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.
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...
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.
Death of a War Criminal
It’s amazing what death can do for a man. Artists find that death adds value to the work everyone thought was garbage when they were alive, and Israeli war criminals find themselves being considered for sainthood.
Rethinking Israel and Palestine with Hannah Arendt
Palestine will cease to exist; leaving a Palestinian population dispossessed of its land and trapped permanently as a stateless people in a state that refuses to recognise its right to exist.
So Much for a Sacred Land
Holiness is performance. If we learn anything from Jesus’ “pearls before swine” it is that the pigs don’t give a crap what is holy and what is not. Holiness is what we say it is and we make it so by how we choose to perform around those things we have declared holy.
Christian Zionism and the Race to Apocalypse
All of this may sound farfetched, but often – especially in US politics – fact is stranger than fiction, and to understand the present behaviour of Israel one ought to pay careful and close attention to the beliefs and influence of Christian Zionism.
Condemnation of Israel is not Antisemitism
No other member state of the United Nations has ignored and violated as many UN resolutions as the State of Israel. To date Israel is in direct violation of no less than 66 resolutions, passed by the Security Council, mainly with regard to its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine, its appalling treatment of the Palestinian population, and its effective annexation of East Jerusalem.
