[Update (April 27, 2023) : From IGA to the ARIAs – via Glastonbury and Gucci: Amy Taylor’s rockin’ rise, Konrad Marshall, The Sydney Morning Herald, December 3, 2022: ‘They opened the Sydney Festival in January [2022], for instance, unaware the event had financial support from the Israeli government, or that a huge boycott was in effect. Some in the punk community branded the band Zionists[?], accusing them of taking blood money. “I’m glad we got a slap on the wrist, because we could walk away having learnt something,” Taylor says. “We made a mistake. Sometimes you just have to admit you don’t know something. But it’s hard sometimes, because I’m the centre of the tornado.” A natural autodidact, Taylor dove down a Middle-East-conflict rabbit-hole, reading the graphic novel Palestine by Joe Sacco, listening to the Palestine Remembered podcast, and donating the band’s festival fee to the Olive Kids foundation, which supports Palestinian children. “I didn’t start reading the news until two years ago, but I’m hugely interested. It’s dope. It’s important,” she explains. “I hadn’t heard about The Troubles before either, so then I go, ‘What’s that?’, and all these puzzle pieces start clicking together. But you make a misstep and you get moral panic.”’.]
[Update (January 16, 2022) : A Jewish Response To The Sydney Festival Boycott, Do Better On Palestine, January 16, 2022 /// (January 14, 2022) : Benjamin Law quits Sydney Festival board following Israeli funding controversy, Robert Moran and Linda Morris, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 14, 2022 | Sydney Festival chair apologises over festival board’s handling of Israeli sponsorship issue, Hamish McDonald, Katie Hamann, Dunja Karagic and Simon Leo Brown, ABC, January 13, 2022 /// (January 11, 2022) : From Safsaf to Sydney: Palestinian resistance and the festival boycott, Jeanine Hourani, Rihab Charida and Matt Chun, Overland, January 11, 2022.]
As you may already be aware, the Sydney Festival — ‘one of Australia’s largest annual cultural celebrations’ — is currently taking place. The Festival (January 6–30) is also the subject of a boycott, called on behalf of Artists Against Apartheid, because the Festival’s Board ‘made the decision to accept funding from the Embassy of Israel, making the embassy a Star Partner’. A large number of artists and performers have responded to the call. For its part the Board issued a motherhood statement.
One artiste that elected to ignore the boycott was Melbourne band Amyl & The Sniffers (‘After an occasionally shambolic hour there’s no encore but that proves relatively easy to accept – the job of lighting a fire under the Sydney Festival has been emphatically accomplished‘). Their decision surprised some, but it also prompted me to make a meme, so y’know: win some, lose some.
For what it’s worth, in 2022 I reckon The Sniffers are Too Big To Fail, and the moment will soon be forgotten, but I remain curious as to why they felt compelled to play; you can read Tropical Fuck Storm’s (slightly grumpy) announcement they’d be pulling the plug on their gig here.
See also : Support the work of artists who withdrew from Sydney Festival. | Sydney Festival Hit by Claims of Art-Washing Over Israel Sponsorship, Patrick Frater, Variety, January 7, 2022 | Gene Simmons, Deborah Conway join opposition to Sydney festival boycott as more acts pull out, Kelly Burke, The Guardian, January 7, 2022 | Sydney Festival boycott: when arts organisations accept donations, there is always a price to pay, Jo Caust, The Conversation, January 6, 2022 | Sydney Festival pays price for Israeli sponsorship, The Australian Jewish News, January 5, 2022 | High-profile figures join Sydney Festival boycott over Israeli funding, Nick Galvin, The Sydney Morning Herald, December 23, 2021.
*For those who’d like to learn a little bit about blak history and Black-Palestinian Solidarity, see : Black-Palestinian Solidarity conference: Contesting settler nationalisms, Gary Foley and Suzannah Henty, Radical Philosophy, Spring 2020:
Black-Palestinian solidarity in the continent emerged during the late 1970s and began with the organised political actions of Ali Kazak and Gary Foley. Kazak, an activist, former Fatah member and, later, Palestinian Liberation Organization representative for the Oceania region, migrated to Australia in 1970. Foley is a Gumbaynggirr activist, historian, and co-founder of the Redfern Aboriginal Legal Services (1971) and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy (1972). Both Kazak and Foley saw the Palestinian and Aboriginal struggle for justice against settler-colonial occupation as united. Their shared militant, anti-imperialist, and internationalist actions against the occupiers and their beneficiaries held solidarity at the heart of their revolutionary decolonial imaginaries.
Join my boycott of the State!
Quit your government job!
Tell your university department head to fuck off!
Tell Centrelink where to stuff its demeaning payments!
In my experience of the Sydney anarchist scene I’ve not met a single ‘anarchist’ who isn’t either directly or indirectly employed by the State, or who doesn’t receive some kind of State-support in the form of social security payments, etc.
I, on the other hand, apart from a few stints of university employment many years ago, and some brief periods of being the beneficiary of largesse from the Dept. of Social Security, as it then was, also many years ago, have always provided for the continuation of my existence through non-State means.
If the State disappeared would I be the only anarchist left?
I’m not expecting too many to join my boycott.
Dear “Futilitarian” (if that is your real name),
Do they owe us a living? ‘Course they do! ‘Course they do!
Anarchists also need to eat.
Regards,
Not my real name
As Futilitarian should very well know, Anarchists object to capitalism as well as the State. If we have an obligation to boycott the State, we also have an obligation to boycott private capital, too.
A moment’s reflection should be enough to demonstrate that it’s impossible to boycott both the State & private capital. That’s why Anarchists don’t have a principle of boycotting them. Instead, we fight them. Not necessarily at every moment of every day, because we have to recognise the balance of forces and choose our battles. But fight them we do.
The State doesn’t owe you a living, Anonymouse, you owe that to yourself. Being a recipient of social security payments tends to make you servile. Being employed by the State can co-opt you in all sorts of insidious ways. Either way, you’re fucked. Of course, in the end we’re all fucked, regardless of how we passed the time. I just find it a point of amusement that so many self-described anarchists depend for their existence on the State. I also think that most boycotts are bullshit, carried out by middle-class wankers for their own egoistic purposes, contributing nothing to the poor fuckers whom they purport to support. My boycott of the State, however, is ridgy didge and should be supported one-hundred percent.
As Ablokeimet should know, not all anarchists object to capitalism (anarcho-capitalists, market capitalists, agorists, etc.). Just because social anarchists dictate that the latter aren’t anarchists doesn’t make it so. It just demonstrates the archist tendencies that lurk within social anarchists. I personally object to nothing at all. Whatever human beings get up to doesn’t surprise me in the least and is okay by me. As the song goes: whatever gets you through the night, it’s alright, it’s alright. As another song has it: I don’t care what you say, boy, there ain’t no way out.
The Arab-Israeli conflict isn’t nearly as one-sided as this post makes it sound.
@James:
Outta curiosity, how do you think this post makes ‘the Arab-Israeli conflict’ sound one-sided, what does that mean, and what do you think is the relationship between Arab and Palestinian?
Dear “Futilitarian” (if that is your real name),
Do they owe us a living? ‘Course they do! ‘Course they do!
Also, you’d have to be a special sort of stupid to think that anarchists aren’t also anti-capitalist. Capitalism is about power and hierarchy. Anarchism is about anti-power and anti-hierarchy.
Anarchism isn’t automatically anti-market. But markets don’t capitalism make.
If you object to nothing at all, then you’d presumably also not object to slavery. A weird sort of anarchist that would make you.
Regards,
Not my real name
The lack of a settlement between the two sides is at least half down to the leadership of the Palestinians.
Perhaps, Anonymouse, you should do a bit more research into ‘weird sort of anarchists.’
[Erratum: in my previous message, paragraph 2, I inadvertently wrote ‘market capitalists’ instead of ‘market anarchists.’ I should also mention that many market anarchists wouldn’t regard themselves as engaging in capitalist activity. I didn’t go into this extemporisation for the sake of brevity but also because it would appear to negate the point I was making to my friend, Ablokeimet, which is essentially that not all anarchists are averse to markets or indeed capitalism itself.]
And, yes, Anonymouse, Futilitarian is my real name. By a lucky coincidence it is also my condition.
While I would have thought this was obvious, to be clear, the post is not dedicated to examining the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and doesn’t seek to determine precisely what share of the blame for the lack of a (just) settlement may belong to Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians or their respective leaderships, past, present or emerging. That’s why it contains no such analysis. Rather, it takes note of the fact that there’s a boycott campaign directed at the Sydney Festival called by ‘artists who work and create on unceded land, [who] are committed to justice for Indigenous peoples everywhere, from so-called Australia to Palestine’. In any case, ‘An Arab-Israeli conflict in which there are two groups of leaders who are equally at fault for failing to arrive a settlement’ is not a very useful framework for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I reckon. And you’ve not answered my questions: how do you think this post makes ‘the Arab-Israeli conflict’ sound one-sided, what does that mean, and what do you think is the relationship between Arab and Palestinian?
@James:
“The lack of a settlement between the two sides is at least half down to the leadership of the Palestinians.”
This statement’s conclusion drips with absurdity.
The implication that varying levels of incompetence/corruption amongst successive Palestinian leadership are ipso facto the ‘main’ reason for an absence of peace, rather than the unmentioned and demonstrable actions by the Israeli state of illegal occupation, besiegement, ever increasing land theft and application of a 2 tier legal system (apartheid) – i.e. the occupied, besieged, deprived and discriminated are themselves half or more to blame for their predicament, is just the sort of nonsensical obfuscation propaganda expected from such a government’s spokespersons and its partisan supporters.
I find this repulsive on two fronts. On one, I completely support the protesting of Sydney (Fyre) Festival and the boards ludicrous decision to accept this funding knowing full well the implications therein. On the other, I find it deeply unsettling seeing artists being brigaded and browbeaten into losing a pay check (they don’t get many these days) over a decision made far and above them.
Thirdly, good meme well done.
@Derelict:
I’m not sure I fully understand your repulsion, but yes, I am mocking — relative to others, rather gently, in my view — the band. With regards pay cheques, yes, like dozens of others, the Sniffers would’ve missed out on getting paid if they’d cancelled their show. That’s unfortunate, of course, but sometimes, taking a stand can be costly. Still, my strong feeling is that the band could afford it, especially as they’re award-winning, critically-acclaimed, popular, have many gigs booked (they’re returning to play Coachella in a coupla months) and their main source of income is not, in fact, playing arts festivals. But even if cancelling the gig would’ve placed the band in some kinda real financial jeopardy (which I doubt), given their very large and growing fan base, I think it highly likely that, if they were to have cancelled, and made an appeal to their fans for compensation, it would’ve been successful. As it stands, however, they’ve said nothing, which I think is a very weak position for a group that the Festival described as an ‘internationally acclaimed punk rock four-piece … where love and hate, spit and sweat, beer and politics collide’. And as the post suggests, if you’re gonna wear the t-shirt, you should be familiar with the content.
@ndy:
“While I would have thought this was obvious, to be clear, the post is not dedicated to examining the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and doesn’t seek to determine precisely what share of the blame for the lack of a (just) settlement may belong to Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians or their respective leaderships, past, present or emerging.”
This is obviously untrue. The post makes no sense unless you assume that the boycott is just, which in turn only makes sense if you assume that the Arab-Israeli conflict is one in which the Israelis are occupying land which justly belongs to the Palestinians.
Rashid:
“The implication that varying levels of incompetence/corruption amongst successive Palestinian leadership are ipso facto the ‘main’ reason for an absence of peace,”
Is your position that Hamas will accept any situation in which Israel continues to exist?
Because if not, then it follows that there will be a conflict so long as Hamas continues to exist and continues to have the position they have.
@James:
I’m repeating myself, but still.
You wrote: ‘The Arab-Israeli conflict isn’t nearly as one-sided as this post makes it sound.’ My point is that I didn’t attempt to present an account of the Arab-Israeli [sic] conflict — its origins, history, dimensions or actors (of which there are many) — but rather to present a brief account of a campaign to boycott the Sydney Festival. If there are ‘sides’, then, it’s more accurately those who support the boycott and those who oppose it. Further, the boycott doesn’t have unanimous support among those who would, for example, like the Israeli state to, say, adhere to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. The aims of the BDS campaign, even if they have radical implications, are fairly narrow — adherence to international law, an end to occupations/annexations, full citizenship rights for Palestinian residents and so on — and have won support from a broad array of groups. Within this context, different groups express different perspectives/there are many ‘sides’.
@ndy:
“My point is that I didn’t attempt to present an account of the Arab-Israeli [sic] conflict”
No, you assumed it.
Leaving aside the fact that the terms ‘Arab’ and ‘Palestinian’ are not synonymous, assume what, precisely?
@Andy:
“Leaving aside the fact that the terms ‘Arab’ and ‘Palestinian’ are not synonymous”
But you’re not leaving it aside. You’re referring to it.
You seem to think the term ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ is some kind of mistake on my part, and that putting ‘(sic)’ after it is a way to draw attention to that.
In reality, it’s the standard term for this conflict.
“assume what, precisely?”
I have already written “[Your] post makes no sense unless you assume that the boycott is just, which in turn only makes sense if you assume that the Arab-Israeli conflict is one in which the Israelis are occupying land which justly belongs to the Palestinians.”
I don’t see how this is other than a complete answer to your question, rendering your question unnecessary.
James Hutchings:
“The post makes no sense unless you assume that the boycott is just, which in turn only makes sense if you assume that the Arab-Israeli conflict is one in which the Israelis are occupying land which justly belongs to the Palestinians.”
Wow! Only the most extreme Zionists would refuse to accept that proposition. Even the mainstream of the Likud, which is a hard Right Zionist party in Israel that has been in government for most of the last 20 years, verbally accept that some of the land occupied by Israel belongs to the Palestinians & they’re waiting for a reasonable Palestinian leadership to emerge so they can be negotiated with. When your Zionism is more hard line than Bibi’s, I think it’s fair to examine your political assumptions.
In reality, the fundamental cause of the “Arab-Israeli” conflict is the existence of Israel. A Jewish State is the moral & political equivalent of a White Australia or an Islamic Republic. As such, it is an abomination that deserves to be abolished. The fact that a Jewish State has been established, claims sovereignty over most of the old Mandate territory of Palestine and occupies the rest led to the ethnic cleansing of approximately half of the Palestinians. Today, about 15% exist as second class citizens of Israel, about 35% in the West Bank & the Gaza Strip under conditions of occupation (details of which vary depending on whether you look at Area A, Area B, Area C or Gaza) and about half in the diaspora.
The Palestinians have an internationally recognised right to return home. Internationally recognised in theory, but not recognised in practice by any Western imperialist State. This right is independent of the behaviour of the Palestinian political leadership. The existence of Israel, though, depends on the Palestinians not returning home. If they did, the Zionists would be outvoted and the institutions which make Israel Israel (i.e. a Jewish State) would be dissolved.
Nevertheless, there have been occasions when a settlement may have been possible, based on the Palestinian political leadership accepting a great deal less than what the Palestinians were actually entitled to. With one exception, these settlements were ones that required the Palestinians to accept Israeli terms which were offered precisely for the purpose of being rejected. The exception was the negotiations in 2000 by Ehud Barak, which foundered over the question of the return of refugees.
Why have successive Israeli governments (with the one exception noted above) only ever offered terms which they knew would be rejected? It’s because Israel doesn’t want peace. Peace would mean an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, an end to Israeli settlements & an end to Israel’s territorial expansion. It would mean abandoning the maximalist ambitions of Jabotinsky. So much of the Israeli ruling class depends on perpetual war and occupation that peace would threaten their power.
OK, so let’s turn to the responsibility of the Palestinian political leadership. As noted above, the Palestinian leadership has had a few occasions on which to reach peace with Israel, but each time it would have required abandoning the Palestinian diaspora, leaving Israeli Palestinians as second class citizens and defying the opinion of the Palestinians to whom they were theoretically responsible. Yasser Arafat came close, but at the end he wasn’t prepared to face the wrath of Palestinians for leaving the diaspora to the tender mercies of the various Arab tyrannies under which they now exist. We’re talking about people who’ve held on to the front door keys of the houses they fled in 1947-48. They wanna go home.
And now, Hamas. Yes, that bunch of reactionary, misogynistic anti-Semites. They were created in the first place by Israel, which had a policy of promoting fundamentalist Islam amongst Palestinians as a means of undermining the PLO. Israel wasn’t happy when Hamas itself turned to armed struggle, but it still benefits from having the perfect enemy. It’s so repulsive that it cuts the Palestinians off from much support they could obtain on the merits of their cause, while simultaneously adopting a strategy of armed struggle that can’t win and doing everything they can to prevent other strategies from being adopted. The latest example of this was the response of Hamas to the upsurge of Palestinian struggle sparked off by the threatened evictions in Sheik Jarrah in May last year. The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group discussed it here:
https://melbacg.wordpress.com/2021/07/01/the-struggle-for-palestine/
Israel needs to be destroyed. Not by the armies of Arab States, or by mythical Iranian nuclear weapons, but by workers’ revolution. It won’t happen until there’s been revolution elsewhere (most especially Egypt), but that’s what is necessary.
Finally, about the boycott of the Sydney Festival. It fits within the BDS campaign, but has attracted more support than that campaign as a whole has because of the clear issue involved of accepting money from the State of Israel. And the BDS campaign was specifically developed as an alternative to armed struggle. That’s right. BDS is a vehicle for supporting the liberation of Palestine while opposing Hamas. Not that you’ll ever see Israel & its supporters mention that, of course.
So the boycott of the Sydney Festival is one I’m happy to get behind.
“They were created in the first place by Israel, which had a policy of promoting fundamentalist Islam amongst Palestinians as a means of undermining the PLO. ”
This is, obviously, wrong. You’ve taken a thing that happened–Israel dropped Egypt’s restrictions against Islamic fundamentalists and used them as a counterweight to secular nationalists–and turned it into something that didn’t.
“Is your position that Hamas will accept any situation in which Israel continues to exist?
Because if not, then it follows that there will be a conflict so long as Hamas continues to exist and continues to have the position they have.”
@James
My position is that the ‘primary’ responsibility of ending a decades long military occupation, a besiegement, illegal territorial expansion etc. etc. lies with the perpetrator of such actions – not with its victims, regardless whether some of those victims and leadership have resorted to reactionary violence.
Secondly, the aforementioned actions of successive Israeli political leadership, as well as Palestinian aspirations for self determination and statehood, pre date the creation and rule of Hamas within the Gaza Strip.
Thirdly, I can neither speak for nor predict what Hamas may or may not accept in the future in terms of an Israeli state, however pragmatism is something they have at least indicated in public declarations previously.
“Hamas presents new charter accepting a Palestine based on 1967 borders”
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/hamas-new-charter-palestine-israel-1967-borders
I also think it’s reasonable to assume that much of their current belligerent posturing is circumstantial, i.e. fed by a popular perception that, unlike the rule of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, they are by comparison uncorrupted and unafraid to engage armed resistance against an aggressor with an exponentially better resourced military, and which has laid siege to Gaza by land, air and sea since 2007.
In any case even if your suggestion is true – i.e. that conflict will continue so long as a political entity ideologically opposed to the existence of some other nation state, itself exists and continues to hold that view, then why does such logic not apply to Israeli political groups and leadership?
“Netanyahu: A Palestinian state won’t be created”
https://m.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-a-palestinian-state-wont-be-created-586017/amp
“The Hateful Likud Charter Calls for Destruction of Any Palestinian State”
https://www.juancole.com/2014/08/charter-destruction-palestinian.html
Naftali Bennett: “I oppose a Palestinian state — I think it would be a terrible mistake”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/bennett-says-he-wont-meet-mahmoud-abbas-palestinian-state-a-terrible-mistake/amp
Ablokeimet, I’m sure the comrades and fellow workers have found your article most instructive and that it will prevent them from straying from the path. Victory is nigh! My preference, however, is to practice BDSM in the privacy of my boudoir.
@Rashid:
“I can neither speak for nor predict what Hamas may or may not accept in the future in terms of an Israeli state”
“I also think it’s reasonable to assume that much of their current belligerent posturing is circumstantial”
Do you see how these two statements contradict each other?
===
“which has laid siege to Gaza by land, air and sea since 2007.”
No they haven’t.
@James
I’ve clearly made the mistake of marrying argument with examples and evidence. You’ve shown me how it’s much more efficient to ignore, and then be a simple contrarian offering alternative facts.
“Do you see how these two statements contradict each other?”
No they don’t.
“No they haven’t”
Yes they have.
Thanks for your time.
@Rashid:
i) What is the difference, in your opinion, between predicting what Hamas will do (which you say you won’t do) and assuming what Hamas will do (which you say you will do)?
ii) You’re only laying siege to something if you want to come in. Israel was, on the contrary, in Gaza, and left. Your definition of ‘siege’ is wrong.
@James
“What is the difference, in your opinion, between predicting what Hamas will do (which you say you won’t do) and assuming what Hamas will do (which you say you will do)?”
Your question and its premise is a mischaracterisation of what I wrote earlier.
The distinction is between what Hamas ‘is’ doing currently versus what Hamas ‘might’ (hypothetically) do in the future. Both are opinion but the first is informed by current circumstances of which we are somewhat aware, whilst the second involves predicting in the context of future circumstances of which we are entirely unaware.
“You’re only laying siege to something if you want to come in. Israel was, on the contrary, in Gaza, and left. Your definition of ‘siege’ is wrong.”
A curious point of distinction which ignores the substantive point. Perhaps that was the point.
Does the Israeli government intend to militarily re-enter Gaza or will it continue to just surround it with absolute control of everything entering/exiting, periodically bombing it from the air, employing snipers at its border fence, and shelling it from the sea? Just don’t call it a siege you say.
But whilst your definition of siege is perfectly fine and you’re entitled to hold it, it’s hardly exclusive.
Cambridge Dictionary
——————————
Lay siege: to besiege
Besiege: to surround a place, especially with an army, to prevent people or supplies getting in or out
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
——————————
Lay siege: to surround (as a fortified place) with armed forces for the purpose of capturing or preventing commerce and communication
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
——————————
Lay siege: if a group of people lay siege to a place, they try to get control by surrounding it
“… it follows that there will be a conflict so long as Hamas continues to exist and continues to have the position they have.”
Revisiting: What’s the difference between a political entity existing and having a position which rejects (including with violence) an established nation state, versus political entities existing and having positions which reject (including with violence) the establishment of a nation state?
“A curious point of distinction which ignores the substantive point.”
No.
Wanting to stop weapons getting in which will be used against them is different, in obvious ways, to wanting to take over.
“The distinction is between what Hamas ‘is’ doing currently versus what Hamas ‘might’ (hypothetically) do in the future.”
No.
There is no reasonable interpretation of
“I also think it’s reasonable to assume that much of their current belligerent posturing is circumstantial”
in which you aren’t making a prediction about future behavior.
“What’s the difference between a political entity existing and having a position which rejects (including with violence) an established nation state, versus political entities existing and having positions which reject (including with violence) the establishment of a nation state?”
But that’s not the difference between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas’ stated aim is to establish an Islamic fundamentalist state in the entire territory of what is currently Israel.
No one in Israel has ever had the aim of establishing a Jewish state in the entire territory of the Arab or Muslim world. They fairly quickly abandoned claims to the entire territory of the British Mandate of Palestine.
But that wasn’t good enough. And nor would anything else other than declaring that they were evil colonizers and going ‘back’ to Europe en masse.
@James
“Wanting to stop weapons getting in which will be used against them is different, in obvious ways, to wanting to take over”
That’s quite the spin on besieging an entire civilian population, i.e. collective punishment, denial of commerce, denial of medical supplies etc, all contrary to international law.
“There is no reasonable interpretation…in which you aren’t making a prediction about future behavior”
You seem intent on drawing a bizarre inference which isn’t there. Making assumptions about current behaviour based on known current circumstances is not the same as making predictions about future behaviour based on unknown circumstances. That’s absurd and a complete non sequitur.
“But that’s not the difference between Israel and Hamas”
That’s an answer…but not to the question I asked. If you decide to answer ‘my’ question, refer to my previous post.
“Hamas’ stated aim is to is to establish an Islamic fundamentalist state in the entire territory of what is currently Israel”
And Likud’s stated aim (Likud Platform 1999) is to establish a Jewish state encompassing the entirety of what is currently Gaza and the West Bank. So there’s that.
But why are some Hamas statements to be accepted and promoted without question, but contrary ones (e.g. acceptance of 1967 borders) to be ignored without mention? It’s almost as if an unwavering adherence to a fear and victim narrative, replete with racist and religious stereotypes, suits Israel’s broader agenda far better than acknowledging diversity of beliefs and aims amongst Palestinians.
And btw what a fantastic narrative it is. The nuclear armed state with one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world, justifies its abhorrent behaviour towards a besieged civilian population cramped into a narrow strip of land by continually emphasising a stated threat of militarily defeat and conquest – by a crude guerilla outfit.
Hamas may not want an Israel, but the Israeli government definitely wants a Hamas.
All the best.
“That’s quite the spin on besieging an entire civilian population, i.e. collective punishment, denial of commerce, denial of medical supplies etc, all contrary to international law. ”
If you have a way of stopping weapons getting in that doesn’t slow down the flow of everything else, then let’s hear it.
And what do you imagine they’re doing? They obviously don’t want to control the territory, because they did control the territory and pulled out.
Do you imagine that Hamas wouldn’t bring in weapons? Do you imagine that they wouldn’t use those weapons against Israel? Because they seem to be quite clear that they intend to do both.
So, what then? Israel should just accept that Hamas will be shooting rockets at them permanently? Why?
“Making assumptions about current behaviour based on known current circumstances is not the same as making predictions about future behaviour based on unknown circumstances.”
This is obviously wrong.
“That’s an answer…but not to the question I asked. If you decide to answer ‘my’ question, refer to my previous post.”
I have decided not to answer your question, because your question is irrelevant.
“And Likud’s stated aim (Likud Platform 1999) is to establish a Jewish state encompassing the entirety of what is currently Gaza and the West Bank.”
So, most of the area that was meant to be a Jewish state in the place?
But that would leave only 22 predominantly Arab countries!
And yes, I know those 22 countries won’t let the Palestinians in. Whereas Israel would if they’d credibly agree to stop shooting rockets at it.
And, again, it doesn’t matter what Israel wants. It wouldn’t matter if Israel wanted the 1948 borders or the 1967 borders, or everything from the Nile to the Euphrates, or half of Tel Aviv.
It’s not about who has the Gaza Strip or the Golan Heights or the Sinai. Any Jewish presence, other than as subjects of an Islamic state, is unacceptable to Hamas. Arab presence, either in or out of Israel, has never been unacceptable to Israel.
James:
“They were created in the first place by Israel, which had a policy of promoting fundamentalist Islam amongst Palestinians as a means of undermining the PLO.”
This is, obviously, wrong. You’ve taken a thing that happened–Israel dropped Egypt’s restrictions against Islamic fundamentalists and used them as a counterweight to secular nationalists–and turned it into something that didn’t.
Well, yes, Israel didn’t create Hamas out of nothing. Israel poured resources into the Gaza Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood as a counterweight to secular nationalists. Israel had no principled objection to its misogyny or its all-round reactionary nature (given Israel’s choice of other friends, it would have been strange if it did) and only dropped the organisation after it took up armed struggle.
It’s telling that you didn’t address any of my other points, though.
And here:
“And Likud’s stated aim (Likud Platform 1999) is to establish a Jewish state encompassing the entirety of what is currently Gaza and the West Bank.”
So, most of the area that was meant to be a Jewish state in the place?
But that would leave only 22 predominantly Arab countries!
Once again, you betray your position as the most extreme Zionist: the Palestinians can go elsewhere because there are 22 other Arab countries. There was never a Jewish majority in Palestine at any time until the war in 1947-48. A Jewish majority has only been created by ethnic cleansing and, even so, is a bare majority. If the refugees came home, Jews would be in the minority.
Further, there is not merely one “Arab nation”. You might as well argue that there is a single European nation. There are many Arab nations. Palestine is one of them. Nations are formed by a people having a common experience, you see, and the experience of living under British rule, with Zionist colonisation followed by the Nakba and then decades of occupation (or exile in the diaspora without integration) have formed the Palestinians into a coherent nation. You don’t get to justify ethnic cleansing by pointing to Morocco, Sudan or Iraq.
Once upon a time, I thought you were an Anarchist. I was mistaken, it seems.
“Once upon a time, I thought you were an Anarchist. I was mistaken, it seems.”
And that is one reason why in anarchist circles you can expect to meet, on the whole, highly intelligent people–and yet can’t always expect to hear highly intelligent things.
If you get kicked out for saying the wrong thing, then no one will say the wrong thing. But no one will say the right thing that might get them accused of saying the wrong thing either.
An example of a not highly intelligent thing that you might hear is that Palestinians must have their own nation on the soil of Palestine, but on the other hand Jews having their own nation is “the moral & political equivalent of a White Australia” and “an abomination that deserves to be abolished”.
@James:
You wrote:
To leave something aside means to not consider something because you want to consider something else instead. When somebody writes that they’re ‘leaving aside’ something, they need to make reference to *what* they’re ‘leaving aside’ (which I did). So yes, of course I’ve referred to what I’m leaving aside. In this case, I’m leaving aside further discussion of the distinction between Arab and Palestinian and why that might be important. Further, you wrote:
I assume it’s not a mistake on your part to employ the term ‘Arab-Israeli’. If it was, I assume you’d have said so by now. But it’s an alternative to ‘Israeli-Palestinian’, and I don’t regard the two, ‘Arab’ and ‘Palestinian’, as synonymous. Some do, however, and among these are some Zionists. They deny ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian’ are in any relevant sense distinct from ‘Arab’ or ‘Arabian’. From this vantage, they similarly deny Palestinian nationality and aspirations to form a nation-state. Such claims echo the earlier refrain ‘A land without people for a people without a land’; a phrase reminiscent of the legal concept ‘Terra nullius’. Such conceptual linkages help inform the fact that a number of Indigenous peoples in (‘so-called’) Australia make political connections to the Palestinian struggle against settler-colonialism in that part of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouVcBdOgQSM
Finally, while we agree to disagree that the post is ‘one-sided’ (and why), I’ve commented mostly in order to draw attention to the fact that Amnesty International has just condemned Israeli apartheid.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid
The Palestinians, as far as I know, don’t deny that they’re Arabs, or that no one conceived of themselves as part of ‘the Jordanian people’ or ‘the Kuwaiti people’ or ‘the Palestinian people’ before lines drawn by Europeans happened to create those divisions (Egypt seems to be an exception). The Palestinian flag is basically the flag of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
Your argument seems to assume that less than half the blame is the same thing as no blame at all.
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