Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Insufficient housing, an eroded social sector and diminished state support made tens of thousands destitute .

I do not find the article helpful , especially that it is by a self-proclaimed revolution leftist magazine. On one hand it spreads illusion, for we all know that Netanyahu can easily stay in Israel with US protection or seek refuge in the US in the worst case scenario. He is not Milosevic.  That it is not even mentioned in the article. On the other hand, appealing to the British ‘government’ is a passive call. It reinforces the idea that we should have faith in the very same British regime that has helped create the state of Israel, supported it for decades and complicit in wars and invasions, regardless whether Labour or Conservative are in government.

How much of the war in Ukraine or the one on Gaza will be known in the future? Looking at the example of ‘ Algeria in the Archives ’ or the British empire, can inform us that information and records could be buried for decades. What we know now is just some of what is happening. The article is behind a paywall unless one has an institution subscription, for example, with NLR.

No news here, but a norm France’s double standard

 “The western world, structured by centuries of colonisation and the notion of ‘inferior races’, including Arabs and Muslims, was always favourable towards … falsehoods.  “Israel has always been the West’s main proxy to weaken and bully Arab states and populations. It is the West’s primary attack dog in the Middle East.  “Indeed, this horrible massacre of Palestinians is not being accomplished by Israel alone, but by an axis of genocide . Western media have done a good job of concealing the responsibility of western countries in what will probably be the first true enterprise of mass extermination of a people in the 21st century.” Yet Gabon implicitly appeals to the West to use an embargo and other tools to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians instead of appealing to the Arabs who rose up in 2011 and 2019 to topple the rotten regimes that enable Israel and the West to carry on with their crimes.  According to this argument, when states commit mass violence there is only one

A good piece. “Trumpism, despite what its hyperbolic opponents say, is not a subversion of the constitutional order. Like Japanism, it is a continuation of liberalism that uses forms of restorationism to redefine the country’s mission, promising to rebuild collective bonds by reinstating traditional social hierarchies. Unlike Japanism, though, it will struggle to reshape the state in its image or create anything resembling a new national order. Its ideological appeal does not necessarily translate to institutional power.”  Related Tosaka Jun’s book

Just another news item A survey says over 61,000 people are estimated to have died in  Khartoum  state during the first 14 months of  Sudan's war.

The main task of imperialism in our time is to prevent, or, if that is impossible, to slow down and control the economic development of underdeveloped countries.  While there have been vast differences among underdeveloped countries. The underdeveloped world as a whole has continually shipped a large part of its economic surplus to more advanced countries on account of interest and dividends. The worst of it is, however, that it is very difficult to say what has been the greater evil as far as the economic development of underdeveloped countries is concerned: the removal of their economic surplus by foreign capital or its reinvestment by foreign enterprise. — Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, 1957

 A Short Guide to Marx’s Capital   in 150 pages A book by Colin Chalmers

David Lay Williams’s contribution “inverts the common conservative argument that arguing against economic inequality is somehow contrary to the thrust of classical Western thought. If anything, it’s the casual and lazy dismissal of concerns with economic inequality that constitute an intellectual deviation and decline from the norm.” Note how a universal topic like economic inequality does not include non-Western thinkers from China to India, from Latin America to the Middle East and Africa. Williams just restricted his research to Western European thinkers. The reviewer himself mentioned a couple of non-white intellectuals and activists, but not a single non-Westerner came to his mind.

‘ Houthi Hunting Club. Red Sea 2023-2024’

“The Israeli authorities’ organized, violent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, who are members of another ethnic group, is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors. Such actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing .”

A retired NHS surgeon returns from Gaza with a testimony

Dr Dayah’s fatwa, which was published in a detailed six-page document, criticises Hamas for what he calls “violating Islamic principles governing jihad”. There are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it  [sic].           —Aziz Al-Azmeh,  Islams and Modernities  

Israel has reached an unimaginable peak of evil. And indeed many people all over the world find it hard to imagine that this is so… The only possible conclusion must be that Israeli evil has nothing to do with Judaism and that what is manifested in Israeli behavior is not Jewishness. It is pure colonialist, nationalist and chauvinistic racism and should be treated as such.“ — Nurit Peled-Elhanan , Israeli academic and author

“We are living through a moment when the ‘F’ word is no longer taboo and the threat of fascism lurks everywhere.”  Alberto Toscano “reminds us that liberalism is no enemy of fascism , and fascists flower in the hot house of capitalism.”

French police violence

“Liberals are losing their minds and blaming Muslim, Arab, and anti-genocide voters for the outcome. They refuse to take the responsibility.” "Liberals jump for 'women's rights' but refuse to listen to the voices of Palestinian women who suffer under the occupation.”  Liberals, and a few conservatives, have waged a jihad ‘to save Muslim women from brown Muslim men’ in Afghanistan and Syria (think Yazidi women, for example), LGBT people in the MENA region, the ban on the headscarf in France, etc. now they can see how Palestinian women have been liberated once and for all: we have less of oppressed Muslim women wearing the headscarf. What the IDF has achieved in a year, Western missionaries and liberal jihadist have been unable to achieve in decades. Expand: liberals and capitalist exploitation, dispossession, racism, etc. Related Martin Kettle on the Guardian  blames the voters “Kettle cannot hold back on his bitterness toward US voters - a very liberal take on the Demo

Just another news item “ And large areas looked like Stalingrad after the Second World War.” —  Jan Egeland,  the head of aid organisation Norwegian Refugee Council Comparing Gaza destruction to Stalingrad? This a vase for the German regime to protest against the UN? How dare you compare the destruction of Gaza to Stalingrad, especially that we are helping the Israeli army in this destruction? The UK paper The Telegraph, echoing Madeleine Albright, would say that ‘the price is worth it.”

This is only one of the ways and it should not be the only one. The twentieth-century anti-fascist movements from Germany to Spain to Chile also have many lessons to learn from. Change won’t come through conventional politics but by circumventing it