Gaza & the Security Council: A Council of Décor

Geopolitics & International Relations
Written By Osama Shakman

Morning reflection
A new morning in Gaza: no water, scarce bread, and a sky crowded with metal. In New York, the word “truce” is spoken as if it were a sip of water poured onto a fire that already knows it will not be extinguished.

Extended evening reflection
As night falls, international institutions go to sleep, reassured by their own silence. Gaza alone stays awake—an open wound, a conscience that refuses to close its eyes to injustice.

Time passes heavily: weeks of bombardment, days without electricity, nights without safety. Then the Security Council emerges with a statement softened at the edges, as though language could heal what law failed to prevent.

Seventy-five years of resolutions—numbers neatly stacked in archives, texts polished with careful phrasing—yet when asked about a child under the rubble, they offer nothing but silence.

This council operates by a familiar architecture: a veto that freezes blood in place, elastic wording that numbs feeling, and a crooked scale that turns the victim into the accused for failing to die quietly.

Here, institutional failure is no accident; it is policy. Double standards are not an occasional mistake, but the rule by which the world is managed. International law, born to be a shelter for all, has become elegant décor—protecting only those who control both the wind and the roof.

In this scene, Gaza is not merely a place. It is a moral question suspended in the air:
Is justice a universal value, or a privilege granted and withdrawn according to alliances?

When justice is tested on the ground, rhetoric dissolves, excess words fall away, and only action remains—or its absence.

Gaza has placed the world before its mirror without courtesy: either a law that saves a human being because they are human, or institutions skilled at arranging the hall while the house collapses on its inhabitants.

In this brutal test, the most dangerous trait of the “council of décor” is not its inability to stop the war, but its remarkable talent for beautifying ugliness—while leaving the victim alone in the dark. 

Osama Shakman

Forty years in the sky were not merely a profession, but a long meditation on the meaning of existence. Borders drawn on maps dissolve, and the world becomes a single, living whole, where everything seems small except the human being.

In that altitude, I learned to observe and to understand before I judge, to see turbulence as part of a greater order not immediately visible to the eye. The sky was my first teacher: its vastness teaches humility, and its silence awakens the art of listening.

Today, I exchange the cockpit for the pen—not to recount a professional biography nor to stand on a political platform, but to open a window for reflection. What I write is not borrowed theory, but thoughts born of lived experience—of long flight hours and quiet moments between takeoff and landing.

This space is simply a free ground for thought, where words are kept from noise and the human story is honored, however simple it may seem. For every life, no matter how fleeting, carries a meaning worth telling and a voice worth hearing.

Welcome to a new journey—one measured not in miles, but in depth of thought and breadth of vision.

٤٠ عاما في السماء، عمر من المراقبة

أربعون عامًا في السماء لم تكن مجرد مهنة، بل تأمّلًا طويلًا في معنى الوجود. تتلاشى الحدود التي رسمناها على الخرائط، ويغدو العالم كتلةً واحدة نابضة بالحياة، حيث يصغر كل شيء إلا الإنسان.

في ذلك العلوّ تعلّمت أن أراقب وأفهم قبل أن أحكم، وأن أرى الاضطراب جزءًا من نظامٍ أكبر لا تدركه العين لأول وهلة. كانت السماء معلمي الأول: اتساعها يعلّم التواضع، وصمتها يوقظ الإصغاء.

واليوم أستبدل قمرة القيادة بالقلم، لا لأروي سيرةً مهنية ولا لأعتلي منبرًا سياسيًا، بل لأفتح نافذةً للتأمل. ما أكتبه ليس نظرياتٍ مستعارة، بل أفكار وُلدت من التجربة، من ساعات الطيران الطويلة ولحظات التأمل بين الإقلاع والهبوط.

هذا الفضاء مساحةٌ حرة للفكر، تُصان فيها الكلمة من الضجيج، ويُحتفى بالقصة الإنسانية مهما بدت بسيطة. فكل حياة، وإن بدت عابرة، تحمل معنى يستحق أن يُروى وصوتًا يستحق أن يُصغى إليه.

مرحبًا بكم في رحلةٍ لا تُقاس بالأميال، بل بعمق الفكرة واتساع الرؤية.

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