#haaretz#editorial West Bank settlers are exploiting the “propitious moment” created by the war that #Hamas started to expel thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands. They are terrorizing them through various means in order to drive them from their villages. Far from everyone’s eyes, the West Bank is changing almost irreversibly.
"As horrific as the massacre was, it does not absolve Israel of its past crimes against the Palestinians, does not justify the ethnic cleansing Israel is currently carrying out in both the Strip and the West Bank."
"When the very mention of context itself is considered anti-Semitic, then pretext takes its place. The massacre serves as a pretext for ethnic cleansing in the Strip and West Bank and an excuse to muzzle and intimidate the Palestinian citizens of Israel."
It's not always easy to take Professor Ilan Pappé for his word when it comes to vigorous historical research, but his commentary is always interesting, and in this case also reflexive.
====
The holy rage: the plight of the Israeli left
My heart goes out to Jewish-Israeli leftists these days. They vent their distress on the pages of #Haaretz daily newspaper, while directing their anger at the global left, or at least the Western left. They are in a reality I found myself in some 15 years ago: ostracized and alienated from Jewish society for my “betrayal” of it on the one hand, yet on the other hand, not accepted as a credible partner by Palestinian society, whose national movement I supported as a researcher and political activist. Luckily that stage of my life is behind me.
When you don't belong to any group of reference, you are in a societal and intellectual limbo. This is exactly the distress of the Israeli left. The massacre carried out by #Hamas on October 7 exposed the difference between it and the global left. The global left is an organic part of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian liberation movement.
This liberation movement is no longer as institutionalized as it was, and is much more fragmented and weakened compared to its heyday in the 1970s. But it remains robust and its solidarity movement remains as well. The concepts and language of the solidarity movement have always been different from those of the Israeli left. This movement has not supported the two-state solution idea for years, and has long defined #Zionism as a settler colonial movement and Israel as an #apartheid state.
The sins of this movement, as they appear in the righteous indignation articles of writers like Eva Illouz,, Ofri Ilany, Haim Levinson and many others, are mainly twofold: comparing #Israel to colonialism, and mentioning the historical context of the massacre carried out by Hamas.
But the global left does not talk about Israel as part of global colonialism, but as part of settler colonialism. It is worth recalling, even for a moment, what characterizes settler colonial movements. These are movements of European refugees, who sought refuge and shelter from a Europe that did not want them and even persecuted them. They arrived in countries inhabited by native populations, who the new settlers saw as a fundamental obstacle to their dream of building a new Europe of their own.
Destruction of the local population or its expulsion were a precondition for the success of this new settlement. This is the story of the founding of the United States, Canada and Australia. The Zionist movement was also such a movement, and like the other movements relied on an empire to gain a foothold in a foreign land, found religious justification for settlement, and engaged in the search for ways to get rid of both the empire that assisted it and the native majority population.
Indeed, this is the perception of the global left. It includes defining Israel as an apartheid state, and was not born on October 7. It does not prevent condemnation of Hamas' actions, but it certainly provides a much more convincing explanation for this terrible event than defining Hamas as a bloodthirsty #Nazi organization that seeks to kill #Jews for the sake of killing.
Israel reacted with rage to the mass killing in the Gaza Strip, yet the Israeli left still expected the global left to be outraged along with it and relate to the horrors of that Shabbat outside any context. This is the global left's second sin, and this is the sin of the #UN secretary general: mentioning the context.
The Israeli left demands focus on the event as pure evil without context. Mentioning the context does not justify it but explains it, and above all offers a different explanation than that adhered to by Israeli politicians, pundits and journalists. In vain, the Israeli left will ask people of conscience worldwide to focus on the horrors of October 7, and therefore forget about the horrors of the occupation and siege prior to October 7 and those of the days after October 7.
The global left has always focused in the past - both in its historical perception and moral viewpoint - on contexts that gave birth to difficult actions of those who rebelled against Western oppression. Therefore, those who supported the abolitionist movement did not see the terrible massacre of whites led by Nat Turner in 1831, an event that harmed the struggle to abolish slavery, as an uncontextualized evil. Those who supported the Algerian liberation movement did not demand constant condemnation of the terrible massacre carried out by the rebels in July 1962 of white settlers in the city of Oran as if it had no historical context of over a hundred years of French abuse and oppression of the Algerian people.
These contexts explain the event, they do not justify it. They certainly clarify for us why the chorus of the Israeli left is shocked by what it defines as an insufficient response from the global left, and why its prominent spokespeople accuse the global left of anti-Semitism and immorality. As horrific as the massacre was, it does not absolve Israel of its past crimes against the Palestinians, does not justify the ethnic cleansing Israel is currently carrying out in both the Strip and the West Bank.
Moreover, and perhaps most importantly. As terrifying and horrible as it is, this is not a constitutive event: Israel will remain a settler colonial state, with features of an apartheid regime, Palestinian resistance will continue, global civil society will continue to support it, and Israel will rely solely on the support of Western elites. This is a clear recipe for continued bloodshed, with no winners, only losers, a reality in which calling for a ceasefire, which could lead to the return of the kidnapped, is considered treason, and the continuation of fighting and abandoning the kidnapped to their fate is preferred.
When the very mention of context itself is considered anti-Semitic, then pretext takes its place. The massacre serves as a pretext for ethnic cleansing in the Strip and West Bank and an excuse to muzzle and intimidate the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It also serves as a pretext for the United States to return its army to the region, from which it was expelled in disgrace after the failed attempt to impose democracy by force. It serves as a pretext for Western governments to severely undermine freedom of expression and opinion in the name of fighting terror.
Moral compass and awareness of contexts exposes the pretexts and their disaster-laden results, and above all focuses on what matters now: recognizing again that Palestinians and Israelis have only two options: mutual destruction or living together.
Professor Ilan Pappé, at the Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, is the author of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."
It's not always easy to take Professor Ilan Pappé for his word when it comes to vigorous historical research, but his commentary is always interesting, and in this case also self-reflective.
====
The holy rage: the plight of the Israeli left
My heart goes out to Jewish-Israeli leftists these days. They vent their distress on the pages of #Haaretz daily newspaper, while directing their anger at the global left, or at least the Western left. They are in a reality I found myself in some 15 years ago: ostracized and alienated from Jewish society for my “betrayal” of it on the one hand, yet on the other hand, not accepted as a credible partner by Palestinian society, whose national movement I supported as a researcher and political activist. Luckily that stage of my life is behind me.
When you don't belong to any group of reference, you are in a societal and intellectual limbo. This is exactly the distress of the Israeli left. The massacre carried out by #Hamas on October 7 exposed the difference between it and the global left. The global left is an organic part of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian liberation movement.
This liberation movement is no longer as institutionalized as it was, and is much more fragmented and weakened compared to its heyday in the 1970s. But it remains robust and its solidarity movement remains as well. The concepts and language of the solidarity movement have always been different from those of the Israeli left. This movement has not supported the two-state solution idea for years, and has long defined #Zionism as a settler colonial movement and Israel as an #apartheid state.
The sins of this movement, as they appear in the righteous indignation articles of writers like Eva Illouz,, Ofri Ilany, Haim Levinson and many others, are mainly twofold: comparing #Israel to colonialism, and mentioning the historical context of the massacre carried out by Hamas.
But the global left does not talk about Israel as part of global colonialism, but as part of settler colonialism. It is worth recalling, even for a moment, what characterizes settler colonial movements. These are movements of European refugees, who sought refuge and shelter from a Europe that did not want them and even persecuted them. They arrived in countries inhabited by native populations, who the new settlers saw as a fundamental obstacle to their dream of building a new Europe of their own.
Destruction of the local population or its expulsion were a precondition for the success of this new settlement. This is the story of the founding of the United States, Canada and Australia. The Zionist movement was also such a movement, and like the other movements relied on an empire to gain a foothold in a foreign land, found religious justification for settlement, and engaged in the search for ways to get rid of both the empire that assisted it and the native majority population.
Indeed, this is the perception of the global left. It includes defining Israel as an apartheid state, and was not born on October 7. It does not prevent condemnation of Hamas' actions, but it certainly provides a much more convincing explanation for this terrible event than defining Hamas as a bloodthirsty #Nazi organization that seeks to kill #Jews for the sake of killing.
Israel reacted with rage to the mass killing in the Gaza Strip, yet the Israeli left still expected the global left to be outraged along with it and relate to the horrors of that Shabbat outside any context. This is the global left's second sin, and this is the sin of the #UN secretary general: mentioning the context.
The Israeli left demands focus on the event as pure evil without context. Mentioning the context does not justify it but explains it, and above all offers a different explanation than that adhered to by Israeli politicians, pundits and journalists. In vain, the Israeli left will ask people of conscience worldwide to focus on the horrors of October 7, and therefore forget about the horrors of the occupation and siege prior to October 7 and those of the days after October 7.
The global left has always focused in the past - both in its historical perception and moral viewpoint - on contexts that gave birth to difficult actions of those who rebelled against Western oppression. Therefore, those who supported the abolitionist movement did not see the terrible massacre of whites led by Nat Turner in 1831, an event that harmed the struggle to abolish slavery, as an uncontextualized evil. Those who supported the Algerian liberation movement did not demand constant condemnation of the terrible massacre carried out by the rebels in July 1962 of white settlers in the city of Oran as if it had no historical context of over a hundred years of French abuse and oppression of the Algerian people.
These contexts explain the event, they do not justify it. They certainly clarify for us why the chorus of the Israeli left is shocked by what it defines as an insufficient response from the global left, and why its prominent spokespeople accuse the global left of anti-Semitism and immorality. As horrific as the massacre was, it does not absolve Israel of its past crimes against the Palestinians, does not justify the ethnic cleansing Israel is currently carrying out in both the Strip and the West Bank.
Moreover, and perhaps most importantly. As terrifying and horrible as it is, this is not a constitutive event: Israel will remain a settler colonial state, with features of an apartheid regime, Palestinian resistance will continue, global civil society will continue to support it, and Israel will rely solely on the support of Western elites. This is a clear recipe for continued bloodshed, with no winners, only losers, a reality in which calling for a ceasefire, which could lead to the return of the kidnapped, is considered treason, and the continuation of fighting and abandoning the kidnapped to their fate is preferred.
When the very mention of context itself is considered anti-Semitic, then pretext takes its place. The massacre serves as a pretext for ethnic cleansing in the Strip and West Bank and an excuse to muzzle and intimidate the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It also serves as a pretext for the United States to return its army to the region, from which it was expelled in disgrace after the failed attempt to impose democracy by force. It serves as a pretext for Western governments to severely undermine freedom of expression and opinion in the name of fighting terror.
Moral compass and awareness of contexts exposes the pretexts and their disaster-laden results, and above all focuses on what matters now: recognizing again that Palestinians and Israelis have only two options: mutual destruction or living together.
Professor Ilan Pappé, at the Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, is the author of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."
Ich habe gestern mit den neuen GPTs von OpenAI rumgespielt und mir letztendlich für meine aktuellen Projekte drei tatsächlich hilfreiche Chatbots erstellt.
Say hello to "Linux Server Admin Assistant", "Bricks Builder Assistant" und "Kirby CMS Advisor". Derzeit frei verfügbar für alle, die es brauchen und ein Abo für ChatGPT abgeschlossen haben.
"Das ist nicht die Zukunft, aber man kann sie von hier aus sehen" (DXHR)
Yesterday I played around with the new GPTs from OpenAI and ended up creating three actually helpful chatbots for my current projects.
Say hello to “Linux Server Admin Assistant”, “Bricks Builder Assistant” and “Kirby CMS Advisor”. Currently freely available to anyone who needs it and has a ChatGPT subscription.
“This is not the future, but you can see it from here” (DXHR)
Warm-hearted @neilhimself CHIVALRY adapted by me for @darkhorsecomics letters by Todd Klein & me, Eisner/Locus winner - perfect for an autumn read. https://amzn.to/40KTp0A
I want to start by saying that the updates contained herein are not absolutely necessary.
A forum user asked this question:
Is there a way to use the context menu for tabs in Firefox mobile? Tap and hold used to bring up a menu where I could, among other things, send the tab to another device. That is very useful at times.
Tap and hold in the tabs list doesn’t bring up any menu at all.
I answered this question in what I am calling Question & Answer (post 85) and made an update in the Final Updates (post 61).
Updated November 17th 2023:
This forum thread is best viewed with javascript disabled in your browser.
Added fenix_theme.css for those that want the Firefox for Android (fenix) theme and don’t want to hide the Tab Bar.
Added file descriptions to some posts.
Adjusted the following files to hide the Tab Bar in Fullscreen and to hide the Title Bar (only useful if you modify these files to prevent hiding the Tab Bar):
Lines 251-254 and Lines 511-514 of fenix_fox-alt.css
Lines 251-254 and Lines 542-545 of fenix_fox.css
Lines 472-475 and Lines 732-735 of fenix_one-alt.css
Lines 472-475 and Lines 763-766 of fenix_one.css
Changed this:
/* Hide Nav Bar when in Fullscreen mode */
#nav-bar[inFullscreen] {
display: none;
}
To this:
/* Hide Nav Bar and Tab Bar when in Fullscreen mode and hide and Title Bar */
#nav-bar[inFullscreen],
#TabsToolbar[inFullscreen],
.titlebar-buttonbox-container {
display: none;
}
I have a crafts channel on makertube.net already but would prefer to spread myself around in case one server goes down. Also tbh I'm not even sure devlogs would count as "making" anyway.
Tried the instance finder on the PT homepage but it's pretty useless so if anyone knows where is stable and welcomes this kind of content I'd appreciate it! Thanks.
A couple of devloggers are already on diode.zone although at time of writing that instance wasn’t taking new signups
I did get a couple of DMs about invite-only instances too, which seemed legit and stable enough but they just weren’t for me
In the absence of other compelling instances, I checked with the admin of MakerTube and they confirmed gamedev counts as “making”. So I just stuck with there in the end and we’ll see how it goes🤷♀️
@ajsadauskas@fediverse
...on the other hand, isekai-ing ten thousand German FOSS reply guys into the World of Shitposting and Discourse* would result in some entertaining fireworks, so who's to say?
Oops I accidentally a Homestuck reference (and I don't even like Homestuck). Clearly the platform I spend too much time on isn't fedi or bsky - it's Tumblr.
@davidboatymcboa@neilhimself
Neil Gaiman ... Neil Gaiman ... I've heard that name before. would that be the Neil Gaiman of 'Good Omens' fame? If so ... someone fucked up the end of 'Good Omens II' and I'm still pissed about that.
@neilhimself To all you fans here on Mastodon here’s a wee link with enough Neil Gaiman, Charles Vess, Lyras Books and @rovinacaiart art to make you go oooooh whilst getting out your wallets!
The live link to buy your tickets will be available as soon as both raffles have been approved by @raffall_app