Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1140
June 2, 2018
Land Of Sinners And Scholars
Anthony McIntyre finds little of merit in recent comments by Bishop Kevin Doran.
His Haughtiness, Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin, has forgotten nothing and learned less. On Monday he took to the airwaves to label Catholic Yes voters sinners for having the temerity to do what they, not he, felt was right. They cast their vote to assert that the constitutional right for a 31 year old woman should not be on a par with a zygote.
As for the rest of us who are not Catholics, we must be sinners as well. The Devil and Hell is hardly something we can avoid on the mere ground of not being Catholic. Maybe not being Catholic is enough for the bishop to secure us a hot spot in hell. But like the miracle, sin is a religious invention and should be of as much relevance as the dodo to all but those still bewitched by the magic of it all.
Doran, in venting his bishopric ire at Yes voters, seems wholly incapable of comprehending just how he and his ilk are viewed, their influence on a sharp downward spiral since, to use Gramscian terms, the secular war of position eventually led to wars of manoeuvre in key referenda where secularism began an unchecked advance in seizing solid ground. The Doran factor helps explain why the "Catholic Church is a religious rust belt of half empty churches."
With disdainful indifference to how modern society approaches problems, the bishops often appear indistinguishable from the sandwich board men who are sometimes to be found walking up and down city centre streets fulminating that nobody is panic stricken when they roar that the end of the world is nigh. A decreasing gaggle of priests in tow, attired in their dark garb that goes with those about whom there is something of the night, they inhabit the land that time forgot.
His Haughtiness has called on Catholics who voted Yes to shuffle off to confession so that somebody lower than his elevated self can will receive them "with the same compassion as any other penitent", forgive them their sin through intercession with god. If the same compassion is shown to them as was shown to child raping priests, they will be told to say three Hail Marys before being sent off to another polling station to vote Yes again.
Bishop Doran is far removed from the late Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Dom Helder Camara. For Camara it was about the poor. The impoverished spiritual aridity of Irish Catholicism compared to its immeasurably more fertile counterpart in regions of South America can be grasped in the title of a book by Camara, The Desert is Fertile.
Hard to imagine Camara not seeing the evil in calling a halt to clinical tests on the development of drugs to be used in the treatment of lung cancer that could prolong life, on the grounds that it might contravene Catholic ethos because female patients might have to take a contraceptive as part of the treatment programme. Claims to be pro-life in that setting are bishopric hot air.
Bishop Doran, like those who like to wrap themselves in a garment of piety solely for the purpose of hectoring everybody else is largely irrelevant to people's daily lives and should stay clear of them altogether. He is one more in a long line of silly, celibate men who believe in a ghost, out of touch with the real needs of those in their diocese, whom they view as subjects. Those who voted Yes or women who decide to terminate their pregnancies, don’t need his forgiveness, don’t need his compassion, don’t need his approval for any choice they make. They are choosing and he is losing.
Helder Camara had people like Doran in mind when he wrote:
Rather than accusing people of being sinners who should go to confession he should have the humility to apologise to the women and children of Ireland for being a member of a hierarchy that historically has visited horrendous crimes upon them.
His Haughtiness, Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin, has forgotten nothing and learned less. On Monday he took to the airwaves to label Catholic Yes voters sinners for having the temerity to do what they, not he, felt was right. They cast their vote to assert that the constitutional right for a 31 year old woman should not be on a par with a zygote.
As for the rest of us who are not Catholics, we must be sinners as well. The Devil and Hell is hardly something we can avoid on the mere ground of not being Catholic. Maybe not being Catholic is enough for the bishop to secure us a hot spot in hell. But like the miracle, sin is a religious invention and should be of as much relevance as the dodo to all but those still bewitched by the magic of it all.
Doran, in venting his bishopric ire at Yes voters, seems wholly incapable of comprehending just how he and his ilk are viewed, their influence on a sharp downward spiral since, to use Gramscian terms, the secular war of position eventually led to wars of manoeuvre in key referenda where secularism began an unchecked advance in seizing solid ground. The Doran factor helps explain why the "Catholic Church is a religious rust belt of half empty churches."
With disdainful indifference to how modern society approaches problems, the bishops often appear indistinguishable from the sandwich board men who are sometimes to be found walking up and down city centre streets fulminating that nobody is panic stricken when they roar that the end of the world is nigh. A decreasing gaggle of priests in tow, attired in their dark garb that goes with those about whom there is something of the night, they inhabit the land that time forgot.
His Haughtiness has called on Catholics who voted Yes to shuffle off to confession so that somebody lower than his elevated self can will receive them "with the same compassion as any other penitent", forgive them their sin through intercession with god. If the same compassion is shown to them as was shown to child raping priests, they will be told to say three Hail Marys before being sent off to another polling station to vote Yes again.
Bishop Doran is far removed from the late Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Dom Helder Camara. For Camara it was about the poor. The impoverished spiritual aridity of Irish Catholicism compared to its immeasurably more fertile counterpart in regions of South America can be grasped in the title of a book by Camara, The Desert is Fertile.
Hard to imagine Camara not seeing the evil in calling a halt to clinical tests on the development of drugs to be used in the treatment of lung cancer that could prolong life, on the grounds that it might contravene Catholic ethos because female patients might have to take a contraceptive as part of the treatment programme. Claims to be pro-life in that setting are bishopric hot air.
Bishop Doran, like those who like to wrap themselves in a garment of piety solely for the purpose of hectoring everybody else is largely irrelevant to people's daily lives and should stay clear of them altogether. He is one more in a long line of silly, celibate men who believe in a ghost, out of touch with the real needs of those in their diocese, whom they view as subjects. Those who voted Yes or women who decide to terminate their pregnancies, don’t need his forgiveness, don’t need his compassion, don’t need his approval for any choice they make. They are choosing and he is losing.
Helder Camara had people like Doran in mind when he wrote:
In the Father's house we shall meet Buddhists and Jews, Muslims and Protestants – even a few Catholics too, I dare say.
Rather than accusing people of being sinners who should go to confession he should have the humility to apologise to the women and children of Ireland for being a member of a hierarchy that historically has visited horrendous crimes upon them.
June 1, 2018
The Luck Of The Gambler
The Uri Avnery Column thinks a gambler's luck inevitably runs out.
In front of the gambler the pile of chips is growing. Higher and higher. Every spin of the roulette wheel adds to the heap.
When the heap reaches the level of his eyes, he could just get up, exchange the chips for money and go home. He winnings are enough to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life.
But the man cannot get up. Just cannot. He is glued to his place at the roulette table. And then his luck abandons him. The heap of chips starts to shrink.
He could still get up and save a part of his winnings. But he cannot. He is glued to his seat. Until he loses the last chip.
In the movies, the man gets up and puts a pistol to his head.
Binyamin Netanyahu resembles this man. He has luck. A lot of luck. It is uncanny.
The whole country sees the luck. His popularity rises to the heavens.
The economy is flourishing. There is practically no unemployment. More and more Israeli start-up companies are being bought abroad for astronomical sums.
In the international sphere, Israel marches from victory to victory. The president of the world's most important country behaves as if he were Bibi's abject slave. The US has recognized undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Greater Israel. The transfer of the American embassy there turned into a national festival, on the same day as another festival took place in Tel Aviv, an outburst of popular joy over Israel's triumph at the Eurovision song contest. The masses are overcome, as if it was a victory in war.
The world press mentions Trump, Putin and Netanyahu in the same breath. Three giants.
Inside Israel, Netanyahu has unlimited power. Emperor Bibi and his wife look like a royal pair.
He has no competitors. Every possible competitor was purged from the ruling party long ago. The remaining Likud functionaries look like dwarfs compared to Giant Bibi. The coalition partners are a miserable lot of small factions, whose leaders know that they have no chance against Bibi. The "opposition" is pitiful, at best.
The institutions of democracy, whose duty it is to safeguard the democratic system from becoming a dictatorship, are being destroyed, one after the other, while the masses shout encouragement. The Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the State Comptroller, the Police Chief – those who do not surrender are crushed.
The corruption cases against both Binyamin and Sarah Netanyahu, which could be wound up within a month, drag on for years, with no end in sight.
On The most important front – the Arab – Netanyahu's luck has reached incredible heights.
The Arab world has always been disunited. But in the past it was a hidden disunity. The lack of coordination between Egypt, Jordan and Syria enabled us to win the 1948 war.
Now the disunity has become open and extreme. Something is happening that in the past was but a dream: Saudi Arabia almost openly cooperates with Netanyahu in the fight against Iran, and so does Egypt.
Two weeks ago, on Black Monday, unarmed Palestinians in Gaza were slaughtered wholesale. Yet not in a single Arab country did stormy demonstrations break out. Not even in the West Bank. Nor in East Jerusalem. Only a tiny Arab demonstration in Haifa, in which a policeman broke the leg of a shackled demonstrator after his arrest.
The entire world witnessed the hideous connection: the victory celebration of Netanyahu at the new US embassy in Jerusalem, while thousands were wounded or killed on the Gaza border. And just a few hours later – the mass outbreak of joy in Tel Aviv's central square over the victory of an Israeli songstress at the Eurovision contest.
The world saw and remained silent. The international reaction to the massacre in Gaza was even less than the usual hypocritical minimum prescribed for such occasions. The only serious reaction came from the Turkish ruler and was buried under a heap of derision in Israel.
During Israel's 70 years of existence, its governments have pretended to long for peace with the Arab world, and before that the Zionist leadership did the same. Since the Oslo agreement, the government also pretended to seek peace with the Palestinian people, whose very existence it denied until then.
During Netanyahu's reign even this pretense has evaporated. At the beginning, Bibi uttered a few words which were construed as advocating the two-state solution. They have been forgotten long ago. Now even the hypocrisy has been swept away. No more peace offers, no "painful concessions", no nothing. Total ignoring of the Saudi Peace Plan (long forgotten),
Why? Simple: there is no possibility of peace without the creation of a Palestinian state. Such a peace necessitates the giving up of parts of the "Land of Israel". Netanyahu knows this well. He does not dream of doing so.
Does this hurt him in the national arena? On the contrary. Does this hurt him in the international arena? Not at all. Perhaps the opposite is true. The further the chances of peace move away, the higher his popularity rises.
A leader with such luck, who will stand up to him? Which politician, which journalist, which billionaire? Everybody flatters him. Everybody wants to serve him. All except a few idealists and other idiots.
What Will happen when the incredibly lucky gambler starts to lose, after all?
History is full of heroes who had legendary luck. Who conquered countries and continents, until the bitter day arrived. Napoleon, for example. Or his German successor, whose name had better not be mentioned in this context.
A person who is too successful will inevitably become a megalomaniac. Their mental equilibrium will be upset.
They will go one kilometer too far and fall into the abyss.
And when they fall, they will take the entire country with them.
Perhaps Netanyahu's luck will continue for some time. Perhaps he will still have more and more successes. Until it stops.
Where will Netanyahu move on from the dizzy height of his successes?
Wisdom would say: he should now exchange the chips he has won, which lie before him on the table, the table of the country, and offer the Palestinians and the whole Arab world a generous peace, which would assure Israel peace for generations to come. It is always wise for a country to make peace while it is at the height of its strength.
But Netanyahu is not wise enough to do so. He will continue on his present path.
Perhaps he will be able to restrain himself and not lead us into a war with Iran – a war which will be lost by both sides. It would be a destructive, a catastrophic war. Perhaps Bibi is clever enough to avoid this trap. Unless the criminal investigations against him come too close to trial and his future becomes too endangered. War is always the last refuge of a nationalist ruler.
Even without war, Bibi's course is leading towards an apartheid state. There is just no other possibility. The "Jewish Nation-State" from the Mediterranean Sea to the desert, with an Arab majority that will inexorably grow, until the balance of power within the state turns, the international situation changes, and the willpower of the herrenvolk weakens.
That has happened in history again and again, and that will happen to us. The Jewish State will turn into a bi-national state, with a shrinking Jewish minority, since Jews will not want to live in such a country.
When? In fifty years? In a hundred years? At the end of the glorious Zionist chapter, the Jews will again disperse throughout the world.
I Don't like to be a prophet of doom. My heart aches when I see the masses captivated by his charisma and following him to perdition.
It reminds me of the legend of the Pied Piper.
In Hamelin, a small town in Germany, there was a plague of rats. In despair, the burghers summoned a renowned rat-catcher and promised him a generous reward.
The rat-catcher took his flute and started to play. The melody was so sweet that all the rats came out of their holes and followed him. The Pied Piper led them into the river, where all the rats perished.
Having got rid of the rats, the burghers refused to pay the agreed price.
So the Pied Piper took up his flute again and started to play. The melody was so sweet that all the children of the town left their homes and followed him. He led them into the river, where all of them drowned.
Bibi Netanyahu, the Pied Piper. Frightening.
Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist.
He writes @ Gush Shalom
In front of the gambler the pile of chips is growing. Higher and higher. Every spin of the roulette wheel adds to the heap.
When the heap reaches the level of his eyes, he could just get up, exchange the chips for money and go home. He winnings are enough to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life.
But the man cannot get up. Just cannot. He is glued to his place at the roulette table. And then his luck abandons him. The heap of chips starts to shrink.
He could still get up and save a part of his winnings. But he cannot. He is glued to his seat. Until he loses the last chip.
In the movies, the man gets up and puts a pistol to his head.
Binyamin Netanyahu resembles this man. He has luck. A lot of luck. It is uncanny.
The whole country sees the luck. His popularity rises to the heavens.
The economy is flourishing. There is practically no unemployment. More and more Israeli start-up companies are being bought abroad for astronomical sums.
In the international sphere, Israel marches from victory to victory. The president of the world's most important country behaves as if he were Bibi's abject slave. The US has recognized undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Greater Israel. The transfer of the American embassy there turned into a national festival, on the same day as another festival took place in Tel Aviv, an outburst of popular joy over Israel's triumph at the Eurovision song contest. The masses are overcome, as if it was a victory in war.
The world press mentions Trump, Putin and Netanyahu in the same breath. Three giants.
Inside Israel, Netanyahu has unlimited power. Emperor Bibi and his wife look like a royal pair.
He has no competitors. Every possible competitor was purged from the ruling party long ago. The remaining Likud functionaries look like dwarfs compared to Giant Bibi. The coalition partners are a miserable lot of small factions, whose leaders know that they have no chance against Bibi. The "opposition" is pitiful, at best.
The institutions of democracy, whose duty it is to safeguard the democratic system from becoming a dictatorship, are being destroyed, one after the other, while the masses shout encouragement. The Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the State Comptroller, the Police Chief – those who do not surrender are crushed.
The corruption cases against both Binyamin and Sarah Netanyahu, which could be wound up within a month, drag on for years, with no end in sight.
On The most important front – the Arab – Netanyahu's luck has reached incredible heights.
The Arab world has always been disunited. But in the past it was a hidden disunity. The lack of coordination between Egypt, Jordan and Syria enabled us to win the 1948 war.
Now the disunity has become open and extreme. Something is happening that in the past was but a dream: Saudi Arabia almost openly cooperates with Netanyahu in the fight against Iran, and so does Egypt.
Two weeks ago, on Black Monday, unarmed Palestinians in Gaza were slaughtered wholesale. Yet not in a single Arab country did stormy demonstrations break out. Not even in the West Bank. Nor in East Jerusalem. Only a tiny Arab demonstration in Haifa, in which a policeman broke the leg of a shackled demonstrator after his arrest.
The entire world witnessed the hideous connection: the victory celebration of Netanyahu at the new US embassy in Jerusalem, while thousands were wounded or killed on the Gaza border. And just a few hours later – the mass outbreak of joy in Tel Aviv's central square over the victory of an Israeli songstress at the Eurovision contest.
The world saw and remained silent. The international reaction to the massacre in Gaza was even less than the usual hypocritical minimum prescribed for such occasions. The only serious reaction came from the Turkish ruler and was buried under a heap of derision in Israel.
During Israel's 70 years of existence, its governments have pretended to long for peace with the Arab world, and before that the Zionist leadership did the same. Since the Oslo agreement, the government also pretended to seek peace with the Palestinian people, whose very existence it denied until then.
During Netanyahu's reign even this pretense has evaporated. At the beginning, Bibi uttered a few words which were construed as advocating the two-state solution. They have been forgotten long ago. Now even the hypocrisy has been swept away. No more peace offers, no "painful concessions", no nothing. Total ignoring of the Saudi Peace Plan (long forgotten),
Why? Simple: there is no possibility of peace without the creation of a Palestinian state. Such a peace necessitates the giving up of parts of the "Land of Israel". Netanyahu knows this well. He does not dream of doing so.
Does this hurt him in the national arena? On the contrary. Does this hurt him in the international arena? Not at all. Perhaps the opposite is true. The further the chances of peace move away, the higher his popularity rises.
A leader with such luck, who will stand up to him? Which politician, which journalist, which billionaire? Everybody flatters him. Everybody wants to serve him. All except a few idealists and other idiots.
What Will happen when the incredibly lucky gambler starts to lose, after all?
History is full of heroes who had legendary luck. Who conquered countries and continents, until the bitter day arrived. Napoleon, for example. Or his German successor, whose name had better not be mentioned in this context.
A person who is too successful will inevitably become a megalomaniac. Their mental equilibrium will be upset.
They will go one kilometer too far and fall into the abyss.
And when they fall, they will take the entire country with them.
Perhaps Netanyahu's luck will continue for some time. Perhaps he will still have more and more successes. Until it stops.
Where will Netanyahu move on from the dizzy height of his successes?
Wisdom would say: he should now exchange the chips he has won, which lie before him on the table, the table of the country, and offer the Palestinians and the whole Arab world a generous peace, which would assure Israel peace for generations to come. It is always wise for a country to make peace while it is at the height of its strength.
But Netanyahu is not wise enough to do so. He will continue on his present path.
Perhaps he will be able to restrain himself and not lead us into a war with Iran – a war which will be lost by both sides. It would be a destructive, a catastrophic war. Perhaps Bibi is clever enough to avoid this trap. Unless the criminal investigations against him come too close to trial and his future becomes too endangered. War is always the last refuge of a nationalist ruler.
Even without war, Bibi's course is leading towards an apartheid state. There is just no other possibility. The "Jewish Nation-State" from the Mediterranean Sea to the desert, with an Arab majority that will inexorably grow, until the balance of power within the state turns, the international situation changes, and the willpower of the herrenvolk weakens.
That has happened in history again and again, and that will happen to us. The Jewish State will turn into a bi-national state, with a shrinking Jewish minority, since Jews will not want to live in such a country.
When? In fifty years? In a hundred years? At the end of the glorious Zionist chapter, the Jews will again disperse throughout the world.
I Don't like to be a prophet of doom. My heart aches when I see the masses captivated by his charisma and following him to perdition.
It reminds me of the legend of the Pied Piper.
In Hamelin, a small town in Germany, there was a plague of rats. In despair, the burghers summoned a renowned rat-catcher and promised him a generous reward.
The rat-catcher took his flute and started to play. The melody was so sweet that all the rats came out of their holes and followed him. The Pied Piper led them into the river, where all the rats perished.
Having got rid of the rats, the burghers refused to pay the agreed price.
So the Pied Piper took up his flute again and started to play. The melody was so sweet that all the children of the town left their homes and followed him. He led them into the river, where all of them drowned.
Bibi Netanyahu, the Pied Piper. Frightening.
Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist.
He writes @ Gush Shalom
May 31, 2018
The Day Of Shame
The Uri Avnery Column on another Day of Same for Israel.
My answer was, without hesitation: I would have stood near the border fence and demonstrated, risking my life and limbs every minute.
How am I so sure?
Simple: I did the same when I was 15.
I was a member of the National Military Organization (the "Irgun"), an armed underground group labeled "terrorist".
Palestine was at the time under British occupation (called "mandate"). In May 1939, the British enacted a law limiting the right of Jews to acquire land. I received an order to be at a certain time at a certain spot near the sea shore of Tel Aviv in order to take part in a demonstration. I was to wait for a trumpet signal.
The trumpet sounded and we started the march down Allenby Road, then the city's main street. Near the main synagogue, somebody climbed the stairs and delivered an inflammatory speech. Then we marched on, to the end of the street, where the offices of the British administration were located. There we sang the national anthem, “Hatikvah”, while some adult members set fire to the offices.
Suddenly several lorries carrying British soldiers screeched to a halt, and a salvo of shots rang out. The British fired over our heads, and we ran away.
Remembering this event 79 years later, it crossed my mind that the boys of Gaza are greater heroes then we were then. They did not run away. They stood their ground for hours, while the death toll rose to 61 and the number of those wounded by live ammunition to some 1500, in addition to 1000 affected by gas.
On That day, most TV stations in Israel and abroad split their screen. On the right, the events in Gaza. On the left, the inauguration of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.
In the 136th year of the Zionist-Palestinian war, that split screen is the picture of reality: the celebration in Jerusalem and the bloodbath in Gaza. Not on two different planets, not in two different continents, but hardly an hour's drive apart.
The celebration in Jerusalem started as a silly event. A bunch of suited males, inflated with self-importance, celebrating - what, exactly? The symbolic movement of an office from one town to another.
Jerusalem is a major bone of contention. Everybody knows that there will be no peace, not now, not ever, without a compromise there. For every Palestinian, every Arab, every Muslim throughout the world, it is unthinkable to give up Jerusalem. It is from there, according to Muslim tradition, that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, after tying his horse to the rock that is now the center of the holy places. After Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is the third holiest place of Islam.
For the Jews, of course, Jerusalem means the place where, some 2000 years ago, there stood the temple built by King Herod, a cruel half-Jew. A remnant of an outer wall still stands there and is revered as the "Western Wall". It used to be called the "Wailing Wall", and is the holiest place of the Jews.
Statesmen have tried to square the circle and find a solution. The 1947 United Nations committee that decreed the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state – a solution enthusiastically endorsed by the Jewish leadership – suggested separating Jerusalem from both states and constituting it as a separate unit within what was supposed to be in fact a kind of confederation.
The war of 1948 resulted in a divided city, the Eastern part was occupied by the Arab side (the Kingdom of Jordan) and the Western part became the capital of Israel. (My modest part was to fight in the battle for the road.)
No one liked the division of the city. So my friends and I devised a third solution, which by now has become a world consensus: keep the city united on the municipal level and divide it politically: the West as capital of the State of Israel, the East as capital of the State of Palestine. The leader of the local Palestinians, Faisal al-Husseini, the scion of a most distinguished local Palestinian family and the son of a national hero who was killed not far from my position in the same battle, endorsed this formula publicly. Yasser Arafat gave me his tacit consent.
If President Donald Trump had declared West Jerusalem the capital of Israel and moved his embassy there, almost nobody would have got excited. By omitting the word "West", Trump ignited a fire. Perhaps without realizing what he was doing, and probably not giving a damn.
For me, the moving of the US embassy means nothing. It is a symbolic act that does not change reality. If and when peace does come, no one will care about some stupid act of a half-forgotten US president. Inshallah.
So There they were, this bunch of self-important nobodies, Israelis, Americans and those in-between, having their little festival, while rivers of blood were flowing in Gaza. Human beings were killed by the dozen and wounded by the thousand.
The ceremony started as a cynical meeting, which quickly became grotesque, and ended in being sinister. Nero fiddling while Rome was burning.
When the last hug was exchanged and the last compliment paid (especially to the graceful Ivanka), Gaza remained what it was – a huge concentration camp with severely overcrowded hospitals, lacking medicines and food, drinkable water and electricity.
A ridiculous world-wide propaganda campaign was let loose to counter the world-wide condemnation. For example: the story that the terrorist Hamas had compelled the Gazans to go and demonstrate – as if anyone could be compelled to risk their life in a demonstration.
Or: the story that Hamas paid every demonstrator 50 dollars. Would you risk your life for 50 dollars? Would anybody?
Or: The soldiers had no choice but to kill them, because they were storming the border fence. Actually, no one did so – the huge concentration of Israeli army brigades would have easily prevented it without shooting.
Almost forgotten was a small news item from the days before: Hamas had discreetly offered a Hudna for ten years. A Hudna is a sacred armistice, never to be broken. The Crusaders, our remote predecessors, had many Hudnas with their Arab enemies during their 200-year stay here.
Israeli leaders immediately rejected the offer.
So Why were the soldiers ordered to kill? It is the same logic that has animated countless occupation regimes throughout history: make the "natives" so afraid that they will give up. Alas, the results have almost always been the very opposite: the oppressed have become more hardened, more resolute. This is happening now.
Bloody Monday may well be seen in future as the day when the Palestinians regained their national pride, their will to stand up and fight for their independence.
Strangely, the next day – the main day of the planned protest, Naqba Day - only two demonstrators were killed. Israeli diplomats abroad, facing world-wide indignation, had probably sent home SOS messages. Clearly the Israeli army had changed its orders. Non-lethal means were used and sufficed.
My Conscience does not allow me to conclude this without some self-criticism.
I would have expected that all of Israel's renowned writers would publish a thundering joint condemnation while the shooting was still going on. It did not happen.
The political "opposition" was contemptible. No word from the Labor party. No word from Ya'ir Lapid. The new leader of the Meretz party, Tamar Sandberg, did at least boycott the Jerusalem celebration. Labor and Lapid did not even do that.
I would have expected that the dozens of our brave peace organizations would unite in a dramatic act of condemnation, an act that would arouse the world. It did not happen. Perhaps they were in a state of shock.
The next day, the excellent boys and girls of the peace groups demonstrated opposite the Likud office in Tel Aviv. Some 500 took part. Far, far from the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated some years ago against the price of cottage cheese.
In short: we did not do our duty. I accuse myself as much as I accuse everybody else.
We must prepare at once for the next atrocity. We must organize for mass action now!
But What topped everything was the huge machine of brain-washing that was set in motion. For many years I have not experienced anything like it.
Almost all the so-called "military correspondents" acted like army propaganda agents. Day by day they helped the army to spread lies and falsifications. The public had no alternative but to believe every word. Nobody told them otherwise.
The same is true for almost all other means of communication, program presenters, announcers and correspondents. They willingly became government liars. Probably many of them were ordered to do so by their bosses. Not a glorious chapter.
After the day of blood, when the army was faced with world condemnation and had to stop shooting ("only" killing two unarmed demonstrators) all Israeli media were united in declaring this a great Israeli victory.
Israel had to open the crossings and send food and medicines to Gaza. Egypt had to open its Gaza crossing and accept many hundreds of wounded for operations and other treatment.
The Day of Shame has passed. Until the next time.
Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist.
He writes @ Gush Shalom
My answer was, without hesitation: I would have stood near the border fence and demonstrated, risking my life and limbs every minute.
How am I so sure?
Simple: I did the same when I was 15.
I was a member of the National Military Organization (the "Irgun"), an armed underground group labeled "terrorist".
Palestine was at the time under British occupation (called "mandate"). In May 1939, the British enacted a law limiting the right of Jews to acquire land. I received an order to be at a certain time at a certain spot near the sea shore of Tel Aviv in order to take part in a demonstration. I was to wait for a trumpet signal.
The trumpet sounded and we started the march down Allenby Road, then the city's main street. Near the main synagogue, somebody climbed the stairs and delivered an inflammatory speech. Then we marched on, to the end of the street, where the offices of the British administration were located. There we sang the national anthem, “Hatikvah”, while some adult members set fire to the offices.
Suddenly several lorries carrying British soldiers screeched to a halt, and a salvo of shots rang out. The British fired over our heads, and we ran away.
Remembering this event 79 years later, it crossed my mind that the boys of Gaza are greater heroes then we were then. They did not run away. They stood their ground for hours, while the death toll rose to 61 and the number of those wounded by live ammunition to some 1500, in addition to 1000 affected by gas.
On That day, most TV stations in Israel and abroad split their screen. On the right, the events in Gaza. On the left, the inauguration of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.
In the 136th year of the Zionist-Palestinian war, that split screen is the picture of reality: the celebration in Jerusalem and the bloodbath in Gaza. Not on two different planets, not in two different continents, but hardly an hour's drive apart.
The celebration in Jerusalem started as a silly event. A bunch of suited males, inflated with self-importance, celebrating - what, exactly? The symbolic movement of an office from one town to another.
Jerusalem is a major bone of contention. Everybody knows that there will be no peace, not now, not ever, without a compromise there. For every Palestinian, every Arab, every Muslim throughout the world, it is unthinkable to give up Jerusalem. It is from there, according to Muslim tradition, that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, after tying his horse to the rock that is now the center of the holy places. After Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is the third holiest place of Islam.
For the Jews, of course, Jerusalem means the place where, some 2000 years ago, there stood the temple built by King Herod, a cruel half-Jew. A remnant of an outer wall still stands there and is revered as the "Western Wall". It used to be called the "Wailing Wall", and is the holiest place of the Jews.
Statesmen have tried to square the circle and find a solution. The 1947 United Nations committee that decreed the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state – a solution enthusiastically endorsed by the Jewish leadership – suggested separating Jerusalem from both states and constituting it as a separate unit within what was supposed to be in fact a kind of confederation.
The war of 1948 resulted in a divided city, the Eastern part was occupied by the Arab side (the Kingdom of Jordan) and the Western part became the capital of Israel. (My modest part was to fight in the battle for the road.)
No one liked the division of the city. So my friends and I devised a third solution, which by now has become a world consensus: keep the city united on the municipal level and divide it politically: the West as capital of the State of Israel, the East as capital of the State of Palestine. The leader of the local Palestinians, Faisal al-Husseini, the scion of a most distinguished local Palestinian family and the son of a national hero who was killed not far from my position in the same battle, endorsed this formula publicly. Yasser Arafat gave me his tacit consent.
If President Donald Trump had declared West Jerusalem the capital of Israel and moved his embassy there, almost nobody would have got excited. By omitting the word "West", Trump ignited a fire. Perhaps without realizing what he was doing, and probably not giving a damn.
For me, the moving of the US embassy means nothing. It is a symbolic act that does not change reality. If and when peace does come, no one will care about some stupid act of a half-forgotten US president. Inshallah.
So There they were, this bunch of self-important nobodies, Israelis, Americans and those in-between, having their little festival, while rivers of blood were flowing in Gaza. Human beings were killed by the dozen and wounded by the thousand.
The ceremony started as a cynical meeting, which quickly became grotesque, and ended in being sinister. Nero fiddling while Rome was burning.
When the last hug was exchanged and the last compliment paid (especially to the graceful Ivanka), Gaza remained what it was – a huge concentration camp with severely overcrowded hospitals, lacking medicines and food, drinkable water and electricity.
A ridiculous world-wide propaganda campaign was let loose to counter the world-wide condemnation. For example: the story that the terrorist Hamas had compelled the Gazans to go and demonstrate – as if anyone could be compelled to risk their life in a demonstration.
Or: the story that Hamas paid every demonstrator 50 dollars. Would you risk your life for 50 dollars? Would anybody?
Or: The soldiers had no choice but to kill them, because they were storming the border fence. Actually, no one did so – the huge concentration of Israeli army brigades would have easily prevented it without shooting.
Almost forgotten was a small news item from the days before: Hamas had discreetly offered a Hudna for ten years. A Hudna is a sacred armistice, never to be broken. The Crusaders, our remote predecessors, had many Hudnas with their Arab enemies during their 200-year stay here.
Israeli leaders immediately rejected the offer.
So Why were the soldiers ordered to kill? It is the same logic that has animated countless occupation regimes throughout history: make the "natives" so afraid that they will give up. Alas, the results have almost always been the very opposite: the oppressed have become more hardened, more resolute. This is happening now.
Bloody Monday may well be seen in future as the day when the Palestinians regained their national pride, their will to stand up and fight for their independence.
Strangely, the next day – the main day of the planned protest, Naqba Day - only two demonstrators were killed. Israeli diplomats abroad, facing world-wide indignation, had probably sent home SOS messages. Clearly the Israeli army had changed its orders. Non-lethal means were used and sufficed.
My Conscience does not allow me to conclude this without some self-criticism.
I would have expected that all of Israel's renowned writers would publish a thundering joint condemnation while the shooting was still going on. It did not happen.
The political "opposition" was contemptible. No word from the Labor party. No word from Ya'ir Lapid. The new leader of the Meretz party, Tamar Sandberg, did at least boycott the Jerusalem celebration. Labor and Lapid did not even do that.
I would have expected that the dozens of our brave peace organizations would unite in a dramatic act of condemnation, an act that would arouse the world. It did not happen. Perhaps they were in a state of shock.
The next day, the excellent boys and girls of the peace groups demonstrated opposite the Likud office in Tel Aviv. Some 500 took part. Far, far from the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated some years ago against the price of cottage cheese.
In short: we did not do our duty. I accuse myself as much as I accuse everybody else.
We must prepare at once for the next atrocity. We must organize for mass action now!
But What topped everything was the huge machine of brain-washing that was set in motion. For many years I have not experienced anything like it.
Almost all the so-called "military correspondents" acted like army propaganda agents. Day by day they helped the army to spread lies and falsifications. The public had no alternative but to believe every word. Nobody told them otherwise.
The same is true for almost all other means of communication, program presenters, announcers and correspondents. They willingly became government liars. Probably many of them were ordered to do so by their bosses. Not a glorious chapter.
After the day of blood, when the army was faced with world condemnation and had to stop shooting ("only" killing two unarmed demonstrators) all Israeli media were united in declaring this a great Israeli victory.
Israel had to open the crossings and send food and medicines to Gaza. Egypt had to open its Gaza crossing and accept many hundreds of wounded for operations and other treatment.
The Day of Shame has passed. Until the next time.
Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist.
He writes @ Gush Shalom
May 30, 2018
Broken Dreams And Lost Lives: Israel, Gaza And The Hamas Card
Stanley L. Cohen lands a Counterpunch to Israeli propaganda.
Photo by U.S. Embassy Jerusalem | CC BY 2.0
For days, now, the Israeli rewrite has been well underway, working overtime, to convince the world seven weeks of carnage in Palestine, more particularly Gaza, did not happen. Or, if it did, Israel’s response to the Great Return March was a measured, proportionate answer to the menace posed by some burning kites, waving flags and nihilist teens armed with slingshot weapons of mass destruction.
At times, we’ve seen Zionists rip a page straight out of the “Sandy Hook” playbook, suggesting gruesome virtual film footage of the on-going blood bath was largely staged as if an anti-Semitic Hollywood back lot production. Indeed, to some, it appears the latest Palestinian victims include the same crises actors used over and over again in false flag operations ranging from Douma, Syria to Parkland, Florida.
Other apologists have turned the morgues of Gaza into a cynical goodwill gesture. Urging belief that if Israeli intent was mass slaughter thousands more would have found eternal peace as opposed to merely being left crippled or limbless on the floors of overbooked hospitals covered with the burn of noxious fumes as rivers of blood passed them by.
To be sure, the methodical madness that is Israel goes something like this: We have the most effective, disciplined, efficient killers in the world. Had we wished to execute many more, running off with backs turned in panic, we could have done so with abandon and relative ease.
Of course, it is that very expertise that puts to lie the claim that the 124 clearly identified members of the press killed or injured, these past months, had fallen victim by mere happenstance, alone.
Apparently, Palestinians should give thanks that Israel merely wanted to set a tone with a controlled atrocity, these past Fridays of protest, as opposed to one of its, by now, regular scenes of effortless carnage sown throughout Gaza like a well planned mosaic of anguish to the palpable indifference of the world.
Can it be long before Israel deducts the cost of ammunition, otherwise dangled for its token monthly occupation tithe, for the extorted quiet trauma of some two million political prisoners?
After-all, busy these days in Syria, saber-rattling in Iran and preparing for its long overdue coast to coast crush of Gaza, even the most prosperous war criminal can, at times, run up against constraints on available weaponry. Despite being the world’s 8th largest arms exporter, Israel, always on the make for more and more military gifts, would have us believe it is no exception.
And, predictably, when other excuses have collapsed to the honest lens of public transparency, the Hamas card is once again played with almost sneering contempt for the world’s ability to pierce the half-truths that fly, each day, alongside the Star of David cast throughout the occupied skyline that is Palestine.
Time and time again, many have been an all too willing, if not complicit, party to Israel’s deflective use of Hamas to explain away the inexplicable: just how proportionality can ever be manipulated to excuse an unchecked attack by the 16th most powerful military force of our time, with thousands of tanks, aircraft and combat ships, with a multibillion dollar yearly military budget, upon a largely tattered urban enclave armed with little more than the determination and spirit of its long embattled people.
It works. It has for decades in a world that long ago condensed the “good” to those with proper skin tone, religion and culture and the “bad” to those who invariably pray five times a day, not once each Saturday or Sunday.
There are distinct components to Israel’s grand witting misspeak about Hamas and Palestinians: The first is a desperate attempt to recast who and what the movement is and from where it has come.
On this point, Israel is to be applauded as it has apparently, successfully, packaged and sold an entirely fictitious representation of the movement to those who seek little more than a fabled narrative to maintain their dutiful support of its colonial project.
I am no stranger to Hamas. To me the movement is not an academic pursuit or abstract intellectual curiosity that only takes shape whenever it confronts the brute force that is Israel…be it in the 365 square kilometer (141 sq mi) confines of Gaza or in the streets and universities of the West Bank. To the contrary, I have been privileged to represent more than a few of its leaders for some two decades. On occasion, the movement has sought my counsel on issues of international law prior to making its decision on how best to proceed with a given matter.
Many of these men and women have also been close personal friends for years. I have often shared a warm welcome and meal at a family dinner table or an overnight stay with Hamas leaders throughout my travels in the Middle East–on occasion against the backdrop of on-going Israeli carnage or in its aftermath.
I have known well most of its founders and current leadership including those that have either been assassinated or languish, today, in Israeli prisons and elsewhere denied any scrap of justice or due process. Over the years, I have spent literally thousands of hours meeting with movement leaders in prisons, at conferences, in Palestine and elsewhere.
These are virtuous, dedicated, nationalists who seek not power for the sake of it or personal profit but have long stood among those who have fought against overwhelming odds and violence to lead the way toward a Palestinian home built of the marrow of freedom, justice and equality.
Contrary to the Israeli and Western effort to reduce Hamas to a collective of essentially unschooled or unsophisticated foreign born so-called Islamists, nothing could be further from the truth. Hamas is a movement born of Palestine, composed of Palestinians who were raised on the very streets where the blood of their people and families, has been lost to the occupation terror imposed by Israel. For the many who suffer from a now decade old blockade of Gaza–with its lack of food, water, medicine and mobility–Hamas and their families have known the same isolation and paid a like price.
Comprised, originally, of physicians, scholars, academics, lawyers, scientists, artists, religious leaders and farmers, it is a movement that evolved of necessity, born in the vacuum of what would obviously become the failed vision of Oslo.
More than a few of these leaders escaped the tyranny of Israeli oppression, years before, to obtain education and accomplishment abroad–only later to give up the fruits of all personal success to return to their homeland and fight for its liberation.
Over the years, Hamas evolved from a social service network, throughout Palestine, to become an armed guard of the Palestinian people through the discrete Qassam Brigades and an elected political movement swept to power in 2006. That victory came in what was described, then, by former President Carter, as the most transparent and successful electoral process he had observed as a monitor over his many years of such service in the Middle East.
Not long thereafter, all of Gaza was punished for the temerity of its electoral will through the imposition of the embargo that a decade later remains in place as an on-going stranglehold on the health, welfare and safety of its two million residents, punctuated by massive deadly Israeli onslaughts every few years.
Portrayed as little more than a terrorist group, one story, in particular, speaks volumes about the depth and breadth of the movement. Invited by one of its top leaders to attend a luncheon outside of Palestine, I arrived at a fourth floor walk-up to find most of its leadership, along with a number of other Palestinian resistance movements, engaged in a debate. No, it was not a heated argument over political tactics or military targets. During the next two hours, tempers flared over whether, and to what extent, language immersion should be included as a teaching tool in grammar school education throughout Palestine. The discussion was led by a PhD linguist schooled by legendary MIT professor, Noam Chomsky. Hebrew was among the languages to be learned.
I am not naive or starry-eyed. Like all political and national liberation movements Hamas has had its problems and made its share of missteps. Nevertheless, Israel’s long-standing attempts to reduce it to a selfish and reckless collective willing to sacrifice the interests and safety of Palestinians, including their own families, to the winds of cheap political gain, is just so much nefariously crafted delusion.
Although this unashamed invention has found a warm welcome in the insipid language of Zionist supporters and ignorant pundits, those with informed knowledge or experience with Hamas understand this call for what it is: a shameful and typical deflection from Israeli responsibility for what can only be called a willing slaughter, these last few months, that ranks among its many others… always, of course, because it had no choice.
The notion that the movement would ask or send people of Gaza to certain injury or death, at the hands of Israeli assassins lying in wait for all to see, reeks of the grand imperial lie that has been Israel for seventy years.
It is no less repugnant than the racist proposition that Palestinians, themselves, care so little about their own families or community that they would willingly sacrifice them en masse to gain the momentary sympathy of a world long inured to their isolation and loss of liberty and life.
Born of supremacist arrogance, Israel now seeks to reduce millions of Palestinians, who have struggled for generations, to little more than unthinking sheeple awaiting instructions from Hamas on when, and how, to express their will or gain their independence. Those with any connection to Palestine, or its long oppressed people, know all too well that the bars of its prison will never quiet its innate thirst for justice and freedom.
In Israel, the expedient conflation of victimizer and victim… of occupier and occupied… is brazen and readily transparent; an indecent marriage of those that would pull the trigger with others who fall prey to its barbaric squeeze. There is simply no honest or moral equivalence.
Yet, in a world that has long found Palestinians to be unworthy of equality and safeguard, this perverse union should come as no surprise. Indeed, willful blindness to Israeli slaughter is the explosive fuel that empowers its rage.
For decades, now, Hamas has become a convenient foil for Israel and its compliant choir after each new horror. Meanwhile, Israel walks away to rearm… leaving Palestine to bury her children, but not her hope.
Against the wail of broken dreams and lost lives, the Great Return March, marches on. For Palestinians, there is no choice.
Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rightsactivist in New York City.
He has done extensive work in the Middle Eastand Africa.
Photo by U.S. Embassy Jerusalem | CC BY 2.0 For days, now, the Israeli rewrite has been well underway, working overtime, to convince the world seven weeks of carnage in Palestine, more particularly Gaza, did not happen. Or, if it did, Israel’s response to the Great Return March was a measured, proportionate answer to the menace posed by some burning kites, waving flags and nihilist teens armed with slingshot weapons of mass destruction.
At times, we’ve seen Zionists rip a page straight out of the “Sandy Hook” playbook, suggesting gruesome virtual film footage of the on-going blood bath was largely staged as if an anti-Semitic Hollywood back lot production. Indeed, to some, it appears the latest Palestinian victims include the same crises actors used over and over again in false flag operations ranging from Douma, Syria to Parkland, Florida.
Other apologists have turned the morgues of Gaza into a cynical goodwill gesture. Urging belief that if Israeli intent was mass slaughter thousands more would have found eternal peace as opposed to merely being left crippled or limbless on the floors of overbooked hospitals covered with the burn of noxious fumes as rivers of blood passed them by.
To be sure, the methodical madness that is Israel goes something like this: We have the most effective, disciplined, efficient killers in the world. Had we wished to execute many more, running off with backs turned in panic, we could have done so with abandon and relative ease.
Of course, it is that very expertise that puts to lie the claim that the 124 clearly identified members of the press killed or injured, these past months, had fallen victim by mere happenstance, alone.
Apparently, Palestinians should give thanks that Israel merely wanted to set a tone with a controlled atrocity, these past Fridays of protest, as opposed to one of its, by now, regular scenes of effortless carnage sown throughout Gaza like a well planned mosaic of anguish to the palpable indifference of the world.
Can it be long before Israel deducts the cost of ammunition, otherwise dangled for its token monthly occupation tithe, for the extorted quiet trauma of some two million political prisoners?
After-all, busy these days in Syria, saber-rattling in Iran and preparing for its long overdue coast to coast crush of Gaza, even the most prosperous war criminal can, at times, run up against constraints on available weaponry. Despite being the world’s 8th largest arms exporter, Israel, always on the make for more and more military gifts, would have us believe it is no exception.
And, predictably, when other excuses have collapsed to the honest lens of public transparency, the Hamas card is once again played with almost sneering contempt for the world’s ability to pierce the half-truths that fly, each day, alongside the Star of David cast throughout the occupied skyline that is Palestine.
Time and time again, many have been an all too willing, if not complicit, party to Israel’s deflective use of Hamas to explain away the inexplicable: just how proportionality can ever be manipulated to excuse an unchecked attack by the 16th most powerful military force of our time, with thousands of tanks, aircraft and combat ships, with a multibillion dollar yearly military budget, upon a largely tattered urban enclave armed with little more than the determination and spirit of its long embattled people.
It works. It has for decades in a world that long ago condensed the “good” to those with proper skin tone, religion and culture and the “bad” to those who invariably pray five times a day, not once each Saturday or Sunday.
There are distinct components to Israel’s grand witting misspeak about Hamas and Palestinians: The first is a desperate attempt to recast who and what the movement is and from where it has come.
On this point, Israel is to be applauded as it has apparently, successfully, packaged and sold an entirely fictitious representation of the movement to those who seek little more than a fabled narrative to maintain their dutiful support of its colonial project.
I am no stranger to Hamas. To me the movement is not an academic pursuit or abstract intellectual curiosity that only takes shape whenever it confronts the brute force that is Israel…be it in the 365 square kilometer (141 sq mi) confines of Gaza or in the streets and universities of the West Bank. To the contrary, I have been privileged to represent more than a few of its leaders for some two decades. On occasion, the movement has sought my counsel on issues of international law prior to making its decision on how best to proceed with a given matter.
Many of these men and women have also been close personal friends for years. I have often shared a warm welcome and meal at a family dinner table or an overnight stay with Hamas leaders throughout my travels in the Middle East–on occasion against the backdrop of on-going Israeli carnage or in its aftermath.
I have known well most of its founders and current leadership including those that have either been assassinated or languish, today, in Israeli prisons and elsewhere denied any scrap of justice or due process. Over the years, I have spent literally thousands of hours meeting with movement leaders in prisons, at conferences, in Palestine and elsewhere.
These are virtuous, dedicated, nationalists who seek not power for the sake of it or personal profit but have long stood among those who have fought against overwhelming odds and violence to lead the way toward a Palestinian home built of the marrow of freedom, justice and equality.
Contrary to the Israeli and Western effort to reduce Hamas to a collective of essentially unschooled or unsophisticated foreign born so-called Islamists, nothing could be further from the truth. Hamas is a movement born of Palestine, composed of Palestinians who were raised on the very streets where the blood of their people and families, has been lost to the occupation terror imposed by Israel. For the many who suffer from a now decade old blockade of Gaza–with its lack of food, water, medicine and mobility–Hamas and their families have known the same isolation and paid a like price.
Comprised, originally, of physicians, scholars, academics, lawyers, scientists, artists, religious leaders and farmers, it is a movement that evolved of necessity, born in the vacuum of what would obviously become the failed vision of Oslo.
More than a few of these leaders escaped the tyranny of Israeli oppression, years before, to obtain education and accomplishment abroad–only later to give up the fruits of all personal success to return to their homeland and fight for its liberation.
Over the years, Hamas evolved from a social service network, throughout Palestine, to become an armed guard of the Palestinian people through the discrete Qassam Brigades and an elected political movement swept to power in 2006. That victory came in what was described, then, by former President Carter, as the most transparent and successful electoral process he had observed as a monitor over his many years of such service in the Middle East.
Not long thereafter, all of Gaza was punished for the temerity of its electoral will through the imposition of the embargo that a decade later remains in place as an on-going stranglehold on the health, welfare and safety of its two million residents, punctuated by massive deadly Israeli onslaughts every few years.
Portrayed as little more than a terrorist group, one story, in particular, speaks volumes about the depth and breadth of the movement. Invited by one of its top leaders to attend a luncheon outside of Palestine, I arrived at a fourth floor walk-up to find most of its leadership, along with a number of other Palestinian resistance movements, engaged in a debate. No, it was not a heated argument over political tactics or military targets. During the next two hours, tempers flared over whether, and to what extent, language immersion should be included as a teaching tool in grammar school education throughout Palestine. The discussion was led by a PhD linguist schooled by legendary MIT professor, Noam Chomsky. Hebrew was among the languages to be learned.
I am not naive or starry-eyed. Like all political and national liberation movements Hamas has had its problems and made its share of missteps. Nevertheless, Israel’s long-standing attempts to reduce it to a selfish and reckless collective willing to sacrifice the interests and safety of Palestinians, including their own families, to the winds of cheap political gain, is just so much nefariously crafted delusion.
Although this unashamed invention has found a warm welcome in the insipid language of Zionist supporters and ignorant pundits, those with informed knowledge or experience with Hamas understand this call for what it is: a shameful and typical deflection from Israeli responsibility for what can only be called a willing slaughter, these last few months, that ranks among its many others… always, of course, because it had no choice.
The notion that the movement would ask or send people of Gaza to certain injury or death, at the hands of Israeli assassins lying in wait for all to see, reeks of the grand imperial lie that has been Israel for seventy years.
It is no less repugnant than the racist proposition that Palestinians, themselves, care so little about their own families or community that they would willingly sacrifice them en masse to gain the momentary sympathy of a world long inured to their isolation and loss of liberty and life.
Born of supremacist arrogance, Israel now seeks to reduce millions of Palestinians, who have struggled for generations, to little more than unthinking sheeple awaiting instructions from Hamas on when, and how, to express their will or gain their independence. Those with any connection to Palestine, or its long oppressed people, know all too well that the bars of its prison will never quiet its innate thirst for justice and freedom.
In Israel, the expedient conflation of victimizer and victim… of occupier and occupied… is brazen and readily transparent; an indecent marriage of those that would pull the trigger with others who fall prey to its barbaric squeeze. There is simply no honest or moral equivalence.
Yet, in a world that has long found Palestinians to be unworthy of equality and safeguard, this perverse union should come as no surprise. Indeed, willful blindness to Israeli slaughter is the explosive fuel that empowers its rage.
For decades, now, Hamas has become a convenient foil for Israel and its compliant choir after each new horror. Meanwhile, Israel walks away to rearm… leaving Palestine to bury her children, but not her hope.
Against the wail of broken dreams and lost lives, the Great Return March, marches on. For Palestinians, there is no choice.
Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rightsactivist in New York City.
He has done extensive work in the Middle Eastand Africa.
May 29, 2018
Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials & The Meaning Of Grime
Christopher Owens with a review of a book that is a celebration of grime.
Masculinity gets a bad rep these days.
In the era of #MeToo, and cultural Marxism deconstructing everything, men are subsequently being told to both "man up" and "stop behaving in stereotypical male fashion." A time for questioning and reflection.
But for young black males, who are being celebrated and condemned for their "hyper masculinity", as well as being targeted by police and politicians, it's a time for righteous anger. Something that this book taps into.
First and foremost, however, this book is a celebration of grime. Now over 15 years old, the genre is something that Britain can be proud of. By taking the formula established by hip hop in America, adding both a dance element to it through jungle/drum n bass and the patois of reggae, grime has built a lasting legacy around the world.
With its roots in the streets and council flats where pirate radios would broadcast battle raps and soundsystem clashes, grime is a culture just as much as punk, heavy metal and hip hop. A uniquely British genre, with British rules and regulations, it has recently begun to be celebrated via retrospectives. And Hold Tight is a worthy addition to the conversation surrounding this music.
Growing up in East London, author Jeff Boakye had a front seat view to the rise and rise of the genre. With Hold Tight, he lists 60 odd songs that are essential to the development of grime. Here, the reader is taken through an alternative history of modern Britain. Starting off with reggae, going through UK hip hop, jungle/drum n bass and 2 step and then the early songs that constituted grime, Boakye gives concise and passionate commentary on each track and why these particular ones are worthy of attention.
As a 32 year old white Irish male, I have very fond memories of hearing some of the songs listed in here for the first time: '21 Seconds' by So Solid Crew really was a song that stuck out among the homogenised American hip hop and R'n'B that was dominating the UK charts at the time. Sounding like the music had been put together on a Playstation 2, it was a track made for clubs, but not glitzy VIP clubs the way Craig David as well as Shanks and Bigfoot were. This was club music for the streets.
So Solid Crew's subsequent notoriety in the media (MP's singling them out for blame in the war on gang culture) was something that stretched back to the "video nasties" and any other moral panic you care to remember: pin the blame for vast socio-economic and political issues on an easily identifiable target that can be contained.
'I Luv U' by Dizzee Rascal was another event. Although it was three years since So Solid Crew, it felt like a lifetime ago. This song took the basic blueprint of what we'd been hearing, but making it noisier, bass heavy and almost nihilistic. But clubby at the same time. Quite a remarkable feat.
And it's no surprise that the album it came from (2003's 'Boy in Da Corner') remains a landmark record, not only for grime but for 21st century music. Very much of its time, but still sounding futuristic.
It's nice to see Skepta get a few chapters devoted to him. From hearing him on 'Intensive Snare' (easily the definitive dubstep tune for me), I've loved his coarse delivery but also the speed of his raps and the intricacy of his wordplay. Even if he has, at times, seemed desperate for a mainstream breakthrough (working with comedy pop/hip hop act N-Dubz for example), Boakye contextualises these missteps and points out that the guy is one of a line of grime artists who pulled similar stunts (Skepta would subsequently be rewarded with the Mercury Music Award for his 2016 LP, 'Konnichiwa')
As a celebration and examination of a genre that has sustained itself for nearly twenty years, and is seeing a commercial renaissance in 2018, Hold Tight is an exceptional read. As a study of black masculinity in the 21st century, it has its moments but it tends to be episodic and it's only really when we get towards the end that it is discussed in a linear fashion.
Nonetheless, what is offered up (the notion of the hyper masculine black man, the fetishisation of guns etc, notion of race vs realness) is thought provoking and makes you reinterpret what you'd traditionally thought of the genre. Boakye makes a link between New Labour's post September 11th obsession with CCTV's, ASBO's (remember them?) and how these correlate with grime's rise to prominence in the same period.
It's clear that young black males, who have been stereotyped and criminalised by police since the SUS laws in the 70's, growing up in Blairite Britain had to fend off other attempts at the state outlawing their main avenue of expression (the infamous Form 696, only scrapped last year, is discussed). Boakye is clear that educationalists are the people who can help challenge preconceived notions, and his essays at the end of the book demonstrate Boakye to be someone who is up for the challenge and someone who can make a change.
With scene godfather Wiley publishing his autobiography and This is Grime hitting the shelves in recent years, it seems the contributions are going to continue for a long while. Long may this continue.
Jeffrey Boakye, 2017, Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials & The Meaning of Grime Influx Press, ISBN-13: 978-1910312254
Masculinity gets a bad rep these days.
In the era of #MeToo, and cultural Marxism deconstructing everything, men are subsequently being told to both "man up" and "stop behaving in stereotypical male fashion." A time for questioning and reflection.
But for young black males, who are being celebrated and condemned for their "hyper masculinity", as well as being targeted by police and politicians, it's a time for righteous anger. Something that this book taps into.
First and foremost, however, this book is a celebration of grime. Now over 15 years old, the genre is something that Britain can be proud of. By taking the formula established by hip hop in America, adding both a dance element to it through jungle/drum n bass and the patois of reggae, grime has built a lasting legacy around the world.
With its roots in the streets and council flats where pirate radios would broadcast battle raps and soundsystem clashes, grime is a culture just as much as punk, heavy metal and hip hop. A uniquely British genre, with British rules and regulations, it has recently begun to be celebrated via retrospectives. And Hold Tight is a worthy addition to the conversation surrounding this music.
Growing up in East London, author Jeff Boakye had a front seat view to the rise and rise of the genre. With Hold Tight, he lists 60 odd songs that are essential to the development of grime. Here, the reader is taken through an alternative history of modern Britain. Starting off with reggae, going through UK hip hop, jungle/drum n bass and 2 step and then the early songs that constituted grime, Boakye gives concise and passionate commentary on each track and why these particular ones are worthy of attention.
As a 32 year old white Irish male, I have very fond memories of hearing some of the songs listed in here for the first time: '21 Seconds' by So Solid Crew really was a song that stuck out among the homogenised American hip hop and R'n'B that was dominating the UK charts at the time. Sounding like the music had been put together on a Playstation 2, it was a track made for clubs, but not glitzy VIP clubs the way Craig David as well as Shanks and Bigfoot were. This was club music for the streets.
So Solid Crew's subsequent notoriety in the media (MP's singling them out for blame in the war on gang culture) was something that stretched back to the "video nasties" and any other moral panic you care to remember: pin the blame for vast socio-economic and political issues on an easily identifiable target that can be contained.
'I Luv U' by Dizzee Rascal was another event. Although it was three years since So Solid Crew, it felt like a lifetime ago. This song took the basic blueprint of what we'd been hearing, but making it noisier, bass heavy and almost nihilistic. But clubby at the same time. Quite a remarkable feat.
And it's no surprise that the album it came from (2003's 'Boy in Da Corner') remains a landmark record, not only for grime but for 21st century music. Very much of its time, but still sounding futuristic.
It's nice to see Skepta get a few chapters devoted to him. From hearing him on 'Intensive Snare' (easily the definitive dubstep tune for me), I've loved his coarse delivery but also the speed of his raps and the intricacy of his wordplay. Even if he has, at times, seemed desperate for a mainstream breakthrough (working with comedy pop/hip hop act N-Dubz for example), Boakye contextualises these missteps and points out that the guy is one of a line of grime artists who pulled similar stunts (Skepta would subsequently be rewarded with the Mercury Music Award for his 2016 LP, 'Konnichiwa')
As a celebration and examination of a genre that has sustained itself for nearly twenty years, and is seeing a commercial renaissance in 2018, Hold Tight is an exceptional read. As a study of black masculinity in the 21st century, it has its moments but it tends to be episodic and it's only really when we get towards the end that it is discussed in a linear fashion.
Nonetheless, what is offered up (the notion of the hyper masculine black man, the fetishisation of guns etc, notion of race vs realness) is thought provoking and makes you reinterpret what you'd traditionally thought of the genre. Boakye makes a link between New Labour's post September 11th obsession with CCTV's, ASBO's (remember them?) and how these correlate with grime's rise to prominence in the same period.
It's clear that young black males, who have been stereotyped and criminalised by police since the SUS laws in the 70's, growing up in Blairite Britain had to fend off other attempts at the state outlawing their main avenue of expression (the infamous Form 696, only scrapped last year, is discussed). Boakye is clear that educationalists are the people who can help challenge preconceived notions, and his essays at the end of the book demonstrate Boakye to be someone who is up for the challenge and someone who can make a change.
With scene godfather Wiley publishing his autobiography and This is Grime hitting the shelves in recent years, it seems the contributions are going to continue for a long while. Long may this continue.
Jeffrey Boakye, 2017, Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials & The Meaning of Grime Influx Press, ISBN-13: 978-1910312254
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