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
This is not Putins war on Ukraine. There’s no clear victim and aggressor here, and any time someone talks about it as if it’s not extremely complicated, they just make it sound like they have no idea what they’re talking about in the first place.
Forcibly taking land from one group and giving it to another is not cool but neither is randomly lobbing rockets onto the civilians.
Decades of Palestinian occupation by colonial forces called. They’d like a word.
What are you talking about? The Palestinians have been emprisoned in an open air concentration camp for 70 years, their children being regularly bombarded, their houses stolen, their women raped, their food and water taken away by the occupying military.
It’s crystal clear who the aggressor here is, the situation in Palestine is very straight forwards compared to the one in Ukraine.
This is all true. What is also true is that Hamas has been firing rockets indiscriminately towards the Israeli civilian population and to my knowledge they would like to wipe out all jews off the face of the earth very much like the nazies would have. That’s just few reasons as to why this is extremely complex issue and I can’t take seriously anyone who claims otherwise.
I’d love to hear how you think this conflict is more straight forward than the one going between Ukraine and Russia. What could possibly justify what Russia is doing?
Please explain this complexity we are talking about here.
I don’t think you can simplify thousands of years of history to one comment.
Not with that attitude
Here you go: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict
Things seem pretty cut and dry from that article. What part explains the complexities that the rubes shilling for Palestine cannot wrap their head around?
The part where people have been living in a place for hundreds of years only to have someone else come in and take it and then put them in the worlds largest prison?
I agree but that is a pretty simple to understand scenario, right? I was asking where the aforementioned complexity is in the whole thing.
Do we just load the Israeli population on a ship and anchor them on the mediterranean sea, or what’s your plan here?
I don’t have a plan. Probably owing to the fact that I am a nobody living in Asia. Guess that means I just have to conjure imaginary moral complexities and minimise the atrocities that Israel has been carrying out without consequences with US and EU backing.
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.
I don’t pretend to be any kind of an expert on the subject. This is one of those things, that the more you read, the less it feels like I know.
I used to default to the Israeli side, but then I heard Netanyahu on a podcast and that guy could not sound more like an aspiring dictator so I looked into it a bit more, and now I just choose to observe this fiasco from the sidelines and not form strong opinions about a subject I don’t understand.
Why did you default to the Israeli side earlier?
We all know the answer is racism.
Because my understanding was that they were just trying to live their lives peacefully while their neighbours are lobbing rockets onto their side for apparently no reason.
How long did it take you to craft the most inane take possible?