I learned the word “condemn” at an early age. It was used constantly on Irish news bulletins in the 1980s.
In theory, “condemn” is a verb that may be applied to any act that triggers feelings of strong disapproval. In practice, it is used more to oppose violence by the oppressed than the oppression which causes that violence.
The partition of both Ireland and Palestine was ushered in by Britain.
As well as carving up both countries, Britain pursued similar policies in both situations.
People of one ethnicity and religion were encouraged to discriminate – systematically – against people of another. In both cases, the discrimination took place in a context of settler-colonialism.
With that history having consequences that endures to this day, Britain ought to be condemned routinely by everyone who opposes injustice.
If the media actually did their job and exposed Britain’s crimes, then comments made over the past few days by James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, would have zero credibility.
According to Cleverly, Britain “unequivocally condemns the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians.” Britain, he added, “will always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
The “attacks” to which he alluded were actually a response to the brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people. Britain set that subjugation in motion as far back as 1917, when Arthur James Balfour, one of Cleverly’s predecessors as foreign secretary, signed his infamous declaration supporting the Zionist movement and its colonization project.
Right to defend?
All talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself” is utter bollocks – if I may use a term with which Cleverly is undoubtedly familiar.
Israel – which has subjected Gaza to a total blockade since 2007 and bombarded its people with frightening regularity – does not have the right to defend itself. The truth is that Palestinains have a right – recognized by the United Nations General Assembly – to defend themselves against Israel’s military occupation and all its attendant aggression.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, tried to sound even angrier than Cleverly. She fulminated against “the attack carried out by Hamas terrorists,” labeling it “terrorism in its most despicable form.”
Needless to say, von der Leyen had nothing to say about how the European Union mollycoddles Israel – actively seeking closer relations with that state, even as its government assumes an overtly fascist character. Von der Leyen herself has implicitly endorsed the ethnic cleansing on which Israel was founded in 1948 by praising the Zionist dream of making “the desert bloom.”
With that record, it is not surprising that von der Leyen is selective in her outrage.
Ariel Kallner, a member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), reacted to the Hamas-led operation by calling for a new Nakba.
The Nakba – Arabic for catastrophe – involved the expulsion of approximately 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. Kallner advocated a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ‘48,” contending “there is no other way.”
Kallner chairs a committee in the Knesset handling Israel’s relations with the EU. Yet his call did not elicit any comment from von der Leyen or other senior players in the Brussels bureaucracy.
Von der Leyen’s reticence is consistent. If she gave her blessing to the first Nakba, then why would she have any qualms about a new one?
read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/condemning-palestinians-contemptible
archive: https://archive.ph/O9zPI
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if Isreal didnt want to be condemned, they shouldnt have focused on attacking civilians. they’re basically fucked now.
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Alright, cool! What is your strategy for the Palestinians to get their land back?
They peacefully protest - they get shot. They don’t even protest at all - they get shot. Do you want them to vote? Should the Palestinians call their representatives in Tel Aviv and say that they won’t be voting for them if they don’t end the occupation? Oh, I know - they should try to elect a third party to the government!
I don’t know at this point. But I know one thing: pouring gasoline on fire is not a strategy for extinguishing it.
I’ll ask you a non-rhetorical question: What were Hamas’ leaders hoping to accomplish when they sent gunmen to shoot civilians attending a rave party? What’s their strategy?
To demoralize Israel. Which it has been, severely.
I don’t know what hamas’ strategy is. I will say this attack will absolutely make settlers second guess whether they want to leave their comfortable life in Brooklyn to set up a new life on stolen land. Is that a good enough reason? I don’t know for sure, but to pretend that this is completely pointless violence is bullshit
Shooting children through a fence has been a pretty good strategy for Israel, why not give that one a go?
Yes, everyone in the world on any side of any conflict wants power and power only. They have no picture of what they will do with that power or broader projects other than to have it. I say this over and over and over every time anything happens ever. It’s just a hard, thought-terminating truth but I’m willing to repeat it.
you are ridiculous, fuck you forever for telling oppressed peoples they’re fighting off their slavers improperly.
they’re basically fucked now
Are they? Who’s gonna fuck them?
Settlers aren’t civilians. They are non combat support for the occupation that the international courts have declared illegal. They are paid by the state of israel to squat on land they have stolen.
How dare they not just lay down and die.
civillians like the fucking general they captured in the military compound they also raided as part of a larger military plan?
You are a fucking FOOL
But OP was saying Palestinians not Hamas?
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Yup, this is fascism vs terrorism. My only empathy is for all of the innocent people from both sides caught in the middle.
Palestinians have the right to revolution just like the Americans, French, and Chinese did. That revolution might be bloody, but the fight for sovereignty and equality is rarely peaceful.
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“Both sides”
However, recent data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows that since 2005, 96% of deaths have been Palestinian.
Every time the oppressed fight back, libs immediately start to create a false equivalence with the oppressors.
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There’s no clear victim and aggressor here
Decades of Palestinian occupation by colonial forces called. They’d like a word.
What are you talking about? The Palestinians have been emprisoned in an open air concentration camp for 70 years, their children being regularly bombarded, their houses stolen, their women raped, their food and water taken away by the occupying military.
It’s crystal clear who the aggressor here is, the situation in Palestine is very straight forwards compared to the one in Ukraine.
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Please explain this complexity we are talking about here.
Things seem pretty cut and dry from that article. What part explains the complexities that the rubes shilling for Palestine cannot wrap their head around?
The part where people have been living in a place for hundreds of years only to have someone else come in and take it and then put them in the worlds largest prison?
I agree but that is a pretty simple to understand scenario, right? I was asking where the aforementioned complexity is in the whole thing.
Do we just load the Israeli population on a ship and anchor them on the mediterranean sea, or what’s your plan here?
I don’t have a plan. Probably owing to the fact that I am a nobody living in Asia. Guess that means I just have to conjure imaginary moral complexities and minimise the atrocities that Israel has been carrying out without consequences with US and EU backing.
I don’t think you can simplify thousands of years of history to one comment.
Not with that attitude
I don’t pretend to be any kind of an expert on the subject. This is one of those things, that the more you read, the less it feels like I know.
I used to default to the Israeli side, but then I heard Netanyahu on a podcast and that guy could not sound more like an aspiring dictator so I looked into it a bit more, and now I just choose to observe this fiasco from the sidelines and not form strong opinions about a subject I don’t understand.
Why did you default to the Israeli side earlier?
We all know the answer is racism.
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How long did it take you to craft the most inane take possible?
“The partition of both Ireland and Palestine was ushered in by Britain” far more than that and more than just britain. All the colonial countries ended up making artificial borders. I mean the india/pakistan thing is from it. Pretty much all of africa, america, and a lot of asia are all sorta artificial borders dictated by colonies and then rearranged in war.
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Thank you
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