Tag: Gaza

When Fear Becomes Strategy: Anti-semitism, Aliyah, and the Calculus of Zionism

On By Tony TaylorIn History, Politics1 Comment

Siyavash Doostkhah, an Iranian refugee himself, sends this thoughtful and provocative piece from Australia, which seeks both to engage with contradiction and to peer beneath the surface of things.

Pro-Palestine demo, Sydney, 2025. Thanks to sydneycriminallawyers.com.au

In recent months, Australia has witnessed an unprecedented rise in both impassioned pro-Palestinian activism and deeply troubling anti-Semitic incidents. Tens of thousands have marched through the streets of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, voicing legitimate grief and fury over the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. At the same time, Jewish schools have been defaced, community centres targeted, and Jewish Australians report growing fear and isolation.

This dual reality, empathy for Palestinians and anxiety within Jewish communities, demands careful and principled reflection. But equally important is this: Why is the Israeli government, self-proclaimed protector of the Jewish people, not doing more to counter this rising tide of antisemitism?

The silence, or, at best, tepid response, from Netanyahu’s administration isn’t just puzzling. It may be strategic.

There is a long, uncomfortable history in which fear has been used not only as a political tool but as an engine of migration. The Israeli state’s Zionist foundations have always relied, in part, on Aliyah, the migration of Jews to Israel, as both a demographic imperative and a spiritual calling. Throughout the 20th century, waves of migration were often triggered or accelerated by persecution: from Nazi Germany and post-war Europe to crises in Arab countries, Ethiopia, and the former Soviet Union. Often under the banner of rescue, but always with a demographic calculus in mind. Fear has long been a midwife to the Zionist project. In this vision, a swelling Jewish population is not merely a response to antisemitism, it is a geopolitical lever.

In the current moment, with the concept of Eretz Yisrael HaShlema “Greater Israel” driving Israeli policy and settlement expansion, we must ask: is fear again being used to accelerate Aliyah? Could the Israeli state be tolerating, or even quietly capitalising on, a global climate of antisemitism to encourage Jews to migrate “home”?

The Aliyah narrative has become more than a cultural call; it is a lever of statecraft. If Jews in Paris, New York, or Sydney no longer feel safe, Israel presents itself as refuge. But if Israel actively stokes the conflict that fuels that fear, through disproportionate violence, provocative incursions, and refusal to engage in diplomatic solutions, then we must ask: Is it still acting in the interest of Jewish safety, or in the interest of a nationalistic expansion project?

For progressive Australians, particularly those committed to Palestinian justice, the challenge is delicate. Solidarity must not slide into complicity. There is a fine but vital line between opposing the Israeli occupation and inadvertently legitimising oppressive actors such as Hamas or the Islamic Republic of Iran, both of whom exploit Palestinian suffering while offering no vision of human rights or freedom. Hamas’s violent tactics and Iran’s authoritarian repression cannot be sanitised simply because they oppose Israel.

Just yesterday, a protestor in Sydney was seen holding a poster of Ayatollah Khamenei, the brutal dictator of Iran, at the pro-Palestinian rally across the Harbour Bridge. That image, with thousands of Australians in the background, will no doubt be used by the Iranian regime and its supporters to manufacture legitimacy. This is how protests are hijacked.

I first encountered this tactic in the 80’s, when I was a refugee in India. On a crowded train platform, I witnessed a man tossing handfuls of coins into the air. Predictably, a crowd quickly gathered. Then, suddenly, placards bearing the image of Rajavi, the leader of the MEK organisation, were raised in the crowd, and someone began photographing the scene. These photos would later be used to suggest mass support for the MEK among Iranian dissidents in exile, an illusion created with a bag of coins and a camera.

We cannot afford to be naive. In Australia, outrage at Israeli state violence must not drift into antisemitism, overt or coded. When Jewish businesses are attacked in Melbourne, when graffiti defiles synagogues in Sydney, or when Jewish Australians feel compelled to hide symbols of their identity, it does not weaken the occupation, it strengthens it. It reinforces the Israeli narrative that the diaspora is unsafe and that Aliyah is the only answer.

There is an old strategy at play: If Jews feel unwelcome elsewhere, the Zionist project gains strength. If Palestinians are framed as irredeemable threats, then Israeli expansionism proceeds unchecked. The answer, for those of us who reject both antisemitism and colonialism, is to break this cycle, not feed it.

We must hold the Israeli government to account, yes, but we must also call out those who hijack solidarity for their own bigotry. We must demand justice for Palestinians, but not by echoing the authoritarian rhetoric of Hamas or Tehran. And we must ensure Jewish Australians are not collateral damage in a geopolitical game they did not consent to play.

True solidarity is principled. It condemns ethnic cleansing and occupation without resorting to hate. It recognises that antisemitism, even when disguised as anti-Zionism, serves no liberation. And it sees clearly how fear, if left unchecked, can become a weapon in the hands of those who seek to redraw borders, not build bridges.

If we are to help build a future where both Palestinians and Israelis can live with dignity and peace, then progressive Australia must sharpen its lens, and its conscience.

With their permission I attach the dialogue between Siyavash and Rasheed, which unfolded on Facebook following the appearance of Siyavash’s original. I do so because such a healthy exchange of opinion is all too rare in the intolerant and suffocating atmosphere dominant today.

Rasheed Abu Hamda responds to Siyavash:

In Brisbane where the protests took place in the last two years there were many jewish voices who spoke against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. And no one made them feel unwelcome otherwise they would’ve stopped attending the protests.

Anecdotally, at least in Brisbane I don’t think that antisemitism is disguising as anti-Zionism.

There was a shop in Paddington that was named and shamed because they were very open about supporting Israeli practices in occupied Palestine. This was an example where an Australian Jewish were overtly in support of Israeli terrorism. I haven’t heard of a single account in Brisbane where Australian Jewish were targeted because of their faith. Targeted because they sided with the apartheid state? Yes, especially the ones who went to Israel to serve in the IDF. My other take on the article is Iranian regime and HAMAS painted with a similar brush is not tactful. HAMAS was a direct produce of 50 years of occupation. It’s like a foster kid who was removed from a violent home and continued to move from family to another. A foster kid that was failed by the system – the international community that let Israel go on and on ( for decades) in their barabric attacks on Palestinians. And when the foster kid grown up and have more power to cause damage to the system, what do we do? We incarcerate the kid. Without taking responsibility (as international community) to acknowledge the systematic failure. The latter continue as we speak 77 years and counting. Addressing the symptoms is less effective than addressing the root cause of this chronic problem.

Siyavash replies:

 Hey Rasheed, I really appreciate you taking the time to reflect and share your thoughts, there’s clearly deep care in your words and I totally respect that. I just want to clarify a few things, not defensively, but to continue the dialogue with honesty.

Firstly, I never said Jewish people were being targeted at the protests themselves. In fact, I fully acknowledge and celebrate the many Jewish voices who stand in solidarity with Palestinians, those voices are powerful and necessary. But outside of those protest spaces, there have been disturbing incidents across Australia with many families reporting feeling unsafe just for being visibly or knowingly Jewish.

As someone who’s been part of anti-Zionist activism in Brisbane since the early days, when it was just a small handful of us, I’ve observed a real shift in recent years. There’s been a creeping conflation of “Israeli” and “Jew,” even in educated circles. I get where it’s coming from, people are angry, traumatised, and rightly horrified by what’s happening to Palestinians. But I think it’s dangerous when that anger is redirected, intentionally or not, at Jewish people more broadly.

You mentioned that Hamas is a result of decades of occupation. I hear that analogy, and yes, the international community absolutely bears responsibility for abandoning Palestinians. But I still think it’s important to be honest about how Hamas came to power. Its rise wasn’t entirely organic. Israel once saw Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO, helping it grow in the 80s to weaken secular Palestinian nationalism.

That’s what I was getting at when I grouped Hamas and the Iranian regime together, not because they’re the same, but because both have been propped up in various ways by external powers (including the West and Israel) when it suited their strategic interests. And now they serve as convenient “boogeymen” to justify continued military aggression and repression.

I also worry when I see some on the Western left romanticising these authoritarian groups simply because they oppose Israel. I’ve lived through this myself, as a refugee from Iran, I watched the left in my country get crushed by the very theocracy they once helped empower. The Iranian left thought they could ally with religious fundamentalists to bring down the Shah, and they were the first ones the regime turned on after the revolution.

It’s a tough, messy landscape. But I think we owe it to ourselves, and to the Palestinian people, to stay sharp, to question all forms of power, and to be wary of letting righteous anger cloud our ethics. We can (and must) be anti-occupation, anti-colonial, and still protect Jewish communities from harm and fear. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

Let’s keep talking.

Over to Rasheed

Thank you Siyavash for sharing your thoughts – I do appreciate you and your thoughts. The Jewish people participating in protests was just an example to demonstrate that tolerance exist providing they are not pro-zionism – sorry I should have clarified that in the first place, a room for improvement. And to hear there are Jewish families who are not pro Zionism are being harassed, it doesn’t sets well with me. As this is what Palestinians are been subjected to and this is what we are protesting against. Except what Palestinians are enduring is more than harassment. As a Palestinian who lived as a refugee for most of my life and lost family members and farming lands to the occupation forces, the question remain in front of mind is do we focus our efforts to expose and hopfully remove the Apartheid system – the main cause of disease, get distracted with addressing the by products of the occupation, or address both while lives are lost on a daily bases in Gaza, West Bank and more Palestinians inside Israel are further marginalised? I personally belive that we need to stop the fire first and stop the one who caused it in the first place prior to get the house back in shape. I’d love to hear your views in that regards especially the ones that are different from what I just shared. After all, I don’t know what I don’t know and multiple perspectives helps us to see the picture better. P.S. I do admire Jewish people who can see right through the fake face of Zionism considering the fears and traumas of many generations while living in Europe. It takes a huge amount of courage to do so.

All of which prompts Siyavash to respond:

Thank you for your heartfelt and grounded message. If I were to sum up my response in a spirit you might relate to, given your deep love for dance, I’d offer the quote often attributed to Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

It speaks to the kind of liberation we both long for, one where joy, dignity, and humanity are not sacrificed in the process of resistance.

You asked an important question about whether we should focus our energy on the system of apartheid or deal with its toxic by-products too. I think the two are deeply linked. From my experience in Iran, I saw firsthand what happens when we think the “enemy of my enemy could be our friend.” We threw our lot in with religious fundamentalists just because they opposed the Shah. That miscalculation cost us deeply. We didn’t realise that by fighting one form of oppression, we were handing power to something even more repressive. That enemy of our enemy quickly became our jailer.

In Persian we say: “از چاله به چاه افتادن” — “to fall from a pothole into a well.” And another saying: “اول چاه را بکن بعد مناره را بدزد” — “Dig the well before you steal the minaret.”

They’re old phrases, but they feel painfully relevant now.

I worry deeply that the incredible sacrifice and resistance of the Palestinian people might one day be co-opted or hijacked by forces that do not represent their dreams for freedom and dignity. I say this not from afar, but from the lessons carved into the Iranian soul over the last 45 years. I look at what Hamas has become, and who benefits from its existence, and I sincerely hope that the secular and nationalist movements can once again take the reins and chart a course for true liberation, free of both occupation and authoritarianism.

Your personal story touches me. Losing land, family, and a sense of home is a grief I cannot claim to fully understand, but I see its depth and weight in your words. Your clarity and refusal to let that grief turn into hate or tunnel vision is powerful. That’s the kind of strength that builds bridges, not just in politics, but between hearts.

I truly hope that in our lifetimes, we’ll sit together in a café in a free Gaza, maybe even during a Waziz reunion concert, and look back on these conversations with gratitude, for having spoken honestly, and for having listened with open hearts.

Much love and respect

And Rasheed closes the conversation:

Thank you Siyavash for your kind and sweet response. I must say your writing style beyond being objective is charming and engaging. How did you do that?

CRUSHING DISSENT AND RESISTANCE

On By Tony TaylorIn History, neoliberalism, Philosophy, Politics2 Comments

I started to put this hardly controversial post together yesterday morning and it’s already been overtaken by numerous pieces despairing at Labour’s proscription of Palestine Action. A direct action group seeking to raise awareness of the obscene genocide in Gaza, of the war crimes of a terrorist State is without any due process defined as a terrorist organisation. Even the Guardian is forced to descend from the fence in an article, ‘It’s a complete assault on free speech’: how Palestine Action was targeted for proscription as terrorists’

The article notes, if the group is proscribed next week, as is expected, being a member of or inviting support for Palestine Action will carry a maximum penalty of 14 years. Wearing clothing or publishing a logo that arouses reasonable suspicion that someone supports Palestine Action will carry a sentence of up to six months.

In a week’s time we wait to applaud the Guardian’s recovery of its liberal tradition, whereby the paper explicitly backs the right of Palestine Action [PA] to exist and resist.

The arrogant and ignorant authoritarianism at the heart of today’s Labour Party is exemplified by the Home Secretary’s condemnation of PA’s militant tactics. In 2018 she spoke in the House of Commons, expressing her admiration for the suffragette movement, and celebrated its herstory by wearing a rosette in the suffragette colours of purple, white and green.

It seems to have slipped her mind that the suffragettes were not shy when it came to attacking the patriarchal state that denied them even a voice. Thus, at 6.10am on the 19 February 1913, a bomb exploded at the summer house that was being built for Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, at Walton-on-the-Hill, causing damage estimated at £500 (modern equivalent nearly £55,000 in today’s money). On the evening of the incident Emmeline Pankhurst, one of the leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), claimed responsibility for the bomb at a meeting at Cory Hall, Cardiff, where she admits that they have “blown up the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s house”. Pankhurst was willing to be arrested for the incident saying “I have advised, I have incited, I have conspired”; and that if she is arrested for the incident she shall prove that the “punishment unjustly imposed upon women who have no voice in making the laws cannot be carried out”. We presume the Home Secretary might well retrospectively need to proscribe the WSPU as a terrorist organisation.

See this great piece that elaborates the story, Lloyd George and the Suffragette Bomb Outrage

And, let’s not forget……….

Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp
1981 – 2000  

On the 5th September 1981, the Welsh group “Women for Life on Earth” arrived on Greenham Common, Berkshire, England. They marched from Cardiff with the intention of challenging, by debate, the decision to site 96 Cruise nuclear missiles there. On arrival they delivered a letter to the Base Commander which among other things stated ‘We fear for the future of all our children and for the future of the living world which is the basis of all life’.

When their request for a debate was ignored they set up a Peace Camp just outside the fence surrounding RAF Greenham Common Airbase. They took the authorities by surprise and set the tone for a most audacious and lengthy protest that lasted 19 years. Within 6 months the camp became known as the Women’s Peace Camp and gained recognition both nationally and internationally by drawing attention to the base with well publicised imaginative gatherings.This unique initiative threw a spotlight on ‘Cruise’ making it a national and international political issue throughout the 80s and early 90s.

The presence of women living outside an operational nuclear base 24 hours a day, brought a new perspective to the peace movement – giving it leadership and a continuous focus. At a time when the USA and the USSR were competing for nuclear superiority in Europe, the Women’s Peace Camp on Greenham Common was seen as an edifying influence. The commitment to non-violence and non-alignment gave the protest an authority that was difficult to dismiss – journalists from almost every corner of the globe found their way to the camp and reported on the happenings and events taking place there.

Living conditions were primitive. Living outside in all kinds of weather especially in the winter and rainy seasons was testing. Without electricity, telephone, running water etc, frequent evictions and vigilante attacks, life was difficult. In spite of the conditions women, from many parts of the UK and abroad, came to spend time at the camp to be part of the resistance to nuclear weapons. It was a case of giving up comfort for commitment.

The protest, committed to disrupting the exercises of the USAF, was highly effective. Nuclear convoys leaving the base to practice nuclear war, were blockaded, tracked to their practice area and disrupted.Taking non-violent direct action meant that women were arrested, taken to court and sent to prison.

The conduct and integrity of the protest mounted by the Women’s Peace Camp was instrumental in the decision to remove the Cruise Missiles from Greenham Common. Under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the missiles were flown back to the USA along with the USAF personnel in 91/92. The Treaty signed by the USA and the USSR in 1987, is in accord with the stated position held by women, in defence of their actions on arrest, when it states :

“Conscious that nuclear weapons would have devastating consequences for all mankind”

A number of initiatives were made by women in Court testing the legality of nuclear weapons. Also, challenges to the conduct and stewardship of the Ministry of Defence as landlords of Greenham Common. In 1992 Lord Taylor, Lord Chief Justice, delivering the Richard Dimbleby Lecture for the BBC, referring to the Bylaws case ( won by Greenham women in the House of Lords in 1990) said ‘…it would be difficult to suggest a group whose cause and lifestyle were less likely to excite the sympathies and approval of five elderly judges. Yet it was five Law Lords who allowed the Appeal and held that the Minister had exceeded his powers in framing the byelaws so as to prevent access to common land’.

The Camp was brought to a close in 2000 to make way for the Commemorative and Historic Site on the land that housed the original Women’s Peace Camp at Yellow Gate Greenham Common between the years 1981 – 2000.

Sarah Hipperson

This remarkable book tells how the women of the Yellow Gate peace camp at Greenham Common took on the law – and in some instances won.

They challenged the laws under which they were arrested and as Judge Hague said said in the County Court “…they are no strangers to litigation, both criminal and civil. In the courts they have sometimes had a considerable measure of success, and indeed they are immortalised in the Law Reports in connection with two of their successes in the higher courts.”

This book offers inspiration and encouragement to all who take part in non-violent direct action or want to challenge the powers of the state or large institutions. In its detailed descriptions of each case, it suggests how this can be done successfully.

The last chapter tells the story of the Commemorative and Historic Site, a garden of peace where once the women of Yellow Gate camp lived and confronted the Cruise Missiles – and the powers of the state.

To buy a copy of this book, send a cheque for £9.98 (+ £1.00 p & p) payable to ‘Greenham Publications’ to 15 Sydney Road, London E11 2JW or order one from your bookseller (ISBN 0-9550122-0-1)

AND AS OF NOW

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/25/mass-protests-uk-nuclear-deterrent-expansion

The biggest expansion of the UK’s nuclear deterrent in a generation will put the nation on the “nuclear frontline” and mobilise a new generation of anti-nuclear weapons protesters, campaign groups have warned.

Anti-nuclear and anti-arms campaign groups are planning mass protests against nuclear weapons – of a kind not seen since the days of the Greenham Common peace camp in the 80s – in response to government plans to significantly expand its nuclear deterrent by buying a squadron of American fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) protested on Saturday, June 28th at RAF Marham in Norfolk, which is used by the US air force.

Campaign groups said the decision to buy 12 F-35A jets, which are capable of carrying conventional arms, and also the US B61-12 gravity bomb, a variant of which has more than three times the explosive power of the weapon dropped on Hiroshima, had been taken without parliamentary debate and undermined democracy.

Returning to Iran, Siya Vash, reports that within the convulsions inside the country suppression of dissent deepens.

The paranoid and humiliated Revolutionary Guards in Iran have been sending the following text messages to people’s mobile numbers:

Warning
Following or joining pages affiliated with the Zionist regime constitutes a criminal act and is subject to legal prosecution. Therefore, given the recorded activity of this number on virtual pages of the Zionist regime, you are hereby warned to immediately remove supportive comments and likes, and exit these pages without delay. Failure to do so will result in legal action in accordance with Article 8 of the Law on Confronting Hostile Actions of the Zionist Regime.
Deputy for Social Affairs and Crime Prevention, Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Honourable People of Iran


In recent days, your exemplary cooperation and solidarity with your servants in the IRGC Intelligence Organisation—through public reporting—has not only altered the enemy’s calculations but has also led to their defeat on the battlefield. Therefore, we kindly ask you to continue this valuable approach and report any suspicious activity by contacting 110, 113, or 114, or through available channels on domestic messaging platforms.
IRGC Intelligence Organisation

In a philosophical atmosphere, all of the above would be open to criticism, agreement and disagreement. However the creeping authoritarianism I have sought to address since the ascent of neoliberalism in the 1980’s, its fetish of individualism and its hatred of autonomous collectivity has gathered pace across the decades, not least during the manufactured COVID pandemic. Central to the shift into an era of technocratic capitalism is the Expert, who takes different forms and cannot be questioned. To do so is to be beyond the pale. This demand for conformity and obedience is profoundly anti-democratic. And its prophets and disciples come from both the traditional Left and Right. If I get my act together I will try to put flesh on these bare bones.

A WAR FORETOLD – AN IRANIAN PERSPECTIVE

On By Tony TaylorIn History, PoliticsLeave a comment

In recent weeks I have despaired. Such anguish can feel, can seem self-centred and indulgent, less than genuine. As such I hardly share it publicly. Meanwhile, neighbours and friends are getting on with their lives, seemingly unaware of the evil enveloping the world. Or perhaps they are burning inside with anger and, like me, are too embarrassed to speak up. knowing they will not be thanked for disturbing the peace.

Earlier I was intending, at the very least, to post a couple of articles about the Israeli declaration of war on Iran, when I received this powerful and personal message from my dear friend, Siya Vash, who I was privileged to meet In Queensland, Australia almost a decade ago. We were together for only a few days but our friendship has deepened despite the oceans that separate us.

Siya Vash begins:

A War Foretold: The Manufactured Crisis Behind the Iran–Israel–US Conflict

The current war between Iran and the Israel–US alliance did not erupt suddenly. It is the result of decades of manipulation, ideological obsession, and calculated imperial ambition. It is a war seeded in lies, watered with treachery, and now blooming into a catastrophe many of us feared, because we have lived it before.

Memory of Fire: The Iran–Iraq War Never Ended

I was a teenager when the Iran–Iraq War began. Like many Iranians, we were told it would be over quickly. A border skirmish, a short-lived aggression. But it dragged on for eight horrific years, a conflict that devoured hundreds of thousands of lives and left deep, still-bleeding scars across our land.

I still remember the sirens. The sound of missiles and bombs landing. The fear etched into the faces of my friends, some of whom are still alive, barely. They are dying a slow, painful death caused by chemical weapons dropped by Saddam Hussein, weapons supplied to him by Western countries who watched from a distance, hands stained but silent. American AWACS radar planes even helped Saddam locate Iranian troop gatherings which he then bombed with poison.

This memory is why I now look at this war, this unfolding confrontation with Israel and the West with the same dread. The same lie is being told again. The same script, only updated for the digital age. And once again, it is the Iranian people who will suffer.

Netanyahu’s Eternal Alarm: The Cry of the Wolf

Since the early 1990s, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned the world again and again that Iran is “just months away” from acquiring a nuclear bomb. He has sounded this alarm so often, in so many forums from the Knesset to the UN, from U.S. Congress to global media that it has become the central pillar of Israel’s foreign policy narrative.

Yet these claims have been repeatedly contradicted by intelligence agencies, including Israel’s own Mossad and the CIA. They acknowledge Iran’s enrichment activity but have found no evidence of an active weapons program.

Still, Netanyahu’s warnings like a wolf crying for the camera have served their purpose: stirring panic, securing Western support, and justifying pre-emptive aggression. The Zionist lobby in the U.S. and Europe has amplified this message, pushing American and European leaders toward confrontation. It worked in Iraq. It’s working again this time, with Iran in the crosshairs.

The JCPOA: A Deal That Could Have Prevented War

In 2015, the world had a choice. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and the P5+1 nations, offered a diplomatic solution: Iran would strictly limit its nuclear program, subject to the most rigorous inspections in the world, in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran upheld its end of the deal. The IAEA confirmed it. But in 2018, Donald Trump under pressure from Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia, and hawkish advisors unilaterally withdrew. Europe condemned the move but eventually aligned itself with the U.S. position in silence, revealing a tragic hypocrisy.

Now, the very nations that once praised the JCPOA insist that Iran has no right to enrich uranium at all not even for peaceful, civilian purposes. The goalposts have moved. The truth has been buried.

The Nuclear Hypocrisy of Israel

While Iran is demonised for enrichment under international supervision, Israel, a nuclear-armed state, remains outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has never admitted to its arsenal, but global consensus acknowledges that Israel possesses dozens, if not hundreds, of nuclear warheads.

Even worse, Israel has now been found guilty of genocide by the International Court of Justice and yet continues to enjoy Western backing, arms shipments, and diplomatic immunity. The historical trauma of Jewish suffering is weaponised again and again, not for healing, but for justifying new cycles of occupation, dispossession, and war.

Who else but Israel could commit war crimes while claiming perpetual victimhood?

Greater Israel and the Real Strategic Goal

The Iranian nuclear issue is a cover. The real objective is regional dominance. From assassinating scientists to bombing Damascus and Beirut, Israel’s long-term project is the dismantling of all resistance to its supremacy a vision loosely framed in the doctrine of “Greater Israel.”

Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah stand in its way. The path to their neutralization is paved with pretexts and nuclear hysteria has been the most effective one.

Empire in Decline, Searching for War

The United States, meanwhile, is a crumbling empire seeking relevance. After two decades of failed wars, the focus has shifted toward China. But Iran with its strategic location, energy reserves, and ties to Russia and China has become a critical pawn in Washington’s renewed Cold War.

Destroying Iran’s sovereignty isn’t just about Israel. It’s about control over the future of Asia. It’s about preventing the emergence of a new, multipolar order where America is no longer the center of the universe.

The West’s Two-Faced Game

Let us not forget: it was the West that helped bring Khomeini to power. They saw the Shah growing independent raising oil prices, strengthening the military and decided he was no longer controllable. Better to have a theocracy suspicious of both East and West than a nationalist king with ambition.

And now, some of the same Western elites who orchestrated that regime change are floating the idea of restoring Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, as a new monarch. The circle of manipulation never ends. Freedom has never been the goal, only influence.

The Future: Remembering the Past, Resisting the Present

We have seen this story before. We have lived it. We remember what chemical war feels like. We know what it means to bury children whose only crime was being born on the wrong side of a border drawn by empires.

This new war was foretold. But it is not inevitable.

Iran may be battered, but it is not broken. The Iranian people despite their suffering under both foreign pressure and domestic repression are not passive pawns. They are resilient, resourceful, and rooted in a deep civilizational memory of resistance.

The West must reckon with its hypocrisy. And the world must finally ask: how many more lies, how many more dead, how many more wars before we say enough?

History will remember. Not just who launched the first missile but who wrote the script.

Complementary to Siya Vash’s calm yet intense explanation of how he is seeing matters unfold, I offer in addition these alternative and differing critiques of the present nightmare.

Israel’s attack on Iran: The violent new world being born is going to horrify you – Jonathan Cook

This is a key moment in the Pentagon’s 20-year plan for “global full-spectrum dominance”: a unipolar world in which the US is unconstrained by military rivals or the imposition of international law. A world in which a tiny, unaccountable elite, enriched by wars, dictate terms to the rest of us.

If all this sounds like a sociopath’s approach to foreign relations, that is because it is. Years of impunity for Israel and the US have brought us to this point. Both feel entitled to destroy what remains of an international order that does not let them get precisely what they want.

The current birth pangs will grow. If you believe in human rights, in limits on the power of government, in the use of diplomacy before military aggression, in the freedoms you grew up with, the new world being born is going to horrify you.

The Function of Stupidity in History – Jeff Noonan

Consider the profound moral stupidity of Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz’s pronouncement that Khameini is a “modern day Hitler” that “can no longer be allowed to exist” and that the missile strike on the hospital in southern Israel was a war crimes. One simply cannot believe the moral blindness of a man who belongs to a government whose armed forces have destroyed every hospital in Gaza, almost every house, shoots people begging for food that Israel has made artifically scarce and killed tens of thousands of people. All necessary, of course! If Khameini is Hitler for partially damaging one hospital what is Netanyahu for ordering the destruction of the whole life-infrastructure of Gaza?

A war criminal?

The War Against Iran: 30 Years in the Making – Piers Robinson

Whatever happens, Western publics should be under no illusion as to how this situation has come to be. The conflicts are the direct consequence of our governments and their associated military industrial complexes pursuing policies of war and, to do so, engaging in covert actions and major deceptions, which include the 9/11 false flag as well as the utilisation of brutal extremist groups in countries such as Syia. The death toll from these conflicts runs well into the millions while the misery is incalculable.

Propaganda, deception and lies, all in the name of war, are becoming firmly established as the parting legacy of the Western empire.

The American Game: Playing and Being Played on the Road to Nuclear War – Edward Curtin

“To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”                        Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh

The U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that. Without waging wars, the U.S. economy, as presently constituted, would collapse. It is an economy based on fantasy and fake money with a national debt over 36 trillion dollars that will never be repaid. That’s another illusion. But I am speaking of pipe dreams, am I not?

And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their indifference and ignorance of its ramifications throughout the society and more importantly, its effects in death and destruction on the rest of the world. But that’s how it goes as their focus is on the masked faces that face each other on the electoral stage of the masquerade ball every four years. Liars all.

But they all speak the double-speak that creates pipe-dreams on the road to nuclear war.

Will we ever stop believing them before it is too late?

If, by chance, you read any of the above, not for a moment, do I expect you to embrace uncritically these viewpoints. I do hope for a provisional and questioning response, the very basis of give and take, a critical dialogue. I do hope for a response that refuses the cowardly, immoral and unethical ambivalence and ambiguity of the liberal and professional mouthpiece, that is the Guardian newspaper. And, for my sins, I do skim its pages everyday, hoping for a moment when it speaks plainly at last, when it condemns without caveat the genocide in Gaza and now the attack on Iran.

Beggaring belief, Christ remains still in the rubble

On By Tony TaylorIn History, PoliticsLeave a comment

Over a year ago I drew attention to the 2023 Christmas sermon given so eloquently by the Reverend Munther Isaac in Bethlehem.

Christ in the Rubble of Gaza

It seems unbelievable that the slaughter of the innocents continues; that the calculated genocide pursued by the Zionist Israeli government remains its official policy, afforded succour and ammunition on a daily basis by the USA, the UK and the EU.

With a heavy heart I can do no more than offer the Reverend’s 2024 calm. yet anguished reflection on the situation facing Palestinians today. I can but weep.

“‘Never again’ should mean never again to all peoples,” Munther says in his sermon. “‘Never again’ has become ‘yet again’ — yet again to supremacy, yet again to racism and yet again to genocide. And sadly, ‘never again’ has become yet again for the weaponization of the Bible and the silence and complicity of the Western church, yet again for the church siding with power, the church siding with the empire.”

“So, today, after all this, of total destruction, annihilation, Gaza is erased — millions have become refugees and homeless, tens of thousands killed. And why is anyone still debating whether this is a genocide or not?”

“We’re still seeing images of children pulled from under the rubble. It’s unthinkable to me that it’s been more than 14 months now into this genocide, and we’re still seeing the same images. It seems like we’re powerless, and it seems that the world is content with letting this go on. And here in the West Bank, as we watch from Bethlehem what’s happening in Ramallah or Hebron, we wonder, ‘Are we next?’ Israel has made it clear they plan to annex the West Bank next year. What would this mean on the ground?”

“Our fear here in Bethlehem is that there is no one who’s going to hold Israel accountable.”

Yes, it has been 440 days. It is 440 days of Palestinians’ resilience, sumud. Indeed, it is 76 years of sumud. But we have not and will not lose hope. Yes, it is 76 years of an ongoing Nakba, but it is also 76 years of Palestinian sumud, clinging to our rights and justice of our cause, 76 years of praying and singing for peace. I was thinking about it. We are stubborn people. We continue to pray for peace year after year after year, and sing about peace, and we will continue to do so. And we will continue to echo the words of the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on Earth.”

As for an ageing, irreconcilable atheist like myself I can but pledge my unswerving support for the Palestinian cause and with the good Reverend pray for ‘peace on earth’.

A New Year begins in Gaza: the crisis and the carnage continue

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, History, PoliticsLeave a comment

A month ago, with some trepidation, it was agreed that our next Chatting Critically meeting would focus on the Israel/Palestine situation. It will take place on Wednesday, January 10th in the ‘Elpida’ kafeneio, Gavalohori, starting at 10.30 a.m.

As the coordinator of the group, I wanted to put together something of an introduction to help the discussion along. However, I’ve found this increasingly difficult as the tragedy unfolds. I’m conscious too that my allegiance to the Palestinian cause goes back to the mid-1970s. I’m hardly impartial.

Thus I’m doing no more than posing a few questions to think about before we get together, supplemented by links to a range of articles, the first of which is by the great independent journalist, John Pilger, who sadly died on New Year’s Eve.

  1. To what extent have we a grasp of the historical background to the conflict? The state of Israel was only founded in 1947 based on expelling thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. How was this justified and who were the players on the world stage, ensuring that this seizure of land happened?
  2. Israel’s establishment as an explicitly Jewish state is a primary point of contention, with many of the state’s critics arguing that this by nature casts non-Jews as second-class citizens with fewer rights. The 1950 Law of Return, for example, grants all Jews, as well as their children, grandchildren, and spouses, the right to move to Israel and automatically gain citizenship. Non-Jews do not have these rights. Palestinians and their descendants have no legal right to return to the lands their families held before being displaced in 1948 or 1967. Deep-rooted structural and social discrimination confirms the second-class status of Arabs within Israel, leading to the charge that Israel is an apartheid state? Is this claim legitimate?
  3. Does the appalling persecution of Jews across the centuries – for a diversity of reasons, not least in the early 20th century because they were seen as socialists. even communists and the obscenity of the Holocaust, the Final Solution – mean that Israel is exempt from moral or political criticism of its actions today – acknowledged war crimes or indeed perceived genocide?
  4. It is generally acknowledged at an international level, even if this is empty of any real meaning that the Palestinian Territories are prison camps. Given the length and intensity of the incarceration, why the surprise and shock when some of the prisoners plan and execute a violent escape. Isn’t such a brutal ‘slave revolt’, as Norman Finkelstein puts it, an inevitable consequence of Israel’s inhuman policies. And is the appropriate answer of the prison guards, the execution of the inmates left therein?
  5. And, finally, on a personal note, how can we allow the closing down of debate by the mere accusation of anti-semitism or ‘Jew-hating’? Amongst my greatest inspirations and influences are to be found composers, Mahler, Mendelsohn and Schoenberg, artists, Menuhin and Bernstein, intellectuals, Freud and Chomsky, revolutionaries, Marx, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg. All were Jewish. In embracing and criticising their artistic, social and political contributions I recognised but didn’t obsess about their Jewishness. In much the same way I don’t think much about Christianity when listening to Haydn or Bruckner. I’m an atheist but I neither hate Jews nor Christians. I simply disagree.

There are many more questions, for sure.

In directing you to interesting and challenging links I cannot but begin with the late John Pilger’s very last article, written in early November, entitled. ‘We are Spartacus’

“Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job, push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.”

He opens::

Spartacus was a 1960 Hollywood film based on a book written secretly by the blacklisted novelist Howard Fast, and adapted by the screenplay writer Dalton Trumbo, one of the “Hollywood 10” who were banned for their “un-American” politics. It is a parable of resistance and heroism that speaks unreservedly to our own times. 

Both writers were Communists and victims of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the US Senate, which, during the Cold War, destroyed the careers and often the lives of those principled and courageous enough to stand up to a homegrown fascism in America.

“This is a sharp time, now, a precise time…”, wrote Arthur Miller in The Crucible, “We live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world”.

There is one “precise” provocateur now; it is clear to see for those who want to see it and foretell its actions. It is a gang of states led by the United States whose stated objective is “full spectrum dominance”. Russia is still the hated one, Red China the feared one.

From Washington and London, the virulence has no limit. Israel, the colonial anachronism and unleashed attack dog, is armed to the teeth and granted historical impunity so that “we” the West ensure the blood and tears never dry in Palestine.

British MPs who dare call for a ceasefire in Gaza are banished, the iron door of two-party politics closed to them by a Labour leader who would withhold water and food from the children.

In expressing his undying admiration for the endeavours of David McBride and Julian Assange in exposing the crimes committed under the banner of the ‘Global War on Terror’, he closes:

Their bravery has allowed many of us, who might despair, to understand the real meaning of a resistance we all share if we want to prevent the conquest of us, our conscience, our self respect, if we prefer freedom and decency to compliance and collusion. In this, we are all Spartacus.

Spartacus was the rebellious leader of Rome’s slaves in 71-73 B.C. There is a thrilling moment in the Kirk Douglas movie Spartacus when the Romans call on Spartacus’s men to identify their leader and so be pardoned. Instead hundreds of his comrades stand and raise their fists in solidarity and shout, “I am Spartacus!”. The rebellion is under way.

Julian and David are Spartacus. The Palestinians are Spartacus. People who fill the streets with flags and principle and solidarity are Spartacus. We are all Spartacus if we want to be.

The Middle East War and the hostile environment

Nira Yuval-Davis is a diasporic Israeli Jew, Professor Emeritus, Honorary Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London. She reflects on the complexities of its start and end points, beginning:

One of the most contested issues regarding telling the story of the current war in the Middle East is about when to start it. Each narrative always has a clear starting point – if not necessarily an end point – but what is the starting point for this war? Is it the terrible massacre that Hamas fighters carried out among soldiers and civilians, Jews and non-Jews, in the South of Israel on 7 October? – the highest number of people killed in one day in the hundred years of conflict since the beginning of the Zionist settlement in Palestine – at least until that day. That’s probably where most Israelis would like to start the story.

Should I start with the ongoing massive systematic bombing, destruction, displacement and killing of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, including thousands of children, a new Palestinian Nakba? That’s where many international protesters focus their protests.

Or I could start the narrative by telling the history of the Zionist settler colonial project, before and after 1948 and the establishment of the Israeli state. A large proportion of the Palestinian population in the Gaza strip today are 1948 refugees, and most of the settlements attacked on 7 October sit on lands where previous generations of today’s Gazans used to live, before the first Nakba.

Or maybe I should start my narrative by telling how Israeli intelligence – just like the US with the Taliban – was a cultivator of Hamas in its infancy, as part of a divide and rule policy aimed at weakening the power of the PLO; and how, until 7 October, it facilitated the rule of Hamas in Gaza by enabling the transfer of money to Hamas from Qatar via Israeli banks, so it could distribute money to people in this huge open-air prison, to maintain its control and keep the population just about surviving.

Another starting point could be the convenience of the Hamas attack and the following war for Iran and its allies, as it has put in jeopardy the anti-Iran, anti-Palestinian, so called ‘normalisation’ agreement that was soon to be signed between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In many ways, this is not just a war between Israel and Gaza, but a regional war, in which various pro-Iranian groups, from Yemen to Syria and Lebanon, are taking part in an anti-American as well as anti-Israeli war, although at the moment, at least, in a contained way.

Related to that, one could start by describing the war as a result of miscalculated wishful thinking. Hamas was hoping that Hezbollah, Iran and other forces in the Arab world would join the war in a much more total way; and Israel has been hoping that Egypt and/or the PLO would take responsibility for governing the population in Gaza instead of Hamas, and, better still, would allow them to be displaced to the Sinai desert. But these organisations and governments have learned their lessons from previous history and are not co-operating.

The timing of the war has also been convenient for Netanyahu and the Israeli government. In one day it stopped the six-month long major protest movement which was demanding the ending of the judicial coup in Israel and the resignation of Netanyahu: the leader of the opposition has joined the government and war cabinet, and all the huge protest and pro-democracy posters which were plastered all over public buildings and public spaces have been replaced with others, even larger, which say – No Left, No Right, together we’ll all win the war.

She ends:

Many of us have been taking part in protest activities against the war in Gaza and its growing human and humanitarian costs, while knowing that the issues cannot be resolved solely by an end to that war. There is a need for the end of the occupation and the de-Zionisation of Palestine/Israel into a state with equal individual and collective rights for all its residents. This seems more than ever a faraway dream, but giving up on striving for it, not keeping alive this alternative narrative, would only be much worse.

https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/document/injustice-palestinian-childrens-experience-of-the-israeli-military-detention-system/

ON ZIONIST FEELINGS

RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH  explores the central and sensitive question of how the hurt experienced by People in and out of Israel, particularly those wedded to Zionism, is used to deflect us from the reality of genocide.

She ends:

My responsibility is to commit myself to the liberation of Palestine. I am confident that my fight against Zionism as a form of racism aligns with my unequivocal rejection and condemnation of antisemitism. I recognize the lethal and genocidal history of European antisemitism that produced the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry. I reject that because of European antisemitic racism, Palestinians must pay the price. I reject essentializing language, stereotypes, or theories that claim that there are particular traits or characteristics unique to “Jewish people” as a homogenous collective, or “being a Jew.” I defend the right of Jewish people to openly practice Judaism and freely express their religious and cultural identity. I defend the right of Jewish people to practice their faith even though I unequivocally reject and condemn Zionism as a political ideology. I do not accept that such a right can be enjoyed at the expense of Palestinian life, freedom, and self-determination.

No amount of intimidation or emotional blackmail will cower Palestinians into silence, into shrinking our voices, adjusting our language, compromising our demands and claims, or repressing our feelings. When the feelings and fragility of Zionists are used as a rhetorical shield to deflect from engaging with the moral and material reality of genocide, Palestinians are left to ask: how many of us must be killed, maimed and injured, forced from our traditional land and beloved homes, be tortured and have our schools, universities, and livelihoods destroyed, for those in power – those who have the power to stop this genocide – to say in public never again. Khallas. Enough.

A thoughtful video, which touches on whether there are solutions acceptable to all parties.

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2023/11/24/a-second-nakba-what-history-tells-us-about-palestine-and-israel

A second Nakba? What history tells us about Palestine and Israel
In this episode of UpFront, we look back at the history and context leading up to the current Israel-Gaza war. Nearly two months after the October 7 attack by Hamas, Israel’s response has killed more than 14,500 Palestinians.

While many see the current conflict as a reaction to the attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, others have pointed out that this view ignores crucial historical context and that the conflict has been ongoing for generations.

Following the 1917 Balfour Declaration which led to an influx of Jewish immigrants, the creation of Israel in 1948 saw an enormous displacement of Palestinians, in addition to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands who remain refugees to this day.

On UpFront, Mustafa Barghouti, the co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, and author Ghada Karmi, join Marc Lamont Hill to look back at the history of Palestine and contextualise the current war.

The colonisation of Palestine: Exhuming a British imperial crime

by Mary Serumaga

Like other British imperial possessions, Palestine was acquired on the cheap and under false pretences, official corruption sealing a deal doomed to end in perpetual violence.

 “Zionism will fail, the experiment to which the noble Earl referred will fail, the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country – Arab all around in the hinterland – may never be remedied…what we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

– British Government, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922, p. 1025

Fascinating and revealing historical context.

Biden, Palestine, and the buttressing of Christian Zionism

Biden’s position on Israel-Palestine does not constitute any real shift from that of Trump and thus similarly gratifies the desires of Christian Zionists.

I had no sense of this significant support for Israel in the USA.

Further evidence Netanyahu propped up Hamas

Thomas Fazi argues:

In my last post I explained how Netanyahu played a crucial role in bolstering Hamas in order to “divide and conquer” the Palestinians and delegitimise the Palestinian National Authority — the continuation of a strategy which Israel had been pursuing, in various forms, since the 1980s.

Later in the piece, he quotes Yasser Arafat, who was the leader of the PLO at the time I was closest to what was going on in Palestine., more than thirty years ago.

“Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organisation antagonistic to the PLO. They [Hamas] received financing and training from Israel. They have continued to benefit from permits and authorisations, while we have been limited, even [for permits] to build a tomato factory.”

When asked what he thought of “these sons of Palestine who blow themselves up and spread death among Israeli civilians”, Arafat answered: “Israel does not allow us to live a normal life. Youth who have nothing to eat, who don’t see any future in front of them, are easy prey of the Islamist movements, which have large amounts of financing at their disposal”.

.

Last but not least a video of Gerald Kaufman, Labour Member of Parliament speaking in Parliament, the year 2009, the event an Israeli attack on Gaza. For my sins, I was heavily involved in the British Labour Party in the 1980s and met Gerald, always immaculately attired several times, once by chance for a coffee at Euston railway station. At the time he was a sworn enemy, being a fierce critic of Tony Benn, to whom I gave cautious support! Anyway, he was charming company and we parted on amicable terms. Fifteen years on this brave speech retains all its relevance.

And, lest I forget, I must register deep gratitude to my dear friend, Steph Green, who has sent me regularly in the last months both links and her own insightful commentary on the continuing crisis in Gaza. I hope I have done her efforts to keep me alert some justice.

“We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.” The United Kingdom’s Labour Party suspended Member of Parliament, Andy McDonald for reciting the above in a speech at a pro-Palestinian rally.

Christ in the Rubble of Gaza

On By Tony TaylorIn Children and Young People, History, Philosophy, Politics2 Comments

As an antidote to what some might see as a lapse into ahistorical sentimentality from an avowed irreconcilable atheist – my previous post, Bah Humbug – I recommend viewing this powerful video or reading the transcript of the pastor’s sermon. His impassioned call transcends religious and secular divides. It is a heart-rending appeal to our shared, common humanity.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. The copy may not be in its final form.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Christ Under the Rubble.

We are angry. We are broken. This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.

More than 20,000 killed. Thousands are still under the rubble. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways, day after day. One-point-nine million displaced. Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. This is a genocide.

The world is watching. Churches are watching. The people of Gaza are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares. But it goes on.

We are asking here: Could this be our fate in Bethlehem? In Ramallah? In Jenin? Is this our destiny, too?

We are tormented by the silence of the world. Leaders of the so-called free lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing the political cover. And yet another layer has been added: the theological cover, with the Western church stepping into the spotlight.

Our dear friends in South Africa taught us the concept of the “state theology,” defined as “the theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism.” It does so by misusing theological concepts and biblical texts for its own political purposes.

Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponized against us — our very own sacred text. In our terminology in Palestine, we speak of the empire. Here we confront the theology of the empire, a disguise for superiority, supremacy, chosenness and entitlement. It is sometimes given a nice cover, using words like “mission” and “evangelism,” “fulfillment of prophecy,” and “spreading freedom and liberty.”

The theology of the empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction. It speaks of land without people. It divides people into “us” and “them.” It dehumanizes and demonizes. The concept of land without people, again, even though they knew too well that the land had people — and not just any people, a very special people. Theology of the empire calls for emptying Gaza, just like it called for the ethnic cleansing in 1948, a “miracle,” or “a divine miracle,” as they called it. It calls for us Palestinians now to go to Egypt, maybe Jordan. Why not just the sea?

I think of the words of the disciples to Jesus when he was about to enter Samaria: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they said of the Samaritans. This is the theology of the empire. This is what they’re saying about us today.

This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it’s the color of our skins. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of a political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. So they say if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant,” then so be it. We are not humans in their eyes. But in God’s eyes, no one can tell us that.

The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling. They always take the word of Palestinians with suspicion and qualification. No, we’re not treated equally. Yet, on the other side, despite a clear track record of misinformation, lies, their words are almost always deemed infallible.

To our European friends: I never ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. And I mean this. We are not white, I guess. It does not apply to us, according to your own logic.

In this war, the many Christians in the Western world made sure the empire has the theology needed. It is thus self-defense, we were told. And I continue to ask: How is the killing of 9,000 children self-defense? How is the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians self-defense?

In the shadow of the empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim, and the colonized into the aggressor. Have we forgotten — have we forgotten that the state they talk to, that that state was built on the ruins of the towns and villages of those very same Gazans? Have they forgot that?

We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear, friends: Silence is complicity. And empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action, all under the banner of complicity.

So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was hell before October 7th, and the world was silent. Should we be surprised at their silence now?

If you are not appalled by what is happening in Gaza, if you are not shaken to your core, there is something wrong with your humanity. And if we, as Christians, are not outraged by the genocide, by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of our gospel message.

If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace. Some have not even called for a ceasefire. I’m talking about churches. I feel sorry for you.

We will be OK. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we, the Palestinians, will recover. We will rise. We will stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far maybe the biggest blow we have received in a long time. But we will be OK.

But for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this? Your charity and your words of shock after the genocide won’t make a difference. And I know these words of shocks are coming. And I know people will give generously for charity. But your words won’t make a difference. Words of regret won’t suffice for you. And let me say it: We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done has been done. I want you to look at the mirror and ask, “Where was I when Gaza was going through a genocide?” …

In these last two months, the psalms of lament have become a precious companion to us. We cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Gaza? Why do you hide your face from Gaza?”

In our pain, anguish and lament, we have searched for God and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus himself became the victim of the very same violence of the empire when he was in our land. He was tortured, crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain, “My God, where are you?”

In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.

And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is not to be found on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. He’s in a cave, with a simple family, an occupied family. He’s vulnerable, barely and miraculously surviving a massacre himself. He’s among the refugees, among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is to be found today.

If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble. When we rely on power, might and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble. When we justify, rationalize and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.

Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed and the displaced. This is his manger.

And I have been looking and contemplating on this iconic image. God with us precisely in this way, this is the incarnation — messy, bloody, poverty. This is the incarnation.

And this child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says, “Just as you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” “You did it to me.” Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them. He is the children of Gaza.

We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair. While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares their fate. He walks with them and calls them his own.

So this manger is about resilience. It’s about sumud. And the resilience of Jesus is in his meekness, is in his weakness, is in his vulnerability. The majesty of the incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized. Resilience because this is very same child who rose up from the midst of pain, destruction, darkness and death to challenge empires, to speak truth to power and deliver an everlasting victory over death and darkness. This very same child accomplished this.

This is Christmas today in Palestine, and this is the Christmas message. Christmas is not about Santas. It’s not about trees and gifts and lights. My goodness, how we have twisted the meaning of Christmas. How we have commercialized Christmas. I was, by the way, in the U.S.A. last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights and all the commercial goods. And I couldn’t help but think: They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their lands. They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land.

Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today. It is a gospel message. It is a true and authentic Christmas message about the God who did not stay silent but said his word, and his word was Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized, he is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.

This message is our message to the world today, and it is simply this: This genocide must stop now. Why don’t we repeat it? Stop this genocide now. Can you say it with me? Stop this genocide —

CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Let’s say it one more time. Stop this genocide —

CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: This is our call. This is our plea. This is our prayer. Hear, O God. Amen.

Thanks to DemocracyNow for this material – find this independent news channel at https://www.democracynow.org/about

On the profound question of historical circumstances Palestine demands a hearing

On By Tony TaylorIn History, Politics2 Comments

I was then I wasn’t going to say anything about the heart-breaking events unfolding in the continuing tragedy, that is the brutal occupation by Israel of Palestine and most immediately Gaza. Simply to venture such an understanding is at odds with the version dominating our screaming screens, mobile or fixed. My empathy with the Palestinian cause, which goes back to the 1970s and refers to my critical allegiance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO] is to be dismissed, forgotten or ridiculed. To my shame, I was in danger of remaining silent.

Then, only a few hours ago the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman tells senior police officers that waving a Palestinian flag or singing a chant advocating freedom for Arabs in the region may be a criminal offence. In a letter to chief constables in England and Wales, she opines:

“It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.”

In this Manichean simplistic obscenity, whereby it is demanded that we agree without a murmur what and who is Good or Evil, how long before even Facebook comments or even ‘likes’ not toeing the line are deemed heinous? Or even this innocuous questioning of the mainstream narrative is seen as unacceptable?

Whilst in accord with Marx himself I am no longer a Marxist I learned much from my days under the ideology’s influence. I remain indebted enormously to the insistence that all events must be grounded,, need to be understood in both their specific and historically intertwined circumstances. This profound, even obvious observation engages with the past and present, with contradiction and complexity, with the dilemma of defining the ethical and the moral, with what is right or wrong. It precludes shallow, immediate and opportunistic readings of what’s going on. It demands, following Aristotle, ‘phronesis’, the thoughtful interrogation of what is happening and what we might do for the best.

For now, if you have the time or inclination, I offer the following links to articles of a dissenting character, although themselves, perchance, too hasty and superficial, which I hope you will read in full.

The West’s hypocrisy towards Gaza’s breakout is stomach-turning – Jonathan Cook

The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.

Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by western politicians or publics.

The West’s hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.

This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage in 2007, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea and air.

Western media are calling the jailbreak and attack by Palestinians from Gaza “unprecedented” – and the most dismal intelligence failing by Israel since it was caught off-guard during the Yom Kippur War exactly 50 years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war”. But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor.

Inevitably for the Palestinians, as Netanyahu also observed, “the price will be heavy” – especially for Hamas is Israel’s creation. Israel will inflict on the prisoners the severest punishment for their impudence.

Hamas is Israel’s creation -Thomas Fazi

Many people don’t know this but Hamas is largely a creation of the Jewish state. For years, Israel encouraged Gaza’s Islamists as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, helping to turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups, which has killed far more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian militant group.

Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, later told the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief that he was giving money to the Muslim Brotherhood, the precursor of Hamas, on the instruction of the Israeli authorities. The funding was intended to tilt power away from both Communist and Palestinian nationalist movements in Gaza, and especially from Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel”), which Israel considered more threatening than the fundamentalists. “The Israeli government gave me a budget”, the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques”.

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation”, Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I… suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face”, he wrote. They didn’t listen to him. What we’re witnessing is a classic case of blowback.

Israeli Bombing of Gaza, “I have ordered a “Complete Siege”… “We are fighting human animals”, Israeli Defence Minister SaysI – Global Research

Israel‘s defence minister described Palestinians as “human animals” and vowed to “act accordingly,” as fighter jets unleashed a massive bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip.

Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, an area of about 365 square km, and home to 2.3 million Palestinians, which has been under an Israeli-led blockade since 2007.

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said.

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he added.

The Israeli air force has dropped 2,000 munitions and more than 1,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza in the last 20 hours, the army said on Monday morning, having shelled 20 high-rise residential buildings, mosques, hospitals, banks and other civilian infrastructure.

What Is the Gaza Strip?

Gaza was part of historic Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from historic Palestine in what is known as Al-Nakba, or “The Catastrophe”.

More than 60 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees, following the expulsion of families from other parts of Palestine in 1948.

Bordered by Israel and Egypt on the Mediterranean coast, the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Gaza was captured by Egypt during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and was under Egyptian control until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when the territory was seized and occupied along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In 2005, Israel purportedly pulled out of Gaza and relocated around 8,000 Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers living in 21 settlements around Gaza to the occupied West Bank.

But in 2007, following the Hamas movement’s election victory in Gaza, Israel responded by imposing an air, land and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip.

According to international law, the blockade amounts to an occupation of the strip.

Since 2008, Israel has launched four invasions of Gaza, in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021, which resulted in the deaths of thouands of Palestinians, mostly civilians and many children.

The campaigns resulted in the destruction of homes and offices, damage to pipelines and sewage treatment infrastructure, impacting drinking water and spiking waterborne diseases.

In the last major operation in 2021, at least 260 Palestinians were killed in Gaza while 13 people were killed in Israel.

Open-air Prison
Israel’s blockade systematically denies Palestinians access to services, hospitals, banks and other vital infrastructure, leaving the population to exist in fraught living conditions.

The blockade has also resulted in a perennial shortage of clean water, electricity, and medical supplies in what is often dubbed the world’s largest open-air prison.

Roughly 97 percent of Gaza’s drinking water is contaminated, and residents are forced to live with constant power outages due to a power grid that has been heavily damaged in repeated Israeli attacks.

Meanwhile, close to 60 percent of Palestinians live in poverty, and youth unemployment sits at 63 percent.

According to UNRWA, the UN agency that cares for Palestinian refugees, years of conflict and blockade have left 80 percent of Gaza’s population dependent on international assistance.