Palestinian Ambassador: “If the law can’t protect Palestinians, it can’t protect anyone.”

ByMexico Solidarity

This article by Darren Garcia appeared in the August 21, 2025 edition of Revista Contralínea.

“If the world allows Palestine to be erased, then it was never meant for everyone, only for some. If the law can’t protect Palestinians, it can’t protect anyone,” said Nadya Rasheed, the Palestinian ambassador to Mexico. She added that in two years of genocide, more than 62,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli army. Among them, more than 20,000 children.

In a keynote address, wearing a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh on her shoulder, the diplomat demanded “a permanent ceasefire to stop the genocide. We demand unrestricted humanitarian aid for Gaza; we demand the release of all [prisoners in Israeli cells].” In this regard, she asserted that “anything less than this is not peace; it is preparation for the next massacre.”

Ambassador Nadya Rasheed charged: “It is as if we are facing a bet by the oppressor in which the available number […] has to double [or] triple, behind walls in the reinforced isolation of disinformation behind the world’s back.”

From the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), she stated that what is happening in his nation is a genocide, which includes murders committed by snipers, torture, and famine.

“It’s not war, it’s genocide!” echoed the unanimous chant in the Great Hall minutes before the ambassador spoke, representing a “resilient people, from the land to which we have always belonged and which we have never wanted to abandon.”

“We are the mirror that reflects, from every angle, the right to exist fully and not in the fragments that this genocide seeks to impose indefinitely in time and space,” denounced the diplomat, also describing the situation of people in the Gaza Strip as a horror with no way out, one that every population in the world is witness to.

Erasing the Identity of a People

A packed room echoed the daily pain of the Palestinian people in the Middle East. Flags, watermelon-shaped drawings, and banners demonstrate the support of a portion of the student community, who took advantage of the opening of the presentation to chant slogans in support of Palestine.

“Our people, every day, for more than half a century, have suffered the constant occupation of their homes,” which began, “and never ended, with the Nakba” – or catastrophe in Arabic – in 1948, when more than 70 percent of Palestinian territory was occupied by Israel as a result of a United Nations declaration seeking to create a state for the Jewish people following the end of World War II.

But since October 2023, intense Israeli attacks have caused almost total devastation to the Palestinian people and infrastructure. “Everything, including cemeteries, has been defaced in an attempt to deface our collective and deeply personal memory,” the ambassador said.

“Many are dying of starvation, from a bomb, from under the rubble, from a gunshot wound. Many are dying in the anguish of waiting for a father, a son, a mother, a loved one, a relative, or a neighbor,” Nadya Rasheed said, her voice breaking. This is happening right now, she charged, as she recounted the events.

“Never before have so many doctors, so many children, so many UN workers been killed in a war. Israel has broken and trampled on every norm, our humane principles, and then the famine: Gaza is being deliberately murdered with the prolonged pain of hunger,” while Israeli authorities block the entry of humanitarian aid. “This is not war, it is extermination, long practiced in its design,” she asserted.

International Organizations Have Failed

“The UN was born from the ashes of World War II, with the solemn promise of ‘never again.’ Its charter forbids the acquisition of territory by force, not as an option, but as a loyal duty; and yet, all these principles are being crushed before the eyes of the entire world,” Nadya Rasheed explained, listening attentively to the students who filled not only the Great Hall but also other rooms projecting the live broadcast.

She also singled out the United Nations Security Council for having “failed to enforce the only binding ceasefire resolution. And after that, not once, not twice, but three times, each time blocked by a veto. The same states that proclaim human rights in theory deliver the bombs that murder children in practice.”

Her words did not remain at the international level, of the Mexican government – s​​he said – although its position has “often been a voice of conscience when others decided to remain silent,” like all countries, “Mexico should do more […] without hesitation or fear.”

For his part, Professor Óscar Torres, from the UNAM School of Law, called on President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo to “act with the same firmness with which [former President] Lázaro Cárdenas acted when he broke off relations with Spain due to the actions of Francisco Franco. We demand that she be empathetic from that platform, abiding by the recommendations of the UN [Special] Rapporteur, Francesa Albanese: breaking off economic and diplomatic relations with Israel while war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power.”

After their participation, the students chanted “break, break, relations with Israel.” A student then spoke to the expectant audience and demanded that not only the Mexican government break relations with Israel, but also UNAM, and that they cease their academic ties with Israeli institutions. She also emphasized the need for the Law School to join the lawsuit against Israel’s genocide, initiated by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.

Ambassador Nadya Rasheed recalled that “the International Court of Justice has already determined that Israel’s actions plausibly constitute genocide. It ordered precautionary measures: halting the genocidal acts, allowing the entry of humanitarian aid […]; but Israel ignores them as usual. This is not a crisis of evidence, it’s a crisis of political will.”

For all of the above, she urged people to refuse to remain silent. “You can insist that the truth be told, even if it’s uncomfortable; you can make your voices louder […]; defending Palestine is defending humanity.”

And he added: “Our history is not only about genocide and suffering, which everyone is now watching on TV or on their cell phones; it is also about resistance, creativity, and life. We have a rich culture; we are a people with an ancient culture.”

  • Mexico, Gaza & The Vampires

    Mexico doesn’t dare mention the word genocide, doesn’t demand international norms be applied, and doesn’t want to break off relations, preferring to remain silent or take refuge in an unattainable future: the creation of two states and accepting the deaths of children from starvation.