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.‘

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.

From the River to the Sea

November 2, 2023November 10, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

The national motto of Canada, “A Mari Usque Ad Mare,” which translates to “From sea to sea,” marks the occupation of a land which the prior occupants still call Turtle Island. While this proprietary geographical imagery derives from the Biblical Psalm 72:8, “He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth,” its eschatological sense of “dominion” has been repeatedly transposed into an imperial one throughout the Common Era. The territorial imagery of “A mari Usque Ad Mare,” is evoked again in ‘America the Beautiful’, a popular patriotic song often confused with the American National anthem,

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

This proprietary boundary symbolism seems to be an identifiable feature of European settler colonial imagery and lore. Indeed, European settler colonialism can be said to have been inaugurated in 1452, when Roman Catholic Pope Nicholas V issued the bull Dum Diversas, authorizing King Afonso V of Portugal to subjugate the lands and the lives of non-Christians. While Zionism does not derive from this Christian ‘doctrine of discovery’, the founding of Israel in the violent displacement of native Palestinians by non-native European Jews, can be seen as the last significant instantiation of such an ethnopolitical ‘dominion’.

Given both the history of settlement and erasure of Palestinians from their lands and the fact that in the past month, 10,733 Palestinians have been killed (10,569 in Gaza and 164 in the West Bank, November 8, 10:50 GMT Update) with the complicity of the collective West, I wonder if it is a guilty self-projection that underpins the interpretation that the freedom slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as a call for genocide (mass killing or other form of eradication with intent)? In fact, as Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has recently explained, this is not a call for the destruction of the state of Israel, but “a call for freedom ‘from the river to the sea’ for everybody.

Image: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/from-sea-to-shining-sea.html

https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/dum-diversas/

https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/israel-hebrew/why-israel-isnt-a-settler-colonial-state/

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

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/2/from-the-river-to-the-sea-what-does-the -palestinian-slogan-really-mean

Viva Bolivia!

October 31, 2023October 31, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

Bolivia’s government severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday 31 October 2023, accusing it of carrying out “crimes against humanity” in Gaza. María Nela Prada Tejada, a diplomat, politician, minister of the Bolivian presidency said categorically, “We demand an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip which have so far claimed thousands of civilian lives and caused the forced displacement of Palestinians.”

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/bolivia-severs-diplomatic-ties-israel-104524467

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/bolivia-israel-hamas-gaza-war-crime

The Shame of the Sunaks

October 31, 2023November 8, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

European settler colonialism was initiated in the 15th century, on the premise of a divinely ordained white supremacy¹, and the founding of Israel in the land of the Palestinians during the British Mandate in the 20th Century was the last significant instantiation of this mode of ethnopolitical domination, albeit it might be seen as a species of settler colonialism all of its own.² The current British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, removed Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Paul Bristow from his post for rebelling against the government’s position on the ongoing war in Gaza. Bristow had expressed his support for a ceasefire and called on the PM to push for an end to fighting between Israel and Hamas. That Sunak, who rose to his high station in the British polity from Indian origins, and who should, therefore, be alert to the inhumanity of subjugation, would be complicit in Israel’s genocidal colonial expansion in the 21st century, is a shame unto him, his family, and their origins.

This theocratic doctrine was initiated 1452, when Pope Nicholas V issued a bull Dum Diversas which authorized King Afonso V of Portugal, to subjugate the lands of non-Christians.
While, it can be argued that Zionism does not derive directly from the Christian ‘doctrine of discovery’, the ethos of populating lands of non-Jews with European Jewish settlers under the auspices and geo-political designs of the British Empire, in my opinion, within the bounds of a broad notion of settler colonialism.

Image: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/rishi-sunak-piles-pressure-on-spineless-keir-starmer-as-he-sacks-parliamentary-aide-paul-bristow-for-defying-him-with-demand-for-a-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza/ar-AA1j6jnu

https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/israel-hebrew/why-israel-isnt-a-settler-colonial-state/

https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/dum-diversas/

Le Massacre des Innocents

October 26, 2023December 20, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

The Massacre of Innocents is a 17th-century masterpiece by Nicolas Poussin that crystalizes, in the portrayal of a single imminent action, an eternal image of child murder. According to the Bible, King Herod the Ascalonite, who was a vassal of Imperial Rome in Judea, feared the advent of a new ‘King of the Jews.’ Unable to ascertain the precise location or age of the new-born Jesus Christ, he decreed the collateral slaughter of all the babies under 2 years old in and around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1). This ancient specter of child murder has returned to haunt us today, both in the debunked (updated December 20) Israeli claim that HAMAS beheaded 40 babies in its fearsome raid on October 7th and, more concretely, in the number of dead Gazan children, laid waste in Israel’s fearful response.

UPDATE: The number of Palestinian children slaughtered stands at 8,663 (this figure is an estimate as of December 19).

Shame on US

October 23, 2023October 26, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

The United States was the only member of the Security Council to veto a draft resolution put forward by Brazil at the UN Security Council calling for a humanitarian pause in the assault on Gaza. This vote, which took place on 18 Oct 2023 followed an earlier resolution that was voted against by France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, for failing to condemn the HAMAS attack on Israel. Blocking this second, amended, call for a cessation of hostilities, which in fact specifically condemned “the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas,” enables, Israel to continue its slaughter of innocent Palestinians without the legal restraint of UN censure. CNN reports that the US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield criticized the resolution for failing to mention Israel’s right to self-defense, thereby perpetuating the Israeli conflation of the semantics of ‘attack’ and ‘defense.’ She also explained that the US wanted more time to let its on-the-ground diplomacy “play out.” It seems that the United States is enabling, even promoting, what Raz Segal has called a textbook case of genocide. Shame!

26. 10 2003 update: 7,028 people killed by air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

Image https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/europe/us-veto-security-council-israel-gaza-war-intl/index.html

https://apnews.com/article/un-security-council-resolution-gaza-hamas-1c23913f8552f5379b2c158a83493835

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-death-toll-names-killed-released-biden-questions

The Morality of the Concentration Camp

October 19, 2023October 26, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

In a moving and stunningly clarifying interview with Chris Hedges, Middle East scholar, Norman Finkelstein gives a historical and personal lesson about the morality of oppression. He locates the meaning of terrorism and the targeting of civilians within the context of genocide and ethnic cleansing, he refers to the Slave Revolts of Nat Turner and John Brown, as well as his own parent’s experiences of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and of Nazi concentration camps.

He contextualizes the acts of terror committed against civilians by HAMAS in terms of the traumatic spiritual and psychological conditions, the despondency and rage, of living in occupied Gaza. He cites Fredric Douglas and W. E, B. Du Bois (on John Brown’s killing of civilians) and, particularly, William Lloyd Garrison (on the killing of innocents in the Nat Turner Rebellion), all three of whom refused to condemn the brutal rebellions against the humiliations, degradations, and physical assaults of slavery. He also quotes his mother, whom he holds to be a deeply moral person, about her thoughts about the millions of German civilians who died in the Allied terror bombings of World War II. She said, “Our feeling was if we’re going to die, we’re going to take some of them with us.”

Describing Gaza as a “Concentration Camp” Finkelstein declares, “You want me to apply moral categories, condemn? … I’ll describe my reaction. I will acknowledge by a dictionary definition that it constituted a very large atrocity. That’s a dictionary definition, and it’s accurate. However, when you want me to apply a moral category to what happened, you lose me … I won’t do it!”

26. 10 2003 update: 7,028 people killed by air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-death-toll-names-killed-released-biden-questions

Forms of Government 2

December 6, 2022November 22, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

2. Ethnocracy: A form of government based on communalism. It is more widespread than you might think. Sometimes it is an explicit premise, at other times, it is just an unstated reality. Wherever the communal organization is stated explicitly in law, we find the formal ethnocracy that we call apartheid.

Here are three instances of legislated ethnocracy –
1) Canada, the quintessential settler-colonial ethnocracy, based on the Indian Act, status identity cards, and native reservations, upon which South African apartheid was based.
2) Malaysia, where there is a constitutionally enshrined ‘special position’ for the indigenous Malays by which they assert their supremacy over immigrant Indians and Chinese who settled under the auspices of colonial rule.
3) Israel, where there is an ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands effected through an apartheid system that involves limiting the Palestinian’s right to movement, denying them the right to vote, and subjecting them to a separate legal system. The seal was set on this ethnocracy, when Israel passed a law in 2018, symbolically affirming that it was the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Teka Teki: Malaysia, Canada, Israel; Apa Persamaannya?
Jawapan: Semuanya mengamalkan Ethnocracy!

UPDATED 13.11.2023

https://en.everybodywiki.com/Apartheid_in_Malaysia

https://troymedia.com/politicslaw/indigenous-apartheid-system-canada/

https://www.vox.com/23924319/israel-palestine-apartheid-meaning-history-debate
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-nation-state-law-bill-explained-apartheid-netanyahu-democracy

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