OHF WEEKLY, Vol. 5 No. 39 including—
💛 Editor’s Letter by @sherrykappel
💛 “Gun Violence Comes from Mob Rule” by R Wayne Branch, PhD
💛 “Losing a White Friend Due to His Racism” by @williamfspivey
💛 “All Bigotry Is Ignorance, But Not All Ignorance Is Bigotry” by Walter Rhein
💛 and a quote by Dorothy Height.
OHF WEEKLY, Vol. 5 No. 39 including—
💛 Editor’s Letter by @sherrykappel
💛 “Gun Violence Comes from Mob Rule” by R Wayne Branch, PhD
💛 “Losing a White Friend Due to His Racism” by @williamfspivey
💛 “All Bigotry Is Ignorance, But Not All Ignorance Is Bigotry” by Walter Rhein
💛 and a quote by Dorothy Height.
1/2 Enraged Israeli spokes people are a very common sight on Western TV these days, but this exchange between Sky's Kay Burley and Israel's Eylon Levy seem to set a new low.
Speaking to Levy about Israel's decision to handover 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 50 Israeli children and babies, Burley said she had spoken “to a hostage negotiator” about the discrepancy in the numbers. He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians and Israel has said that it will release, [...] Does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?"
Investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein has won an award for his book on Israel’s military-industrial complex.
The book The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World examines how the occupied Palestinian territories are used by Israel as a testing ground for new weapons.
He won the book category at The Walkley Awards, Australia’s biggest journalism awards.
Israel's controversial invasion of Lebanon is the subject of this harrowing book, which unsparingly describes the impact of the war on the author and on his adopted country.
All modern nation states have a story of their origins, passed down through both official and popular culture, and yet few of these accounts have proved as divisive and influential as the Israeli national myth.
OHF WEEKLY, Vol. 5 No. 39 including—
💛 Editor’s Letter
💛 “Gun Violence Comes from Mob Rule”
💛 “Losing a White Friend Due to His Racism”
💛 “All Bigotry Is Ignorance, But Not All Ignorance Is Bigotry”
💛 and a quote by Dorothy Height.
OHF WEEKLY, Vol. 5 No. 39 including—
💛 Editor’s Letter by @sherrykappel
💛 “Gun Violence Comes from Mob Rule” by R Wayne Branch, PhD
💛 “Losing a White Friend Due to His Racism” by @williamfspivey
💛 “All Bigotry Is Ignorance, But Not All Ignorance Is Bigotry” by Walter Rhein
💛 and a quote by Dorothy Height.
OHF WEEKLY, Vol. 5 No. 39 including—
💛 Editor’s Letter by @sherrykappel
💛 “Gun Violence Comes from Mob Rule” by R Wayne Branch, PhD
💛 “Losing a White Friend Due to His Racism” by @williamfspivey
💛 “All Bigotry Is Ignorance, But Not All Ignorance Is Bigotry” by Walter Rhein
💛 and a quote by Dorothy Height.
The paradox of the infamous "Blafour Declaration" (1917):
“The most significant and incontrovertible fact is, however, that by itself the [Balfour] Declaration was legally impotent. For Great Britain had no sovereign rights over #palestine, it had no proprietary interest, it had no authority to dispose of the land. The Declaration was merely a statement of British intentions and no more”.
Sol M. Linowitz. 1957. “Analysis of a Tinderbox: The Legal Basis for the State of Israel.” American Bar Association Journal 6 (43): 522–25.
Israel’s #hasbara has officially gone into overdrive, or possibly becoming more desperate. This simulation of a terrorist attack in #London (guess it has nothing to do with London seeing the biggest demonstrations in support of #Palestine) on #Xmas day is supposed to “make Brits feel what it’s like to be ‘in our shoes’ for a minute or two,” according to one of the producers.
——-
London.
Christmas Day.
Your home and dear ones.
What if it were you?
In Israel these days, nothing gets past #hasbara unnoticed.
"People in #Israel, #Gaza and the West Bank are reeling from the repercussions of the 7 October attacks on Israel by the militant organization #Hamas ..."
#haaretz#editorial West Bank settlers are exploiting the “propitious moment” created by the war that #Hamas started to expel thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands. They are terrorizing them through various means in order to drive them from their villages. Far from everyone’s eyes, the West Bank is changing almost irreversibly.
"As horrific as the massacre was, it does not absolve Israel of its past crimes against the Palestinians, does not justify the ethnic cleansing Israel is currently carrying out in both the Strip and the West Bank."
"When the very mention of context itself is considered anti-Semitic, then pretext takes its place. The massacre serves as a pretext for ethnic cleansing in the Strip and West Bank and an excuse to muzzle and intimidate the Palestinian citizens of Israel."
It's not always easy to take Professor Ilan Pappé for his word when it comes to vigorous historical research, but his commentary is always interesting, and in this case also reflexive.
====
The holy rage: the plight of the Israeli left
My heart goes out to Jewish-Israeli leftists these days. They vent their distress on the pages of #Haaretz daily newspaper, while directing their anger at the global left, or at least the Western left. They are in a reality I found myself in some 15 years ago: ostracized and alienated from Jewish society for my “betrayal” of it on the one hand, yet on the other hand, not accepted as a credible partner by Palestinian society, whose national movement I supported as a researcher and political activist. Luckily that stage of my life is behind me.
When you don't belong to any group of reference, you are in a societal and intellectual limbo. This is exactly the distress of the Israeli left. The massacre carried out by #Hamas on October 7 exposed the difference between it and the global left. The global left is an organic part of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian liberation movement.
This liberation movement is no longer as institutionalized as it was, and is much more fragmented and weakened compared to its heyday in the 1970s. But it remains robust and its solidarity movement remains as well. The concepts and language of the solidarity movement have always been different from those of the Israeli left. This movement has not supported the two-state solution idea for years, and has long defined #Zionism as a settler colonial movement and Israel as an #apartheid state.
The sins of this movement, as they appear in the righteous indignation articles of writers like Eva Illouz,, Ofri Ilany, Haim Levinson and many others, are mainly twofold: comparing #Israel to colonialism, and mentioning the historical context of the massacre carried out by Hamas.
But the global left does not talk about Israel as part of global colonialism, but as part of settler colonialism. It is worth recalling, even for a moment, what characterizes settler colonial movements. These are movements of European refugees, who sought refuge and shelter from a Europe that did not want them and even persecuted them. They arrived in countries inhabited by native populations, who the new settlers saw as a fundamental obstacle to their dream of building a new Europe of their own.
Destruction of the local population or its expulsion were a precondition for the success of this new settlement. This is the story of the founding of the United States, Canada and Australia. The Zionist movement was also such a movement, and like the other movements relied on an empire to gain a foothold in a foreign land, found religious justification for settlement, and engaged in the search for ways to get rid of both the empire that assisted it and the native majority population.
Indeed, this is the perception of the global left. It includes defining Israel as an apartheid state, and was not born on October 7. It does not prevent condemnation of Hamas' actions, but it certainly provides a much more convincing explanation for this terrible event than defining Hamas as a bloodthirsty #Nazi organization that seeks to kill #Jews for the sake of killing.
Israel reacted with rage to the mass killing in the Gaza Strip, yet the Israeli left still expected the global left to be outraged along with it and relate to the horrors of that Shabbat outside any context. This is the global left's second sin, and this is the sin of the #UN secretary general: mentioning the context.
The Israeli left demands focus on the event as pure evil without context. Mentioning the context does not justify it but explains it, and above all offers a different explanation than that adhered to by Israeli politicians, pundits and journalists. In vain, the Israeli left will ask people of conscience worldwide to focus on the horrors of October 7, and therefore forget about the horrors of the occupation and siege prior to October 7 and those of the days after October 7.
The global left has always focused in the past - both in its historical perception and moral viewpoint - on contexts that gave birth to difficult actions of those who rebelled against Western oppression. Therefore, those who supported the abolitionist movement did not see the terrible massacre of whites led by Nat Turner in 1831, an event that harmed the struggle to abolish slavery, as an uncontextualized evil. Those who supported the Algerian liberation movement did not demand constant condemnation of the terrible massacre carried out by the rebels in July 1962 of white settlers in the city of Oran as if it had no historical context of over a hundred years of French abuse and oppression of the Algerian people.
These contexts explain the event, they do not justify it. They certainly clarify for us why the chorus of the Israeli left is shocked by what it defines as an insufficient response from the global left, and why its prominent spokespeople accuse the global left of anti-Semitism and immorality. As horrific as the massacre was, it does not absolve Israel of its past crimes against the Palestinians, does not justify the ethnic cleansing Israel is currently carrying out in both the Strip and the West Bank.
Moreover, and perhaps most importantly. As terrifying and horrible as it is, this is not a constitutive event: Israel will remain a settler colonial state, with features of an apartheid regime, Palestinian resistance will continue, global civil society will continue to support it, and Israel will rely solely on the support of Western elites. This is a clear recipe for continued bloodshed, with no winners, only losers, a reality in which calling for a ceasefire, which could lead to the return of the kidnapped, is considered treason, and the continuation of fighting and abandoning the kidnapped to their fate is preferred.
When the very mention of context itself is considered anti-Semitic, then pretext takes its place. The massacre serves as a pretext for ethnic cleansing in the Strip and West Bank and an excuse to muzzle and intimidate the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It also serves as a pretext for the United States to return its army to the region, from which it was expelled in disgrace after the failed attempt to impose democracy by force. It serves as a pretext for Western governments to severely undermine freedom of expression and opinion in the name of fighting terror.
Moral compass and awareness of contexts exposes the pretexts and their disaster-laden results, and above all focuses on what matters now: recognizing again that Palestinians and Israelis have only two options: mutual destruction or living together.
Professor Ilan Pappé, at the Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, is the author of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."
It's not always easy to take Professor Ilan Pappé for his word when it comes to vigorous historical research, but his commentary is always interesting, and in this case also self-reflective.
====
The holy rage: the plight of the Israeli left
My heart goes out to Jewish-Israeli leftists these days. They vent their distress on the pages of #Haaretz daily newspaper, while directing their anger at the global left, or at least the Western left. They are in a reality I found myself in some 15 years ago: ostracized and alienated from Jewish society for my “betrayal” of it on the one hand, yet on the other hand, not accepted as a credible partner by Palestinian society, whose national movement I supported as a researcher and political activist. Luckily that stage of my life is behind me.
When you don't belong to any group of reference, you are in a societal and intellectual limbo. This is exactly the distress of the Israeli left. The massacre carried out by #Hamas on October 7 exposed the difference between it and the global left. The global left is an organic part of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian liberation movement.
This liberation movement is no longer as institutionalized as it was, and is much more fragmented and weakened compared to its heyday in the 1970s. But it remains robust and its solidarity movement remains as well. The concepts and language of the solidarity movement have always been different from those of the Israeli left. This movement has not supported the two-state solution idea for years, and has long defined #Zionism as a settler colonial movement and Israel as an #apartheid state.
The sins of this movement, as they appear in the righteous indignation articles of writers like Eva Illouz,, Ofri Ilany, Haim Levinson and many others, are mainly twofold: comparing #Israel to colonialism, and mentioning the historical context of the massacre carried out by Hamas.
But the global left does not talk about Israel as part of global colonialism, but as part of settler colonialism. It is worth recalling, even for a moment, what characterizes settler colonial movements. These are movements of European refugees, who sought refuge and shelter from a Europe that did not want them and even persecuted them. They arrived in countries inhabited by native populations, who the new settlers saw as a fundamental obstacle to their dream of building a new Europe of their own.
Destruction of the local population or its expulsion were a precondition for the success of this new settlement. This is the story of the founding of the United States, Canada and Australia. The Zionist movement was also such a movement, and like the other movements relied on an empire to gain a foothold in a foreign land, found religious justification for settlement, and engaged in the search for ways to get rid of both the empire that assisted it and the native majority population.
Indeed, this is the perception of the global left. It includes defining Israel as an apartheid state, and was not born on October 7. It does not prevent condemnation of Hamas' actions, but it certainly provides a much more convincing explanation for this terrible event than defining Hamas as a bloodthirsty #Nazi organization that seeks to kill #Jews for the sake of killing.
Israel reacted with rage to the mass killing in the Gaza Strip, yet the Israeli left still expected the global left to be outraged along with it and relate to the horrors of that Shabbat outside any context. This is the global left's second sin, and this is the sin of the #UN secretary general: mentioning the context.
The Israeli left demands focus on the event as pure evil without context. Mentioning the context does not justify it but explains it, and above all offers a different explanation than that adhered to by Israeli politicians, pundits and journalists. In vain, the Israeli left will ask people of conscience worldwide to focus on the horrors of October 7, and therefore forget about the horrors of the occupation and siege prior to October 7 and those of the days after October 7.
The global left has always focused in the past - both in its historical perception and moral viewpoint - on contexts that gave birth to difficult actions of those who rebelled against Western oppression. Therefore, those who supported the abolitionist movement did not see the terrible massacre of whites led by Nat Turner in 1831, an event that harmed the struggle to abolish slavery, as an uncontextualized evil. Those who supported the Algerian liberation movement did not demand constant condemnation of the terrible massacre carried out by the rebels in July 1962 of white settlers in the city of Oran as if it had no historical context of over a hundred years of French abuse and oppression of the Algerian people.
These contexts explain the event, they do not justify it. They certainly clarify for us why the chorus of the Israeli left is shocked by what it defines as an insufficient response from the global left, and why its prominent spokespeople accuse the global left of anti-Semitism and immorality. As horrific as the massacre was, it does not absolve Israel of its past crimes against the Palestinians, does not justify the ethnic cleansing Israel is currently carrying out in both the Strip and the West Bank.
Moreover, and perhaps most importantly. As terrifying and horrible as it is, this is not a constitutive event: Israel will remain a settler colonial state, with features of an apartheid regime, Palestinian resistance will continue, global civil society will continue to support it, and Israel will rely solely on the support of Western elites. This is a clear recipe for continued bloodshed, with no winners, only losers, a reality in which calling for a ceasefire, which could lead to the return of the kidnapped, is considered treason, and the continuation of fighting and abandoning the kidnapped to their fate is preferred.
When the very mention of context itself is considered anti-Semitic, then pretext takes its place. The massacre serves as a pretext for ethnic cleansing in the Strip and West Bank and an excuse to muzzle and intimidate the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It also serves as a pretext for the United States to return its army to the region, from which it was expelled in disgrace after the failed attempt to impose democracy by force. It serves as a pretext for Western governments to severely undermine freedom of expression and opinion in the name of fighting terror.
Moral compass and awareness of contexts exposes the pretexts and their disaster-laden results, and above all focuses on what matters now: recognizing again that Palestinians and Israelis have only two options: mutual destruction or living together.
Professor Ilan Pappé, at the Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, is the author of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."
While the world’s eye has shifted from #Ukraine to #Israel and #Palestine, a gentle reminder that the civil war in #Myanmar (or #Burma) continues to simmer. This video (from 2 days ago) shows members of the Burmese army fleeing to my state in #India, #Mizoram after being chased by members of the PDF. That river is the one I posted some months ago. Locals say that #China has changed its strategy from supporting the ruling Junta to the People’s Defense Armed Forces (PDF). #NoAgendaPost but informative, so sharing - with @mastodonindians too. If true, China’s strategy to support the PDF instead of the ruling Junta could mean a lot for #India - strategically and economically.
The Iranian intellectual Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923-1969) visited #Israel in 1964, and published his rather positive impressions of the Zionist project. Being a communist, he was impressed by the Kibbutz model, among other things.
His travelogue was published by his brother only in 1984, under the title "The land of Azrael*" (سفر به ولايت عزرائيل), which was translated to English under the suggestive title "The Israeli Republic" (i.e. The Islamic Republic of Iran).
About the book:
Written by a preeminent Iranian writer who helped lay the popular groundwork for the Iranian Revolution, The Israeli Republic should be required reading for anyone interested in the history and current political landscape of the Middle East. Documenting Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s two-week-long trip to Israel in February of 1963, his account “Journey to the Land of Azrael” caused a firestorm when it was published in Iran, upsetting the very revolutionary clerics whose anti-Western sentiments Al-e Ahmad himself had fueled. Yet, in the thriving Jewish State, Jalal Al-e Ahmad saw a model for a possible future Iran. Based on his controversial travelogue, supplemented with letters between the author and his wife, Simin Daneshvar (the first major Iranian woman novelist), and translated into English for the first time, The Israeli Republic is a record of Al-e Ahmad’s idealism, insight, and ultimate disillusionment toward Israel. Vibrantly modern in its sensibility and fearlessly polemical, this book will change the way you think about the Middle East.”
Everyone from the Congress to the Harvard president is obsessing about a fantasy of genocide -- the claim that the chant "From the river to the sea" is a call for Jewish extermination, while ignoring the actual genocide unfolding in Gaza.
Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Why has peace in the Middle East remained so elusive?
With incisive and provocative analysis, Jeremy R. Hammond provides a meticulously documented account that explodes popular myths and deconstructs standard narratives about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
I have learned not to expect people to step forward to condemn of these attacks on Jews, but I don't want any of you to later say you didn't know what was happening, as it was happening.
Jews are not necessarily Israelis, much less supporters of Netanyahu.
Muslims are not necessarily Palestinians, much less supporters of Hamas.
Bigotry against Jews and Muslims is just bigotry; it is in no way justified by the current conflict in the Middle East. This goes double when the bigotry leads to violence, as it has.
And yet, in practice, “pro-Palestinian” protests are marred by overt antisemitism.
I don’t know whether pro-Israel protests have the complementary problem, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Certainly, Republican support for Netanyahu is accompanied by Islamophobia, as witnessed by the idiotic attempt to deport all Palestinians.
In case you have the appetite for really depressing pearls of wisdom from #Netanyahu and #Begin's ideological master Jabotinsky... in the 1920's Revisionist Zionism pronounced what #Zionism didn't dare to speak (in public). It also set the foundations for #Israel's security doctrine ever since.
"[...] There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realized long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority."
"[...] But the only way to obtain such an agreement, is the Iron Wall, which is to say a strong power in #Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present."
--- The Iron Wall... translated to English from the original Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923.
#NieWiederIstJetzt 🕊️ : Einen Monat nach dem Terrorangriff der Hamas auf #Israel 🇮🇱 haben heute etwa 200 Bremer:innen vor der Bürgerschaft alle Opfen des Überfalls und seiner Folgen gedacht und Lichter 🕯️ entzündet. Mit Bildern erinnerten sie auch an die 239 Geiseln. #HBBue
University teachers suspended, employees sacked: in #israelPalestine, the authorities punish the slightest expression of support for Palestine on social media. In the course of a week, at least 170 people have been arrested for their online activities. https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-war-political-persecution/