The Poppy is the Flower of Palestine

November 12, 2023March 6, 2024 ~ The Koboi Project

Yesterday was Remembrance Day, and I must confess that, as someone who has lived in lands whare this ritual is practiced since I was 17, I have never worn the Remembrance Day poppy. This is because, while I respect those who have fallen in service of their country, I have always thought this symbolism to be sanctimonius; that it is as much about pomp and militarism, as it is about honouring the sacrifices of the fallen.

My concerns have been heightened by the controversy around this year’s Remembrance Day observances in the UK, wherein the highest officials of government cast aspersions on the March calling for a ceasfire in Palestine that took place on the same day (Saturday 11th November). The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, had called for this march to be postponed claiming that it was “disrespectful and provocative,” because of its coincidence with and proximity to the service at the Cenotaph. His Home Secretary, Suella Bravaman, had characterized previous marches as “Hate Marches” on the basis of the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” which she interpreted as a call for “the erasure of Israel from the map.” The irony of this savage disparagement, is that the ethea of Remembrance Day and the March for Palestine, are in fact, one and the same. An ‘armistice’ is a ‘ceasefire.’

There is, an even deeper irony here. The Imperial British symbol of remembrance, the red poppy, is also a national symbol of Palestine, a nation whose obliteration was initiated in one of the closing acts of the said imperium. As Rosabel Crean explains, the poppy, which grows in abundance in Palestine, symbolizes the relationship between Palestinians and their land, the bloodshed they have endured, as well as their resistance against Israeli occupation. My new awareness of the Palestinian symbolism notwithstanding, I will continue paying my respects to the dead of war, both civilian and military, without wearing the Remembrance Day poppy.

See also: Remembrance Day Will Never Be the Same Again

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0d/30/e0/0d30e083a2e36cba5191a72f6acaf80d.jpg

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15637074

https://news.sky.com/story/these-are-hate-marches-home-secretary-hits-out-at-pro-palestinian-protests-as-uk-terror-threat-level-remains-substantial-12996645

https://www.newarab.com/news/poppies-are-national-symbol-palestinians-not-just-uk

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/london-pro-palestine-armistice-day-march

Zionism ≠ Judaism

November 10, 2023November 10, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, who is the rabbi of a congregation in Queens, New York, explains the relationship between Judaism and Zionism, and sets out the basis of the Orthodox rejection of Jewish nationalism and the Jewish State. First, he defines the Jewish people as being a religious community as opposed to an ethnic or linguistic grouping. He then goes on to explain how Zionism was built on a self-loathing of Judaic piety, an atheistic nationalism, whose very secularism negates the claim to a promised land, and a Christian Zionist eschatology that predates the Jewish Zionist movement. Rabbi Shapiro shows how contemporary antisemitism is sustained by its tethering to antizionism and helps explain the West’s unwavering support of Israel, even as this support approaches complicity in genocide. As of November 9 (07:30 GMT), it is estimated that 10,812 Gazans (including 4,412 children and 2,918 women) have been killed in the ongoing Israeli invasion.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker

Witness to Slaughter

November 9, 2023December 20, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

Matteo di Giovanni is of particular interest in the present series of posts (see links below) as his reputation as a significant Renaissance artist is based on his being the author of four monumental versions of the Massacre of the Innocents. The detail above is from the version painted for the Sant’Agostino Chapel in Siena. The foreground of this image (see the full image below) is filled with figures, entangled in the violence of the massacre. There are anguished mothers, resisting mothers; there are babies, both dead and dying; there are the soldiers, thrusting and slashing their way to fulfilling Herod’s sinister decree.

In the selected detail, which, judging from the lighting, is a focal point of the composition, a soldier is shown thrusting his sword into a baby’s mouth, its point exiting out the infant’s skull. As the soldier concentrates on his action, his expression and stance suggest that he recognizes the disproportionality of his weapon to his task. The baby is shown, with blank eyes, in the throes of a horrific death. The anguished mother looks at us in mute resignation. Behind the mother, is an odd figure who may or may not be attached to one of the disembodied weapon-wielding arms glimpsed through the mass of writhing humanity, stares out at the viewer, engaging with us in a manner that is not uncommon in the Rennaisance Istoria (History painting). He communicates with us as if to say, “you see” or perhaps, “you are a witness”, or even “you are complicit.”

In the contemporary massacre that is ongoing in the land of the very Book referenced in this image, the number of Palestinian children slaughtered in Gaza stands at 8,663 (UpdatedDecember 19), and we are all witnesses to this slaughter of innocents, as it happens on our screens.

Jewish Voice for Peace

November 8, 2023November 8, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

According to Al Jazeera, hundreds of Jewish activists occupied the Statue of Liberty on 7th Nov 2023, to demand a ceasefire in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. They unfurled banners including one that proclaimed NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE, while wearing black T-shirts bearing the slogans Jews Demand Ceasefire Now and Not in our Name. Anyone, regardless of which side of this conflict they belong, who conflates Jews with Zionists and antizionists with antisemites is, at best, deeply mistaken.

Image composited from: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/11/7/jewish-new-yorkers-occupy-statue-of-liberty-to-demand-gaza-ceasefire

Stop Antisemitismism

November 8, 2023November 9, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

Renowned Israeli Historian, Avi Shlaim, who is an Emeritus professor of International Relations at Oxford University, makes the following distinction between antisemitism and antizionism.

Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews simply because they are Jews.

Antizionism is the opposition to one or more of the following –
1) the Zionist ideology
2) the official ideology of the state of Israel
3) the criticism of policies of Israel, particularly regarding the occupation of Palestine.

Shlaim goes on to state that while antisemitism is a very ugly thing that can never be justified, antizionism can be reasonable evidence-based, and legitimate. The problem, however, is that Israel and its allies deliberately conflate the two to besmirch assertions of antizionism, however legitimate, as being instances of antisemitism. This patently cynical obfuscation has been effective in silencing debate on the Palestinian question in Western nations. Given that current Israeli policy, arguably encompasses, genocide acts with stated intent, is time we denounce such antisemitismism.

The Conflation of Judaism and Nazism

November 7, 2023November 7, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

Max Blumenthal introduces the incendiary neologism ‘Judeao-Nazi’, coined by Orthodox Jewish philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovitz, who had a critical view of the developments in the state of Israel. Leibovitz was an unusual Zionist who had a paradoxically nonsectarian and secular vision for his nation. In the recording presented above, from the late 1980s or early 1990s (Leibovitz passed away in 1994), he says, “the entire world knows … that we use torture … to make Arab prisoners talk. That’s what I mean by ‘Judeo-Nazi’ … If I raise my voice it’s because some people still don’t know, that’s why I shout it out loud. Judeo-Nazis do exist.” Blumenthal explains how Leibovitz had predicted that Israel would eventually run concentration camps and insinuates that Leibovitz’s terminology is now fully justified by the situation in Gaza.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz#cite_note-stanford-7

The Advance of Maleficence

November 7, 2023December 20, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

The Massacre of the Innocents (detail) is one of a 36 paintings on 4 panels, the majority of which are by Fra Angelico, in the Museo di San Marco, Florence. This extensive series includes another painting addressing the Lex Amoris doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which arguably sets the theme for the series as a whole. This doctrine is articulated in the inscription on this painting, “Christ did not come to me to destroy the old laws of the patriarchs, but to renew and complete them with a new Law of Love.” Perhaps, the Massacre of the Innocents, underscores by antithesis, the essential New Testament principle of love.

In this primordial image of slaughter, a group of soldiers is represented impassively working its way across the scene, effortlessly slitting the throats of babes in the arms of their desperate mothers who, despite their bodily resistance, are soon to be completely overwhelmed. Viewed abstractly, a solid mass of darkness advances from left to right with strong momentum and at a steady pace, portending the imminent extinguishment of all light and color in the image. In the latest reprise of this archetypal act of inhumanity, 8,663 Gazan children have been slaughtered (UpdatedDecember 19) in an equally malefic military movement, a movement that Norman Finkelstein might describe, after Israeli sources, as ‘mowing the lawn.‘

Free Palestine

November 5, 2023November 7, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Palestine#/media/File:Flag_of_Palestine_(construction_sheet).svg

Grace in the Face of Suffering

November 5, 2023December 20, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

In this fresco by Giacomo Borlone de Buschis in the Oratorio dei Disciplini in Clusone, we witness a profound and poignant presentation of the Biblical narrative of King Herod and the Massacre of Innocents. This is an archetypal image of infanticide (in the sense that the King or father figure, is killing his own infant subjects), in which innocent babes are mercilessly put to death by their sovereign. In this scene, the mothers are helpless and unable to escape. They are surrounded by armored troops, besieged even, within the literal enclosure of the pictorial frame. Their only recourse is to beg for the mercy of their indifferent King, and then to resign themselves to the tragedy. The central figure supplicates and presents her babe to Herod in hope. Others offer their babes up to the sword, holding and soothing them as they are murdered.

Meanwhile, Herod dispassionately instructs his minister who seems to feel the weight of the decree. The killers themselves seem rueful as thrust their swords in gently opening up lesions allowing the blood of the innocents to flow out. Laid on the floor, are the bodies of the dead children, some naked, some swaddled, and, as attested to by their varying hues, in different stages of mortification. This is a poignant image of finding grace in suffering. It is surely an anagogical or theophanic image rather than a literal or allegorical one, wherein the horror and helplessness of slaughter are sublimated into a symbol of submission to the Divine will. It is, after all, one of a cycle of images presenting the stort of Jesus Christ. To date, the number of Palestinian children slaughtered in Gaza stands at 8,663 (this figure is an estimate as of December 19). I offer prayers for Palestinian mothers who, at this very moment, are being challenged to find the grace to bear the murder of their innocent children.

Netanyahu channels King Herod!

November 2, 2023December 20, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

At the dawn of the humanist epoch, the great pioneer of spatial, physical, and psychological realism, Giotto di Bondone, painted a fresco cycle at the Arena Chapel, in Padua, which which presents the story of Christ. Arguably, the perspectival acuity, the modeling of masses, and the emotional expressionism that would come to characterize the Italian Renaissance found its first consolidated realization in this celebrated cycle. Descending from the anagogical abstractions of Medieval art, to engage in an empathetic somatic and psychic sensibility of Humanism, the panels of Giotto’s cycle must have given contemporary viewers an unprecedented impression of the Biblical narrative as being couched in the moral and ethical realities of earthly life.

One striking image here is ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’ (detail) which represents King Herod’s men slaughtering all male children, 2 years old and below, in Bethlehem. As the slaughter ensues, a collection of lifeless children builds into a central heap, as if Giotto were presenting both the physical evidence and the statistical data of the event, all in one visualization. Although the representation of the mothers in this image is thought to have received contemporaneous criticism for being impassive, subdued, numb, and expressionless, I find the stunned stillness of this image more profound and moving than the later more expressive version in Lower Church, Assisi, also believed to be from the artist’s hand.

Not unlike Herod, whose indiscriminate slaughter was based on the uncertainty about the identity of the infant King of the Jews, whom he feared would usurp him one day; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to justify his collateral slaughter of innocents based on their geolocational inseparability from the constituents of his own dreaded nemesis – Hamas. UPDATE: The number of Palestinian children slaughtered in Gaza stands at 8,663 (this figure is an estimate as of December 19).

Image: https://gallerix.org/storeroom/146947004/N/2469/

Image: https://betweentwocities.com/2017/03/19/giottos-two-views-of-the-massacre-of-the-innocents/

https://www.thehistoryofart.org/giotto/massacre-of-the-innocents/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-trackerI