Sari Bashi

Upside-Down Love With a message of hope that is both timely and timeless, Upside-Down Love is an extraordinary memoir—irreverent, funny, and profoundly uplifting—of an Israeli lawyer, a Palestinian professor, and a lo...

Thrilled that the English translation of my memoir, Upside-Down Love @blackstonepub.bsky.social, January 2026) is now on pre-order: blackstonepublishing.com/products/boo...). Critically acclaimed as a beacon of hope in an upside-down Middle East, this irreverent, honest love story is worth a read.

Honored for @blackstonepub.bsky.social to publish my memoir Upside-Down Love (Maqluba) in English in Nov. 2025. Can't wait to work with @danielehrenhaft.bsky.social
to publish this searing, honest & hopeful story of love in the shadow of Israeli occupation. More info here: ummforat.com/en/the-book/

Statement by the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory – on Gaza | United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Occupied Palestinian Territory East Jerusalem and Gaza city, 28 May 2025 Six-hundred days on, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is at its darkest point yet. As relentless, deadly bombardment and mass displacement intensify, famili...

This is a clear statement of what int’l aid groups need from Israel to do their lifesaving work. When you push people to the brink, fixing the problem requires a huge influx of food, services & cooperation with the UN as if you want to stop the starvation. www.ochaopt.org/content/stat...

Head of US-backed Gaza aid group resigns, saying he will not abandon ‘principles’ Jake Wood’s resignation comes after the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation faced criticism from the UN and other aid groups

So much time & money wasted on this ill-fated plan to use aid as a tool for displacement, surveillance and consolidation of Israeli control over Gaza. Israel needs to open Gaza's crossings and let the humanitarian grown-ups do their lifesaving jobs. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Sign of our time: many things that should not need saying, now need to be said.

New Gaza Aid Plan, Bypassing U.N. and Billed as Neutral, Originated in Israel

UN & other experienced groups want to distribute aid throughout Gaza, but the Israeli govt is blocking their supply. They refuse to participate in the new plan.
@nytimes.com today reveals Israeli backing for the new "aid" group, which has no such qualms. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/w...

Israel threatens to starve out northern Gaza, U.N. aid agencies say Israel has allowed almost no food aid into north Gaza for two weeks. Humanitarian groups say it leaves 400,000 people with the choice of eventual starvation or fleeing their homes to the south.

Last year, Israel used aid as a tool to force Palestinians to leave northern Gaza by blocking aid there but allowing some in the south. It now says aid will be allowed just in policed zones in the south, forcing people to leave the north in order to eat. www.npr.org/2024/10/15/n...

“Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged” The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percen...

Israeli govt ministers say they'll depopulate Gaza & settle it with Jews, echoing Trump's call to displace Palestinians. Israel's military made 80% of Gaza a no-go zone & told civilians to leave, but there's no safe place to go & no safe way to get there. www.hrw.org/report/2024/...

Since the start of the war 597 days ago the Israeli gov't has used starvation as a weapon of war, blocking aid & using it as leverage against Hamas. 1/5 of Gaza's 2 million people, nearly half of whom are children, face starvation. gisha.org/en/aid-acces...

Gaza: Starvation and Exile | Sari Bashi On May 12 the IPC, the global authority on food security, issued a dire warning. “The Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of famine,” it

The US-backed group tapped by Israel to run aid in Gaza says it'll start this week, with sites in Gaza's south. Palestinians in Gaza will be pushed to choose between displacement and starvation. A thread w more details in my recent
@nybooks.com piece: www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Gaza: Starvation and Exile | Sari Bashi On May 12 the IPC, the global authority on food security, issued a dire warning. “The Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of famine,” it

“Given the choice, many people [in Gaza] will seek asylum elsewhere,” writes Sari Bashi. “International law requires Israel to let them do so. But they also have a right to come back.”

A missile over a playground. 9 children dead. A hotel turned to rubble. Aid workers nearly buried. This is not collateral damage. This is a pattern of unlawful attacks. 📢The world must demand accountability. 📄Full @hrw report: www.hrw.org/news/2025/05...

Gaza: Starvation and Exile | Sari Bashi On May 12 the IPC, the global authority on food security, issued a dire warning. “The Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of famine,” it

“The plan to make Palestinians in Gaza accept further displacement as a condition of receiving food parcels is intertwined with another: to press them into leaving Palestine altogether.” —Sari Bashi

Al-Khalasa helps us understand the problem but also the solution: More than 2/3 of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are refugees & their descendants from what's now Israel. Trump & Netanyahu don't need to find 3rd countries to take them in. They need to respect their right to return.

Today, Israeli forces continue to destroy towns & displace residents in Gaza, openly endorsing Trump's call to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza. It's part of the same racial superiority logic behind the 1948 Naqba & it won't end when the fighting stops in Gaza- if it ever does.

77 years later, we know the displacement, destruction and denial of the right to return were part of a well-planned policy to ensure Israeli Jewish dominance over Palestinians, including demographic superiority, through apartheid. This was al-Khalasa's school, also destroyed.

Al-Khalasa is one of hundreds of Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed in 1948, as the fledgling Israeli state sought to maximize the land under its control while minimizing the number of Palestinians living there. This was the flour mill, a regional resource at the time.

This week, guided by the excellent NGO Zochrot, I visited the ruins of al-Khalasa, a Bedouin village destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948 to prevent its residents from returning. A thread on the past, future and present of Palestinian refugees, Gaza's "day after" and Trump's Riviera plan.

Gaza: Starvation and Exile | Sari Bashi On May 12 the IPC, the global authority on food security, issued a dire warning. “The Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of famine,” it

'US policymakers have normalized [denying Palestinian refugees' right to return], to the point that Trump has been looking to Egypt or Jordan .. to absorb Palestinians rather than demand that Israeli authorities respect their right to live in Israel.' www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Amid Blockade, Trump and Israel Mull Divisive Aid Plan For Gaza

The proposal does “not look like a plan for aid distribution so much as a tool for further pressure, to ensure that life is unlivable in Gaza,” says @taniahary.bsky.social. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/w...

Women’s Participation Has Proven Worth in Bringing Peace At least, we thought ruefully, the women, peace, and security agenda—backed in the United States by the first Trump administration—is safe. We thought this could remain true even amidst the current Tr...

"When women are involved in peace negotiations, those processes are more likely to lead to agreement ...and are more likely to be implemented." @heatherbarr.bsky.social reminds the 2nd Trump administration what the 1st Trump administration knew: Peace can't exclude women. www.hrw.org/news/2025/05...

New Israeli Guidelines Threaten to Eliminate Humanitarian Action in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Almost Entirely A revised registration process for international NGOs aiding Palestinians creates a chilling effect against criticism and accountability.

From my colleague and friend @eitandi.bsky.social on the bureaucratic cruelty that is blocking lifesaving humanitarian assistance to Palestinians struggling under apartheid and ethnic cleansing. www.justsecurity.org/109772/israe...

Seized, settled, let: how Airbnb and Booking.com help Israelis make money from stolen Palestinian land As Israel deploys tanks in the West Bank for the first time in 20 years, we reveal how two of the world’s biggest travel companies are helping settlers commercialise stolen land

"Businesses should not enable, facilitate, or profit from serious violations of #internationallaw. The time has come for [Airbnb and Booking.com] to stop doing business in the occupied territories on stolen land." @saribashi.bsky.social @hrw.org www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Just some of the dozens of children killed in the recent Israeli airstrikes on Al-Shuja’iya Massacre, Eastern Gaza City

Each one a universe. The light of their parents eyes.

A Hacked Newsroom Brings a Spyware Maker to U.S. Court When Roman Gressier, an American reporter working in El Salvador, found out that he and his colleagues were being surveilled, he feared persecution and worried for his sources’ safety.

My @knightcolumbia.org colleague @carriedecell.bsky.social will be arguing this case before the Ninth Circuit tomorrow on behalf of journalists from @elfaroenglish.bsky.social whose phones were hacked with NSO Group's spyware. 12:00 ET, link to audio below. www.newyorker.com/news/news-de...

Trump Administration Cuts Aid Programs It Had Promised to Keep The U.N. food program said the new cuts “could amount to a death sentence” for millions of desperate people.

U.S. Slashes Many of the Aid Programs It Had Promised to Keep

The U.N. food program said the new cuts “could amount to a death sentence” for millions of desperate people.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/u...

Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court MEMORANDUM FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL THE SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY SUBJECT:      Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court Lawyers

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Shakespeare, Henry VI
www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

I’m told this is a real letter. It basically says, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.”

Bibas Family Funeral in Israel Highlights Illegality of Hostage Taking Shiri, Kfir, and Ariel Bibas were taken hostage by a Palestinian armed group on October 7, 2023, and buried in Israel on Wednesday as mourners bid them farewell along the funeral procession route.

I remember seeing the viral footage of Shiri Bibas, terrified, holding her two boys, surrounded by gunmen, on the afternoon of Oct 7, 2023. It was a searing realization of the horrors that would follow. May their memory be a blessing & may these horrific abuses end. www.hrw.org/news/2025/02...