{ "article": { "title" : "Interviewing the Interviewer: Prem Thakker on his Relentless Reporting on Gaza and U.S. Government Accountability", "author" : "Prem Thakker, Céline Semaan, Afeef Nessouli", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/prem-thakker-reporting-gaza-us-accountability", "date" : "2024-12-11 14:33:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/prem-thumb.jpg", "excerpt" : "Illustrations by Yassa Almokhamad-Sarkisian", "content" : "Illustrations by Yassa Almokhamad-SarkisianCÉLINE: Hi Prem! I just want to say that what we find particularly interesting in your reporting career are the ways in which you talk about climate, about Gaza, about so many different things. How do you see a subject like climate politics connect to the situation in Gaza?PREM: A big part of my evolution was just trying to understand power dynamics, trying to understand incentive structures, motivations, broader systems of power and social management. And so I think with all these issues, of course, there are intersectional, material ways in which they all connect, whether it’s arguments regarding capitalism or production or military industrial complex and so on and so forth. But there’s also just this broader sense of the way in which many things seem to happen in a very undemocratic way, in a way that the more these things happen and the more intense scale at which they happen, the easier it is for them to continue happening, because people on an individual scale can only care about so much, can only manage so much, particularly when there’s so much they have to care about in their own personal lives and spheres. And the more these violent systemic issues escalate and intensify, the more overwhelming they are for an individual person, and the less bandwidth they have to care about them, leaving the government and the powers that be more leeway to escalate further. It’s a very cyclical, circular dynamic that understandably alienates people from each other. And so for me, a through-line between all this is that personal aspect of it, of trying to approach all these with a sense of generosity and empathy, in the same way that I can see myself as a subject in these things too.AFEEF: We have been following your work for a while, but we really know you best from your interactions with the government, pushing Matt Miller into a corner. What does it feel like to face down the government nearly every day and try to hold them to account? Can you give us a bit of a peek behind the curtain?PREM: I’m still a fairly young journalist; I’m fairly new to a lot of this, especially things like the government briefing rooms, and the way I approach it is just very earnestly. I’ve been trying my best to learn from the veterans in those rooms, because I think they’re all very talented and very good at what they do. But I think I’m just there to ask questions that many people have. There’s this veneer in Washington, for which stem certain assumptions about how things work, and therefore, there’s other questions to be asking that these veterans have been conditioned not to ask. There are a lot of basic tensions and contradictions in Washington, and not just about Gaza, and a lot of things that merit a more basic questioning. So I do this as much as I can in the Capitol briefing rooms. I’m just trying to ask questions that would be reasonable for any observer to be asking. That’s my goal. My general approach is just…if something seems a little confusing or weird or contradictory, or actively antithetical to purported government values, or purported government statements, those should be questioned.AFEEF: Give us a bit of an understanding of the tension. Any anecdotes or memories that jump out?PREM: One would just be that it’s been 273 days since the Israeli military killed Hind Rajab and her family members and the paramedics that were sent to save her. That has been a case that I’ve continually asked the government about. She’s just one amongst tens or hundreds of thousands of children who’ve been killed, and those paramedics are amongst hundreds who’ve been killed. Those are family members amongst the tens or hundreds of thousands who have been killed. But it sticks out because this specific case is so prominent. There is such an abundance of material evidence available—the horrifying emergency call, time stamps, locations, emergency workers and unit soldiers to interview and interrogate—that if it were a priority for the Israeli government, for the US government by proxy, that if it were a priority this would not take 273 days to get an accountability resolution. It’s very striking. This case is very emblematic and illustrative of how the US government has responded to how the Israeli government has operated, and how tall the stack is of alleged human rights violations.CÉLINE: Totally. With all the evidence and all of the ways in which everything has been documented and verified, it seems that you’re always faced with the same sort of robotic answers by these people. What’s the best case scenario in that press room, and what’s the worst case scenario?PREM: There has definitely been an understandable questioning by a lot of people of the merits of these briefings entirely, about what they’re for. And I understand that, especially for those who just see the videos and see the non- answers. This isn’t necessarily an aberration for government spokespeople, especially for US spokespeople, to operate this way. Their role is to defend the party line. To defend the policy of the US government. Obviously, what’s unique is just how much more visible this is with tools like Twitter and so on. I think I don’t actually have a perfect answer of what these briefings mean, or what the merits are. I’m just there as much as I can to try to find answers and to try to ask questions.AFEEF: Your profile has probably risen a lot in the last few months, and I wonder what it’s been like personally for you to get TV time and go viral and what, what has that been like personally.PREM: A difficult aspect of being in journalism, particularly journalism that is focused on politics, corruption, civil rights, foreign policy, the environment and so on, is that oftentimes the reason some journalists’ careers accelerate is because of work that they’re doing that’s focused on very horrific, sad things. I’m glad that people seem to be finding the work we’re doing helpful and beneficial, and that they resonate with it. But it’s a very weird and complex feeling to have your career as a journalist benefit from the work you’re doing when the work you’re doing is actually quite painful.CÉLINE: How do you sustain your mental health? Do you have a practice? Do you have any rituals to stay afloat?PREM: I’m surrounded by very, very good people who have hearts of gold and are also very compassionate and caring about the world, but are also compassionate and caring about what’s right in front of them, and so to be something that’s in front of them, and to be a benefactor of that caring compassion is very sustaining. I do like to meditate. I do like to play sports. I feel like a big part of life is just playing. And I feel like as much as we can play and can play with other people and just hang out is very sustaining. It’s understandable for people who are so immersed in these kinds of topics, whether it’s climate change or war or attacks on civil liberties, civil rights, systematic discrimination, racism, you name it, to just feel very hopeless, or to feel very conflicted about removing yourself from that, even for a moment. But it seems like if we’re going to care about the world, you also have to care about not just your own world, but the people who share that world with you, including your loved ones, your friends, your neighbors, and part of that involves enjoying being around them. And so I think it’s not just a philosophical act of resistance to love life and share good times. It’s important because it’s a coherent part of caring about the world. Those reminders that others have shared with me have been very grounding and important.CÉLINE: What do you hope is the impact on culture from your work? Younger journalists seeing you in these rooms; that alone is an important image. You wearing black nail polish in these rooms. That’s another image. What is the impact that these images have on culture?PREM: Going back to what we talked about earlier, about the assumptions of the way this place is supposed to work.There are questions that no one really asks because that’s not the news of the day, that should not be controversial questions. Even very basic ones, like, “Hey, Senator, the world’s on fire. Why are you behaving this way? It’s the world’s hottest year on record. What do you say to your constituents who just suffered from a hurricane made worse by climate change?” I try to pursue those questions and not fall into the understandable tendency to just operate on the assumptions of how this place is supposed to work. Washington is supposed to serve people, so if myself and my colleagues can be a part of encouraging other journalists to embrace that spirit, to be much more empowered, and to see that other people feel that way too, and bring them to be even more engaged. I think that’s a good thing, because a lot of people in this country, for very good reason and in different flavors, are disenchanted, alienated, separated from politics. I empathize with that and sympathize with that, but I think it’s all the more important for them to be here too, to be skeptical, to be present, to be reading and learning.That is my broader hope with the work we try to do: to listen to the disempowered and give them voice and to make them feel power, and to not make them feel like they’re always spoken down to. With regards to things like me wearing nail polish, or things like that, or just basically looking a little different. The world needs a little more color. What’s wrong with that?" } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "Clear Backpacks, Columbine, and the Colors of School Safety", "author" : "Derecka Purnell", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/clear-backpacks-columbine-colors-of-school-safety", "date" : "2025-09-02 23:38:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2025_9_Gun_Violence_Derecka_Purnell_1.jpg", "excerpt" : "In elementary school, our classroom’s wooden door displayed a laminated sheet that listed emergency drills, coordinated by shades of urgency. Green, yellow, orange, red. Fire drills were fun. We stole giggles and glances at friends and crushes as everyone lined up outside on the playground. Tornado drills - when we were sure they were just drills - took us into hallways to tuck our heads between our knees for a thrilling disruption to an otherwise routine school day. Teachers taught us to scoot under our tiny desks during earthquake drills. A couple of kids would get in trouble for twisting their heads around and shaking on their backs, clearly possessed by the demons of imaginary tremors. We’d defend our acting, “But why we gotta practice sitting still for an earthquake!?”", "content" : "In elementary school, our classroom’s wooden door displayed a laminated sheet that listed emergency drills, coordinated by shades of urgency. Green, yellow, orange, red. Fire drills were fun. We stole giggles and glances at friends and crushes as everyone lined up outside on the playground. Tornado drills - when we were sure they were just drills - took us into hallways to tuck our heads between our knees for a thrilling disruption to an otherwise routine school day. Teachers taught us to scoot under our tiny desks during earthquake drills. A couple of kids would get in trouble for twisting their heads around and shaking on their backs, clearly possessed by the demons of imaginary tremors. We’d defend our acting, “But why we gotta practice sitting still for an earthquake!?”Then, we started preparing for people to kill us.Tornadoes don’t twist door knobs, target classrooms, punish giggles or reload weapons. Shootings are unnatural disasters. The one at Columbine happened right after my 9th birthday. Learning that kids kill kids colored my school days more. Intruder drills are dark. We’d turn off the lights, sit in silence, and hide in the coat room. At last, an administrator tapped on each door to signal that we were clear.In the thirty years since those sixteen kids had their lives stolen in Colorado, I have been a student, youth worker and organizer, freedom school instructor, middle school teacher, board member of a youth nonprofit, the best aunt to my niblings, an improving godmother, and now parent of an eleven and nine year old– nearly an expert in first days of school. We send kids into the world. We expect them to come home with their crayons and their complaints. Sometimes, they do not. According to data by the Washington Post, more than 394,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine, impacting more than 400 schools across the country. Over 200 people have been killed and twice as many people have been injured.On the last day before my first holiday break from teaching, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was breaking news. Word passed between teacher to teacher like a virus, each one of us sinking with symptoms of heartbreak into the spinning black office chairs around the work lounge. A few months later, pessimism spread, too. A white man in the United States of America could murder his mother, and then a class of nearly all white kindergarteners, and nothing would really happen. Twenty miniature caskets and politicians failed to carry any piece of federal legislation down the aisle to be signed into law for ten years. President Biden ultimately signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, which did not address how the Sandy Hook shooter ultimately secured the weapon used in the killing spree, which was legally obtained by his mother. More mass school shootings followed.About ten states have bans on assault rifles, important bans birthed in the activism and tears following deadly rampages. Yet the usual political sluggishness and nothingness resulting from school shootings was one of the most important lessons that would secretly haunt me throughout the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement: most white lives did not matter in the U.S. In fact, most people who are white can never matter as long as death-dealing forms of oppression exist, including patriarchy, ableism, homophobia, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. Those children were sacrificed at capitalism’s bloody altar, little casualties for the sake of gunmaking CEOs.As with all pain and suffering, capitalists turn school shootings into a market. Kids get killed, companies get cash. According to a major study, people bought three million more guns than normal in the five months following the Sandy Hook shooting. The same study found an additional correlated spike in unintentional gun-related deaths for sixty people, including twenty children in that period. No drills or alarms or color coded systems can prepare anyone for these accidents.Gun sales belong to an entire marketplace that depends on preventable deaths. Instead of eliminating the problems - including weapons manufacturers - capitalists sell “solutions.”Florida is spending half a million dollars to pilot drone technology in three school districts. Pilots will operate the drones inside the schools from a remote command center, and for a thousand bucks a month, be able to “respond within five seconds and take out the shooter in less than a minute.” What if there are multiple shooters, like Columbine? Maybe multiple drones! What if the shooting takes place on the playground? Maybe playground drones! What if the shooting takes place on the school bus? Maybe school bus drones! Of course, the solutions have to be piloted, subscribed to, implemented, insured, updated, repaired, replaced, repackaged, and resold. We are in a kaleidoscope of the school to prison pipeline, military industrial complex, and carceral state.Two years ago, my kids’ school district emailed parents another new “solution:” clear backpacks. In three bullet points, they listed that clear backpacks will help school officials scan bookbags, reduce weapons and contraband, and increase transparency among students. As cons, they acknowledged that some people might view it as an invasion of privacy and that the bookbags might be hard to find in stores. My then nine-year old child had questions.* Why are they turning our school into a prison? Isn’t that much plastic bad for the environment? What do they think might happen?*Columbine and Sandy Hook were not secrets I withheld. His questions made me feel otherwise. When he found out how Tamir Rice was killed later in the school year, he was livid that in all that I had told him about the police, I did not tell him that they also can kill kids. In 2014, the year he was born, it was news to me, too. I learned about Aiyanna Stanley-Jones after Michael Brown was killed, even though cops killed her four years earlier. Breaking old news to children hurts. In a moment, they experience the specific cruelty of the incident, the general cruelty of the world, and immediate vulnerability to a new danger. His childhood is now colored by these events, and the clear bookpack solution was as fake as the plastic material of the bag.His questions led us on a research journey. Some school districts in other parts of the country introduced clear bookbags and then rescinded them. Why? Clear backpacks contain polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. The kind of PVC in bookbags contains a chemical that can cause cancer, asthma, fertility issues, early puberty for girls, liver damage, and mental developmental issues. In 2022, the Charlotte School District in North Carolina halted its bookbag policy and rollout due to California Proposition 65 Warning attached to the clear backpacks, notifying consumers of cancer causing agents due to the PVC.One year later, vinyl chloride, the underlying chemical in PVC, came into public scrutiny in the aftermath of a major train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Residents of the small, mostly white town witnessed a catastrophic spill and burn that released over 1.1 million pounds of vinyl chloride into the soil, air, and water, alongside other toxic chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency reported that public health agencies informed residents that vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen that “continuous lifetime exposure to low levels of vinyl chloride can increase an individual’s risk of developing liver cancer, as well as other cancers.” The EPA has ongoing reporting on the environmental impact of the toxins, explaining to residents that screenings have returned readings below the amount necessary for government protection. Residents have organized and reported otherwise, including “recurring rashes, lesions, and bloody noses endured by themselves, their loved ones, and their children.”Not only would PVC bookbags cause plastic pollution for the planet, it was bad for humans, too.The pervasiveness of guns and the political permission for school shootings to persist will attempt to undermine other aspects of our social, physical, and mental health. Clear backpacks - which experts warn that no evidence supports improving safety- may make parents and educators feel better. But it is not worth exposing kids to cancer causing agents, slowly, intentionally, on their backs, everyday, and equally important, conditioning us all to perform or accept additional surveillance as convenient protective measures.My kid and I were successful at convincing some parents and the school leadership to reverse the clear backpack policy. But the next year, a new principal introduced optional mesh bookbags as an alternative, gentler surveillance, and so our fight continues. The color of school safety is not clear, and a clear backpack is not as immediately lethal as a gun. What remains dangerous is the kind of market driven approach that offers new drills and commodities towards a different kind of preventable tragedy. Let’s not be the kind of society who accepts it." } , { "title" : "To Do the Greatest Harm: Cornell University’s Complicity in International Violence & Destruction", "author" : "Eliza Salamon & MB", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/cornell-complicity", "date" : "2025-08-20 12:01:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/greg-daines-A37V-7GyDDg-unsplash.jpg", "excerpt" : " This independent research shown in this report, show that the US and Israeli military, the largest military and weapons corporations, and technology companies have invested over $180 million in Cornell researchers and departments, mostly from 2023-2024.", "content" : " This independent research shown in this report, show that the US and Israeli military, the largest military and weapons corporations, and technology companies have invested over $180 million in Cornell researchers and departments, mostly from 2023-2024.Discussion of the military-industrial complex often leaves out its third arm: academia. For many decades, the American defense industry, weapons manufacturers, and universities have collaborated in a profitable pattern that turn students and academics into cogs of the American war machine. 1 2 The Department of Defense (D.o.D.) is the branch of government that distributes taxpayer funds, generally through direct and indirect contracts, to research universities.This report unmasks Cornell University’s participation in this system and its complicity in global violence, destruction, and human rights violations while it enjoys a $10.7b endowment. In particular, our analysis, largely based on Office of Sponsored Research files from 2001-2024, finds that Cornell has been complicit in the U.S.-backed Saudi genocide of Yemen and the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Gaza. This complicity has been established through two forms of collaboration: Direct collaboration, through tens of millions of dollars in funding, with weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel companies. These include companies from which the student undergraduate and graduate bodies have adopted divestment resolutions (BAE Systems, Boeing, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Technion Institute, and ThyssenKrupp). 3 4 Direct collaboration with Saudi ARAMCO and the Israeli Ministry of Defense (I.M.o.D.), including millions of dollars in funding. In addition, Cornell’s partnership with the Israeli university Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) through the New York City Cornell Tech Campus is uniquely egregious and a direct form of collaboration. 5 Much of the data supporting this has been aggregated into an excel file attached here 6 with the original files. 7 Hundreds of these sponsored research projects are listed in the linked table in addition to D.o.D. work that is included in our larger report. 8 The projects vary in subject from vaccines to cyber to hardware to policy. The table should be treated as a largely representative but incomplete list of Cornell’s involvement with the most prominent weapons manufacturing-related entities.Israeli Funding and Cornell’s Role in Apartheid and GenocideIn 2007, Harold Craighead, Professor in Applied and Engineering Physics, secured $300k from the I.M.o.D. The funded project focused on the development and fabrication of nanodevices. Though we were unable to obtain papers specifically citing this funding other than the official reporting, we present here the most plausible outcome of the proposed research. In 2006, Craighead received a visit from former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.9 In a discussion with Peres, Craighead mentioned his collaboration with Tel Aviv University (T.A.U). Indeed, in the same year Craighead published a paper in collaboration with employees of T.A.U. focusing on the same topic of nanodevices.10 Military applications of the research include nano-meter scale robotics and biotechnologies along with optics/imaging. In a similar vein, the unaffiliated partnership between Lockheed Martin and Rice University documents other broad military applications of nano-tech.11In 2020, Robert F. Shepherd, an Associate Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, solicited $100k from the I.M.o.D. for elastic metamaterials research. Like Craighead, this funding is not reported in any of Shepherd’s publications, though one can extrapolate on the basis of the research topic as to which papers of his were I.M.o.D. funded. In particular, a paper from 2020 focuses precisely on the use of fluid flow to modulate material shape.12 This field is largely concerned with the manufacturing of materials which can change properties like texture or rigidity as a modulated response. Such applications are useful for the development of robotic components which can manipulate or navigate the environment. In addition, Shepherd’s collaborator at Israeli university Technion, Amir Gat, lists a 2019-2020 $100k funding grant from Maffat (a joint administrative body of the I.M.o.D and the I.D.F.) under the same topic.13 Conference proceedings also fit under the same topic and Shepherd went to Technion to present his work at a conference in 2020.14 15Frank Wise, Professor of Engineering in Applied and Engineering Physics, also solicited $100k from the I.M.o.D. to research high-power lasers. Such terawatt fiber lasers have a variety of applications but are of particular military interest for destroying aircraft or infrastructure without the use of conventional kinetic weapons like missiles. Lockheed Martin, a weapons manufacturer, reports its own interests in high-power lasers and such weapons are already being applied aboard military ships.16 17 18 This funding resulted in a paper on lasers that can be modulated to use various modes of emission.19 Pavel Sidorenko, a post-doc within Wise’s group, is now holding a position at the Technion continuing research on the high-power fiber lasers “which are becoming increasingly important in a variety of fields ranging from military applications to healthcare”.20Qing Zhao, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, also solicited $420k from the I.M.o.D. between 2021 and 2024. Zhao used this funding to research artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms and cites the I.M.o.D. funding in two papers dealing with computer vision and decision-making algorithms.21 22 Focusing on the former, Zhao’s work on computer vision enables cameras to more effectively identify objects, persons and notice patterns.23 Indeed, such computer vision algorithms have been implemented by the Israeli military to identify Palestinians from Gaza at checkpoints targeting forcibly displaced refugees.24Zhao’s work also has applications in the development of efficient autonomous drone swarms, by producing algorithms that lead to effective decision-making.25 Suppose a swarm of drones is navigating an area, each with its own sensors or cameras learning about its environment, then the data has to be processed leading to a decision. Zhao’s work creates an algorithm that processes this information in a centralized way and then makes a decision. This research can be applied to make decisions such as whether or not to kill an individual or bomb a building. Per a Booz Allen Hamilton report, Israel has been to date the first to use machine learning, including drone swarms successfully in military campaigns:“Israel’s victory over Hamas in 2021 was the first war to be won via the asymmetric advantage provided by AI, and the conflict in Gaza that started in 2023 continues to be characterized by AI as well as information warfare in the cognitive domain… Israel became the first country to use true drone swarms, deploying them in its 2021 conflict with Gaza, and is arguably the global leader in this technology because of their implementation of Elbit Systems’ Legion-X, a modular, heterogeneous, multi-domain C2 swarm system”.26 See also.27The use of these machine learning algorithms in Gaza has been documented in +972 magazine with the implementation of algorithms known as The Gospel, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy?28On the policy side, Sarah Kreps, Professor in Government, conducts public policy and supply chain studies for the D.o.D. and the Israeli government. In 2024, she published a study on the best surveillance practices for governments to engage in.29 The study was in part funded by the Israel National Cyber Directorate.Given Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, Cornell’s collaboration with Technion University in Israel is another blatant example of its active complicity. With the establishment of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in NYC in 2012, Cornell has doubled down on its commitment to its Israeli collaborations, despite the efforts of its activist student body and the protest of NYC communities.30 31 At the announcement of the partnership, the Israeli consul expressed the “strategic importance” of the project to change the state’s association with conflict and violence, and instead associate it with innovation.32 Cornell consistently touts its collaboration with Technion in published articles: “The impact of the Technion on Israel’s economy, society and defense is unmatched”.33Further, the word “defense” is often used by weapons manufacturers and governments as a euphemism for offensive capabilities. The Technion has also been instrumental in advancing technological capabilities of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.34 35 36 It also had several programs and scholarships sponsored by weapons manufacturers Rafael and Elbit Systems.37 In addition, Technion has been directly complicit through providing support to the Israeli military.38 As the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (B.D.S.) movement has documented: “Technion has developed a course on marketing the Israeli weapons industry to the international market for export. Technion also has numerous joint academic programs with the Israeli military and developed the remote­ control capabilities for the Caterpillar D­9 armored bulldozer used by the Israeli military to demolish Palestinian homes—considered collective punishment under international law.”39 40 41 42 Cornell Tech’s council includes Michael Bloomberg who once stated: “I’ll never condition aid to Israel.”43 This may reflect, in part, why Cornell’s leadership has refused to even consider divestment.Saudi Funding and Cornell’s Role in Climate Change and Human Rights AbusesCornell’s complicity with genocidal governments extends further through its substantial relationships with the Saudi government and its institutions. University programs and individual faculty benefit from Saudi funds despite the many violations of human rights carried out by Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi totalitarian Crown Prince and Prime Minister. These include but are not limited to the following: the U.S.-backed genocide in Yemen, the assassination and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the country’s limitless production of fossil fuels, and its persistent crackdowns on its own activists, including feminists. The Yemeni genocide claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians from 2015 to 2022.44 [^45] American-made weapons were used and made the U.S. complicit.45 46 47 48 At no point did Cornell, as an institution, take action to break ties with the Saudi dictatorship. Cornell’s former president Frank H. T. Rhodes served as a trustee at the King Abdullah University of Science Technology along with former M.I.T. president Charles M. Vest.49Over the past few years, faculty have also been subsidized through research funding from Saudi ARAMCO, the majority state-owned petroleum and natural gas company responsible for almost 4.5% of all global CO2 and methane emissions between 1965 and 2017.50 The company has a long history of obstructing action against climate change through aggressive lobbying and funding of Western research, especially at American universities.51 The work financed by Saudi ARAMCO at Cornell is focused on oil refinement and energy generation broadly, a problematic venture, especially considering academia’s knowledge of the human role in perpetuating climate change.Amongst the employees who received funds from ARAMCO are Lawrence Cathles, Lynden Archer and Emmanuel Giannelis, professors in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Materials Science, respectively, who received $1.3m from 2009 to 2011 through the KAUST-Cornell Center for Energy and Sustainability. Despite its name, this center, a collaboration between Cornell and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (K.A.U.S.T.) in Saudi Arabia from 2008-2015, was committed to research on oil and gas production.52 53 Further K.A.U.S.T. funding followed: Giannelis also received $531k between 2012 and 2014. Archer, current Dean of the School of Engineering, received $84k in 2017. In 2023, $250k went to Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Yong Joo and $400k to a professor in Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Geoffrey Coates. Yong Joo also solicited $200k in funding along with Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering Greeshma Gadikota’s $300k in 2024.Collaboration With Weapons ManufacturersIn addition to collaborating with violent regimes, Cornell has received millions of dollars in research funding that have come directly from weapons manufacturers. Publicly available documents dating from 2001 show this funding includes the “primes”54: Lockheed Martin [~$3m], Raytheon [~$6.5m], Boeing [~$1.4m], Northrop Grumman [~$2.3m] and General Dynamics [~$240k]. B.A.E. Systems [~$2.3m], L3Harris [~$1.4m], Shell [$500k], Exxon [~$1.2m], Intel Corporation [~$16.4m], I.B.M. [~$7.2m], M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory [~$250k], Teledyne [~$700k] and others have also given considerable research funding to the Cornell employees.The group of studies are far too extensive to discuss in one document but demonstrate the ultimate functioning of so-called “academic” research. The funding has been for machine learning and artificial intelligence development, software and computer language platforms, silicon chip and battery development, miniature satellites, robotics, data visualization, 3-D rendering and much more. All of these are components that are often declared as being “dual use” but are used by militaries and states well beyond any stated consumer use. As one example, Raytheon has published articles on its web page touting its collaboration with Cornell on gallium-nitride materials and refinement radio-frequency technologies.55These collaborations extend to student life. Cornell has overtly partnered with Lockheed Martin to create a Masters of Engineering program in Systems Engineering.56 On the front page of the program is stated: “Lockheed Martin Employees - Welcome!”. Standards are lowered for Lockheed Martin employees by waiving GRE scores and requiring only one recommendation letter. Similarly, Cornell has an identical partnership with Boeing for a Masters program along with a 5% tuition discount and waiving of application fee.57The university also holds a key laboratory for the Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub (N.O.R.D.T.E.C.H.) along with a plethora of other universities and weapons manufacturers.58 Though its aims include a wide array of technologies, they are highly focused on the development of computer chips. The basis of the organization is to create a collaborative space between weapons manufacturers, the D.o.D., and academia.The Cornell Tech campus in N.Y.C. also does its own collaborations, including with DefenseArk.59 Through its startup award it has helped sustain autonomous robotics companies like Aatonomy which are looking to do business with the D.o.D.60OutlookIn the midst of foreign catastrophes including the Yemeni genocide, the ongoing Palestinian genocide and the assassination of hundreds of reporters in Gaza, Cornell has never ceased nor paused its collaboration with regimes or the weapons manufacturers supplying them. Not only does this demonstrate its institutional and individual collaboration with actors that consistently violate international law, but also reveals that its professed human values are ultimately hollow calls. In our non-comprehensive analysis of Cornell research funding from 2001-2024, we found that researchers and institutes received hundreds of millions of dollars from the D.o.D, weapons manufacturers, and international governments committing vast human rights violations. Further investigation would also reveal indirect transfers of technology and weaponry from Cornell to U.A.E.’s fueling of the Sudanese genocide by means of weapons manufacturing sales.61Cornell feigns its research to be merely theoretical, non-applied, or done for the sake of “knowledge production.” David Gray Widder, post-doctoral researcher at Cornell Tech has recently written about the impossibility of making a distinction between basic and applied research when such research is funded by entities whose explicit purpose is to enact harm: “this mutual enlistment is crucial to the perpetuation of the military-industrial-commercial-academic complex, and to the technopolitical imaginaries of security through military domination that keep public funds flowing to projects in more efficient killing and destruction”.62Political scientist Neve Gordon and medical anthropologist Guy Shalev published a recent article titled “The Shame of Israeli Medicine”, which concludes that Israeli academics are not doing their part in preventing the genocide and therefore require external pressure and sanctioned from outside Israel. Despite these findings, Cornell Tech’s president Michael Kotlikoff recently stated proudly in a speech that “at Cornell Tech, we have the most intensive and meaningful collaboration with an Israeli university of any institution in this country”.63As Cornell reportedly prepares to reach a $100 million settlement with the Trump administration over allegations of anti-semitism, it draws ever closer to the belly of the beast.64 The Trump administration’s blatant weaponization of anti-semitism is one of its many tactics designed to manufacture consent for its crackdown on higher education and prompt capitulation. With this settlement, Cornell’s alliances with repressive regimes are only continuing to expand. An institution that continues to tie itself to the destruction of international communities can only degrade and devolve into a symbol of oppression.This report finds that Cornell’s purported goals in sustaining human-centred values are not only lacking, but are egregiously contrary to them. On an institutional and individual level, Cornell is intimately complicit in the act of genocide. And though Cornell has its own unique forms of complicity, the academic-military-industrial complex permeates the entire American system of higher education. If these institutions, as they have demonstrated thus far, do not have the moral capacity to make ethical and just decisions, it is the responsibility of students, faculty, staff, and the broader international academic community to put pressure, sanctions, and boycotts on them. Ultimately, the contradictions revealed within academia, both over decades of violent complicity and the ongoing starvation and annihilation of Gaza, make clear the necessity of breaking apart and reshaping an academia divorced from the military, and truly committed to a greater, ethical, and just future. https://universities.icanw.org/ ↩ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/the-pentagons-quest-for-academic-intelligence-ai/ ↩ https://assembly.cornell.edu/shared-governance/get-involved/input-issues/spring-2024-undergraduate-referendum/submitted?utm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss ↩ https://www.instagram.com/p/DI_mRUeOtKr/?img_index%3D3 ↩ https://www.instagram.com/p/DI_mRUeOtKr/?img_index%3D3 ↩ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SbjxsSRFFNKQTe0typvAR3KjKo0IZmdmBTpkMht6Ets/edit?usp%3Dsharing ↩ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S6NHD1w-828udkjH6mfYe0whBGoD0YZg/view?usp%3Ddrive_link ↩ https://antiwar.io/cornell ↩ 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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/climate/saudi-arabia-aramco-oil-solar-climate.html ↩ https://ecommons.cornell.edu/communities/9de3b5de-53b7-4098-a8e9-e611323f790a ↩ https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2008/04/25-million-cu-saudi-link-will-boost-nanoscale-research ↩ https://ventureoutsource.com/contract-manufacturing/top-military-electronic-defense-primes-diversify-de-risk-win-dod-pentagon-procurement-budget ↩ https://www.rtx.com/news/news-center/2023/11/16/rtx-and-darpa-to-revolutionize-gallium-nitride-technology-for-improved-radio-freq ↩ ttps://www.engineering.cornell.edu/sys/distance-learning-meng-systems-engineering/corporate-partners/lockheed-martin-employees/ ↩ https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/sys/distance-learning-meng-systems-engineering/corporate-partners/boeing-employees/ ↩ https://www.nordtechub.org/members ↩ https://tech.cornell.edu/news/bridging-academia-and-industry-innovation-meet-cornell-techs-first-venture-fellow/ ↩ https://tech.cornell.edu/news/how-to-easily-make-any-robot-autonomous/ ↩ https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/arms-sales-uae-00217874 ↩ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.17840 ↩ https://president.cornell.edu/speeches-writings/2025-state-of-the-university-address/ ↩ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-01/cornell-close-to-white-house-settlement-of-up-to-100-million ↩ " } , { "title" : "Legalized Occupation: Dissecting Israel’s Plan to Seize Gaza", "author" : "EIP Editors", "category" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/legalized-occupation-dissecting-israels-plan-to-seize-gaza", "date" : "2025-08-09 10:13:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Cover-Legalized_Occupation.jpg", "excerpt" : "Israel’s newly approved plan to “take control” of Gaza City and other key areas of the enclave is being presented to the world as a security imperative. In reality, it is an extension of a long-standing settler-colonial project—another chapter in the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.", "content" : "Israel’s newly approved plan to “take control” of Gaza City and other key areas of the enclave is being presented to the world as a security imperative. In reality, it is an extension of a long-standing settler-colonial project—another chapter in the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.The language of “control,” “buffer zones,” and “security perimeters” is not neutral. It is a calculated rhetorical strategy designed to obscure the material realities of occupation, annexation, and ethnic cleansing. This is not a temporary maneuver aimed at stability. It is the consolidation of power through the seizure of land, the dismantling of Palestinian civil society, and the deepening of Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe—all in violation of international law.The Political Calculus Behind the OperationTo understand the decision, we must first acknowledge its political function for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Facing mounting domestic discontent, the collapse of public trust, and arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes, Netanyahu is cornered. His far-right coalition partners demand an uncompromising expansionist agenda, and his own political survival depends on delivering it.Occupation has always been a cornerstone of this political project. By launching a military campaign to seize Gaza’s largest urban center, Netanyahu signals strength to his base while sidestepping accountability for the escalating humanitarian disaster. That disaster is not collateral damage—it is a form of collective punishment meant to force submission. It is also a bargaining chip: an occupied, starved, and displaced population is easier to control and harder to resist.A Continuation of the NakbaThis plan is not an anomaly; it is the latest manifestation of a decades-long pattern. Since the Nakba of 1948, the forced displacement of Palestinians and the destruction of their communities have been central tools of state policy. In Gaza today, we see the same logic: empty the land of its people, destroy the infrastructure of life, and claim it under the guise of security.International law is explicit: annexation through military force is illegal. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and the transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory. Yet, as with the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel has consistently acted with impunity—shielded by the political, financial, and military backing of powerful allies.The Humanitarian FrontGaza has already been described by UN officials as a “graveyard for children.” The enclave’s population has endured a near-total blockade for 18 years, compounded by repeated bombardments that have destroyed hospitals, schools, and basic infrastructure. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced since the start of this latest escalation. Food insecurity is at catastrophic levels; medical supplies are almost nonexistent.Israel’s seizure of Gaza City—home to hundreds of thousands—will further collapse what remains of civilian life. Humanitarian organizations warn that the move will trigger mass displacement, deepen famine, and cut off the few remaining supply routes. These are not accidental outcomes. They are part of a strategy that weaponizes deprivation as a means of political control.Narrative as a BattlefieldThe battle over Gaza is not only military—it is discursive. The words chosen by political leaders and media outlets shape how the world understands, or misunderstands, what is unfolding. In Netanyahu’s framing, Israel is not occupying Gaza; it is “liberating” it from Hamas. In this telling, Palestinian civilians become invisible, reduced to collateral casualties in a counterterrorism campaign.This is why reframing is crucial. We must reject the sanitized vocabulary of “security zones” and “temporary control” and speak plainly: this is occupation, annexation, and the forcible seizure of Palestinian land. It is not liberation, it is domination. And it is not about peace, it is about power.Global ConnectionsIsrael’s actions in Gaza are not isolated from broader global struggles. From the forced removal of Indigenous peoples in North America to the apartheid regime in South Africa, the tactics of dispossession, militarization, and narrative control follow a familiar pattern. This is why solidarity movements around the world—led by Indigenous, Black, and other colonized peoples—see their own struggles reflected in Palestine’s.The link is not merely symbolic. Israel’s military technology, surveillance systems, and counterinsurgency tactics are exported globally, often marketed as “field-tested” in Gaza and the West Bank. These technologies underpin policing, border control, and repression from Ferguson to Kashmir. In this way, Gaza is both a site of profound local suffering and a laboratory for global authoritarianism.Discrediting the PlanIf the goal is to discredit this plan in the eyes of the international public, the strategy must be twofold: expose contradictions and center Palestinian agency.Expose contradictionsNetanyahu insists Israel does not seek to govern Gaza permanently, yet the seizure of land, establishment of military perimeters, and destruction of civilian infrastructure point toward long-term control.Israel claims to act in self-defense, yet the scale and method of its campaign far exceed any proportional response under international law.Center Palestinian agencyElevate Palestinian voices—journalists, doctors, teachers—who are documenting life under siege.Highlight grassroots forms of resilience and resistance that defy the portrayal of Palestinians as passive victims or inevitable threats.Name the enablersIdentify the governments, corporations, and financial institutions providing material or diplomatic cover for the occupation.Show how this complicity undermines their stated commitments to human rights and international law.Connect to global strugglesFrame Gaza as part of a worldwide resistance to settler colonialism, authoritarianism, and militarized capitalism.Build coalitions across movements to break the isolation that occupation depends upon.Everything Is PoliticalFrom a political-analyst perspective, the key insight is that this is not simply a geopolitical crisis—it is a crisis of narrative. If we accept the occupying power’s framing, we have already conceded the first battle. That is why the work of reframing—naming what is happening, connecting it to historical patterns, and centering the perspectives of the colonized—is not ancillary to the struggle; it is the struggle.In the end, Israel’s plan to seize Gaza is not about security—it is about sovereignty. Not Palestinian sovereignty, but the sovereignty of a state built on the denial of another people’s right to exist on their land. That is the truth the world must see clearly, and that is the truth we must continue to tell, relentlessly, until occupation becomes not a political fact but a historical memory." } ] }