On not knowing what to say about Gaza

What is the benefit of having the international community administer Gaza as opposed to Israel administering Gaza? He throws the suggestion out there, but doesn’t really discuss the merits at all.

I found Harari‘s article worth reading but the suggestion in the last paragraph is useless. The „willing“ should disarm Hamas and take over control of the Gaza Strip. How? He doesn’t say.

I second the recommendation of Goldberg‘s article. The quoted statements by the DSA and other pseudoleftists are sickening, they apparently don’t give a damn about the civilian suffering on both sides as long as they get an opportunity to spew revolutionary rhetoric from the safety of the US.

“It is not just disgusting but self-defeating for vocal segments of the left to disavow those universal ideas about human rights, declaring instead that to those who are oppressed, even the most extreme violence is permitted. Their views are the mirror image of those who claim that, given what Israel has endured, the scale of its retaliation cannot be questioned.”

Gift link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/columnists/israel-gaza-massacre-left.html?unlocked_article_code=e0JJCuukE92wPWEzU4d1Ow22t1M5onrqQKlUmkfvPyHoVv0q5n5FfVUm9yMqHRETe2JLxzgNL49h2RGr4-kRnN_-q2gNXGJRxUDILa0Czr6wYwHhGCMnBwrnfOX127e_Zgml8OfdbWUk33YLMVbRBTZx39jmQtJPsAlmqJT9E5otBUWtsSLqVhijl2FgDZzxfAK_SlkrRX7JvzMQDzj0r_hR3FuyDvYg6Fp-BiiGKDnaKe28xm5kY6tmXOQqBfnWcF0VMzB5izg7Dkde_-Ih3aK9ZBplVpMizw6jCOit_I9Itlby1rkEjLWLSbLlmcYVltvVZTLJKNPMBQKbUeL1JrWdbqke6oi2P2GrgXWlAQ&smid=url-share

the Need for a Decent Left

2002 called, they want their liberal imperialism back
https://decentpedia.blogspot.com

I can’t scale the NYT paywall, but let me guess; Goldberg is whatabouting some Columbia undergrad commons room tweet with EmptyG calling for bombing Gaza into a field of glass.

The “left” that has actual political influence in the corridors of federal power ends with Sanders and his ilk, none of whom are praising Hamas. That some schmoe who still has a Glenn Greenwald poster over his bed has done so says nothing about the actual “Left”. But since there has to be a bothsides, here’s Goldberg.

I was concerned that nobody had yet tried to use the current situation in Gaza to dunk on the DSA, but fortunately Goldberg and the NYT are on the case. The DSA, which counts about 80,000 members, is the true source of the problem here, not the ones who have held power for decades in the US.

Goldberg touchingly proffers “But if humanist principles spur total revulsion toward the terrorist crimes in Israel, they also demand restraint in Gaza”, noting that Israel is imposing collective punishment on Gaza. Goldberg is however appalled that some members of the left are being insensitive to Israelis’ sufferings. I am appalled too but, after all, as Goldberg also reports, the most visible representative of the left in the US (Sanders and AOC) said all the right things about the issue. On the other hand, nothing is said about the President. You know, the one heading the decent progressives. The other day he said that “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation. My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.” One would think that a few words could be spent on how, maybe, just maybe, the President of the nation that is the closest ally to Israel, that President could also try to avert the collective punishment Israel is inflicting on Gaza. But, no, all eyes should be on the “disgusting left”. Then some wonder why a big part of the population ends up falling for the fake news of the right. With true news spun like these…

I think it is pretty easy to condemn Hamas’s attacks on Israel as war crimes deliberately targeting civilians — when you walk up to a child and kill them, there’s no counter argument possible.

It’s a little grayer when Israel indiscriminately bombs Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians and, I’m guessing, way fewer combatants, but it seems to me to be quite likely to be criminal behavior as well.

The bigger problem is that right now, most Israelis don’t believe that Palestinian leadership will tolerate a Jewish Israel. Hamas, controlling Gaza, clearly wants Jews killed or evicted from Israel, and I’ve been unable to find any statement by Abbas tolerating a Jewish state either.

On the other side, around 2000-2001 time frame, Arafat started the 2nd Intifada, rejected the Tabas partial agreement, while Clinton left the White House and Ariel Sharon became PM of Israel. Since that time, Israelis decided that to avoid terrorist bombings, separating the populations, and simply building settlements in the West Bank, would be a good long term solution. Sharon essentially rejected the Two State solution, and Palestinian intransigence provided good cover.

Unfortunately, the long term plan of the Israeli right requires 5M Palestinians to live with no political rights, essentially forever. That can’t go on forever, and with Israeli settlement building in the West Bank along with impoverishment of people in Gaza under Hamas, the pressure just keeps building up.

Oslo in 1993 was supposed to be the start of a trust building process. Instead, the Palestinians kept using terror as a tool, and Israelis kept using the process as a cover to keep grabbing more land from Palestinians. Tragically bad leadership on both sides, and a wasted generation or two.

You know what economists always says: If something can’t go on forever, it will stop. The mathematician in me recognizes that this like a non-constructive “proof.” You know it will stop, you don’t know how or why. But it doesn’t take a genius to realize it will be ugly.

The international community must compel a settlement.

You might just as well say ‘A host of angels must descend from heaven to compel a settlement’.

I find it difficult to think of what Hamas did as anything other than monstrous. Randomly murdering anyone in your path is about as low as you can get.

At the same time, I have no idea what alternative I would propose. Should Hamas just sit and wait? Nonviolent demonstration has proved futile. And if a military action is warranted, what form should it take. If we could rewrite the script, after the Hamas fighters poured into Israel, what would they do?

This seems on point:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/12/israel-gaza-statement-condemnation/

I was able to find the full text of Security Council Resolution 242 online here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_242
I was also able to find an English-language version of the declaration made by Hamas in 2017 here:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

Taking each document as a whole, the two cannot be reconciled.

DSA has tens of thousands of members, has tense internal politics, and lacks a strong central organization. The condemnations here (based on … promoting in advance but not organizing a rally at which some speakers later said things you don’t like, and one twitter post) are, uh, not entirely convincing. (Did you know that people post stupid stuff on twitter? Even members of the largest left-wing organization in the US?)

Maybe I’m missing something, but I just can’t understand why so many on the Left find it so difficult to forcefully condemn both Hamas’ actions and Israel’s settler colonialism – as well as Putin’s war of aggression, which #21 references.

So I if I understand correctly: the answer to the question of “what to say about Gaza” is to rant about the DSA.

The phrase “decent left” is the liberal imperialist klaxon; sorry that wasn’t clear. (Walzer’s original declaration of decency makes embarrassing reading twenty years on.)
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/can-there-be-a-decent-left/

engels @28
I’m aware of the Walzer piece but you’re tarring the MG column on the basis of its title, which probably some editor chose.

And your comment about ranting is a bit hypocritical. As if, say, during the 2011 NATO mil. action in Libya, you never ranted about Spiked or parts of the Labour Party or whoever else might have been saying things you opposed.

I’m sorry this is harsh, I’m guessing we could have an amicable conversation in real life and might even be friends, but your comments here get to me sometimes.

P.s. I’m sorry I don’t have an instant complete solution for Gaza and everything else. I would think humanitarian corridors and perhaps a cease fire to set them up might be in order, but I’m not in a position to do much about it. In the meantime I reserve the right to “rant” about DSA or anything else.

P.S. This applies to Goldberg as well. She’s a leftist spending most of her column space attacking the right.

@Bob 33

I used to have hope that some sort of long term peace could be found. I don’t anymore. There is nothing to say. I wish there was.

A god starting point is to call things by their names. What Israel is doing now is not defense. It is revenge.

The question is, will Israel murder 10 Palestinians for every Israeli who was murdered by Hamas? Or will it be 20, or 50, or 100, or more?

What is worth saying now is whatever makes the eventual number lower rather than higher. I was impressed that Leo Varadkar was willing to say that there are lines that even Israel cannot cross. Unfortunately, the message of most Western leaders (Biden very much included) is, in effect, “kill them all.”

I can only echo the despair felt by many on this thread.

What seems clear to me is that the episode demonstrates how important a leader who can rise above the calls for revenge from a grieving population.

I also feel the appeals to respect international law though important come across as an external standard that Israel is being judged against. Perhaps a stronger case could be made by appealing to the Israeli Government to take the moral high ground: How your enemy treats you defines them, but how you treat your enemy defines you.

I found this article in Politico one of the more reflective I’ve read in the past few days: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/in-israel-theres-grief-anger-and-determination-but-whats-the-plan-00121366

One thing that perhaps can be said that hasn’t been said so far is that Israel’s long-standing blockade of Gaza has been extraordinarily ineffective in preventing the entry of military equipment into Gaza. Guns, ammunition, paragliders, rockets, construction materials and eqipment to build tunnels: all seem to enter with little impediment. At the same time, all sorts of non-military goods seem to get “caught” in the net. If the Israelis want to prevent attacks coming from Gaza, while avoiding unneccessary suffering by civilians, why not put in place a true embargo that achieved its stated purpose? It is hard to believe that such a blockade would be more difficult than seizing total control of Gaza through a ground invasion.

This is a rejoinder to Michelle Goldberg and others, via Duncan Black, who headlined it with the quote “navel-gazing cranks”:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/young-morality-and-old-morality

Stephen, thanks; that line has been running through my head. But also these, worse:

The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Too mild, though not inapt, for the horrors in prospect at that moment.

As to this one, we may be confident that the idiots now in power in Israel, unlike a former American administration, will not respond by destroying an adjacent but not complicit nation.

Terrorist acts are aimed at getting the target to overreact. That is their goal. They aim to get the government to show their “true nature” as immoral oppressors and to garner support for the cause the terrorists believe is “righteous and undeniable.” The hope is that the government reaction will include atrocities that degrade their legitimacy and, ultimately, the support of their allies.

Governments should know this. They should react to terrorist acts accordingly. This would include mourning, condemnation of the terrorists, attempts to capture and hold those terrorists accountable, and public and absolute refusal to overreact in the way the terrorists hope. The US after 9/11 failed this test. Israel is currently failing this test.

JW Mason @13 – Corbyn named Seumas Milne one of his chief aides, had plenty of warm words for Hamas in the past and, despite the dishonest headline, has been historically very, very selective about what civilian deaths he gets upset about. Unless his article unexpectedly just consists of a short statement acknowledging that he is hopelessly compromised on this issue and cannot make a positive contribution, and so will be remaining silent at this time, I cannot imagine anything he could say that needs to be said, or would be productive to be said, or anything other than mind-blowingly idiotic to be said. The fact that the very opening of the article is on how “I, Jeremey Corbyn, have righteously condemned this violence once again. Sadly my oracular utterances were not heeded before” should remind us that Corbyn is a vain ignoramus, whose politics are solely about building up a cadre of worshippers for his cult of personality without inadvertently doing anything that might actually result in positive change to people’s lives.

And this is why I’m so frustrated in this moment – for all of my adult life every Israeli government has seemed to be committed to brutalising the Palestinians, and the Netanyahu government is a gaggle of incompetent fascists and eliminationist lunatics, that was so focused on gutting the state and keeping Bibi out of jail it basically let HAMAS walk in. Israeli society is pissed with him, and rightly so, and I’m guessing he’ll be ousted soon. The horrific pogrom of 7 October didn’t occur in a vacuum. Hadley Freeman is upset people aren’t flying Israeli flags in solidarity the way they flew Ukrainian flags? Maybe she should consider what those flags have come to mean, through the actions of their respective states over the years. There’s a reason the Ukrainian far right uses its own flags.

And as Pittsburgh Mike @5 eloquently puts it “Unfortunately, the long term plan of the Israeli right requires 5M Palestinians to live with no political rights, essentially forever. That can’t go on forever, and with Israeli settlement building in the West Bank along with impoverishment of people in Gaza under Hamas, the pressure just keeps building up.” Indeed, I’d go further and say this isn’t the Israeli right, its a hegemonic position of the Israeli political establishment.

None of these things should be controversial to say. None of these things should be outside the realm of legitimate debate.

And yet, the most vocal opposition to Israeli war crimes has been led by dipshit narcissists like Corbyn and associated cosplaying radicals. Here in London we had immediate Palestinian solidarity campaigns after the attack. The timing was dubious enough, but the cherry on top were the idiots showing up with paraglider badges shouting Khaybar! If the people organising the protest don’t want to look like terrorist sympathisers they need to police their ranks and exclude the people openly sympathising with terrorists. If your political organisation can’t, or won’t, do that, then its not a serious political organisation and it should be regarded with contempt. Simple as.

Ultimately I think the US and EU have played a pretty smart game in their public communications. They recognised in a way that the Corbyns of this world don’t that everyone in Israel is currently dealing with the aftermath of an extremely traumatic event and are emotionally raw. It will be hard for anyone to think straight through the red mist. By signalling maximum solidarity publicly at this point in time, it is much more likely an Israeli government (either Netanyahu’s or his successor) will listen to private entreaties to show restraint and have some form of defensible long term plan for stability. We’ve already seen the Americans move in this direction, and Brussels is starting to as well (the fag-end Tory government in the UK is barely functional at this point so I’m more or less disregarding them at this point).

That said I don’t have high hopes for that plan working – I think this is going to be several months of bloody carnage. There’s too much poison in the Israeli political discourse. But there is at least an effort underway to avoid it, being undertaken by people (like Starmer) who are calibrating their message to gain as much influence over events in future, who are being criticised by people (like Corbyn) who want to burnish their ‘radical’ cred.

TLDR – there are some on the left who are trying to stop the creation of a mountain of corpses, and some on the ‘left’ looking forward to being very publicly upset about the mountain so that people can see how good and empathetic they are.

“But the world is watching, and if Israel gets a pass for the very worst, then it will be hard for the “West” to deliver lectures about Russia’s conduct in Ukraine to Africans, Latin Americans and so forth.”

Not that that would stop the West.

Chris @51

Apologies – there was an incident at conference where Corbyn was asked to condemn Hamas and did one of his trademark tantrums at the journalist who had the temerity to ask. I thought your opening line was a clear reference to that (as we’re both in the UK) but I can accept I was mistaken.

FWIW – I’m not ‘looking’ at this through the lens of domestic UK politics, but for better or for worse the UK is a P5 state and the domestic political context matters, both for the UK and the world. Two weeks ago Suella Braverman looked like a deranged fascist – she still is, but when you have mass demonstrations in London implicitly celebrating a horrific pogrom she’s going to look a lot more reasonable to a lot more people. Secondly, in terms of whatever influence the UK has over Israel’s response, the unhelpful interventions of Corbyn and his fellow paragliding enthusiasts are likely to be negative. Demonstrably, and publicly, marginalising and excluding them from the political conversation gives London more credibility with Tel Aviv.

And since I wrote I’ve seen that US pressure has gotten Israel to turn the water back on in Gaza after pressure from the US. The IDF seems to have paused after indications that it would roll in on Saturday. This could be for operational reasons (weather etc.), but the Americans have also been quietly asking the Israelis what their plan is and warning them that international solidarity will evaporate if they turn Gaza into a charnel house. I’m still very pessimistic about a positive outcome here, but it does demonstrate that as much as the usual suspects have been upset by Biden and von der Leyen expressing maximum solidarity with Tel Aviv, its been a vastly more effective tactic for influencing Israeli behaviour than chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ in Trafalgar square.

The major problem here is neither people on the whole recognise the humanity of the other.
It is very easy to kill people under those circumstances.
I do not know the solution to this.
We are at present witnessing revenge not a just solution.
surely one part of the solution is the recognition of Israelis stealing Palestinian property way back in 1948

The massacres Hamas committed are calculated to provoke Israel into a disproportionate reaction that will kill many thousands of Palestinian civilians and make Israel look monstrous. And it’s impossible to act against Hamas without civilians suffering because Hamas is a terrorist organization that uses the civilian population. The civilian deaths on the Palestinian side are part of Hamas’ calculation, the more the better for them. This should be obvious to the Israeli leadership and their supporters and it should also be obvious to supporters of the Palestinian cause.

I’ll say one more thing about the DSA question. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what the DSA and similar groups say. What we write in this forum matters even less. The best thing is probably to not say anything any more. Give up the idea of trying to make even the smallest difference, give up the idea of trying to get something right and to call out what is wrong. None of it matters anyway. Give up the idea of an organized political left.

For some non-DSA related posts of interest, I liked the following:

1) “Terror and counter-terror” on Substack, by Timothy Snyder. Basically, this is Israel’s 9/11 and Israel risks committing similar mistakes to what the US did after its 9/11.

2) “Why Hamas Attacked—and Why Israel Was Taken by Surprise, A Conversation With Martin Indyk” on Foreign Affairs. According to Indyk, Hamas attacked to disrupt the Abraham Accords. Hamas counted on Israel to overreact. This overreaction would then alienate the populations of Arab countries making it more difficult for their rulers to sign onto the Accords.

3) “Chartbook 245: Gaza, beyond de-development to disposability and destruction” on Substack, by Adam Tooze. Interesting history of Gaza’s political economy. Here an interesting paragraph: “Whereas the labour market for Israeli insiders was tightly regulated with strong rights for workers enforced by powerful trade unions, Palestinian labour functioned as a flexible and disenfranchised reserve army that could be hired and fired at will. The conditions of discrimination and low pay were compounded by Israel’s economic crisis in the early 1980s, the consequences of which fell most heavily on the Palestinian underclass. In 1987 these resentments exploded in the first Intifada.”

TM @56 is right about Hamas’s use of civilians, but the IDF still has an obligation to minimize harm to civilians as much as possible under the circumstances. Easy for a distant observer to say, but worth noting.

Also, armies are not monolithic. In any conflict, some units will likely follow the rules of war more closely than others. A lot probably depends on the quality of individual officers. Not an original point, of course, but worth bearing in mind.

Thanks for engaging, TM, I believe we are converging. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I do not know the answer to your question.

I will read the LGM link and maybe we will have a chance to revisit it in the future. But I will leave Ukraine out of this thread as there is already enough tragedy in it.

Since I shared the other one, I might as well share another gift link to Michelle Goldberg’s latest column. (Spoiler: No mention of DSA this time.)

Piling Horror Upon Horror

“In the face of massacres that for Jews around the world brought back memories of genocide, the language of some Israeli leaders has, in turn, become murderous.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/opinion/israel-palestine-mass-death.html?unlocked_article_code=tEMl8PepSnCIO5a20wjIeYq2qjGVmIGHZoOoTligWVY1y99L262gmariQZSe_snMsLqDOYoUS0SwE_ux6PYLR1yGz00pQX3HprSqx9rpvVofSZJCvTO_ejjr3QxTNk_Nfc2_tDaQQ8FLErNgvv6vIt2xxSZ-OlyizULbrrXvgdFFUYbTc41_KqvyuwPwqNb8fJ4gAp0fvusMDvcnO-aJcf0UZ4US2x0jRkp42RYD88CePBBxVLo5ajfee8_KEdJRWNmb6FFT-coT2IVnw1ntV_D7vwUPMsWSKPjaR3wqblJNb519TaRhYlC3wkv2NpVArDyVhlZKg854zTwcbdQZlTpopjSITQ&smid=url-share

We are past the tipping-point of the Seneca Cliff.

All of the vital trajectories of contemporary human and terrestrial history are headed towards the end-state conditions of a series of viciously morbid systemic and structural asymptotic fault lines and processes – ecocidal climate change; oligarchical capitalist class warfare; the continuing historical phenomena of military conflict without the existence of counteractive pacifist and peacemaking historical processes to act as a counterweight – that are ineluctably leading the human species to an extended period of great suffering in hell on earth.

(The following relies heavily upon Immanuel Wallerstein and his school of World-Systems Analysis. In particular it is an attempt to describe and to analyze the internal momentum of a set of world-systems from the perspective of the longue durée).

The nations which inhabit the core zones of the capitalist world system – the USA; the EU; Australia; the UK – have in recent decades been captured by rightist politics. This process has accelerated in recent years into the politics of arch-reaction and ultranationalism or, simply and succinctly put, Fascism.

To this must be now be added a full-blooded return and embrace of 19th/early 20th century Imperialism and Colonialism of the vintage of the blood-soaked Sykes-Picot Agreement and the hideous horrors wrought by the Balfour Declaration.

Why were a number of prominent buildings lit with the Israeli flag? Why was this to the exclusionof the Palestinian flag? Why weren’t both Palestinian and Israeli flags displayed in a manner that would accord with the Two-State Solution that these nations cannot even remember to pay lip-service to, despite it being their own purported policy position? Was this state of thoughtless absent-mindedness brought about due to these nations having done everything in their power to destroy the conditions necessary for the implementation of their ostensible policy position?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/israeli-flags-adorn-eu-buildings-after-hamas-attacks-is-the-bloc-united

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/09/1204662594/europe-condemn-hamas-support-israel-suspend-palestinian-aid

https://www.newarab.com/news/uk-eu-light-solidarity-israel-it-bombs-gaza

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-11/nsw-opera-house-lights-over-the-years-political-controversy/102958584

All the utter BS of these nations as being upholders of Human Rights and of an International rules-based legal order, promoters of Liberal Constructivism etc. has been fully exposed for all to see as being the smoke-screen for the geopolitics of power-hegemonic positioning that was always apparent to the victims of their rapine foreign misadventures.

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2023/10/11/is-international-law-to-protect-civilians-ignored-in-gazas-war

We have returned full cycle. This cyclical return is not of the somewhat reassuring, or at least amusing, “first as tragedy, then as farce” variety. Searching for an illustration, we may need to turn to the infernal abyss of the Yuga Cycle.
“Who was ever ready to extricate dharma that had become sunk owing to the evil effects of Kaliyuga.”— Pikira grant of Pallava Simhavarman, line 10

France is an ultranationalist urinal that had not one but two Fascist candidates in the last election. Or were there three fascist candidates?

“When Emmanuel Macron, the French president, decided in October 2019 to share his views on immigration and Islamophobia, he chose the far-right magazine Valeurs Actuelles, declaring that “the failure of our (economic) model coincides with the crisis of Islam” and adding that this crisis leads to the emergence of more radical forms of political Islam. Macron criticized a demonstration in support of the right to wear veils as “non-aligned Third-Worldism with Marxist tendencies” (he used the word “relents,” which can be translated to hint or trace, but also to stink or stench). This interview was published a few days after a mosque shooting in Bayonne, in south-west France. No terrorism offenses were brought by the French government against the white shooter.”
https://africasacountry.com/2020/01/postcolonialism-does-not-exist-in-france

“Eric Zemmour, (is) a former journalist with multiple convictions for hate speech. Zemmour owes much of his prominence to a news channel owned by media tycoon Vincent Bollore, whose influence increases with each news outlet he takes over.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-listening-post/2022/4/9/france-votes-oligarchs-demagogues-and-the-media

“Statement on France by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination”

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/07/statement-france-un-committee-elimination-racial-discrimination

“United Nations: France must ‘seriously address’ police racism
UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani spoke out against ‘deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement’ at a media briefing in Geneva.”

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/06/30/united-nations-france-must-seriously-address-police-racism_6040123_7.html

And the inbred provincials of that self- immolating, self-infantilizing, laughing stock backwater of brexit little england? Can we pin our pious hopes on an ardent prayer that surely a kingdom reigned over by such enlightened regal personages cannot possibly have learnt absolutely NOTHING from colonial history, can they?

“Israel Arms Trade (Prohibition) Bill”
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3025

https://caat.org.uk/news/caat-calls-for-uk-to-end-arms-sales-and-military-support-for-israeli-forces-following-gaza-killings/

https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/2023/01/british-arms-yemen/#:~:text=Since%202015%2C%20over%20%C2%A323,that%20has%20raged%20since%202015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum#Controversies

https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/british-genocide-in-kenya-time-for-a-reckoning/

Or are the power-elites of the core zones of the capitalist world-system as they ever were?
Genocidal criminals-against-humanity as always.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australians-reject-indigenous-voice-referendum-final-yougov-poll-2023-10-12/

Today, Palestinian unions have called on trade unionists across the world to show their solidarity by refusing to continue with the provision of arms to Israel. They have asked that workers in relevant industries make the following commitments:

To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel.
To refuse to transport weapons to Israel.
To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.
To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.
Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and, in the case of the US, funding to it.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/impending-genocide

@engels, I for one am glad that NLR/Sidecar is against genocide. TBH, they seem to have been a bit on the fence on that one in recent conflicts.

“And yet, the most vocal opposition to Israeli war crimes has been led by dipshit narcissists like Corbyn and associated cosplaying radicals.”

I’d note that a very, very large reason Corbyn is regarded as a dipshit is because he supports Palestinian causes. Pretty impossible to disentangle the idea that he’s an idiot for being a ‘terrorist supporter’ from the idea that he’s both on the side the mainstream hates and is separately an idiot.

@TM 71
When considering the Palestine Israel conflict/genocide the massive preponderance of power is with the two nuclear armed states – Israel and the USA.

We are (or should be) looking for an account of historical causality. Naturally, historical causality is located in the most powerful historical currents. Colonialism is driven by the wielding of the necropolitical power as a means of inflicting violence to maintain control and exert domination. (see Achille Mbembe)

Your pathetic attempts to play lawyer for Tel Aviv and for Washington is a sickening example of the most damnable Lady Macbeth handwashing.
What liberal-bourgeois fantasy of “agency” are you talking about? Are there any activities that the Palestinians engage in that Zionists like you, in your nightmarish opium clouds of bloodletting, do not immediately stamp your iron boots upon?

It is impossible to display the Palestinian flag on Instagram, unaccompanied by any reference whatsoever to the Jewish people, without a barrage of Israeli airstrikes hitting the poor unfortunate who stepped out of line. Is this the sort of thing you mean when you speaking empowering people so that they may have “agency” or “freedom of speech”??

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220131-emma-watson-is-with-palestine/

What about Palestinians simply living their lives? Is that ok with you? The answer is a violent, bloodthirsty NO!

“A Threshold Crossed
Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”
“About 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Throughout most of this area, Israel is the sole governing power; in the remainder, it exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian self-rule. Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

“Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity
The comprehensive report, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law. This system is maintained by violations which Amnesty International found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.
Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.

“There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people. Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history. Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people. The international community must face up to the reality of Israel’s apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored.”
Amnesty International’s findings build on a growing body of work by Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied the apartheid framework to the situation in Israel and/or the OPT.
Identifying apartheid
A system of apartheid is an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination by one racial group over another. It is a serious human rights violation which is prohibited in public international law. Amnesty International’s extensive research and legal analysis, carried out in consultation with external experts, demonstrates that Israel enforces such a system against Palestinians through laws, policies and practices which ensure their prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment.
In international criminal law, specific unlawful acts which are committed within a system of oppression and domination, with the intention of maintaining it, constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid. These acts are set out in the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute, and include unlawful killing, torture, forcible transfer, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms.
Amnesty International documented acts proscribed in the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute in all the areas Israel controls, although they occur more frequently and violently in the OPT than in Israel. Israeli authorities enact multiple measures to deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, including draconian movement restrictions in the OPT, chronic discriminatory underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and the denial of refugees’ right to return. The report also documents forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, and unlawful killings, in both Israel and the OPT.
Amnesty International found that these acts form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and are committed with the intent to maintain the system of oppression and domination. They therefore constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/

Two days ago, Hamas senior leader Dr Naim said; “It doesn’t mean that we lost control … there was a chaos in the area.”. (^1.)

Soon, my intuition tells me, Isreal (and Bkinken and Biden et al) will be quoted regarding civilians, saying…
… It doesn’t mean that we lost control … there was a chaos in the area.

As JQ says in “No true war is bad?”, “obvious anthropic fallacy problem”.

Any talk of “… not targeting civilians” by the IDF is, unfortunately, correct. 
But: words.
Any talk of civilians being in the target zone is correct.
But: reality.
Words?
Or reality?

“No true war is bad?
…
“After that, the argument descends into Pinker-style nonsense. While repeating the usual stats about the decline in violent deaths, Morris mentions in passing that a nuclear war could cause billions of deaths. He doesn’t consider the obvious anthropic fallacy problem – if such a war had happened, there would not be any op-eds in the Washington Post discussing the implications for life expectancy.”
by JOHN Q on OCTOBER 13, 2019

Chris Bertram @47 said “… and if they don’t actually intend the deaths of children, civilians, they are pretty reckless about bringing them about and all too ready to utter the stock clichés about “human shields” and the like to shift the blame. Being reckless about civilian deaths is wrong and deliberately killing them is worse, quite independently of what the “other side” does, but there is no way that morally inflamed people are going to hold back from the conclusion that they are entitled to cast off restraints in getting their own back on the “monsters” who confront them.”

Which monsters?
How many children and carers?
??% are women in caring roles for the 2nd largest demographics of young people. The Gaza Strip is the youngest population with only Uganda having a younger population. 

The West Bank compared to Gaza Strip is Looxury! Gaza has the highest unemployment and the lowest wages and the densest population.

50% in the last Gaza election voted for Hamas. Did the other 50% vote for nefarious splinter groups listed below? Or are they just stuck in Gaza?

^1.
This ABC article quotes “Hamas senior leader” saying Hamas had no plans to target civilians. It was “.   others had infiltrated the Hamas operation”. 

ABC Australia says;
“Hamas senior leader says there were no plans to target civilians in Israel attack
Pressed on whether he was claiming the terrorist group had lost control of its fighters, Dr Naim told 7.30 that others had infiltrated the Hamas operation.

“There are other Palestinian groups who became part of the operation, even ordinary people when they see the prison around Gaza Strip was broken, and the siege was open,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean that we lost control … there was a chaos in the area.”

“Dr Naim would not identify who the other groups were.”…

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-17/hamas-fighters-no-plans-target-civilians-basem-naim/102988812

Other groups (known) are;
“The Gaza Strip’s security is mainly handled by Hamas through its military wing, the
– Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades,
– internal security service, and
– civil police force.
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades have an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 operatives.[172]

“Other Palestinian militant factions operate in the Gaza Strip alongside, and sometimes opposed to Hamas.
– The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, also known as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is the second largest militant faction operating in the Gaza Strip. Its military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, has an estimated 8,000 fighters.[173][174][175][176]

“In June 2013,
-the Islamic Jihad broke ties with Hamas leaders after Hamas police fatally shot the commander of Islamic Jihad’s military wing.[174] The third largest faction is the
– Popular Resistance Committees. Its military wing is known as the Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades.

Other factions include
– the Army of Islam (an Islamist faction of the Doghmush clan),
 the Nidal Al-Amoudi Battalion (an offshoot of the West Bank-based Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades),
– the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades (armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine),
– the Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade (ISIL offshoot),
– Humat al-Aqsa,
– Jaysh al-Ummah,
– Katibat al-Sheikh al-Emireen,
 the Mujahideen Brigades, and
 the Abdul al-Qadir al-Husseini Brigades.[177]

“… to the Gaza Strip having an unusually high proportion of children in the population, with 43.5% of the population being 14 or younger and a median age in 2014 of 18, compared to a world average of 28, and 30 in Israel. The only countries with a lower median age are countries in Africa such as Uganda where it was 15.[293]”
Wikipedia / Gaza strip

Population pyramid of the State of Palestine in 2020
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Palestine_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png/700px-Palestine_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png

Population pyramid of the United States as of July 1, 2022
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/USA_Population_Pyramid.svg/700px-USA_Population_Pyramid.svg.png

Talking Heads sums up this latest folly. “We’re on a road to nowhere, Come on inside, Takin’ that ride to nowhere, We’ll take that ride”

We are being taken for a ride. 

Meanwhile in the more elevated setting of the UN, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield is fighting for moral clarity in mostly the same way TM is here:

But the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the resolution, carefully crafted by Brazilian diplomats, was unacceptable because it made no mention of Israel’s right to self-defence. The UK abstained, saying the resolution lacked mention of the way Hamas was using ordinary Palestinians as human shields. The US ambassador said she was horrified and saddened by the loss of life, but that the actions of Hamas had brought about the humanitarian crisis…

“US vetoes UN’s call for ‘humanitarian pause’ and corridors into Gaza”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/us-vetoes-un-call-for-humanitarian-pause-and-corridors-into-gaza

Hundreds arrested at Israel-Gaza protest near US Capitol
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67155421

David in Tokyo @77

Hamas has a political wing, so to speak, and a military wing. The political leadership lives in Doha, Qatar, but the military leadership does not.

Iran has long funded Hamas, and supported Hezbollah as well. There is, last I heard, no hard evidence linking Iran directly to the Oct. 7 attacks however. But it does back Hamas.

I agree w engels on one pt at any rate — there should be a (temporary at least) ceasefire in Gaza. Seems unlikely to happen.

Not often you hear an American president celebrating the military-industrial complex so baldly:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/us/politics/transcript-biden-speech-israel-ukraine.html

“We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores, our own stockpiles, with new equipment. Equipment that defends America and is made in America. Patriot missiles for air defense batteries, made in Arizona. Artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas. And so much more.

You know, just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.”

So the US will be funding two regional wars simultaneously. What could go wrong?

Nation states are an extremely flawed system of social-political organization, not least because they are principally based on ethnicity. There are 1000s of ethnic groups but only 200 nation states. (What of the Tamils, Kurds, Uighurs?)
Nonetheless, as long as we have nation states, if any ethnic group should have its own nation, it is Jews, who are constantly scapegoated, and who have been subject to a genocide within living memory.
This is a reason to roll back the West Bank settlements and adopt a two-state solution, one for Jews and one for Palestinians.

In a Gaza lounge room, soon:
“Walking through walls” thus becomes a kind of militarized parkour.”
…
“”Imagine it—you’re sitting in your living room, which you know so well; this is the room where the family watches television together after the evening meal. . . . And, suddenly, that wall disappears with a deafening roar, the room fills with dust and debris, and through the wall pours one soldier after the other, screaming orders. You have no idea if they’re after you, if they’ve come to take over your home, or if your house just lies on their route to somewhere else. The children are screaming, panicking. . . . Is it possible to even begin to imagine the horror experienced by a five-year-old child as four, six, eight, twelve soldiers, their faces painted black, submachine guns pointed everywhere, antennas protruding from their backpacks, making them look like giant alien bugs, blast their way through that wall?”

…”In it, Weizman—an Israeli architect and prominent critic of that nation’s territorial policy—documents many of the emerging spatial techniques used by the Israeli Defense Forces in their high-tech, legally dubious 2002 invasion of Nablus. During that battle, Weizman writes, “soldiers moved within the city across hundred-meter-long ‘overground-tunnels’ carved through a dense and contiguous urban fabric.” Their movements were thus almost entirely camouflaged, with troop movements hidden from above by virtue of always remaining inside buildings”.
…
https://www.bldgblog.com/2010/01/nakatomi-space/

“Lethal Theory”
Eyal Weizman
November 1, 2009
…
“Rather than submit to the authority of conventional spatial boundaries and logic, movement became constitutive of space. The three-dimensional progression through walls, ceilings and floors across the urban mass reinterpreted, short-circuited and recomposed both architectural and urban syntax. The IDF’s strategy of ‘walking-through-walls’ involved a conception of the city as not just the site, but the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux.

“At stake are the underlying concepts, assumptions and principles that determine military strategies and tactics.”
…
https://onlineopen.org/lethal-theory

I’ve found myself thinking about the title of this post repeatedly.
I have a neighbour who is visiting family in Tel Aviv, so when talking to her husband it is clear what to say: “I hope she is well and you have my best wishes”.
I also have a Palestinian colleague at work, and so I say “I hope your family are well and you have my best wishes”.
So “On not knowing what to say about Gaza” seems perhaps incomplete. Some comments seem to assume a context of speaking “publicly” to an unspecified audience. And while this matter of course, it is perhaps not the only context.