What follows is openly UTOPIAN. The proposals put forward here have, under contemporary historical conditions, ZERO prospects of ever occurring. They are impossible proposals but not, strictly speaking, inconceivable.
Unconstrained by being a member of the diplomatic corps, which is also to say free of the vested interests and Realpolitik chess games of hegemonic power-positioning that poison all International Relations, ordinary people such as myself possess, as an essential aspect of their insectoid insignificance, a type of imaginative and conceptual Freedom that can also at times be untrammeled.
Employing this Freedom, I would like to put forward a model for a One-State *solution* to the One-State *reality* that is currently Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. The new state of United Palestine-Israel.
However science fictional the proposals outlined below will seem, they may at least serve as a *negative* illustration. The New State of United Palestine-Israel as conceived of here may serve as an antithetical picture, possibly even an utopian negation, of the military-colonial, mass-murderous horrors that are the Hell on Earth that Tel Aviv has constructed in its monumental contribution to the History of Criminal-against-Humanity Evil.
Under present-day conditions, acquiescing to the ethnic cleansing logic of American and Israeli Zionism is the only viable path that remains for those that wish to save the Palestinian lives that are still left. When the situation is viewed through this bloody glass darkly (free from the lotus-eating “solutions” that have failed so bloodily in the past) the only real world “solution” is the same as the Absolute Evil that the nuclear-armed military machines of Washington and Tel Aviv have teleologically positioned as the deathly end point of the decades-long Palestinian Genocide.
This is a Zero-state solution. A theocratic, ethno-nationalist State of Israel characterized by uniform religious affiliation and universal military conscription. The Palestinians will go the way of the Herero. No Palestinian territory. No Palestinian state. A terrestrial Palestinian population of near-Zero that consists entirely of a people in permanent exile. A perpetual Diaspora with tragically ironic parallels to the history of the Jews.
Wholly dependent as they are upon the good graces of their iron-fisted military colonizers, the only good option for the Palestinians is to flee en masse. Trump, Kushner and now Biden and Blinken may have been tight-fisted when it came to squeezing UNRWA and the UNHCR, but they can doubtless be relied upon to foot the bill for Palestinian mass expulsion.
To see the iron necessity of this inexorable Historical logic of the Palestinian Genocide, consider by way of contrast the impossible tasks that are those that need to be done if instead we want a One –State *solution* to the One-State *reality* that is currently Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
For the newly minted state of United Palestine-Israel to be a viable, stable, happy and prosperous entity there must be:
1/A multi-paradigmatic transformation of historical consciousness.
A new name for the new state: United Palestine-Israel. Or better yet, the literati from both sides can invent a new name, invent a new tradition (Eric Hobsbawm) and imagine a new community (Benedict Anderson).
A new flag. A new anthem. The publication of new linguistic dictionaries to lay the groundwork of the new national language that will develop in the future that will be the syncretization of modern Hebrew and modern Arabic.
A voluntary cross-adoption program in which Israeli families adopt Palestinian infants and raise them as Muslims or as Christians. Palestinian families adopt Israeli infants and raise them as Jews or as secular atheists.
Choose a World Cup year for the start-date of this newly birthed state. If FIFA can drop all pretense of apoliticality and ban Russia from the World Cup, FIFA can do something in a positive direction and reserve a place for United Palestine-Israel. FIFA already reserves a place for the host nation.
2/A Truth, Reconciliation and Reparation Commission and Fund. The UK, the USA, Israel and certain powerful sections of the Jewish diaspora owe the Palestinian people untold trillions for their infliction of multi-generational military mass killing, internal and external displacement, arrested development and democidal injury and trauma. As a negative example, Tel Aviv *deliberately* withheld the provision of Covid vaccines to the Palestinians in a timely manner. The Absolutely Evil weaponization of Famine and communicable Disease as instruments of Genocide that we are currently all damned to witness are all Crimes against Humanity that scream to the Heavens for repentance, remorse, reparation and recompense.
Pay this multi-trillion dollar bill in full and into the future.
3/United Palestine-Israel will sign the NPT and agree to regular IAEA inspections. United Palestine-Israel will sign all relevant treaties that commit to arms limitations and disarmament.
The Reparations Fund will pay the multi-billion dollar bill that Tel Aviv and Washington owe to the ordinary people of Iran who have suffered greatly under a regime of sanctions that were specifically designed to maintain Israeli rogue- nuclear hegemony in the region.
4/It is *imperative* that these processes must be completed within 12-24 months.
The *real* start-date for the Dawn of the New reality will be the day after. On that day every single nationalistic thought and sentiment is halted and expunged utterly and forever more. All of the foul ethno- and religious nationalism without which most of the mindsets of modern-day belligerence would not exist will cease immediately and forever in United Palestine-Israel.
Let United Palestine-Israel be the guiding Light and inaugural Event for the final and terminal death of the historical Age of Nationalism. Let the next, New Age be one of Universal Humanism.
Tragically it is necessary for us to plummet from the Celestial plane of pure conceptualization to the nauseating reality of Hell on Earth. This is a suitably Miltonic plummet to infernal Hell as we Fall from the Divine Light of God’s grace and glory in keeping with Zizek’s thematic poetic allusion above.
Of necessity, we must reflect on the Global, world-historical macro-situation in which the ongoing Israeli military colonization of Palestine is but one part of the overall picture of profound Civilizational systemic crisis, self-destruction, terminal collapse and death.
We are past the tipping-point of the Seneca Cliff. There are at present a number of viciously morbid systemic and structural asymptotic fault lines and processes - climate change; oligarchical capitalist class warfare; the continuing historical phenomena of military conflict without any corresponding pacifist and peacemaking historical processes to act as a counterpoint - that are ineluctably leading the human species to an extended period of great suffering in hell on earth.
Under such historical conditions, Tel Aviv will not sate its military-colonial bloodthirst until there is not a single Palestinian - the people that Golda Meir infamously called “an invented people” in her act of genocide by conceptual means - left anywhere on the face of the Earth. A Zero-State solution non plus ultra.
There is no doubt that you are correct. But the Israeli state will have to suffer a strategic defeat before the obvious logic of what you are saying becomes clear to Israeli Jews. The US will do all in its power to prevent Israel from suffering this strategic defeat, as that would automatically be yet another strategic defeat for the US - following closely on NATO's utter defeat and humiliation in Ukraine. Still, I believe it is going to happen. Was it Freud who said that demographics is destiny. There are 7.5 million Jews in the Holy Land - and 7.5 million Muslims. The idea of a "Jewish State" is a fantasy that found its origin in 19th Century German Nationalism. This idea is well past its sell by date.
"The crisis in democracy is in part a crisis in nationalism, which today seems to revolve around four issues: how nations define membership; how they popularize a version of historical memory; how they locate a sovereign identity; and how they contend with the forces of globalization. In each of these, nationalism and liberalism are often in tension. Democracies tend to navigate this tension rather than resolve it. Yet, around the world, nationalism is slowly strangling liberalism—a trend that could accelerate in a damaging way this year."
Do you remember which polls cited that around 90% of Israeli Jews are opposed to the two-state solution? I haven't seen numbers that high, and I'm curious.
"The conflict is between Hamas and Israeli hard-line Zionists". No. On the morning of Sunday 8th of October, you would have been hard-pressed to find to find a single Israel, whether Zionist or anti-Zionist, Jew or Arab, Jewish or Muslim, who did not think that Israel should respond with massive force against Hamas. For context: I spent years volunteering and campaigning with Human Rights groups in the West Bank and peacenik groups in Israel proper. (I also did my MA thesis on the extremist violent ideological settlers). This is a war between Hamas and Israel, which was started, unequivocally, by the former.
This "war," i.e. Genocide, was started in 1948. Even before that, as the Brits sent terrorists like the Black and Tans in the 1920s to suppress the Palestinian independence movement - because they had already decided to turn Palestine into "a little Jewish Ulster in a sea of hostile Arabism." Hamas didn't exist when this "war" started. As for the reaction of Israeli Jews, on the 8th of October last, the only intelligent reaction would have been to ask themselves if the idea of a "Jewish State" in a land where there are 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Muslims is a good idea? Especially when that idea depends on Apartheid and Genocide.
The numbers of innocents killed and the level of suffering in Gaza are clearly shocking. If you insist on talking I'd genocide (something with which my family has had some experience), 60% of the residents of the Strip are under 18; half of the rest are women: so 80% of Gazans are women or children. When you compare that to 30% killed being men, or when you console it to the Iraqi/US/UK war on ISIS, especially in Mosul and even moreso corrected for population density and Hamas's tactics... It's still terrible and appalling, but genocide it is not.
Btw., 80% of the population of Gaza are women and children - because it's a refugee camp. Those families used to live in other parts of Palestine - before they were ethnically cleansed and forced into this de facto concentration camp. You know, when the Native Americans used to break out of the reservations, it wasn't very pretty either. Angry people do terrible things. But, in the 19th Century, the Yanks could get away with the inevitable slaughter that would come as as reprisals for these break-outs. The tragedy of the Zionists is that although their Zionist project is a relic of 19th Century ideology - they are trying to act it out in the 21st Century - when their atrocities can been seen by anyone with a smart phone - and enough intelligence to use one.
Hangonamo, you can't call it a de facto concentration camp in 1948-49 when the Egyptians were in charge. Unless you're blaming them, which I don't think you are. Also, do you know why they were called "concentration camps"? ...Because unless you're saying that the plan was to concentrate all Palestinians into Gaza (which would be strange given that the majority did not go there and many stayed in Israel proper), in order to liquidate them decades later, which would be strange given that, even with this terrible war, under 1.4% of the population have been killed... Unless that's what you're saying, then I think you have the wrong term.
Maybe you have never read the Genocide Convention. It clearly defines Genocide as: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2
Based on this definition, the International Court of Human Rights has ruled that there is a plausible case that Israel is committing Genocide.
"...intent to destroy in part of in whole..." This has not been proven. The important thing is to prevent starvation. But the accusation of genocide was made before the danger of real hunger became manifest. There is no proof whatsoever. What there is proof of is Hamas preventing the delivery or distribution of food.
Ah, it’s clear from your comments that you’re a psychotic antisemite. Please, go to Gaza and live in the Islamist paradise that the Palestinians have constructed for themselves.
What incredible dishonesty to pretend you don’t know that the use of the entire civilian population of Gaza as human shields is the *core* of Hamas’s strategy. Keep carrying water for Hamas, Iran, and the Islamists!
You don't seem to understand the concept of "human shields." You can only have a human shield if your enemy is reluctant to murder humans. As we see, "Israel" has no such reluctance.
Yes, to me it is also unfortunate that the face of Judaism in the Middle East today is Bibi, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Kushner. But it's absurd to highlight Israel, when the faces of the Middle East also include Erdogan, Putin in Syria, Assad, MbS, the mullahs of Iran, al-Sadr, Nasrallah, Sisi, and many others, who are arguably much more violent, fascistic, and extreme, simply with less military power at their disposal. Never mind Haniyeh, Mashaal, ISIS, etc! This is the point of ensuring Israel's qualitative edge. As absurd as it seems, whether we like it or not, Israel is probably the best that region has got as far as human rights are concerned given the nature of the conflict it actually faces – not from the computer screen or TV, but in bomb sirens, genocidal saber rattling, terrorism, attacks like October 7, and basically regional apartheid.
Maybe if you were watching your child starve to death because "Israel" is blocking aid trucks, you'd have a less philosophical understanding of "human rights."
Enough throwing starving and dying children into arguments as a bludgeon. It's perverse. Did Israel launch the war on October 7? Hamas has had 18 years to improve the lives of its citizens in Gaza, to reconcile with the PA, and to move toward negotiating a two-state solution. Why didn't they do that? Oh, you won't answer because you attack and then block me, like Hamas, attacking and then hiding underground.
"Israel" launched the War of Extermination in 1948. I have no intention of blocking you. Why should I do that when you are exposing the Genocidal Lies and hypocrisy of Zionism with every word you write. Now doubt, the Germans too wondered why Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto didn't spend their time improving their lives - instead of planning an uprising.
No, it's you that has ethnically cleansed the Palestinians off their land and into ghettos - or concentration camps. 80% of the population of Gaza are refugees. Refugees from where? Mars? No, from their homes all over Palestine.
As usual, the pro-Palestinian activists would rather win an historical argument than make life better for themselves or anybody else. What is happening in Gaza is a tragedy
I visited the Stasi-Prison in Berlin with an Israeli friend of mine who asked a beautiful question to the guide: „Is there any research about what being a prison guard did to the guards themselves?“
The guide was baffled over the -in her eyes- stupidity of the question, as the perpetrator-victim relationship was so clear, that only the victim‘s perspective is allowed to be considered.
In Germany today, the anti-anti-semitische fight has reached grotesque levels, as one third of the events cancelled are organised by Jews…
Just like in the article, the fight against communism aka mccarthyism adapted certain forms of stalinist denunciation, the defence of democracy in the west reminds Ai Weiwei of maoist-China. Maybe the German "das Kind mit dem Bade ausschuetten" (something like: to empty the bathtub with the child inside) could also be used for it's fight against anti-semitism ;)
Conflict is hamas versus israel alas with lebanon thrown in — hamas is neither sumi or shia ? I forgo religion due to its wars — esp on my personal freedom -/
I think of them as each other now. neighbors who cant figure out a way to get along. and resort to war is what it does, over and over, both sides. Hamas prodded this. and Israel did what it always does. but the thing is -- Hamas has no other agenda. and the politics in Palestine is also very complex. Hamas offers even promises to Palestinians war -- more war raison d'etre.
Actually Socialism did work - and worked very well indeed. Nor did the Communist states fail. Their achievements were colossal by today's standard. After 1945, Communist governments housed hundreds of millions of people. Ignorant people in the West - many of them homeless - were told that these "Commie Blocks" were poorly built prisons. Well, as for poorly built, the Commie Blocks are the only thing still standing in Bakhmut - while anything built after 1991 crumbled in the first few days. And as for being prisons - hundreds of millions of people in the Capitalist countries today would be over the moon if they got a chance to live in a Commie Block. Or take China. China today would be on the same level as India without the Communist Party - or even lower. There's only two ways for a poor country to lift itself out of poverty - you either put a Communist Party in power - or you whore yourself to Uncle Sam. And, needless to say, unless Uncle Sam has a particular reason for building up your economy, it isn't going to happen - look at the state of the Baltic countries today. 30 years after Communism the only thing of value there was built by the Communists. You might object - But the Soviet Union fell, that must mean it was a failure. No, it wasn't a failure. The failure was that the Communist Party lost the will to purge the buffoons (Gorbachev) and the drunken criminals (Yeltsin et al) from its ranks. Does anyone imagine for one second that the USSR would have fallen if Putin had been in power instead of the pizza-loving Gorbachev? The fall of the Berlin Wall was a catastrophe for the Slavic peoples - who became slave labor for the West - and a catastrophe for the Western working class, who have had their wages and conditions devastated by the invasion of cheap Slavic labor. Actually, the fall of the Berlin Wall was an even greater disaster for Germany. The DDR was the last German state to ever exist. It was Germany's very last hope.
I must be going crazy I thought the book was titled Eyeless in Giza for the longest time, maybe Gaza just was not so much occupying my thoughts and so I would misread Gaza as Giza.
“And although the conflict is between Hamas and Israeli hardline Zionists, we should abandon all illusions that there is a clear line to separate “extremists” from the majority of the population. According to the latest opinion polls, around 90% of Israeli Jews are opposed to the two-state solution.”
Interesting that you neglect to mention that 75% of Palestinians *support 10/7*, and 90% of them support the al Qassam brigades. They started this war in the lost gruesome way possible, but you have to blame the Jew.
The conflict isn’t between Hamas and Israeli hardline Zionists. Hamas wants all Jews dead. So do most Palestinians. For close to a century now they’ve repeatedly rejected all peace deals because they will not accept even a square foot of Jewish land in the Middle East.
Lmao you actually don’t know that most Jews in Israel are Mizrahi? Do you even know what that words? Your ignorance is astonishing…get off Substack and read a book.
Most Jewish families in "Israel" today come from Europe, including Russia - and from the USA. They had to travel thousands of miles to ever meet a Palestinian.
so glad I let religion go. it doesnt let me go at certain base levels. and I still visit with ideas about gods as part of structures that engage in language when I sit down to write. but as a thing I would die for.... a la camus. no -- those gods and those reasons dictated by tribal nature of ancient appealing gods, both islam and judiasm talk constantly about "our" traditions, as rule of law... going way back, they dont share. they may allow, but they dont share. Iran plus Israel right wing, are in the "same" conversation. Israel and Hamas same conversation, till death will do us part... clap one hand against the other to emphasize. I found those religiosos squeezed the life out of me, jesus I took somewhere else, as coming through life, which is other than YawaAllah who never assumes mortal its the other way around never goes through pain of death assumes mantle of infinity - I split J guy in two, put the love on principle thing as a universal over by Buddha, who also came through life, that something of "god" loves me or I wouldnt be here -- thats a "pretty" for the sake of its own devices. And the martyr side, dick on a stick dying in arms of god, as representative my mortal blood, as acquainted with his, blood into my mouth-- a relationship I have with death which is sacrifishy in sense that my sins define Me w.r.t. sea of darkness and the other -- Sea of darkness, is another label for infinity, partcles suddenly existing, emerge in math physics from a nothingness/infnity duality they call Sea of Darkness. Coff Coff
Its consequences are, obviously, not quite the same (no one sends you to prison or kills you, though you may lose your job, which is bad enough), but its nature and ridiculousness are the same. I think a Chinese and a Romanian (my case) are better placed to make the comparison.
The problem is indifference that produces the same effect as censorship. It's not merely people being exclude for a speech or a post. This operation has effects. It creates indifference as a survival strategy. Individuation deepens out of fear of what you might let slip or have to hear. Further, if one watches/reads Wei Wei's interview it makes it more clear: "This is really like a cultural revolution, which is really trying to destroy anybody who have different attitudes, not even a clear opinion.
"So I think that this is such a pity, that it happened in the West, so broadly in universities, in media, in every location.
"In universities or political sector - everywhere - you cannot talk about the truth."
at least you could say that ruffly 50% are mentally censored rightwing nazi fascists or victimized believers (stockholmsyndrome) which just lie to your face..
What follows is openly UTOPIAN. The proposals put forward here have, under contemporary historical conditions, ZERO prospects of ever occurring. They are impossible proposals but not, strictly speaking, inconceivable.
Unconstrained by being a member of the diplomatic corps, which is also to say free of the vested interests and Realpolitik chess games of hegemonic power-positioning that poison all International Relations, ordinary people such as myself possess, as an essential aspect of their insectoid insignificance, a type of imaginative and conceptual Freedom that can also at times be untrammeled.
Employing this Freedom, I would like to put forward a model for a One-State *solution* to the One-State *reality* that is currently Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. The new state of United Palestine-Israel.
However science fictional the proposals outlined below will seem, they may at least serve as a *negative* illustration. The New State of United Palestine-Israel as conceived of here may serve as an antithetical picture, possibly even an utopian negation, of the military-colonial, mass-murderous horrors that are the Hell on Earth that Tel Aviv has constructed in its monumental contribution to the History of Criminal-against-Humanity Evil.
Under present-day conditions, acquiescing to the ethnic cleansing logic of American and Israeli Zionism is the only viable path that remains for those that wish to save the Palestinian lives that are still left. When the situation is viewed through this bloody glass darkly (free from the lotus-eating “solutions” that have failed so bloodily in the past) the only real world “solution” is the same as the Absolute Evil that the nuclear-armed military machines of Washington and Tel Aviv have teleologically positioned as the deathly end point of the decades-long Palestinian Genocide.
This is a Zero-state solution. A theocratic, ethno-nationalist State of Israel characterized by uniform religious affiliation and universal military conscription. The Palestinians will go the way of the Herero. No Palestinian territory. No Palestinian state. A terrestrial Palestinian population of near-Zero that consists entirely of a people in permanent exile. A perpetual Diaspora with tragically ironic parallels to the history of the Jews.
Wholly dependent as they are upon the good graces of their iron-fisted military colonizers, the only good option for the Palestinians is to flee en masse. Trump, Kushner and now Biden and Blinken may have been tight-fisted when it came to squeezing UNRWA and the UNHCR, but they can doubtless be relied upon to foot the bill for Palestinian mass expulsion.
To see the iron necessity of this inexorable Historical logic of the Palestinian Genocide, consider by way of contrast the impossible tasks that are those that need to be done if instead we want a One –State *solution* to the One-State *reality* that is currently Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
For the newly minted state of United Palestine-Israel to be a viable, stable, happy and prosperous entity there must be:
1/A multi-paradigmatic transformation of historical consciousness.
A new name for the new state: United Palestine-Israel. Or better yet, the literati from both sides can invent a new name, invent a new tradition (Eric Hobsbawm) and imagine a new community (Benedict Anderson).
A new flag. A new anthem. The publication of new linguistic dictionaries to lay the groundwork of the new national language that will develop in the future that will be the syncretization of modern Hebrew and modern Arabic.
A voluntary cross-adoption program in which Israeli families adopt Palestinian infants and raise them as Muslims or as Christians. Palestinian families adopt Israeli infants and raise them as Jews or as secular atheists.
Choose a World Cup year for the start-date of this newly birthed state. If FIFA can drop all pretense of apoliticality and ban Russia from the World Cup, FIFA can do something in a positive direction and reserve a place for United Palestine-Israel. FIFA already reserves a place for the host nation.
2/A Truth, Reconciliation and Reparation Commission and Fund. The UK, the USA, Israel and certain powerful sections of the Jewish diaspora owe the Palestinian people untold trillions for their infliction of multi-generational military mass killing, internal and external displacement, arrested development and democidal injury and trauma. As a negative example, Tel Aviv *deliberately* withheld the provision of Covid vaccines to the Palestinians in a timely manner. The Absolutely Evil weaponization of Famine and communicable Disease as instruments of Genocide that we are currently all damned to witness are all Crimes against Humanity that scream to the Heavens for repentance, remorse, reparation and recompense.
https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/
Pay this multi-trillion dollar bill in full and into the future.
3/United Palestine-Israel will sign the NPT and agree to regular IAEA inspections. United Palestine-Israel will sign all relevant treaties that commit to arms limitations and disarmament.
The Reparations Fund will pay the multi-billion dollar bill that Tel Aviv and Washington owe to the ordinary people of Iran who have suffered greatly under a regime of sanctions that were specifically designed to maintain Israeli rogue- nuclear hegemony in the region.
4/It is *imperative* that these processes must be completed within 12-24 months.
The *real* start-date for the Dawn of the New reality will be the day after. On that day every single nationalistic thought and sentiment is halted and expunged utterly and forever more. All of the foul ethno- and religious nationalism without which most of the mindsets of modern-day belligerence would not exist will cease immediately and forever in United Palestine-Israel.
Let United Palestine-Israel be the guiding Light and inaugural Event for the final and terminal death of the historical Age of Nationalism. Let the next, New Age be one of Universal Humanism.
Tragically it is necessary for us to plummet from the Celestial plane of pure conceptualization to the nauseating reality of Hell on Earth. This is a suitably Miltonic plummet to infernal Hell as we Fall from the Divine Light of God’s grace and glory in keeping with Zizek’s thematic poetic allusion above.
Of necessity, we must reflect on the Global, world-historical macro-situation in which the ongoing Israeli military colonization of Palestine is but one part of the overall picture of profound Civilizational systemic crisis, self-destruction, terminal collapse and death.
We are past the tipping-point of the Seneca Cliff. There are at present a number of viciously morbid systemic and structural asymptotic fault lines and processes - climate change; oligarchical capitalist class warfare; the continuing historical phenomena of military conflict without any corresponding pacifist and peacemaking historical processes to act as a counterpoint - that are ineluctably leading the human species to an extended period of great suffering in hell on earth.
Under such historical conditions, Tel Aviv will not sate its military-colonial bloodthirst until there is not a single Palestinian - the people that Golda Meir infamously called “an invented people” in her act of genocide by conceptual means - left anywhere on the face of the Earth. A Zero-State solution non plus ultra.
There is no doubt that you are correct. But the Israeli state will have to suffer a strategic defeat before the obvious logic of what you are saying becomes clear to Israeli Jews. The US will do all in its power to prevent Israel from suffering this strategic defeat, as that would automatically be yet another strategic defeat for the US - following closely on NATO's utter defeat and humiliation in Ukraine. Still, I believe it is going to happen. Was it Freud who said that demographics is destiny. There are 7.5 million Jews in the Holy Land - and 7.5 million Muslims. The idea of a "Jewish State" is a fantasy that found its origin in 19th Century German Nationalism. This idea is well past its sell by date.
Yes, fully agree.
"The crisis in democracy is in part a crisis in nationalism, which today seems to revolve around four issues: how nations define membership; how they popularize a version of historical memory; how they locate a sovereign identity; and how they contend with the forces of globalization. In each of these, nationalism and liberalism are often in tension. Democracies tend to navigate this tension rather than resolve it. Yet, around the world, nationalism is slowly strangling liberalism—a trend that could accelerate in a damaging way this year."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/03/nationalism-elections-2024-democracy-liberalism/
Are you off your meds??
Do you remember which polls cited that around 90% of Israeli Jews are opposed to the two-state solution? I haven't seen numbers that high, and I'm curious.
"The conflict is between Hamas and Israeli hard-line Zionists". No. On the morning of Sunday 8th of October, you would have been hard-pressed to find to find a single Israel, whether Zionist or anti-Zionist, Jew or Arab, Jewish or Muslim, who did not think that Israel should respond with massive force against Hamas. For context: I spent years volunteering and campaigning with Human Rights groups in the West Bank and peacenik groups in Israel proper. (I also did my MA thesis on the extremist violent ideological settlers). This is a war between Hamas and Israel, which was started, unequivocally, by the former.
This "war," i.e. Genocide, was started in 1948. Even before that, as the Brits sent terrorists like the Black and Tans in the 1920s to suppress the Palestinian independence movement - because they had already decided to turn Palestine into "a little Jewish Ulster in a sea of hostile Arabism." Hamas didn't exist when this "war" started. As for the reaction of Israeli Jews, on the 8th of October last, the only intelligent reaction would have been to ask themselves if the idea of a "Jewish State" in a land where there are 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Muslims is a good idea? Especially when that idea depends on Apartheid and Genocide.
The numbers of innocents killed and the level of suffering in Gaza are clearly shocking. If you insist on talking I'd genocide (something with which my family has had some experience), 60% of the residents of the Strip are under 18; half of the rest are women: so 80% of Gazans are women or children. When you compare that to 30% killed being men, or when you console it to the Iraqi/US/UK war on ISIS, especially in Mosul and even moreso corrected for population density and Hamas's tactics... It's still terrible and appalling, but genocide it is not.
Btw., 80% of the population of Gaza are women and children - because it's a refugee camp. Those families used to live in other parts of Palestine - before they were ethnically cleansed and forced into this de facto concentration camp. You know, when the Native Americans used to break out of the reservations, it wasn't very pretty either. Angry people do terrible things. But, in the 19th Century, the Yanks could get away with the inevitable slaughter that would come as as reprisals for these break-outs. The tragedy of the Zionists is that although their Zionist project is a relic of 19th Century ideology - they are trying to act it out in the 21st Century - when their atrocities can been seen by anyone with a smart phone - and enough intelligence to use one.
Hangonamo, you can't call it a de facto concentration camp in 1948-49 when the Egyptians were in charge. Unless you're blaming them, which I don't think you are. Also, do you know why they were called "concentration camps"? ...Because unless you're saying that the plan was to concentrate all Palestinians into Gaza (which would be strange given that the majority did not go there and many stayed in Israel proper), in order to liquidate them decades later, which would be strange given that, even with this terrible war, under 1.4% of the population have been killed... Unless that's what you're saying, then I think you have the wrong term.
Maybe you have never read the Genocide Convention. It clearly defines Genocide as: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2
Based on this definition, the International Court of Human Rights has ruled that there is a plausible case that Israel is committing Genocide.
"...intent to destroy in part of in whole..." This has not been proven. The important thing is to prevent starvation. But the accusation of genocide was made before the danger of real hunger became manifest. There is no proof whatsoever. What there is proof of is Hamas preventing the delivery or distribution of food.
Hamas is not preventing deliveries of food - the Israeli state is. That's Genocide.
Ah, it’s clear from your comments that you’re a psychotic antisemite. Please, go to Gaza and live in the Islamist paradise that the Palestinians have constructed for themselves.
There's nothing so antisemitic as bombing Semitic women and children.
What incredible dishonesty to pretend you don’t know that the use of the entire civilian population of Gaza as human shields is the *core* of Hamas’s strategy. Keep carrying water for Hamas, Iran, and the Islamists!
You don't seem to understand the concept of "human shields." You can only have a human shield if your enemy is reluctant to murder humans. As we see, "Israel" has no such reluctance.
You are such a dishonest, Jew-hating troll
Yes, to me it is also unfortunate that the face of Judaism in the Middle East today is Bibi, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Kushner. But it's absurd to highlight Israel, when the faces of the Middle East also include Erdogan, Putin in Syria, Assad, MbS, the mullahs of Iran, al-Sadr, Nasrallah, Sisi, and many others, who are arguably much more violent, fascistic, and extreme, simply with less military power at their disposal. Never mind Haniyeh, Mashaal, ISIS, etc! This is the point of ensuring Israel's qualitative edge. As absurd as it seems, whether we like it or not, Israel is probably the best that region has got as far as human rights are concerned given the nature of the conflict it actually faces – not from the computer screen or TV, but in bomb sirens, genocidal saber rattling, terrorism, attacks like October 7, and basically regional apartheid.
Maybe if you were watching your child starve to death because "Israel" is blocking aid trucks, you'd have a less philosophical understanding of "human rights."
Enough throwing starving and dying children into arguments as a bludgeon. It's perverse. Did Israel launch the war on October 7? Hamas has had 18 years to improve the lives of its citizens in Gaza, to reconcile with the PA, and to move toward negotiating a two-state solution. Why didn't they do that? Oh, you won't answer because you attack and then block me, like Hamas, attacking and then hiding underground.
"Israel" launched the War of Extermination in 1948. I have no intention of blocking you. Why should I do that when you are exposing the Genocidal Lies and hypocrisy of Zionism with every word you write. Now doubt, the Germans too wondered why Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto didn't spend their time improving their lives - instead of planning an uprising.
Last I checked the Arab world keeps israel and the Palestinians in a ghetto in the Mideast. Perhaps the Arab world is the problem
No, it's you that has ethnically cleansed the Palestinians off their land and into ghettos - or concentration camps. 80% of the population of Gaza are refugees. Refugees from where? Mars? No, from their homes all over Palestine.
As usual, the pro-Palestinian activists would rather win an historical argument than make life better for themselves or anybody else. What is happening in Gaza is a tragedy
Why do you put Israel in scare quotes lol
Because Apartheid and Genocide are scary things to do.
"but now they are reinforcing anti-Semitism all around the world" Opposing the killing of civilians has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
I visited the Stasi-Prison in Berlin with an Israeli friend of mine who asked a beautiful question to the guide: „Is there any research about what being a prison guard did to the guards themselves?“
The guide was baffled over the -in her eyes- stupidity of the question, as the perpetrator-victim relationship was so clear, that only the victim‘s perspective is allowed to be considered.
In Germany today, the anti-anti-semitische fight has reached grotesque levels, as one third of the events cancelled are organised by Jews…
The Stasi were a very benign police force by today's standards.
what that may telling us?...
Just like in the article, the fight against communism aka mccarthyism adapted certain forms of stalinist denunciation, the defence of democracy in the west reminds Ai Weiwei of maoist-China. Maybe the German "das Kind mit dem Bade ausschuetten" (something like: to empty the bathtub with the child inside) could also be used for it's fight against anti-semitism ;)
andreas the nazi whore..
Please explain, I don’t understand your comment
you know what you are.. no need for explainings.. you dumb fucking incest nazi whore.. son of a dumb bitch!..
Conflict is hamas versus israel alas with lebanon thrown in — hamas is neither sumi or shia ? I forgo religion due to its wars — esp on my personal freedom -/
I think of them as each other now. neighbors who cant figure out a way to get along. and resort to war is what it does, over and over, both sides. Hamas prodded this. and Israel did what it always does. but the thing is -- Hamas has no other agenda. and the politics in Palestine is also very complex. Hamas offers even promises to Palestinians war -- more war raison d'etre.
Actually Socialism did work - and worked very well indeed. Nor did the Communist states fail. Their achievements were colossal by today's standard. After 1945, Communist governments housed hundreds of millions of people. Ignorant people in the West - many of them homeless - were told that these "Commie Blocks" were poorly built prisons. Well, as for poorly built, the Commie Blocks are the only thing still standing in Bakhmut - while anything built after 1991 crumbled in the first few days. And as for being prisons - hundreds of millions of people in the Capitalist countries today would be over the moon if they got a chance to live in a Commie Block. Or take China. China today would be on the same level as India without the Communist Party - or even lower. There's only two ways for a poor country to lift itself out of poverty - you either put a Communist Party in power - or you whore yourself to Uncle Sam. And, needless to say, unless Uncle Sam has a particular reason for building up your economy, it isn't going to happen - look at the state of the Baltic countries today. 30 years after Communism the only thing of value there was built by the Communists. You might object - But the Soviet Union fell, that must mean it was a failure. No, it wasn't a failure. The failure was that the Communist Party lost the will to purge the buffoons (Gorbachev) and the drunken criminals (Yeltsin et al) from its ranks. Does anyone imagine for one second that the USSR would have fallen if Putin had been in power instead of the pizza-loving Gorbachev? The fall of the Berlin Wall was a catastrophe for the Slavic peoples - who became slave labor for the West - and a catastrophe for the Western working class, who have had their wages and conditions devastated by the invasion of cheap Slavic labor. Actually, the fall of the Berlin Wall was an even greater disaster for Germany. The DDR was the last German state to ever exist. It was Germany's very last hope.
I must be going crazy I thought the book was titled Eyeless in Giza for the longest time, maybe Gaza just was not so much occupying my thoughts and so I would misread Gaza as Giza.
And yet, you took the trouble to comment.
“And although the conflict is between Hamas and Israeli hardline Zionists, we should abandon all illusions that there is a clear line to separate “extremists” from the majority of the population. According to the latest opinion polls, around 90% of Israeli Jews are opposed to the two-state solution.”
Interesting that you neglect to mention that 75% of Palestinians *support 10/7*, and 90% of them support the al Qassam brigades. They started this war in the lost gruesome way possible, but you have to blame the Jew.
The conflict isn’t between Hamas and Israeli hardline Zionists. Hamas wants all Jews dead. So do most Palestinians. For close to a century now they’ve repeatedly rejected all peace deals because they will not accept even a square foot of Jewish land in the Middle East.
So why do you lay most of the blame on Jews?
This "war" started in 1948. Please take the blinkers off.
Who started that war?
Who had to travel from Europe and the USA so that they could feel threatened by Palestinians?
Lmao you actually don’t know that most Jews in Israel are Mizrahi? Do you even know what that words? Your ignorance is astonishing…get off Substack and read a book.
Most Jewish families in "Israel" today come from Europe, including Russia - and from the USA. They had to travel thousands of miles to ever meet a Palestinian.
You’ve just demonstrated your gross ignorance of *basic* facts. This isn’t even a matter of dispute. You’re embarrassing yourself.
so glad I let religion go. it doesnt let me go at certain base levels. and I still visit with ideas about gods as part of structures that engage in language when I sit down to write. but as a thing I would die for.... a la camus. no -- those gods and those reasons dictated by tribal nature of ancient appealing gods, both islam and judiasm talk constantly about "our" traditions, as rule of law... going way back, they dont share. they may allow, but they dont share. Iran plus Israel right wing, are in the "same" conversation. Israel and Hamas same conversation, till death will do us part... clap one hand against the other to emphasize. I found those religiosos squeezed the life out of me, jesus I took somewhere else, as coming through life, which is other than YawaAllah who never assumes mortal its the other way around never goes through pain of death assumes mantle of infinity - I split J guy in two, put the love on principle thing as a universal over by Buddha, who also came through life, that something of "god" loves me or I wouldnt be here -- thats a "pretty" for the sake of its own devices. And the martyr side, dick on a stick dying in arms of god, as representative my mortal blood, as acquainted with his, blood into my mouth-- a relationship I have with death which is sacrifishy in sense that my sins define Me w.r.t. sea of darkness and the other -- Sea of darkness, is another label for infinity, partcles suddenly existing, emerge in math physics from a nothingness/infnity duality they call Sea of Darkness. Coff Coff
Religion has little or nothing to do with it. Zionism is a secular, European, ideology.
zionism is preached as coming right out of the bible. thats a view to reduce it to something other than its original exceptionalism.
Well, censorship in "the west" is not, I repeat, is not the same as in Mao's China. It's worth, and a bit sad also, repeating this.
Its consequences are, obviously, not quite the same (no one sends you to prison or kills you, though you may lose your job, which is bad enough), but its nature and ridiculousness are the same. I think a Chinese and a Romanian (my case) are better placed to make the comparison.
The problem is indifference that produces the same effect as censorship. It's not merely people being exclude for a speech or a post. This operation has effects. It creates indifference as a survival strategy. Individuation deepens out of fear of what you might let slip or have to hear. Further, if one watches/reads Wei Wei's interview it makes it more clear: "This is really like a cultural revolution, which is really trying to destroy anybody who have different attitudes, not even a clear opinion.
"So I think that this is such a pity, that it happened in the West, so broadly in universities, in media, in every location.
"In universities or political sector - everywhere - you cannot talk about the truth."
at least you could say that ruffly 50% are mentally censored rightwing nazi fascists or victimized believers (stockholmsyndrome) which just lie to your face..
🙋♀️ Slavoj, do you know you can insert footnotes from the ‘More’ dropdown at the top?