The basic flaw in this article is that you don't consider the possibility that pro-Palestinians could change reality by persuading Palestinians to stop acting so stupid all the time. You think only about how to change Israel's behavior, but there's a super easy way that all of the deaths in Gaza could have been avoided, and that's just Hamas not doing October 7th, or even doing it but not killing grandmas while livestreaming it on Facebook to their family 🤷.
Its almost cute in its naivete to believe Hamas, or Palestinian society at large is going to take its marching orders from American Pro-Palestinian activists.
Also, to varying degrees this violence against Gaza has been Israeli policy for over a decade, well before October 7th.
You are very confused. Prior to the invasion of Israel in 2023, there had been no wars since 2014. Israel was pursuing a policy of gradually easing the blockade, increasing work permits into Israel, decreasing security along the Gaza fence, and allowing in unrestricted aid from the Arab world. Gaza was getting better.
But they wanted to die on their feet rather than living on their knees, and so they did, except the bit about being on their feet.
On the contrary, it’s you who are very confused. There was no invasion of Israel. Palestinians can’t invade their own country. There was no war (in the sense that the word “war” is normally used) in Gaza in 2014 or thereafter. What there has been is a series of high tech killing sprees of a stateless people, comprising of mostly refugees and their descendants, who have been living under a blockade in a dense urban enclave. In the Palestinian Territories west of the Jordan river, Israel has been pursuing a policy of annexation, home demolitions, abductions and lethal violence. All of this happens because an extremely self-entitled people, who derive their sense of entitlement from their origin story, have been empowered by a world superpower, and have been largely protected from the consequences of their crimes, that is, until Oct 7th happened.
This is merely an attempt at deflection in the service of shielding Israelis when their crimes are described to them. One of the many vices that Israel apologists are all too prone to make.
The trick there would be to convince the people of Gaza that if they’d only turn away from the belligerent rejectionism of Hamas and other the Islamist groups in favor of the moderate cooperative accomodationism, like, say, the PA, then they’d be a lot further along on the path to self-determination with the support of the Israelis and the international community.
Unfortunately that experiment has been run post-Arafat in the West Bank for the last 20 years and achieved bupkis in that regard.
When there’s Palestinian violence, the Israelis refuse to negotiate a long-term political settlement as to not reward terrorism. When there’s no violence, the Israelis refuse to negotiate such a settlement with the Palestinians because everyone can safely ignore them and maintain the status quo. And the Netanyahu government has already explicitly rejected rule by a (reformed) PA in Gaza.
The pro-Palestinian side often gets rightly criticized for not assigning agency or culpability to pathologies on their side, but going forward I don’t really see much the people of Gaza could do to improve their collective lot.
Most Israelis think the Palestinian Authority is also committed to the destruction of Israel and will use any land that it can get to stage further attacks. Whether this is right or wrong (it's complicated, but if I have to give a black and white answer, I think it's correct), it's what they think, and no path to Palestinian statehood exists that doesn't involve dissuading them of this belief. Now, I don't personally attach any value to the concept of national determination, so I think it much better for Gaza to be absorbed into Egypt, and the West Bank to be split between Jordan and Israel, but that faces the same obstacle, namely that Israelis have to be persuaded it won't just be used as a base for further attacks, like south Lebanon was.
Going forward, though, specifically for the people of Gaza, it is obvious that humane response is to help as many of them as possible to leave.
Absolutely: individuals that want to leave should be allowed to leave, on pure humanitarian grounds. But that leaves unresolved the questions as to who bears responsibility for conditions on the ground being intentionally made to be so uninhabitable as to make that mitigation necessary, what the consequences for that should be, and what burden the US should take on to shield them from those consequences at the loss of its own prestige in the region.
Regardless, we already know from the mass expulsion experiment of 1948 how Israelis feel about Palestinian right of return, so that one-way ticket would be a tough sell to make to the people of Gaza collectively.
From an American liberal perspective—presumably the vantage of the writer’s post —there’s the moral hazard of endorsing and rewarding a policy of ethnic cleansing, in whole or in part, that most of us believe was Israel’s ultimate inclination (if not outright plan) going back to its founding. If they get away with it in Gaza, a similar policy in the West Bank is sure to follow, Hamas or no Hamas.
Israelis generally seem to be perfectly fine with that outcome, if polls are to be believed, but American liberals have deep misgivings about their country underwriting all of it while at the same time feeling powerless to have effectively influenced the relevant US policy in a direction more to their liking.
None whatsoever, but that’s the logistical problem for the expulsionists to solve. One is usually assured that “Palestinians” don’t actually exist, in which case no one should have to be moved.
Surely a ‘humane response’ would be a) to immediately stop slaughtering en masse the civilian population of Gaza by starvation and carpet bombing and b) to stop treating the Palestinian population in general like Untermenschen.
But the Israelis are gripped by a nineteenth century colonial mindset in which problems with ‘unruly natives’ have only colonial-type ‘solutions’ whereas the only genuinely humane solution is to be found through respect of post-WWII international humanitarian law.
You just live in a world of empty words signifying nothing more than emotional attachments you have to them. Let us say that Israel stops all military activity right now. 90% of Gazans live in tents; most of the buildings are destroyed. Whichever group will take over the Gaza strip will just commence planning some new attack on Israel, and we get to do this all over again in, say, five years.
What is the point in all this? Nationalism isn't real. People aren't actually attached to some piece of soil in which they thrive because their ancestors live there or some such. They can just go live in some new place that isn't so messed up. Like your ancestors did.
P.S. You really have to get over this colonial bullshit. 90% of the Israelis who want to kill more Palestinians are brown people from the MENA. 90% of Israelis who want to kill fewer Palestinians are white Jews from Europe. The reason Israel is becoming more brutal to the Palestinians is because it's becoming a real Middle Eastern country.
If Israel ‘stops all military activity’ many civilian lives would be saved. If new groups eventually took up arms it would be because an oppressive governing regime offered no future but servitude. Colonial history gives numerous examples.
You say people aren’t attached to land and can simply go and live somewhere else. Surely that should apply to the Israeli latecomers to the area.
The State of Israel signed the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines the duties of an occupying power and the rights of the people occupied. Why doesn’t Israel respect even its own word?
Yes, obviously if Israelis leave that will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians have been testing the theory that they can bring this about through terrorism for a century, but it hasn't worked.
2. “The urge to kill Palestinians was simply waiting for the all-clear of Oct. 7. Precious Israelis were captured…. You forgot about the massacre of Israeli women, children, old men and women. ‘All clear’? Are you sick?
3. “their land…” All of it, you think? Utter nonsense. And you know it. So Jews were never in Judea?
4. Comparison of Palestinians to Native American Indians is very interesting. And I don’t think you appreciate the implications of that comparison. For the Palestinians.
5. Whether it be Gaza or the PA , Palestinians have been starting and losing wars with Israel since 1949. So I’ll say it once again. Starting a war has serious consequences for a People. Starting and losing a war has catastrophic consequences for that People. Starting and losing 4-8 war (depending on how one counts) has world historic geopolitical consequences. It’s unfortunate that you’re so blinded by your own want of common sense that you can’t see beyond the momentary ‘but I don’t like it because I think it’s unfair, terribly unfair’. From one moment to another and another.
What I said was my opinion that the historic and present trajectory of the Palestinians is one of diaspora resulting from the aforementioned starting and losing wars. They’ve had plants of opportunities to make lemonade from lemons and have spurned them again and again. Tragic. And not Israel’s fault when viewed from the long road of history to this point.
I don't know if it's woke. He sides by default with Muslims against Jews and this colours his perception of the conflict, though he tries to be civilized about in (and succeeds FWIW). In some very abstract sense, this is not the correct way to approach things, but it is how it is. Obviously, if there was some dipshit group of non-Muslims who kept trying to re-litigate a war from 80 years ago through terrorism against Muslims and narcissistic Wakanda historiography, he would look at it differently. But I will be charitable and assume he would have some compassion for this hypothetical nation of fools, and so should we.
I don't see how it can possibly be described as woke. Its non-moralistic realism which is about as diametrically opposed to wokeism as possible. If we look at the situation fairly and historical context (reestablishing the ancient state of Judea in the 20th century) I'd have to say that the State of Israel is more of the Wakanda project. If Palestinian nationalism has taken on a few of those components its more by a mirroring effect. Everyone's views are colored by their standpoint to a degree including yours and mine, but I would have compassion for such a nation, though maybe I would spend less time thinking about a depressing subject which is arguably even detrimental to become involved in.
Woke is simultaneously white ethnomasochism and brown ethnonarcissism, but I didn't call you woke.
Sure, Zionism is a crazy ideology, but I live in a house not a tent surrounded by rubble, and that's the difference between a crazy ideology implemented well, and a crazy ideology implemented badly.
I don’t think the “Palestinians” have it in themselves to “stop acting so stupid all the time.” Given how the gazan children are educated, Jew hate is inbred from childhood. And that kind of hatred then breeds political and military stupidity as adults. My guess is that they become diaspora through the ME over the coming decades.
UN statistics show that prior to Oct 7, 20 Palestinians had been killed for each Israeli killed. As for "they teach their children to kill us" quite the opposite is the case, but the mantra in Israel contributed to the joy of the IDF troops in Gaza recorded on their smartphones.
The urge to kill Palestinians was simply waiting for the all-clear of Oct. 7. Precious Israelis were captured, so the vermin in Gaza could be slaughtered with relish. The world ignored the three slaughters of Gazans years before, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge and Operation Pillar of Defense, collectively known in Israel as "mowing the grass" indicating the worthlessness of Palestinian lives in Israeli eyes. There is a photo taken during one of the three operations of Israelis sitting in lawn chairs enjoying the view of destruction.
The plight of the Palestinians comes from their crime of refusing to leave their land despite the terrible oppression they have endured. It is precisely the same as the case of the American Indians, Hamas then taking the form of Geronimo, Cochise, Blue Jacket and others who said they would die rather than yield their land to the white man.
That you dare to speak of "Jew hate" when the world has heard the words of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and Netanyahu about the Palestinians is incredible. Where have you been as Israeli settlers have been beating Palestinians, burning their olive orchards and terrorizing the natives for decades...while the IDF stood by watching. These settlers have now been officially armed by Ben-Gvir, distributing semi-automatic rifles to any that want them. Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to having no rights, are not permitted to be armed.
You verify where you are coming from by putting the word Palestinians in quotes.
Arrogance, ignorance and self-righteousness are a very toxic mix. Zionism features them all with the phenomenal claim that Israelis are the victims in their project of land theft by the use of force.
Jews are welcome, respected, successful and a credit to American society in which they are equal citizens along with everyone else, notably the descendants of the native-Americans who had to go through hell like the Palestinians. It should be noted that native-Americans are full citizens and have been since 105 years ago.
This citizenship in the state that did all it could to exterminate them was given only 30 years after the end of the Indian Wars in 1890. It was at least some recognition of the horror that was done.
Today, 76 years after the bloody beginning of Israel, all that the Palestinians can expect is more hatred and killing in attempts to get rid of them by their occupiers. It is despicable. Equally so is the full support of my beloved country, the United States.
If Native Americans haad maintained demographic parity with white settlers, they would never have been admitted for citizenship. The main problem Palestinians have is that there are simply too many of them for any state in the region to absorb them without collapsing.
"The main problem Palestinians have"? Killing tens of thousands of helpless people is a problem. The Nazis took it into millions and there is no indication that Israel will stop at anything short of extermination. There is no evidence that most Israelis think anything more of killing Palestinians than the Nazis did of killing Jews. From the beginning Zionism wanted the land and that is exactly what it has been accomplished by force. It is a second holocaust, an attempt to make right the first by committing the second. Two wrongs don't make a right and you write of the victims having a problem.
Will you take responsibility, as Sabrina and I do, and give your real name in English? On my vigil on a street corner I have had many Zionists curse me and shout obscenities. Yesterday one called me a terrorist for exercising my freedom of speech. Not one of them has identified himself, nor is a single Israeli flag evident anywhere here. Who would be proud to show that flag that represents a country endlessly slaughtering people?
Regarding your citizenship comment, Israelis brag that 20% of Israelis are not Jewish. That is a small minority that by your logic should be given full citizenship. Far from that, many Israelis call for the expulsion of non-Jewish Israelis. Ethnic supremacy is never pretty and Israel is the proof...76 years of abuse now openly shown in slaughter of the untermensche.
And what do you make of Hamas’ admission today that 72% of Gaza deaths so far in this conflict are military age males and that they over calculated civilian deaths? And that Hamas lopped off 3400 so-called confirmed deaths and 1000+ children?
FYI. Not picking a fight here, but your points above don’t necessarily have the persuasive force you think they do.
Some of us Americans remember the “military age males” canard from our own GWOT drone assassination program. And that was when we had a Nobel peace prize winner in the White House.
I feel like I’m in a remake of Taxi Driver and I’m Travis Bickle, ‘You talkin’ to me?’
Cuz I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand your point. It’s not my assertion. It’s Hamas’ own ‘correction’ to what theyve been asserting forever about the nature of Gaza’s war dead at the hands of the IDF.
I was triggered by the line “military age males” and its history, which, yes, wasnt really relevant to what you were saying.
That said…collecting, counting, and record-keeping of bodies accurately in a war zone with >90% infrastructure destruction is a fiendishly difficult task. The Gaza Health ministry, whatever else its faults, has the dubious distinction of having gotten quite good at it from the experience going back to Cast Lead in 2009 to the point where even the Israeli gov’t bases their own estimates on those numbers.
I usually mentally put error bars of 10% on any Gaza death count numbers when I read them in articles. When most people on the Pro-Palestininian side quote the numbers, they are almost always making some qualitative point about the enormity of human devastation in Gaza that would still hold if the actual number were 10% higher or 10% lower than the one they quoted.
In fact, I recall a press conference with Netanyahu early last year where he “disputed” whatever the Gaza health ministry numbers were at the time and asserted that he believed the numbers were lower and quoted a value that differed by only 6%, which presumably are numbers he was getting from his internal intelligence sources. That’s a pretty good cross-check endorsement of the veracity of the Gaza health ministry estimates, in my book.
Looking at the physical devastation in Gaza, logic tells me that there must be countless hundreds to thousands of undocumented bodies under all that rubble. There are stories of wild dogs growing fat on eating the decaying corpses. And the health ministry only counts bodies that can be brought into hospitals or health facilities. So the estimates are almost assuredly lower than actual. We probably won’t know the real body count for years.
It also makes sense to me that there might be a correction to the health ministry posted numbers after an extended ceasefire when they had more time and resources for record-checking and reassessment of their statistics and methods. It actually speaks well of them, in my view, that they would be that diligent and then publish their findings.
After all, if propaganda were their primary goal, why would they ever self-correct the numbers downward? They would just write “100 million dead” on a bloody shirt and wave it around in front of Al Jazeera cameras.
Besides, usually one hears hair-splitting scrutiny over every facet of the historically-reliable statistical methods and numbers from the Hamas-run health ministry but accepts without any critical analysis or self-awareness whatsoever, numbers from the IDF, who have their own incentives to inflate Hamas fighter death count, as if they were infallibly dictated from a holy burning bush. I usually conclude the person—Andrew Fox and John Spencer types—making the point is not so sincerely interested in objective fact or scientific accuracy but rather is just operating in bad-faith or has some other ideological motive.
Israel is committing a second holocaust and doing it with eagerness against fellow human beings, unending slaughter by a fully equipped modern army, navy and air force, the best the United States can provide. No hesitation, mass killing has been going on from 2023 to now with no end in sight. The victims are helpless, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza.
Now here comes a person who doesn't have the courage to use his real name. He (she?) has nothing to say about ethnic cleansing, ethnic supremacy and the rejection of liberty and justice for all. Blind to the atrocities of Israel, like the war criminal Netanyahu, he can think only of disparaging the victims.
Well, you who hide behind anonymity, afraid to take responsibility for what you post so carelessly, I use my real name and have been standing on a street corner in the US in front of a synagogue whose rabbi and members appeared at a public hearing to denounce a ceasefire. I also stand in front of the entrance to Northwestern University. I have been doing this for over 5 months throughout the cold of winter and I freely give my name as I do here.
I want to end the awful grip of Zionism on the United States, that has pulled the US down to the lowest point in its history and is currently trying to crush freedom of speech. That's why I am on the corner, week after week with no end in sight, standing for liberty and justice for all, the thing that Zionism rejects as it has stolen and continues to steal the land from the natives just as was done by Anglo-Americans to the American Indians.
You keep hiding as "OverFlowError" here, asking about Hamas and ignoring the slaughter that your comments imply you approve of, and I will continue to be on the street speaking to hundreds of people in person and freely giving my name, obsessed with liberty and justice for all.
Where to begin with your feelings of guilt. Second holocaust? No, and any comparison to the real Holocaust is an anathema, a sick insult by a confused man. Numbers matter. Intent matters. Circumstances matter. And none are present in this attempted slander of yours. Such accusations are thrown at Israel as if they presented a serious accusation. They are not. Seventy plus percent of the Jews in Europe were killed in the Holocaust. Have you even tried to look at even the numbers of civilian casualties claimed by Hamas to the Palestinian population there? You’re an adult, and you think there’s a real, a close comparison? It’s a frank stupidity your part. And you just blurt it out as though the blurting lends credence to the accusation.
And what do you make of Hamas’ admission today that 72% of Gaza deaths so far in this conflict are military age males and that they over calculated civilian deaths? And that Hamas lopped off 3400 so-called confirmed deaths including 1000+ children? This admission comes at an awkward moment for you, no?
Do you think your criticisms carry weight or credibility because your name is Clif Brown? You say it is but there’s no proof of fact in naming yourself upon sign up here, is there? Call yourself Alfred E. Neuman and we’d not know the difference. Nor would your points be any wiser or more foolish. You think you “take responsibility “ for your posts? How so? Dear Clif, nobody gives a damn here whether you post under an assumed name, a real name or anonymously. What gives credence is the substance of the the thoughts you post, the words you use, the cogency, accuracy to the ears of others. You could have made the same bleating post anonymously and it’d still be a bleating post patting yourself on the back about being on a street corner “standing for liberty and justice for all.” And that homily makes you what? Right? Persuasive? Ya, no one’s ever been wrong standing on a corner with a sign since the sign is a sure sign of ‘truth, justice and the American way’? Never any crazies out on the cold corners?
Anonymity in public speech carries a great tradition with it. Have you ever read the Federalist Papers? I’m not John Jay, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton for damn sure, but what you really sound like is a fella who believes in doxing rhetorical opponents, people you disagree with so you can try to apply some “responsibility”? Why do you care? No one takes you more seriously because you say you’re out on the corner in the cold “obsessed with liberty and justice for all.” That has a ring of truth to it. The “obsessed “ part anyways.
The Gazans started this latest iteration of yet another war in the ME. And they are paying a heavy price for their murderous massacre. Hopefully, Hamas will be eradicated as the Nazis were in Germany. Your posts support Hamas because you are obsessed with a false narrative. You assign no real responsibility to Hamas. Or to the population that supports them. It’s a serious business starting a war as the Gazans did. And your standing on a cold corner with a sign patting yourself on the back won’t end it. It will end when Israel says it will end. Or when Gazans start killing enough of the Hamas among them to drive them once and for all out of power.
“We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us...”
They wouldn’t teach that hate to their children and use them as defensive military props if they did. Hamas bears direct responsibility. The Gazan civilians are directly responsible for not removing Hamas.
Golda was a terrible person. That is the dumbest quote - pretty much sums up the backwards ass logic of Zionists. And they don’t teach that to their kids - ISRAEL DOES. Literally they have outlook points to watch the genocide from afar and cheer . I’ve met Zionist kids who have been taught hate from their parents. Wake up.
I don't understand why the idea of just ending the war by accepting Israel's existence and not spending another ten generations attempting to wipe it out doesn't even come up here. It's such an odd blind spot.
Israel has said that if Hamas lays down its arms and surrenders the next step is the “voluntary emigration” of the population. Please try to keep up with events.
No it hasn't. You may want to check Israeli media sources, instead of getting all your news from the same sources that celebrate the death of every Israeli civilian as an achievement. Those aren't being honest with you.
It’s literally what Netanyahu + other members of Likud and the ruling coalition have explicitly stated in text and on video (amongst plenty of people from the general population of Israel). You’re not fooling anyone.
Look, I know you know that's not true. I understand that it feels good to look for excuses to demonize the opposition. It feels good to see yourself as a tortured, innocent oppressed martyr. And it feels good to look to read people who let you feel this way.
But real people are dying in this war. And so long as you can't take responsibility for keeping it going because you care more about feeling vindicated than about peace, it can't end. Israelis aren't going to sit down and accept being bombed, kidnapped raped and tortured to death just because it makes you feel good. If you want peace to ever actually happen, you need to accept the actual responsibility for the outcomes of your actions.
It’s not silly at all. Their not doing so already is not for lack of trying. Biden and Blinken asked the Egyptians early on to take Gazans and they categorically refused. Despite what pro-Palestine people think there were SOME constraints that the Biden admin and the Israelis felt they were forced to contend with (although Israel never stopped trying to find a workaround, hence: “voluntary migration”).
Now that Trump has broached and promoted the idea, the Israelis—including members of the opposition in the Knesset and so called “liberals” in gen pop—are openly supporting it because there’s now an American admin that’s willing to potentially ram the policy down Egypt/Jordan’s/the Arab world’s throat.
I always double check and 99% of the times they are accurate, as in this case. I dont understand what you are discussing: there is a clear apartheid, displacement, extermination, ethnic cleansing going on for decades. We all know it. Its cheap & ridiculuos to keep blaming it on Hamas.
Well for the first 100 years the Zionist movement and Britain should not have attempted to create a colonial state by displacing all the Arabs who lived in Palestine, but I feel like you want to ignore that.
So you admit the stray comment by Netanyahu isn’t the cause of Palestines warmongering? It’s really about genociding the Israelis? Great.
Also, not all the Arabs who lived in Palestine were displaced, and their displacement was caused by the genocidal war they themselves started. So spare me the whining.
The Native American Genocide didn't kill or displace every single native either. Natives also fought back, viciously at times, against European colonization. The comparison you invite does you no favors.
The Zionist movement fully intended to strip all land, civil, and political rights from the Palestinians who lived there to create a new ethnostate. The 'peace' and 'rights' promised were not worth the paper they were written on—as the author of that paper himself acknowledged.
Okay cool, so you admit you were lying about "all" the Arabs being displaced. Nice to know we agree that the Palestinians have always wanted to genocide the Israelis, and so offhand comment by Netanyahu are just an excuse. Thanks for the conversation!
On many occasions -- in 1971, 1988, 2002 and others -- the Palestinians or their representatives offered to recognize the existence of Israel -- in most cases, full diplomatic recognition -- in exchange for a withdrawal to the 1967, internationally mandated borders. Israel has always refused. It has never been willing to accept the existence of a Palestinian state, because it has never relinquished its goal of Greater Israel, that is, a Jewish state "from the river to the sea," in the words of Likud's founding charter.
Of course most Americans, like you apparently, haven't the faintest idea of this history. I recommend the books of Avi Shlaim, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, and Tanya Reinhardt, among others.
(to clarify, this was the exact opposite of what happened - in all those cases Israel offered peace and the Palestinians walked away because they can't accept a peace where Israel still exists.
Well except 1971, that was just two years before Arabs launched their third or fourth attempt at wiping Israel off the map. No idea how you go that one).
Thanks for the "clarification," Shaked. People who want to decide between your version and mine can consult the authors I mentioned, as well as Rashid Khalidi's "The Hundred Years War on Palestine" and Nasser Aruri's "Dishonest Broker: The Role of the US in Israel and Palestine."
Perhaps you should check with actual historians and what they think of Khalidi who never used any first source materials and only anecdotal stories. A good book to read would be 1948 by Benny Morris who is a respectable historian. This embarrassing that you chose an extremely biased narrative for the truth.
I assume you mean "Check with pro-Israel historians who have not said a word about the horrendous Israeli assault on Gaza except to defend it." Morris was an excellent historian, and he seems to have made some good (though mostly minor) points against Khalidi here: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/7210/the-war-on-history/. But one of his substantive criticisms is simply mistaken. He criticizes Khalidi for calling Zionists "colonizers," since no state sent them. But one of the meanings of "colonize" is "come to settle among and establish political control over (the Indigenous people of an area" (Oxford Languages online). To deny that Jewish settlers colonized a land that other people were living on simply makes honest discussion impossible.
It's worth noting, when talking about said authors, that Noam Chomsky still denies the Cambodian genocide and none of the others are any better. If what you want is to find authors that will enable you to hate western countries regardless of facts, these are good places to go. But they will lead you to neverending war, and if you don't like the results of that you may want to read real history.
Not exactly. In 1977, before anyone knew for certain what was happening in postwar Cambodia, Chomsky wrote a review of reporting from the area (https://chomsky.info/19770625/). He found, unsurprisingly, that the most sensational allegations were least credible but also the most widely publicized -- just what one would expect in media coverage of an official enemy. His own judgment was "major atrocities," of as yet unknown extent. He did not "deny," and has never denied, Khmer Rouge genocide.
I don’t think many honest brokers take khalidi’s “histories” as gospel. The old saw is that history is written by the winners. So far I’d say Israel is nearer to that status than the Gazans or PA’s. 10/7 broke the backs of any honest brokers. Hamas is genocidal. Until 1988, explicitly and publicly so. Post 10/7, I don’t think anyone takes post 1988 Hamas seriously as a peace partner. Hence, most folks world wide don’t care if Israel just gets on with it and roots out Hamas by any means. If Gazans remain to support Hamas, they get the hard end of the fighting along with the Hamas henchmen. So the only question is, will Gazans hold out for 3 3/4 years more (at a minimum) to the end of Trump because Bibi’s likely to get what he wants.
It isnt, Israel never offered a proper state to the Palestinians, they never offered the land which they were legally entitled to, the Palestinians did recognise Israel though, Israel responded by moving settlers into the west bank.
The Palestinian national movement has never indicated a credible offer of peace. If the Palestinians attempted a Gandhi-style campaign of nonviolent resistance, Israel would be forced from both internal and external forces to relent. Why don't the Palestinians try that?
Phoenix: It's a reasonable question. The answer is that for many decades the Israeli security forces smothered most nonviolent political organization by Palestinians, via censorship, regulations against public meetings, "anti-terrorist" legislation, restrictions on external financial support, etc. You seem to have a far more elevated conception of Israel's political morality than the history warrants.
In as much as the the Great March of Return had a political end, it was right there in the title, Palestinians get to return to Israel and so it was not even pretending to be in favour of a 2 state solution.
But functionally speaking that wasn't its end because it's just completely stupid to think that Israel would just let all the Palestinians return simply because they said they want to and rocked up. Functionally speaking, its sole purpose was to make Israel relax and then renege on it's policy of having a killzone in front of the Gaza barrier. And this end was successfully achieved. Of course, it's not clear how Gazans benefit in any way from being able to walk within 500 meters of the Gaza barrier, but it did have one clear effect, namely that it made the October 7th invasion possible.
And so now 50,000, and likely more, Gazans are dead. No doubt this is all worth it if you are a depraved callous altruist, or a western leftist, but I repeat myself.
I don't think we deserve a great deal of sympathy, and if I did, I wouldn't think it terribly important if we got it or not. But maybe sympathise with the Palestinians you have encouraged to destroy themselves through your vicarious heroism.
An excellent piece Murtaza. It’s rare to see commentary this clear-eyed when talking about Palestine.
I’m as blind to the future as you are, but the one place where my predictions would differ would be on the US public’s reaction to locking up and deporting protestors. Too much of the US origin myth and self conception is based on the ideal of human rights and free speech. The liberal order may be decaying worldwide, but the US is too deeply founded on liberal morality to truly abandon it domestically. I expect a backlash and eventual course correction, though possibly one that tries to merge it with nativist/isolationist instincts.
Thanks Justin. I actually agree, in that the First Amendment is such a core part of American identity and this flagrant assault on it would inevitably engender a negative response.
I hope you're right. I'm not optimistic, though. Support for Israel goes way beyond a power structure and a lobby. By its own defenders, it's been called the "tip of the spear," a "mighty aircraft carrier for the US," the "best investment we ever made," a nation that "we need more than they need us,"* and I think that's an accurate framing. It's the tip of the spear of American empire. To challenge it is to challenge American empire itself, which is why protests against it are treated more harshly than protests against even the President himself.
(*In order, those phrases are direct quotes from Josh Hammer, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden, and Nikki Haley.)
You can wear a pink hat and protest Trump. You can boycott any American state or corporation. You can hurl invectives at any ally -- any, except Israel. This is not about one small country in the Middle East that just happens to be our largest recipient of aid. It's about what it means for the US.
Vigilante violence is not ok, even in response to blasphemy. But other than Iran, what government authorizes that? Is Iran the standard we're adopting now?
Oh my god, you go on and on and never even touch upon what matters - Hamas and some significant portion of Gazans got exactly what they want, including unthinkable death and destruction and, bonus, people like you running cover for them.
Just like the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto got exactly what came to them and their community right. Zionists are nazis of today and Islam will win. Zionism will fall.
So much to chew on here and as always reading your thoughts leave me with keen awareness of my intellectual shortcomings. In many ways I can see the resonance of this argument in how an individual should/might navigate work relationships as well, which then leaves me a little cold (is there no loyalty). I remember you saying that you were influenced by Fukayama, but is this not contrary to “The End of History “.
Is the key the to Palestinian liberation a person(s) who have a keen understanding of how power works, a la Great Man theory.
If Israel's "special relationship" with the US we're broken by, say, an alliance of shrewd Khaliji Royals and alt-right US oligarchs, a lot of my fellow pro Palestinian activits would be quietly disappointed. Strange, because compared to mass protest, it's easier to imagine something like that actually working. For those who don't personally suffer the consequences of Palestinian weakness, the method by which liberation is achieved is more important than liberation itself.
A sobering read. The liberal framework -- by which Palestinians and their allies appealed to rights, to international law, and so on has come to nought. Beginning in the 20th century "Great Powers" (principally Britain and then the US) paid lip service to liberal values when convenient. Not to put too fine a point on it, these "values" were mostly invoked on behalf of "civilized" (White) populations, not colonized natives. Now the liberal pretense is as dead as a dodo (thanks to Biden in Gaza, and to Trump's whole philosophy).
So much progress has been made, the civil rights movement, the women's movement and one can't be too dismayed by the flash-in-the-pan Trump as he was elected by just a bit over 1/4 of the American electorate.
It isn't true that people are not swayed by events. Bull Conner hosing down blacks had an electric effect on white America. The situation of blacks under slavery was a powerful factor in the northern states.
The fact that the Palestinians are in such dire straits is due to what you so accurately describe, the success of Jews in America that placed them in positions where, if they are Zionists, they can exercise their authority to do such things as get a pro-Palestinian employee fired or, as in the case of Bill Ackman, declare that none such will be hired. No conspiracy, it is simply exercising the power a group finds themself able to exert.
Zionists can, as publishers or newsroom producers, stop a pro-Palestinian opinion piece or reader letter from being published or aired. They can, as politicians (or though threatening politicians), pour money and weapons to Israel. As millionaires and billionaires they can, through AIPAC, place people they like in Congress so that a war criminal, Netanyahu, can not only be asked to appear, but will receive standing ovations there. As megadonors to universities, Zionist can dictate the end of freedom of speech on campus and back it up with our Zionist headed government threatening withdrawal of federal money. Zionist Sheldon Adelson bought the US embassy move to Jerusalem, so what can't Zionists do?
Zionism has America locked up and having had this tight grip for years, Israel has been allowed by the US to do anything it wishes without consequences. Power unrestrained is never a good thing and it creates monsters, either individuals or countries. The monster that we see in Israel today is a creation of Zionism in America that brought the nonpartisan support of Israel.
But the open slaughter of Palestinians by the IDF is not without consequences. There is a revolution in Congress, Democrats are deserting the Zionist leadership. Schumer, who openly boasts that he is a defender of Israel is in trouble. The decades long bipartisan support of Israel is crumbling. Go Bernie!
More is needed. We citizens cannot be spectators. Here is where we the people come in. For over 5 months I have been standing on a corner in front of an American synagogue whose rabbi and congregation vehemently denounced a city ceasefire resolution attempt, all making it a point to identify themselves as Jews. Why? So that the effort could be called antisemitic if it progressed. It died. The person proposing the resolution was fired. Zionism at work but that did it for me.
There I am, day after day, week after week, month after month with a Palestinian flag flying and signs that say such things as "Israel is NOT in the Pledge of Allegiance" and "Zionism is NOT Judaism" Of course the police were immediately called. They arrived to say, "some people are uncomfortable about you being here, would you consider moving across the street?" No, I would not. Freedom of speech is real, but who is using it?
Now that what I call the Antisemitism Inquisition is touring universities in an effort to punish and intimidate pro-Palestinian protesters, I am at the entrance to Northwestern University with my Palestinian flag and signs. You can see them at clifbrown.substack.com
Zionism at the personal level is easily defeated because it is ethnic supremacist, rejecting liberty and justice for all. I don't get into arguments with Zionists because they can't defend this foundational principle of the movement to create Israel. Additionally, Zionism is not about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" because it denies all three of these to the natives of the land it has taken from them by might making right. It bears a far closer relationship to National Socialism than American democracy.
Zionism is un-American, it is as simple as that, and it is incredible that many American Jews who enjoy all the freedom, all the success, all the acceptance that they do in the US can be Zionist and even be dual citizens, jumping between the rights and freedom of the US and the ability to go take land from the Palestinians and even kill them. Could there be any greater hypocrisy?
Gideon Levy quotes Golda Meir as saying, "after the holocaust, Jews can do anything" and that is exactly what we are seeing right now. The slaughter of the natives is being done by people who are blinded by self-righteousness and are convinced that they are victims even as they destroy helpless people with a fully modern army equipped with all the US can provide for killing as efficiently as possible. Oct 7 was an epic horror but unlimited and ongoing killing of tens of thousands is not to be criticized? This moral blindness is passed on deliberately from generation to generation of Israelis as high school kids are deliberately traumatized by trips to Auschwitz where they can wrap themselves in the Israeli flag. True, one doesn't have to go, but many do.
It is astounding to hear Zionists say that Palestinians "teach their children to kill us". The whole thing is given away by Netanyahu declaring that Israel is the force of light against the force of darkness. He believes this as surely as Hitler believed that he was doing Europe a favor by killing Jews. The holocaust, horror that it was, has survived in Zionist minds as allowing them anything by way of compensation, to which nothing can compare. Nothing is ruled out, no number of natives slaughtered would be too much. No wonder the IDF did not hesitate in Gaza.
This is communal madness and the number one priority for the United States is to break free of the awful grip of Zionism that has like an anchor dragged our country into a moral abyss. It was terrifying when Biden declared himself a Zionist, the President of the United States not hesitating to say he endorses the rejection of liberty and justice for all! How much more could one be a traitor to America than that?
There is a long way to go, but the grip is weakening. Any American reading this - get out on the street and demonstrate against Zionism. Exercise your freedom of speech to pull our country up from the lowest point in American history - fully supporting the slaughter being done by Israel when we claim to have learned from the same operation done to the American Indian.
"Gaza was the rock upon which post-World War II human rights discourse finally broke." Maybe in the Western world.
Not in the rest of the world. Human rights broke a long time ago in huge parts of the world and was fixed in them and other parts through uprisings, demonstrations, imprisonment, torture and deaths.
You can discuss it if you want. I just think its deeply questionable the extent to which this is the primus inter pares issue that people organize politics around. Israel is also becoming a more purely Middle Eastern country in the sense that it cares little to nothing for human rights and is more of a realist state
It is good to see some reflection on what your favored side did wrong, but you still cannot allow yourself to acknowledge that this is an Arab Israli conflict, not an Arab-West conflict. You are still wedded to the idea that what Israelis think doesn't matter. That somehow all you need is to convince the US to abandon Israel. Israel defeated multiple Arab attempts to annihilate it before the US became its ally. It is conceivable that Israel, a nuclear armed state, a weapons provider in world ridden by conflicts, a first innovative economy, will find other allies if it were abandoned by the US. You should devote more effort to understand how Israel went from having a strong peace camp, and overwhelming support for a two state solution, to where we are now. Maybe it's time the Palestinians reflect really hard and rethink the idea that they have to coerce Israel rather than convince Israel that concessions to them will not mean more frequent and more horrific Oct 7's. It's going to be really hard now, and that's the real blunder.
I thought you were examining what went wrong and what is to be done. It is notable that you don't ever consider the option of engaging with Israel and Israelis rather than coming up with less and less plausible ways of coercing Israel.
I read his article as a perspective from the American Left on the frustrations with the inefficacy of the western pro-Palestinian movement to positively influence US policy on the conflict.
It’s quite possible that a more Palestinian-sympathetic US policy would not have ultimately moved the needle much with Israeli opinion or on facts on the ground thousands of miles away, but we’ll never actually know because of questionable domestic strategy choices within the movement.
American college students being seen as publicly embracing Hamas as a righteous and moral resistance group and using Palestinian nationalist slogans was just as likely to alienate the broader American public from their cause as when some of their grandparents similarly embraced the Viet Cong, Chairman Mao, or “Bring the War Home” SPS violence as means to bring an end to the Vietnam war.
Any serious student of the history of American leftist politics should have seen that coming a mile away. In fact, there’s a YouTube of Norman Finkelstein speaking at Columbia last year earnestly trying to steer young activists away from those methods and slogans.
Engaging with Israel is useless. Remember Oslo. It has been used to turn the Westbank into ghettoised communities that have zero freedom of movement and cruel abuses at checkpoints, and has rendered the PLO ineffective.
The idea that you can look at the last several decades of Palestinian history and somehow consider that a path to victory is very strange. In every conceivable metric they've lost. They've lost massive numbers of lives and a huge amount of territory. More broadly the entire Arab world is a disaster. What would losing even look like if this doesn't qualify? Israel is not going to be broken. Best case scenario they have to make a compromise and have stable agreed-on borders with their neighbors. They're a very a wealthy high tech country surrounded by completely dysfunctional backward places like Egypt and Lebanon. Nobody's breaking them.
What exactly do you expect in response to your "insights" which have nothing at all to do with what I wrote or with the original post? You run into a random pro-Israel commenter and feel you have to share your ignorant perspective?
"A sincere belief in human rights to the neglect of hard power and material interests has become a kind of intellectual opium, rendering people dependent, numb, and depressed, as they wait for a nonexistent arc of history to bend in their favor. History will not vindicate you, nor condemn your enemies...You either win or lose. There are no moral victories. The important question is not to ask why the world is silent to your suffering, but how you allowed yourself to become so weak in the first place, and what you are going to do about it now."
This a beautiful and haunting passage I will think about over course of the day.
Early and consistent global unification in opposition to all Islamic terrorism including Hamas and Hezbollah would have resulted in a better life for all Palestinians. The activism against Irael and in support of Hamas and Hezbollah achieve nothing but continued misery for the Palestinian people.
Lol, this literally has nothing to do with anything. When Palestinian nationalist groups were overwhelmingly secular nationalist Israeli hated and attacked them with if anything even greater force. They're just doing what they want because they have the upper hand, the solution is to lower their hand not engage in these pointless semantic games.
'When Palestinian nationalist groups were overwhelmingly secular nationalist Israeli hated and attacked them with if anything even greater force.'
This is certainly untrue. The fact is that the Palestinian movement has suffered its most crushing defeats during those periods when it was heavily Islamicised, specifically in 1948 and right now. Despite the often appalling brutality of the PLO, they actually did a pretty good job of advancing their national interests and making progress towards national self determination and this all spluttered out with the rise of Hamas.
When was there any Palestinian nationalist groups that were not committed to Iran-funded "death to Israel"?
It is they height of intellectual dishonesty to claim that Israel would never welcome a peaceful Palestinian neighbor... that Israel is committed to perpetual war against the Palestinians for any reason other than the Palestinians have been controlled by terrorist groups committed to the destruction of Israel.
I don't think its even possible to have a discussion with someone this ignorant. Iran was not even relevant to the subject until relatively recently in history, and during the heydey of the PLO it was actually governed by a totally different regime that was sympathetic to Israel. The older generation of Palestinian groups accepted Israel decades ago and they are still hated and banned by Israel nonetheless. I think you should find something to talk about that is more on your own level.
Presumably that was because those Palestinian nationalists groups were killing Israeli civilians and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
Yes there is such as a thing as human rights, whether or not positivist law incorporates it or not. Every moral person should attempt to incorporate human rights into their governments legal code.
Where this piece completely fails is that the reason there is not outrage is because there is no genocide. The casualties are very much within the normal boundaries of war. Where morality has failed is on part of the International law activists and the overall islamic world to encourage and actively evacuate the women and children of Gaza.
Every sane person understands that Jus Bello has been met, and the Israelis are justified in going to war. The moral failure is on account of Arab nations to then invite and offer protection to their fellow compatriots. Instead, the Palestinians are used as a third rail against Israel. The Arab world, nor the author actually cares about the Palestinians. Instead Palestinianism is a nihilistic attempt to dislodge Jewish sovereignty from this Earth.
You're going to have to take it up with the ICC and ICJ both of which seem to think its legally reasonable that Israel is committing genocide. I've actually spent enough time dealing with the subject directly to be satisfied that human rights considerations plays zero to no role in Israeli policy on the subject and government officials freely express the desire to commit genocide in the territory. Standard non-Western third world country, nothing unique to condemn or praise in that.
Thank you, and please keep doing what you are doing. I haven't found a more informed, insightful or articulate writer than yourself on Substack or anywhere else.
The basic flaw in this article is that you don't consider the possibility that pro-Palestinians could change reality by persuading Palestinians to stop acting so stupid all the time. You think only about how to change Israel's behavior, but there's a super easy way that all of the deaths in Gaza could have been avoided, and that's just Hamas not doing October 7th, or even doing it but not killing grandmas while livestreaming it on Facebook to their family 🤷.
Its almost cute in its naivete to believe Hamas, or Palestinian society at large is going to take its marching orders from American Pro-Palestinian activists.
Also, to varying degrees this violence against Gaza has been Israeli policy for over a decade, well before October 7th.
You are very confused. Prior to the invasion of Israel in 2023, there had been no wars since 2014. Israel was pursuing a policy of gradually easing the blockade, increasing work permits into Israel, decreasing security along the Gaza fence, and allowing in unrestricted aid from the Arab world. Gaza was getting better.
But they wanted to die on their feet rather than living on their knees, and so they did, except the bit about being on their feet.
On the contrary, it’s you who are very confused. There was no invasion of Israel. Palestinians can’t invade their own country. There was no war (in the sense that the word “war” is normally used) in Gaza in 2014 or thereafter. What there has been is a series of high tech killing sprees of a stateless people, comprising of mostly refugees and their descendants, who have been living under a blockade in a dense urban enclave. In the Palestinian Territories west of the Jordan river, Israel has been pursuing a policy of annexation, home demolitions, abductions and lethal violence. All of this happens because an extremely self-entitled people, who derive their sense of entitlement from their origin story, have been empowered by a world superpower, and have been largely protected from the consequences of their crimes, that is, until Oct 7th happened.
Oh look, more pointless definition-making in the service of achieving nothing. I thought it was Jews who were particularly prone to this vice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Silver#:~:text=and%20Palestinian%20women.-,Disappearance%20and%20death,start%20of%20the%20Gaza%20war.
Was she sufficiently protected for her crime of dedicating her life to improving the wellbeing of Palestinians?
This is merely an attempt at deflection in the service of shielding Israelis when their crimes are described to them. One of the many vices that Israel apologists are all too prone to make.
The trick there would be to convince the people of Gaza that if they’d only turn away from the belligerent rejectionism of Hamas and other the Islamist groups in favor of the moderate cooperative accomodationism, like, say, the PA, then they’d be a lot further along on the path to self-determination with the support of the Israelis and the international community.
Unfortunately that experiment has been run post-Arafat in the West Bank for the last 20 years and achieved bupkis in that regard.
When there’s Palestinian violence, the Israelis refuse to negotiate a long-term political settlement as to not reward terrorism. When there’s no violence, the Israelis refuse to negotiate such a settlement with the Palestinians because everyone can safely ignore them and maintain the status quo. And the Netanyahu government has already explicitly rejected rule by a (reformed) PA in Gaza.
The pro-Palestinian side often gets rightly criticized for not assigning agency or culpability to pathologies on their side, but going forward I don’t really see much the people of Gaza could do to improve their collective lot.
Most Israelis think the Palestinian Authority is also committed to the destruction of Israel and will use any land that it can get to stage further attacks. Whether this is right or wrong (it's complicated, but if I have to give a black and white answer, I think it's correct), it's what they think, and no path to Palestinian statehood exists that doesn't involve dissuading them of this belief. Now, I don't personally attach any value to the concept of national determination, so I think it much better for Gaza to be absorbed into Egypt, and the West Bank to be split between Jordan and Israel, but that faces the same obstacle, namely that Israelis have to be persuaded it won't just be used as a base for further attacks, like south Lebanon was.
Going forward, though, specifically for the people of Gaza, it is obvious that humane response is to help as many of them as possible to leave.
Absolutely: individuals that want to leave should be allowed to leave, on pure humanitarian grounds. But that leaves unresolved the questions as to who bears responsibility for conditions on the ground being intentionally made to be so uninhabitable as to make that mitigation necessary, what the consequences for that should be, and what burden the US should take on to shield them from those consequences at the loss of its own prestige in the region.
Regardless, we already know from the mass expulsion experiment of 1948 how Israelis feel about Palestinian right of return, so that one-way ticket would be a tough sell to make to the people of Gaza collectively.
From an American liberal perspective—presumably the vantage of the writer’s post —there’s the moral hazard of endorsing and rewarding a policy of ethnic cleansing, in whole or in part, that most of us believe was Israel’s ultimate inclination (if not outright plan) going back to its founding. If they get away with it in Gaza, a similar policy in the West Bank is sure to follow, Hamas or no Hamas.
Israelis generally seem to be perfectly fine with that outcome, if polls are to be believed, but American liberals have deep misgivings about their country underwriting all of it while at the same time feeling powerless to have effectively influenced the relevant US policy in a direction more to their liking.
Serious question: What country would want to take in, say, 50,000 Palestinians?
None whatsoever, but that’s the logistical problem for the expulsionists to solve. One is usually assured that “Palestinians” don’t actually exist, in which case no one should have to be moved.
Surely a ‘humane response’ would be a) to immediately stop slaughtering en masse the civilian population of Gaza by starvation and carpet bombing and b) to stop treating the Palestinian population in general like Untermenschen.
But the Israelis are gripped by a nineteenth century colonial mindset in which problems with ‘unruly natives’ have only colonial-type ‘solutions’ whereas the only genuinely humane solution is to be found through respect of post-WWII international humanitarian law.
You just live in a world of empty words signifying nothing more than emotional attachments you have to them. Let us say that Israel stops all military activity right now. 90% of Gazans live in tents; most of the buildings are destroyed. Whichever group will take over the Gaza strip will just commence planning some new attack on Israel, and we get to do this all over again in, say, five years.
What is the point in all this? Nationalism isn't real. People aren't actually attached to some piece of soil in which they thrive because their ancestors live there or some such. They can just go live in some new place that isn't so messed up. Like your ancestors did.
P.S. You really have to get over this colonial bullshit. 90% of the Israelis who want to kill more Palestinians are brown people from the MENA. 90% of Israelis who want to kill fewer Palestinians are white Jews from Europe. The reason Israel is becoming more brutal to the Palestinians is because it's becoming a real Middle Eastern country.
If Israel ‘stops all military activity’ many civilian lives would be saved. If new groups eventually took up arms it would be because an oppressive governing regime offered no future but servitude. Colonial history gives numerous examples.
You say people aren’t attached to land and can simply go and live somewhere else. Surely that should apply to the Israeli latecomers to the area.
The State of Israel signed the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines the duties of an occupying power and the rights of the people occupied. Why doesn’t Israel respect even its own word?
Yes, obviously if Israelis leave that will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians have been testing the theory that they can bring this about through terrorism for a century, but it hasn't worked.
I didn’t say that in the above comment.
2. “The urge to kill Palestinians was simply waiting for the all-clear of Oct. 7. Precious Israelis were captured…. You forgot about the massacre of Israeli women, children, old men and women. ‘All clear’? Are you sick?
3. “their land…” All of it, you think? Utter nonsense. And you know it. So Jews were never in Judea?
4. Comparison of Palestinians to Native American Indians is very interesting. And I don’t think you appreciate the implications of that comparison. For the Palestinians.
5. Whether it be Gaza or the PA , Palestinians have been starting and losing wars with Israel since 1949. So I’ll say it once again. Starting a war has serious consequences for a People. Starting and losing a war has catastrophic consequences for that People. Starting and losing 4-8 war (depending on how one counts) has world historic geopolitical consequences. It’s unfortunate that you’re so blinded by your own want of common sense that you can’t see beyond the momentary ‘but I don’t like it because I think it’s unfair, terribly unfair’. From one moment to another and another.
What I said was my opinion that the historic and present trajectory of the Palestinians is one of diaspora resulting from the aforementioned starting and losing wars. They’ve had plants of opportunities to make lemonade from lemons and have spurned them again and again. Tragic. And not Israel’s fault when viewed from the long road of history to this point.
"they teach their children to kill us"
Agreed. I'm a fan of Murtala, but the article is too woke, too much "I'm weak so i get to hit you but you can't hit me".
Palestine can't strike Israel at will with no repercussions.
Both sides must take some level of personal responsibility for this to make sense
I don't know if it's woke. He sides by default with Muslims against Jews and this colours his perception of the conflict, though he tries to be civilized about in (and succeeds FWIW). In some very abstract sense, this is not the correct way to approach things, but it is how it is. Obviously, if there was some dipshit group of non-Muslims who kept trying to re-litigate a war from 80 years ago through terrorism against Muslims and narcissistic Wakanda historiography, he would look at it differently. But I will be charitable and assume he would have some compassion for this hypothetical nation of fools, and so should we.
I don't see how it can possibly be described as woke. Its non-moralistic realism which is about as diametrically opposed to wokeism as possible. If we look at the situation fairly and historical context (reestablishing the ancient state of Judea in the 20th century) I'd have to say that the State of Israel is more of the Wakanda project. If Palestinian nationalism has taken on a few of those components its more by a mirroring effect. Everyone's views are colored by their standpoint to a degree including yours and mine, but I would have compassion for such a nation, though maybe I would spend less time thinking about a depressing subject which is arguably even detrimental to become involved in.
Woke is simultaneously white ethnomasochism and brown ethnonarcissism, but I didn't call you woke.
Sure, Zionism is a crazy ideology, but I live in a house not a tent surrounded by rubble, and that's the difference between a crazy ideology implemented well, and a crazy ideology implemented badly.
Yeah fair
I don’t think the “Palestinians” have it in themselves to “stop acting so stupid all the time.” Given how the gazan children are educated, Jew hate is inbred from childhood. And that kind of hatred then breeds political and military stupidity as adults. My guess is that they become diaspora through the ME over the coming decades.
What an inversion of reality your comment is.
UN statistics show that prior to Oct 7, 20 Palestinians had been killed for each Israeli killed. As for "they teach their children to kill us" quite the opposite is the case, but the mantra in Israel contributed to the joy of the IDF troops in Gaza recorded on their smartphones.
The urge to kill Palestinians was simply waiting for the all-clear of Oct. 7. Precious Israelis were captured, so the vermin in Gaza could be slaughtered with relish. The world ignored the three slaughters of Gazans years before, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge and Operation Pillar of Defense, collectively known in Israel as "mowing the grass" indicating the worthlessness of Palestinian lives in Israeli eyes. There is a photo taken during one of the three operations of Israelis sitting in lawn chairs enjoying the view of destruction.
The plight of the Palestinians comes from their crime of refusing to leave their land despite the terrible oppression they have endured. It is precisely the same as the case of the American Indians, Hamas then taking the form of Geronimo, Cochise, Blue Jacket and others who said they would die rather than yield their land to the white man.
That you dare to speak of "Jew hate" when the world has heard the words of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and Netanyahu about the Palestinians is incredible. Where have you been as Israeli settlers have been beating Palestinians, burning their olive orchards and terrorizing the natives for decades...while the IDF stood by watching. These settlers have now been officially armed by Ben-Gvir, distributing semi-automatic rifles to any that want them. Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to having no rights, are not permitted to be armed.
You verify where you are coming from by putting the word Palestinians in quotes.
thank you for putting things in place again.
Arrogance, ignorance and self-righteousness are a very toxic mix. Zionism features them all with the phenomenal claim that Israelis are the victims in their project of land theft by the use of force.
Jews are welcome, respected, successful and a credit to American society in which they are equal citizens along with everyone else, notably the descendants of the native-Americans who had to go through hell like the Palestinians. It should be noted that native-Americans are full citizens and have been since 105 years ago.
This citizenship in the state that did all it could to exterminate them was given only 30 years after the end of the Indian Wars in 1890. It was at least some recognition of the horror that was done.
Today, 76 years after the bloody beginning of Israel, all that the Palestinians can expect is more hatred and killing in attempts to get rid of them by their occupiers. It is despicable. Equally so is the full support of my beloved country, the United States.
If Native Americans haad maintained demographic parity with white settlers, they would never have been admitted for citizenship. The main problem Palestinians have is that there are simply too many of them for any state in the region to absorb them without collapsing.
they dont belong to any other state but to Palestine. Why should they go anywhere else.
"The main problem Palestinians have"? Killing tens of thousands of helpless people is a problem. The Nazis took it into millions and there is no indication that Israel will stop at anything short of extermination. There is no evidence that most Israelis think anything more of killing Palestinians than the Nazis did of killing Jews. From the beginning Zionism wanted the land and that is exactly what it has been accomplished by force. It is a second holocaust, an attempt to make right the first by committing the second. Two wrongs don't make a right and you write of the victims having a problem.
Will you take responsibility, as Sabrina and I do, and give your real name in English? On my vigil on a street corner I have had many Zionists curse me and shout obscenities. Yesterday one called me a terrorist for exercising my freedom of speech. Not one of them has identified himself, nor is a single Israeli flag evident anywhere here. Who would be proud to show that flag that represents a country endlessly slaughtering people?
Regarding your citizenship comment, Israelis brag that 20% of Israelis are not Jewish. That is a small minority that by your logic should be given full citizenship. Far from that, many Israelis call for the expulsion of non-Jewish Israelis. Ethnic supremacy is never pretty and Israel is the proof...76 years of abuse now openly shown in slaughter of the untermensche.
And what do you make of Hamas’ admission today that 72% of Gaza deaths so far in this conflict are military age males and that they over calculated civilian deaths? And that Hamas lopped off 3400 so-called confirmed deaths and 1000+ children?
Do you trust Hamas even more now??
FYI. Not picking a fight here, but your points above don’t necessarily have the persuasive force you think they do.
Some of us Americans remember the “military age males” canard from our own GWOT drone assassination program. And that was when we had a Nobel peace prize winner in the White House.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/
I feel like I’m in a remake of Taxi Driver and I’m Travis Bickle, ‘You talkin’ to me?’
Cuz I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand your point. It’s not my assertion. It’s Hamas’ own ‘correction’ to what theyve been asserting forever about the nature of Gaza’s war dead at the hands of the IDF.
I was triggered by the line “military age males” and its history, which, yes, wasnt really relevant to what you were saying.
That said…collecting, counting, and record-keeping of bodies accurately in a war zone with >90% infrastructure destruction is a fiendishly difficult task. The Gaza Health ministry, whatever else its faults, has the dubious distinction of having gotten quite good at it from the experience going back to Cast Lead in 2009 to the point where even the Israeli gov’t bases their own estimates on those numbers.
I usually mentally put error bars of 10% on any Gaza death count numbers when I read them in articles. When most people on the Pro-Palestininian side quote the numbers, they are almost always making some qualitative point about the enormity of human devastation in Gaza that would still hold if the actual number were 10% higher or 10% lower than the one they quoted.
In fact, I recall a press conference with Netanyahu early last year where he “disputed” whatever the Gaza health ministry numbers were at the time and asserted that he believed the numbers were lower and quoted a value that differed by only 6%, which presumably are numbers he was getting from his internal intelligence sources. That’s a pretty good cross-check endorsement of the veracity of the Gaza health ministry estimates, in my book.
Looking at the physical devastation in Gaza, logic tells me that there must be countless hundreds to thousands of undocumented bodies under all that rubble. There are stories of wild dogs growing fat on eating the decaying corpses. And the health ministry only counts bodies that can be brought into hospitals or health facilities. So the estimates are almost assuredly lower than actual. We probably won’t know the real body count for years.
It also makes sense to me that there might be a correction to the health ministry posted numbers after an extended ceasefire when they had more time and resources for record-checking and reassessment of their statistics and methods. It actually speaks well of them, in my view, that they would be that diligent and then publish their findings.
After all, if propaganda were their primary goal, why would they ever self-correct the numbers downward? They would just write “100 million dead” on a bloody shirt and wave it around in front of Al Jazeera cameras.
Besides, usually one hears hair-splitting scrutiny over every facet of the historically-reliable statistical methods and numbers from the Hamas-run health ministry but accepts without any critical analysis or self-awareness whatsoever, numbers from the IDF, who have their own incentives to inflate Hamas fighter death count, as if they were infallibly dictated from a holy burning bush. I usually conclude the person—Andrew Fox and John Spencer types—making the point is not so sincerely interested in objective fact or scientific accuracy but rather is just operating in bad-faith or has some other ideological motive.
Israel is committing a second holocaust and doing it with eagerness against fellow human beings, unending slaughter by a fully equipped modern army, navy and air force, the best the United States can provide. No hesitation, mass killing has been going on from 2023 to now with no end in sight. The victims are helpless, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza.
Now here comes a person who doesn't have the courage to use his real name. He (she?) has nothing to say about ethnic cleansing, ethnic supremacy and the rejection of liberty and justice for all. Blind to the atrocities of Israel, like the war criminal Netanyahu, he can think only of disparaging the victims.
Well, you who hide behind anonymity, afraid to take responsibility for what you post so carelessly, I use my real name and have been standing on a street corner in the US in front of a synagogue whose rabbi and members appeared at a public hearing to denounce a ceasefire. I also stand in front of the entrance to Northwestern University. I have been doing this for over 5 months throughout the cold of winter and I freely give my name as I do here.
I want to end the awful grip of Zionism on the United States, that has pulled the US down to the lowest point in its history and is currently trying to crush freedom of speech. That's why I am on the corner, week after week with no end in sight, standing for liberty and justice for all, the thing that Zionism rejects as it has stolen and continues to steal the land from the natives just as was done by Anglo-Americans to the American Indians.
You keep hiding as "OverFlowError" here, asking about Hamas and ignoring the slaughter that your comments imply you approve of, and I will continue to be on the street speaking to hundreds of people in person and freely giving my name, obsessed with liberty and justice for all.
Where to begin with your feelings of guilt. Second holocaust? No, and any comparison to the real Holocaust is an anathema, a sick insult by a confused man. Numbers matter. Intent matters. Circumstances matter. And none are present in this attempted slander of yours. Such accusations are thrown at Israel as if they presented a serious accusation. They are not. Seventy plus percent of the Jews in Europe were killed in the Holocaust. Have you even tried to look at even the numbers of civilian casualties claimed by Hamas to the Palestinian population there? You’re an adult, and you think there’s a real, a close comparison? It’s a frank stupidity your part. And you just blurt it out as though the blurting lends credence to the accusation.
And what do you make of Hamas’ admission today that 72% of Gaza deaths so far in this conflict are military age males and that they over calculated civilian deaths? And that Hamas lopped off 3400 so-called confirmed deaths including 1000+ children? This admission comes at an awkward moment for you, no?
Do you think your criticisms carry weight or credibility because your name is Clif Brown? You say it is but there’s no proof of fact in naming yourself upon sign up here, is there? Call yourself Alfred E. Neuman and we’d not know the difference. Nor would your points be any wiser or more foolish. You think you “take responsibility “ for your posts? How so? Dear Clif, nobody gives a damn here whether you post under an assumed name, a real name or anonymously. What gives credence is the substance of the the thoughts you post, the words you use, the cogency, accuracy to the ears of others. You could have made the same bleating post anonymously and it’d still be a bleating post patting yourself on the back about being on a street corner “standing for liberty and justice for all.” And that homily makes you what? Right? Persuasive? Ya, no one’s ever been wrong standing on a corner with a sign since the sign is a sure sign of ‘truth, justice and the American way’? Never any crazies out on the cold corners?
Anonymity in public speech carries a great tradition with it. Have you ever read the Federalist Papers? I’m not John Jay, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton for damn sure, but what you really sound like is a fella who believes in doxing rhetorical opponents, people you disagree with so you can try to apply some “responsibility”? Why do you care? No one takes you more seriously because you say you’re out on the corner in the cold “obsessed with liberty and justice for all.” That has a ring of truth to it. The “obsessed “ part anyways.
The Gazans started this latest iteration of yet another war in the ME. And they are paying a heavy price for their murderous massacre. Hopefully, Hamas will be eradicated as the Nazis were in Germany. Your posts support Hamas because you are obsessed with a false narrative. You assign no real responsibility to Hamas. Or to the population that supports them. It’s a serious business starting a war as the Gazans did. And your standing on a cold corner with a sign patting yourself on the back won’t end it. It will end when Israel says it will end. Or when Gazans start killing enough of the Hamas among them to drive them once and for all out of power.
Still hiding in anonymity and expecting to be taken seriously.
I see that kind of hate imbued in Zionists not Palestinians
I think not. Golda Meir had it pretty spot on.
“We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us...”
They wouldn’t teach that hate to their children and use them as defensive military props if they did. Hamas bears direct responsibility. The Gazan civilians are directly responsible for not removing Hamas.
This is an older conversation.
Golda was a terrible person. That is the dumbest quote - pretty much sums up the backwards ass logic of Zionists. And they don’t teach that to their kids - ISRAEL DOES. Literally they have outlook points to watch the genocide from afar and cheer . I’ve met Zionist kids who have been taught hate from their parents. Wake up.
Had you met her?
I don't understand why the idea of just ending the war by accepting Israel's existence and not spending another ten generations attempting to wipe it out doesn't even come up here. It's such an odd blind spot.
Israel has said that if Hamas lays down its arms and surrenders the next step is the “voluntary emigration” of the population. Please try to keep up with events.
No it hasn't. You may want to check Israeli media sources, instead of getting all your news from the same sources that celebrate the death of every Israeli civilian as an achievement. Those aren't being honest with you.
It’s literally what Netanyahu + other members of Likud and the ruling coalition have explicitly stated in text and on video (amongst plenty of people from the general population of Israel). You’re not fooling anyone.
This is silly. If they wanted to do that they could've done it a long time ago. Hamas's attacks on Israeli civilians aren't what's stopping them.
No, its actually quite hard to force an entire population to leave against their will. Israel would know, it has been trying for decades.
Look, I know you know that's not true. I understand that it feels good to look for excuses to demonize the opposition. It feels good to see yourself as a tortured, innocent oppressed martyr. And it feels good to look to read people who let you feel this way.
But real people are dying in this war. And so long as you can't take responsibility for keeping it going because you care more about feeling vindicated than about peace, it can't end. Israelis aren't going to sit down and accept being bombed, kidnapped raped and tortured to death just because it makes you feel good. If you want peace to ever actually happen, you need to accept the actual responsibility for the outcomes of your actions.
It’s not silly at all. Their not doing so already is not for lack of trying. Biden and Blinken asked the Egyptians early on to take Gazans and they categorically refused. Despite what pro-Palestine people think there were SOME constraints that the Biden admin and the Israelis felt they were forced to contend with (although Israel never stopped trying to find a workaround, hence: “voluntary migration”).
Now that Trump has broached and promoted the idea, the Israelis—including members of the opposition in the Knesset and so called “liberals” in gen pop—are openly supporting it because there’s now an American admin that’s willing to potentially ram the policy down Egypt/Jordan’s/the Arab world’s throat.
I always double check and 99% of the times they are accurate, as in this case. I dont understand what you are discussing: there is a clear apartheid, displacement, extermination, ethnic cleansing going on for decades. We all know it. Its cheap & ridiculuos to keep blaming it on Hamas.
When a french politician posted calling for “Peace for palestine and israel, without hamas“ Netenyahu’s kid broke down into a screaming fit.
When an American went in calling for peace, the Palestinians accepted her and Israel ran her over with a bulldozer
When Hamas offered a peace deal, Israel insisted that they needed to be able to keep their illegal settlements and military checkpoints
Cool, and what’s your excuse for the first 100 years of this conflict before they said that?
Well for the first 100 years the Zionist movement and Britain should not have attempted to create a colonial state by displacing all the Arabs who lived in Palestine, but I feel like you want to ignore that.
So you admit the stray comment by Netanyahu isn’t the cause of Palestines warmongering? It’s really about genociding the Israelis? Great.
Also, not all the Arabs who lived in Palestine were displaced, and their displacement was caused by the genocidal war they themselves started. So spare me the whining.
The Native American Genocide didn't kill or displace every single native either. Natives also fought back, viciously at times, against European colonization. The comparison you invite does you no favors.
The Zionist movement fully intended to strip all land, civil, and political rights from the Palestinians who lived there to create a new ethnostate. The 'peace' and 'rights' promised were not worth the paper they were written on—as the author of that paper himself acknowledged.
"so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate." Arthur Balfour https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/60431057?access_key=key-136ulpy32ssl2l27p8nb
Okay cool, so you admit you were lying about "all" the Arabs being displaced. Nice to know we agree that the Palestinians have always wanted to genocide the Israelis, and so offhand comment by Netanyahu are just an excuse. Thanks for the conversation!
On many occasions -- in 1971, 1988, 2002 and others -- the Palestinians or their representatives offered to recognize the existence of Israel -- in most cases, full diplomatic recognition -- in exchange for a withdrawal to the 1967, internationally mandated borders. Israel has always refused. It has never been willing to accept the existence of a Palestinian state, because it has never relinquished its goal of Greater Israel, that is, a Jewish state "from the river to the sea," in the words of Likud's founding charter.
Of course most Americans, like you apparently, haven't the faintest idea of this history. I recommend the books of Avi Shlaim, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, and Tanya Reinhardt, among others.
I see. You guys just run on a whole alternate set of history. This is wild.
(to clarify, this was the exact opposite of what happened - in all those cases Israel offered peace and the Palestinians walked away because they can't accept a peace where Israel still exists.
Well except 1971, that was just two years before Arabs launched their third or fourth attempt at wiping Israel off the map. No idea how you go that one).
Thanks for the "clarification," Shaked. People who want to decide between your version and mine can consult the authors I mentioned, as well as Rashid Khalidi's "The Hundred Years War on Palestine" and Nasser Aruri's "Dishonest Broker: The Role of the US in Israel and Palestine."
Perhaps you should check with actual historians and what they think of Khalidi who never used any first source materials and only anecdotal stories. A good book to read would be 1948 by Benny Morris who is a respectable historian. This embarrassing that you chose an extremely biased narrative for the truth.
I assume you mean "Check with pro-Israel historians who have not said a word about the horrendous Israeli assault on Gaza except to defend it." Morris was an excellent historian, and he seems to have made some good (though mostly minor) points against Khalidi here: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/7210/the-war-on-history/. But one of his substantive criticisms is simply mistaken. He criticizes Khalidi for calling Zionists "colonizers," since no state sent them. But one of the meanings of "colonize" is "come to settle among and establish political control over (the Indigenous people of an area" (Oxford Languages online). To deny that Jewish settlers colonized a land that other people were living on simply makes honest discussion impossible.
What’s embarrassing is, instead of offering a take based on reading Khalidi’s work you’re just regurgitating a take someone spoon fed you.
It's worth noting, when talking about said authors, that Noam Chomsky still denies the Cambodian genocide and none of the others are any better. If what you want is to find authors that will enable you to hate western countries regardless of facts, these are good places to go. But they will lead you to neverending war, and if you don't like the results of that you may want to read real history.
Not exactly. In 1977, before anyone knew for certain what was happening in postwar Cambodia, Chomsky wrote a review of reporting from the area (https://chomsky.info/19770625/). He found, unsurprisingly, that the most sensational allegations were least credible but also the most widely publicized -- just what one would expect in media coverage of an official enemy. His own judgment was "major atrocities," of as yet unknown extent. He did not "deny," and has never denied, Khmer Rouge genocide.
I don’t think many honest brokers take khalidi’s “histories” as gospel. The old saw is that history is written by the winners. So far I’d say Israel is nearer to that status than the Gazans or PA’s. 10/7 broke the backs of any honest brokers. Hamas is genocidal. Until 1988, explicitly and publicly so. Post 10/7, I don’t think anyone takes post 1988 Hamas seriously as a peace partner. Hence, most folks world wide don’t care if Israel just gets on with it and roots out Hamas by any means. If Gazans remain to support Hamas, they get the hard end of the fighting along with the Hamas henchmen. So the only question is, will Gazans hold out for 3 3/4 years more (at a minimum) to the end of Trump because Bibi’s likely to get what he wants.
You write that "I don't think anyone post 1988 Hamas seriously as a peace partner." Did you know that in 2006 Hamas floated a peace proposal? https://fanack.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/archive/user_upload/Documenten/Links/UN/Negotiations/HAMAS_Proposal__2006_.pdf. Israel and the US did not even acknowledge it but instead incited the PLO to attack Hamas, which had just won an election.
Did you know that? If so, you're one of very few people in the United States who does?
>(to clarify, this was the exact opposite of what happened
It isnt.
It is. But you don't know and need to say it to support the narrative and naive people like you but it.
>It is.
It isnt, Israel never offered a proper state to the Palestinians, they never offered the land which they were legally entitled to, the Palestinians did recognise Israel though, Israel responded by moving settlers into the west bank.
The Palestinian national movement has never indicated a credible offer of peace. If the Palestinians attempted a Gandhi-style campaign of nonviolent resistance, Israel would be forced from both internal and external forces to relent. Why don't the Palestinians try that?
Phoenix: It's a reasonable question. The answer is that for many decades the Israeli security forces smothered most nonviolent political organization by Palestinians, via censorship, regulations against public meetings, "anti-terrorist" legislation, restrictions on external financial support, etc. You seem to have a far more elevated conception of Israel's political morality than the history warrants.
In as much as the the Great March of Return had a political end, it was right there in the title, Palestinians get to return to Israel and so it was not even pretending to be in favour of a 2 state solution.
But functionally speaking that wasn't its end because it's just completely stupid to think that Israel would just let all the Palestinians return simply because they said they want to and rocked up. Functionally speaking, its sole purpose was to make Israel relax and then renege on it's policy of having a killzone in front of the Gaza barrier. And this end was successfully achieved. Of course, it's not clear how Gazans benefit in any way from being able to walk within 500 meters of the Gaza barrier, but it did have one clear effect, namely that it made the October 7th invasion possible.
And so now 50,000, and likely more, Gazans are dead. No doubt this is all worth it if you are a depraved callous altruist, or a western leftist, but I repeat myself.
I don't think we deserve a great deal of sympathy, and if I did, I wouldn't think it terribly important if we got it or not. But maybe sympathise with the Palestinians you have encouraged to destroy themselves through your vicarious heroism.
The Palestinians did in the early 90s, they acknowledged Israels existence, Israel then moved hundreds of thousands of settlers into the west bank.
An excellent piece Murtaza. It’s rare to see commentary this clear-eyed when talking about Palestine.
I’m as blind to the future as you are, but the one place where my predictions would differ would be on the US public’s reaction to locking up and deporting protestors. Too much of the US origin myth and self conception is based on the ideal of human rights and free speech. The liberal order may be decaying worldwide, but the US is too deeply founded on liberal morality to truly abandon it domestically. I expect a backlash and eventual course correction, though possibly one that tries to merge it with nativist/isolationist instincts.
Thanks Justin. I actually agree, in that the First Amendment is such a core part of American identity and this flagrant assault on it would inevitably engender a negative response.
I hope you're right. I'm not optimistic, though. Support for Israel goes way beyond a power structure and a lobby. By its own defenders, it's been called the "tip of the spear," a "mighty aircraft carrier for the US," the "best investment we ever made," a nation that "we need more than they need us,"* and I think that's an accurate framing. It's the tip of the spear of American empire. To challenge it is to challenge American empire itself, which is why protests against it are treated more harshly than protests against even the President himself.
(*In order, those phrases are direct quotes from Josh Hammer, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden, and Nikki Haley.)
You can wear a pink hat and protest Trump. You can boycott any American state or corporation. You can hurl invectives at any ally -- any, except Israel. This is not about one small country in the Middle East that just happens to be our largest recipient of aid. It's about what it means for the US.
You can draw anything...except Mohammad.
Vigilante violence is not ok, even in response to blasphemy. But other than Iran, what government authorizes that? Is Iran the standard we're adopting now?
Just pointing out your double standards.
Oh my god, you go on and on and never even touch upon what matters - Hamas and some significant portion of Gazans got exactly what they want, including unthinkable death and destruction and, bonus, people like you running cover for them.
Just like the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto got exactly what came to them and their community right. Zionists are nazis of today and Islam will win. Zionism will fall.
So much to chew on here and as always reading your thoughts leave me with keen awareness of my intellectual shortcomings. In many ways I can see the resonance of this argument in how an individual should/might navigate work relationships as well, which then leaves me a little cold (is there no loyalty). I remember you saying that you were influenced by Fukayama, but is this not contrary to “The End of History “.
Is the key the to Palestinian liberation a person(s) who have a keen understanding of how power works, a la Great Man theory.
If Israel's "special relationship" with the US we're broken by, say, an alliance of shrewd Khaliji Royals and alt-right US oligarchs, a lot of my fellow pro Palestinian activits would be quietly disappointed. Strange, because compared to mass protest, it's easier to imagine something like that actually working. For those who don't personally suffer the consequences of Palestinian weakness, the method by which liberation is achieved is more important than liberation itself.
Great point
A sobering read. The liberal framework -- by which Palestinians and their allies appealed to rights, to international law, and so on has come to nought. Beginning in the 20th century "Great Powers" (principally Britain and then the US) paid lip service to liberal values when convenient. Not to put too fine a point on it, these "values" were mostly invoked on behalf of "civilized" (White) populations, not colonized natives. Now the liberal pretense is as dead as a dodo (thanks to Biden in Gaza, and to Trump's whole philosophy).
Murtaza, your world weariness is showing.
So much progress has been made, the civil rights movement, the women's movement and one can't be too dismayed by the flash-in-the-pan Trump as he was elected by just a bit over 1/4 of the American electorate.
It isn't true that people are not swayed by events. Bull Conner hosing down blacks had an electric effect on white America. The situation of blacks under slavery was a powerful factor in the northern states.
The fact that the Palestinians are in such dire straits is due to what you so accurately describe, the success of Jews in America that placed them in positions where, if they are Zionists, they can exercise their authority to do such things as get a pro-Palestinian employee fired or, as in the case of Bill Ackman, declare that none such will be hired. No conspiracy, it is simply exercising the power a group finds themself able to exert.
Zionists can, as publishers or newsroom producers, stop a pro-Palestinian opinion piece or reader letter from being published or aired. They can, as politicians (or though threatening politicians), pour money and weapons to Israel. As millionaires and billionaires they can, through AIPAC, place people they like in Congress so that a war criminal, Netanyahu, can not only be asked to appear, but will receive standing ovations there. As megadonors to universities, Zionist can dictate the end of freedom of speech on campus and back it up with our Zionist headed government threatening withdrawal of federal money. Zionist Sheldon Adelson bought the US embassy move to Jerusalem, so what can't Zionists do?
Zionism has America locked up and having had this tight grip for years, Israel has been allowed by the US to do anything it wishes without consequences. Power unrestrained is never a good thing and it creates monsters, either individuals or countries. The monster that we see in Israel today is a creation of Zionism in America that brought the nonpartisan support of Israel.
But the open slaughter of Palestinians by the IDF is not without consequences. There is a revolution in Congress, Democrats are deserting the Zionist leadership. Schumer, who openly boasts that he is a defender of Israel is in trouble. The decades long bipartisan support of Israel is crumbling. Go Bernie!
More is needed. We citizens cannot be spectators. Here is where we the people come in. For over 5 months I have been standing on a corner in front of an American synagogue whose rabbi and congregation vehemently denounced a city ceasefire resolution attempt, all making it a point to identify themselves as Jews. Why? So that the effort could be called antisemitic if it progressed. It died. The person proposing the resolution was fired. Zionism at work but that did it for me.
There I am, day after day, week after week, month after month with a Palestinian flag flying and signs that say such things as "Israel is NOT in the Pledge of Allegiance" and "Zionism is NOT Judaism" Of course the police were immediately called. They arrived to say, "some people are uncomfortable about you being here, would you consider moving across the street?" No, I would not. Freedom of speech is real, but who is using it?
Now that what I call the Antisemitism Inquisition is touring universities in an effort to punish and intimidate pro-Palestinian protesters, I am at the entrance to Northwestern University with my Palestinian flag and signs. You can see them at clifbrown.substack.com
Zionism at the personal level is easily defeated because it is ethnic supremacist, rejecting liberty and justice for all. I don't get into arguments with Zionists because they can't defend this foundational principle of the movement to create Israel. Additionally, Zionism is not about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" because it denies all three of these to the natives of the land it has taken from them by might making right. It bears a far closer relationship to National Socialism than American democracy.
Zionism is un-American, it is as simple as that, and it is incredible that many American Jews who enjoy all the freedom, all the success, all the acceptance that they do in the US can be Zionist and even be dual citizens, jumping between the rights and freedom of the US and the ability to go take land from the Palestinians and even kill them. Could there be any greater hypocrisy?
Gideon Levy quotes Golda Meir as saying, "after the holocaust, Jews can do anything" and that is exactly what we are seeing right now. The slaughter of the natives is being done by people who are blinded by self-righteousness and are convinced that they are victims even as they destroy helpless people with a fully modern army equipped with all the US can provide for killing as efficiently as possible. Oct 7 was an epic horror but unlimited and ongoing killing of tens of thousands is not to be criticized? This moral blindness is passed on deliberately from generation to generation of Israelis as high school kids are deliberately traumatized by trips to Auschwitz where they can wrap themselves in the Israeli flag. True, one doesn't have to go, but many do.
It is astounding to hear Zionists say that Palestinians "teach their children to kill us". The whole thing is given away by Netanyahu declaring that Israel is the force of light against the force of darkness. He believes this as surely as Hitler believed that he was doing Europe a favor by killing Jews. The holocaust, horror that it was, has survived in Zionist minds as allowing them anything by way of compensation, to which nothing can compare. Nothing is ruled out, no number of natives slaughtered would be too much. No wonder the IDF did not hesitate in Gaza.
This is communal madness and the number one priority for the United States is to break free of the awful grip of Zionism that has like an anchor dragged our country into a moral abyss. It was terrifying when Biden declared himself a Zionist, the President of the United States not hesitating to say he endorses the rejection of liberty and justice for all! How much more could one be a traitor to America than that?
There is a long way to go, but the grip is weakening. Any American reading this - get out on the street and demonstrate against Zionism. Exercise your freedom of speech to pull our country up from the lowest point in American history - fully supporting the slaughter being done by Israel when we claim to have learned from the same operation done to the American Indian.
Thank you for sharing this. I have to print it and keep it.
"Gaza was the rock upon which post-World War II human rights discourse finally broke." Maybe in the Western world.
Not in the rest of the world. Human rights broke a long time ago in huge parts of the world and was fixed in them and other parts through uprisings, demonstrations, imprisonment, torture and deaths.
Did human rights ever (in the conventional sense) ever exist in the Arab world?
They've never really existed outside of America and Western Europe for a few decades
So you're claiming that it's meaningless to discuss Human Rights in an Arab or Middle Eastern context?
You can discuss it if you want. I just think its deeply questionable the extent to which this is the primus inter pares issue that people organize politics around. Israel is also becoming a more purely Middle Eastern country in the sense that it cares little to nothing for human rights and is more of a realist state
It is good to see some reflection on what your favored side did wrong, but you still cannot allow yourself to acknowledge that this is an Arab Israli conflict, not an Arab-West conflict. You are still wedded to the idea that what Israelis think doesn't matter. That somehow all you need is to convince the US to abandon Israel. Israel defeated multiple Arab attempts to annihilate it before the US became its ally. It is conceivable that Israel, a nuclear armed state, a weapons provider in world ridden by conflicts, a first innovative economy, will find other allies if it were abandoned by the US. You should devote more effort to understand how Israel went from having a strong peace camp, and overwhelming support for a two state solution, to where we are now. Maybe it's time the Palestinians reflect really hard and rethink the idea that they have to coerce Israel rather than convince Israel that concessions to them will not mean more frequent and more horrific Oct 7's. It's going to be really hard now, and that's the real blunder.
This wasn’t really intended to be a comprehensive history of the Israel Palestine conflict or even an in depth analysis of Israel as such
I thought you were examining what went wrong and what is to be done. It is notable that you don't ever consider the option of engaging with Israel and Israelis rather than coming up with less and less plausible ways of coercing Israel.
I read his article as a perspective from the American Left on the frustrations with the inefficacy of the western pro-Palestinian movement to positively influence US policy on the conflict.
It’s quite possible that a more Palestinian-sympathetic US policy would not have ultimately moved the needle much with Israeli opinion or on facts on the ground thousands of miles away, but we’ll never actually know because of questionable domestic strategy choices within the movement.
American college students being seen as publicly embracing Hamas as a righteous and moral resistance group and using Palestinian nationalist slogans was just as likely to alienate the broader American public from their cause as when some of their grandparents similarly embraced the Viet Cong, Chairman Mao, or “Bring the War Home” SPS violence as means to bring an end to the Vietnam war.
Any serious student of the history of American leftist politics should have seen that coming a mile away. In fact, there’s a YouTube of Norman Finkelstein speaking at Columbia last year earnestly trying to steer young activists away from those methods and slogans.
Engaging with Israel is useless. Remember Oslo. It has been used to turn the Westbank into ghettoised communities that have zero freedom of movement and cruel abuses at checkpoints, and has rendered the PLO ineffective.
The idea that you can look at the last several decades of Palestinian history and somehow consider that a path to victory is very strange. In every conceivable metric they've lost. They've lost massive numbers of lives and a huge amount of territory. More broadly the entire Arab world is a disaster. What would losing even look like if this doesn't qualify? Israel is not going to be broken. Best case scenario they have to make a compromise and have stable agreed-on borders with their neighbors. They're a very a wealthy high tech country surrounded by completely dysfunctional backward places like Egypt and Lebanon. Nobody's breaking them.
It's amazing there are still people out there who still can't wake up from this delusion.
Yes you are certainly delusional.
What exactly do you expect in response to your "insights" which have nothing at all to do with what I wrote or with the original post? You run into a random pro-Israel commenter and feel you have to share your ignorant perspective?
Oh, sorry I missed that logic. But thanks for make my point about your utter delusion.
Serious question:
What do you think the Gazans should do going forward?
(You can ignore October 7th if you want.)
How do you propose Gazans & Gaza should spend their next 50 years & towards what goals?
I'm sorry if I was unclear. I wasn't asking you to predict the future.
I'm asking you what you want Gazans to do in the next several decades.
Apparently I was unclear. I'm asking about the Palestinians who reside in Gaza.
Do you understand my question?
"A sincere belief in human rights to the neglect of hard power and material interests has become a kind of intellectual opium, rendering people dependent, numb, and depressed, as they wait for a nonexistent arc of history to bend in their favor. History will not vindicate you, nor condemn your enemies...You either win or lose. There are no moral victories. The important question is not to ask why the world is silent to your suffering, but how you allowed yourself to become so weak in the first place, and what you are going to do about it now."
This a beautiful and haunting passage I will think about over course of the day.
Well done. A depressing read, but thanks for writing it.
Thanks Paul
Early and consistent global unification in opposition to all Islamic terrorism including Hamas and Hezbollah would have resulted in a better life for all Palestinians. The activism against Irael and in support of Hamas and Hezbollah achieve nothing but continued misery for the Palestinian people.
Lol, this literally has nothing to do with anything. When Palestinian nationalist groups were overwhelmingly secular nationalist Israeli hated and attacked them with if anything even greater force. They're just doing what they want because they have the upper hand, the solution is to lower their hand not engage in these pointless semantic games.
'When Palestinian nationalist groups were overwhelmingly secular nationalist Israeli hated and attacked them with if anything even greater force.'
This is certainly untrue. The fact is that the Palestinian movement has suffered its most crushing defeats during those periods when it was heavily Islamicised, specifically in 1948 and right now. Despite the often appalling brutality of the PLO, they actually did a pretty good job of advancing their national interests and making progress towards national self determination and this all spluttered out with the rise of Hamas.
When was there any Palestinian nationalist groups that were not committed to Iran-funded "death to Israel"?
It is they height of intellectual dishonesty to claim that Israel would never welcome a peaceful Palestinian neighbor... that Israel is committed to perpetual war against the Palestinians for any reason other than the Palestinians have been controlled by terrorist groups committed to the destruction of Israel.
I don't think its even possible to have a discussion with someone this ignorant. Iran was not even relevant to the subject until relatively recently in history, and during the heydey of the PLO it was actually governed by a totally different regime that was sympathetic to Israel. The older generation of Palestinian groups accepted Israel decades ago and they are still hated and banned by Israel nonetheless. I think you should find something to talk about that is more on your own level.
Presumably that was because those Palestinian nationalists groups were killing Israeli civilians and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
Yes there is such as a thing as human rights, whether or not positivist law incorporates it or not. Every moral person should attempt to incorporate human rights into their governments legal code.
Where this piece completely fails is that the reason there is not outrage is because there is no genocide. The casualties are very much within the normal boundaries of war. Where morality has failed is on part of the International law activists and the overall islamic world to encourage and actively evacuate the women and children of Gaza.
Every sane person understands that Jus Bello has been met, and the Israelis are justified in going to war. The moral failure is on account of Arab nations to then invite and offer protection to their fellow compatriots. Instead, the Palestinians are used as a third rail against Israel. The Arab world, nor the author actually cares about the Palestinians. Instead Palestinianism is a nihilistic attempt to dislodge Jewish sovereignty from this Earth.
You're going to have to take it up with the ICC and ICJ both of which seem to think its legally reasonable that Israel is committing genocide. I've actually spent enough time dealing with the subject directly to be satisfied that human rights considerations plays zero to no role in Israeli policy on the subject and government officials freely express the desire to commit genocide in the territory. Standard non-Western third world country, nothing unique to condemn or praise in that.
@Jon: Do you think that there's any actions that Israel or the IDF could take that couldn't be justified by Jus Bello?
Thank you, and please keep doing what you are doing. I haven't found a more informed, insightful or articulate writer than yourself on Substack or anywhere else.