GEORGE GALLOWAY’S STUNNING VICTORY in Rochdale, Britain, has provoked a sharp response from leftists whose primary analytical focus remains socio-economic.
When we were both at primary school, Rob, it was possible for a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem to travel by car to Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast without experiencing constant humiliation and harassment at the hands of the IDF. The "ongoing repression and occupation", that today makes such a journey almost impossible, is not, however, without cause. The Palestinians called it the "Intifada".
It is difficult to understand what the Western nations have done, in this context, that requires absolution. Could it be for the extraordinary US airlift of munitions to Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973? An airlift that prevented Egypt and Syria (backed by the USSR) from over-running the IDF and setting in motion a second Holocaust. Or, perhaps, it is for helping Israel to erect the "Iron Dome" protecting its citizens from the rockets fired at their towns and cities by Iran's proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. If there is any absolving to be done, then it most certainly should include nations from the East as well as the West.
Solidarity is a fine emotion, but its worth is diminished considerably when given to only one group of people. I pity the Palestinians of Gaza, cast in the role of victims, against their will, by Hamas' impresarios of hate, who use their blood as political currency to purchase the world's sympathy and "solidarity".
The monstrous fact of this tragedy is that this dreadful currency is being accepted, as Hamas always knew it would be. The terrorists understand that there are sufficient self-loathing "leftists" in the West to obscure, beneath a million Palestinian flags, the cause of Israel's undeniably excessive retaliation - Hamas' deliberate butchery of 7th October 2023. The most devastating pogrom since World War II.
As you say, Rob, solidarity is not an exclusive emotion.
Most people in the world believe that the Israelis have gone too far including ½ of Americans. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-poll-biden-war-gaza-4159b28d313c6c37abdb7f14162bcdd1 In November a new Talbot Mills poll shows 60% of New Zealanders agree the government should call for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict, now rising. It is simply counterproductive vengeance and colonial expansionism.
The abhorrent chant “From the river to the Sea” notwithstanding (most don’t understand that concept - Israel, like Pākehā NZers are not going anywhere -colonialism becomes entrenched after several generations).
It is not just so-called “self-loathing leftists” (a silly term used mostly by the right-wing as a term of abuse) who are appalled by Israelis' irrational and counterproductive vile action in Gaza and the West Bank as much if not more so than Hamas.) But most of the world. The deaths and injuries, mostly women and children, many dismembered for life are sewed 1:100 Israeli to Palestinians per capita. It didn’t have to be this way.
Polls previous to the Hamas atrocity and following an unforgivable orgy of revenge showed that the support showed that Hamas was deeply unpopular in Gaza. They were voted in nearly 2 decades ago in a minority government and then, in full fascist mode prevented any following election. Foreign Affairs reported in October only ‘29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government’. Since the invasion by the Israelis, the poll numbers have reversed. Like most similar ruthless bombing campaigns since WW2 (London, Berlin, Dresden, Hanoi), the effects have been the opposite. Resolve has increased.
“The (first) intifada began on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the Jabalia refugee camp. Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier”. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Since then Israel has been taken over by even further far-right members, with a current finance cabinet minister on record stating that in 2023 'I’m a Fascist Homophobe', according to Israel’s Haaretz.
Palestine was “double booked” by McMahon (who promised Palestine to the Palestinians ..later backtracking, after using them to help win WW1) ...and of course, Balfour resulted in a century of conflict. The colonized and abused native population needs to be addressed. “Right to return” after 2000 years a period according to geneticists in which we all share DNA does not apply, but the Jewish population does need a refuge and they are not going anywhere. It could have been different. It still can.
You describe as abhorrent the chant 'From the River to the Sea [Palestine will be free]'.
It is abhorrent only to those who delight in abhorring it.
To others, including many who march weekly in New Zealand streets, it is a call for the apartheid state Israel and the territories it illegally occupies to be replaced by a unitary state with equal rights for all, without regard to language, culture, religion, or purported ethnicity. A state like New Zealand.
To suggest that these two peoples can live together in peace after 7 October, and after 30,000 Gazan dead (and counting) represents the triumph of hope over experience on a grand scale, John - or should that be, Pollyanna?
The Western government mantra of a 'two-state solution' has been rendered impossible by Zionist colonial settlement of the Israeli-occupied West Bank since 1967, about 700,000 so far with more every day, accelerating since October 7 according to the WSJ, with increasing violence by those settlers against the Palestinians.
So what's left other than a one-state solution? That the present illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by apartheid Israel continue forever - a thousand-year reich.
Or maybe Israel could withdraw to the borders proposed in 1947, with a UN-governed Jerusalem-Bethlehem. Even Hamas might be happy with that. Perhaps you should suggest it to Bibi.
Israel......to be replaced by a unitary state with equal rights for all, without regard to language, culture, religion, or purported ethnicity. A state like New Zealand.
Or more like Iran or Iraq or the rest of the middle east and North Africa? Or like the tens of thousands of Christians murdered and mutilated in sub Saharan Africa in recent years.
How utterly naive or willfully blind do you have to be to believe that fantasy.
I suspect you are merely uninformed about the nature of modern Israel and the reasons they are so determined to protect their country and it's people as a predominantly Jewish homeland.
The present population is about 72% Jewish; refugees (and their descendants) from tyranny, persecution and actual genocide in North Africa (Sephardic and Maghrebi) , Central and Eastern Europe (Ashkenazi), other parts of the Middle East (Mizrahi from Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Afghanistan etc.) and from the Central Asian "stans" (Bukharian).
There are about two and a half million Arab Muslims, Christians and Bedouins (25%) and the balance are Christians, Kurds, Armenians, Bahai, Atheists etc. or otherwise undefined. The "apartheid" label seems particularly unsuitable for the most diverse, freest, most liberal and democratic country in the Middle East. Arab Muslims are popularly elected politicians and appointed high court judges; they enjoy freedoms and rights superior to their fellows in the benighted regimes around them. They (for by far the most part) prefer it stays that way.
I am not easily offended. Two points: (1) You say 'the "apartheid" label seems particularly unsuitable for the most diverse, freest, most liberal and democratic country in the Middle East', and casually ignore that this state has since 1967 held millions in subjection in the West Bank and Gaza, and clearly has no intention of ending its occupation of those territories. (2) The Wikipedia story on Expulsions needs to be divided in two: expulsions and 'exoduses' before 1947, which are irrelevant, and those subsequent. The movement of Jews from Arab and wider Muslim countries since 1948 is the direct consequence of the foundation of Israel, and not an argument for its existence. As Wikipedia says, it was partly a response to Arab anger at Palestinians having their land taken under the British for an essentially European colonisation project, and partly a response by Jews in the Muslim world to invitation by Israel to rapidly populate the country from which Palestinians had been expelled or had fled.
"expulsions and 'exoduses' [and genocides] before 1947, which are irrelevant",
Yes of course they're relevant, relevant to the need for the establishment of modern Israel in the first place and secondly to the history, the collective memory, of the Jewish people . People like to believe that the Nazi holocaust was the motivating factor for the establishment of Israel; unaware, I guess, of the history of Islamic persecution that goes right back to the siege of Banu Qurayza in 627 and the beheading of hundreds of male Jew captives by the prophet himself. The women "enjoyed" a different fate. An example his more fanatical followers today are Hell bent on emulating it would appear.
That interpretation indicating a single state solution, with all parties getting along would be the ideal, and it was perhaps possible 70 years ago. But “the river to the sea” is more often interpreted as Hamas does, removing all Israelis by violence. That is abhorrent. There is a country that exists between the river and the sea and it is not going anywhere.
After the Holocaust and endless pogroms, it is understandable that the Jewish people would want a safe haven. (Albeit the 2000 year return to a “homeland” is a fairy tale. Everyone on earth shares some DNA over that time-period according to geneticists.) Zionism was a fraught colonialist proposition (as was the colonialist experience here, Australia, the US, and Canada). No consent was given by the native population who had already established a Palestinian identity at the end of the 19th century. Very little habitable land on earth has not been at one time seized by people from others. We need to move on with a viable and fair 2-state solution in my opinion.
Whether there is such a thing as 'a Jewish people', or whether there is a simply a Jewish religion whose central myth is that there exists a Jewish people, will be debated as long as that troublesome cultural thing called religion exists, I suppose. As you say, everyone shares DNA from that (2000-years-ago) time-period, and some DNA studies suggest many Palestinians have a greater claim to descent from ancient Israelites than European Ashkenazi Jews.
That's all irrelevant. We deal with the now, not the past. If there are any Palestinians still alive after Netanyahu has been deposed, the challenge will be finding what is the 'viable and fair solution' for the people living in the land between the River and the Sea: dividing them into two states, with implied massive population transfers, or uniting them in one.
There most certainly are “Jewish People” (as there are most certainly Māori people and European people) - albeit certainly not entirely the same people as who identified as “Jewish people” in the Roman Empire. BBC, Smithsonian, and others wrote convincing articles on the subject. We are mostly all genealogically descended from royalty, from Roman emperors, Asian farmers, and Jewish carpenters from that era. “The maths tells us that in 3,000 years someone alive today will be the common ancestor of all humanity.” https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19331938 At 2,000 years, most of us are related. (and see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/ )
But over the last several centuries there is no doubt that the Jewish people have been subject to unspeakable persecution and attempted genocide. They are identified not just by religion (many are secular) but by culture and to a certain point (at least over the last several generations), genetics. I’m not sure if my Jewish friends would agree. I’ll ask.
Regarding 2 states, the UN partition plan for Israel and Palestine in 1947 was reasonable and opposed by radical nationalist elements on both sides. Even the two-state solution Oslo peace process was initially a far better deal than what the Israelis gave the Palestinians and was also destroyed by nationalists on both sides (primarily started by Israeli extremists)...thus the intifadas. https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-state-solution So what now?
'The problem with Zionism is that it’s obscene for anyone’s status or rights in the area where they live to depend on their ethnicity or religion or where their ancestors lived. Zionism should be rejected not because we think Palestinians have a better claim than Israeli Jews to a blood-and-soil connection to the land, but on the basis of the universalist principles that have always formed the rock-solid normative basis of the socialist movement and, before that, were proclaimed by the French Revolutionaries in 1789.
'Those principles say that everyone is entitled to the same package of rights, just for being a human being.'
Chris, my solidarity is with all of the oppressed of the earth. I have no more empathy with oppressors and masters of war from the East than from the West. I’m opposed to them all, and those who support them and their actions.
I do not support Hamas nor Islamic Jihad. I am opposed not only to the current genocidal actions in Gaza which are also opposed by the great majority of other people in the world and their various types of government, but also to the ongoing repression and occupation actions over decades which have had such devastating effects on Palestinians. The “Western” nations cannot absolve themselves from responsibility for this. This is what I think so many “leftists” are concerned about - the human issues and how much we “loathe” being part of it. Solidarity with those suffering is not an exclusive emotion or action.
The appalling October 7th murders and mayhem made no strategic (or any) sense unless Hamas and Islamic Jihad, fully anticipating that reactions such as yours, would serve their interests, their moral elevation in the eyes of fools, their justification for the murder of the innocent.
The more dead Palestinians the better from that point of view. You are very much "part of it", but not in the way you imagine.
Sorry Rob, I'm not questioning the purity of your position but it's effect: the legitimisation of the psychopathic terrorists Hamas. Hamas are fully responsible, they knew the consequences, that the Israelis would respond with full force and that the Palestinians would suffer terribly but they did it anyway.
While I've no dog in this fight I know there is such a thing as good and evil. Gang rapes, necrophilia, beheadings, torture, genital mutilation and murder of the innocent are the latter. I also know, as do the Israelis, a bit of the history of Islamic oppression and conquest and what happened to the Armenians, Buddhists, Berbers, Christians, Druze, Hindus, Jews, Kurds, Yazidis or Zoroastrians from the middle east and North Africa.
Just for the record, I strongly object to Democracy Project persisting in describing Chris Trotter as 'New Zealand's leading leftwing political commentator'. He may be New Zealand's leading crypto-apologist for Zionism, he may be New Zealand's leading opponent of those who advance what many Māori perceive to be their Treaty rights; but leading leftwing political commentator he is not.
And who are these people? The mythical "self-loathing leftists", a term of abuse used generally by the far-right and likes of confused former leftsists such as Chris ? I know many leftists. I know NONE who supports racial separatism and totalitarian far-right Islamists. Criticizing Israeli’s vile neo-fascism has become, like Stalinist decrees that the “state can do no harm” or that “our ideology can never be disparaged” entrenched by con man Netanyahu and his cabinet of merry fascist men - now dismantling the courts and using the word antisemitism to weaponize debate.
Yes, who are these people, what are they on about calling for a ceasefire and jihad, war and peace, at the same time? Just confused?
"You don't understand the narcissistic/psychopathic. They feel that anyone stupid enough to fall prey to their machinations deserves what they get" Jordan Peterson.
I admit that there may be some confused people "calling for a ceasefire and jihad, war and peace, at the same time". I expect them to be a tiny minority of those calling for a ceasefire and a more rational war policy than that of pure evil vengence - razing the buildings to the ground, severing limbs of children and killing their mothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMgzjm_zxc4&ab_channel=DemocracyNow%21...etc.
Hamas and their policies, wildley unpopular with Gazans before the invasion according to most polls, are now their only saviours ...and their unwitting victims. Isareal who forced many of their native population off their land by violnece decades earlier without compensation, now expect Gazans to roll over and die it seems.
And you were doing so well, Seann, until you had to go and spoil it all by admitting to being an annihilationist anti-semite who would happily witness the death of 9 million human-beings.
Most people in the world believe that the Israelis have gone too far including ½ of Americans. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-poll-biden-war-gaza-4159b28d313c6c37abdb7f14162bcdd1 In November a new Talbot Mills poll shows 60% of New Zealanders agree the government should call for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict, now rising. It is simply counterproductive vengeance and colonial expansionism.
The abhorrent chant “From the river to the Sea” notwithstanding (most don’t understand that concept - Israel, like Pākehā NZers are not going anywhere -colonialism becomes entrenched after several generations).
It is not just so-called “self-loathing leftists” (a silly term used mostly by the right-wing as a term of abuse) who are appalled by Israelis' irrational and counterproductive vile action in Gaza and the West Bank as much if not more so than Hamas. But most of the world. The deaths and injuries, mostly women and children, many dismembered for life are skewed 1:100 Israeli to Palestinians per capita. It didn’t have to be this way.
Polls previous to the Hamas atrocity and following an unforgivable orgy of revenge showed that the support showed that Hamas was deeply unpopular in Gaza. They were voted in nearly 2 decades ago in a minority government and then, in full fascist mode prevented any following election. Foreign Affairs reported in October only ‘29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government’. Since the invasion by the Israelis, the poll numbers have reversed. Like most similar ruthless bombing campaigns since WW2 (London, Berlin, Dresden, Hanoi), the effects have been the opposite. Resolve has increased.
“The (first) intifada began on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the Jabalia refugee camp. Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier”. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Since then Israel has been taken over by even further far-right members, with a current finance cabinet minister on record in 2023 stating that 'I’m a Fascist Homophobe', according to Israel’s Haaretz.
Palestine was “double booked” by McMahon (who promised Palestine to the Palestinians ..later backtracking, after using them to help win WW1) ...and of course, Balfour resulted in a century of conflict. The colonized and abused native population needs to be addressed. “Right to return” after 2000 years a period according to geneticists in which we all share DNA does not apply, but the Jewish population does need a refuge and they are not going anywhere. It could have been different. It still can.
When we were both at primary school, Rob, it was possible for a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem to travel by car to Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast without experiencing constant humiliation and harassment at the hands of the IDF. The "ongoing repression and occupation", that today makes such a journey almost impossible, is not, however, without cause. The Palestinians called it the "Intifada".
It is difficult to understand what the Western nations have done, in this context, that requires absolution. Could it be for the extraordinary US airlift of munitions to Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973? An airlift that prevented Egypt and Syria (backed by the USSR) from over-running the IDF and setting in motion a second Holocaust. Or, perhaps, it is for helping Israel to erect the "Iron Dome" protecting its citizens from the rockets fired at their towns and cities by Iran's proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. If there is any absolving to be done, then it most certainly should include nations from the East as well as the West.
Solidarity is a fine emotion, but its worth is diminished considerably when given to only one group of people. I pity the Palestinians of Gaza, cast in the role of victims, against their will, by Hamas' impresarios of hate, who use their blood as political currency to purchase the world's sympathy and "solidarity".
The monstrous fact of this tragedy is that this dreadful currency is being accepted, as Hamas always knew it would be. The terrorists understand that there are sufficient self-loathing "leftists" in the West to obscure, beneath a million Palestinian flags, the cause of Israel's undeniably excessive retaliation - Hamas' deliberate butchery of 7th October 2023. The most devastating pogrom since World War II.
As you say, Rob, solidarity is not an exclusive emotion.
Most people in the world believe that the Israelis have gone too far including ½ of Americans. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-poll-biden-war-gaza-4159b28d313c6c37abdb7f14162bcdd1 In November a new Talbot Mills poll shows 60% of New Zealanders agree the government should call for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict, now rising. It is simply counterproductive vengeance and colonial expansionism.
The abhorrent chant “From the river to the Sea” notwithstanding (most don’t understand that concept - Israel, like Pākehā NZers are not going anywhere -colonialism becomes entrenched after several generations).
It is not just so-called “self-loathing leftists” (a silly term used mostly by the right-wing as a term of abuse) who are appalled by Israelis' irrational and counterproductive vile action in Gaza and the West Bank as much if not more so than Hamas.) But most of the world. The deaths and injuries, mostly women and children, many dismembered for life are sewed 1:100 Israeli to Palestinians per capita. It didn’t have to be this way.
Polls previous to the Hamas atrocity and following an unforgivable orgy of revenge showed that the support showed that Hamas was deeply unpopular in Gaza. They were voted in nearly 2 decades ago in a minority government and then, in full fascist mode prevented any following election. Foreign Affairs reported in October only ‘29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government’. Since the invasion by the Israelis, the poll numbers have reversed. Like most similar ruthless bombing campaigns since WW2 (London, Berlin, Dresden, Hanoi), the effects have been the opposite. Resolve has increased.
“The (first) intifada began on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the Jabalia refugee camp. Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier”. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Since then Israel has been taken over by even further far-right members, with a current finance cabinet minister on record stating that in 2023 'I’m a Fascist Homophobe', according to Israel’s Haaretz.
Palestine was “double booked” by McMahon (who promised Palestine to the Palestinians ..later backtracking, after using them to help win WW1) ...and of course, Balfour resulted in a century of conflict. The colonized and abused native population needs to be addressed. “Right to return” after 2000 years a period according to geneticists in which we all share DNA does not apply, but the Jewish population does need a refuge and they are not going anywhere. It could have been different. It still can.
You describe as abhorrent the chant 'From the River to the Sea [Palestine will be free]'.
It is abhorrent only to those who delight in abhorring it.
To others, including many who march weekly in New Zealand streets, it is a call for the apartheid state Israel and the territories it illegally occupies to be replaced by a unitary state with equal rights for all, without regard to language, culture, religion, or purported ethnicity. A state like New Zealand.
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23972967/river-to-sea-palestine-israel-hamas
To suggest that these two peoples can live together in peace after 7 October, and after 30,000 Gazan dead (and counting) represents the triumph of hope over experience on a grand scale, John - or should that be, Pollyanna?
The Western government mantra of a 'two-state solution' has been rendered impossible by Zionist colonial settlement of the Israeli-occupied West Bank since 1967, about 700,000 so far with more every day, accelerating since October 7 according to the WSJ, with increasing violence by those settlers against the Palestinians.
So what's left other than a one-state solution? That the present illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by apartheid Israel continue forever - a thousand-year reich.
Or maybe Israel could withdraw to the borders proposed in 1947, with a UN-governed Jerusalem-Bethlehem. Even Hamas might be happy with that. Perhaps you should suggest it to Bibi.
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/in-depth-features/visual-evidence-shows-illegal-settler-construction-in-west-bank-surging/BF11225B-45A7-430A-A39C-48336B5B8286
Israel......to be replaced by a unitary state with equal rights for all, without regard to language, culture, religion, or purported ethnicity. A state like New Zealand.
Or more like Iran or Iraq or the rest of the middle east and North Africa? Or like the tens of thousands of Christians murdered and mutilated in sub Saharan Africa in recent years.
How utterly naive or willfully blind do you have to be to believe that fantasy.
Sorry for being rude John.
I suspect you are merely uninformed about the nature of modern Israel and the reasons they are so determined to protect their country and it's people as a predominantly Jewish homeland.
The present population is about 72% Jewish; refugees (and their descendants) from tyranny, persecution and actual genocide in North Africa (Sephardic and Maghrebi) , Central and Eastern Europe (Ashkenazi), other parts of the Middle East (Mizrahi from Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Afghanistan etc.) and from the Central Asian "stans" (Bukharian).
There are about two and a half million Arab Muslims, Christians and Bedouins (25%) and the balance are Christians, Kurds, Armenians, Bahai, Atheists etc. or otherwise undefined. The "apartheid" label seems particularly unsuitable for the most diverse, freest, most liberal and democratic country in the Middle East. Arab Muslims are popularly elected politicians and appointed high court judges; they enjoy freedoms and rights superior to their fellows in the benighted regimes around them. They (for by far the most part) prefer it stays that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsions_and_exoduses_of_Jews
I am not easily offended. Two points: (1) You say 'the "apartheid" label seems particularly unsuitable for the most diverse, freest, most liberal and democratic country in the Middle East', and casually ignore that this state has since 1967 held millions in subjection in the West Bank and Gaza, and clearly has no intention of ending its occupation of those territories. (2) The Wikipedia story on Expulsions needs to be divided in two: expulsions and 'exoduses' before 1947, which are irrelevant, and those subsequent. The movement of Jews from Arab and wider Muslim countries since 1948 is the direct consequence of the foundation of Israel, and not an argument for its existence. As Wikipedia says, it was partly a response to Arab anger at Palestinians having their land taken under the British for an essentially European colonisation project, and partly a response by Jews in the Muslim world to invitation by Israel to rapidly populate the country from which Palestinians had been expelled or had fled.
"expulsions and 'exoduses' [and genocides] before 1947, which are irrelevant",
Yes of course they're relevant, relevant to the need for the establishment of modern Israel in the first place and secondly to the history, the collective memory, of the Jewish people . People like to believe that the Nazi holocaust was the motivating factor for the establishment of Israel; unaware, I guess, of the history of Islamic persecution that goes right back to the siege of Banu Qurayza in 627 and the beheading of hundreds of male Jew captives by the prophet himself. The women "enjoyed" a different fate. An example his more fanatical followers today are Hell bent on emulating it would appear.
You can't just dismiss a history like that.
Nor can you use it as an excuse to colonise a country long occupied by others and expect them to obligingly disappear without a struggle.
https://imeu.org/article/plan-dalet
https://www.1948.org.uk/plan-dalet-and-the-nakba/
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/64896/the-horrors-of-7th-october-did-not-happen-in-a-vacuum.-why-has-this-become-unsayable
That interpretation indicating a single state solution, with all parties getting along would be the ideal, and it was perhaps possible 70 years ago. But “the river to the sea” is more often interpreted as Hamas does, removing all Israelis by violence. That is abhorrent. There is a country that exists between the river and the sea and it is not going anywhere.
After the Holocaust and endless pogroms, it is understandable that the Jewish people would want a safe haven. (Albeit the 2000 year return to a “homeland” is a fairy tale. Everyone on earth shares some DNA over that time-period according to geneticists.) Zionism was a fraught colonialist proposition (as was the colonialist experience here, Australia, the US, and Canada). No consent was given by the native population who had already established a Palestinian identity at the end of the 19th century. Very little habitable land on earth has not been at one time seized by people from others. We need to move on with a viable and fair 2-state solution in my opinion.
Whether there is such a thing as 'a Jewish people', or whether there is a simply a Jewish religion whose central myth is that there exists a Jewish people, will be debated as long as that troublesome cultural thing called religion exists, I suppose. As you say, everyone shares DNA from that (2000-years-ago) time-period, and some DNA studies suggest many Palestinians have a greater claim to descent from ancient Israelites than European Ashkenazi Jews.
That's all irrelevant. We deal with the now, not the past. If there are any Palestinians still alive after Netanyahu has been deposed, the challenge will be finding what is the 'viable and fair solution' for the people living in the land between the River and the Sea: dividing them into two states, with implied massive population transfers, or uniting them in one.
There most certainly are “Jewish People” (as there are most certainly Māori people and European people) - albeit certainly not entirely the same people as who identified as “Jewish people” in the Roman Empire. BBC, Smithsonian, and others wrote convincing articles on the subject. We are mostly all genealogically descended from royalty, from Roman emperors, Asian farmers, and Jewish carpenters from that era. “The maths tells us that in 3,000 years someone alive today will be the common ancestor of all humanity.” https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19331938 At 2,000 years, most of us are related. (and see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/ )
But over the last several centuries there is no doubt that the Jewish people have been subject to unspeakable persecution and attempted genocide. They are identified not just by religion (many are secular) but by culture and to a certain point (at least over the last several generations), genetics. I’m not sure if my Jewish friends would agree. I’ll ask.
Regarding 2 states, the UN partition plan for Israel and Palestine in 1947 was reasonable and opposed by radical nationalist elements on both sides. Even the two-state solution Oslo peace process was initially a far better deal than what the Israelis gave the Palestinians and was also destroyed by nationalists on both sides (primarily started by Israeli extremists)...thus the intifadas. https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-state-solution So what now?
Massive population transfers? Why?
'The problem with Zionism is that it’s obscene for anyone’s status or rights in the area where they live to depend on their ethnicity or religion or where their ancestors lived. Zionism should be rejected not because we think Palestinians have a better claim than Israeli Jews to a blood-and-soil connection to the land, but on the basis of the universalist principles that have always formed the rock-solid normative basis of the socialist movement and, before that, were proclaimed by the French Revolutionaries in 1789.
'Those principles say that everyone is entitled to the same package of rights, just for being a human being.'
https://jacobin.com/2024/03/rights-ancestors-land-israel-palestine
Chris, my solidarity is with all of the oppressed of the earth. I have no more empathy with oppressors and masters of war from the East than from the West. I’m opposed to them all, and those who support them and their actions.
I do not support Hamas nor Islamic Jihad. I am opposed not only to the current genocidal actions in Gaza which are also opposed by the great majority of other people in the world and their various types of government, but also to the ongoing repression and occupation actions over decades which have had such devastating effects on Palestinians. The “Western” nations cannot absolve themselves from responsibility for this. This is what I think so many “leftists” are concerned about - the human issues and how much we “loathe” being part of it. Solidarity with those suffering is not an exclusive emotion or action.
The appalling October 7th murders and mayhem made no strategic (or any) sense unless Hamas and Islamic Jihad, fully anticipating that reactions such as yours, would serve their interests, their moral elevation in the eyes of fools, their justification for the murder of the innocent.
The more dead Palestinians the better from that point of view. You are very much "part of it", but not in the way you imagine.
You need a very narrow perspective indeed to read what I wrote as “moral elevation” or “justification” of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Sorry Rob, I'm not questioning the purity of your position but it's effect: the legitimisation of the psychopathic terrorists Hamas. Hamas are fully responsible, they knew the consequences, that the Israelis would respond with full force and that the Palestinians would suffer terribly but they did it anyway.
Nothing to do with “purity”.
One can see why wars happen. We are right, they are wrong. Whatever damage, harm, suffering is caused is not our “fault” but theirs.
Thanks Rob, fair enough.
While I've no dog in this fight I know there is such a thing as good and evil. Gang rapes, necrophilia, beheadings, torture, genital mutilation and murder of the innocent are the latter. I also know, as do the Israelis, a bit of the history of Islamic oppression and conquest and what happened to the Armenians, Buddhists, Berbers, Christians, Druze, Hindus, Jews, Kurds, Yazidis or Zoroastrians from the middle east and North Africa.
Hamas must be destroyed.
Just for the record, I strongly object to Democracy Project persisting in describing Chris Trotter as 'New Zealand's leading leftwing political commentator'. He may be New Zealand's leading crypto-apologist for Zionism, he may be New Zealand's leading opponent of those who advance what many Māori perceive to be their Treaty rights; but leading leftwing political commentator he is not.
A "leftwing" that supports racial separatism and totalitarian far right Islamists?
And who are these people? The mythical "self-loathing leftists", a term of abuse used generally by the far-right and likes of confused former leftsists such as Chris ? I know many leftists. I know NONE who supports racial separatism and totalitarian far-right Islamists. Criticizing Israeli’s vile neo-fascism has become, like Stalinist decrees that the “state can do no harm” or that “our ideology can never be disparaged” entrenched by con man Netanyahu and his cabinet of merry fascist men - now dismantling the courts and using the word antisemitism to weaponize debate.
Yes, who are these people, what are they on about calling for a ceasefire and jihad, war and peace, at the same time? Just confused?
"You don't understand the narcissistic/psychopathic. They feel that anyone stupid enough to fall prey to their machinations deserves what they get" Jordan Peterson.
I admit that there may be some confused people "calling for a ceasefire and jihad, war and peace, at the same time". I expect them to be a tiny minority of those calling for a ceasefire and a more rational war policy than that of pure evil vengence - razing the buildings to the ground, severing limbs of children and killing their mothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMgzjm_zxc4&ab_channel=DemocracyNow%21...etc.
Hamas and their policies, wildley unpopular with Gazans before the invasion according to most polls, are now their only saviours ...and their unwitting victims. Isareal who forced many of their native population off their land by violnece decades earlier without compensation, now expect Gazans to roll over and die it seems.
And you were doing so well, Seann, until you had to go and spoil it all by admitting to being an annihilationist anti-semite who would happily witness the death of 9 million human-beings.
On this, at least, Rob, we are of one mind.
Most people in the world believe that the Israelis have gone too far including ½ of Americans. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-poll-biden-war-gaza-4159b28d313c6c37abdb7f14162bcdd1 In November a new Talbot Mills poll shows 60% of New Zealanders agree the government should call for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict, now rising. It is simply counterproductive vengeance and colonial expansionism.
The abhorrent chant “From the river to the Sea” notwithstanding (most don’t understand that concept - Israel, like Pākehā NZers are not going anywhere -colonialism becomes entrenched after several generations).
It is not just so-called “self-loathing leftists” (a silly term used mostly by the right-wing as a term of abuse) who are appalled by Israelis' irrational and counterproductive vile action in Gaza and the West Bank as much if not more so than Hamas. But most of the world. The deaths and injuries, mostly women and children, many dismembered for life are skewed 1:100 Israeli to Palestinians per capita. It didn’t have to be this way.
Polls previous to the Hamas atrocity and following an unforgivable orgy of revenge showed that the support showed that Hamas was deeply unpopular in Gaza. They were voted in nearly 2 decades ago in a minority government and then, in full fascist mode prevented any following election. Foreign Affairs reported in October only ‘29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government’. Since the invasion by the Israelis, the poll numbers have reversed. Like most similar ruthless bombing campaigns since WW2 (London, Berlin, Dresden, Hanoi), the effects have been the opposite. Resolve has increased.
“The (first) intifada began on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the Jabalia refugee camp. Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier”. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Since then Israel has been taken over by even further far-right members, with a current finance cabinet minister on record in 2023 stating that 'I’m a Fascist Homophobe', according to Israel’s Haaretz.
Palestine was “double booked” by McMahon (who promised Palestine to the Palestinians ..later backtracking, after using them to help win WW1) ...and of course, Balfour resulted in a century of conflict. The colonized and abused native population needs to be addressed. “Right to return” after 2000 years a period according to geneticists in which we all share DNA does not apply, but the Jewish population does need a refuge and they are not going anywhere. It could have been different. It still can.
I'm a working class leftist, I'm Maori, I care very much about the white working class in NZ and I want to see so-called Israel destroyed.