Closer to the Edge is a reader-supported publication on the Substack platform. It posted the following article yesterday.
Well, look at that – Canada, the U.K., and Australia just went and recognized Palestine like it’s the most natural damn thing in the world, while America sits in the corner drooling on itself, shackled to Trump’s bloated ego. Our allies are out here making moves toward peace – or at least putting on the costume of it – and we’re still clinging to some delusional fever dream cooked up in a Mar-a-Lago tanning bed. It’s like watching the cool kids form a band while the U.S. is outside pounding Natty Light and screaming about how real music died with Skynyrd.
Because here’s the deal: Trump’s policies aren’t just stupid, they’re radioactive. We’re spiraling into this sweaty, paranoid isolationism where every foreign handshake looks like a plot against us. He’s convinced half the country that being the world’s leader means hiding in a bunker with a gun in one hand and a bucket of KFC in the other, snarling at anybody who dares to suggest working with allies. And while everyone else is trying to jury-rig some fragile hope for a two-state solution, Trump’s foreign policy doctrine is basically: “Screw the world, America’s drunk and driving home.”
So what does that leave us with? A burned-out empire teetering on the edge, too busy huffing its own supply of nationalism to realize the world has moved on. This isn’t strength – it’s cowardice dressed up in red, white, and blue polyester. And when our oldest allies start ghosting us on matters of war and peace, it doesn’t just make America look weak – it makes us irrelevant. A once-mighty nation trading in its passport for a shotgun and a recliner, muttering “America First” while the rest of the world quietly changes the locks.
Meanwhile, others are critical of the international recognition of Palestine, noting that it’s a mere “fantasy of statehood” while ever these same international players continue to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Multiple Western governments over the weekend, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, jointly recognized Palestine as a state for the first time.
However, many advocates for Palestinian freedom and self-determination have said that the official recognition of Palestine is only a symbolic first step and will not do anything to change the situation so long as these governments continue selling weaponry being used by Israel to level Gaza.
In a column written for The Guardian, French journalist Rokhaya Diallo criticized French President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to officially recognize Palestine on Monday, for not doing more to hinder Israel’s power to wage war against the Palestinians.
“Macron’s ‘solemn announcement’ to the UN General Assembly on Palestine is planned for next Monday, 22 September,” she explained. “Wouldn’t it be a better first step for France to announce concrete sanctions against Israel? Netanyahu is under an international arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet he was allowed to use French airspace when traveling to the US in July.”
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last year.
Writing in +972 Magazine, Palestinian journalist Alaa Salama similarly argued that recognizing Palestine would simply create “the illusion of action” unless Western governments take further steps to sanction Israel.
“Now, more than ever, symbolic gestures are worse than useless,” he argued. “They buy time for the regime committing the crimes and drain urgency from the only remedies that matter: ending the genocide, sanctioning the perpetrator, isolating the apartheid system, and insisting without apology on equal rights and the right of return. This is not extremism. It is the bare minimum of justice.”
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the actions of Western governments were still “utterly failing to stop the genocide” and that they needed serious sanctions in order to “stop Israel’s atrocities” in Gaza.
. . . Inès Abdel Razek, executive director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, said in a roundtable discussion with Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka that Western nations’ support for a theoretical Palestinian state were not the same as support for actual Palestinian self-determination.
“In this context, genocide in Gaza is met not with consequences but with ceremony,” she said. “The [Palestinian Authority] clings to optics, and Western states embrace symbolic gestures, while Palestinians are left with neither justice nor statehood, only a widening gap between lived reality and international performance.”
Yara Hawri, co-director of Al-Shabaka, argued during the same panel discussion that recognition of a Palestinian state at this point was pointless given that Israel has made Gaza unlivable and is moving forward with plans to annex the West Bank as well, with officials recently approving the E1 settlement plan that would cut off the key city of East Jerusalem from the rest of the territory and make Palestinian statehood impossible.
“We are a colonized, besieged, and occupied people facing genocide in Gaza,” she said. “Any serious political engagement must begin from this reality, not from the illusion of a state that does not exist. Instead of halting genocide and forced starvation – much of it facilitated by the very states offering recognition – we are told to focus on a fantasy of statehood that no one is willing to bring into being.”
– Brad Reed
Excerpted from “Western Governments Recognize
Palestinian State, But Continue to Fund
Israeli Government Making It Inviable”
Common Dreams
September 22, 2025
Excerpted from “Western Governments Recognize
Palestinian State, But Continue to Fund
Israeli Government Making It Inviable”
Common Dreams
September 22, 2025
Finally, the UK-based Novara Media shared the following about the Palestinian flag being raised outside the building that now constitutes Palestine’s London embassy.
Crowds gathered outside what was previously the Palestine Mission to the UK premises – now the official Palestinian embassy – in Hammersmith, west London to watch the flag-raising ceremony on Monday 22 September.
It comes after the UK government said it would join leaders from Australia, France and Canada in finally recognising Palestine as a state on 21 September, as Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza continues.
Outside the embassy, Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot said: “It comes as our people in Gaza are being starved, bombed, and buried under the rubble of their homes, as our people in the West Bank are being ethnically cleansed, brutalised by daily state-sponsored terrorism, land theft and suffocating oppression.
“Yet, this moment stands as a defiant act of truth, a refusal to let genocide be the final word; a refusal to accept that occupation is permanent; a refusal to be erased and a refusal to be dehumanised.”
Scottish first minister and SNP leader John Swinney said it was a “great honour” to attend the ceremony and described it as a “defining moment.”
Ambassador Zomlot explained the symbolism of the Palestinian flag’s colours to those gathered: “Black for our mourning, white for our hope, green for our land and red for the sacrifices of our people.”
Related Off-site Links:
“Nothing Will Stop Israel”: Mustafa Barghouti on the Limits of Western Recognition of Palestine – Democracy Now! (September 22, 2025).
The UK Recognises Palestine – Michael Walker and Ash Sarkar (Novara Media, September 22, 2025).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• A Poem That Remains Painfully Relevant
• “This Is a Genocidal Project”
• “A Year of War Against Children”
• Protesting Israel’s “Starvation Campaign” in Gaza
• Israel’s Actions in Gaza: “A Clear and Present Moral Collapse”
• Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza (2023)
• More Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
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