Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

From Thermopylae to the Twin Towers

“According to media reports, since 7 October, hundreds, and potentially thousands of British citizens have left the UK to fight for the Israeli Defense Forces in Israel’s war on Gaza. Many of these Britons may already be complicit in potential war crimes and crimes against humanity, and could face future prosecution should these matters go to trial.  ICJP has urgently asked the government to clarify its position on the legality of British citizens going to fight in Israel or Gaza, noting the difference with its policy on Ukraine.” ***** In a panel discussion in London ,  emeritus professor Avi Shlaim, lecturer of International Relations at the University of Oxford  spoke about how Palestinian resistance has been “decontextualised” and that Palestinians are engaged in a decolonial struggle. During the panel discussion, Wadah Khanfar spoke about a “shameless, explicit hypocrisy” from Western politicians. “Every kind of mask has dropped. And we see the faces of these leader...

This an adapted rewriting of Heinrich von Treischke’s statement. “International law becomes meaningless when any attempt is made to apply its principles equally to barbarian nations. The only way to punish the Palestinians  is to make them pay tens of times for what they did; it is the only sort of example they understand. For the Israeli state and its backers to apply international law in cases like this would not be either humanity or justice; it would be shameful weakness.” The original quote: In 1898, the German political scientist Heinrich von Treischke stated what many of his contemporaries would have regarded as the obvious: “International law becomes meaningless when any attempt is made to apply its principles equally to barbarian nations. The only way to punish a black tribe is to burn their villages; it is the only sort of example they understand. For the German empire to apply international law in cases like this would not be either humanity or justice; it would be shame...

available in 5 languages The eleven  BRICS  countries now control nearly 20% of the  IMF ’s capital, in other words, the equivalent in voting power.

Those who are against both Hamas and the Israeli state are also aiding oppression and state terror. They are also hypocritical, for they have opposed the Russian’s state terror against Ukrainian civilians. Maybe Biden should have reiterated the BBC’s way of justifying Israeli state terror: Palestinians do not listen to warning and instructions asking theme to leave. That would make him look ‘more convincing’. The Intercept: ‘ Gaza casualty numbers unravels upon inspection ’ Reality could also be completely reversed and history skewed: the Palestinians become the oppressor. GOP Republican Brian Mast compared all Palestinians to Nazis.

There is a focus on capitalism in the UK .  I don’t understand what Michael Roberts means by three socio-economic systems. Is it not capitalism the socio-economic system of our era?

It is simple and clear: It is not the Israeli state to blame; it is the Palestinians who do not follow warnings and instructions.

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.

A few days ago, a British-born woman asked me why Israel had to kill all those Palestinians.  It should  “focus on destroying Hamas only,” she said. I thought she was so naive. A decent and rare piece on the Guardian although the writer has illusions in ‘the international community”  and ‘international law’. What would have been the reaction if those children were pets? What will they think of those who let it happen? Palestinian children injured in an Israeli air strike await treatment at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, on 17 October 2023 (Photo credit: AFP)

And European cynicism is more deadly still UN. SOS Méditerranée/Flavio Gasper

When evil-doing comes like falling rain Like one who brings an important letter to the counter after office hours: the counter is already closed. Like one who seeks to warn the city of an impending flood, but speaks another language. They do not understand him. Like a beggar who knocks for the fifth time at the door where he has four times been given something: the fifth time he is hungry. Like one whose blood flows from a wound and who awaits the doctor: his blood goes on flowing. So do we come forward and report that evil has been done us. The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!” When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summe...

“Many terrorist organisations, pilloried as such in the course of recent history, have ceased to be pariahs and become legitimate interlocutors. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Algerian National Liberation Front, the African National Congress (ANC) and many others have been by turns described as ‘terrorists’, a word which serves to depoliticise their struggle, to present it as a confrontation between Good and Evil. Each time the Palestinians rebel, the West, – so prompt to glorify the resistance of the Ukrainians – speaks of terrorism. In 1967, following the Israeli aggression, General de Gaulle spoke these premonitory words: ‘Now Israel is organising, on the territories it has conquered, an occupation which will necessarily involve oppression, repression, and expulsions. If they encounter any resistance, they will call it terrorism…‘ Contrary to what many Israelis claim (…) this is not a ‘unilateral’ and ‘unprovoked’ attack. The fright which Israelis are experiencing just now...

The US and European governments are reinventing a “new and improved” Israel: the perfect image of their sustained history of colonial and imperial savagery around the world. What Israel is doing now in Gaza echoes what the  French ,  British , Portuguese, Germans, Spanish, Americans and others have done around the globe throughout history.  Even for a committed Zionist, it would be hard not to notice the innate imperial brutality of Biden’s assertion about “inventing” Israel - not as a Jewish haven from a sustained history of European brutalisation culminating in the Holocaust, but as a military base to protect the best interests of a dysfunctional empire.  A reflection of American and European savagery around the world A child injured in Israeli attacks is taken to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on 23 October 2023 (Reuters)

Not deep or a bigger picture , but you get the idea that men and women who belong to a certain group or defend certain interests in a class society decide on major issues, mobilise men and women in uniforms, and they are backed by an army of pundits and scholars.

Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region Related The Arab Uprisings - A Decade of Struggle

Frédéric Lordon : «   Terrorisme   » est un mot impasse. Concéder «   terrorisme   », c’est annuler que ce qui se passe en Israël-Palestine est politique. Au plus haut point. Même si cette politique prend la forme de la guerre, se poursuivant ainsi par d’autres moyens selon le mot de Clausewitz. Le peuple palestinien est en guerre – on ne lui a pas trop laissé le choix. L’acharnement à faire dire «   terrorisme   » ne satisfait que des besoins passionnels – et aucune exigence intellectuelle. «   Terrorisme   » a une irremplaçable vertu : donner une violence pour dépourvue de sens. Et de causes Les tragédies israéliennes sont incarnées en témoignages poignants, les tragédies palestiniennes sont agglomérées en statistiques. Le bloc bourgeois quand il fait bloc derrière Israël à l’extérieur saisit surtout l’occasion de faire bloc contre ses ennemis à l’intérieur. Le bloc bourgeois français est plus israélien que les Israéliens : il refuse q...

A good article by Ussama M aqdisi, the author of  Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World “Philo-Zionism relies on two pillars. These include a generalised western view that Israel’s creation is a just and moral recompense for the history of  European antisemitism  that culminated with the Holocaust; and the consistent racist demonisation of Israel’s opponents as non-western barbarians of a peculiar antisemitic type.  The entire ethical edifice of an inward-looking, Eurocentric, post-war western humanism - its museums of remembrance, its discourse of tolerance and reflection, and its obsessive grappling with its own antisemitic past - is ultimately built on the backs of native Palestinians, who were chased out of their homes and  also out of history .  Palestinian resistance - including “terrorism” - has consistently been decontextualised, and depicted as irrational and immoral by western powers and mainstream m...

An Israeli liberal: Only a few acknowledged that the father’s story of return, redemption and liberation was also a story of conquest, displacement, oppression and death. Yaron Ezrahi ,  Rubber Bullets, Power and Conscience in Modern Israel, 1996 I would say there is probably a mistranslation. Instead of ‘Only a few’ I think the author meant ‘Only few’. Related – from my radio show archive Occupied Minds - A Journey through the Israeli Psyche (Pluto Books, 2006). An interview with Arthur Neslen The impracticality of a two-state solution. Overcoming Zionism: an interview with Joel Kovel The Colonial Drama of Israel-Palestine The Myths of Zionism – an interview with John Rose in 2008

It is true that sections of the Western left either defended/justified/kept silent on the Syrian regime’s crimes. “But to millions who see the war as an intensification of a 75-year dispossession of Palestinians, and the 16-year siege of Gaza, it merely positions the writers as apologists for Israel’s unending war crimes .”

Casting doubt on Gaza’s statistics Related