Not at all equivalent. "Free Palestine" is a political slogan, while the Star of David is a symbol of Judaism, more comparable to the cross of Christianity.
But Free Palestine is not a statement of support for terrorism, which is the alleged perception. Given the persistence with which Israel identifies itself with the Star of David and proclaims itself Jewish the perception is of equivalent validity.
I think @Arethosemyfeet would have a better case if he were arguing that the use of the Israeli flag was close to a statement of support for the current actions of the state of Israel. And I might agree with that.
But I don't think it's reasonable to extend the same association to the Star of David by itself, any more than it was reasonable to claim that because ISIS and Al Qaeda claimed to be acting in the interests of all Muslims, that the use of any Muslim symbol becomes a statement in support of terrorism.
My point was that it takes a similar level of ignorance and/or disingenuousness to jump from "free Palestine" to "support for terrorism" as it does from "star of david" to "support for genocide". I agree that there is not a precise equivalence of symbolism.
Not at all equivalent. "Free Palestine" is a political slogan, while the Star of David is a symbol of Judaism, more comparable to the cross of Christianity.
I think it's another aspect of this trap that Palestine's existence is seen as a questionable or menacing political statement while Israel's existence is seen as a basic reality that cannot be questioned. You cannot be Palestinian without being immediately politicized merely for thinking that your culture exists.
I see the lack of equivalency, but I also see a deep problem that denying Palestinian expression isn't going to solve.
On the other hand, one beef I have with "Free Palestine" is that both Palestine and Israel aspire to become nation states, and nation states are generally monstrous things. I've seen some aspirations that Palestine, not being an ethno-state or a strictly religious state, might have a shot at being something closer to a secular free society, but the way things are going I don't know if that'll go past being aspirational. And a nice monster is still a monster.
I'm sure, per own voice, that if I were either Palestinian or Israeli, I might see it differently because I would then be part of one monster or another, but I'm deep in the guts of the American monster. And, over what garbage I've seen in my lifetime, I'm not especially proud of that one either.
I appreciate the nuances, but being threatened for your identity over a conflict you have no control over sucks, regardless of what your identity is.
On the other hand, one beef I have with "Free Palestine" is that both Palestine and Israel aspire to become nation states, and nation states are generally monstrous things.
What's the current viable alternative to the nation state?
On the other hand, one beef I have with "Free Palestine" is that both Palestine and Israel aspire to become nation states, and nation states are generally monstrous things.
What's the current viable alternative to the nation state?
On the other hand, one beef I have with "Free Palestine" is that both Palestine and Israel aspire to become nation states, and nation states are generally monstrous things.
What's the current viable alternative to the nation state?
Multi-nation states. They're not always successful, and often they have a dominant "nation" that suppresses the identities and cultures of the others, but they do exist. The UK is one such, the USSR was another. Many countries whose borders were defined by colonial powers have multiple nations within them. What's open to question is whether overlapping national identities can share the same physical space without conflict. We've seen plenty of contrary examples, such as Bosnia, and ongoing disputes within India (and plenty more...). Bosnia perhaps offers a possible model, of a federal system with territories where the majority are from a particular background but a shared presidency and federal government.
What's open to question is whether overlapping national identities can share the same physical space without conflict.
At some point it seems like national identities would need to be superseded by or subordinated to some kind of identification with the state if the state is to succeed - which would lessen the sense of national identity, I would think. Not entirely analogous, but historians talk about how people usually said "the United States are" prior to the Civil War but gradually switched to "the United States is" afterward.
What's open to question is whether overlapping national identities can share the same physical space without conflict.
At some point it seems like national identities would need to be superseded by or subordinated to some kind of identification with the state if the state is to succeed - which would lessen the sense of national identity, I would think. Not entirely analogous, but historians talk about how people usually said "the United States are" prior to the Civil War but gradually switched to "the United States is" afterward.
I think that might be the ultimate goal, but that's something that will take a lot of time and trust (or, I fear, something so calamitous it shocks both sides into ending the animosity, somewhat like France and Germany forming the core of the EU). Lebanon's system has its problems, but most of the time it allows its 3-way religious split to co-exist.
We are. I don't know what it took the bring lasting peace between France and Germany, after so many centuries and two devastating wars in 30 years but I hope it can be found and shared with Israelis and Palestinians.
On the other hand, one beef I have with "Free Palestine" is that both Palestine and Israel aspire to become nation states, and nation states are generally monstrous things.
What's the current viable alternative to the nation state?
Viable is an interesting question. I've read theories that such things have happened in the past, but the modern world make sit seem fairly impossible.
I was thinking of nation states in general, and I appreciate the responses that have appeared since this post, it's some hope.
I've had a pet notion for some time now that nation state formation is often a horrifying process. I'd sometimes joke, very darkly, that Israel is doing it in what feels like a very slow, painstaking manner, which might not be an improvement. The idea that you could have two identities sharing a common economic unit feels promising, but I struggle to see how it can win when the discourse seems to be framed in terms of competing grievance.
Mind, it has happened. I read recently that Netanyahu is trying to imagine his future interaction with Palestine akin to how the US rebuilt Japan after the war, and I initially found that analogy so abhorrent that I couldn't imagine he was anything but cynical. But maybe with better leadership. His popularity seems to be tanking, and I think his actions are responsible for a lot of the current bloodshed.
Mind, it has happened. I read recently that Netanyahu is trying to imagine his future interaction with Palestine akin to how the US rebuilt Japan after the war, and I initially found that analogy so abhorrent that I couldn't imagine he was anything but cynical. But maybe with better leadership. His popularity seems to be tanking, and I think his actions are responsible for a lot of the current bloodshed.
The problem I have with this argument is that it doesn't really jibe particularly well with Israel's actual historical dealings with Gaza, which is a policy of deliberate de-development that goes back decades, has been in place for much longer than Hamas has been in charge and has been carried out under governments of different stripes.
Furthermore, there's a test case here; the West Bank hasn't been under the control of Hamas, wither the mini Japan ? Where was the evidence that there was a mini-Japan in development in the occupied territories pre the first intifada?
This is like Yuval Noah Harari saying that liberal hopes were that the Palestinians in Gaza would make a 'good faith attempt' to become a mini Singapore after the withdrawal of Israeli troops on the ground. It's an argument that doesn't hold much water, once you give it more than a moments thought.
What's open to question is whether overlapping national identities can share the same physical space without conflict.
At some point it seems like national identities would need to be superseded by or subordinated to some kind of identification with the state if the state is to succeed - which would lessen the sense of national identity, I would think.
It wouldn’t lessen the sense of national identity, it would just transfer it to the new entity. In other words, it would replace multiple smaller nation states with a single larger nation state.
I've been drawing attention to the fash attempting to cosy up to the Jewish community lately, attempting to paint Islam as a common enemy. It worries me that they're starting to succeed. At the risk of skating close to bringing other subjects into an Epiphanies thread (which is not my intention), I cannot help but see a parallel between this and the way they cosy up to anti-Trans LGB groups and TERFs.
I was at least pleased to see the organisers of the march against anti-semitism tell Yaxley-Lennon to do one when he stated his intention to turn up in "support". Baby steps.
The small minority of marchers chanting "Judenrat" at anti-Zionist Jewish counter-protesters was rather less edifying. I assume they're no more representative than those calling for the death of Jews at pro-Palestine marches but, given all the attention given to the latter it's important to be aware that any large march will attract an extremist fringe.
Since he gave the US as an example, I'm guessing not.
Arguably the U.S. is not a nation-state, except in the vague and vernacular sense where "nation-state" is used as a metonym for any country, rather than a situation where the nation (a group of people sharing a common birth, natio) is geographically co-extensive with the state (a political entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence).
I've been drawing attention to the fash attempting to cosy up to the Jewish community lately, attempting to paint Islam as a common enemy. It worries me that they're starting to succeed.
I think this goes back some time; the Jewish community in the UK is generally more politically conservative than is the case in the US, with some of the move coming in the 2010s as a result of Miliband's policy on Israel (sidenote: Even the party recognised Jewish Labour Movement has as one of its stated values "To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life")
This maps to many of the community organisations having links or members in common with right wing political groups such as the Henry Jackson Society, or Jewish newspapers printing articles by Melanie Phillips, Douglas Murray etc.
Mind, it has happened. I read recently that Netanyahu is trying to imagine his future interaction with Palestine akin to how the US rebuilt Japan after the war, and I initially found that analogy so abhorrent that I couldn't imagine he was anything but cynical. But maybe with better leadership. His popularity seems to be tanking, and I think his actions are responsible for a lot of the current bloodshed.
The problem I have with this argument is that it doesn't really jibe particularly well with Israel's actual historical dealings with Gaza, which is a policy of deliberate de-development that goes back decades, has been in place for much longer than Hamas has been in charge and has been carried out under governments of different stripes.
Furthermore, there's a test case here; the West Bank hasn't been under the control of Hamas, wither the mini Japan ? Where was the evidence that there was a mini-Japan in development in the occupied territories pre the first intifada?
This is like Yuval Noah Harari saying that liberal hopes were that the Palestinians in Gaza would make a 'good faith attempt' to become a mini Singapore after the withdrawal of Israeli troops on the ground. It's an argument that doesn't hold much water, once you give it more than a moments thought.
Mind, it has happened. I read recently that Netanyahu is trying to imagine his future interaction with Palestine akin to how the US rebuilt Japan after the war, and I initially found that analogy so abhorrent that I couldn't imagine he was anything but cynical. But maybe with better leadership. His popularity seems to be tanking, and I think his actions are responsible for a lot of the current bloodshed.
The problem I have with this argument is that it doesn't really jibe particularly well with Israel's actual historical dealings with Gaza, which is a policy of deliberate de-development that goes back decades, has been in place for much longer than Hamas has been in charge and has been carried out under governments of different stripes.
Furthermore, there's a test case here; the West Bank hasn't been under the control of Hamas, wither the mini Japan ? Where was the evidence that there was a mini-Japan in development in the occupied territories pre the first intifada?
This is like Yuval Noah Harari saying that liberal hopes were that the Palestinians in Gaza would make a 'good faith attempt' to become a mini Singapore after the withdrawal of Israeli troops on the ground. It's an argument that doesn't hold much water, once you give it more than a moments thought.
Since he gave the US as an example, I'm guessing not.
Arguably the U.S. is not a nation-state, except in the vague and vernacular sense where "nation-state" is used as a metonym for any country, rather than a situation where the nation (a group of people sharing a common birth, natio) is geographically co-extensive with the state (a political entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence).
Since he gave the US as an example, I'm guessing not.
Arguably the U.S. is not a nation-state, except in the vague and vernacular sense where "nation-state" is used as a metonym for any country, rather than a situation where the nation (a group of people sharing a common birth, natio) is geographically co-extensive with the state (a political entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence).
That is a very helpful piece of etymology that I'm surprised I hadn't noticed before. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
I've been drawing attention to the fash attempting to cosy up to the Jewish community lately, attempting to paint Islam as a common enemy. It worries me that they're starting to succeed.
I think this goes back some time; the Jewish community in the UK is generally more politically conservative than is the case in the US, with some of the move coming in the 2010s as a result of Miliband's policy on Israel (sidenote: Even the party recognised Jewish Labour Movement has as one of its stated values "To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life")
This is a fault line that runs right through the Labour movement and has done for decades. Even 20 years ago when I was a student it was old hat that the Union of Jewish Students was hand in glove with the National Organisation of Labour Students and both were ardently Zionist, with all expenses paid trips to Israel to see how wonderful it was. Meanwhile pro-Palestinian Jews and gentiles in Labour (including the Federation of Student Islamic Societies) were overwhelmingly associated with Student Broad Left. Many of the same faces that were on either side at that time are now (or were) Labour MPs or party staff.
The New York Times ran a piece a few days ago [ paywall ] on civilian casualties in Gaza and Israeli tactics.
Israel has cast the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip as a regrettable but unavoidable part of modern conflict, pointing to the heavy human toll from military campaigns the United States itself once waged in Iraq and Syria.
But a review of past conflicts and interviews with casualty and weapons experts suggest that Israel’s assault is different.
While wartime death tolls will never be exact, experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century.
People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.
Precise comparisons of war dead are impossible, but conflict-casualty experts have been taken aback at just how many people have been reported killed in Gaza — most of them women and children — and how rapidly.
It is not just the scale of the strikes — Israel said it had engaged more than 15,000 targets before reaching a brief cease-fire in recent days. It is also the nature of the weaponry itself.
Israel’s liberal use of very large weapons in dense urban areas, including U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs that can flatten an apartment tower, is surprising, some experts say.
“It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,” said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. To find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, he said, we may “have to go back to Vietnam, or the Second World War.”
In fighting during this century, by contrast, U.S. military officials often believed that the most common American aerial bomb — a 500-pound weapon — was far too large for most targets when battling the Islamic State in urban areas like Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria.
This is what the IDF means when it claims to be minimizing civilian casualties.
This whole situation is starting to remind me of the US's catastrophic, murderous response to the Sept. 11 attacks, only sped up about 50x. And that was barely twenty years ago - you would think it was recent enough that governments would still remember some of the lessons from it.
This whole situation is starting to remind me of the US's catastrophic, murderous response to the Sept. 11 attacks, only sped up about 50x. And that was barely twenty years ago - you would think it was recent enough that governments would still remember some of the lessons from it.
Netanyahu clearly took the lesson that the problem in Iraq and Afghanistan was insufficient death and destruction.
This whole situation is starting to remind me of the US's catastrophic, murderous response to the Sept. 11 attacks, only sped up about 50x. And that was barely twenty years ago - you would think it was recent enough that governments would still remember some of the lessons from it.
I remember, when it first happened, a lot of folks saying "this is our 9-11!" and I wondered how far they'd thought out that analogy. The resemblance is real.
Well that was a horrendous read. Thank you, I think.
Things that stuck out:
- "power targets" are a euphemism for terrorist attacks, quite literally intended to "create shock" i.e. terrify the civilian population in pursuit of a political objective.
- comparison with Israeli soldiers: no government would accept routinely targetting enlisted personnel in their private homes and lives as legitimate yet somehow it's different when it's Hamas members.
- almost total disregard for human life. Attacks approved on the flimsiest pretext in the full knowledge of killing dozens of civilians.
- The rotten, maggot ridden cherry on this revolting turd cake: calling the target generation AI "The Gospel". I mean fuck, even allowing that there might be different connotations in Hebrew and in Jewish culture, that is disgusting.
Well that was a horrendous read. Thank you, I think.
Things that stuck out:
- "power targets" are a euphemism for terrorist attacks, quite literally intended to "create shock" i.e. terrify the civilian population in pursuit of a political objective.
- comparison with Israeli soldiers: no government would accept routinely targetting enlisted personnel in their private homes and lives as legitimate yet somehow it's different when it's Hamas members.
- almost total disregard for human life. Attacks approved on the flimsiest pretext in the full knowledge of killing dozens of civilians.
- The rotten, maggot ridden cherry on this revolting turd cake: calling the target generation AI "The Gospel". I mean fuck, even allowing that there might be different connotations in Hebrew and in Jewish culture, that is disgusting.
I wonder if it has any connotations beyond the secular, where it tends to mean "absolute truth". The word itself is just Old English for "Good News" (Tolkien riffs on this when he had Wormtongue call Gandalf the opposite - Lathspell), calqued on Greek Euangelion.
Well that was a horrendous read. Thank you, I think.
Things that stuck out:
- "power targets" are a euphemism for terrorist attacks, quite literally intended to "create shock" i.e. terrify the civilian population in pursuit of a political objective.
- comparison with Israeli soldiers: no government would accept routinely targetting enlisted personnel in their private homes and lives as legitimate yet somehow it's different when it's Hamas members.
- almost total disregard for human life. Attacks approved on the flimsiest pretext in the full knowledge of killing dozens of civilians.
- The rotten, maggot ridden cherry on this revolting turd cake: calling the target generation AI "The Gospel". I mean fuck, even allowing that there might be different connotations in Hebrew and in Jewish culture, that is disgusting.
I wonder if it has any connotations beyond the secular, where it tends to mean "absolute truth". The word itself is just Old English for "Good News" (Tolkien riffs on this when he had Wormtongue call Gandalf the opposite - Lathspell), calqued on Greek Euangelion.
Which just makes it feel worse.
It's in Hebrew, Habsora or הבשורה, but seems to be widely used in the religious meaning so it's hard to believe those who named it wouldn't have known exactly how it would look.
Things that stuck out:
- "power targets" are a euphemism for terrorist attacks, quite literally intended to "create shock" i.e. terrify the civilian population in pursuit of a political objective.
- comparison with Israeli soldiers: no government would accept routinely targetting enlisted personnel in their private homes and lives as legitimate yet somehow it's different when it's Hamas members.
- almost total disregard for human life. Attacks approved on the flimsiest pretext in the full knowledge of killing dozens of civilians.
The impression given was that in practice it operates as a form of plausible deniability, especially with the close elision between the first and second points, and outsourcing effective decision making capability to an autonomous system is a means of distancing any one individual from a particular outcome.
I expect that miltarys around the world are watching and taking notes.
I thought the elision is between killing Hamas members, which presumably has widespread approval, and killing anyone who lives near Hamas members. In practice, this means everyone. I'm not sure if militaries are taking note, surely they learned from Kissinger something similar, we're only bombing near the border, but of course that border is quite deep. OK, we bombed that hospital, but Hamas is everywhere.
Deniability focusing on the who and the why rather than the what, the result is to create a set of arguments that can be endlessly litigated while rendering a population disposable.
I thought the elision is between killing Hamas members, which presumably has widespread approval, and killing anyone who lives near Hamas members. In practice, this means everyone. I'm not sure if militaries are taking note, surely they learned from Kissinger something similar, we're only bombing near the border, but of course that border is quite deep. OK, we bombed that hospital, but Hamas is everywhere.
It does make me rather angry when people comment on Gaza as if it were not already the size and density of a major US city.
I just think of the one that I live in, there's nowhere you could fire an artillery shell without catching civilian architecture in the blast radius. It's passive aggressive victim-blaming in the extreme.
Woke up to the news that the poet and academic Refaat Alareer had been killed in an Israeli airstrike yesterday. He was a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza where he taught Shakespeare and was a co-founder of the global 'We are not numbers' project that pairs writers from Gaza with writers in the West who help them tell their stories in English. I'd worked on anthologies featuring poetry he wrote and the work of his students. The Islamic University of Gaza was destroyed by IDF missiles in October.
This is more devastating news. Refaat joins 28 artists, poets, writers, musicians, calligraphers, and dancers killed by Israeli bombing in the last two months. When I was reading around, I came across tributes to some of them: poet Shahdah Al-Buhbahan aged 73, killed alongside his six-year-old granddaughter; award-winning poet and novelist Heba Abu Nada, who was killed alongside her son; Lubna Mahmoud Alian, 15-year-old violin prodigy at Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, killed alongside members of her family; Dr. Sufian Taieh, UNESCO Chair in Physics and Astrophysics and Space Science in Palestine and President of the Islamic University, killed alongside his entire family. Words fail me.
And then there are the reporters and journalists dying each day just to keep people informed about what is happening there. To date, 68 journalists have been killed covering the Israeli-Hamas war since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 — more than one a day and 72% of all media deaths worldwide. The overwhelming majority of them have been Palestinian journalists working in the Gaza Strip.
And then there are the reporters and journalists dying each day just to keep people informed about what is happening there. To date, 68 journalists have been killed covering the Israeli-Hamas war since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 — more than one a day and 72% of all media deaths worldwide.
An Oct. 13 strike that killed a videographer for the Reuters news agency and injured six others in southern Lebanon was carried out by the Israeli military and appeared to be a deliberate attack, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
The watchdog group said that evidence it had reviewed — including dozens of videos of the incident, photographs and satellite images, and interviews with witnesses and military experts — showed that the journalists were not near areas where fighting was taking place and that there was no military objective near their position.
“The attack on the journalists’ position directly targeted them,” the report said, labeling the attack a war crime.
The Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to the report.
Reuters published its own investigation on Thursday and said that an Israeli tank crew had killed its journalist and wounded the others.
Israel cannot invest its safety in its current regime of supremacy, in which Palestinians are forced to suffer as second-class people in their historic land.
Woke up to the news that the poet and academic Refaat Alareer had been killed in an Israeli airstrike yesterday. He was a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza where he taught Shakespeare and was a co-founder of the global 'We are not numbers' project that pairs writers from Gaza with writers in the West who help them tell their stories in English. I'd worked on anthologies featuring poetry he wrote and the work of his students. The Islamic University of Gaza was destroyed by IDF missiles in October.
This is more devastating news. Refaat joins 28 artists, poets, writers, musicians, calligraphers, and dancers killed by Israeli bombing in the last two months. When I was reading around, I came across tributes to some of them: poet Shahdah Al-Buhbahan aged 73, killed alongside his six-year-old granddaughter; award-winning poet and novelist Heba Abu Nada, who was killed alongside her son; Lubna Mahmoud Alian, 15-year-old violin prodigy at Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, killed alongside members of her family; Dr. Sufian Taieh, UNESCO Chair in Physics and Astrophysics and Space Science in Palestine and President of the Islamic University, killed alongside his entire family. Words fail me.
And then there are the reporters and journalists dying each day just to keep people informed about what is happening there. To date, 68 journalists have been killed covering the Israeli-Hamas war since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 — more than one a day and 72% of all media deaths worldwide. The overwhelming majority of them have been Palestinian journalists working in the Gaza Strip.
Every single casualty is a human being whose life was destroyed alongside the lives of their loved ones. One day the ancestors of the perpetrators will visit the site of the memorial to this horror and hang their heads in shame. Apologies and excuses will never be sufficient.
May those responsible for every atrocity be brought to their knees, to beg for forgiveness.
This is an extract from a letter by the head of the UN's relief effort in Palestine:
"This week, the Israeli military forces have instructed people to move further south, forcing Gaza's population into an ever-shrinking space. Shelters are shockingly overcrowded, with high risk of epidemic illness. In these overfull and unsanitary spaces, more than 700 people use a single toilet, women give birth (an average of 25 per day), and people nurse open wounds. Tens of thousands sleep in courtyards and streets. People burn plastic to stay warm…"
You can read the whole letter here, where he also says that he believes his staff will be casualties before long.
@Ariel, so chilling to read Lazzarini's desperation: 'In my 35 years of work in complex emergencies, I never have expected to write such a letter, predicting the killing of my staff & the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfill.'
And now the US vetoes the UN resolution backed by many nations demanding immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
As Rav Amiel notes, the prioritization of establishing Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel over all else can lead quickly to the annulment of other obligations toward God and toward other human beings.
So, this article is safely an own voice that, to my sense of religion and politics (my two academic studies in life,) very elegantly describes the problem that Israel creates for Judaism. It also gave me a lot of thoughts about Protestantism and my own identity and why my identity as a Protestnat recoils at the entire project even when I empathize, very deeply sometimes, with people who are still trying to make the blasted thing work.
Nation building is always a terrible, terrible thing to witness. Doesn't matter which nationality does it.
An irony that cuts into me is that Israel is, perhaps not even intentionally, treating Palestinians more or less the same way European Christian nations treated Jews. And perhaps based on very similar motivations. Build a country for "us" and you create a people of "them." That thought feels kinda offensive to me. I can feel the way it must feel to a lot of Jewish folks who, perhaps with reason, treat human history as if it were being especially cruel to them apart from every other ethnic minority that's ever tried to make a life on this planet, but...it's hard for me not to keep circling back to it.
Yes, greater Israel. I would predict that Hamas membership, and other militant groups, will increase, as Palestinians are being offered no peaceful solution. I suppose the endpoint is extinction for them, although remnants will survive in exile.
It's an interesting comparison with N. Ireland, as here militant groups disarmed, as they were persuaded that peace was possible and beneficial. No such solution in Israel is possible.
The other day I posted this image on my FB page, I got 13 likes and four shares. Also, nine positive commets, but this one negative comment:
Hmmmm… how human is Hamas when they killed and raped children in front of their parents, beheaded babies in front of their parents. Beheaded and Killed parents in front of their kids….. They are acting like savages! I stand with Israel! ❤️you are sick!!!🤮
My reply was:
Where have I mentioned Hamas? Hamas is not Palestine. Under the Just War Theory, Israel must show.
Proportionality
Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of proportionality. Combatants must make sure that the harm caused to civilians or civilian property is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated by an attack on a legitimate military objective. This principle is meant to discern the correct balance between the restriction imposed by a corrective measure and the severity of the nature of the prohibited act. and
Military necessity
Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of military necessity. An attack or action must be intended to help in the defeat of the enemy; it must be an attack on a legitimate military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. This principle is meant to limit excessive and unnecessary death and destruction.
When Palestinian deaths are approaching, if not surpassing 20,000, where is the proportionality?
Israel had advised Palestinian civilians to flee to certain safe areas. Now, the Israelis are attacking those areas.
Comments
But Free Palestine is not a statement of support for terrorism, which is the alleged perception. Given the persistence with which Israel identifies itself with the Star of David and proclaims itself Jewish the perception is of equivalent validity.
But I don't think it's reasonable to extend the same association to the Star of David by itself, any more than it was reasonable to claim that because ISIS and Al Qaeda claimed to be acting in the interests of all Muslims, that the use of any Muslim symbol becomes a statement in support of terrorism.
I think it's another aspect of this trap that Palestine's existence is seen as a questionable or menacing political statement while Israel's existence is seen as a basic reality that cannot be questioned. You cannot be Palestinian without being immediately politicized merely for thinking that your culture exists.
I see the lack of equivalency, but I also see a deep problem that denying Palestinian expression isn't going to solve.
On the other hand, one beef I have with "Free Palestine" is that both Palestine and Israel aspire to become nation states, and nation states are generally monstrous things. I've seen some aspirations that Palestine, not being an ethno-state or a strictly religious state, might have a shot at being something closer to a secular free society, but the way things are going I don't know if that'll go past being aspirational. And a nice monster is still a monster.
I'm sure, per own voice, that if I were either Palestinian or Israeli, I might see it differently because I would then be part of one monster or another, but I'm deep in the guts of the American monster. And, over what garbage I've seen in my lifetime, I'm not especially proud of that one either.
I appreciate the nuances, but being threatened for your identity over a conflict you have no control over sucks, regardless of what your identity is.
What's the current viable alternative to the nation state?
I'm wondering if @Bullfrog meant 'ethnostate'
Multi-nation states. They're not always successful, and often they have a dominant "nation" that suppresses the identities and cultures of the others, but they do exist. The UK is one such, the USSR was another. Many countries whose borders were defined by colonial powers have multiple nations within them. What's open to question is whether overlapping national identities can share the same physical space without conflict. We've seen plenty of contrary examples, such as Bosnia, and ongoing disputes within India (and plenty more...). Bosnia perhaps offers a possible model, of a federal system with territories where the majority are from a particular background but a shared presidency and federal government.
At some point it seems like national identities would need to be superseded by or subordinated to some kind of identification with the state if the state is to succeed - which would lessen the sense of national identity, I would think. Not entirely analogous, but historians talk about how people usually said "the United States are" prior to the Civil War but gradually switched to "the United States is" afterward.
I think that might be the ultimate goal, but that's something that will take a lot of time and trust (or, I fear, something so calamitous it shocks both sides into ending the animosity, somewhat like France and Germany forming the core of the EU). Lebanon's system has its problems, but most of the time it allows its 3-way religious split to co-exist.
We are. I don't know what it took the bring lasting peace between France and Germany, after so many centuries and two devastating wars in 30 years but I hope it can be found and shared with Israelis and Palestinians.
Viable is an interesting question. I've read theories that such things have happened in the past, but the modern world make sit seem fairly impossible.
I was thinking of nation states in general, and I appreciate the responses that have appeared since this post, it's some hope.
I've had a pet notion for some time now that nation state formation is often a horrifying process. I'd sometimes joke, very darkly, that Israel is doing it in what feels like a very slow, painstaking manner, which might not be an improvement. The idea that you could have two identities sharing a common economic unit feels promising, but I struggle to see how it can win when the discourse seems to be framed in terms of competing grievance.
Mind, it has happened. I read recently that Netanyahu is trying to imagine his future interaction with Palestine akin to how the US rebuilt Japan after the war, and I initially found that analogy so abhorrent that I couldn't imagine he was anything but cynical. But maybe with better leadership. His popularity seems to be tanking, and I think his actions are responsible for a lot of the current bloodshed.
Source.
The problem I have with this argument is that it doesn't really jibe particularly well with Israel's actual historical dealings with Gaza, which is a policy of deliberate de-development that goes back decades, has been in place for much longer than Hamas has been in charge and has been carried out under governments of different stripes.
Furthermore, there's a test case here; the West Bank hasn't been under the control of Hamas, wither the mini Japan ? Where was the evidence that there was a mini-Japan in development in the occupied territories pre the first intifada?
This is like Yuval Noah Harari saying that liberal hopes were that the Palestinians in Gaza would make a 'good faith attempt' to become a mini Singapore after the withdrawal of Israeli troops on the ground. It's an argument that doesn't hold much water, once you give it more than a moments thought.
It wouldn’t lessen the sense of national identity, it would just transfer it to the new entity. In other words, it would replace multiple smaller nation states with a single larger nation state.
tl;dr the corollary to equating criticism of Israel with being anti-semitic appears to be embracing actual anti-semites so long as they cheer on Israeli crimes.
I've been drawing attention to the fash attempting to cosy up to the Jewish community lately, attempting to paint Islam as a common enemy. It worries me that they're starting to succeed. At the risk of skating close to bringing other subjects into an Epiphanies thread (which is not my intention), I cannot help but see a parallel between this and the way they cosy up to anti-Trans LGB groups and TERFs.
The small minority of marchers chanting "Judenrat" at anti-Zionist Jewish counter-protesters was rather less edifying. I assume they're no more representative than those calling for the death of Jews at pro-Palestine marches but, given all the attention given to the latter it's important to be aware that any large march will attract an extremist fringe.
Arguably the U.S. is not a nation-state, except in the vague and vernacular sense where "nation-state" is used as a metonym for any country, rather than a situation where the nation (a group of people sharing a common birth, natio) is geographically co-extensive with the state (a political entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence).
I think this goes back some time; the Jewish community in the UK is generally more politically conservative than is the case in the US, with some of the move coming in the 2010s as a result of Miliband's policy on Israel (sidenote: Even the party recognised Jewish Labour Movement has as one of its stated values "To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life")
This maps to many of the community organisations having links or members in common with right wing political groups such as the Henry Jackson Society, or Jewish newspapers printing articles by Melanie Phillips, Douglas Murray etc.
That is a very helpful piece of etymology that I'm surprised I hadn't noticed before. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
This is a fault line that runs right through the Labour movement and has done for decades. Even 20 years ago when I was a student it was old hat that the Union of Jewish Students was hand in glove with the National Organisation of Labour Students and both were ardently Zionist, with all expenses paid trips to Israel to see how wonderful it was. Meanwhile pro-Palestinian Jews and gentiles in Labour (including the Federation of Student Islamic Societies) were overwhelmingly associated with Student Broad Left. Many of the same faces that were on either side at that time are now (or were) Labour MPs or party staff.
This is what the IDF means when it claims to be minimizing civilian casualties.
This whole situation is starting to remind me of the US's catastrophic, murderous response to the Sept. 11 attacks, only sped up about 50x. And that was barely twenty years ago - you would think it was recent enough that governments would still remember some of the lessons from it.
Netanyahu clearly took the lesson that the problem in Iraq and Afghanistan was insufficient death and destruction.
I remember, when it first happened, a lot of folks saying "this is our 9-11!" and I wondered how far they'd thought out that analogy. The resemblance is real.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/
Well that was a horrendous read. Thank you, I think.
Things that stuck out:
- "power targets" are a euphemism for terrorist attacks, quite literally intended to "create shock" i.e. terrify the civilian population in pursuit of a political objective.
- comparison with Israeli soldiers: no government would accept routinely targetting enlisted personnel in their private homes and lives as legitimate yet somehow it's different when it's Hamas members.
- almost total disregard for human life. Attacks approved on the flimsiest pretext in the full knowledge of killing dozens of civilians.
- The rotten, maggot ridden cherry on this revolting turd cake: calling the target generation AI "The Gospel". I mean fuck, even allowing that there might be different connotations in Hebrew and in Jewish culture, that is disgusting.
I wonder if it has any connotations beyond the secular, where it tends to mean "absolute truth". The word itself is just Old English for "Good News" (Tolkien riffs on this when he had Wormtongue call Gandalf the opposite - Lathspell), calqued on Greek Euangelion.
Which just makes it feel worse.
It's in Hebrew, Habsora or הבשורה, but seems to be widely used in the religious meaning so it's hard to believe those who named it wouldn't have known exactly how it would look.
The impression given was that in practice it operates as a form of plausible deniability, especially with the close elision between the first and second points, and outsourcing effective decision making capability to an autonomous system is a means of distancing any one individual from a particular outcome.
I expect that miltarys around the world are watching and taking notes.
It does make me rather angry when people comment on Gaza as if it were not already the size and density of a major US city.
I just think of the one that I live in, there's nowhere you could fire an artillery shell without catching civilian architecture in the blast radius. It's passive aggressive victim-blaming in the extreme.
Collateral damage is a horrible expression.
This is more devastating news. Refaat joins 28 artists, poets, writers, musicians, calligraphers, and dancers killed by Israeli bombing in the last two months. When I was reading around, I came across tributes to some of them: poet Shahdah Al-Buhbahan aged 73, killed alongside his six-year-old granddaughter; award-winning poet and novelist Heba Abu Nada, who was killed alongside her son; Lubna Mahmoud Alian, 15-year-old violin prodigy at Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, killed alongside members of her family; Dr. Sufian Taieh, UNESCO Chair in Physics and Astrophysics and Space Science in Palestine and President of the Islamic University, killed alongside his entire family. Words fail me.
And then there are the reporters and journalists dying each day just to keep people informed about what is happening there. To date, 68 journalists have been killed covering the Israeli-Hamas war since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 — more than one a day and 72% of all media deaths worldwide. The overwhelming majority of them have been Palestinian journalists working in the Gaza Strip.
An example:
Every single casualty is a human being whose life was destroyed alongside the lives of their loved ones. One day the ancestors of the perpetrators will visit the site of the memorial to this horror and hang their heads in shame. Apologies and excuses will never be sufficient.
May those responsible for every atrocity be brought to their knees, to beg for forgiveness.
"This week, the Israeli military forces have instructed people to move further south, forcing Gaza's population into an ever-shrinking space. Shelters are shockingly overcrowded, with high risk of epidemic illness. In these overfull and unsanitary spaces, more than 700 people use a single toilet, women give birth (an average of 25 per day), and people nurse open wounds. Tens of thousands sleep in courtyards and streets. People burn plastic to stay warm…"
You can read the whole letter here, where he also says that he believes his staff will be casualties before long.
And now the US vetoes the UN resolution backed by many nations demanding immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
Nation building is always a terrible, terrible thing to witness. Doesn't matter which nationality does it.
An irony that cuts into me is that Israel is, perhaps not even intentionally, treating Palestinians more or less the same way European Christian nations treated Jews. And perhaps based on very similar motivations. Build a country for "us" and you create a people of "them." That thought feels kinda offensive to me. I can feel the way it must feel to a lot of Jewish folks who, perhaps with reason, treat human history as if it were being especially cruel to them apart from every other ethnic minority that's ever tried to make a life on this planet, but...it's hard for me not to keep circling back to it.
What long term outcome does Israel want, do we think? The Status Quo hardly seems sustainable.
Eretz Israel. The fate of Palestinians is a matter of indifference to them so long as they get their land.
My reply was:
When Palestinian deaths are approaching, if not surpassing 20,000, where is the proportionality?
Israel had advised Palestinian civilians to flee to certain safe areas. Now, the Israelis are attacking those areas.
This all smacks of war crimes, in my book.
They want all Palestinians to be absorbed into other nations. Or destroyed. They don't really seem to care which.