Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label gaza

How Postwar Germany Fell in Love With Israel

“Even former Nazis could identify with Israeli expansionism — and used this support to absolve their own pasts. “Between 80 and 100 percent of steel and iron for Israel’s growing machine industry came from German resource payments to Israel, without which Israel would have been unable to develop its industrial base…  By 1954, some 20 percent of Israel’s imports were from West Germany, making it Israel’s second-biggest import partner. “The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) gained access to a higher-quality arsenal. German officers were also sent to Israel to train the IDF, while Israeli officers were sent to Germany to be trained by the Bundeswehr, including future IDF chiefs such as Haim Laskov. “Over a thousand West Germans asked the Israeli embassy if they could become Israeli soldiers, including the writer Günter Grass, previously of the Waffen-SS. “Instead of  challenging  the capitalist elites that fed Nazism’s initial rise and continue to dominate German politics to this ...

Santiago de Chile: Gaza

Solidarity with Palestine “Break relations with the genocidal state of Israel” Related The President of Chile Gabriel Boric has been described by  The Economist  as " woke " and as part of the  millennial left , "with a program focused on social justice, human rights, the environment and feminism". Boric has expressed support for the  State of Palestine  on multiple occasions. In 2019, after receiving a gift from the Jewish Community of Chile, he called for Israel to return the occupied Palestinian territories in a tweet.  He described Israel as a "genocidal and murderous state" that violates international treaties, stressing the importance of defending international principles and human rights regardless of a country's power.  Boric refuted accusations of  antisemitism , asserting his rejection of all forms of discrimination. He considers the Israeli occupation of territories beyond the  1967 borders  as a violation of international la...

10 Britons Accused of Committing War Crimes in Gaza

Lawyer Michael Mansfield: “ If one of our nationals is committing ​an offence , we ought to be doing something about it​. Even if we can’t stop the government of foreign countries behaving badly, we can at least stop our nationals from behaving badly.” It means “our government” is not behaving badly, i.e. the denial of British regime's tacit support of genocide. It means only 10 bad apples, 10 bad dual nationals, have 'behaved badly'. Barrister Sean Summerfield: “ The public will be shocked…”  Would they?

The World After Gaza

Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza : “If you are going to remain a person with a conscience, then you've got to reconsider many of your alliances and professional relationships, or you stay within those institutions and become dead inside.” Pankaj, you have stirred your finger in my wound, as I carry on being complicit in genocide unable to break away from the web I am entangled in.

Hungary's Orbán and Germany's Merz: Netanyahu is Welcome

Viktor Orbán will this week host Benjamin Netanyahu on a five-day visit to Hungary, becoming the first European leader to defy the International Criminal Court arrest warrant on the Israeli premier for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Germany’s expected next chancellor Friedrich Merz said after the general election last month that he would find the “ways and means” to have Netanyahu visit. “I think it is a completely absurd idea that an Israeli prime minister cannot visit the Federal Republic of Germany,” Merz said. Financial Times , 30 March 2025

No One is Listening

No one wants to hear what the people of Gaza actually want . The anti-Hamas voices in the West only amplify their suffering when it serves their agenda. They were silent when Gaza was screaming in agony, in mourning, in starvation.  They want to use our voices when we chant against Hamas, but they mute us when we cry out for our murdered families. They never want to hear us demand an end to Israel’s slaughter.”

Israel's Ambassador to Austria

During a closed-door meeting  with the local Jewish community in Innsbruck on Thursday, Roet said that "there should be a death sentence" for teenagers for "holding a gun" or a "grenade".  He provided no evidence of children carrying weapons in Gaza.”  Has Austria expelled him? No. Envoy suggests executing Gaza children

Israel's Leaflet Says the Truth

A genocidal state says the truth: The "world map won’t change if all the people of Gaza were to vanish.” "No one will notice you, no one will ask about you. You are left alone to face your inevitable fate," the leaflets read . "Neither the US nor Europe care about Gaza. Even your  Arab states  don’t care, they are now our allies, they provide us with money, weapons and oil. They only send you shrouds."

Trump and Putin Are on the Same Side

“The myth of ‘Western values’ died in Gaza. Myths do not die. They are debunked or refuted. They often persist for a long time and are adaped to new contexts; they are part of a belief system. I remember well after Iraq and Afghanistan how people invoked ‘democracy’ and ‘Western values’ in a way not dissimilar from what the Bushes and Blairs and later the Obamas and Bidens articulated them. Recently, a student at the ‘best’ European university in social sciences told me that the myth of sectarianism in the Middle Ast is still being repeated. A white liberal, ‘MeeToo’ English woman what Russia was doing in Ukraine was ‘a Russian thing. It's in their history’. Zelenskyy's recent rise in ‘popularity’ among many is built upon ‘the myth of Western values’ defending Ukraine against an authoritarian Russian regime. Myths are strentghned through amnesia. History is brushed aside and Pavlovian conditioning is enforced.  We should remember how the emergence of ISIS was analysed. How ...

Germany's Reckoning With Its Past is No Longer a Model

“[O]ver time, Holocaust memory in Germany progressively transformed into a policy of unconditional support for Israel. What was once an example of historical reckoning has become a framework that, in my view, contributes to the erasure of critical perspectives and enables actions that contradict the very principles of justice and accountability that this memory was meant to uphold. “The focus on the Holocaust, while important, has overshadowed or minimized the memory of colonialism, creating a tension that became more apparent after October 7. “This ‘aporetic’ memory politics is the premise for ignoring the colonial dimension of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. In the German and Western European discourse, Netanyahu is depicted as the representative of the Jews as victims. Therefore, Palestinians are not a dispossessed people, but a new embodiment of antisemitism. “Germany is today complicit in the genocide in Gaza, just like France, Italy, and the UK. However, Germany’s ...