Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

In what way has Hamas distanced itself from the more extreme elements of its charter? That article, which makes that claim, merely links to Amazon and what looks like a self published book.

Citing only Hamas leaders’ use of the phrase, while disregarding the liberationist context in which other Palestinians understand it, shows a disturbing level of ignorance about Palestinians’ views at best, and a deliberate attempt to smear their legitimate aspirations at worst.

Even that article agrees that Hamas uses that slogan. The timing of large crowds chanting this Hamas slogan coming so soon after the Hamas October 7, 2023 massacres does raise some concerns.

I read about some demonstrators in Brighton pinning images of hang gliders to their backpacks. Serious question: are we saying this is fine because if people did want more massacring you'd expect the hang glider backpack people to say so?

I also believe in free speech and do not think people should be arrested for this. But it's kind of wtf.

it's fine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter

there is actual genocide happening right now by the way and it's perverse to fixate on an imagined genocide suggested by the most paranoid reading of a well understood phrase within the palestine liberation movement

Depends on your perspective and the context. Poster Keyes asked what it means on the "is this anti-semitism?" thread." To me this is an indicator that the phrase is not well understood. I'd suggest that thread might be a good place to continue that discussion?

The people carrying those photos could be talked to about those. As far as I'd go and absolutely never involve Police.

The slogan "from the river to the sea" I see it as fine. Its used within the wider Palestinian movement xp

That article, which makes that claim, merely links to Amazon and what looks like a self published book.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, October 21, 2023 1:04 PM (twenty-three minutes ago)

a minor point, but that isn't a self-published book. The publisher, Pluto Press, is listed on the page, and the author is "a Palestinian academic, a senior research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies and the co-ordinator of the Cambridge Arab Media Project (CAMP) at the University of Cambridge." (wiki)

xp Again, depends on the context and your perspective. I think the signal in Brighton may not be the same as how it is received at UC Davis California.

Yes Pluto is a commie press.

https://www.plutobooks.com/

the phrase well understood by palestinians and their allies and not so much by people who insist on assuming there is a secret genocidal agenda to everything palestinians do and say! xps

Ok! I still think the antisemitism thread is a good place to make this case. Since other posters have been asking there.

a minor point, but that isn't a self-published book.

My mistake. My point was mostly that he makes a bold claim, links to what I assumed would be evidence, or even a quote or something, but instead it's just an ebook being sold.

I generally think this is a poor line of critique. Just because something is e-published doesnt mean anything. Especially if you assume there is a reason dissidents don't have the same access to print publishing.

Heh, that's not what I mean, sorry for being unclear. Just that the citation is a link to a book, period. Not a phrase in the book or an interview in the book, or a chapter of a book, just a place to buy the book. It'd be like me saying "Blue Velvet" is a terrible movie, and linking to Roger Ebert's "Your Movie Sucks."

Or, you know, something like that.

A quotation or a page number would have been stronger evidence, but tbf referencing a whole book in an academic article is a totally normal citation practice

right, it was a widely reported shift in 2017: https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-hamas-charter-20170501-story.html

takes from 2017 or 2018 (like the Forward article) about this revision being evidence of a kinder gentler Hamas have not aged well clearly

Oh I see. The article was also behind a subscription wall that I had to give my email address to and be signed up on some sort of a list.

But hey, that's how committed I am to having these discussions in good faith.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/its-simply-a-call-for-freedom-marchers-defend-contentious-slogan-at-london-palestine-protest

jfc please stop entertaining this bullshit

directed @ the "free world" in general which is repulsively eager to paint a people undergoing genocide as the perpetrators

ime a lot of liberals are fucking desperate to find any excuse to withdraw any token acknowledgements of palestinian suffering and the flimsiest presence will do

*pretence

They are suffering. It's inhumane and fucked up to cut off water and electricity to millions of innocent people, shoot a bunch of journalists and then claim the news coverage is slanted. I already said this. Will say it again.

My mother grew up in occupied Manchuria, almost starved to death during multiple sieges and fled because the Chinese communists shot anyone on site that anyone claimed was a collaborator. Nobody here is in favor of forced migration or genocide and we don't all live in a white American bubble. Ok?

I don't either but OK. I'm sorry about what your family went through.

however I have learned not to expect that people - even people I have trusted in the past - are necessarily opposed to those things - in fact many seem eager to embrace them as once they're handed the right framings by the media (and the mere existence of that chant will be enough for some)

Anyone who's going to be actually influenced or change their opinion about the situation based on what some protesters somewhere chant on some march, or what they mean by that chant, is a deeply unserious person probably trying to mask their own repellent opinions and should stfu anyway.

Like, "I used to support Palestinian rights but then some kids at Harvard said some shit," shut up, just total bullshit.

sure but it happens and stuff like this does tend to sway wavering liberals unfortunately

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/its-simply-a-call-for-freedom-marchers-defend-contentious-slogan-at-london-palestine-protest

― The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Saturday, 21 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Lol.

"Teacher Philip Grayson seemed incredulous when told the slogan he had been singing moments earlier had been labelled antisemitic. “Really? I genuinely had no idea.” The 47-year-old added: “I hated Corbyn for how he behaved on this issue.”"

did he really or was he just told he should?

I once had lunch with Marek Edelman. He was the Labor Military Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A few hundred young Jews with pistols and gasoline bombs against the entire German army. And they held them off for a month.

The 50,000 starving people who remained after months of deportation and mass murder tried to hide in bunkers. The Germans decided they would rather not fight it out in the maze of buildings and tunnels and bunkers that the Jewish resistance had created and they simply ringed the ghetto with artillery and flattened it. Twenty-eight (28) fighters survived by crawling out through the sewers. Edelman was one. He escaped to the forests, joined the partisans there, and kept fighting.

In the 1980's, after a career as a heart surgeon, he became a labor activist again, in the Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc. A young Polish journalist asked him, "what does it mean to be a Jew?" He answered "To be a Jew is to be on the side of the weak."

In 2002, when Hamas was organizing suicide bombings in Israel and Israel was bombing apartment buildings in Gaza, Edelman wrote to the leadership of Hamas. Here is the full letter --

He wrote--

"To all leaders of Palestinian military, paramilitary and guerrilla organizations; to all soldiers of Palestinian militant groups:

My name is Marek Edelman. I am a former Deputy Commander of the Jewish Military Organization in Poland and one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In the memorable year of 1943 we fought for the survival of the Jewish community in Warsaw. We fought for mere life, not for territory, nor for a national identity. We fought with hopeless determination, but our weapons were never directed against the defenseless civilian population, we never killed women and children. In the world devoid of principles and values, despite a constant danger of death, we did remain faithful to these values and moral principles.

We were isolated in our fight, and yet the powerful opposing army was not able to destroy these barely armed boys and girls. Our fight in Warsaw lasted several weeks, and later we fought in the partisan groups and in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Yet nowhere in the world can urban guerrilla force bring a conclusive victory, but it cannot be defeated by well-armed armies either. And this war will not bring any resolution. Blood will be spilled in vain and lives will be lost on both sides."

He was trashed in the Israeli press for addressing the Palestinians armed groups respectfully, as people engaged in the same kind of struggle he had been. And yet he wrote to them to point out that NO CIRCUMSTANCE justified the mass murder of civilians.

To Marek Edelman "never again" meant "never again for anyone." It was a statement of human solidarity, not a license to commit mass murder of those you fear or wish to dispossess.

Marek Edelman remained in Poland all his life. He refused to leave the country of his birth and at his death the Polish military high command carried his coffin. I have read that the Israeli ambassador did not attend. I don't know if that is true or not but I do know that Marek Edelman would recognize what it means to cut 2 million people, most civilians and half under 18, off from food and water and bombard them with jets and artillery.

That is not how you be on the side of the weak.

And if you are young and Jewish and you don't feel right about what is being done in your name, but feel like you are all alone, you are not. Marek Edelman, the best of us, the bravest, he is with you.

-- Damon Silvers was formerly Policy Director of the AFL-CIO and is now a Visiting Professor of Practice at University College London and a Senior Advisor to labor unions in the US and the UK. The views expressed herein are his personal views alone.

I don’t really know if it matters, but just because I want people to know where I stand if I keep posting in this thread: I agree with everything felicity just said. Food, water, aid, shelter for Gazans should be the immediate priority, and nothing a random professor says is going to change my view that a just resolution is needed that fully respects the rights of Palestinians. Nor am I fundamentally opposed to the concept of a single binational state / the end of Israel as a “Jewish” state so long as it remains a state that fully respects the rights of Jews as well. Nor am I opposed to a two state solution if a more feasible path is found to that. How to get to either of those things from where we are is not something I feel much confidence in my ability to opine on.

I think debates over what the slogans “really” mean are kind of pointless. Different people mean different things. I don’t think it per se means ethnic cleansing of Jews, but nor do I think there is some unified idea of what it means in the “Free Palestine movement,” because I don’t think that what people are describing as the Free Palestine movement in this thread (essentially a leftist movement) necessarily speaks for the global majority of the people who advocate a Free Palestine.

Who are the majority? Do you just mean Muslims?

I don't mean "the Muslims" since I obviously know plenty of Muslim leftists who favor a secular democratic binational state - the person who first introduced me to the concept years ago was Muslim. But the nations that show the most support for Palestine are not democratic or secular.

unlike israel or the US I guess

In any case, what I meant was that I don't care much about whether or not it is an "antisemitic" slogan in the pure sense, but I do think many of the people using it globally mean a muslim state, not a secular one.

I'm sure most people in gaza would take either right now

The US is relatively secular, in spite of some recent moves by the Supreme Court. Maybe not as secular as some European states, but relatively secular.

Israel is becoming increasingly theocratic. I think a lot of liberal-leaning American Jews who "stand with Israel" might be surprised to find out what some of the people in Bibi's governing coalition actually believe. Ben Gvir's party was actually outlawed years ago, but he was made minister of security. The thing is there are still plenty of areas that are liberal and secular like Tel Aviv so you can still go visit and have the experience of being in a relatively secular country and not notice what I think is creeping religious fascism not only toward Arabs but toward reform and secular Jews. I think Israel is on a trajectory to becoming a country a lot of American Jews will one day realize they don't "love" as much as they thought.

but I do think many of the people using it globally mean a muslim state, not a secular one.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, 21 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Who can control what is in the minds of people chanting that or any slogan?

No one obv. That's why I don't care that much about policing slogans.

But you are making assumptions about people chanting that slogan that are based on what, exactly?

It's a distraction. People are like "Do you support THIS THING someone chanted or THAT THING some associate professor at a state school said or THIS POSTER I saw a screenshot of," just complete bad faith. Nobody has to assume responsibility for every potentially objectionable take. And no matter what any protestor or academic is saying, they're not the ones dropping bombs on anyone, it's nearly irrelevant to the actual issues.

In any case, what I meant was that I don't care much about whether or not it is an "antisemitic" slogan in the pure sense, but I do think many of the people using it globally mean a muslim state, not a secular one.

I think a lot of liberal-leaning American Jews who "stand with Israel" might be surprised to find out what some of the people in Bibi's governing coalition actually believe

Liberal-leaning American Jews are extremely aware of this, have been ever since Netanyahu formed this government, and when they say they "support Israel" a big part of what they mean is that they have to save Israel from men like Smotrich and Ben Gvir and their expulsionist program. And by extension, from Bibi, who has hooked his carriage to those nutcases in order to save his own skin and thereby broken a national understanding that they were unfit to serve in government. Surely you don't think liberal-leaning (i.e. almost all non-Orthodox) Jews in America are rallying behind Netanyahu? He is seen as a failure, and it sounds like that's how he's seen by most Israelis, too.

No I don't think they're rallying behind Netanyahu at all, but I think they may not have fully come to grips with the politics that put him in power.

eephus, perhaps what you’re saying is true of your particular jewish community, but my nominally-liberal reform jewish community is full of folks who do not think so deeply about the issue. they’re likely aware that netanyahu is conservative, and aware of the protests, but they don’t care enough to, say, stop donating to aipac or stop buying israel treasury bonds.

my (hip, indie rock-listening) rabbi has been preaching that the “war against hamas” is a “just war,” and that any harm that comes as a result of warfare is unfortunate, but not necessarily immoral

what I’m saying, i guess, is that it doesn’t matter if they’re opposed to netanyahu or his cronies, lots of american jews are rallying around the israeli flag to a much greater extent than israelis are

Perfect

A reporter asks one woman on the march if the chant 'From the river to sea, Palestine will be free' is genocidal and antisemitic.

In less than 20 seconds the woman brilliantly explains why this is nonsense. pic.twitter.com/fSzPsYzCAk

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 21, 2023

Incredible turn out today, felt particularly powerful to join the queer bloc and condemn Israel's pinkwashing of violent occupation pic.twitter.com/CZ6rPIQPvP

— Aine Bennett (@_ainebennett) October 21, 2023