Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

Archived editorial from Haaretz on the ICC warrants:

Starvation, Murder, Persecution: ICC Warrants Are an Unprecedented Moral Nadir for Israel

Interestingly Gramsci in the piece wrt to Israel having the facility to pursue it's own internal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity as is being suggested by UKLI
they regard this as a non-option:

View attachment 452333

I am wondering if Israel state and it's general public aren't acting in rational way.

After Hamas attack they had a lot of international support and condemnation of Hamas.

One year on and they are losing international support except from US and countries like mine.

South Africa case is extremely important symbolically.

I can see why activists pursuing the legal arguments plus making Israel an international pariah with world public opinion are correct.

Here is quote from article,

Unfortunately, both the government and public opinion, with the support of most of the media, are refusing to listen. Instead, they are all hoping that Trump will enable Israel to continue, if not intensify, the actions that the International Criminal Court defines as crimes against humanity.

So forget about trying to get Israeli public onside. That's pointless.

Go for using international law strategically and isolate Israel as a pariah state. In world public opinion. Even if our western leaders won't.

Question is whether this will happen quick enough to save Palestinians being basically wiped off the map of Palestine
 
Western states could treat Israel like Putin's Russia is being treated.

Just to make it clear I'm not saying Israel should be picked on differently from other states occupying other people's land.
 
Meanwhile there are two ceasefire deals in the offing. Very predictably it is said that Netanyahu is stalling for time on the Gaza one:

Arab mediators: Netanyahu stalling, wrongly thinks Trump will deliver better Gaza deal

but there is also a potential ceasefire deal with Hezbollah:

 
Israel sanctions Haaretz due to articles that ‘hurt’ Israeli state

Israel has approved a resolution to cut ties with the Israeli news outlet Haaretz and ban government funding bodies from communicating or placing advertisements with the newspaper.

The government said its decision was due to “many articles that have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self-defence, and particularly the remarks made in London by Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken that support terrorism and call for imposing sanctions on the government,” Haaretz reported on Sunday.
 
Watched this



Is start of series of lectures hosted by SOAS titled Imperialism , Colonialism and Human Rights

The starting point for the lecture series is the article I've linked. Which I've read. Its not to long. By Nimar Sultani

Francesca Albanese gave a barn storming speech. Her visit to UK was met with demos outside where ever she spoke. So she was clearly giving her all on this.

Its not to long and the intro speakers are good. One said both David Lammy and Francesca are ex SOAS students. Lammy recent comments on what genocide show that unfortunately in his case education at SOAS didn't work. One of the more amusing asides in the video. He really isn't that bright imo. Typical Labour party as I know them. Good at politicking but not very bright.

Francesca was putting argument that Palestinian struggle is linked to struggles of indigenous people world wide.

She did give long section about what's happening in Gaza now

TBF I've had to stop watching some of everyday news and instead read history and academic article like this. Its to much for my head to watch more dead bodies.

The intro speakers and her plus the demos outside are making an atmosphere , understandably imo , of barely hidden mutual loathing. Her speech reflected this. I can understand this. And can feel the same myself.

The academic text goes into the plus and minuses of the international law paradigm to get a just solution for Palestinians.

Makes convincing argument if international law cant work for Palestinians its failed.

Says among other things ( and Id recommend it as a read 45 pages)

International law does not fully take aboard Zionism as a colonial project.

That separating out Palestinians inside Israel/ in West Bank and Gaza and as refugees outside the Mandate area means that the totality of the oppression of Palestinians gets lost.

There is a long discussion in his piece about NGOs. HRW and Amnesty International. For long time they avoided the Palestinian issue. More recent reports by them hold delicate balancing act between saying Israel is now Apartheid state and not saying the origins of this are in Zionism. Trying to be objective and not take political sides. He says in end this doesn't work.

He's quite critical of NGOs like HRW. I've more sympathy for them.

So what Nimar is saying, as a previous generation of Palestinians said ( he mentions Sayegh) is that the underlying issue is Zionism as a colonial racist project. This is not fully expressed in how international law works. Which is a deliberate systemic aspect of International law. Not an unfortunate by product of it.

At one point he says UN agreed that Zionism was a form of racism. This was dropped in order that the Oslo peace process gets started.

International law itself is political and its an area of contestation. There isn't a pure law. Its possible to use it. Without seeing law as area where political power is contested and exercised its easy to fall into the traps that some NGOs do. Which inadvertantly shore up this unjust state of affairs

I think the Nimar article on international law is very good
 

Attachments

  • Sultany Palestine Litmus Test final.pdf
    469.9 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom