And it is this disproportionate response — typical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — that has people around the world up in arms. This war will only result in Palestinian cassualties, and many of these will be children and unarmed civilians — young and old. The propaganda from the Israeli government will be, as it has always been, that Hamas is ‘hiding behind human shields,’ but the sorry reality is that in such an overcrowded urban environment non-combatants have nowhere else to go.
Addressing Some Tory Lies
For as long as I can remember, the bedrock of every single Conservative initiative has been a web of class-antagonistic jingoism and outright lies. David Cameron’s better-late-than-never apology to the people of Derry for the Bloody Sunday massacre exposed the facts of Britain’s lies and denials in Ireland during the Troubles, since the 2014 campaign for independence in Scotland the Tories have come to be recognised for the liars and master manipulators they are, and Brexit has put the final nails in the coffin. To expect anything more than a barefaced lie...
Antisemitism and the Modern Apartheid State
At the heart of this Israeli and Zionist definition is the deliberate conflation of Zionism – an ethno-nationalist state-political ideology – and Judaism, and, by extension, the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. How useful to the State of Israel – Katz’s “Jewish State” – would it be had this definition been adopted officially by the European Union as it was by the US State Department last year? Doubtless, this is what the AJC’s Andrew Baker had in mind when he negotiated with the EU to have it adopted. Yet, more rational heads prevailed.
Antisemitism: A Meaningless Charge
But this new antisemitism – the use of “antisemitism” to silence dissent, by calling everything anti-Semitic, weakens our ability to combat real anti-Semitic racism. When everyone is an anti-Semite no one is an anti-Semite. Reasonable people who can see through the political weaponisation of this language begin to dismiss – as I have been guilty of doing – almost every claim of antisemitism. We become deaf to a terminology that, ever since Auschwitz, should ring immediate alarm bells the moment we hear it. “Antisemitism,” thanks to pro-government media outlets...
Israel can’t use the Holocaust as an Excuse
Israel’s goal is the total destruction or at least the absolute subjugation of Palestine to make way for the completion of the Zionist project, the creation of a hegemonic colonial-settler Jewish ethno-state. Criticism of this genocidal programme and the provisional Apartheid state it has constructed has been muted by the shadow of the Holocaust. Apparently the nations of the world are somehow guilty of a crime so monstrous against Israel that they are simply now no longer able to point out the moral enormities of Israel.
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Man behind Donald Trump
When it comes to the grey eminence behind Trump we have to pay closer attention to the vision of Trumpism. By its nature real hegemonic power looks to the future; it never stops strategising its own preservation, and it does this primarily in the construction of a narrative of threat in which only the powerholder can offer salvation.
Our Christmas Present from the United Nations
In the real world – a place both Netanyahu and Danon are ill at ease – we have to deal with real people and their real rights and claims. In the real world gods don’t act as guarantors. Laws do. In this case we have the current position of international law and the reality of Palestine and Israel as real and existing states with rights.
What’s with all the Hasbarartists?
Israel is the world’s leading producer of laser-guided airstrike drones responsible for the deaths of countless civilians in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Palestine produces olive oil.
Random Public Journal 