Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

[Idris2002]

Israel is run by die hards now. I don't see how it can get much worse for Palestinians

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231006-jews-reverse-immigration-from-israel-is-on-the-rise/

Says that emigration rise/ looking into emigration by getting EU passport pre dated Hamas attack. It was due to rise of right in Israel. And the subsequent protests. Not directly the Palestine issue.

Getting an EU passport was a good insurance back up.

So its not the fault of "decolonial chatter" making life in Israel so untenable that people feel they need to leave

"Decolonial chatter" You are mixing up twitter with the work of respected Israeli Jewish and Palestinian historians.

They have studied the concrete reality of what happened and how it effects today.

I dont read much Twitter as its not helpful.

Historically people have left Israel before. In 60s when there was economic downturn.

A younger generation might see an Israel run by hard right as not somewhere they want to live. Like my Polish friends who came here. Preferred living in UK than a Poland run by socially conservative governments.

I dont see Israel being isolated in sense of political and military aid. US and UK plus some EU countries support Israel in various ways. I do not see this ending soon. So no I do not see Israel being isolated any time soon in a practical sense. World public opinion yes due to the bombing of Gaza.

I didn't say "its the fault of "decolonial chatter". My point was that a lot of the lumpen left have an idiot "send 'em back" policy which plays directly into the hands of "the world wants us dead, we have to keep Israel as it is now at all costs" crowd.

As for the work of respectable historians, I'm reading this right now. What think you of same?

Class, Nation, and Political Organization: The Anti-Zionist Left in Israel/Palestine | International Labor and Working-Class History | Cambridge Core

Class, Nation, and Political Organization: The Anti-Zionist Left in Israel/Palestine - Volume 75 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

 

[Yossarian]

Been reading that heads of universities are being given a head time for not stopping pro Palestine students.

With now a government inquiry into universities and protests about Gaza bombing.

What is annoying is that one head of a college said that the constitution of US defends free speech.

Which is correct. But it seems in this case no.

In this case their is no defence of free speech and those that do are accused of aiding anti semitism.

Yeah, the presidents of Harvard and MIT are under pressure to resign over remarks at a hearing in Congress last week and the president of Penn State has already done so.

They were attacked by everybody from the White House on down for saying how they would respond to "calls for genocide" would "depend on the context," but most of the reporting on it fails to make clear that the "calls for genocide" being referred to is protesters' use of the word "intifada."

 

[Gramsci]

I didn't say "its the fault of "decolonial chatter". My point was that a lot of the lumpen left have an idiot "send 'em back" policy which plays directly into the hands of "the world wants us dead, we have to keep Israel as it is now at all costs" crowd.

As for the work of respectable historians, I'm reading this right now. What think you of same?

Class, Nation, and Political Organization: The Anti-Zionist Left in Israel/Palestine | International Labor and Working-Class History | Cambridge Core

Class, Nation, and Political Organization: The Anti-Zionist Left in Israel/Palestine - Volume 75 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

Well that was the implication of your post

I do not look at twitter much so have no idea who these "lumpen left" are who want to send them back

Matzpen I have read a bit about and seen the doc made years back.

It was Matzpen members coming to UK that first enlightened the left in this country about what exactly was happening in Israel.

I met one a while back who is in my local PSC. Where I first heard of them.

I think Ive done a few posts on them here.

Here is the doc and my comments on it

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

And old post I did on communist Knesset member. ( now very old post)

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

 

[Pickman's model]

View attachment 403686

No idea who’s behind this but it’s being shared a bit on Twitter. Seems a little privileged to me to expect people who can’t afford it to not leave the house on Monday…

X. There is no twitter any more

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

.

 

[8ball]

Genocidal sing songs before committing genocide

Doesn’t have the same ring as the “river to the sea” ditty.

 

[8ball]

View attachment 403686

No idea who’s behind this but it’s being shared a bit on Twitter. Seems a little privileged to me to expect people who can’t afford it to not leave the house on Monday…

Laptop-class homeworkers. V few will be going into the office on a Monday.

Not too sure how clearly any participation will show up to anyone without access to some fairly privileged data.

 

[PTK]

Laptop-class homeworkers. V few will be going into the office on a Monday.

Not too sure how clearly any participation will show up to anyone without access to some fairly privileged data.

I would deactivate my IG if I knew what it was.
Staying at home seems like the opposite of collective action.

 

[8ball]

I would deactivate my IG if I knew what it was.
Staying at home seems like the opposite of collective action.

It’s collective *in*action.
Burns way fewer calories, doesn’t involve single-use packaging, pretty much zero carbon emissions…

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Laptop-class homeworkers. V few will be going into the office on a Monday.

Not too sure how clearly any participation will show up to anyone without access to some fairly privileged data.

Yeah that doesn’t sound like most working people…

 

[PTK]

Dockers in Belgium and Catalonia have refused to handle weapons shipments for Israel. We need industrial action agains the war.

 

[8ball]

Yeah that doesn’t sound like most working people…

Don’t think it’s meant to be.

 

[Humberto]

So the US vetoed a UN draft resolution calling for a ceasefire on Friday and the UK abstained. This could go on for months? Alongside the humanitarian situation becoming ever more desperate. This is just horiffic. Unrestrained, hate-motivated terrorism.

Gaza has gone 'far beyond' a humanitarian crisis - medical charity MSF

The head of medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that Gaza faces a catastrophe extending far beyond a humanitarian crisis, describing the situation in the densely populated enclave as chaotic.

www.reuters.com

 

[Johnny Vodka]

So the US vetoed a UN draft resolution calling for a ceasefire on Friday and the UK abstained. This could go on for months?

Biden administration calling for restraint, while vetoing ceasefire and selling Israel more ammo with an "emergency authority".

Biden bypasses Congress to sell tank shells to Israel amid further fighting in Khan Younis

Emergency declaration used to sell $106.5m worth of ammo for Israel’s tanks as reports of fierce fighting in southern Gaza city of Khan Younis emerge

www.theguardian.com

 

[Gramsci]

David Lammy article in Observer.

What comes across is the lame way Labour party leadership follow what US is doing. If Biden does something they follow.

Palestinian are referred to as terrorists. But Israeli settlers attacks on Palestinian villages aren't.

Forcible transfer is used instead of ethnic cleansing.

And how does he think these illegal settlements get built? It's not just down to a few violent settlers and a few people in government. Illegal settlements in West Bank pre dated the present government.

He doesn't join up the dots to see that what is happening in West Bank is linked to Gaza. Ethnic cleansing is being attempted in Gaza in a different way.

Which is why a ceasefire is needed now

Something the leadership of party oppose.

Nor does he say what kind of pressure a UK government will use. Banning a few people isn't going to cut it.

Labour will oppose expulsions of Palestinians and bar violent settlers from UK | David Lammy

Britain must pressure Israel to halt the theft of land in the West Bank. Settlers are killing hopes for a two-state solution and Sunak’s government does nothing, writes shadow foreign secretary David Lammy

www.theguardian.com

 

[ska invita]

Israel-Gaza war: Half of Gaza's population is starving, warns UN

Conditions in Gaza have made the delivery of food almost impossible, the UN World Food Programme says.

www.bbc.co.uk

....with Gazan's increasingly going to be dying of starvation and exposure it feels like a massive game of chicken being played by Israel v The World - who will break to start accepting "refugees" (force evicted Palestinians)?

I heard someone this week saying that one key reason Egypt doesn't want to open its border, beyond not wanting to be seen as part of the ethnic cleansing programme, and also wanting to avoide the hard economic and social impacts such a number of refugees would have, is because (take what I am about to say with a pinch of salt as I may not be remembering this precisely right) that El-Sisi is effectively at war with the Muslim Brotherhood (who came to power after the Arab Spring and are now banned in Egypt), and Hamas is for practical purposes the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. Supposedly the Sinai peninsular in particular is where parts of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood are camped out. Which suggests no amount of US bribery or pressure would change El-Sisi's mind....

Jordan already has the world's second-highest number of refugees per capita...

Cant see any ray of hope right now

 

[tim]

Yeah, and in a similar bit of riffing... I think I keep bringing up the Nakba in these kinds of discussions, which might get repetitive but I think if you're going to oppose Zionism (which you should!) then it's worth understanding Zionism, not just the obviously repugnant and disgusting Zionism of 2023 but the relatively attractive Zionism of 1947 or 1948. And to me, if nothing else, thinking about Zionism in 1948 shows that you can't just go "this group of people don't have a state to protect them, therefore them having a state would automatically be a good development, no matter what".

I don't see how Zionism is any different from all the other irredentists ideologies that led to the creation of political entities in the twentieth century, particularly after the two world wars. State creation after the collapse of the Empires of the nineteenth century led to expulsions resettlement and massacres in many places as well as the conscious efforts to create new national identities with the imposition of national languages and often a state religion.

Israel is not substantially different, in that sense, as an entity than: Turkey, Pakistan, Serbia, Bosnia, Czechia, Syria, Bangladesh, Greece, or Poland.

Like in those other places, Israeli identity is something that has developed over the past 75-100 years. 78% of Israel Jews were born in Israel and the vast majority will be either monolingual or bilingual Hebrew speakers and have a sense of having an Israeli national/cultural identity in the same way that I, or anyone else has a sense of national and cultural identity. No Israeli Jew under the age of 90 bears any responsibility for the creation of the state. Does having some personal commitment to that state make them Zionists and consequently in some way depraved?

Changing topic, The white, European, bourgeois coloniser narrative that is pushed by lots of bourgeois Europeans ignores a couple of issues. Firstly, the Holocaust was not a unique occurrence. It was the culmination of centuries of persecution and murder of European Jews. The Russian pogroms from the 1880s led many to see settling in Palestine as a way of guaranteeing their own and their families safety as did the overt antiSemitism of most European states in the early twentieth century. Jews were pushed out of Europe. It was made clear to them that they had no rights to exist there and live normal lives.

Secondly, the "white settler" narrative ignores the fact that a large proportion of Israeli Jews are not of European heritage but have ancestors who come from North Africa, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. Many of them refugees from the persecution that followed the creation of Israel. There is no foreseeable way that Israeli Jews of Iraqi, Libyan, Afghani, Saudi or Yemeni origin could return to those countries.

 

[ska invita]

I don't see how Zionism is any different from all the other irredentists ideologies that led to the creation of political entities in the twentieth century, particularly after the two world wars. State creation after the collapse of the Empires of the nineteenth century led to expulsions resettlement and massacres in many places as well as the conscious efforts to create new national identities with the imposition of national languages and often a state religion.

Israel is not substantially different, in that sense, as an entity than: Turkey, Pakistan, Serbia, Bosnia, Czechia, Syria, Bangladesh, Greece, or Poland.

Like in those other places, Israeli identity is something that has developed over the past 75-100 years. 78% of Israel Jews were born in Israel and the vast majority will be either monolingual or bilingual Hebrew speakers and have a sense of having an Israeli national/cultural identity in the same way that I, or anyone else has a sense of national and cultural identity. No Israeli Jew under the age of 90 bears any responsibility for the creation of the state. Does having some personal commitment to that state make them Zionists and consequently in some way depraved?

Changing topic, The white, European, bourgeois coloniser narrative that is pushed by lots of bourgeois Europeans ignores a couple of issues. Firstly, the Holocaust was not a unique occurrence. It was the culmination of centuries of persecution and murder of European Jews. The Russian pogroms from the 1880s led many to see settling in Palestine as a way of guaranteeing their own and their families safety as did the overt antiSemitism of most European states in the early twentieth century. Jews were pushed out of Europe. It was made clear to them that they had no rights to exist there and live normal lives.

Secondly, the "white settler" narrative ignores the fact that a large proportion of Israeli Jews are not of European heritage but have ancestors who come from North Africa, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. Many of them refugees from the persecution that followed the creation of Israel. There is no foreseeable way that Israeli Jews of Iraqi, Libyan, Afghani, Saudi or Yemeni origin could return to those countries.

i agree with all of that... this is a form of ethnic state creation that we are witnessing that isnt unique in history....doesnt make it right though

 

[PTK]

I don't see how Zionism is any different from all the other irredentists ideologies that led to the creation of political entities in the twentieth century, particularly after the two world wars. State creation after the collapse of the Empires of the nineteenth century led to expulsions resettlement and massacres in many places as well as the conscious efforts to create new national identities with the imposition of national languages and often a state religion.

Israel is not substantially different, in that sense, as an entity than: Turkey, Pakistan, Serbia, Bosnia, Czechia, Syria, Bangladesh, Greece, or Poland.

Like in those other places, Israeli identity is something that has developed over the past 75-100 years. 78% of Israel Jews were born in Israel and the vast majority will be either monolingual or bilingual Hebrew speakers and have a sense of having an Israeli national/cultural identity in the same way that I, or anyone else has a sense of national and cultural identity. No Israeli Jew under the age of 90 bears any responsibility for the creation of the state. Does having some personal commitment to that state make them Zionists and consequently in some way depraved?

Changing topic, The white, European, bourgeois coloniser narrative that is pushed by lots of bourgeois Europeans ignores a couple of issues. Firstly, the Holocaust was not a unique occurrence. It was the culmination of centuries of persecution and murder of European Jews. The Russian pogroms from the 1880s led many to see settling in Palestine as a way of guaranteeing their own and their families safety as did the overt antiSemitism of most European states in the early twentieth century. Jews were pushed out of Europe. It was made clear to them that they had no rights to exist there and live normal lives.

Secondly, the "white settler" narrative ignores the fact that a large proportion of Israeli Jews are not of European heritage but have ancestors who come from North Africa, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. Many of them refugees from the persecution that followed the creation of Israel. There is no foreseeable way that Israeli Jews of Iraqi, Libyan, Afghani, Saudi or Yemeni origin could return to those countries.

You make a good point about the formation of nation states. The difference in the case of Israel is that the formation of the nation state there was not the product of a native population, but of a population that came from Europe, and North America.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

What did they get thrown out for in the first place?

 

[SpookyFrank]

David Lammy article in Observer.

What comes across is the lame way Labour party leadership follow what US is doing. If Biden does something they follow.

Palestinian are referred to as terrorists. But Israeli settlers attacks on Palestinian villages aren't.

Forcible transfer is used instead of ethnic cleansing.

And how does he think these illegal settlements get built? It's not just down to a few violent settlers and a few people in government. Illegal settlements in West Bank pre dated the present government.

He doesn't join up the dots to see that what is happening in West Bank is linked to Gaza. Ethnic cleansing is being attempted in Gaza in a different way.

Which is why a ceasefire is needed now

Something the leadership of party oppose.

Nor does he say what kind of pressure a UK government will use. Banning a few people isn't going to cut it.

Labour will oppose expulsions of Palestinians and bar violent settlers from UK | David Lammy

Britain must pressure Israel to halt the theft of land in the West Bank. Settlers are killing hopes for a two-state solution and Sunak’s government does nothing, writes shadow foreign secretary David Lammy

www.theguardian.com

I do like the 'violent settlers' trope they've just come up with. As if there's a non-violent way to force people off their land, demolish their homes and build new ones in clear violation of international law.

 

[PTK]

What did they get thrown out for in the first place?

.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Serious question. Why were the Jews expelled from Palestine in the first place, according to the books our societies were structured around?

 

[PTK]

Which books? Can you give a reference?

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Let’s make it simple, the Bible.
What was the reason given?

 

[tim]

You make a good point about the formation of nation states. The difference in the case of Israel is that the formation of the nation state there was not the product of a native population, but of a population that came from Europe, and North America.

European and American if you exclude that half of the Jewish population that came from the Middle East and North Africa.

Op-Ed: No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans

Along with resurgent identity politics in the United States and Europe, there is a growing inclination to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race.

www.latimes.com

 

[tim]

What did they get thrown out for in the first place?

For being Jews.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

That’s not what Hosea or Micah said.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Let’s make it simple, the Bible.
What was the reason given?

Who cares? Biblical justifications using stories dating back two millennia, even where those stories have some loose basis in real history, are bullshit. This was an influx of predominantly Europeans as part of a colonial-settler project. These were European people speaking European languages and with a European history. And they forced people whose immediate ancestors had been there for hundreds of years off their land. This is the history that matters. Fully verifiable, living-memory history.

An equivalent perhaps would be a bunch of people coming to Britain and forcing people off their land at gunpoint, using the justification that they had stories telling them that the Romans had evicted their ancestors from Britain.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

European and American if you exclude that half of the Jewish population that came from the Middle East and North Africa.

Op-Ed: No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans

Along with resurgent identity politics in the United States and Europe, there is a growing inclination to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race.

www.latimes.com

The founders of Israel were overwhelmingly from Europe. Immigration from elsewhere mostly came later.