Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Even Le Monde Diplomatique calls the ‘Palestinian question’. 1. “In the past few months, conferences have been held in Israel advocating resettlement (especially of northern Gaza) as soon as the territory is ‘cleaned up.” 2. The ‘Order and Clean-up’ programme “ involves the ‘total defeat’ of Hamas, then a process of ‘deradicalisation’; the idea is that evacuating the 300,000 Palestinians still living north of the Netzarim corridor will enable the IDF to establish an unbreakable siege of Hamas in this area, and orders to this effect were issued on 6 October this year. A second stage will trap Palestinian fighters in ‘closed military zones’, forcing them to surrender or starve to death, without regard for any hostages who might be held there. This strategy is already in place at the Jabaliya camp, which has been under siege since 12 October.” 3. “On 3 July the government approved the seizure of nearly 13 sq km of land in the Jordan valley, the largest confiscation of land in the West Ban...

I don’t think we can talk about ‘hypocrisy’ anymore. It has been normalised as part of ‘our values’. It is not a negative feature. I don’t agree with the two state solution implied in the article.

“The Great Hope of Social Democracy stood and  championed the funders of a genocide with nary a word of criticism  — indeed, she even defended Harris on the question of the genocide, saying she is ‘working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home’. “With this speech, AOC solidified once and for all which side she is on the struggle to end the genocide in Palestine — the side of the establishment, the side that wants a temporary cease-fire and the continuation of the occupation and oppression of Palestine. She doesn’t want to end the apartheid system of Israeli domination; she stands with the Zionist oppressors and strongly endorses some of their strongest backers. AOC has betrayed the movement for Palestine; she is an enemy of that movement. We cannot continue to support politicians who may propose progressive domestic programs but support imperialism abroad . ]my emphasis N.M.] “ The incorporation of AOC into the establishment i...

‘Telk Qadeya’: A Western world that excludes Palestinians from humans They save sea turtles They kill human animals But this is one issue, and that’s another How to become a white angel? Bear half a conscience Fight for freedom movements Eradicate liberation movements Bestow your compassion and tenderness On the killed according to nationality But this is one issue, and that’s another How to become civilised Abiding by all terms and conditions Make all your words righteous Take trees in your arms Sugar-coat titles and names While an army demolishes a nearby school And when caught red-handed … with blood Say everyone’s a victim But this is one issue, and that’s another How can I believe this world? When it talks about humanity Seeing a mother lamenting her child Who died in a raid … hungry Placing the killers on a par with their victims With all honesty and fairness But this is one issue, and that’s another How can I sleep peacefully? Plugging my ears While a family is buried under the ...

Harris is pronounced like هرس in Arabic, which means to ground/to crush.  Another face of  liberal imperialism:  Kamala is just like her predecessor s.

A brief-history of the Arab ballad

" Buy when there's blood in the streets,  even if the blood is your own . " —Baron Rothschild

What a razor-sharp letter!

“ The speech that I could not deliver because German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (1930s style).”

“We recognize the cruel irony that the very language and discourse of feminism is being used to justify our own elimination as a people by the very powers decrying gendered violence. We must, then, ask the question: What is Zionism performing when it simultaneously rapes and violates our women, mass murders our children and attempts to starve us to death while disciplining us for naming this as genocidal ?”

Excellent! I don’t agree with Lordon’s optimism though. 

"You can call it ethnic cleansing . I repeat again, the Arabs do not want, normal Arabs do not want to live in Gaza. If you want to call it cleansing, if you want to call it apartheid, you choose your definition. I choose the way to protect the state of Israel." "We must do it. It's part of Israel area," he says. "This is the land that God gave us, and you couldn't go to God and tell him, 'OK you gave me, and I gave to other people.' No. I believe in the end we will go back to Gaza." When God was an estate agent!

Verbal gymnastics

The Intercept reported on how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee delivered a series of donations worth $95,000 to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson in the days after he passed $14 billion in military aid for Israel in November. Meanwhile, AIPAC plans to spend upward of $100 million to oust progressive Democratic members of Congress who have dared challenge Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza. It’s all part of a yearslong effort to purge any Democrat who dares question Israeli policy from Congress, while elevating the most radical right-wing pro-Israel Republicans. And with 30,000 Palestinians dead and Israel readying a brutal ground assault in Rafah, it’s more important than ever for The Intercept to keep digging to expose AIPAC’s lobbying activity and how the organization leverages its deep pockets to make sure the U.S. continues funding Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. There’s no way to fully understand why the U.S. keeps pouring guns and money into Israel’s barbaric war on...

Muslims who cannot bring themselves not to legitimise a murderous regime.  If they think they are punishing Biden, they are not.

The resilience of the Palestinians, tenacious, irrepressible, stubborn always amazes the occupiers and appears shocking in the eyes of many Westerners. As at the time of the first Intifada in 1987, or the second in 2000, at the time of the armed actions on the West Bank or the mobilisation in favour of Jerusalem or the clashes around Gaza, under siege since 2007 and which has suffered six wars in 17 years (400 dead in 2006, 300 in 2008–2009, 160 in 2012, 2,100 in 2014, nearly 300 in 2021 and several dozen in the spring of 2023). The Israeli rulers accuse their enemies of ‘barbarity’, of disrespect for human life, in a word, of ‘terrorism.’ The accusation allows the accusers to wrap themselves in the cloak of righteousness and a clear conscience, camouflaging the apartheid system of an unbelievable brutality which oppresses the Palestinians every single day of their lives. Let me remind readers once again that many ‘terrorist’ organisations, pilloried as such in the course of recent his...

Ever since its founding after World War II the German Federal Republic, to gain acceptance into the family of “western democracies,”  while denouncing Hitler and his most famous henchmen, almost completely restricted condemnation to the horrifying annihilation of the Jewish people while distorting or ignoring the earlier, intense fascist attacks against the Left, especially the Communist left, which so often ended with a noose or a guillotine. Largely forgotten were also Nazi crimes against almost every country in Europe, beginning in Spain in 1936-1939 and climaxing in the killing of an estimated 27 million people of the USSR. In fact, a large number of the perpetrators went unpunished or regained influence and prosperity. Meanwhile, the policy-makers built up connections with any and every Israeli government, including large financial support, often in the form of armaments (like submarines). But since such support served as evidence that Germany had “overcome its past,” tot...

Indian-made drones on their way to Israel Related The Palestine Laboratory

“It cannot be the same tribute. A life is a life and one life is equivalent to another but there are victims of terrorism and victims of war. Being a victim of terrorism means being attacked as a French person or as a defender of a way of life. A collateral victim, you are in war… it's not of the same nature.”  — Former French president François Hollande It a whole neocolonial racist mindset. Fascists encouraged a distinction between members of the nation who merited protection and outsiders who deserved rough handling. One of the most sensational cases of Nazi violence before power was the murder of a communist laborer of Polish descent in the town of Potempa, in Silesia, by five SA men in August 1932. It became sensational when the killers’ death sentences were commuted, under Nazi pressure, to life imprisonment. Party theorist Alfred Rosenberg took the occasion to underscore the difference between “bourgeois justice,” according to which “one Polish Communist has the same weighti...

More than a month old article. It is brief but a good summary . Related The betrayal of Gaza