British and EU representatives are siding with the oppressor.

I learned the word “condemn” at an early age. It was used constantly on Irish news bulletins in the 1980s.

In theory, “condemn” is a verb that may be applied to any act that triggers feelings of strong disapproval. In practice, it is used more to oppose violence by the oppressed than the oppression which causes that violence.

The partition of both Ireland and Palestine was ushered in by Britain.

As well as carving up both countries, Britain pursued similar policies in both situations.

People of one ethnicity and religion were encouraged to discriminate – systematically – against people of another. In both cases, the discrimination took place in a context of settler-colonialism.

With that history having consequences that endures to this day, Britain ought to be condemned routinely by everyone who opposes injustice.

If the media actually did their job and exposed Britain’s crimes, then comments made over the past few days by James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, would have zero credibility.

According to Cleverly, Britain “unequivocally condemns the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians.” Britain, he added, “will always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

The “attacks” to which he alluded were actually a response to the brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people. Britain set that subjugation in motion as far back as 1917, when Arthur James Balfour, one of Cleverly’s predecessors as foreign secretary, signed his infamous declaration supporting the Zionist movement and its colonization project.

Right to defend?

All talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself” is utter bollocks – if I may use a term with which Cleverly is undoubtedly familiar.

Israel – which has subjected Gaza to a total blockade since 2007 and bombarded its people with frightening regularity – does not have the right to defend itself. The truth is that Palestinains have a right – recognized by the United Nations General Assembly – to defend themselves against Israel’s military occupation and all its attendant aggression.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, tried to sound even angrier than Cleverly. She fulminated against “the attack carried out by Hamas terrorists,” labeling it “terrorism in its most despicable form.”

Needless to say, von der Leyen had nothing to say about how the European Union mollycoddles Israel – actively seeking closer relations with that state, even as its government assumes an overtly fascist character. Von der Leyen herself has implicitly endorsed the ethnic cleansing on which Israel was founded in 1948 by praising the Zionist dream of making “the desert bloom.”

With that record, it is not surprising that von der Leyen is selective in her outrage.

Ariel Kallner, a member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), reacted to the Hamas-led operation by calling for a new Nakba.

The Nakba – Arabic for catastrophe – involved the expulsion of approximately 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. Kallner advocated a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ‘48,” contending “there is no other way.”

Kallner chairs a committee in the Knesset handling Israel’s relations with the EU. Yet his call did not elicit any comment from von der Leyen or other senior players in the Brussels bureaucracy.

Von der Leyen’s reticence is consistent. If she gave her blessing to the first Nakba, then why would she have any qualms about a new one?

read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/condemning-palestinians-contemptible

archive: https://archive.ph/O9zPI

  • kayjay@kbin.social
    92·
    1 year ago

    The part where people have been living in a place for hundreds of years only to have someone else come in and take it and then put them in the worlds largest prison?

    • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      52·
      1 year ago

      I agree but that is a pretty simple to understand scenario, right? I was asking where the aforementioned complexity is in the whole thing.

      • Critical_Insight
        34·
        1 year ago

        Do we just load the Israeli population on a ship and anchor them on the mediterranean sea, or what’s your plan here?

        • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          52·
          1 year ago

          I don’t have a plan. Probably owing to the fact that I am a nobody living in Asia. Guess that means I just have to conjure imaginary moral complexities and minimise the atrocities that Israel has been carrying out without consequences with US and EU backing.

          • Critical_Insight
            11·
            1 year ago

            No one is minimising the atrocities that Israel has been carrying out.

            It’s you who was questioning my statement, that it’s a complex issue, and now your failure to come up with anything even remotely sounding like a solution seems to indicate that it indeed is.

            • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
              42·
              1 year ago

              But it’s not a complex issue. Palestine has been reduced to a concentration camp by settler colonialists for decades. An armed uprising is the logical next step for them if the rest of the world has failed them. What’s complicated about that? You are just handwringing about civilian casualties without a hint of irony from your .uk domain and comparing Hamas (which Israel helped create btw) to Nazi Germany like a goddamned fool.

              The worst crimes of Hamas that you will hear of today will not even be a drop in a bucket compared to what Palestine has had to go through. And it’s not even a contest. You can spout settler apoligia while hiding behind the shield of moral purity like a coward all you want. It doesn’t make the situation complicated because either you haven’t bothered to investigate it or you just wanna cheer on for the settlers.

              • Critical_Insight
                1·
                1 year ago

                What part of me saying it’s a complex issue makes you assume I’m on the side of Israel? I’m on the side of the Israeli and Palestine people, and against the rather fascistic government of Israel, aswell as the religious extremists that’s Hamas.

                I haven’t made any statements wether I think Israel should be there in the first place. Even if you believe they have no right to that land, that is not solving the issue. That’s just picking a side. Complex issue means that it’s difficult to figure out what to do about something. It is difficult to figure out what to do about the Israeli - Palestine conflict. This is a really complex issue.

                Also, I must say it’s quite insane how angry you’re getting at me for no apparent reason.

                • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Now, I think the biggest problem with the white liberal in America, and perhaps the liberal around the world, is that his primary task is to stop confrontation, stop conflicts, not to redress grievances, but to stop confrontation. And this is very clear, it must become very, very clear in all our minds. Because once we see what the primary task of the liberal is, then we can see the necessity of not wasting time with him. His primary role is to stop confrontation. Because the liberal assumes a priori that a confrontation is not going to solve the problem. This, of course, is an incorrect assumption. We know that.

                  We need not waste time showing that this assumption of the liberals is clearly ridiculous. I think that history has shown that confrontation in many cases has resolved quite a number of problems — look at the Russian revolution, the Cuban revolution, the Chinese revolution. In many cases, stopping confrontation really means prolonging suffering.

                  The liberal is so preoccupied with stopping confrontation that he usually finds himself defending and calling for law and order, the law and order of the oppressor. Confrontation would disrupt the smooth functioning of the society and so the politics of the liberal leads him into a position where he finds himself politically aligned with the oppressor rather than with the oppressed.

                  The reason the liberal seeks to stop confrontation — and this is the second pitfall of liberalism — is that his role, regardless of what he says, is really to maintain the status quo, rather than to change it. He enjoys economic stability from the status quo and if he fights for change he is risking his economic stability. What the liberal is really saying is that he hopes to bring about justice and economic stability for everyone through reform, that somehow the society will be able to keep expanding without redistributing the wealth.

                  • Critical_Insight
                    1·
                    1 year ago

                    The discussion is wether Israeli - Palestine conflict is a complex issue or not an so far you have not in any way demonstrated that it’s not.