Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

In line with his view that holiness was totally separate from the material world, Leibowitz denied that the  Land of Israel  was holy and that the Jews had a special right to it, writing that "the idea that a specific country or location has an intrinsic 'holiness' is an indubitably idolatrous idea" and that "talk of rights is pure nonsense. No nation has a right to any land." In a 1968 essay titled "The Territories", Leibowitz postulated a hellish future: The Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police—mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire ...

“[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...

As “the Israelis and the Americans understand very well, the ongoing discourse on terrorism is not about the victims of ‘terrorism’ but about the ‘perpetrators’ . The fact that state armies more regularly target the very same victims that ‘terrorists’  target, yet are not referred to as ‘terrorists’, clarifies that it is not the act of ‘terrorism’ that defines the actor as ‘terrorist’ but rather the opposite: it is the perpetrator’s conferred identity as ‘terrorist’ that defines his/her actions as ‘terrorist’ in nature. Evidently, the 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 resista...

Against Amnesia The experience of violence by a stronger party has historically turned victims into terrorists. That's what happens to peoples and nations. When they are battered, they hit back. State terror very often breeds collective terror. –Eqbal Ahmed, 1998 [Ahmed though does not explicitly include the state terrorism of Western states. He merely talks about the how US ‘promotes terrorism’, for instance.] From a transcript of a talk by Eqbal Ahmed University of Colorado, Boulder, on 12 October 1998 “By 1942, the Holocaust was occurring, and a certain liberal sympathy with the Jewish people had built up in the Western world. At that point, the terrorists of Palestine, who were Zionists, suddenly started to be described, by 1944-45, as 'freedom fighters.' Then from 1969 to 1990 the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, occupied the center stage as the terrorist organization. Yasir Arafat has been described repeatedly by the great sage of American journalism, Willi...

Sir John Saunders, the chair of the inquiry, said the mosque had displayed "weak leadership" in failing t  address what an expert witness to the inquiry described as a "very toxic political environment" fuelled by conflict and unrest in Libya. Tracey Pook, the Didsbury Mosque's community engagement coordinator, has been monitoring the number of threats the centre has received and said they had been growing by the hour.  "Having compiled the threats and attacks, I've seen people say the mosque should be demolished, that extremists live here, and that the centre is somehow responsible for the murder of children," Pook told Middle East Eye . Words like ‘extremism’, ‘radicalism’ and ‘terrorism’ apply only to describe violence committed by individuals or organisations. Those who monopolise definitions - when they exist – and concepts throughout history are crucial in manufacturing ‘public opinion’ and producing emotive reaction, and therefore, opinions ...

“We paid the price twice” for Bashir’s dictatorship, says Amjed Farid, the opposition activist. “We got rid of the tyrant who was supporting terror, through a popular revolution that we paid for with our blood. And now we are paying the price for this tyrant, even though we were his first victims.” “Is this justice?”

 Macron’s Wars

This piece is still one of most sober analysis of violence by non-state actors. And it is by a liberal magazine. There is a major inaccuracy in a statement though . “ The history  of the West is every bit as violent  as the modern Middle East, with brief periods of relative peace punctuated by periods of bloody conflict.” As violent as? The violence of Nazi Germany, the Belgian Genocide in Congo or the American war on the Vietnamese, just to cite three events, had no comparable examples in the history of the Middle East. The Threat is Already Inside

 Permission to narrate Palestinian feminism

"We are quick to label the Reading attack terrorism"

Syria as a globalised war A critical liberal view of the West, bit it is wishful thinking. "Europe's fear of refugees is the only thing that can save Syria"

To obliterate means to destroy utterly; to wipe out. Do we really need Iran? What have the Iranians done for us? A revolution and women in black? Why don't just have friends ruling Iran like those in Egypt? At least the Americans have brought us Elvis and Michael, Jeans, Sharon Stone and porno, Hollywood and Schwarzenegger, Marlboro, MacDonald's and Donald Duck, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates... Putting aside geopolitical economy, protecting allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel), having control (not the need) over hydrocarbons, limitng the expansion of China's and Russia's spheres of influence, capital expansion and markets... one should look at it in another way: It could be that a new spectatcle is in the making. Imagine how many people will be watching, even discovering where Iran is! Imagine how many discussion will take place and how many articles will be written!  And let's shout with the pacifists: "Stop the War", "Peace Now!" And in ...

Absurdity The Stansted 15

"Unless we, as a government, are prepared to act vigourously and take strong measures to combat the insidious propaganda of the extremists we are bound to have something very like rebellion in India before long... You say what you like about not holding India by the sword, but you have held it by the sword for 100 years and when you give up the sword you will be turned out. You must keep the sword ready to hand and in case of trouble or rebellion use it relentlessly. [Edwin Samuel] Montagu calls it terrorism, so it is and in dealing with natives of all classes you have to use terrorism whether you like it or not." —General Henry Rawlinson, commander-in-chief in India, quoted by John Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire,  Bookmarks Publications 2006, pp. 113-14

I am with terrorism Niza'r Qabbani, London 1997. See the original Arabic version here . Qabbani was a Syrian poet, diplomat and publisher. We are accused of terrorism:  if we defended rose and woman  and the mighty verse ...  and the blueness of sky ...  A dominion .. nothing left therein...  No water, no air ..  No tent, no camel,  and not even dark Arabica coffee!!  We are accused of terrorism:  if we defended with guts  the hair of Balqis  and the lips of Maysun  if we defended Hind, and Da`d  Lubna and Rabab ..  and the stream of Kohl  coming down from their lashes like the verses of revelation.  You will not find with me  a secret poem  or a secret logos  or books I put behind doors.  I do not even have one poem  walking down the street, wearing veil.  We are accused of terrorism:  if we wrote about the ruins of a homeland  torn, weak ...  a homeland with...

Before the next attack Once examined, the terms 'British values' and 'Western values' unspool into a sequence of connotative links connecting territory, birth and culture in a roughly 'historicist' manner.  It is a given that 'the West', for example, is not a geographical entity so much as a historically produced caste of national states comprising Europe and its colonies, from North America to Australasia.  This white West is connected to its supposed values through the crucial vector of culture.  Thus, it just so happens that white people are the legatees of a particular level of civilizational and cultural development that give them these unique, priceless assets such as democracy.  This necessitates forgetting how passionately and often violently democracy was resisted within the social formations of 'the West', as well as how much modern democratic revolutions owed to the decidedly 'non-Western' Haiti.  But the link between terri...

According to a U.S. army strategist: "In sum, U.S. policy in the Middle East is confused, contradictory, counterproductive, and dangerous. It could leave Washington involved in a war with Iran. (And given our recent wars in the region, imagine where that’s likely to land us.)" The worry is what would a war with Iran cost the U.S. Who cares of what would cost the Iranians? There are some interesting arguments though by this enlightened mind in the most dangerous imperialist army on earth. "America's Iran hysteria"

More than a spat Qatar and its Gulf neighbours See also The deal

Theresa May: " We are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face as terrorism breeds terrorism."   For the first time ever, I am in agreement with  May. I will only be more accurate in future. I will try to avoid the term "terrorism". I will use "violence" instead.