Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

[Kevbad the Bad]

For people my age, and younger, we grew up with an archetype of evil synonymous with Nazism. It didn't have to be that. From my perspective it could have been Soviet communism, just as murderous in its actuality, just as demeaning of the human spirit, just as violent, authoritarian etc etc. But it was the Nazis that we fought against in WW2, the Nazis who bombed our cities, the Nazis who industrialised their killing machine. So to many the Nazis are the epitome of evil, against whom other nasty people, regimes and movements are compared.
It's no surprise that Zionism and the present Israeli regime get compared in that way, especially when the Israeli government and military regularly accuse their opponents of Nazism and compare others' actions to the Holocaust. It's all too easy, too human, to say something like 'it's not the Palestinians who are Nazis. It's the Israelis'. You don't have to make it much more complicated than that.

 

[ska invita]

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer saying Israel cannot go on and must make “significant course corrections” is remarkable. I think we're (finally!) hitting a diplomatic/political breaking point between the US and Israel.

Fuck them. Netanyahu rightly says they're a month from finishing the job, just a bit of Rafah left to level. This pathetic "course correction" sentiment is six months too late... disingenius bullshit. What is the US doing in practical terms? Supporting it and shutting down opposition. Fuck their hot air concern. Murderous cunts

 

[klang]

So to many the Nazis are the epitome of evil, against whom other nasty people, regimes and movements are compared.

Weird innit

 

[teqniq]

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer saying Israel cannot go on and must make “significant course corrections” is remarkable. I think we're (finally!) hitting a diplomatic/political breaking point between the US and Israel.

Well it'll be long past time if it actually happens, which I am not at all convinced it will.

 

[Gramsci]

On Nazi comparison.

Agree the way it's used is to taunt Jewish people.

And it's a mistake there are better ways to look at this.

On historical comparisons Ilan Pappe book the Ethnic cleansing of Palestine is set out to determine if the Nakba constituted ethnic cleansing under present international law and what happened in the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

He makes convincing case that Israel was founded on an act of ethnic cleansing and it's possible to say who were the leading figures involved. David Ben Gurion being one.

Discussions within Zionism of "population transfer" ( removing Arabs from Palestine to make space for Jews)were discussed in Zionist circles in late 20s and 30s. A very small section of Zionists had reservations about this

I'm sure some Zionists would have preferred an organised population transfer to what actually happened. But when it came to it armed Zionists used force to expel Palestinians to make their state. That's an historical fact. Its not about individual Zionists as such. If one wanted a state of Israel that's what had to be done.

So to say this of Zionism is fair enough. Its about building a ethno nationalist state. Using ethnic cleansing.

This does not mean that Zionism is unique in this. As Pappe shows very well the kind of attitudes that were seen in Ex Yugoslav wars are comparable to 48


Secondly another argument is that Israel now exists so this should be put in the past. There are people like settlers who are behaving badly and should be stopped. But overall Israel state is their to stay

This doesn't see that the ethnic cleansing didn't stop in 48.

The West Bank is case in point. Under both Labor and Likud there has been policies of building settlements. Gradually taking more Palestine land. Using methods that aren't as dramatic as armed military expelling Palestinians but setting up and developing a legal system/ structure of occupation to bring this incremental ethnic cleansing about.

It's been an ongoing process since 67

 

[Gramsci]

And another thing imo Zionists learnt a lot from the British when the British Empire ran the mandate.

Rather than the comparisons with Nazis perhaps better to look at comparison with how Israel state has treated the indigenous people and how British empire did

The Arab Revolt of 1930s for example.

Some of the use of Nazi comparison is imo a way to avoid looking at how British empire used violence - direct or indirect - to keep populations under control.

It being supposedly a liberal Empire.

 

[Knotted]

Fuck them. Netanyahu rightly says they're a month from finishing the job, just a bit of Rafah left to level. This pathetic "course correction" sentiment is six months too late... disingenius bullshit. What is the US doing in practical terms? Supporting it and shutting down opposition. Fuck their hot air concern. Murderous cunts

Not sure if it's hot air ot not yet. There's probably divisions within the administration. Even as hot air it's an absolutely astonishing statement that a top Democrat, and a very pro Israel one at that, would verbally reject the Israeli government and its actions. Surely they're looking toward Benny Gantz as leading alternative political program which will be very similar but with perhaps a bit more international savvy. But in any case this is a political crisis for the Americans, they have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.

 

[ska invita]

Not sure if it's hot air ot not yet. There's probably divisions within the administration. Even as hot air it's an absolutely astonishing statement that a top Democrat, and a very pro Israel one at that, would verbally reject the Israeli government and its actions. Surely they're looking toward Benny Gantz as leading alternative political program which will be very similar but with perhaps a bit more international savvy. But in any case this is a political crisis for the Americans, they have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.

Yes they're looking to Benny Gantz, and as you say it makes fuck all difference. I hope they choke on their carefully worded statements of concern

 

[Knotted]

Yes they're looking to Benny Gantz, and as you say it makes fuck all difference. I hope they choke on their carefully worded statements of concern

To be fair it's a statement of concern for Israel, not for Gazans.

 

[Dystopiary]

Cancer patients are not being allowed to leave Gaza for treatment.

"My medicine is finished. I'm so tired. I can hardly see in front of me. My chemotherapy ran out a long time ago," said Siham.

The 62-year-old has leukaemia. Before the war broke out she was being treated at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in north Gaza - the only cancer hospital in the Strip.

She's one of approximately 10,000 cancer patients in Gaza - according to figures from Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry - who have been unable to get treatment or medicines since the hospital shut down in the first week of November due to fuel shortages.

She has been trying to leave to get life-saving treatments, but been turned back five times since the war began.

We have spoken to two other cancer patients who were turned away at the border despite their names being on the evacuation lists.

Also, it seems that an Egyptian travel agency called Hala is exploiting the situation by charging those who can leave huge amounts of money to leave Gaza. This is sickening exploitation:

Before the war, [Hala] used to charge about $350 (£274) per person to go from Gaza to Egypt. After 7 October, the price reportedly rocketed to almost $12,000 per person, before the company limited it to $5,000 for an adult Palestinian and $2,500 for a child - though Hala does not officially advertise this.

This cost of evacuating one adult is more than four times the average annual salary in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Siham says she can hardly walk a step without feeling dizzy now.

Cancer patients stopped from leaving Gaza for treatment

 

[PTK]

It gives me no glee. It's a comparison I avoided for a long time. But fuck me, how can you say it's out of order now? Sadly, very fucking sadly, it isn't.

What is the point of the comparison? Is something only bad if it can be compared to Nazism?

 

[Gramsci]

Israel says it plans 'humanitarian islands' for Gaza displaced - BBC News

It comes ahead of a planned offensive in the city of Rafah, where 1.4 million people are sheltering.

www.bbc.co.uk

Read the title and thought WTF?

The chief spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, said in a briefing to journalists on Wednesday that they needed to make sure that all 1.4 million people currently living in Rafah, or "at least a significant amount", would leave ahead of any offensive.

He suggested that they could move to "humanitarian islands that we will create with the international community", where temporary housing, food and water would be provided.

What these islands are is developing similar structure as in West Bank. With heavily policed islands of Palestinians under Israeli indirect control.

And as per usual with Israeli state they are quite happy if international community stumps up the money and logistics to do this.

Cost free control of colonised people.

And Israeli state are still whining about UNRWA. Who took responsibility for decades for the people they ethnically cleansed.

TBF Israel as a state takes the piss. And have so for decades.

Reading some of this stuff even on neutral news site like BBC and it makes my blood boil.

This country should cut off all support to Israel. Full stop.

 

[Gramsci]

For people my age, and younger, we grew up with an archetype of evil synonymous with Nazism. It didn't have to be that. From my perspective it could have been Soviet communism, just as murderous in its actuality, just as demeaning of the human spirit, just as violent, authoritarian etc etc. But it was the Nazis that we fought against in WW2, the Nazis who bombed our cities, the Nazis who industrialised their killing machine. So to many the Nazis are the epitome of evil, against whom other nasty people, regimes and movements are compared.
It's no surprise that Zionism and the present Israeli regime get compared in that way, especially when the Israeli government and military regularly accuse their opponents of Nazism and compare others' actions to the Holocaust. It's all too easy, too human, to say something like 'it's not the Palestinians who are Nazis. It's the Israelis'. You don't have to make it much more complicated than that.

Yes I'm of the generation that grew up on war comics. Good post and I agree with this.

Before this all kicked of in Israel/ Gaza I set myself the project of reading more on British Empire. Need to get back to it.

One of the people who came up was the Carribbean Communist George Padmore. Who was contemporary of CLR James and lived in this Country for long time.

On WW2 his view was what should people on colonies fight for the British Empire.

That British Empire in practise was no worse than Hitlers Third Reich.

That WW2 was a fight between Empires.

To bring this back to the thread he wrote this in 1941. So pre full knowledge of Holocaust.

Comparing Jewish experience with Black experience of racism.

In South Africa and Rhodesia, the blacks have as much voice in their governments as the Jews in that of the Third Reich....Never were so many oppressed so much by so few as in South Africa and Rhodesia.

In this article he is taking apart the settler colonial argument.

As with a lot of Padmore , a great writer of polemical journalism, he takes an internationalist approach.

Seeing the comparisons between different groups oppressed by Imperialism. Jews and Black colonised people. Possible basis then for solidarity.

George Padmore: British Imperialists Treat the Negro Masses Like Nazis Treat the Jews (1941)

George Padmore: British Imperialists Treat the Negro Masses Like Nazis Treat the Jews (1941)

www.marxists.org

Its this heritage of thought about oppression and Empire that has got lost.

 

[pbsmooth]

Don't know if this has been shared yet (couldn't find it after a quick search)
Vol. 46 No. 5 · 7 March 2024
EXTRA

The Shoah after Gaza​

Pankaj Mishra​

Pankaj Mishra · The Shoah after Gaza

Memories of Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis are the foundation on which most descriptions of extreme ideology and...

www.lrb.co.uk

Interesting but could have done with a better editor. Long and wordy doesn’t equal good writing.

And while his basic point on how the holocaust has shaped Israeli policies and Jewish sentiments is quite a compelling one I think he over eggs it. At times it does feel like he’s trying to relegate the Holocaust to just one of many atrocities; there’s a glib reference to « the Shoah and Hiroshima » as if they’re comparable. Jewish persecution hasn’t been limited to the holocaust either which he doesn’t seem to address. But nevertheless some elements of his argument do make sense.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

his basic point on how the holocaust has shaped Israeli policies

By my reading, his basic point is that the Holocaust wasn't a huge factor in the initial nation-building stage of early Israel, and it only became a powerful national symbol later, post-Eichmann trial. Quite the reverse, as he points out that Ben-Gurion was dismissive and horrible towards Holocaust survivors, who didn't fit with the brave, strong settler nation image he wanted to project. The Holocaust has since been coopted as a central defining essence, but I'm not sure that the author's point is that it shapes policies. The policy from the start was to settle as much land as possible. That's been ongoing throughout Israel's existence (and before).

 

[pbsmooth]

By my reading, his basic point is that the Holocaust wasn't a huge factor in the initial nation-building stage of early Israel, and it only became a powerful national symbol later, post-Eichmann trial. Quite the reverse, as he points out that Ben-Gurion was dismissive and horrible towards Holocaust survivors, who didn't fit with the brave, strong settler nation image he wanted to project. The Holocaust has since been coopted as a central defining essence, but I'm not sure that the author's point is that it shapes policies. The policy from the start was to settle as much land as possible. That's been ongoing throughout Israel's existence (and before).

yes sorry that was what I was referring to was just a tired and lazy post and didn’t bother to word it properly.
I don’t think he balances it out enough but it’s certainly good for thought.

Not sure your last two lines aren’t as matter of fact as you make out. the policy was a safe land for Jews. I don’t agree settling as much land as possible was the policy from the start.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

yes sorry that was what I was referring to was just a tired and lazy post and didn’t bother to word it properly.
I don’t think he balances it out enough but it’s certainly good for thought.

Not sure your last two lines aren’t as matter of fact as you make out. the policy was a safe land for Jews. I don’t agree settling as much land as possible was the policy from the start.

Yes, that's fair. The 'safe land for Jews' aspect certainly now has a Holocaust element to it.

But settling as much land as possible was the Zionist project. As others have posted, there were internal disputes within the Zionist pioneers about what their relationship with Palestinians should be, but as of at least the founding of Israel onwards, those who wanted to exclude them rather than work and live with them have been winning. What is happening today is a logical extension of the original Nakba. In a sense, it has never ended.

 

[Gramsci]

Having another look at Mishra

Not sure your last two lines aren’t as matter of fact as you make out. the policy was a safe land for Jews. I don’t agree settling as much land as possible was the policy from the start.

It was.

See here for example.

Post in thread 'Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion' Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

 

[Gramsci]

As what I've posted by Padmore there is general assumption that Nazism was some kind of aberration and the uncomfortable for some comparisons with other Imperialisms is shoved under the carpet.

Pankaj Mishra says this:

Popular West-is-best accounts of totalitarianism continue to ignore the acute descriptions of Nazism (by Jawaharlal Nehru and Aimé Césaire, among other imperial subjects) as the radical ‘twin’ of Western imperialism; they shy away from exploring the obvious connection between the imperial slaughter of natives in the colonies and the genocidal terrors perpetrated against Jews inside Europe.

I do not think this is glib comparison.

And this is spot on:

Billions of non-Westerners have been furiously politicised in recent years by the West’s calamitous war on terror,....and the barefaced hypocrisy over the plight of Ukrainians and Palestinians; they can hardly fail to notice a belligerent version of ‘Holocaust denial’ among the elites of former imperialist countries, who refuse to address their countries’ past of genocidal brutality and plunder and try hard to delegitimise any discussion of this as unhinged ‘wokeness’.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yep. Bengal Famine of 1943 is a good example of that. 3 million dead. Churchill didn't give a fuck. Majority of British people have no idea it even happened, let alone that the British were responsible.

How many people know which has been the deadliest war of this century? You would think that would be common knowledge. But it was in Africa, and very few people here know, even though it was the deadliest by quite some distance. Millions can die in the wars of the Congo and it barely registers on the inside pages of Western newspapers.

 

[Gramsci]

To add this does not have to be about competing who was most oppressed view.

It can point to links and solidarity between different groups.

 

[Gramsci]

Yep. Bengal Famine of 1943 is a good example of that. 3 million dead. Churchill didn't give a fuck. Majority of British people have no idea it even happened, let alone that the British were responsible.

BBC radio have new doc on that.

 

[ska invita]

Theres a reason why Godwins Law exists and its not because of antisemitism

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What is the point of the comparison? Is something only bad if it can be compared to Nazism?

I'd turn that around. What is the point in criticising the comparison?

'Nazi' is a term that gets bandied around too much to be of much analytical value, but there have been banners at the marches comparing Netanyahu to Hitler. And why shouldn't people do that? In particular, if it gets them into trouble, as it has in Germany, it is hitting a certain mark. Protests that don't threaten the powers being protested about aren't really effective protests.

In this instance, I'm certainly not going to try to police how people protest. On the contrary, I would support anyone who got into trouble for making that comparison.

 

[emanymton]

I'd turn that around. What is the point in criticising the comparison?

'Nazi' is a term that gets bandied around too much to be of much analytical value, but there have been banners at the marches comparing Netanyahu to Hitler. And why shouldn't people do that? In particular, if it gets them into trouble, as it has in Germany, it is hitting a certain mark. Protests that don't threaten the powers being protested about aren't really effective protests.

In this instance, I'm certainly not going to try to police how people protest. On the contrary, I would support anyone who got into trouble for making that comparison.

I think there is a difference between using it rhetorically and using it as serious analysis.

Is Israel comparable to Nazi Germany? No not at all.

Can the comparison be used to make a point and piss them off? Sure

 

[teqniq]

Jesus. H. Christ:



I'm asking myself why even are the BBC giving her a platform but then I remember the amount of times that Farage has been on the show.

 

[andysays]

I think there is a difference between using it rhetorically and using it as serious analysis.

Is Israel comparable to Nazi Germany? No not at all.

Can the comparison be used to make a point and piss them off? Sure

I agree. It's not really about serious analysis.

It's more about a rhetorical comparison to what's generally viewed* as the worst example of atrocity in human history, plus the irony of the Zionist/Jewish state behaving similarly or equally badly to how the Nazi/German state behaved.

*we can argue about whether this view is correct, but even if it isn't, it doesn't negate the point

 

[Nylock]

Mad mel has always been a smug, objectionable arsehole who's certainty about her opinions is only matched by their inaccuracies.

 

[tim]

Seeing the comparisons between different groups oppressed by Imperialism. Jews and Black colonised people. Possible basis then for solidarity.

George Padmore: British Imperialists Treat the Negro Masses Like Nazis Treat the Jews (1941)

George Padmore: British Imperialists Treat the Negro Masses Like Nazis Treat the Jews (1941)

www.marxists.org

Its this heritage of thought about oppression and Empire that has got lost.

The Jews weren't just oppressed by the Nazis, they were systematically exterminated.

 

[ID47]

The Jews weren't just oppressed by the Nazis, they were systematically exterminated.

In 1941 when the article was written the extent and manner of the Holocaust was not yet widely known.