Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

Yes. The legitimising of a lot of what would previously been considered hard or far right attitudes is pretty dangerous.

I mean it's happening all over but this conflict isn't helping.

Making my way through this conversation, where people in the West are doing the little they can.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/17/israel-palestine-conflict-sally-rooney-isabella-hammad

This conversation got away from me and sorry for long post and feel free to disregard, though I feel that almost every post I made here yesterday has been taken to mean something I didn't intend so this is a final attempt at clarifying, though ultimately I think 'clarity' is an impossible and likely insane aspiration.

In response to the discussion of some of the material I linked above, there is a key distinction between a semantic argument and explaining the documented legal case (that Israel’s laws and practices in both Israel and the oPt, which has been a position of the UN since the publication of the report I linked above). It is not my belief or view that the crime of apartheid is based on racial distinctions, it is the definition included in the 1973 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1976/07/19760718%2003-04%20AM/Ch_IV_7p.pdf) which defines apartheid for the purposes of international law. Similarly, I quoted the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda, which determined that the ‘definition of (a) racial group is based on the hereditary physical traits often identified with a geographical region, irrespective of linguistic, cultural, national or religious factors.’ These are not my views they are the recognised legal definitions of these concepts. The report from ESCWA I linked above was the first by a UN agency to apply the term apartheid to Israeli actions and gives a detailed but readable legal analysis of that position. This report first established a concept that has subsequently formed the basis of much work in this area carried out by e.g. the Special rapporteur for the oPt. The report isbased on much prior legal scholarship, which began analysing the legal basis for this claim in the previous decade.

As the work of UN institutions, these reports shape the work of committees overseeing the implementation of human rights conventions and which are uniquely privileged to shape the normative substantive definition of concepts such as ‘apartheid’ and ‘race’ within their applicability to international human rights law (and the work of courts in ruling on this).

It is of course true that concepts such as ‘race’ are deep and multi-valent concepts that can and should be thought about well beyond the scope of law. The work of activists, academics and ordinary people in their everyday lives contributes far more to the understanding of the concept of race than any legally applicable version emerging from a court ever can. It is also true that these are concepts that can never be settled in the illusory way imagined by jurisprudence, they are historical (and thus in flux), interpersonal (criss-crossed by contradictory embodiments), material, psychological, etc, etc, etc.

Neither is it my intention to suggest that these definitions should be ‘accepted’ or stand in for the social, political or ethical understandings simply because the UN is ‘good’, or rejected because the UN is ‘bad’. The UN is deeply flawed for many reasons listed here and elsewhere, and it is also true that attempts to undermine the UN’s work in this area are often motivated by partisan or malicious intent. Fundamentally, struggles for justice and humanity would be doomed if they rested solely on legal instruments and institutions - nevertheless their powers and the willingness of states to enforce international law are the basis of ‘human rights’ as an operable human endeavour, whether we like it or not. ‘War crime’, ‘genocide’, ‘apartheid’, are all primarily legal concepts (though with other ways of being addressed, discussed and analysed.

My view is that we should not confuse these legal designations with ethical or political ones (though they are strongly linked to both, in terms of their content and effects). I think we need to be clear on how this works so that we can maintain these distinct spheres of understanding in reading these concepts. To be honest I don’t think describing Israel’s actions as apartheid is ‘shocking’, I don’t think the designation of apartheid in and of itself is sufficient to describe the debasement and cruelty of the violence exercised legally, socially, militarily, politically and culturally against the Palestinian people by the state of Israel and many of its representatives, institutions and citizens and the ways this is enabled by us around the globe through our actions or inactions. It is simply a legal definition. Considered as a moral disaster, I am similarly deeply resistant to ‘semantic’ arguments or even reasoned debate (which can feel like distraction or abstraction from the intolerable and unimaginable reality). I see the news and have to scroll quickly past autoplaying videos filled with unspeakable horror and can’t believe that the same denials, equivocations and justifications remain intact. There is something impossible at the core of this, impossible to imagine. I don’t know how people can endure it and I don’t know how people can pursue it.

I appreciate that long post, plax (ico).

I read more about this on my own trying to construct the best answer from your point of view. Two examples of legal actions seem to be eviction and immigration policy. Those were within Israel's borders.

They seem recent, and ongoing, and trending. I have read there had been a movement to take over the courts. And also why so many Israeli citizens vehemently protested.

To be honest I don’t think describing Israel’s actions as apartheid is ‘shocking’, I don’t think the designation of apartheid in and of itself is sufficient to describe the debasement and cruelty of the violence exercised legally, socially, militarily, politically and culturally against the Palestinian people by the state of Israel and many of its representatives,

This is otm; I’ve been trying to find the words to express precisely this.

There is something impossible at the core of this, impossible to imagine. I don’t know how people can endure it and I don’t know how people can pursue it.

― plax (ico), Monday, December 18, 2023 3:50 AM bookmarkflaglink

I agree, and sympathize. It is intolerable, and I interpret people's strong posts here often as an expression of that.

Layla Moran, a Lib Dem MP from a Palestinian Christian background, has been relaying info from her family members trapped in a church in Gaza. Been pretty hard to see her tweeting stuff like this to near complete indifference from her colleagues, ngl.

Update. Yesterday the Father got a call from the IDF saying between 2-4pm they would not fire on them. This meant they could move around to check on each other. That’s 2hrs where civilians in a church could use the toilets without being killed. Please make this stop. Please. https://t.co/DJUlVro5gH

— Layla Moran 🔶 (@LaylaMoran) December 18, 2023

Protest in inner London borough of Lambeth. It's a Lab run council and one of their MPs abstained on the ceasefire motion.

Live nearby but couldn't join. Looks like a solid turnout.

Brilliant turnout this evening demanding Lambeth Council and councillors listen represent constituents and @LambethUNISON workers and demand a full and immediate #ceasefireNow, an end to the illegal occupation, and a #FreePalestine🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/JXtVK3Hgc7

— Lambeth Solidarity (@LambSolidarity) December 18, 2023

I hadn’t really followed the whole Masha Gessen situation but their* piece about historical comparisons and the reaction to/critiques of touches on some points discussed on ilx. This piece btw is on two pages so you have to click nachste seite:

Two recurrent phrases are: "If there is something, then what’s it like?" - a plea for a reference, a comparison - and another: "Something always precedes that which follows." When we compare, we are also comparing contexts and histories, and making predictions. This is, of course, part of what makes Holocaust comparisons so fraught: they predict the worst. One important objection I have heard to comparing Gaza to the ghetto: but there are no death marches out of Gaza and no death camps waiting for its inhabitants.

And this is why we compare. To prevent what we know can happen from happening. To make "Never Again" a political project rather than a magic spell. And if we compare compellingly and bravely, then, in the best case scenario, the comparison is proven wrong.

NYT has a deeper look at the incident at Cooper Union and the resulting fallout (gift link): https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/nyregion/cooper-union-pro-palestinian-protest.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G00.lKvo.N7_dl4wsZuMG&smid=url-share

What struck me about that Cooper Union piece is that blocking or impeding the movement of a person if based on sex is generally considered sexual harassment under case law.

https://responsehelps.org/information/sexual-harassment/

I think of it as analogous if based on some other protected characteristic.

The NYT Daily episode from 12/13 on campus antisemitism has some sound clips at the beginning as well as discussion of the politics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/podcasts/the-daily/antisemitism-university.html

thought this was a good summary

The idea that e.g. Netanyahu has ensorcelled our political/media class with ethnic wizardry is insane, but I’d guess it’s less grim to contemplate than: our imbecile political class will gladly embrace genocide, if the alternative is admitting that they were wrong about anything.

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) December 19, 2023

It's ofc always fun to dunk on the political class but I think that take obscures the geopolitical and economic reasons why support for Israel continues amongst it.

With some confusion about who can see what when it comes to twitter, I think when linking tweets it might be worth summarizing or giving own take with a "this guy says something along lines of..." and then linking. I don't have strong feelings on this either way, but there seems to be some back and forth on whats good or bad use of tweets

As to what flyingrodent is saying, maybe. The relationship is definitely quite strange. I think there IS kind of an ensorcelling (never heard that word before, had to google it). Netanyahu treats Biden (and Obama before him) kind of like an irritant than a backer, but somehow this seems to work. The US has enormous leverage over Netanyahu, which it seems to be frightened to use. Just the act of acting the strongman seems to increase ensorcellment. But I think maybe it describes the format of the support more than the existence of the support.

I see about Netanyahu not seeing the hostages families, its also noteworthy Biden (or Sunak) haven't done anything like that either. Its kind of a weird support that feels more like support for Netanyahu than for Israel

Ignore first part of that post, its not relevant (I realize too late now introduced but still)

he's talking about UK politicians and media rather than elsewhere

esp in the UK there are much pettier party-political and gatekeeping and in-group sigalling elements at play* which is what I assume the tweet is about but even then there are geopolitical and economic reasons why they behave this way ultimately those things should still be seen as primary (but the mystification over these motivations is on the extreme side even compared to US discourse)

*(along with a general lack of emphathy and a specific, pointed contempt for people we've fucked over)

empathy has one h

he's talking about UK politicians and media rather than elsewhere

Oh, like the Labour Friends of Israel type thing? I find that difficult to follow, that almost feels like an example of the kind of self-ensorcellment that the UK specialises in

I stupidly subjected myself to radio 4's today programme this morning and the presenter was interviewing someone from an aid organisation in gaza, and the presenter was pompously "correcting" him about the situation on the ground there - because the alternative would have been questioning for a moment his own worldview. that's the sort of thing.

xp it is and your example is a very minor one it's the whole party and and the other parties and the media and people who engage with any of those things for too long (even in hatred)

Yes that absolutely happens, especially amongst the footsoldiers of client journalism, but it's misleading to view it as the whole story imo.

xpost

[100-post lawyerly digression on whether there is an agreed-upon definition of ensorcel]

I make people uncomfortable if I'm watching/listening to current events with them bc I always feel the need to "correct" and point out the framing and I hate what it turns me into xps

I had to look it up google says it's archaic xp

I'm archaic so I'll be using it.

Ok, I see what you mean now. I don't think this is anything to do with Israel per se, attitudes to Israel are just a manifestation of it. I think this is more of a kind of 1950s institutionalism that sees Israel as kind of like Canada or New Zealand. I don't know if its' any deeper than that. The kind of thing that exists in institutions but not necessarily the public. Technically I think this isn't ensorcellment but self-ensorcellment from which the source no longer exists and may only be continuing in placebo form

Man you guys really run something into the fucking ground huh

New board description!

As another example (albeit one entirely off topic here, I'm aware), almost no-one talking about Rwanda in the UK has any interest in the state of Rwanda (in either sense) - it's just a black box labelled 'awayness'

I don’t follow.

I would say it's more than "awayness" - most people associate it with the atrocities there in the 90s, so it's also "send them away to the bad place"

Very good piece on Gessen, but mostly on Arendt and her changes in thinking on Israel.

https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/arendt-and-jerusalem

Many of the discussions going on now have been going on for decades, partly because the FBI and its counterintelligence programs have muddied the waters by falsely equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism while ignoring many actual incidents of antisemitic terror. Good thread.

In 1970, the NY Times published a piece purporting to expose Jewish fears that anti-zionism was the new antisemitism within Black Power and New Left groups. The FBI took notice and turned the article into a pamphlet as part of its Counterintelligence Program or COINTELPRO. 1/13 pic.twitter.com/MxZxkTTBHY

— Stuart Schrader (@stschrader1) December 18, 2023

BREAKING: Colorado Supreme Court disqualifies Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The move sets up a battle before the U.S. Supreme Court. https://t.co/dfnRnBU3wS

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) December 19, 2023

Lol, sorry

Occupied. Right now. Berlin Central Station. Top work comrades. Time to close down the genocide monsters of western colonialism. Time to destroy Israeli fascism. This is what solidarity looks like. #GazaMassacre #FreePalestinepic.twitter.com/a0ynLBQAtQ

— GhostofDurruti (@DurrutiRiot) December 19, 2023

From one of the quote tweets he lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank.

On #C4News last night Israeli politician Yuli Edelstein, (chair of the Israeli parliaments Foreign Affairs & Security Committee) said that accusing IDF snipers of targeting civilians in a church compound is antisemitic. pic.twitter.com/7WLf7wNO4y

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) December 19, 2023

Yes. Spoke about that guy earlier in the thread. Or the other thread.

... in fact that's the interview I saw.

normie dems breaking alert🚨 https://t.co/lfqh6Esa43

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) December 20, 2023

When you’ve lost moulton and spanberger

Talking of interviews, that belligerent cunt Naftali Bennett is back on British TV to turn everyone watching against the Israeli cause. He's just come up with a new phrase to describe B'Tselem: "self-hating Israelis".

Polling wise Americans are giving up on Israel being armed to the teeth.

Not that it matters with Biden.

Support more military aid to Israel?

Oct 17
Voters: 64-28 (+36)
Dems: 59-29 (+30)

Nov 2
Voters: 51/41 (+10)
Dems 49-43 (+6)

Nov 17
Voters: 54-39 (+15)
Dems: 45-48 (-3)

Dec 20
Voters: 45-46 (-1)
Dems: 36-58 (-22) 👀 https://t.co/yP1Gx3dtiU

— austerity is theft (@wideofthepost) December 21, 2023

"The thing is, though, “God, I wish the Israelis would just kill these people” is something you can sigh into a scotch and soda with your co-workers at the hotel bar after a day of frustrated “diplomacy.” Nobody would bat an eye. It’s just blowing off steam. But if you’re recorded saying it to a halal cart vendor in Manhattan, you have violated the social contract. If you stay within the system, almost everything is allowable: structural violence demands a certain politeness."

https://thebaffler.com/latest/impolite-society-burton

An 8yr old British Palestinian boy has been out of school because staff wont let him wear a Palestine flag patch on his coat. His dad explains what happened.

The school says its apolitical, but when Russia invaded Ukraine they flew the Ukrainian flag & held fund raisers pic.twitter.com/8GUgHIx49t

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) December 21, 2023

I found this commentary to be rather moving and specific in how it thinks through language and the notion of a shibboleth. Pertinent to our discussion of Zionism, River/sea, etc. An excellent read: here.

Zionism is not a Jewish sect, nor a Jewish tenet, nor a Jewish ritual, nor will you find it in the Torah, the Talmud, the Midrash, etc. It is a political movement and ideology based on religious fundamentalism, like, say, Hamas. Often, we call religious fundamentalists “terrorists,” but that’s only if they’re Islamic. This too is a shibboleth.

Zionism has two main tenets: Jews have a sacred claim to the land of Palestine, and Jews cannot survive as a people in a world that is deeply hostile to them, unless they have their own state.

These are two very different things. The first tenet is religious in nature – and as with most things sacred and numinous, it ought to be seen as fixed and immutable – but it is, interestingly, not necessary to Zionism. Or, that is, it is literally nominal insofar as “Zion” referred in the Hebrew Bible to Jerusalem, and often referred metonymically to the larger surrounding area that we would call Palestine. Therefore, Zion and its -ism. But in keeping with the metaphorical usage of “Zion” in the Torah, the founding Zionists were not necessarily committed to a Jewish State existing in “Zion,” or Jerusalem and its surrounds. Theodor Herzl himself, the founder of modern Zionism, presented at the 6th World Zionist Congress the Uganda Scheme – developed by the British – an idea for a Jewish State in British East Africa.

Herzl did, like many Zionists, prefer to found the state in Palestine, but he was looking for expediency; considering the historical plight of the persecuted Jew, he believed Jews needed a homeland in the form of a state, and that that homeland didn’t have to be religiously sanctioned as home; it just had to be established. Therefore, he and other Zionists worked with the British, who they hoped would establish for them a Jewish state. This is because of the second tenet, which as I have said trumps the first: the Jews need their own state in order to survive in a world that is existentially hostile to them.

This second tenet is deeply cynical; it resigns itself to antisemitism as fatalism. Zionists moreover relied on Britain, a colonialist empire that is as Arabophobic as it is antisemitic – and that promised Palestine both to Arabs and to Jews, simultaneously, for the sole sake of geopolitical strategy against the Turks during World War I – to establish that state for them. The Zionists had no illusions about this: “The antisemites WILL BECOME our most loyal friends, the antisemitic nations will become our allies,” wrote Herzl in his diary. In establishing the world then into 2 camps – Jews and antisemites – Zionism re-maps not only the entire world, but Jewry itself. Even Jews like me, who don’t support Zionism, would be considered antisemitic. And in pitting themselves against an “antisemitic world,” the Zionists authorize themselves to commit horrors. Herzl wrote in his diary as early as 1895 the Zionist plan for occupying Palestine: “We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.”

This plan for naked ethnic cleansing follows its throughline uninterrupted to today. In April 2021, in an address to Palestinian Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich tweeted “a true Muslim must know that the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel, and over time Arabs like you who do not recognize this will not stay here.” Later that fall, he elaborated that the Palestinians were “here by mistake—because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.” And this year, looking to finish the job, Israeli security minister Avi Dichter said on November 12th, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba…Gaza Nakba 2023.” Like it’s a Black Friday event. Like it will be done in the middle of the market.

The resemblance in the speech of the Zionists to their antisemitic oppressors – the fascism, the racism, the colonialism, the vitriolic ambition for land and power – is illuminating. It is like the Gileadites and the Ephraimites, who resemble one another exactly, and only differ in their accents, and in who holds power. For this reason, this is to me the most interesting shibboleth of the three: it inverts itself. Its expression contains its absolute antithesis. The border crossed is not geopolitical, it is a border within the self, it self-trespasses, it self-annihilates. “Anti-zionism is Antisemitic” is the wrong pronunciation: the correct one is “Zionism is Antisemitic.”

yep

IF I thought Zionism meant Smotrichism I too would be anti-Zionist.

Zionism is a land of contrasts

I loved that article, tabes, and thanks; wish that there was more attention paid toward how debates of semantics effectively form a method of filibustering, that afford (the current Zionists-in-charge like) Smotrich et al. their greatest asset— time to kill. As we debate what versions of Zionism we would or would not support, the shitheads who have the funding and electorate power are, effectively, destroying any future concept that “good Zionism” can exist; templates that would propose a contrary future are welcome at this point, until I’m convinced, I remain broadly and vociferously anti-Zionist

Lol @ this attack on Alareer's work.

If you’re going to try to write a hit piece about a poet who was martyred and whose work will be remembered, you gotta come with a CV a little stronger than this one. https://t.co/GH9vuFuFgS pic.twitter.com/j4jsKJDTZ5

— 🇵🇸 timothy 🍉 faust (@crulge) December 21, 2023