Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“ By broadening who and what constitutes a military target, mass killings take place under the guise of legal and strategic necessity. Arguably, the fastest way to turn civilians into combatants and civilian infrastructure, such as bakeries, into military bases on a massive scale is through the use of AI.” “[F]or the first time, the army's AI systems are allowing it to generate new targets faster than it can strike them. He noted that in the 2014 and 2021 wars, the IDF had exhausted its list of targets. Previously, finding and justifying new targets seemed to be a bottleneck in Israeli military operations.” Like competition in the ‘free market’, a capitalist has to tap well for a new niche even when the market is ‘saturated’. “The question is not whether AI is good or bad for war, or whether it could be refined to be fairer. The bias in the ‘target factory’ is a political one, pre-existing the elaboration of its data models: that international law integrates an economy of violence ...

La complicité des États occidentaux dans les politiques criminelles et terroristes de l’État d’Israël contre les Palestinien·nes.

Joseph Daher, author of "Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God", said that Iran’s decision to once again launch a direct attack on Israeli soil – one that he said had had little impact on the country’s military capabilities – likely served more than one purpose. “We have to understand this 'retaliation' from Iran in two aspects,” he said. “Firstly, as a way to reaffirm a form of deterrence against Israel and in response to the numerous attacks of Israel against Iran directly or against Iranian-related targets. And secondly, to maintain this connection in the so-called Axis of Resistance by acting in favour of Tehran's network of influence in the region – especially Hezbollah. Because there were rising criticisms among Hezbollah’s popular base, basically asking, ‘What is Iran doing against the rising attacks, against this escalation of violence against Lebanon?’. That said, this ‘retaliation’ will not stop Israeli war on Lebanon.” Daher said t...

“Abdourahmane Ridouane’s deportation is not an ancillary phenomenon. It is a logical part of the inner workings of a system developed long before 7 October and whose vindictive activities continue despite the present political crisis. The power structure uses all available means and finds new justifications in current political events, be it public security during the Olympics or the repression of anti-Semitism - both perfectly legitimate.” A state that has a monopoly on the use of violence and uses it at home and abroad (imperialistically), finds scapegoats in its rule and divide policy and in its distraction from the social, racial and class issues. It manufactures an ‘enemy within’ and nurtures the far-right ideology. It goes as far as passing legislations akin to ones passed by a police state - example: the ban on wearing of the headscarf. When a French student last year admitted that he would be complicit in oppression if after university he would be working with the IMF, whe...

Paul Freire’s legacy

    «حزب الله» ليس رصيد قوة في استراتيجية تحرير وتحرر فلسطينية ولبنانية وعربية، أو حتى إسلامية ، إلا بقدر ما تندرج في استراتيجية توسع وسيطرة إيرانية. والمرجع النهائي في كيفية تصرف التنظيم الشيعي المسلح ليس آلام الفلسطينيين ومحنتهم الرهيبة، ليس القدس والمسجد الأقصى، بل أمن إيران.

“A corporation pays an affordable sum in damages. The court issues a stern scolding. Onward to business as usual.” “Criminal prosecutions usually target executives, rather than the companies they run – and even then, accountability is rare. ‘I can only think of three businessmen who’ve been convicted over the last 20 years, for complicity in war crimes or crimes against humanity – and none before that,’  says Mark Taylor, the author of a book titled War Economies and International Law . ‘And I can’t think of a single company that has ever been convicted on either of these charges’.”

“The only beneficiaries of regimes that – like Pretoria – prop up neoliberal multilateralism in this manner are the multinational corporates based in the West and BRICS+ economies, the same ones nurturing Netanyahu .”

“[T]he US, Israel and other imperial European countries understand well that the resistance of Palestinians, Algerians, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Somalis and other peoples around the world to colonial and imperial invasions and bombings is a legitimate and moral self-defence against imperial and colonial terror, which is why they have to launch political propaganda campaigns and fabrications, and deploy the term “terrorism” to depict such resistance as always immoral and illegitimate.” —Joseph Massad, Middle East Eye, 17 September 2021 ‘We are back’ to the same arguments about ‘terrorism’ and ‘international law’ .  – It is a question of power and revenge. Israel’s massive state violence stems from the ability of the state to carry out such acts. – Israel’s massive acts of violence is supported by the major power with whom it has broken the ‘international law’ over decades. – Israel can do it, like the US did it in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries because it ca...

‘ Nasrallah will not rest in peace’

You cannot say:  “ We must mourn all civilian deaths ” because some civilians are ‘human animals’. “In this time of  extraordinary  repression  in academia , Finkelstein appears to be the first professor to be dismissed from a tenured job over anti-Zionist speech since the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.”

The enduring influence of Marx’s masterpiece

This was written before the assassination of Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. “ [A] terrorist strategy formulated by a terrorist state par excellence … constitutes a stark confirmation that state terrorism is much more dangerous than the terrorism of non-state groups, as it applies the same logic, i.e. the killing of civilians for a political purpose, but with immeasurably greater potential for lethality and destruction.”

Some of Arendt’s predictions in 1944 came true, and some were more than true. Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts in nothing but the rude force of the nation. A nationalism that necessarily and admittedly depends upon the force of a foreign nation is certainly worse. This is the threatened state of Jewish nationalism and of the proposed Jewish state, surrounded inevitably by Arab states and Arab people. Even a Jewish majority in Palestine–nay  even a transfer of all Palestine’s Arabs, which is openly demanded by the revisionists –would not substantially change a situation in which Jews must either ask protection from an outside power against their neighbors or come to a working agreement with their neighbors… [T]he Zionists, if they continue to ignore the Mediterranean people and watch out only for the big faraway powers, will appear only as their tools, the agents of foreign and hostile interests. Jews who know their own history should be aware that such a state of affairs wi...

Que des commémorations offrent un miroir déformé du passé, seul un naïf pourrait s’en étonner. Celles-ci servent avant tout à mettre en scène un récit qui correspond aux intérêts de ceux qui les organisent. Mais la réécriture de l’histoire de la seconde guerre mondiale est bien plus vaste. Elle touche aussi les médias, les manuels scolaires, les musées et, dans certains pays, les politiques publiques. l’histoire est-elle manipulée à foison . Elle justifie des guerres, disqualifie des adversaires, soude des identités collectives. Chacun peut l’occulter, la récrire, la distordre, y piocher une analogie, une référence dès lors qu’elles confortent une démonstration… Parce que leur principal pouvoir consiste à cadrer l’espace et à définir le périmètre du débat, les médias s’emploient à maintenir « hors cadre » les pages susceptibles de ternir l’image des démocraties libérales.

Barbarism re-appears, but this time it is created inside civilisation itself and is an integral part of it. This is the leprous barbarism, barbarism as the leper of civilisation. —Karl Marx, 1847, Kleine ökonomische Schriften (Berlin: Dietz Verlag) 1955, p. 245.