Sanctioning Genocide: Justice For Palestine In The Land Of Bolivar

🟥 Sanctions from Below — When the Global South Dared to Speak Law to Empire

It didn’t happen in Geneva, nor in Brussels, nor behind the dead-eyed walls of the UN Security Council. It happened in Bogotá. There, under the Andean sky and the ghost of Bolívar, twelve nations from across the once-pillaged Global South did something that the so-called “international community” has refused to do for nearly a century: they held Israel accountable. Not in words alone, not with empty UN votes or solemn statements meant for Western editorials—but with sanctions. Concrete, coordinated, and courageous.

Bolivia. Cuba. Indonesia. Iraq. Libya. Malaysia. Namibia. Nicaragua. Oman. South Africa. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Colombia. Each state carried the weight of its own colonial wounds to the table. Each brought the long memory of Western betrayal. And together, they did what Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin will not do: declare, without apology, that genocide is underway in Gaza, and that it must end—not with hand-wringing, but with action. With the flow of weapons severed, with ports closed to death-cargo, with coal and capital cut off from the machinery of Zionist destruction.

This is not posturing. This is not symbolic. This is the decolonization of diplomacy in real time. And it is happening not because the West grew a conscience—but because the South has had enough. Enough of the “rules-based order” that always finds loopholes for its favorite colonizers. Enough of watching international law turned into a cudgel for empire and a shield for apartheid. Enough of the moral theatrics staged by those who supplied the very bombs that buried 60,000 Palestinians beneath the rubble.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur—branded an antisemite by Washington for daring to tell the truth—stood shoulder-to-shoulder with South African diplomats, Colombian ministers, and Palestinian survivors. She called it what it is: genocide. And she reminded us what they always try to make us forget—that resistance, even in the shadow of horror, is a duty. “Hope must be a discipline,” she said, echoing the kind of moral clarity that once lit fires in Havana, in Algiers, in Hanoi.

The imperial press barely noticed. Or they called it theater. Or they called it dangerous. What else can they say? When the servants stop obeying, the master can only sputter. But the real danger—if you’re sitting in Tel Aviv or Langley—is that this isn’t just a diplomatic gesture. It’s an insurgent realignment. A mutiny of meaning. These twelve countries didn’t just condemn Israel—they exposed the West. They made visible the hollow center of liberal internationalism. They reminded the world that the courts in The Hague only move when the gavel is pushed by white hands.

Colombia, once a proud client of U.S. military doctrine, now says it will end all coal exports to Israel. South Africa, once labeled a “terrorist state” for harboring Mandela, now leads the charge to bring Israeli generals to justice. Nicaragua, smeared as a dictatorship, is more lawful than London. Iraq, still crawling from the wreckage of a U.S. war crime, refuses to be silent. And Libya—what remains of it after NATO’s crusade—still finds a way to stand. These are not perfect states. But perfection is not what gives legitimacy—principle does. Memory does. Struggle does.

And let’s be clear: they are not alone. Over thirty nations gathered in Bogotá. Even China, Brazil, and Mexico watched. Spain showed up. Turkey nodded. The Madrid Group, a parallel bloc of Arab and European nations, is circling the same fire. There is something gathering here—a center of gravity beyond the NATO orbit. A movement, not just of states, but of historical reckoning. And the message is not complicated: the era of impunity is over. If the West will not enforce international law, then the rest of the world will learn to do it without them.

Palestine has always been the fault line. A settler colony propped up by empire, defended by lies, normalized through terror. The children of Gaza have always been the collateral of Western civility. But this time, something different is stirring. The world’s forgotten states are no longer content to be mourners. They are architects now—building a new moral infrastructure, block by block, sanction by sanction.

And while the empire clutches its pearls and rattles its sabers, the people of the world are watching. Because what Bogotá taught us is this: even the smallest state, standing with truth, can shake the tallest tower of lies. Even the poorest nation, armed with memory and principle, can break the silence that genocide depends on. This wasn’t a conference. It was a warning. The Other Side has found its voice. And it is done asking permission.

🟥 From Bandung to Bogotá: The Long Arc of Anti-Colonial Internationalism

This gathering didn’t fall from the sky. It didn’t appear like a miracle in the face of atrocity. It is the direct descendant of centuries of resistance and decades of deliberate alignment among the colonized. The diplomats who stood shoulder-to-shoulder in Bogotá are inheritors of a political tradition that stretches from the rice fields of Vietnam to the sugarcane of Haiti, from the liberation wars of Algeria and Zimbabwe to the non-aligned defiance of Cuba and Yugoslavia. Bogotá was not an outlier. It was continuity—a reminder that the Third World never surrendered, it was simply ignored by the headlines of empire.

When South Africa led the charge at the International Court of Justice, it did so not as a mere victim of apartheid history, but as a state forged in the fire of international solidarity. The arms embargoes, boycotts, and sanctions that once helped break the back of the apartheid regime were led by the same moral forces now rising against Israeli settler colonialism. And now, South Africa returns that legacy to the world, insisting that the mechanisms used to defeat racial capitalism on its own soil must now be deployed to confront genocide in Palestine.

Colombia’s new role in this front is no less significant. For generations, it was one of Washington’s most obedient clients—a keystone in the militarized U.S. architecture of Latin America. Under Petro, that script has flipped. Not only did Colombia co-host this historic summit, it cut coal exports to Israel, identified the mechanisms of betrayal within its own bureaucracy, and declared itself—officially and without shame—on the side of Palestinian resistance. This is a break not only with Israeli impunity, but with U.S. hemispheric hegemony. In the ruins of Plan Colombia rises a new plan: solidarity.

Libya, battered and broken by NATO bombs, now signs its name to a legal order that condemns those same bombs when dropped on Gaza. Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, steps forward as a voice not of religious tokenism, but of principled sovereignty. Iraq, a nation still smoldering from imperial invasion, joins the call for international justice. Cuba, under blockade, and Nicaragua, under siege, reaffirm their place in the long genealogy of uncompromising anti-imperialism.

These are not isolated gestures. They are convergences. And they follow a trail blazed by the Bandung Conference of 1955, where 29 newly independent nations gathered to declare that the world would no longer be divided between Western masters and colonial subjects. In Bandung, the principle of non-alignment was born—not out of fence-sitting neutrality, but as an act of militant refusal to be subordinated to either pole of Cold War empire. Now, in Bogotá, we are seeing that spirit reborn—not as nostalgia, but as necessity.

What Bandung represented ideologically—resistance to domination, affirmation of sovereignty, and solidarity among the oppressed—Bogotá seeks to render materially. Where the Non-Aligned Movement once called for moral clarity, the Hague Group calls for legal enforcement. Where the tricontinental struggle dreamed of Third World unity, the sanctions framework begins to institutionalize it. This is the move from theory to logistics. From moral protest to geopolitical infrastructure.

The West likes to pretend the Global South is fragmented, directionless, and dependent. But this alliance—born of blood, betrayal, and revolutionary endurance—speaks otherwise. It tells us that even in a world ruled by sanctions, coups, and surveillance, the old rebel coalitions are not dead. They are reassembling. And this time, they are armed not only with slogans and guerrilla strategies, but with ports, courts, contracts, and currencies. They are learning the machinery of enforcement. And they are ready to use it—not to dominate, but to finally end the era where domination gets to call itself law.

🟥 Imperial Optics: How the West Frames Justice as Threat

It’s always the same script. Whenever the colonized speak in unison, the imperial chorus cries foul. The moment Bolivia and Iraq say “no more arms to Israel,” it’s labeled extremism. When Cuba demands justice at the ICC, it’s dismissed as propaganda. When Colombia cuts coal shipments, the Financial Times mutters about “irresponsibility.” And when South Africa drags genocide into the legal light, the New York Times implies they’ve overstepped their bounds—like a servant raising their voice in the master’s courtroom. This isn’t new. This is empire’s oldest reflex: to cast rebellion as irrational and resistance as dangerous.

The propaganda machine knows its rhythms well. On cue, headlines smear the Hague Group as “anti-Israel” and “politically motivated.” Albanese is painted as a rogue bureaucrat. Petro is treated as a radical liability. The very act of imposing sanctions on a genocidal state becomes, in Western eyes, an act of destabilization. Think about the absurdity of it: the Global South cuts off weapons and coal to stop children from being slaughtered, and the North calls it irresponsible. Meanwhile, the very governments arming Israel to the teeth—Washington, Berlin, London—pose as defenders of order and humanitarian concern. It would be laughable if it weren’t soaked in blood.

They call it “delegitimizing Israel.” What they mean is that it threatens their monopoly on legitimacy. They say it’s “antisemitic.” What they mean is that their favorite apartheid regime is finally facing accountability. They accuse the South of “politicizing law,” as if law hasn’t been political since the first treaties carved up Africa and the Americas. They worry about “setting precedents,” because the precedent they dread is that justice might become universal. That the tools they’ve used to punish Global South resistance—sanctions, travel bans, prosecutions—might finally be turned against one of their own.

For decades, international law has functioned as a weapon of the West. Its tribunals were built to prosecute African leaders and Balkan rebels—not white war criminals in suits and uniforms. Its rules of war were bent around NATO’s “humanitarian interventions” and Israel’s “right to self-defense.” But the Global South’s legal offensive flips the table. Suddenly, the tools of lawfare are in the hands of those it was designed to suppress. And the masters of global impunity are beginning to sweat.

This is why the enemy must delegitimize the conference in Bogotá. Why it must downplay the unity of the twelve. Why it must ridicule the moral clarity of the action points. Because once the idea takes root—that sovereignty includes the right to impose justice, not just absorb injustice—then the whole imperial order begins to buckle. Once it’s clear that law does not belong exclusively to the West, then so too collapses the myth that morality flows only from Paris, London, and D.C.

The Hague Group isn’t a threat to peace—it’s a threat to impunity. The twelve-state sanctions package isn’t chaos—it’s the reassertion of order from below. And every time a Western paper writes a sneering op-ed about it, they only confirm what we already know: that empire can’t imagine a world where the colonized are not subjects, but architects. Where Gaza is not a target, but a line in the sand. Where justice is not filtered through white supremacy and finance capital, but spoken in the accents of Jakarta, Managua, and Windhoek.

That’s the real danger to them. Not that the Global South is angry, but that it is organized. Not that it mourns, but that it acts. Not that it dreams, but that it enforces. And the more they scream about “dangerous precedents,” the clearer it becomes: the old order is cracking. The court of global opinion is shifting. And in that courtroom, the empires stand accused—and the gavel is slipping from their grip.

🟥 The Geometry of Resistance: Assembling a New Moral Architecture

What the twelve nations declared in Bogotá was not simply an indictment—it was a blueprint. Not a protest, but a policy. They didn’t just shout slogans; they etched a six-point program into the ledger of international law. Each point a hammer strike against impunity, each clause a refusal to be complicit in the blood economy that fuels Israeli apartheid. And for once, the so-called international community wasn’t dictating terms. It was being summoned to listen.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t about emotion. It was logistics. Real-world enforcement. They spoke of flag registries and shipping lanes. Of military fuel and dual-use items. Of public contracts and state budgets. They’re not simply condemning genocide—they’re tracing its supply chain. And they are severing the links. Point by point. Vessels flagged under their authority will not carry weapons to Israel. Their ports will not host death freighters. Their public funds will not bankroll settlements or surveillance systems. Their prosecutors will begin laying the groundwork for international trials—not for theater, but for justice.

This is a shift from rhetoric to sovereignty. A movement from narrative to infrastructure. And in doing so, the Hague Group is asserting something that has long been forbidden under empire: that the Global South has the right to enforce its own moral and legal decisions. That sovereignty does not mean sitting silently in colonial borders drawn by European pens, but actively refusing to abet genocide.

President Petro’s intervention cut to the bone: “We are the world’s fifth-largest coal exporter,” he said, “and that coal is helping kill humanity.” He wasn’t just condemning Israel—he was indicting his own state apparatus, his own bureaucrats who smuggled fuel behind his back. It was not performative. It was revolutionary discipline. A leader confronting his contradictions, not hiding behind them. And in that moment, Colombia stopped being just another Latin American state and became a node in the global resistance economy. One that recognizes that materials—minerals, metals, money—are never neutral. They either serve empire or they serve liberation.

The Hague Group is teaching us that the mechanics of resistance must evolve. We cannot merely condemn from the outside—we must disrupt from within. We must understand maritime law, corporate registries, trade logistics, and diplomatic immunity—not to mimic our oppressors, but to dismantle the routes they use to maintain control. If the bombs dropped on Rafah were built with American steel, fueled by Colombian coal, shipped under Panamanian flags, and financed by Swiss banks—then the resistance must stretch across that entire chain.

This is the geometry of resistance: triangulating Gaza with Bogotá, The Hague, and Windhoek. Building a mesh network of anti-imperial enforcement, where every port closed to genocide is a battlefield reclaimed. Every contract revoked is a bullet dodged. Every embargo imposed is a lifeline restored. This is not the soft politics of appeals—it is the hard architecture of action.

And it is precisely this rigor that frightens the architects of impunity. Because it proves the colonized world is not just capable of resistance—it is capable of governance. Of crafting systems, not just slogans. Of building power, not just demanding it. The Hague Group, in this sense, is more than a coalition. It is the scaffolding of a new moral order—one that remembers what the old one forgot: that justice is not something handed down by the strong. It is something enforced by the united.

🟥 Class Lines Across Continents: Why Gaza Matters to the World’s Poor

Gaza is not just Gaza. It is the front line of the global class war. What happens there does not stay there. It ripples outward, because the weapons used to murder Palestinians are the same ones pointed at Black communities in the U.S., Indigenous water protectors in Canada, slum dwellers in Brazil, mine workers in South Africa. Gaza is where imperialism drops the mask. Where settler colonialism shows its original face—one of unrelenting annihilation. And if it goes unchallenged, it sends a signal to every ruling class across the world: you can do this too, so long as your victims are poor, brown, and unarmed.

That’s why this new coalition matters. Because it draws class lines that the empire desperately wants to blur. It connects the Palestinian child buried in rubble with the Mexican maquiladora worker, the Congolese cobalt miner, the Filipino fisher resisting U.S. bases, the Black mother organizing tenant unions in Atlanta. It links state violence in Gaza to structural violence everywhere. It clarifies the stakes: this is not an ethnic conflict, nor a tragic misunderstanding between civilizations. It is a war between those who hoard and those who hunger. Between those who bomb and those who bury. Between empire and the earth’s majority.

And for the working class inside the empire—especially in the U.S.—the question is not whether Gaza is your fight. It’s how long you’ll keep pretending it isn’t. Your taxes bought the bombs. Your police departments train with the IDF. Your media calls resistance “terror.” Your unions—those that still breathe—are afraid to speak. And your ruling class uses every foreign war to tighten the screws on you at home. Mass surveillance didn’t start in Ferguson—it was tested in Rafah. The militarization of your cities didn’t begin with 9/11—it began with Cold War counterinsurgency exported to Latin America and Palestine. And now it’s all coming home.

But so can the resistance. What Bogotá offered was a mirror, and an invitation. A mirror to see who you are complicit with. An invitation to defect. To break with the bipartisan war machine. To join the world’s poor, not as tourists in struggle but as comrades in arms. This isn’t about saviorism. The people of Gaza do not need your pity. They need your rupture. They need you to cut ties with Raytheon, with Lockheed, with Elbit, with the NGOs that wash blood with brochures. They need you to stop looking for balance, and start choosing sides.

Because the side has already been chosen by those who rule you. They chose settler colonialism. They chose endless war. They chose technofascism with an app and a border wall. They chose to pour your public wealth into weapons while your hospitals rot and your schools crumble. Gaza is their blueprint. You are next. And that’s why solidarity is not charity—it’s strategy. It is self-defense on a planetary scale.

The Hague Group may not be able to stop the genocide alone. But they have lit the fuse. They have drawn a map for the rest of us. For workers in Oakland and Karachi. For Indigenous rebels in Chiapas and East Jerusalem. For socialists in Harlem and Havana. They have named the criminal, and they have made the case. Now it’s our job to turn that case into consequences. To make it impossible—for Israel, for the U.S., for any empire—to do what it has always done without paying a price.

Gaza is not a distraction from your struggle. Gaza is the concentrated expression of that struggle. And in standing with its people, you stand with every act of resistance that dares to imagine the world beyond bulldozers and barbed wire. You stand with life against extinction. With bread against bombs. With memory against oblivion. With the future, against the machinery that wants it erased.

🟥 This Is the Line: Clarity Is the Duty of the Living

The diplomats in Bogotá didn’t flinch. They didn’t stutter through euphemisms or bury their declarations in footnotes. They called it what it is: genocide. They named the killer: Israel. And they named the accomplice: the West. No moral detours. No concern for offending the sensibilities of those who bankroll annihilation. Because when children are being bombed in tents, clarity is not just preferable—it is an obligation. And what they gave the world was exactly that: clarity rooted in struggle, clarity enforced with sanctions, clarity expressed through the language of sovereignty reclaimed.

Francesca Albanese, banned and smeared by empire, didn’t appeal to respectability. She spoke like a revolutionary jurist who knows that law without courage is complicity. President Petro didn’t hedge his language. He called his own government’s betrayal by name. Zane Dangor didn’t ask for Western permission. He asked the South to lead. And the Palestinian representatives didn’t beg for recognition. They declared that recognition itself—recognizing Palestine, recognizing resistance—is an act of historical justice.

Because that’s what this moment demands. Not compromise. Not academic caution. Not liberal discomfort. But revolutionary clarity. And that clarity doesn’t ask, “What will the powerful think of us?” It asks, “What will the oppressed remember about us?” Did we draw the line, or did we watch in silence while the empire traced it in blood? Did we stand when standing meant something, or did we wait until it was safe, until the cameras left, until the bodies were counted and the markets stabilized?

This was not a flawless gathering. Twelve countries is not the world. Sanctions alone will not dismantle Zionism or imperialism. But perfection is not what we need. What we need is alignment. What we need is an axis of resistance that does not flinch. That does not apologize for saying what must be said. That understands that the children of Gaza are not collateral—they are the frontline of a global fight to reclaim the very meaning of humanity.

If you are waiting for history to absolve you, you’ve already failed. History isn’t watching—it is being written. Right now. By every dock worker who refuses to load a ship. By every journalist who refuses the false equivalence. By every student who rips down the banner of neutrality and names the crime. By every government, no matter how small or sanctioned, that dares to sever ties with the killers. The era of ambiguity is over. There are only two sides now. One writes press releases. The other writes resistance.

In Bogotá, the Global South chose its side. Not with tears, but with tools. Not with hashtags, but with hard policy. They chose law as a weapon. Memory as a compass. And Gaza as the line that cannot be crossed. That is the Other Side. The one that refuses to normalize horror. The one that believes internationalism is not a dream, but a duty. And that the point of moral clarity is not to soothe the comfortable—but to arm the committed.

So let the empire sneer. Let the pundits dismiss. Let the colonizers threaten. The line has been drawn. The rest is up to us.