The Global South and the Gaza Assault
Israel’s harsh and indiscriminate actions in Gaza after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack have invoked a major and remarkably convergent response across the Global South. States as diverse as South Africa, Mexico, Chile, and Indonesia have initiated or forcefully participated in international legal action on Palestine and the Gaza conflict, including a case at the International Court of Justice alleging genocide by Israel. Meanwhile, the United States continues to be by far the biggest backer of Israel’s assault, its key supplier of weapons and its chief shield at the UN Security Council, with President Biden resisting calls to use any of these tools to change Israeli behavior.
The panel examined how different regions in the Global South (Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia) view the war in Gaza, how Gaza has increased contradictions in the international system and what is needed to rebuild confidence and trust between the Global Majority and the United States given Washington’s multiple failures in handling the conflict. Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, will be joined by Samar al-Bulushi, QI non-resident fellow, and Filipe Nasser, Senior Advisor to Brazil’s Foreign Minister, H.E. Ambassador Mauro Vieira. Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute, moderated the conversation.
Program
Panelists
Sarang Shidore
Sarang Shidore is Director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute, and a senior non-resident fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. He is also a member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University, where he teaches a class on the geopolitics of climate change. His areas of research and analysis are geopolitical risk, grand strategy, and climate security, with a special emphasis on the Global South and Asia. Sarang has more than 100 publications to his credit in journals, edited volumes, and media outlets in his areas of expertise, including in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Nation, South China Morning Post, Council on Foreign Relations and others.
Samar al-Bulushi
Samar Al-Bulushi is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Irvine. She is a former contributing editor at Africa is a Country and has published in a variety of public outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa. Her writing and interviews have appeared in The Intercept, Africa is a Country, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, Democracy Now!, Al-Jazeera, Pambazuka, Review of African Political Economy, and Warscapes. Al-Bulushi received her BA at Columbia University, her MA from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and her PhD in anthropology from Yale University.
Filipe Nasser
Filipe Nasser is a Brazilian career diplomat since 2006. He is currently a Senior Advisor to Brazil’s Foreign Minister, H.E. Ambassador Mauro Vieira. Previously he was Head of the Division for the Affairs of the Sea, Antarctica and Outer Space in Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Nasser has had postings in Brazil’s Embassies in Washington, DC and Santo Domingo and Brazil’s Mission to the United Nations in New York. He founded and served as the first editor-in-chief of Juca, the yearly journal of Brazil’s diplomatic academy. He holds a Master's in Public Administration (Harvard University), a Master's in Diplomacy (Rio Branco Institute), and a BA in International Relations (University of Brasilia).
Trita Parsi
Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President at the Quincy Institute. He was the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order and was named by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy in Washington D.C. in both 2021 and 2022. Parsi is an expert on U.S.-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign politics, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He is the co-founder and former President of the National Iranian American Council. He received his PhD in foreign policy at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies.