Tag: Israel-Palestine

2024-10-15

Palestinians, written out of their rights to the land – compared with a new history

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: ,

Compare . . .

1 Palestinians have little basis for their claims against Zionists to the land:

A fundamentalist Christian view:

Since becoming a nation in 1948, the Israelis have developed a productive, fertile and wealthy nation in a desert wasteland. They have been outstanding custodians of their homeland. . . .

. . . . many Palestinian Muslims believe they also have a religious claim to the land of Palestine. That is why they have fought and will continue to fight so ferociously for it.

The Jewish Virtual Library:

When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades. Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most of the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.” In fact, Palestine is never explicitly mentioned in the Koran . . . .”

Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:

We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.

In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”

The Jewish Policy Center:

“A land without a people for a people without a land” is a phrase that gets under the skin of most Palestinians, who think that the authors of the phrase looked at Ottoman Palestine, did not see them, and instead saw an empty land. Yet perhaps this phrase would have made sense if we zoomed in on the meaning of the word “people.”

Whoever coined the phrase that became a Zionist slogan did not use the word people to describe a bunch of humans dwelling on a certain land. People, in this phrase, is used to mean a nation, a state or a nation-state.

Before 1948, the Arabs who lived in Palestine had never organized themselves in a state, but had, for centuries, lived as subjects of empires that ruled them from faraway capitals, such as Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, and Istanbul. In the history of the Arabs, Jerusalem never served as the seat of any dynasty and never practiced sovereignty. At best, the city served as a provincial capital. In this sense, when the Zionists looked at Ottoman Palestine, they did not see a nation-state. They saw Arab provinces of successive empires, Arab or Turkish. This is why the land looked one without a people, that is without a nation state.

A pro-Zionist website:

Historically, the word “Palestinian” did not refer to Arabs living in the region, but to the region itself. Some 100 years ago, the land was administered by the British, and its inhabitants were Jewish, Christian and Muslim – all of whom were identified as “Palestinian.” However, for most, their primary identity was not their nationality, but their religion.

Indeed, many Arabs bristled at being called “Palestinian,” voicing strong opposition to the label. Instead, they saw themselves first and foremost as Arabs or Muslims. Only in the mid-1960s was the word co-opted to mean Arabs.

Hence, before 1948, it would not have made sense to talk about Palestinians as opposed to Jews. The population was divided into two primary groups: Jewish and Arab.

This makes sense because a sovereign Palestinian state never existed. Therefore, there were no “Palestinian lands.” Rather, the land was part of the Mandate for Palestine, a geographical area controlled by the British after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

From The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute:

The Palestinian peasant was indeed being dispossessed, but by his fellow-Arabs: the local sheikh and village elders, the Government tax-collector, the merchants and money-lenders; and, when he was a tenant-farmer (as was usually the case), by the absentee-owner. By the time the season’s crop had been distributed among all these, little if anything remained for him and his family, and new debts generally had to be incurred to pay off the old. Then the Bedouin came along and took their “cut”, or drove the hapless fellah off the land altogether.

This was the “normal” course of events in 19th-century Palestine. It was disrupted by the advent of the Jewish pioneering enterprise, which sounded the death-knell of this medieval feudal system. In this way the Jews played an objective revolutionary role. Small wonder that it aroused the ire and active opposition of the Arab sheikhs, absentee landowners, money-lenders and Bedouin bandits.

Comment:

. . . . Note that the local Arabs never claimed that they had a sovereign country.

. . . with

2 a humanist perspective, stripped of Eurocentric beliefs in the primacy of nationalist feelings:

[This history] refers to the groups that as a rule live outside the realm of politics and power. . . . The narrative is clear; it begins with a society in Palestine as remote as possible from politics in the late Ottoman period . . . .

They are not one mass of people. They are grouped according to choice in small social units, usually households. But, with time, they prefer to define themselves via ethnicity, gender, occupation, class or culture. They change at will, but at times are forced to, not always to their advantage. Their world is a mix of material necessity and spiritual solace. Many of them are closely connected to the land where they live or chose to settle on. They cling to the land or to their property not from a national imperative to protect the mother/fatherland, the entity, but for much more mundane and at the same time humane reasons.

These local actors are leaders as well as ordinary members of the community. They are Palestine’s women and children, peasants and workers, town dwellers and farmers. They are defined according to their religious or ethnic origins as Armenians, Druzes, Circassians, or Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, as well as to their views on religion, whether secular, orthodox or fundamentalist. In writing about them, definitions call for a balance between their own claims and the author’s understanding of what groups them together. Feeding a family, staying on the family land or attempting to make a new life on foreign soil can be portrayed as patriotism or nationalism: for most people it is an existentialist and survivalist act. (bolding added)

So begins (pages 8-9) the history of the land by a Jewish historian:

  • Pappé, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

(I am reminded of the way our nineteenth century ancestors (who had migrated thousands of miles from their homeland) erroneously portrayed the Australian aborigines as “nomadic”, with the implication that they had no notion of attachment to any land. It is a colonialist mind-set that has always “justified” ethnic cleansing and genocide. (I use the word “genocide” according to its meaning as defined by the originator of the word, Raphael Lemkin.)

2024-10-07

“They are Messianic Jewish supremacists, racists, of the worst kind”

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: ,

Ehud Barak

Former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, speaking on Australia’s national current affairs program, 7.30, about the reason for the government of Israel refusing to declare a truce to free the hostages and for continuing the war (“if someone would have said we would still be stuck in Gaza after a year no-one would have believed it” @ 28:40) and even expanding it into the West Bank and Lebanon. The specific question Barak was responding to was whether “right wing elements within [Netanyahu’s] cabinet” ride their “successes” in the current war to continue to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank….

Oh sure. For sure they will do it. They do it even without this. They want a settlement… And if we wait for too long they might raise some idea that we had some promise from some corner of the Bible to get some part of Lebanon. They are Messianic Jewish supremacists, racists, of the worst kind. I compare them to the Proud Boys of America, those who were behind the 6 January event. So, think of the American President, who would nominate one of these leaders from the program to be secretary of treasury with certain formal roles and the other one to be in charge of national security, of homeland security. That’s crazy but that’s exactly what Netanyahu did because he needs tight control for the survival of the government. If there is even a ceasefire, in order to exchange the hostages and a ceasefire for four months, immediately it will become a day of reckoning because people will demand to establish a national investigation, a committee led by a Supreme Court judge, to find who is responsible for the worst day in our history. (@ 26 mins 55 secs)

(Of course, Barak is introduced as “having come very close to securing peace with the Palestinians” when he was Prime Minister. We are rarely reminded that the “best deal” the Palestinians were ever offered was a “state” divided into four island-regions, each surrounded by Israeli settlements or territory. The above quotation is not meant to imply agreement with every other view Barak expressed in the 7.30 interview. — No thought, of course, that there might be “a day of reckoning” to investigate responsibility for expulsions and killings of Palestinians since 1948.)

2024-06-23

The Collapse of Zionism & Hope in a New Generation

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: , ,

* The anthropologist’s work I have just completed is fully in line with similar kinds of analyses of the causes of radicalization and extremist, even suicidal, acts of mayhem — Scott Atran, Jason Burke, Robert Pape, William McCants, Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, Bruce Hoffman, Anne Speckhard, Raffaello Pantucci, Riaz Hassan, Loretta Napoleoni, Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan (sic), Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, Peter Neumann, Ghassan Hage, Thomas Hegghammer, Richard Jackson, Ed Husain, Mohammed M. Hafez,  Lorne L. Dawson, Quintan Wiktorowicz, Nate Rosenblatt — along with specialist studies of Hamas itself. The point being that the arguments are supported by mountains of research studies.

— I have posted on the research of the above (and others) on this blog. Search under the tags “radicalization” and “terrorism”.

Among the initiators of the The Palestine History and Heritage Project (PaHH) (that I spoke about recently in Imagine Palestine) was Dr Ilan Pappé. Pappé has written a sobering article in which he sees some hope for both Jews and Arabs beyond the current horrors. I’ve read in past years opinions by various hopefuls that “this time” we will see the beginning of the demise of an aggressive power only to have such thoughts wisp away into nothingness. But one thing is certainly clear as day — and this comes just after I have finished reading the latest work by a prominent anthropologist* in which he addresses the nature of “band of brothers” type bonding and willingness to sacrifice one’s life in resistance to an overwhelming force — and in that light it is clearer than ever that even if Israel manages to kill every current Hamas fighter it will inherit only more waves of like minded resistance fighters to battle.

Pappé draws comparisons with the last days of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Some of us will recall how SA’s use of horrific violence to maintain its system only convinced us that it would never change.

. . . Hamas’s assault of October 7 can be likened to an earthquake that strikes an old building. The cracks were already beginning to show, but they are now visible in its very foundations. More than 120 years since its inception, could the Zionist project in Palestine – the idea of imposing a Jewish state on an Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern country – be facing the prospect of collapse? . . . 

. . . Here, I will argue that [the early indicators] are clearer than ever in the case of Israel. We are witnessing a historical process – or, more accurately, the beginnings of one – that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism. And, if my diagnosis is correct, then we are also entering a particularly dangerous conjuncture. For once Israel realizes the magnitude of the crisis, it will unleash ferocious and uninhibited force to try to contain it, as did the South African apartheid regime during its final days.

A first indicator is the fracturing of Israeli Jewish society. At present it is composed of two rival camps which are unable to find common ground. . . .

— Time capsule – Vridar’s 2007 post on Gaza (Watch this to understand the background to October 7): Gaza (the reality behind the myth of “God’s will” for modern Israel)

One camp can be termed the ‘State of Israel’. It comprises more secular, liberal and mostly but not exclusively middle-class European Jews and their descendants, who were instrumental in establishing the state in 1948 . . . .

The other camp is the ‘State of Judea’, which developed among the settlers of the occupied West Bank. It enjoys increasing levels of support within the country and constitutes the electoral base that secured Netanyahu’s victory . . . .

. . . . More than half a million Israelis, representing the State of Israel, have left the country since October, an indication that the country is being engulfed by the State of Judea. This is a political project that the Arab world, and perhaps even the world at large, will not tolerate in the long term.

One often hears through mainstream channels that the problem is “very complicated”. I recently listened to an academic excuse himself from commenting on the current conflict because Israel-Palestine is “not my area of expertise”. Nonsense. It is as “complicated” as the European dispossessions and ultimate genocides of the indigenous peoples in North and South America and Australia. I posted an overview of the planning and implementation of the Zionist project under Masalha: Expulsion of the Palestinians

The second indicator is Israel’s economic crisis. . . .  The conflict between the State of Israel and the State of Judea, along with the events of October 7, is meanwhile causing some of the economic and financial elite to move their capital outside the state. Those who are considering relocating their investments make up a significant part of the 20% of Israelis who pay 80% of the taxes.

The third indicator is Israel’s growing international isolation, as it gradually becomes a pariah state. This process began before October 7 but has intensified since the onset of the genocide. It is reflected by the unprecedented positions adopted by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. . . . 

The fourth … indicator is the sea-change among young Jews around the world. Following the events of the last nine months, many now seem willing to jettison their connection to Israel and Zionism and actively participate in the Palestinian solidarity movement. . . . 

The fifth indicator is the weakness of the Israeli army. There is no doubt that the IDF remains a powerful force with cutting-edge weaponry at its disposal. Yet its limitations were exposed on October 7. . . . 

The final indicator is the renewal of energy among the younger generation of Palestinians. It is far more united, organically connected and clear about its prospects than the Palestinian political elite. Given the population of Gaza and the West Bank is among the youngest in the world, this new cohort will have an immense influence over the course of the liberation struggle. The discussions taking place among young Palestinian groups show that they are preoccupied with establishing a genuinely democratic organization – either a renewed PLO, or a new one altogether – that will pursue a vision of emancipation which is antithetical to the Palestinian Authority’s campaign for recognition as a state. They seem to favour a one-state solution to a discredited two-state model. . . .

Pappé, Ilan. “The Collapse of Zionism.” NLR/Sidecar, June 21, 2024. https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/the-collapse-of-zionism?pc=1610.

To refer back to my latest reading, Inheritance by Harvey Whitehouse: The best we might dare hope for is the emergence of a boundary-crossing leadership, of which Nelson Mandela was a clear example. Two key works cited:

We have seen young Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians working together for justice and assistance for many years now (though their efforts have not made headlines) — so the possibility of that kind of leadership after the slaughter has ended is not out of the question. Though an acceleration of violence in the meantime seems inevitable.

 

2024-04-07

Brisbane March for Palestine

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: , , ,

Several hundred, young and old, held a public rally and march today calling for federal, state and local governments to cut direct support for Israel and businesses doing business with Israel at this time. Not many by a long shot, and of course it was ignored even by the local TV news media. Among the speakers was one from a very small number of anti-Zionist Jews. He spoke of some of his extended family refusing to have anything to do with him because of his stance. I took it as a disheartening reality check that the newly formed Jewish Council of Australia is a not a large body.

It was interesting to hear that it is worth trying to pressure even local government to take a stand. The Brisbane City Council had our Story Bridge lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag after the October 7 events (though all the emphasis in the news at the time, and the news that shocked the world, was not on the crimes that Hamas did commit but on the crimes that they did not commit). Since then, requests to light up colours in support of Gaza at this time have been flatly rejected.

There’s a long way to go yet. Something happens to you when you are involved in a rally and march like that. I have learned enough about the nature of rituals from studies of religion to recognize how this ritual works in a similar way: the bonding one feels with others, with seriousness of purpose but with good humour and camaraderie, the vicarious identification with distant people and events and the bringing of those distant people and events close to us. The drums, the applauding, the chanting, the laughter — bonding all to something bigger. Some rituals are acted out behind closed doors. Others are public and meant to be noticed. Hopefully in shorter time rather than too much longer more of those bystanders who appear to look at us as if we were strange exhibits in a circus parade (or simply as “bad protesters”) will learn more about why we are doing what we are doing and also take action in different ways. It’s happened before. But I don’t want to look back and say I did nothing. I met our local member/representative a few days ago. I will let him know what government action I believe he should be pushing for. I’d like to do a little more in cooperation with local activists to help raise public awareness — to add one more voice to those pushing back against the local impact of mainstream media and the pablum spin of politicians.

 

2024-03-27

Messiah Mode – understanding Israel today

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Messiahs and messianism, Politics & Society
Tags: ,

There was a time when I felt reasonably confident that the views of the Zionist extremist Meir Kahane would never become dominant in Israel. Surely, they would always be confined to the margins. 

Then Netanyahu formed government with the religious extremists. How on earth did it turn out this way?

I failed to understand that Kahane was as much against the idea of Diaspora Jews as he was against anything else, and how propaganda and activism towards this end would play out.

David Sheen explains it well. His presentation in 2019 effectively predicted the events unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank today, including scenes captured in videos that I had naively believed the West had buried in 1945.

Sheen begins with the views that have been preached by government appointed rabbis to Israel’s military. Those views even openly align with the racist and genocidal proclamations of Hitler — with the only difference being that Hitler was mistaken in identifying the master race with the Aryans.

The video explains “the four types” of Jews as they are aligned with the Jewish sacred books, the Torah and Talmud.

Liberal
(Reformist)
Torah
=
Holy		 Torah
≠
Just
Torah laws need reform to align it with modern values.
Nationalist
(Opportunist)
Torah
≠
Holy		 Torah
=
Just
God gave Jews the land of Palestine,
therefore they have an obligation to take it.
Religious
(Supremacists)
Torah
=
Holy		 Torah
=
Just
Traditionally held that God would give Jews the land
and make the gentiles willing slaves of the Jews;
not for Jews to act but to wait for God to do it.
Socialist
(Humanist)
Torah
≠
Holy		 Torah
≠
Just

The video explains how the middle two, the nationalist and the religious (supremacist) have joined forces under Netanyahu.

2024-03-21

October 7

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: ,

. . . .

The Israelis responsible even had the intelligence that the Hamas attack was imminent (they even had the Hamas plans and saw them running to the fence barrier on the morning of the 7th) but dismissed it all thinking it incredible.

The failure of the Israeli defence forces was astonishing. Hamas expected to suffer 80% casualties and that only 20% of them would return alive. In fact the figures were reversed. And it was the Israeli military posts they attacked that suffered the incredible losses. Hamas had no plans for the unexpected situation they found themselves in.

Hamas crimes, yes, but no evidence of rape, no beheaded or oven-burned babies.

The mutilated bodies, those stabbed and burned and run over, appear to have been Palestinian, not Israeli.

Israeli tanks and Apache helicopters fired into houses and cars killing Israelis as well as Hamas.

Like the propaganda following Germany’s 1914 invasion of Belgium – stories of bayoneting women and children . . . .

Like the 1939 lie by Hitler that Poland had attacked Germany . . . .

Like the Gulf of Tonkin lie to justify the Vietnam war . . . .

Like the lie of Iraqis in Kuwait throwing babies from incubators prior to the 2003 Gulf war . . . .

Like the lie of weapons of mass destruction to justify the 1993 Iraq war . . . .

. . . . The October 7 dehumanizing lies serve to justify the slaughter under way in Gaza (and of course to deflect from the utter failure of the Israeli defence force on that morning.)

A brief extract:

2024-01-03

The “Objective” and “Neutral” Historian Versus the Provocateur

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography
Tags: , ,

A historian is supposed to stimulate thought. A histo­rian who insists on being neutral, a per­son of footnotes, and does not provoke, is doing a disservice to the profession.

When I think about Germany and about German historians who con­stantly hid behind the ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ of history, I know where that leads.

Those who are col­orless, who are neither here nor there, in the end collaborate with what exists.

— Moshe Zimmermann, emeritus professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A classic example of the “purely objective” historian is another Israeli, Benny Morris, whose works on the events connected with the founding of Israel are widely known.

Benny Morris (Wikipedia image)

In 2004 Counterpunch published an interview with Benny Morris that opened with this paragraph:

Note: Benny Morris is the dean of Israeli ‘new historians’, who have done so much to create a critical vision of Zionism–its expulsion and continuing oppression of the Palestinians, its pressing need for moral and political atonement. His 1987 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, chronicled the Zionist murders, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing that drove 600,000-750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948, thus refuting the myth that they fled under the orders of Arab leaders. A second edition of this book is due out this month [= the green cover on the right], chronicling even more massacres, and a previously unsuspected number of rapes and murders of Palestinian women. Thus Morris continues to provide crucial documentation for Palestinians fighting the heritage of Al-Nakba, “The Catastrophe.”

But it was all objectively told and the historian author in fact personally lamented that the expulsion of the Palestinians at that time was left as unfinished business:

But in an astonishing recent Ha’aretz interview, after summarizing his new research, Morris proceeds to argue for the necessity of ethnic cleansing in 1948. He faults David Ben-Gurion for failing to expel all Arab Israelis, and hints that it may be necessary to finish the job in the future. Though he calls himself a left-wing Zionist, he invokes and praises the fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky in calling for an “iron wall” solution to the current crisis. Referring to Sharon’s Security Wall, he says, “Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.” He calls the conflict between Israelis and Arabs a struggle between civilization and barbarism, and suggests an analogy frequently drawn by Palestinians, though from the other side of the Winchester: “Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians.”

Continue reading “The “Objective” and “Neutral” Historian Versus the Provocateur”

2023-12-11

Statement of Scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: , ,

It’s hard to turn one’s mind to biblical studies at this time. Here is a copy of a statement that can be found on a Keough School of Global Affairs site at the University of Notre Dame. The scholars warn that the record of history indicates that we are witnessing evidence unfolding that much, much worse is still to come in Israel’s “war” on Gaza and with the coinciding actions in the West Bank and towards Palestinian citizens inside Israel. An introductory statement explains the purpose of the statement:

Contending Modernities presents the statement of scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies sounding the alarm regarding further escalation of the crimes against civilians underway in Gaza. In the introduction, Raz Segal highlights the melding of apocalyptic religious symbolism with an exclusionary modern nation state project by Israeli leadership to justify and drum up support for unprecedented rates of Palestinian death and destruction.

Here is Raz Segal’s Introduction to the Statement of the scholars:

Dr. Raz Segal is Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University. Dr. Segal has held a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and was recently a Senior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (March-July 2023). His publications include Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1914-1945 (2016); Days of Ruin: The Jews of Munkács during the Holocaust (2013); and he was guest editor of the Hebrew-language special issue on Genocide: Mass Violence and Cultural Erasure of Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly (2018). In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Segal has published op-eds, book reviews, and larger articles on genocide, state violence, and memory politics in Hebrew, English, and German in The Guardian, LA Times, The Nation, Jewish Currents, Haaretz, +972 Magazine, and Berliner Zeitung, and he has appeared on Democracy Now! and ABC News.

In the following statement, over 55 scholars of the Holocaust, genocide, and mass violence deplore the atrocity crimes against civilians committed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on 7 October and by Israeli forces since then. The starvation, mass killing, and forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is ongoing, raising the question of genocide, especially in view of the intentions expressed by Israeli leaders. Israeli President Isaac Herzog used particularly loaded language in an interview on MSNBC just a few days ago, on 5 December: “This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas. It’s a war that is intended, really, truly, to save western civilization. …  We are attacked by [a] Jihadist network, an empire of evil. … and this empire wants to conquer the entire Middle East, and if it weren’t for us, Europe would be next, and the United States follows.” Herzog builds on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s association of Israel’s attack on Gaza with the Biblical evil of Amalek, but he places it on a modern scale as the last stand against global apocalypse and the demise of “western civilization.” Both Herzog and Netanyahu are secular Jews. Their use of religious language and symbolism in this case reflects a dangerous intersection in the case of Israel of the exclusionary modern nation state with a settler colonial project in a place infused with multiple religious histories and meanings. The scholars who have signed the statement are signaling their alarm about the mass violence underway in Gaza and the inflammatory language that threatens to escalate it further. They call for urgent action to stop Israel’s attack on Gaza and to work towards a future that will guarantee the equality, freedom, dignity, and security of all the people who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

RAZ SEGAL
December 9, 2023

Statement of Scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies on Mass Violence in Israel and Palestine since 7 October

https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/statement-of-scholars-7-october/

December 9, 2023

We, scholars of the Holocaust, genocide, and mass violence, feel compelled to warn of the danger of genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza. We also note that, should the Israeli attack continue and escalate, Palestinians under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel face grave danger as well.

We are deeply saddened and concerned by the mass murder of over 1,200 Israelis and migrant workers by Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and others on 7 October, with more than 830 civilians among them. We also note the evidence of gender-based and sexual violence during the attack, the wounding of thousands of Israelis, the destruction of Israeli kibbutzim and towns, and the abduction of more than 240 hostages into the Gaza Strip. These acts constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. We recognize that violence in Israel and Palestine did not begin on 7 October. If we are to try to understand the mass murder of 7 October, we should place it within the context of Israeli settler colonialism, Israeli military occupation violence against Palestinians since 1967, the sixteen-year siege on the Gaza Strip since 2007, and the rise to power in Israel in the last year of a government made up of politicians who speak proudly about Jewish supremacy and exclusionary nationalism. Explaining is not justifying, and this context in no way excuses the targeting of Israeli civilians and migrant workers by Palestinians on 7 October.

We are also deeply saddened and concerned by the Israeli attack on Gaza in response to the Hamas attack. Israel’s assault has caused death and destruction on an unprecedented level, according to a New York Times article on 26 November. In two months, the Israeli assault has killed more than 16,000 Palestinians (with thousands more buried under the rubble)—nearly half of them children and youth, with a Palestinian child killed every ten minutes on average before the ceasefire—and wounded over 40,000. Considering that the total population of Gaza stands at 2.3 million people, the killing rate so far is about 0.7 percent in less than two months. The killing rate of civilians in Russia’s bombing and invasion of Ukraine in the areas most affected by the violence are probably similar—but over a longer period of time. A number of experts have therefore described Israel’s attack on Gaza as the most intense and deadliest of its kind since World War II, but while Russia’s attack on Ukraine has, for very good reason, prompted western leaders to support the people under attack, the same western leaders now support the violence of the Israeli state rather than the Palestinians under attack.

Israel has also forcibly displaced more than 1.8 million Palestinians within the Gaza Strip, while destroying almost half of all buildings and leaving the northern part of the Strip an “uninhabitable moonscape.” Indeed, the Israeli army has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since 7 October, which is equivalent to two Hiroshima bombs, and according to Human Rights Watch, deployed white phosphorous bombs. It has systematically targeted hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries, and agricultural fields. The state has also killed many essential professionals, including more than 220 healthcare workers, over 100 UN personnel, and dozens of journalists. The forced displacement has, furthermore, created in the southern part of the Strip severe overcrowding, with the risk of outbreak of infectious diseases, exacerbated by shortages of food, clean water, fuel, and medical supplies, due to Israel’s “total siege” measures since 7 October.

The unprecedented level of destruction and killing points to large-scale war crimes in Israel’s attack on Gaza. There is also evidence of a “widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack” that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines as a crime against humanity. Moreover, dozens of statements of Israeli leaders, ministers in the war cabinet, and senior army officers since 7 October—that is, people with command authority—suggest an “intent to destroy” Palestinians “as such,” in the language of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The statements include depictions of all Palestinians in Gaza as responsible for the Hamas attack on 7 October and therefore legitimate military targets, as expressed by Israeli President Herzog on 13 October and by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when he invoked, on 29 October, the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, just as Israel began its ground invasion. Casting an entire civilian population as enemies marks the history of modern genocide, with the Armenian genocide (1915-1918) and the Rwanda genocide (1994) as well-known examples. The statements also include dehumanizing language, such as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s reference to “human animals” when he proclaimed “total siege” on Gaza on 9 October. The slippage between seeing Hamas as “human animals” to seeing all Palestinians in Gaza in this way is evident in what Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian promised to people in Gaza the next day: “Hamas has turned into ISIS, and the residents of Gaza, instead of being appalled, are celebrating. … Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

These expressions of intent need to be understood also in relation to the widespread incitement to genocide in Israeli media since 7 October. Israeli journalist David Mizrachi Wertheim, for instance, wrote on social media on 7 October that “If all the captives are not returned immediately, then turn the [Gaza] Strip into a slaughterhouse. If a hair falls from their head – execute security prisoners. Violate all norms on the way to victory.” He also added, “we are facing human animals.” Four days later, another Israeli journalist, Roy Sharon, commented on social media “that if, in order to finally eliminate the military capabilities of Hamas, including Sinwar and Deif, we need a million bodies, then let there be a million bodies.” Annihilatory language now also appears in public spaces, such as banners on bridges in Tel Aviv that call “to annihilate Gaza” and explain that “the picture of triumph is 0 people in Gaza.” There are dozens of examples of incitement in Israeli media, which recalls the incitement to genocide in Rwanda as genocide was unfolding there in 1994.

This incitement points to the grave danger that Palestinians everywhere under Israeli rule now face. Israeli army and settler violence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which has intensified markedly from the beginning of 2023, has entered a new stage of brutality after 7 October. Sixteen Palestinian communities—over a thousand people—have been forcibly displaced in their entirety, continuing the policy of “ethnic cleansing” in Area C that comprises 60 percent of the West Bank. Israeli soldiers and settlers have furthermore killed more than 220 Palestinians in the West Bank since 7 October, while arresting thousands. The violence against Palestinians also includes acts of torture.

Palestinian citizens of Israel—almost 2 million people—are also facing a state assault against them, with hundreds of arrests since 7 October for any expression of identification with Palestinians in Gaza. There is widespread intimidation and silencing of Palestinian students, faculty, and staff in Israeli universities, and the Israeli Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai threatened to expel to Gaza Israeli Palestinians identifying with Palestinians in Gaza. These alarming developments and measures build on a view of Palestinian citizens of Israel as potential enemies that stretches back to the military rule imposed on the 156,000 Palestinians who survived the Nakba and remained within the territory that became Israel in 1948. This iteration of military rule lasted until 1966, but the image of Israeli Palestinians as a threat has persisted. In May 2021, as many Israeli Palestinians came out to protest an attack on Palestinians in East Jerusalem and another attack on Gaza, the Israeli police responded with massive repression and violence, arresting hundreds. The situation deteriorated quickly, as Jewish and Palestinian citizens clashed across Israel—in some places, as in Haifa, with Jewish citizens attacking Palestinian citizens on the streets and breaking into houses of Palestinian citizens. And now, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right settler who serves as Israeli minister of national security, has put Israeli Palestinians in even more danger by the distribution of thousands of weapons to Israeli civilians who have formed hundreds of self-defense units after 7 October.

The escalating violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the exclusion and violence against Palestinian citizens of Israel are particularly worrying in the context of calls in Israel after 7 October for a “second Nakba.” The reference is to the massacres and “ethnic cleansing” of more than 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of villages and towns by Israeli forces in the 1948 war, when Israel was established. The language that member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) Ariel Kallner from the ruling Likud party used in a social media post on 7 October is instructive: “Nakba to the enemy now. … Now, only one goal: Nakba! Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to whoever dares to join [them].” We know that genocide is a process, and we recognize that the stage is thus set for violence more severe than the Nakba and not spatially limited to Gaza.

Thus, the time for concerted action to prevent genocide is now. We call on governments to uphold their legal obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to intervene and prevent genocide (Article 1) by (1) implementing an arms embargo on Israel; (2) working to end Israel’s military assault on Gaza; (3) pressuring the Israeli government to stop immediately the intensifying army and settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which constitute clear violations of international law; (4) demanding the continued release of all hostages held in Gaza and all Palestinians imprisoned unlawfully in Israel, without charges or trial; (5) calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate and issue arrest warrants against all perpetrators of mass violence on 7 October and since then, both Palestinians and Israelis; and (6) initiating a political process in Israel and Palestine based on a truthful reckoning with Israeli mass violence against Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba and a future that will guarantee the equality, freedom, dignity, and security of all the people who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

We also call on businesses and labor unions to ensure that they do not aid and abet Israeli mass violence, but rather follow the example of workers in Belgium transport unions who refused in late October to handle flights that ship arms to Israel.

Finally, we call on scholars, programs, centers, and institutes in Holocaust and Genocide Studies to take a clear stance against Israeli mass violence and join us in efforts to stop it and prevent its further escalation.

 

 

Mohamed Adhikari, University of Cape Town

Taner Akçam, Director, Armenian Genocide Research Program, The Promise Armenian Institute, UCLA

Ayhan Aktar, Professor of Sociology (Retired), Istanbul Bilgi University

Yassin Al Haj Saleh, Syrian Writer, Berlin

Sebouh David Aslanian, Professor of History and Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History, UCLA

Karyn Ball, Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton

Haim Bresheeth-Žabner, Professorial Research Associate, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Cathie Carmichael, Professor Emerita, School of History, University of East Anglia

Daniele Conversi, Professor, Department of Contemporary History, University of the Basque Country

Catherine Coquio, Professeure de littérature comparée à Université Paris Cité, France

John Cox, Associate Professor of History and Global Studies and Director of the Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Martin Crook, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of the West of England

Ann Curthoys, Honorary Professor, School of Humanities, The University of Sydney

Sarah K. Danielsson, Professor of History, Queensborough, CUNY

John Docker, Sydney, Australia

John Duncan, affiliated with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Didier Fassin, Professor at the Collège de France and the Institute for Advanced Study

Joanne Smith Finley, Reader in Chinese Studies, Newcastle University, UK

Shannon Fyfe, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, George Mason University; Faculty Fellow, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy

William Gallois, Professor of the Islamic Mediterranean, University of Exeter

Fatma Muge Gocek, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Svenja Goltermann, Professor of Modern History, University of Zurich

Andrei Gómez-Suarez, Senior Research Fellow, Centre of Religion, Reconciliation and Peace, University of Winchester

Penny Green, Professor of Law and Globalisation and Director of the International State Crime Initiative, Queen Mary University of London

John-Paul Himka, Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta

Marianne Hirschberg, Professor, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Kassel, Germany

Anna Holian, Associate Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Arizona State University

Rachel Ibreck, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Department of Politics and International Relations, Goldsmiths, University of London

Adam Jones, Professor, Political Science, University of British Columbia Okanagan

Rachel Killean, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School

Brian Klug, Hon. Fellow in Social Philosophy, Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and Hon. Fellow, Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton

Mark Levene, Emeritus Fellow, University of Southampton

Yosefa Loshitzky, Professorial Research Associate, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Thomas MacManus, Senior Lecturer in State Crime, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Zachariah Mampilly, Professor, Baruch College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Benjamin Meiches, Associate Professor of Security Studies and Conflict Resolution, University of Washington-Tacoma

Dirk Moses, Professor of International Relations, City College of New York, CUNY

Eva Nanopoulos, Senior Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary University of London

Jeffrey Ostler, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Oregon

Thomas Earl Porter, Professor of History, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC

Colin Samson, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex

Victoria Sanford, Lehman Professor of Excellence, Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide, Stockton University

Elyse Semerdjian, Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies, Clark University

Martin Shaw, University of Sussex/Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals

Damien Short, Co-Director of the Human Rights Consortium and Professor of Human Rights and Environmental Justice at the School of Advanced Study, University of London

Ronald Grigor Suny, William H. Sewell, Jr. Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of History and Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan

Adam Sutcliffe, Professor of European History, King’s College London

Barry Trachtenberg, Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, Wake Forest University

Enzo Traverso, Professor in the Humanities, Cornell University

Jeremy Varon, Professor of History, The New School, New York

Johanna Ray Vollhardt, Associate Professor of Psychology, Clark University

Pauline Wakeham, Associate Professor, Department of English, Western University (Canada)

Keith David Watenpaugh, Professor and Director, Human Rights Studies, University of California, Davis

Andrew Woolford, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, University of Manitoba

Ran Zwigenberg, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, History, and Jewish Studies, Pennsylvania State University

“Bombing Kids Is Not Self Defense” by Becker1999, Flickr.com, CC BY 2.0 DEED. — image included in the University of Notre Dame/Contending Modernities post of the statement.

I have read and studied about the Zionist movement and history of Palestine-Israel since the late nineteenth century in some depth and (I mean I have studied the history that has happened since that time, not that I have studied since that time the history of …) and can only hope against all hope that Noam Chomsky’s unfathomable optimism is valid when he says that at last there might be some hope for the salvation of the Palestinians — see from the 3 minutes 50 seconds his remarks on

2023-11-02

“A deep calm conversation about a very complicated issue”

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: , , , , ,

A deep calm conversation about a very complicated issue. I tried to talk to an audience who never get exposed to our side of the story. No sound bites , no trending phrases , no attempts to score points for reach and views. Just an attempt to have our voices heard. I hope it will be something that will be used for a longer time not just for the heat of the moment. I think it will be aired tomorrow. — Bassem Youssef

 

2023-10-28

Australia’s “Gaza War”

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: , ,

. . . . Then came Cullin-la-ringo.

After a long journey from Victoria with his family, servants, stockmen, wagons and over 7000 thousand sheep, Horatio Wills pitched his tents by the Nogoa River in early October 1861. Eight months earlier, “the perfect state of peace” on the Nogoa had been shattered by Lieutenant Patrick. More violence had followed in the months since as Patrick went about his work. . . .

[But let’s not get distracted with details of history lest some of us, God forbid, suspect I write with winking approval of what happened to the Wills family and household.]

The Willses were not to blame for any of this but, as the paper pointed out:

The blacks, like their civilised invaders, confound the individual with the race; that, in common with all people, whether savage or half-civilised, they exact the penalty from the first of the adverse nation who falls into their hands. In war, this course is sometimes followed by belligerent States, professing to rank with civilised nations. Indeed, the principle of reprisals is nothing else than punishing the innocent for the guilty.

The family had been at Cullin-la-ringo for ten days when about a hundred Gayiri men and women descended on their camp and killed them all in broad daylight. Among the nineteen dead were seven children. Though they had many guns to defend themselves, the only shot fired in the attack was from Wills’ revolver. His head was nearly severed. Bodies were left scattered among the tents. . . .  News of the killings at Cullin-la-ringo broke around the world. It remains the bloodiest massacre by blacks in the history of Australia.

“An uncontrollable desire for vengeance took possession of every heart,” [Queensland Governor] Bowen told the Duke of Newcastle, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Bowen had no quarrel with such “just chastisement”. All over the north, settlers and Native Police rode out to kill. Scrubs and mountains were scoured. Blacks were shot and driven over cliffs. The Rockhampton Bulletin reported the clashes with something like delight.

The Native Police overtook the tribe of natives who committed the late outrage at Nogoa, and succeeded in driving them into a place from whence escape was impossible. They then shot down sixty or seventy, and they only ceased firing upon them when their ammunition was expended.

Those who sought shelter in Rockhampton – “the little town of mud and dust” – were driven back out into the bush to be shot. As it was after Hornet Bank, blacks were executed hundreds of miles from the scene of the crime. Runs on the Comet, the Nogoa, the Dawson and the Mackenzie were stripped of Aborigines. About four hundred are thought to have died in the weeks after Cullin-la-ringo, but that is no more than a cautious guess. The Yiman, Wadjigu, Gayiri and Darumbal peoples were nearly wiped out.

……..

After Cullin-la-ringo there was no hope left of reining in the Native Police. Vengeance was blessed. No limits were set on the awful powers of the force. More than ever, the government placed the highest value on the energy of its officers and their discretion – in both meanings of that slippery word: judgement and secrecy. Nowhere would the occupation of Australia prove bloodier than here, and no instrument of state as culpable as the Native Police. Slaughter was bricked into the foundations of Queensland.

  • Marr, David. Killing for Country: A Family Story. Black Inc, 2023. pp 249-253

The above took place a little more than twenty years after one of the earliest settlements in Queensland, the idealistic mission station named Zion’s Hill.

2023-10-21

Truth in the Court Jester’s Barbs — (plus a positive interview with Noam Chomsky)

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: , , , ,

Probably most readers here long before now have seen the video below (Piers Morgan interviewing Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef on the current Israeli response in Gaza to the Hasbut I love it so much I want to display it here, too.

I confess to being a little taken aback by Ben Shapiro’s justification of the mass bombing of civilians (Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki …) by the Allies. I had long thought (after talking with some from that generation, including one who belonged to a bomber crew over Dresden) that “we” looked back on that kind of vengeful barbarism with some guilt and shame. Certainly not some kind of “tragic necessity”. Still naive after all these years.

As for Piers Morgan insisting in the above show that he had never spoken of “decapitated babies”, the following demonstrate that his memory failed him at that moment: Continue reading “Truth in the Court Jester’s Barbs — (plus a positive interview with Noam Chomsky)”

2023-10-10

Unspeakable…

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags: , ,

Is there anything at all that can be said? I can only feel — appropriate words won’t come. I gather news updates from a range of sources and have been distressingly learning for years now about the increasing attacks by Israelis on Palestinians, including the killing of women and children, with the clear winks from far right government members (even calling for a Palestinian town to be “wiped out“) and with the protection and sometimes outright facilitation of Israeli security forces (both the IDF and the police) — all this and not one word of protest from those national leaders who are now roused to speak up and cry out for a total vindication of Israel’s “right to defend itself” against the atrocities of Hamas — with that condemnation morphing all to often into an implicit condemnation of all Palestinians. The world cries out “War Crime” when a Russian missile destroys a power plant in Ukraine. But when Israel blocks all food and power from entering the overcrowded home of 2 to 3 million people….

As the correspondent Jonathan Cooke wrote:

The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.

Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by western politicians or publics.

The West’s hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.

This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage in 2007, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea and air.

. . . .

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war”. But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor.

Inevitably for the Palestinians, as Netanyahu also observed, “the price will be heavy” – especially for civilians. Israel will inflict on the prisoners the severest punishment for their impudence.

Watch how little sympathy and concern there will be from the West for the many Palestinian men, women and children who are killed once again by Israel. Their immense suffering will be obscured, and justified, by the term “Israeli retaliation”.

. . . .

No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinans were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being held hostage by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.

No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza’s Palestinians had been put on a “starvation diet” by Israel – only limited food was allowed in, calculated to keep the population barely fed.

No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. Israel simply called it “mowing the lawn”. The destruction of vast areas of Gaza, what Israeli generals boasted of as returning the enclave to the Stone Age, was formalised as a military strategy known as the “Dahiya doctrine“.

No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. Many thousands were left as amputees after those snipers received orders to shoot the protesters indiscriminately in the legs or ankles.

Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel’s repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not?

After so much indifference for so long, it is difficult to hear the sudden horror from Western governments and media because Palestinians have finally found a way – mirroring Israel’s inhumane, decades-long policy – to fight back effectively.

This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in western capitals.

. . . .

I listened to an American diplomat try to explain that the reason there is no peace between Israel and the Palestinians is because Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. No-one said that the United States’ refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the mainland Chinese government from 1949 to 1972 made it impossible for the two countries to live in the same world together. Hamas has called for a two-state solution recognizing the 1967 borders — an implicit acknowledgement that a regime they consider illegitimate and illegal and immoral will exist alongside a Palestinian state. Israel has persistently thumbed its nose at international law by expanding its own settlements in the only place a Palestinian state could exist, — and effectively winking at their settler pogroms against Palestinian villages.

An Israeli military spokesperson said the “breakout” by Hamas from Gaza proved that Hamas were animals who could never be satisfied. After all, he “explained”, Israel “unilaterally” withdrew its forces totally from Gaza leaving Gaza entirely to the Palestinians; “What more could Israel do in giving the Palestinians all they asked for!” — Like leaving caged prisoners to their own devices within their barbed wire and spike defended walls on their subsistence diet and patchy power supply.

It’s all too sickening. But it seemed so wrong to post about intellectual fancies like biblical studies without acknowledging something infinitely more important right now.

I have not heard first hand or face to face from Palestinians themselves or from anyone who has visited the West Bank and Gaza recently so I rely on media reports (only partly on the mainstream media, though that has a place, too) and published research and testimonies to keep abreast of what is happening. A while back, during the time of the wave of suicide bombings, I learned that many ordinary Palestinians despised Hamas for their cold use of youngsters to blow themselves up. Since then, there have been changes within Hamas and they were democratically elected in Gaza (to much of the world’s horror) — they were the only party that most Palestinians trusted to actually deliver needed humanitarian services. I don’t know what most Palestinians think of the recent Hamas attacks but I would not be surprised if a good many feel despair and dismay. But it doesn’t matter now. The fire has started. If only individuals like us could do a little more to try to raise awareness of the hypocrisy and racism among our national leaders that is giving comfort to the governing powers of Israel as they ignore the rules of humanity and justice. Except when their own prisoners violate them to their own hurt.

 

 

 

2021-05-21

Hamas Rockets, a Gift for Netanyahu — Some Overlooked Words and Facts

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags:

Hamas control of Gaza is exactly what Netanyahu wants to maintain:

The prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] also said that, “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

— Harkov, Lahav. “Netanyahu: Money to Hamas Part of Strategy to Keep Palestinians Divided.” The Jerusalem Post, March 12, 2019. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-to-hamas-part-of-strategy-to-keep-palestinians-divided-583082.

Hamas, Netanyahu’s gift that keeps on giving

After all, it was the toxic cocktail of Jewish terror and Hamas violence that first brought Netanyahu to power more than a quarter of a century ago. The fervently right-wing Israeli who gunned down Yitzhak Rabin, followed by a shocking spate of Hamas suicide bombings of public buses in major Israeli cities, paved Bibi’s come-from-far-behind electoral path to Balfour Street.

That’s how Netanyahu likes his public. Shattered. Furious. Fearful. Paralyzed.

Burston, Bradley. “Netanyahu and Hamas Are Working Together to Destroy My Israel.” Haaretz. May 20, 2021. http://www.proquest.com/docview/2529195266/citation/7524E1F185E04576PQ/16.

This latest outbreak started over Jewish attempts to drive long-time Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from their homes. Ironically, now with the rise of right-wing Jewish extremists replacing secular Zionism,

The sharp irony is that the early Zionists never actually regarded Jerusalem as integral to their national enterprise, but as a spiritual center.

Theodor Herzl

Nowhere was Zionist apathy towards Jerusalem more manifest than in the writings of Theodore Herzl, father of political Zionism. Herzl did not hesitate to express his disregard for Jerusalem, even at a time when the majority of its residents were Jewish.

“When I remember thee in days to come, O Jerusalem, it will not be with pleasure,” he wrote, upon his only visit to Palestine in 1898. It’s no wonder the First Zionist Congress, which met in Basel in 1897 to discuss Herzl’s Jewish state proposal, had passed over Jerusalem in silence.

Disenchanted with Jerusalem, Herzl dreamed of founding the future Jewish capital in northern Palestine. He believed that Jerusalem would be a major obstacle to the creation of his Jewish state, and that a Jewish ownership of Jerusalem’s holy sites could jeopardize his entire plan for Jewish settlement in Palestine. Herzl also feared that the Vatican would oppose any form of Jewish political presence in Jerusalem. He was willing to give up Jerusalem in return for international recognition of Jewish sovereignty over other parts of Palestine.

In fact, Herzl was the first to propose a plan to declare old Jerusalem an international city. In “Altneuland,” he wrote that Jerusalem belonged to all nations as a multicultural and spiritual center. He even proposed to turn the Old City into a multinational museum.

Herzl envisioned Jerusalem as a utopian city where state affairs are “banned from within these walls that are venerated by all creeds,” and where “the old city would be left to the charitable and religious institutions of the all creeds which then could amicably divide up this area among themselves.”

The early Zionist movement, which took its name from one of Jerusalem’s ancient names, was ready to give up Jerusalem as a prelude to building the future Jewish state. By excluding Jerusalem from their original plan, the Zionist founders hoped to avoid international outrage, clashes with Muslim and Christian communities, and divisions between secular Zionists and the Orthodox Jewish community of Jerusalem.

The original Zionist policy was therefore to keep a low profile toward Jerusalem. Unlike the British, who made Jerusalem the country’s capital under the mandate, the early Zionist movement built its headquarters far from Jerusalem, in central and northern Palestine. There was little nationalist shudder in the Jewish Yishuv in 1908, when the Palestine Office, headed by Arthur Ruppin, opened its doors in Jaffa instead of Jerusalem.

. . . .

As for Palestinians, it was also in Jaffa, not Jerusalem, where their national aspirations were set, it being Palestine’s beating urban heart and vibrant economic and cultural center.

Neither party wanted Jerusalem, except maybe the British, who, in the words of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, wished to proclaim the city “a Christmas gift for the British people.”

And yet few Israelis today seem to realize that the image of Jerusalem as the eternal and united capital of the Jewish people was a relatively recent invention.

Indeed, few remember that day in November 1947, when the UN General Assembly passed its historic resolution to partition Mandate Palestine between Arabs and Jews, ultimately leading to the creation of the State of Israel. The plan, which provided for two states — one Jewish, one Arab — excluded Jerusalem from the future Jewish state. Owing to its unique status, Jerusalem was to be governed by a “special international regime” administered by the United Nations.

And yet the Zionist leadership embraced the plan almost without hesitation. Celebrations swept the quarters of the Jewish yishuv in Mandate Palestine. The following year, Israel, emboldened by the partition plan, declared its independence, and not long after, the new state was recognized by a majority of United Nations member states, led by the United States.

. . . .

The irony is that while the early Zionist establishment was ready to relinquish Jerusalem to build the Jewish state, the current Israeli leadership seems to be relinquishing the Jewish state for Greater Jerusalem, where Palestinians constitute nearly 40 percent of the city’s population, with thousands living beyond the separation barrier in East Jerusalem.

By annexing East Jerusalem, Israel is rapidly headed toward a one-state reality which, sooner or later, would culminate in a Jewish minority ruling over a Palestinian majority in an apartheid-style regime.

The history of the early Zionist movement in Palestine is nearly forgotten today, but its lesson is still alive: Jerusalem “belonged to all of its nations and creeds.”

Assi, Seraj. “How Israel Invented Its Exclusive Claim Over Jerusalem.” Israel Palestine News (blog), May 11, 2021. https://israelpalestinenews.org/haaretz-how-israel-invented-its-exclusive-claim-over-jerusalem/.

Apartheid? I hear rumours that it is finally becoming acceptable to use that word as a criticism of Israel. Are times really changing? I read mixed signals in Biden’s response to this latest violence.

We hear of Gaza being an open-air prison. Maybe we should have another look at Israel:

But if there is one central, fundamental takeaway from the latest operation, from the entire situation, from a year in which thousands died from the coronavirus, from four elections in a row and counting, from the Israeli discourse that continually strains toward blindness, it is how captive Israeli society is. Not captive in the physical sense, not aware of the captivity, but conceptually captive to an extreme degree, ostensibly of its own free will.

Just turn on any television channel to see what a large gap there is between reality – in which much of Israel has been shut down for more than a week due to the threat of rockets fired by a terrorist organization – and all the talk about “severe blows,” “setting them back years” and “victories.” The disparity between the Israeli discourse and the Israeli reality is akin to that between a banana and a watermelon. When someone is holding a banana and keeps insisting it’s a watermelon, and everyone submissively nods their heads, we’ve got a problem.

Assulin, Yair. “The Real ‘Captives’ in Israel.” Haaretz. May 20, 2021. http://www.proquest.com/docview/2529405585/citation/7524E1F185E04576PQ/18.

2021-05-15

Depressingly Relevant Years Later

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
Tags:

From 2014:

Notes from Nur Masalha’s book, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948

https://vridar.org/tag/masalha-expulsion-of-the-palestinians/