"Israel represents a failure of humanity." Never was a statement more true. Conversely though the conflict has taught me much about Palestinians which I was sadly and unforgivably ignorant of before. Their stoicism, decency, humanity, dignity and above all bravery are a lesson to us all.
I have long said that the Palestinians and the Black people under white domination in the US are among the most admirable people in the world. Where do they get their resilience in the face of such severe oppression and betrayal?
What choice did they have Scott? As a survivor of horrendous psychopathic abuse in my childhood and adolescence, and as someone who works with survivors, I can tell you that when you are in a position where you realise you’re being annihilated, you either give up and die (I very nearly did—two serious suicide attempts in my youth), or you endure and when you have a chance you start to do whatever you can to improve your situation. The human spirit is incredible. I witness it every day. The Black people under domination in the US and the Palestinians must endure, survive or be destroyed. Sumud!
Yes, indeed, they have had to fight for survival or simply be destroyed, and the latter is not much of an option. Of course, some collaborate with the enemy, like kapos and quislings: the colonial puppet «Palestinian Authority» is a good example.
When people are trapped in psychopathic systems they have no good options. Surrender and die, fight back: exhaust yourself, come to harm, lose and then die, or be destroyed for the rest of your life, or collaborate.
Psychopathic systems always encourage collaborators. Some collaborators don’t even do it by choice. Israel has used disgusting strategies and tricks to force some Palestinians to collaborate with them. The film ‘Omar’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_(2013_film)), while fictional, is accurate in its depiction of how Israel always operated in the colonised West Bank and how it recruits informants. All of it is illegal according to International Law (whatever it’s worth anymore)…
As a lawyer who during law school won a scholarship in public international law that turned out to have been funded by war profiteers, I can say that international law is mostly a device of propaganda. There is no way to enforce any right or punish any wrong at international law, so its status as «law» seems questionable. The main actors and right-holders at international law are states. As we have seen time and time again, the US and a few other powerful states do as they damn well please, invoking international law when it suits their nefarious purposes and spurning it when it doesn't.
Yeah, I’ve kind of figured it out. Prof Raz Segal (ex Israeli, Assoc. Prof in genocide studies, Stockton University US) said in an interview after 7th Oct 2023 that exceptionalism for Israel was baked into international law which I found fascinating. I haven’t had time to research this, but just observing events over the past few decades, he could well be right. International Law is an interesting idea but as you say the US and other powerful states do whatever they want. Veto rights at the UN Security Council make a complete mockery of any attempt to create a rational and cooperative international environment. This era of the nation state is collapsing, I believe, but what will replace it, I can’t predict. Unless we evolve psychologically as a species, whatever will replace it is likely to be worse.
I agree the resilience and determination of Palestinians are unpraralled. The only sad part of this resilient movement is the lack of a credible leadership for these remarkable people. That's where the difference with the black civil rights, South Africa's resistance to apartheid and dare I say the Indian freedom movement. Allow me to explain.
In all the above movements the leadership was credible and followed a clear path of civil disobedience and non violent protest if their occupation. Even in SA Nelson Mandela realized and left his violent past and led the nation to freedom from apartheid. Black civil rights movement in large parts was non violent and led by leaders like Martin Luther who believed in civil disobedience. Off course blacks over the years right from slavery times built a community that concentrated on education believing that education will provide them necessary resources to community to fight back.
Closer to my home our entire freedom movement was mass based and leader like Gandhi, Nehru, Patel etc under the leadership of Gandhi fought the British imperialism through civil disobedience and non violence. That gave them the moral fortitude against a military behemoth like British and finally after second world war left India.
That's precisely where Palestinians are short served by thier leaders. Though I don't believe the terrorists monicker associated with Palestinians struggle but leadership like Hamas does make it difficult to argue against and their radicalism is deterimental to Palestinians.
So-called non-violent protest is in fact violent against the oppressed themselves. Gandhi’s handiwork in India is evident from the violent partition of the country and the continued failure to address major social divisions. Of course, the ruling class praises «non-violent» figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King over those such as Verma and Malcolm X who endorsed a revolutionary approach to national liberation: it wants to encourage ineffective (non-violent) methods over effective (violent) ones.
People who know more than the story-book bullshit version of Gandhi’s life that is taught in India and elsewhere will know that he collaborated with the British colonialists in Azania («South Africa») and India alike to gain favour for his own class and «race» at the expense notably of the African nations under white settler-colonial domination and the Indian masses (especially the impoverished, those who were not Hindu, and revolutionaries whom he betrayed to the British at the «non-violent» cost of the revolutionaries' lives).
I shall not be found directing the Palestinian resistance movement from an armchair. That is what you presume to do when you ignorantly criticise the «radicalism» of those who rightly reject what you advocate.
I beg to differ but will leave it at that. So essentially you have believed what the right wingers in India propagates and excluded all the material outside so called Indian text book says about Gandhi and Indian freedom movement. You have a right to your views but story bending partition is a completely different proposition.
It is Gandhi who lined up with the right wing by betraying revolutionaries to the British and seeking compromise with them for the benefit of his aristocratic class (never mind the Indian masses for whom those whom he turned in to the British occupiers were ardently struggling).
It is Gandhi who in Azania disdained the Africans (whom he called «Kaffirs»—literally 'infidels' but in essence 'niggers'), joined forces with the British to oppress and destroy them, insisted that Indians were far and away the racial superiors of the Africans, and sought to perpetuate white settler-colonial rule.
It is Gandhi who curried favour with Mussolini and Hitler right into the 1940s.
It is Gandhi who preached misogyny, blaming women for rape and forcing a number of them (including some young relatives) to sleep naked in his bed as an alleged test of his chastity.
And you have the gall to accuse me of subscribing to right-wing Indian drivel.
Wow Gandhi and Hitler great. Other than his views on Africans which he changed later on and apologized is exactly what is propagated today by the regime in India.yet when abroad they talk about the Gandhi and his message. You can have your views sir. Thanks
I think an essential starting point is to not get bamboozled. I talk to a lot of people who hesitate to say anything about Palestine-Israel, or get involved because they think they ‘don’t know enough’ or that it’s ‘complicated’. Making it clearer to people is usually a starting point for me. I simply explain that Israel is a settler-colonial project and that it is a crime against humanity, no matter who commits it, or who the victim is. In my previous piece I equate settler-colonialism to a home invasion something everyone can relate to. I highlight the fact that a crime is a crime, and if human beings are harmed in the context of an abusive system, we have a moral duty to support them and oppose the system that abuses them. I am aware of more than a few people who have felt more confident to become active. We need the entire world to object to being lied to, or at least a sizeable minority. We could start taking our governments to court for lying to us…
I’m not going to pretend I know what to do. All I know is that history teaches us that when people did not give up and kept going despite overwhelming opposition and real abuse from the mainstream and its institutions, they did eventually achieved their goals. If that were not the case, you and I would still not be able to vote, and slavery would be alive and well and legal in the UK, to name just to important example.
We must keep going in our resistance and in calling our governments to task, and we must learn from the experience of the Suffragettes and the anti-slavery movement spearheaded by William Wilberforce. Despite the fact that he was stupendously wealthy and had a seat in Parliament he was in the margins. But he succeeded and he worked with many ‘ordinary’ people, many women among them who themselves had few rights in 1700s UK.
I can't change what régimes such as the US and Canada do, but I can speak and write. Maybe a few others will become hostile to Zionism in part because of my efforts. In any event, I will not be silenced.
The answer is You must do everything you can. You might not be perfect for the task, or even semi-qualified. But you are here and while you are here you have a responsibility to act humanely, that is spiritually, with compassion and generosity. The problem you are seeking to to fix be fixed in a week or a hundred years; you do not know. But you can do everything you can do. Don't be dismayed that you cannot do as much as Avigail or others, simply do what you can with compassion and generosity, without questioning.
I recommend a book: "The Book of Joy" which chronicles a week of discussion by the Dami Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu about seeking a realizing life's ultimate goal, a life of spiritual joy. They discuss the challenges of "what to do".
And remember we are all pulling together, millions of us humans the world over; you are not alone in your frustrations and anger.
Millions of people were on the streets demonstrating and Blair still invaded Iraq leading to the deaths well over 200,000 Iraqi people. I was there speaking in huge demonstrations in Australia. It means that demonstrating, even in our millions, is not enough. But I am not sure what to do short of putting our whole society on hold until our politicians are held to account.
I went to one. One thing that I thought at the time weakened the march was that a number of people brought their own pet issues to the demonstration, so that it became a general march of dissatisfaction and incoherent demands for all sorts of stuff, rather than a pointed statement. It may be the case that some of the demands or dissatisfying conditions were related in a genealogical way to the specific issue. But front loaded demands for everything to change and become perfect are 1/ not actionable and 2/ allow for minor sops to those demands to be used as "responses" to the main issue. More shelters for abused women are a desirable goal but don't address imminent war.
Also, at that march, for the first time I saw coldly threatening men stationed on rooftops. Of course this was post 9/11 and I read it as a turn of the screw on the authoritarian social architecture which was obviously going to happen, obvious while the towers were still burning.
I was living in Melbourne at the time and remember the protests. And how John Howard the PM at the time was champing at the bit to get involved with his chums Blair and Bush.
“We do not see our hand in what happens, so we call certain events melancholy accidents when they are the inevitabilities of our projects, and we call other events necessities merely because we will not change our minds.”
Note that nobody of influence and authority dares point out Netanyahu's trqck record at least not in public.
In fact, bringing up the War On Iraq is a faux pas akin to standing up in Shul and and and interrupting the cantor to demand that the person who just farted please identify him or herself.
Well said Avigail👍💚. Another excellent article exposing the vile racism and lies underpinning the US-backed settler colonialist criminal enterprise, otherwise known as Israel 🤢
My only criticism of your list of lies, Avigail, is that opposition to settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine *does* entail the destruction of the Zionist entity. You are right to say that many people who oppose Zionist settler-colonialism nonetheless do not want to see the Zionist entity destroyed. They are naïve at best: the Zionist entity is inherently settler-colonial and therefore must be destroyed. To perpetuate it is to perpetuate settler-colonialism.
I might need to make that clearer. It means the destruction of the settler-colonial structure but Israel spins it to be destruction of the Jews. That is where the lie is.
Yes, and it is certainly a lie. I want nothing to do with anyone who seeks to destroy the Jews or any other population. But the Zionist entity must go.
If someone gave you the answer the 101th time you ask the question, what will you do differently? Whatever that it is, why not do that now. If you would like things to change, do what you can to nudge things in that direction.
I don’t blame you. I’m asking the same question. Evil is in control of humanity and we don’t have a magical ring to throw into a Mount Doom to take the evil power away… We have to act in the reality in which we live.
You must know that power and justice do not go hand in hand. The Zionist entity was established because imperialist Britain a hundred-odd years ago wanted it. That's all. The early Zionist leaders—élitists opposed by 99% of European Jews—curried favour with every empire that could give them Palestine: the Ottoman, German, and British empires. Subsequently they did the same with the Yankee empire.
Why can't anyone stop it? Because the Yankee bloc wants it to go on.
They’re a race when they’re appealing to religious Zionists and multi-ethnic/ melting pot when appealing to liberal Zionists. At some point someone must see the contradiction.
You’d think, but no… And even if they did, Israel’s biggest ethos is ‘the end justifies the means’—the end being the settler-colonial project. In the name of its completion everything and anything is permitted, lies, inconsistencies, contradictions, murder, genocide, invasions, torture, rape—nothing matters to Israel and Zionists other than an exclusively Jewish state.
Jews struggled to escape the ghetto; now the Zionists want to herd them back into it. For my part, I would not want to live in an ethnically uniform place. Settler-colonial North Uhmerica is bad enough in that respect as it is…
What I always wonder is why no PM or voice within Israel ever calls for Palestinians living in Israel as their citizens and getting full rights as citizens. The two state solution is dead before it started due to the settler-colonial nature of Israel. They always profess some biblical promised land pretext to disenfranchise and kill Palestinians. If Israel and Jews are really God's gift to this world doesn't it behove of such race of people to accommodate in their nation state other inhabitants of the land. Wouldn't God be happy with such magnanimity from Jews? That fact that they always talk about complete elimation and dehumanize paleatenians is an indication that Israel is a rogue state and doesn't believe in peaceful coexistence.
The so-called ‘two state solution’ is not only dead, it was always fictitious. Israel invented it for Western consumption as part of its PR efforts to appear ‘reasonable’ and deflect from its settler-colonial aims. I explained in my article that Jewishness in Israel is racial. And their so-called ‘nation state’ is a settler-colonial enterprise—a home invasion—built entirely on stolen Palestinian land. If you read my article I explain that Jews cannot imagine sharing space with non-Jews. I have also written about this in many other essays. Israel is a cult-state with racialism at its foundation and a morbid fear of mixing with what Israel considers non-Jews. What they want is a racially pure state, so no Palestinians…
Ditto the «peace process», a lie from the outset. Of course, that doesn't stop the Zionists and their lackeys from falsely accusing the Palestinians of rejecting «generous» offers of «peace».…
It must be admitted that long-standing Jewish practice has treated Jewish identity as racial. Traditionally, and still today (except maybe in Reform circles?), a rabbi must turn a prospective convert away three times before accepting her. That's a way to maintain racial purity. The kashruth serve a similar purpose by discouraging Jews from dining with non-Jews, which cultivates attitudes such as «stick to those of your own kind».
Avigail will know more about this than I do. There is a fringe movement among the settler-colonial population to integrate the Palestinians into Zionist society by having them all convert to Judaism, with some strings attached. Spain did this more than half a millennium ago to the Jews and Muslims living there, but quickly those who went along with it found their sincerity doubted.
Even if the Palestinians were willing to accept this obscene proposal, the settler-colonial public would not be. Theoretically any Orthodox convert is fully recognised as a Jew for the purposes of Zionist master-race status. I doubt, however, whether a Palestinian convert would be readily accepted.
Conversion is complicated and only a handful of convert are accepted as Jews by the Israeli state. Conversion has to be approved by the Israeli state’s Rabbinate (yes, there is such a thing and it has enormous amount of power in Israel). Many people who are converted by Reform Rabbis or other Jewish Western groups are not accepted as Jews by the Israeli state. By and large in Israel the definition of a Jew in Israel is racial. Converts that Israel would accept, would have to live fully orthodox lives. I can’t see this becoming a ‘mass movement’ among Palestinians, nor should it be…
Yes, only Orthodox converts are accepted for this purpose. That underscores the racial character of Jewish identity as defined by the Zionists: it's a matter of maternal descent, excepting only those few who go through onerous Orthodox conversion and are approved by the state. Even the Nazis didn't take race that far.
I just want to go back to those who quote the Bible. They seem to ignore senteces such as, "Thou shall not kill", the verse that mentions redeeming hostages, and a quote which I will probably misquote. "Revenge is Mine, sayeth the Lord", meaning that humans should leave revenge to God and not take it into their own hands. Reliance on Scriptures depends on who is quoting.
I am an atheist, but even a believer should be able to see that the Bible was written for a particular society quite different from ours, with very different practices and institutions. Timelessness is just not a reasonable quality to attribute to the text. After all, we no longer practise slavery, nor do Jewish women sacrifice two turtledoves at the temple after each menstrual cycle.
The fetish of quoting the Bible fails to take account of the evolution of society. If we can disregard as obsolete the parts about slavery and sacrifices, maybe we can also disregard the parts about killing people for having gay sex.
One important lie missing from your list, Avigail: the Zionist entity has any legitimacy. It is on a par with the settler-colonial perpetrators of the American Holocaust and seeks to achieve exactly the same genocidal end.
"Israel represents a failure of humanity." Never was a statement more true. Conversely though the conflict has taught me much about Palestinians which I was sadly and unforgivably ignorant of before. Their stoicism, decency, humanity, dignity and above all bravery are a lesson to us all.
I have long said that the Palestinians and the Black people under white domination in the US are among the most admirable people in the world. Where do they get their resilience in the face of such severe oppression and betrayal?
What choice did they have Scott? As a survivor of horrendous psychopathic abuse in my childhood and adolescence, and as someone who works with survivors, I can tell you that when you are in a position where you realise you’re being annihilated, you either give up and die (I very nearly did—two serious suicide attempts in my youth), or you endure and when you have a chance you start to do whatever you can to improve your situation. The human spirit is incredible. I witness it every day. The Black people under domination in the US and the Palestinians must endure, survive or be destroyed. Sumud!
Yes, indeed, they have had to fight for survival or simply be destroyed, and the latter is not much of an option. Of course, some collaborate with the enemy, like kapos and quislings: the colonial puppet «Palestinian Authority» is a good example.
When people are trapped in psychopathic systems they have no good options. Surrender and die, fight back: exhaust yourself, come to harm, lose and then die, or be destroyed for the rest of your life, or collaborate.
Psychopathic systems always encourage collaborators. Some collaborators don’t even do it by choice. Israel has used disgusting strategies and tricks to force some Palestinians to collaborate with them. The film ‘Omar’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_(2013_film)), while fictional, is accurate in its depiction of how Israel always operated in the colonised West Bank and how it recruits informants. All of it is illegal according to International Law (whatever it’s worth anymore)…
As a lawyer who during law school won a scholarship in public international law that turned out to have been funded by war profiteers, I can say that international law is mostly a device of propaganda. There is no way to enforce any right or punish any wrong at international law, so its status as «law» seems questionable. The main actors and right-holders at international law are states. As we have seen time and time again, the US and a few other powerful states do as they damn well please, invoking international law when it suits their nefarious purposes and spurning it when it doesn't.
Yeah, I’ve kind of figured it out. Prof Raz Segal (ex Israeli, Assoc. Prof in genocide studies, Stockton University US) said in an interview after 7th Oct 2023 that exceptionalism for Israel was baked into international law which I found fascinating. I haven’t had time to research this, but just observing events over the past few decades, he could well be right. International Law is an interesting idea but as you say the US and other powerful states do whatever they want. Veto rights at the UN Security Council make a complete mockery of any attempt to create a rational and cooperative international environment. This era of the nation state is collapsing, I believe, but what will replace it, I can’t predict. Unless we evolve psychologically as a species, whatever will replace it is likely to be worse.
I agree the resilience and determination of Palestinians are unpraralled. The only sad part of this resilient movement is the lack of a credible leadership for these remarkable people. That's where the difference with the black civil rights, South Africa's resistance to apartheid and dare I say the Indian freedom movement. Allow me to explain.
In all the above movements the leadership was credible and followed a clear path of civil disobedience and non violent protest if their occupation. Even in SA Nelson Mandela realized and left his violent past and led the nation to freedom from apartheid. Black civil rights movement in large parts was non violent and led by leaders like Martin Luther who believed in civil disobedience. Off course blacks over the years right from slavery times built a community that concentrated on education believing that education will provide them necessary resources to community to fight back.
Closer to my home our entire freedom movement was mass based and leader like Gandhi, Nehru, Patel etc under the leadership of Gandhi fought the British imperialism through civil disobedience and non violence. That gave them the moral fortitude against a military behemoth like British and finally after second world war left India.
That's precisely where Palestinians are short served by thier leaders. Though I don't believe the terrorists monicker associated with Palestinians struggle but leadership like Hamas does make it difficult to argue against and their radicalism is deterimental to Palestinians.
So-called non-violent protest is in fact violent against the oppressed themselves. Gandhi’s handiwork in India is evident from the violent partition of the country and the continued failure to address major social divisions. Of course, the ruling class praises «non-violent» figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King over those such as Verma and Malcolm X who endorsed a revolutionary approach to national liberation: it wants to encourage ineffective (non-violent) methods over effective (violent) ones.
People who know more than the story-book bullshit version of Gandhi’s life that is taught in India and elsewhere will know that he collaborated with the British colonialists in Azania («South Africa») and India alike to gain favour for his own class and «race» at the expense notably of the African nations under white settler-colonial domination and the Indian masses (especially the impoverished, those who were not Hindu, and revolutionaries whom he betrayed to the British at the «non-violent» cost of the revolutionaries' lives).
I shall not be found directing the Palestinian resistance movement from an armchair. That is what you presume to do when you ignorantly criticise the «radicalism» of those who rightly reject what you advocate.
I beg to differ but will leave it at that. So essentially you have believed what the right wingers in India propagates and excluded all the material outside so called Indian text book says about Gandhi and Indian freedom movement. You have a right to your views but story bending partition is a completely different proposition.
It is Gandhi who lined up with the right wing by betraying revolutionaries to the British and seeking compromise with them for the benefit of his aristocratic class (never mind the Indian masses for whom those whom he turned in to the British occupiers were ardently struggling).
It is Gandhi who in Azania disdained the Africans (whom he called «Kaffirs»—literally 'infidels' but in essence 'niggers'), joined forces with the British to oppress and destroy them, insisted that Indians were far and away the racial superiors of the Africans, and sought to perpetuate white settler-colonial rule.
It is Gandhi who curried favour with Mussolini and Hitler right into the 1940s.
It is Gandhi who preached misogyny, blaming women for rape and forcing a number of them (including some young relatives) to sleep naked in his bed as an alleged test of his chastity.
And you have the gall to accuse me of subscribing to right-wing Indian drivel.
Wow Gandhi and Hitler great. Other than his views on Africans which he changed later on and apologized is exactly what is propagated today by the regime in India.yet when abroad they talk about the Gandhi and his message. You can have your views sir. Thanks
Thank you, Avigail. That old question remains still to be answered: “What then must we do?”
I think an essential starting point is to not get bamboozled. I talk to a lot of people who hesitate to say anything about Palestine-Israel, or get involved because they think they ‘don’t know enough’ or that it’s ‘complicated’. Making it clearer to people is usually a starting point for me. I simply explain that Israel is a settler-colonial project and that it is a crime against humanity, no matter who commits it, or who the victim is. In my previous piece I equate settler-colonialism to a home invasion something everyone can relate to. I highlight the fact that a crime is a crime, and if human beings are harmed in the context of an abusive system, we have a moral duty to support them and oppose the system that abuses them. I am aware of more than a few people who have felt more confident to become active. We need the entire world to object to being lied to, or at least a sizeable minority. We could start taking our governments to court for lying to us…
I’m not going to pretend I know what to do. All I know is that history teaches us that when people did not give up and kept going despite overwhelming opposition and real abuse from the mainstream and its institutions, they did eventually achieved their goals. If that were not the case, you and I would still not be able to vote, and slavery would be alive and well and legal in the UK, to name just to important example.
We must keep going in our resistance and in calling our governments to task, and we must learn from the experience of the Suffragettes and the anti-slavery movement spearheaded by William Wilberforce. Despite the fact that he was stupendously wealthy and had a seat in Parliament he was in the margins. But he succeeded and he worked with many ‘ordinary’ people, many women among them who themselves had few rights in 1700s UK.
I can't change what régimes such as the US and Canada do, but I can speak and write. Maybe a few others will become hostile to Zionism in part because of my efforts. In any event, I will not be silenced.
The answer is You must do everything you can. You might not be perfect for the task, or even semi-qualified. But you are here and while you are here you have a responsibility to act humanely, that is spiritually, with compassion and generosity. The problem you are seeking to to fix be fixed in a week or a hundred years; you do not know. But you can do everything you can do. Don't be dismayed that you cannot do as much as Avigail or others, simply do what you can with compassion and generosity, without questioning.
I recommend a book: "The Book of Joy" which chronicles a week of discussion by the Dami Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu about seeking a realizing life's ultimate goal, a life of spiritual joy. They discuss the challenges of "what to do".
And remember we are all pulling together, millions of us humans the world over; you are not alone in your frustrations and anger.
"Nuclear proliferation ZOMG!" is but a pretext, sort of like WMDs were the pretext to the War On Iraq.
It's exactly like the WMD lie. That one also originated from Netanyahu.
Millions of people were on the streets demonstrating and Blair still invaded Iraq leading to the deaths well over 200,000 Iraqi people. I was there speaking in huge demonstrations in Australia. It means that demonstrating, even in our millions, is not enough. But I am not sure what to do short of putting our whole society on hold until our politicians are held to account.
I went to one. One thing that I thought at the time weakened the march was that a number of people brought their own pet issues to the demonstration, so that it became a general march of dissatisfaction and incoherent demands for all sorts of stuff, rather than a pointed statement. It may be the case that some of the demands or dissatisfying conditions were related in a genealogical way to the specific issue. But front loaded demands for everything to change and become perfect are 1/ not actionable and 2/ allow for minor sops to those demands to be used as "responses" to the main issue. More shelters for abused women are a desirable goal but don't address imminent war.
Also, at that march, for the first time I saw coldly threatening men stationed on rooftops. Of course this was post 9/11 and I read it as a turn of the screw on the authoritarian social architecture which was obviously going to happen, obvious while the towers were still burning.
I was living in Melbourne at the time and remember the protests. And how John Howard the PM at the time was champing at the bit to get involved with his chums Blair and Bush.
“We do not see our hand in what happens, so we call certain events melancholy accidents when they are the inevitabilities of our projects, and we call other events necessities merely because we will not change our minds.”
― Stanley Cavell
I remember those times very well, and John Howard. The quote is incredible. Thank you.
Note that nobody of influence and authority dares point out Netanyahu's trqck record at least not in public.
In fact, bringing up the War On Iraq is a faux pas akin to standing up in Shul and and and interrupting the cantor to demand that the person who just farted please identify him or herself.
It worked exactly as intended. So naturally, Netanyahu will use it again.
Well said Avigail👍💚. Another excellent article exposing the vile racism and lies underpinning the US-backed settler colonialist criminal enterprise, otherwise known as Israel 🤢
My only criticism of your list of lies, Avigail, is that opposition to settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine *does* entail the destruction of the Zionist entity. You are right to say that many people who oppose Zionist settler-colonialism nonetheless do not want to see the Zionist entity destroyed. They are naïve at best: the Zionist entity is inherently settler-colonial and therefore must be destroyed. To perpetuate it is to perpetuate settler-colonialism.
I might need to make that clearer. It means the destruction of the settler-colonial structure but Israel spins it to be destruction of the Jews. That is where the lie is.
Yes, and it is certainly a lie. I want nothing to do with anyone who seeks to destroy the Jews or any other population. But the Zionist entity must go.
There is one truth and that is that people are killed. I ask for the hundredth time - why can't anyone stop it. It just gets worse.
If someone gave you the answer the 101th time you ask the question, what will you do differently? Whatever that it is, why not do that now. If you would like things to change, do what you can to nudge things in that direction.
I'm asking the question here because I've honestly run out of ideas.
I don’t blame you. I’m asking the same question. Evil is in control of humanity and we don’t have a magical ring to throw into a Mount Doom to take the evil power away… We have to act in the reality in which we live.
You must know that power and justice do not go hand in hand. The Zionist entity was established because imperialist Britain a hundred-odd years ago wanted it. That's all. The early Zionist leaders—élitists opposed by 99% of European Jews—curried favour with every empire that could give them Palestine: the Ottoman, German, and British empires. Subsequently they did the same with the Yankee empire.
Why can't anyone stop it? Because the Yankee bloc wants it to go on.
They’re a race when they’re appealing to religious Zionists and multi-ethnic/ melting pot when appealing to liberal Zionists. At some point someone must see the contradiction.
You’d think, but no… And even if they did, Israel’s biggest ethos is ‘the end justifies the means’—the end being the settler-colonial project. In the name of its completion everything and anything is permitted, lies, inconsistencies, contradictions, murder, genocide, invasions, torture, rape—nothing matters to Israel and Zionists other than an exclusively Jewish state.
Jews struggled to escape the ghetto; now the Zionists want to herd them back into it. For my part, I would not want to live in an ethnically uniform place. Settler-colonial North Uhmerica is bad enough in that respect as it is…
Truth and lies are of interest to sociopaths, solely to the extent that they can be weaponized
Absolutely! And it is precisely because the traits of sociopathy are in charge of our world that truth or lie mean F all.
Thanks for articulating this so clearly, Avigail. What you said needed to be said.
What I always wonder is why no PM or voice within Israel ever calls for Palestinians living in Israel as their citizens and getting full rights as citizens. The two state solution is dead before it started due to the settler-colonial nature of Israel. They always profess some biblical promised land pretext to disenfranchise and kill Palestinians. If Israel and Jews are really God's gift to this world doesn't it behove of such race of people to accommodate in their nation state other inhabitants of the land. Wouldn't God be happy with such magnanimity from Jews? That fact that they always talk about complete elimation and dehumanize paleatenians is an indication that Israel is a rogue state and doesn't believe in peaceful coexistence.
The so-called ‘two state solution’ is not only dead, it was always fictitious. Israel invented it for Western consumption as part of its PR efforts to appear ‘reasonable’ and deflect from its settler-colonial aims. I explained in my article that Jewishness in Israel is racial. And their so-called ‘nation state’ is a settler-colonial enterprise—a home invasion—built entirely on stolen Palestinian land. If you read my article I explain that Jews cannot imagine sharing space with non-Jews. I have also written about this in many other essays. Israel is a cult-state with racialism at its foundation and a morbid fear of mixing with what Israel considers non-Jews. What they want is a racially pure state, so no Palestinians…
Ditto the «peace process», a lie from the outset. Of course, that doesn't stop the Zionists and their lackeys from falsely accusing the Palestinians of rejecting «generous» offers of «peace».…
It must be admitted that long-standing Jewish practice has treated Jewish identity as racial. Traditionally, and still today (except maybe in Reform circles?), a rabbi must turn a prospective convert away three times before accepting her. That's a way to maintain racial purity. The kashruth serve a similar purpose by discouraging Jews from dining with non-Jews, which cultivates attitudes such as «stick to those of your own kind».
Avigail will know more about this than I do. There is a fringe movement among the settler-colonial population to integrate the Palestinians into Zionist society by having them all convert to Judaism, with some strings attached. Spain did this more than half a millennium ago to the Jews and Muslims living there, but quickly those who went along with it found their sincerity doubted.
Even if the Palestinians were willing to accept this obscene proposal, the settler-colonial public would not be. Theoretically any Orthodox convert is fully recognised as a Jew for the purposes of Zionist master-race status. I doubt, however, whether a Palestinian convert would be readily accepted.
Conversion is complicated and only a handful of convert are accepted as Jews by the Israeli state. Conversion has to be approved by the Israeli state’s Rabbinate (yes, there is such a thing and it has enormous amount of power in Israel). Many people who are converted by Reform Rabbis or other Jewish Western groups are not accepted as Jews by the Israeli state. By and large in Israel the definition of a Jew in Israel is racial. Converts that Israel would accept, would have to live fully orthodox lives. I can’t see this becoming a ‘mass movement’ among Palestinians, nor should it be…
Yes, only Orthodox converts are accepted for this purpose. That underscores the racial character of Jewish identity as defined by the Zionists: it's a matter of maternal descent, excepting only those few who go through onerous Orthodox conversion and are approved by the state. Even the Nazis didn't take race that far.
I just want to go back to those who quote the Bible. They seem to ignore senteces such as, "Thou shall not kill", the verse that mentions redeeming hostages, and a quote which I will probably misquote. "Revenge is Mine, sayeth the Lord", meaning that humans should leave revenge to God and not take it into their own hands. Reliance on Scriptures depends on who is quoting.
«Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord» (Romans xii.19). A similar sentiment appears at Deuteronomy xxxii.35.
The Bible has been used to justify slavery, genocide, the oppression of women, racial supremacy, homophobia, and other crimes.
I am an atheist, but even a believer should be able to see that the Bible was written for a particular society quite different from ours, with very different practices and institutions. Timelessness is just not a reasonable quality to attribute to the text. After all, we no longer practise slavery, nor do Jewish women sacrifice two turtledoves at the temple after each menstrual cycle.
The fetish of quoting the Bible fails to take account of the evolution of society. If we can disregard as obsolete the parts about slavery and sacrifices, maybe we can also disregard the parts about killing people for having gay sex.
«Israëli» is an anagram of «i.e., liars».
«Israël» is an anagram of «serail» (whorehouse).
One important lie missing from your list, Avigail: the Zionist entity has any legitimacy. It is on a par with the settler-colonial perpetrators of the American Holocaust and seeks to achieve exactly the same genocidal end.