Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Dania' and Anna's struggle to uncover British complicity in crime In November 2016, “only weeks after the Great Hall attack, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary at the time, had urged Javid to continue selling arms, a Freedom of Information request would  later show . “During the Arab Spring of 2011, the government allowed the  export of sniper rifles to North African and Middle Eastern states  under the label of ‘crowd control goods’. “In January 2024, newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Cameron was pressed before the Foreign Affairs Committee about whether he had been advised that Israel had breached international humanitarian law. “Cameron, who noted repeatedly that he wasn’t a lawyer, eventually   said : 'The short answer to that is no'.” “On 26 March 2024, by when at least 32,414 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza and Israel had been accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, then-shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, asked...

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."

Shaul Magid, Peter Beinart, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Pankaj Mishra

and more borrowing, more cronysm, more complicity in mass murder, more spending on 'defense',  welfare cuts and more  On 'Starmer's Britain’

“ The political and moral deformations and intellectual helplessness of Germany today are more dangerous than at any other time since 1945…  The country that laid waste the moral structure of western society looks feeble again before the economic crises and social breakdowns of capitalism that first produced fascism. Revealingly, the binary of the enlightened west and unenlightened east – once used to authorise the Nazi quest for  Lebensraum  in the east and then adapted to serve cold war policy agendas – is the currency today of far-right nationalists across Israel, Europe and America…  And there was much about western democracies – especially their foundations in white supremacy, and cultures of racism and antisemitism – that allowed Hitler to believe that they would welcome his extermination of Jews.” Related The new German chauvinism  ( an essay in two parts) Germany's reckoning with its past is no longer a model

A diary from Gaza

“The Brutalist  is the story of modern America’s derision of art, of any creative endeavour that has no immediate monetary value. America has no place for a man of Laszlo’s ilk, for defiant art that refuses to abide by the rules of the market – the real god of America.” A review by Jospeh Fahim

Blinken and co should “talk less about the rules-based international order and more about defending the free world. That is a more accurate and comprehensible description of what western foreign policy is actually about…  As in the cold war and the earlier struggles of the 20th century, the world’s democracies do not need to apologise for being ruthless in defence of free societies.” —Gideon Rahman, Financial Times, 27 May 2024   ‘Democracy’ instead of capitalism or at as, his colleague Martin Wolf calls it, ‘ democratic capitalism ’. Manipulation of history: the 20th century was a struggle netween ‘democracies’ and non-democracies. In fact, the 20th century saw struggles between empires, advanced capitalist state, and movements of national liberations, class struggle in the heart of bourgeois democracies, even struggles against dictatorships such as in Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Greece … to overcome capitalism and aiming at establishing genuine democracies. ‘Defending the free ...

Myth 1: Trump put pressure on Netanyahu. That has been depicted by many as if it was him who arm-twisted the Israeli genocidal leader to put an end to the war. Myth 2: The depiction of the current truce as a victory for Hamas. by  Gilbert Achcar

During the 1960s, the  Haaretz  newspaper was a staunch supporter of the key political decisions made by Menachem Begin, thus playing a significant role in reinforcing his legitimacy and that of his Herut movement. On the one hand, this support was motivated by the desire to transform Israel’s socialist economy into a freer and less government-controlled market. On the other hand, it stemmed from the aspiration to democratise Israel’s political life. This symbiosis began to emerge in the early 1960s and was sustained over a lengthy period of time, thus underscoring the role played by Israeli bourgeois-liberal circles in the Zionist Right’s path to power. Haaretz  and its long-time owner and editor-in-chief Gershom Shocken  passed away in late 1990, a little over a year before Begin’s own death. After Begin’s demise in March 1992,   Haaretz   dedicated a farewell article in his honour titled ‘Farewell to an Opponent’, portraying a balanced and even eulogisti...

Myth 1: Trump put pressure on Netanyahu. That has been depicted by many as if it was him who arm-twisted the Israeli genocidal leader to put an end to the war. Myth 2: The depiction of the current truce as a victory for Hamas.  أسطورتان متعلقتان بوقف إطلاق النار في غزّة 

As ‘a ceasefire’ has been reached, here is a genocidal view on why it shouldn’t happen and why state terrorism should continue. “The IDF concurs that fighting against Hamas will resume in the foreseeable future. Hamas will not be disarmed, remaining a persistent threat that must be addressed. Even if combat initially remains aerial after Phase II of the hostage deal, a military foothold will persist. Forces will operate in a reinforced buffer zone, which will serve as a launchpad for raids deeper into Gaza when needed—and such operations will be necessary .” I do think that Israeli violence with its different forms by the state and the settlers will continue in the form of war or in other means for the simple reason that Israel has not achieved its ‘stragetical objectives’.

How Israel Turned More Than 10,000 Children Into Collateral Damage Iris Leal Haaretz, 30 December 2024 “I love post-apocalyptic horror cinema, especially zombie movies. I struggle to define exactly the particular pleasure that I take in scenes of big, empty cities, neglect, a civilization being destroyed and hordes of bloodthirsty zombies roaming the ruins, but I love it. The template is always the same: a deadly fungus or virus created in a laboratory that spreads from chimpanzees to human beings turns everyone into crazed zombies with an uncontrollable desire to transmit the disease and annihilate humanity. As per the genre's rules, the heroes are always a small band of survivors, trying to reestablish society and civilization. In the best example of the genre, "28 Days Later," the pathogen is called the "Rage Virus." On October 7, 2023, murderous gangs of gunmen from  Hamas ' elite Nukhba Force infected Israeli society with a deadly virus. None of what we...

“[S]ectors of the populist or neo-Stalinist Left lament the fall of the Assad dictatorship . They present it — along with the rest of the “Axis of Resistance” led by the reactionary Iranian regime — as a progressive and anti-imperialist alternative. Some argue that the enemies of our enemy should be our allies, because they challenge ‘Western hegemony’. This completely ignores the class character of these powers. Rather than supporting the Palestinian cause or that of other oppressed people, these forces seek to oppose the reordering of the region for the further benefit of Israel and the United States because that would push them to the margins; at the same time they reconcile themselves with the pro-imperialist monarchies of the Gulf.”

Investigate 4,000 French soldiers for ‘war crimes’ in Palestine, says MP

This war needs to be understood in a broader perspective, beyond its stated aims of destroying Hamas and/or Hezbollah. Historically, every resistance movement that has emerged—from leftist and nationalist to Islamist and religious—have been labeled as “terrorist organizations” before being targeted by Israeli violence. This war is no exception and can be understood as a deadly turn in a long and violent history of Zionist settler colonialism in the region—this time fully and openly backed, funded, and armed by the United States of America. There is also no doubt that Israel’s technological advancement and supply of the most sophisticated and lethal weaponry (provided by the United States and many European countries) made this war clearly disproportionate in terms of military power. Similarly, the unprecedented open political backing of Israel during its televised genocide by most Western governments and, importantly, by the Arab states that have signed the Abraham Accords, has tilted t...

“The contents of the reported documents challenge the long-standing narrative that the  Assad government  was a steadfast opponent of Israel, instead portraying its alleged complicity in Israeli military operations against Iranian targets. The documents state that Assad's regime not only received intelligence from Israel but also actively coordinated attacks against Iranian positions.”

“ Abu Mohammad al-Jolani says new rulers must not get distracted from task of rebuilding.”

Bassam Haddad on Democracy Now Related Syrians face an uncertain future