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sebastianschroeder , to histodons German
@sebastianschroeder@nrw.social avatar
oatmeal , to histodons
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/ If Biden Wants Israeli-Palestinian Peace, He Must Break With the Past (Prof Avi Shlaim, December 22, 2020)

Shlaim argued back in 2020 that only by breaking from past failed policies of coddling Israel can capitalize on new regional dynamics to make meaningful progress toward a two-state solution.

Shlaim suggested that the traditional U.S. approach of unconditional support for Israel, while posing as an "honest broker" in peace negotiations, has been incoherent and self-defeating. The Oslo peace too was a charade that allowed Israel to continue expanding settlements while paying lip service to a two-state solution that became increasingly untenable.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/22/if-biden-wants-israeli-palestinian-peace-he-must-break-with-the-past/ or https://archive.is/37JT5

@israel
@palestine
@histodons

oatmeal , to academicchatter
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/ In her own words: Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian on Zionism

The Hebrew University suspended Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian today, after she refused to resign.

@israel
@palestine


@academicchatter

video/mp4

oatmeal , to academicchatter
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/ Benny Morris Prevented from speaking at LSE Law School

[…] Morris’ rhetoric is particularly dangerous at a time of rising anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, Islamophobic, racist and xenophobic violence. The danger of such speech is part of the reason the ICJ is investigating the words of military and political leaders, but also media and public figures, as inciting genocide.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1b7lnuf/lse_law_school_prevent_benny_morris_speaking_on/

@israel
@palestine


@academicchatter

MikeDunnAuthor , to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History February 13, 1945: 25,000 civilians died when the Allies firebombed Dresden. In a three-day period, they dropped 3,900 tons of explosives and incendiaries, reducing six square miles of the city to rubble. Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden during the bombing. He wrote about it in his novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

@bookstadon

estelle , to random
@estelle@techhub.social avatar

"An estimated 90,000 Kenyans were slaughtered in the Kikuyu uprising while just over a thousand were hanged on a portable gibbet. Some 160,000 were detained in internment camps where torture was routine.

"One of Britain’s victims was US President Barack Obama’s paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, who was arrested in 1949, and tortured by having pins inserted under his fingernails."

Kitson brought to Belfast his experiences in Kenya, fighting the Kikuyu Land and Freedom Army (exotically dubbed the “Mau Mau” by the British) in the early 1950s where he honed a practice of using “turned” or “converted” rebels into “counter-gangs”.

Anne Cadwallader: https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-general-who-terrorised-the-colonies/

oatmeal , to academicchatter
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/ This is what ethnocide looks like: Israel deliberate destruction of Palestinian academia.

On January 17th, the last remaining intact university in Gaza, Al-Aqsa University, was bombed and completely destroyed by the Israeli military. The bombing of 's universities is not collateral damage, but part of Israel's deliberate policy to destroy Palestinian academic and cultural life.

Israeli academic institutions have not spoken out against this destruction and its consequences.

Over the past 40 years, Palestinian universities have faced systematic harassment by , including campus closures and restrictions on faculty, students and academic cooperation.

Since October 7, the situation has severely intensified. In the occupied West Bank, most studies are online due to restrictions. In Gaza, all academic institutions have been destroyed, along with schools, libraries, archives and other educational sites.

Hundreds of students and faculty members have been killed in the bombings. At least 94 university staff members in Gaza are reported dead. Prominent academics have been specifically targeted and killed.

This represents an almost complete destruction of Palestinian academic life that will take years to rebuild. Surviving students and staff are traumatized, grieving and displaced.

Palestinian intellectual life is critical for society. Israel's systematic targeting of is aimed at erasing not just physical infrastructure but Palestinian cultural and spiritual life.

Dr. Anat Matar (ענת מטר): "As Israeli academics, we must raise our voices against the killing of students and colleagues, mass arrests, and the annihilation of education in Gaza."

[Hebrew] https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-02-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018d-6461-d359-a58f-757388d40000 or https://archive.is/87Ja6

@academicchatter
@palestine
@israel


estelle , to random
@estelle@techhub.social avatar
estelle OP ,
@estelle@techhub.social avatar
oatmeal , to random
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/ On The previous Israeli attempt to encourage "voluntary emigration" of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip

The proposals being heard against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza, to transfer the residents of the Strip to other countries, are not new. Dr. Amri Shefer Raviv, a historian of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, examined in his research a similar attempt made by the Israeli government immediately after the Six Day War.

In the months after the Six Day War, the Committee for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories drafted a document that was meant to outline the lines of action for controlling the conquered territories. The first and most important paragraph defined in the draft document: "A policy aimed at the departure of a maximum number of Arabs from the held territories".

From then on, Israel consistently dealt with the question of how to encourage the Palestinian residents of the territories to leave the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - without provoking international criticism against it. Unlike the West Bank, where about a quarter of the residents left immediately after the war, almost no resident left the Gaza Strip.

Initially, Israel hoped that a political agreement would solve the refugee problem and determine in an orderly manner the fate of the Gaza Strip and its residents. As time passed, when it was understood that a political agreement and a solution to the refugee problem were not on the horizon - Israel moved to a policy of encouraging emigration. It was a quiet policy aimed at pushing people to leave the Gaza Strip individually - whether by providing incentives to leave or pushing them to seek a better life by deliberately maintaining a low standard of living in the Strip. At the same time, Israeli representatives made efforts to reach agreements with foreign countries - including in Latin America - that would be willing to absorb Palestinian refugees for a fee.

https://kolektiva.media/w/8f4b4CrccZLgJcFPce9nJk

  • Turn on subtitles to see translation to English

Source: Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research.
January 2024.

@israel
@palestine





oatmeal , to histodons
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/the "topics document" [מסמך הצירים] was drafted in 1988 to regulate the release of sensitive documents from state archives [*]

The criteria according to which the governmental archives (the IDF Archive and the State Archive) decide whether to expose or conceal historical documentation - are not sufficiently transparent to the public. These criteria are also not fixed and have changed over the years.

"The Topics Document" [מסמך הצירים], alongside additional related historical documentation, was itself concealed and closed to review for many years. Only after three years of insistence with the State Archive was it finally transferred to the ["footprints"] Institute.

So what are the sensitive issues, pertaining to IDF's image, Israel might like to conceal from scrutiny by researches?

One of those "sensitive topics" defined in the document is material that portrays the IDF as an occupying army devoid of moral foundations, which could harm its image as a moral army. Under this topic, eight concrete issues were listed, including:

  • Violent conduct against the Arab population and acts of cruelty (killing, murder not necessitated by combat, rape, looting, pillage)

  • Desecration of holy sites (desecration of churches, mosques and cemeteries)

  • Criminal acts (theft, looting of property, forgeries and destruction of evidence)

  • Atrocities committed against Jewish women (rape)

  • Atrocities committed by IDF divisions [in the War of Independence]: (Hula, Khisas, Eilaboun, Duwayma, etc.).

Another topic is aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself, Israel would like to avoid making public due to national security concerns:

  • Expulsion of Palestinians: Policy of retaliation against infiltrators; orders to harm infiltrators even in case of doubt

  • Establishing policy against return of Palestinians to their lands

  • Evacuation of Palestinian settlements and residents (Majdal, today "Ashkelon")

  • Violent conduct against prisoners contrary to the Geneva Convention (killing); not taking notice of white flags

  • Bombing of civilian facilities (bombing of hospitals to refugee camps Gaza, El Burj)

[*] Declassification of government papers according to the thirty years limit, by law, led to the emergence of the "New Historians" in Israel [Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris ...], who are known, collectively, to have challenged Israel's Zionist narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict

The original document, in Hebrew, can be seen here: https://www.akevot.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1988-09-topics-document_redacted.pdf

@histodons
@israel
@palestine


oatmeal , to histodons
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/on the "topics document" [מסמך הצירים] was drafted in 1988 to regulate the release of sensitive documents from state archives [*]

The criteria according to which the governmental archives (the IDF Archive and the State Archive) decide whether to expose or conceal historical documentation - are not sufficiently transparent to the public. These criteria are also not fixed and have changed over the years.

"The Topics Document" [מסמך הצירים], alongside additional related historical documentation, was itself concealed and closed to review for many years. Only after three years of insistence with the State Archive was it finally transferred to the ["footprints"] Institute.

So what are the sensitive issues, pertaining to IDF's image, Israel might like to conceal from scrutiny by researches?

One of those "sensitive topics" defined in the document is material that portrays the IDF as an occupying army devoid of moral foundations, which could harm its image as a moral army. Under this topic, eight concrete issues were listed, including:

  • Violent conduct against the Arab population and acts of cruelty (killing, murder not necessitated by combat, rape, looting, pillage)

  • Desecration of holy sites (desecration of churches, mosques and cemeteries)

  • Criminal acts (theft, looting of property, forgeries and destruction of evidence)

  • Atrocities committed against Jewish women (rape)

  • Atrocities committed by IDF divisions [in the War of Independence]: (Hula, Khisas, Eilaboun, Duwayma, etc.).

Another topic is aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself, Israel would like to avoid making public due to national security concerns:

  • Expulsion of Palestinians: Policy of retaliation against infiltrators; orders to harm infiltrators even in case of doubt

  • Establishing policy against return of Palestinians to their lands

  • Evacuation of Palestinian settlements and residents (Majdal, today "Ashkelon")

  • Violent conduct against prisoners contrary to the Geneva Convention (killing); not taking notice of white flags

  • Bombing of civilian facilities (bombing of hospitals to refugee camps Gaza, El Burj)

[*] Declassification of government papers according to the thirty years limit, by law, led to the emergence of the "New Historians" in Israel [Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris ...], who are known, collectively, to have challenged Israel's Zionist narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict

The original document, in Hebrew, can be seen here: https://www.akevot.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1988-09-topics-document_redacted.pdf

@histodons
@israel
@palestine


oatmeal , to histodons
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

/ Shiblī, ʻAdanīyah, and Elisabeth Jaquette. Minor Detail. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2020.

The true story of how a Bedouin girl was raped and murdered by Israeli soldiers.

[…] The Negev gang rape at the heart of Minor Detail is a true story, carried out by Israeli soldiers in 1949. Another minor detail: according to declassified documents, the real-life commander answered his superior’s question on whether the girl was eventually returned to her village by reporting that his soldiers killed her because “it was a shame to waste the petrol”.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/30/minor-detail-by-adania-shibli-review-horror-in-the-desert

@israel
@palestine
@histodons
@bookstodon

oatmeal , to random
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

must be recognised as an international crime

The massive, arbitrary destruction of civilian housing in violent conflict should be recognised as a crime under international law, the UN’s independent housing rights expert told the General Assembly today [28 October 2022].

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/domicide-must-be-recognised-international-crime-un-expert

@israel
@palestine

oatmeal OP ,
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar
appassionato , to bookstodon
@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

War Crimes and Just War

Larry May argues that the best way to understand war crimes is as crimes against humanness rather than as violations of justice. He shows that in a deeply pluralistic world, we need to understand the rules of war as the collective responsibility of states that send their citizens into harm's way, as the embodiment of humanity, and as the chief way for soldiers to retain a sense of honour on the battlefield.

@bookstodon



appassionato , to bookstodon
@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

Targeting Civilians in War

In this vitally important book on a topic of acute concern for anyone interested in military strategy, international security, or human rights, Alexander B. Downes reminds readers that democratic and authoritarian governments alike will sometimes deliberately kill large numbers of civilians as a matter of military strategy.

@bookstodon


appassionato OP ,
@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

@voxpopsicle @bookstodon On the contrary, it's a long book.

This encyclopedia covers massacres, atrocities, war crimes, and genocides, including acts of inhumanity on all continents; and serves as a reminder that lest we forget, history will repeat itself.



pivic , to bookstodon
@pivic@kolektiva.social avatar
appassionato , to bookstodon
@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia

A landmark, magisterial history of the trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals—the largely overlooked Asian counterpart to Nuremberg

Relevant today.

@bookstodon





CaringKinderSociety , to random
@CaringKinderSociety@aus.social avatar

"..our universities in Australia must be places where we have the courage to take up our responsibilities as ethical researchers and teachers: our classrooms must be spaces of historical truth-telling that seek to explain why and how this is happening and support students to express their truths, including through student activism."

"As educators and researchers, we pay our deep respect to Palestinian scholars, writers, artists, and activists, including Palestinians based in Australia. We commit to continuing to learn from long histories of Palestinian description, critique, and analysis. Our colleagues in Palestine have called on us again and again to take action, and so we must. Telling the truth in history – as we know from our experiences in this settler-colony of Australia – is an important act of resistance, and we commit to undertaking this task."

https://overland.org.au/2023/12/statement-from-historians-in-australia-in-solidarity-with-palestine/

oatmeal ,
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

“As historians who study – amongst other things – settler-colonialism, genocide, apartheid, gendered and sexed violence, Jewish history, Palestinian history, Israeli history, and more, we say that this breathtaking and heartbreaking violence is unacceptable and must be opposed entirely. We know that the violence did not begin on October 7th, and is a result of long transnational histories of imperialism, colonialism, state violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism. The story does not begin on October 7th, and longer histories – involving European colonisation of Palestine, the mandate system and British rule, the 75 years since the establishment of the State of Israel, the 56 year occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and the 16 year blockade on Gaza – must be held at the forefront of our minds. “

@histodons
@israel
@palestine

oatmeal , to random
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

1/2 Enraged Israeli spokes people are a very common sight on Western TV these days, but this exchange between Sky's Kay Burley and Israel's Eylon Levy seem to set a new low.

Speaking to Levy about Israel's decision to handover 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 50 Israeli children and babies, Burley said she had spoken “to a hostage negotiator” about the discrepancy in the numbers. He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians and Israel has said that it will release, [...] Does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?"




Sky's Kay Burley wth Israel's Eylon Levy

oatmeal , to random
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

West Bank settlers are exploiting the “propitious moment” created by the war that 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.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-11-17/ty-article-opinion/stop-israels-warmongering-settlers/0000018b-d9ec-dffa-adef-ffec7d150000

If you can’t afford a subscription install bypass paywall for to read the full article https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

@israel
@palestine

oatmeal OP ,
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

"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 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 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 as a settler colonial movement and Israel as an 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 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 organization that seeks to kill 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 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."

Hebrew: https://www.mekomit.co.il/הזעם-הקדוש-מצוקת-השמאל-הישראלי/

@israel
@palestine


@academicchatter

oatmeal OP ,
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

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 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 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 as a settler colonial movement and Israel as an 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 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 organization that seeks to kill 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 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."

Hebrew: https://www.mekomit.co.il/הזעם-הקדוש-מצוקת-השמאל-הישראלי/

@israel
@palestine


@academicchatter

oatmeal , to academicchatter
@oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

It's sad to say, but the media of the "only Democracy in the Middle East" is fully mobilized. Except for , which operates outside the consensus, Israel's news sites and daily newspapers highlight heroism, while concealing the kidnapped and ignoring or downplaying the killing of thousands of Gazan children.

Israeli readers are getting a daily diet consisting of every food fight on between celebs pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, truly bizarre opinion columns written by an Israeli Palestinian, glorifying and admiring Jews, or simplistic and obnoxious opinion pieces like "Gaza minus Israelis = Auschwitz".

From "The massacre brought Jews back to the beginnings of Zionism", penned by Mahmud Abu Raj'ab:

"[...] And before they [the Jews] forget the spirit inspired them when they established the state [of Israel], and before they reach the stage where "blindness blinds their eyes", someone comes who wakes them up from their deep slumber and brings them back to the ground of reality. So do not be frightened or dismayed."

(last expression taken from Joshua, 10:25)

The text on Ynet (which never publishes anything in Arabic) is available in both Hebrew and Arabic, "بعد المذبحة: عودة الى البدايات دولة اليهود لا تزال في صعود."

https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/by1m1b11qt

@academicchatter
@israel
@palestine


ynet
maariv hamas wanted/tageted list
makorrishon

appassionato , to bookstodon
@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

Judgment at Tokyo

World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
A landmark, magisterial history of the trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals—the largely overlooked Asian counterpart to Nuremberg.

@bookstodon

boud , to worldnews in Ethiopia: Mass killings continue, risk of further ‘large-scale’ atrocities
@boud@framapiaf.org avatar

@livus

The report itself ([3], point 72) finds (by ENDF + EDF + Amhara/Afar Special Forces + 'fano'), not . Tigrayan forces committed (not crimes against humanity) (point 71).

@tallwookie No, a "UN invasion" would solve nothing. The question for rich-country outsiders is which local/regional/continental groups/institutions should be supported. African civil society has plenty of ideas and is very active.

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20230920032323/https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/chreetiopia/A_HRC_54_55_AUV.pdf

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