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Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

I don't think he is a poster like this. He made a fairly innocuous post earlier as I recall and got jumped on.

I really value your posts Gramsci but I think tim being jumped on is a reason some posters are reluctant to post on the thread, as was asked earlier.
 
I don't think he is a poster like this. He made a fairly innocuous post earlier as I recall and got jumped on.

I really value your posts Gramsci but I think tim being jumped on is a reason some posters are reluctant to post on the thread, as was asked earlier.

Ive taken a fair amount of stick on this thread in earlier pages and stuck with it.

I had Tim on ignore but poster will insist on commenting on my posts

And to add unless someone really winds me up I have tried to base posts on what Ive read and watched and not just spout off.
 
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Ive been following this thread from the start. And tried to post up reasonable posts based on my reading.

Tim has from the start been pursuing this line. When pushed says those who support Palestinian rights are suspect of anti semitism.

Despite what has happened in Gaza has not changed their tune.

I have them on ignore but they reply to my posts. Maybe I should not.

There whole thing is that criticism of Israel is picking on it when others are just as bad. And that people who take to much of an interest in Palestine are either conscious or unconsciously anti semitic.

Maybe I should not rise to it.
It's different opinions, that's all, and of course you shouldn't rise to it.

Other countries are as bad, and some people do question why Israel gets so much attention. For anyone with a personal connection with 'the Levant' to put it diplomatically, its obvious why they'd care. Ditto people who refer to the whole place as 'the Holy Land' - that's still common parlance among a certain kind of Christian. Nobody I know who is Israeli or Jewish or both, is entirely uncritical of Israel. But what it looks like is that quite a lot of people who have no connection - personal or religious - with Israel, Palestine or 'the Holy Land' get very loud on this issue over and above others such as Xinjiang or Burma or Yemen or Sudan or...

And the thing is, anti-semitism does feed this extra loudness over Israel/Palestine, not you but it does. You know it does, we all know it does. We've seen it glancingly on this very thread, which I've also followed since the OP.

So I think there are a lot of views we aren't hearing because of some of the more vitriolic shit that even a pretty thoughtful post can attract. Nobody wants Mark fucking Regev in here but ffs Israel isn't going anywhere, and yelling "hasbara shill" at anyone who points that out is pointless, frustrating, annoying, and IMO unworthy of your own contributions. It's equivalent to yelling "anti semite" at anyone who says that maybe Israel should be a different kind of country.

Anyway, I'm trying to comment less so I'll leave it there.
 
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Ive taken a fair amount of stick on this thread in earlier pages and stuck with it.

I had Tim on ignore but poster will insist on commenting on my posts

And to add unless someone really winds me up I have tried to base posts on what Ive read and watched and not just spout off.
I don't really understand the point tim was making tbh but I'd assumed he was asking why we're singling out Israel as uniquely different from other 'settler states'. I'm also not actually sure which other settler states he was referring to (I'm a bit out of my depth :) ) but I think it's a fair question why we're concentrating on Israel when there are other slaughters going on around the world.

It's also easy to ignore that tim has explicitly said "The point is that the Israeli regime is murderous and cruel and needs to be held to account." I don't see that as being apologizing for the Israeli state.
 
yelling "hasbara shill" at anyone who points that out is pointless, frustrating, annoying, and IMO unworthy of your own contributions. It's equivalent to yelling "anti semite" at anyone who says that maybe Israel should be a different kind of country.
I think this is fair. I get Gramsci's frustrations, though. Tim has repeated this line more than once and it is extremely irritating to say the least to be on the receiving end of it. Settler-colonialism and analysis of it is something that has an established intellectual history and makes an awful lot of sense. Just ask indigenous peoples of North America or Australia. This was settler-colonialism but happening in the 20th century. Whatever your position on Israel, it's impossible to deny that there were people living in Palestine who were kicked off their land by the people who were to become the Israelis. That is settler-colonialism.
 
Agree with your post.

A qualification.

Jordan in 48 did deal with Zionists it would get West Bank. Palestinians were made Jordanian citizens. More to do with the Jordanian King wanting to extend his kingdom than anything else.

TBF the Jordanian army put up a good fight against Zionists in 48. Who emboldened by success in expelling Palestinians made moves on West Bank. Which under UN partition plan they did not get. This despite the deal they had made with King of Jordan. Who kept his side of bargain.

The Jordanian army was one of the most effective fighting forces against Zionism in 48. However unlike the Zionists they kept to the bargain made and did not interfere with the ethnic cleansing by Zionists outside area agreed.

The Jordanian army in 1948 aka "The Arab Legion" was a British led military force under the command of John Glubb. The British had lost control of half of Palestine and the fight for the West Bank was as much about maintaining a British presence in the territory. The Jordanian Royal Family had formerly been the rulers of Hejaz which is currently part of the Saudi State and had no long-standing links with or rots in the area having been imposed by the British as their clients after WW1

Any assessment of the latter part of Hussein's reign in Jordan needs isn't really complete without considering his attacks upon the Palestinian forces during "Black September". He was hated in the Arab World but loved by the British state and media.

 
I was reading a book by a US journalist in which he wrote that the reason that the mass media in predominantly Christian countries pays so much attention to events in Israel-Palestine is that the names of some of the places in the area are familiar to us. The “Holy Land” is an element of our cultural background. The area does not seem as obscure to most of us as, for example, East Timor (which was under occupation by the Republic of Indonesia for 25 years, and a large proportion of the population of which was killed).

The mass media give much coverage to the conflict, and so people in Britain are more interested in it than in conflicts that have less coverage. Furthermore, the government of the UK was responsible for the outcome in 1948, and today provides support to the State of Israel, thus it is an issue in British politics.

It is usually the case that human rights abuses in other countries do not receive widespread coverage in the British mass media unless the UK is considering engaging in military intervention.

(The mass murder of Kurdish civilians in Iraq using poison gas received little coverage at the time, when the UK was tilting in favour of Saddam’s regime. It was only 14 or 15 years later, when the UK government was planning to invade Iraq, that the average Sun reader would solemnly tell you that Saddam has “killed his own people”).
 
It's also easy to ignore that tim has explicitly said "The point is that the Israeli regime is murderous and cruel and needs to be held to account." I don't see that as being apologizing for the Israeli state.

That is what winds me up. Says one thing then undercuts it by saying something else.

Any specific question and comes back with well they are all at it so why go on at Israel.

Only said what they really thought pages back when pushed. Guard came down momentarily.
 
I was reading a book by a US journalist in which he wrote that the reason that the mass media in predominantly Christian countries pays so much attention to events in Israel-Palestine is that the names of some of the places in the area are familiar to us. The “Holy Land” is an element of our cultural background.
Yes, really devout Christians IME care quite a lot about the situation in their "Holy land", and do a lot of handwringing over it. But ultimately, and I've either hinted at this or actually said it upthread, Christians are happy for Israel to be Jewish, 1. because it feels biblical and fulfils prophecy etc, but 2. it obviously stops churches being turned into mosques. Put brutally, Christians trust Jews to look after Christian heritage in the Holy Land, more than they trust Muslims to.

So that essentially concludes the Christian case for zionism, and in my experience Christians are usually soft zionists who really just want Israel to be nicer. I think that idea underpins most broader attitudes within the entirety of 'christendom'. It's not an analysis, it's feels - and so in the long term, maybe Bibi and his posse really are shitting the Christian bed with the sheer brutality of all this.

Anyway it's another angle and one unlikely to get much of an airing here.
 
Tim can be a contrarian. I don't think he's a bad person. Don't let him wind you up. Put him back on ignore if need be. You can live without seeing what he says.
Obviously the hasbara accusations are a bit daft but you do have to wonder about the motivations of someone whose every post is a case study in whataboutery when you're in the middle of a genocide.
 
I don't think he is a poster like this. He made a fairly innocuous post earlier as I recall and got jumped on.

I really value your posts Gramsci but I think tim being jumped on is a reason some posters are reluctant to post on the thread, as was asked earlier.

Is Tim being jumped on? One daft post? Late on a Friday? Compared to all the other studied posts Gramsci has made? That's not being jumped on. Nobody has really 'piled in'. People have suggested ignore, and others have criticized Gramsci for finally losing his rag.

It's a message board. That's a pretty lightweight pile-on.

but I think it's a fair question why we're concentrating on Israel when there are other slaughters going on around the world.

Answered earlier yesterday in the thread. We all have our interests, most of us choose our battles. But it's not like this is a politically insignificant problem potentially for the rest of the world. Superpower interests aren't quite the same in Sudan. Fewer people here were brought up on Khartoum compared to Jerusalem.

And it is genocide.
 
Is Tim being jumped on? One daft post? Late on a Friday? Compared to all the other studied posts Gramsci has made? That's not being jumped on. Nobody has really 'piled in'. People have suggested ignore, and others have criticized Gramsci for finally losing his rag.

It's a message board. That's a pretty lightweight pile-on.
I didn't mean this last post when I said 'jumped on', it was mainly the previous one that several people pulled him up on. Mind you his gratuitous use of 'bourgeois' didn't help, it's an accusation that liberals like him do often make. :rolleyes:
Answered earlier yesterday in the thread. We all have our interests, most of us choose our battles. But it's not like this is a politically insignificant problem potentially for the rest of the world. Superpower interests aren't quite the same in Sudan. Fewer people here were brought up on Khartoum compared to Jerusalem.

And it is genocide.
Was still a fair question, but yes I agree that it was answered.

I'm just thinking out loud as to why some posters might not want to add to the thread.
 
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I don't think it is a fair question at all. This is the thread for news and thoughts about an ongoing genocide that is being supported by our government. We shouldn't have to justify being engaged with it.
 
It's a question that is asked - and as planetgeli pointed out it's been answered.

Must also admit I'm not sure which other settler states aren't being criticized or not called 'settler states' though.

Eta: Settler colonialism - Wikipedia

In which case I don't think tim's criticism is valid - I can't see urban giving a free pass to any of the other countries on that list who were now carrying on killing and expelling the original inhabitants wholesale.
 
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It's a question that is asked - and as planetgeli pointed out it's been answered.

Must also admit I'm not sure which other settler states aren't being criticized or not called 'settler states' though.

Eta: Settler colonialism - Wikipedia

In which case I don't think tim's criticism is valid - I can't see urban giving a free pass to any of the other countries on that list who were now carrying on killing and expelling the original inhabitants wholesale.

I can't see the argument over those places (whichever they may be) getting quite so heated / bitter as the argument over this place, though. That to me is a teensy bit problematic. But it's also hardly news. And it may simply be reflective of the "Holy Land" cultural background that anyone raised in a christian place will have been marinated in (regardless of their actual personal, grown-up views on christianity)
 
Answered earlier yesterday in the thread. Superpower interests aren't quite the same in Sudan. Fewer people here were brought up on Khartoum compared to Jerusalem.

And it is genocide.


Local powers including Israel, Egypt and the Gulf States.



As to "Superpowers" Wagner seemed to be moving in earlier in the year.


And it is genocide, land theft and colonisation in Darfur



The extract below is from the last article:


Adam Mousa Obama, from the group Darfur Victim Support, which publishes videos of RSF abuses, says the group targets men in particular, to take their land and wipe them out as an Indigenous Darfuri group. The RSF grew out of, and is heavily comprised of, the Janjaweed militias that fought on behalf of the Sudanese government during the war in Darfur, and was responsible for atrocities that qualify as crimes against humanity, according to Human Rights Watch.

“When they took Ardamata they made an announcement that all boys should come out. When they did, they started shooting them all. They want to destroy all the Indigenous people,” says Obama. “The youth have the power and ability to fight. They don’t want them to stay alive.”
 
Local powers including Israel, Egypt and the Gulf States.



As to "Superpowers" Wagner seemed to be moving in earlier in the year.


And it is genocide, land theft and colonisation in Darfur



The extract below is from the last article:


Adam Mousa Obama, from the group Darfur Victim Support, which publishes videos of RSF abuses, says the group targets men in particular, to take their land and wipe them out as an Indigenous Darfuri group. The RSF grew out of, and is heavily comprised of, the Janjaweed militias that fought on behalf of the Sudanese government during the war in Darfur, and was responsible for atrocities that qualify as crimes against humanity, according to Human Rights Watch.

“When they took Ardamata they made an announcement that all boys should come out. When they did, they started shooting them all. They want to destroy all the Indigenous people,” says Obama. “The youth have the power and ability to fight. They don’t want them to stay alive.”
I already posted articles extensively covering the genocide that has been and still is happening in Sudan on the Sudan thread, particularly in Darfur, but unfortunately it's true that people seem a great deal less interested in what is happening there especially when compared to current events in Israel and Gaza.
 
Local powers including Israel, Egypt and the Gulf States.



As to "Superpowers" Wagner seemed to be moving in earlier in the year.


And it is genocide, land theft and colonisation in Darfur



The extract below is from the last article:


Adam Mousa Obama, from the group Darfur Victim Support, which publishes videos of RSF abuses, says the group targets men in particular, to take their land and wipe them out as an Indigenous Darfuri group. The RSF grew out of, and is heavily comprised of, the Janjaweed militias that fought on behalf of the Sudanese government during the war in Darfur, and was responsible for atrocities that qualify as crimes against humanity, according to Human Rights Watch.

“When they took Ardamata they made an announcement that all boys should come out. When they did, they started shooting them all. They want to destroy all the Indigenous people,” says Obama. “The youth have the power and ability to fight. They don’t want them to stay alive.”
Please don't do this.
 
I already posted articles extensively covering the genocide that has been and still is happening in Sudan on the Sudan thread, particularly in Darfur, but unfortunately it's true that people seem a great deal less interested in what is happening there especially when compared to current events in Israel and Gaza.
The genocide developing in Gaza has been front page/headline news in the UK for months, with live update pages on the most viewed news websites bringing the latest developments to your phone every few minutes. Social media is full of horrific images and partial takes. It's built on an issue that has been a regular news story for as long as I've been alive, from PLO attacks in the 70s to the IDF indiscriminately bombing Gaza every few years over the last couple of decades. There's widely divided positions, with the entirely different narratives of Israel and Palestine having little in common, giving plenty to debate. The UK government solidly supports Israel in its attacks on Palestine, the US even more so.

The unfolding genocide in Sudan has barely been reported in the UK - you have to go back a month to find a report in the Guardian. Everyone agrees its a bad thing, but you have to go hunting to find any information about the background. The UK government barely seems to have a position on Sudan - the FCO haven't updated their Sudan webpage since October.

It's hardly surprising that one prompts lengthy discussions and the other tumbleweed.
 
Settler-colonialism and analysis of it is something that has an established intellectual history and makes an awful lot of sense. Just ask indigenous peoples of North America or Australia. This was settler-colonialism but happening in the 20th century. Whatever your position on Israel, it's impossible to deny that there were people living in Palestine who were kicked off their land by the people who were to become the Israelis. That is settler-colonialism.

'Settler-colonialism' is one explanatory framework. It's hardly uncontested. Here for example is a recent article on the RS21 website:
Debate – the limitations of settler colonial theory.
(...) Settler colonial theory often ends up promoting an extremely uncritical and romanticised approach to often fraught politics of Indigenous nationalist movements, one notable example being a recent Tempest article on Palestinian resistance. This approach reflects the essentially classless analysis of colonial societies promoted by settler colonial theory, a weakness which undermines its capacity to unpack the complex interactions between imperialism and capitalism, colonialism and class, and racism and resistance in today’s world. Settler colonial theory’s dismissive attitude towards the non-Indigenous working classes and its uncritical championing of Indigenous nationalist movements also echoes the problems of third worldism that influenced much of the radical left in the second half of the 20th century.

Now I don't agree with any part of RS21's 'wet trotskyism', and I really don't like the manner in which this article expresses things, but it does draw attention to some of the problems with 'settler-colonial' theory as an explanatory framework.

By contrast here's an article from within a different explanatory framework.
Gaza: An Extreme Militarization of the Class War – The Brooklyn Rail
It's a translation of a text that was first published in French a couple of months ago. I thought it was interesting, although I'm not convinced by it's conclusions, and I'm not in love with it's 'manner of speaking' either. Despite that I find this sort of class based framework a little more compelling than 'settler colonialism'.

At the end of the day however that's all they are - attempts at explanatory frameworks.

I would add that I think it's absurd to suggest that 'settler colonialism', when applied to Israel, is invariably an expression of judeophobia. But I also think it's absurd to ignore the fact that elements of the left are indeed antisemitic, and other parts appear to remain blind to that fact. That's the unfortunate legacy of decades of shitty forms of anti-imperialism.
 
There are situations in which a class based analysis breaks down. Palestine/Israel is one of those situations, where one whole group of people is a particular kind of underclass, a prisoner class.

This is similar to a situation of slavery. Or apartheid SA. To talk about different classes of people in other ways, you first need to agree that they are all people in a fungible sense.
 
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