10 Good Things That Happened in 2025 |
Mahmoud Khalil, 2025. Photo Credit: © European Union, 2025 via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 4.0
It’s true — 2025 has been a hard year. It’s easy to focus on the disasters, and there have been many. But we also had real victories that moved us closer to a better world. Here are some of my highlights from 2025:
1. Israel was forced to negotiate a ceasefire
In October, a ceasefire agreement was reached in Gaza, though it would be a lie to call it an end to the genocide we’ve all been witnessing for over two years. Still, the pause matters because it reveals what Israel could not achieve. Israel failed to break the Palestinian people or erase them from their land. It was forced to negotiate. It also gave us one of the rare moments where we saw videos coming out of Gaza with Palestinians celebrating in the streets, and feeling a little bit of relief for the first time in a long time. Yes, the Israelis are violating the ceasefire every day, Palestinians continue to suffer, and the “Peace Plan” passed by the United Nations is a sham. But the fact that Israel was unable to accomplish its goal of defeating and expelling the Palestinians–and instead had to negotiate–is in itself a testament to the power of both the Palestinians and their supporters throughout the world.
2. Mahmoud Khalil is free
In June, after months in ICE detention, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was freed! We got to see him at the People’s Conference for Palestine and he’s been in action ever since. From the moment he was first detained, the Palestine solidarity movement never stopped demanding his freedom. We knew that if we allowed this to happen to Mahmoud, it could happen to any one of us. His freedom is a testament to the power we all have when we stand together and have a clear demand. The same goes for Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk, Georgetown scholar Badar........