This is not a Religious Conflict

November 13, 2023November 14, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

This is the Palestinian flag used in 1938 during the revolt against the British Mandate. As evident in the design, Christians and Muslims were represented equally in this movement. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), formed in 1964, was also very much a secular resistance movement and remains so to this day. It was only after the Iranian revolution in the 1980s, that Islamic groups like Hezbollah, and Hamas began to take the lead in the Palestinian resistance. Even today Christian Palestinians identify with their fellow Muslim Palestinians in the struggle against occupation. Framing the struggle in religious terms, as a struggle between Jews and Muslims is at best a misunderstanding, and at worst, it serves to divide Palestinian identity, rendering Palestinians more vulnerable to Israeli subjugation.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_flags

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/tricontinental-revolution/plo-and-the-limits-of-secular-revolution-19751982/8C0DC0B35609FF5F646B5B3037F262F1

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2021/5/20/22442290/dont-forget-palestinian-christians-israel-palestine-conflict-escalation-protests-bethlehem-jerusalem

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.

Terrorism and Genocidal Revenge

October 16, 2023October 16, 2023 ~ The Koboi Project

On 7th October HAMAS fighters broke out of the blockaded Gaza strip the executed a devastating military operation deep within Israel. They captured 11 military bases and inflicted indiscriminate acts of terror on Israeli settlements, killing over 1,200 people, including women and children.

Exiled Israeli historian Ilan Pape gives his views on the impending Israeli response to this devastating HAMAS incursion. He characterizes the ongoing siege and impending invasion of Gaza as being based on an impulse for revenge set within an ongoing policy of genocide involving settler colonialism, occupation, and ethnic cleansing. He suggests that the objective of this invasion can be conceived of in terms of two possible models:
1) The moderate Beirut 1982 model, wherein Israel forced the PLO out of Lebanon – which he characterizes as expulsion and interprets as the permanent ejection of HAMAS from Gaza and
2) The extreme Afghanistan 2003 model wherein the USA invaded to eradicate the Taliban – which he extrapolates as the mass killing of all those whom Israel believes are associated with HAMAS.

Whichever model prevails, Pape believes that Israel will succeed militarily but that it may lose politically, particularly if HAMAS’ strategy triggers such a massive response from Israel as to provoke an attack from Hezbollah in Lebanon and an uprising in the West Bank, amounting to a third Intifada.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-october-7-2023/

https://www.jta.org/2023/10/11/israel/death-toll-in-israel-attack-soars-past-1200-as-catalog-of-hamas-horrors-is-revealed

https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada

The Situation in Palestine

May 17, 2021May 17, 2021 ~ The Koboi Project

Michael Walker and the British communist commentator Ash Sarkar discuss Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza in terms of Western geopolitical interests. They deconstruct the blatant media bias in covering the conflict, which they set in the context of Israel’s ongoing settler colonialism and apartheid. The critique is centered on Omar Badder’s analysis and questioning of the entry point for Western media reporting, which is as follows –

Status quo: occupation/ apartheid is violence against Palestinians
Then Israel escalates through evictions/beatings/ shootings
Then some Palestinians respond w/violence.
Then Israel “responds” w/massacres

“If you start reporting at #3. you are misleading your audience”

Mahathir’s Error on the Jews

March 22, 2019April 17, 2019 ~ The Koboi Project

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s reputation for being ‘antisemitic’, was recently brought to mind by the problems experienced by his family in the movie business (in the context of investments made in the production of the film Dr Strange). In the interest of the truth, of his legacy, and perhaps even of his family’s business interests, I urge him to make one specific correction in his world Jewry rhetoric. As evidenced by the Senator Ilhan Omar affair, there is an urgent need to cleave in two the confused referent/s of these signifiers – ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist.’ In fact, as explained by Rabbi Dovid Weiss in the Al Jazeera interview above, the conflation of these signs serves the cause of Zionism. Haderim (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews are amongst the firmest and truest defenders of Palestine and Palestinians. Many Muslim nations, communities and leaders have been fair weather friends of the Palestinians, but not these gentle, archaic and God fearing Jews. Just listen to the humility, clarity, love and courage expressed by the Rabbi, bearing in mind that his people resist Zionism from communities across the world and even, at great risk, from the within the heart of Israel (Haderim Jews constituted over 12% of Israel’s population in 2017). While I am tickled by the reflexive candour of Mahathir’s taxonomy of noses and comprehend the political expediency revealed in his explanation that ‘the people’ will understand better if he says ‘Yahudi‘ (Jews) instead of ‘Zionist’, I am nevertheless perplexed by, even ashamed of, his perpetuation of this Zionist conflation, not least because it obscures the diversity of positions held by the Jewish peoples, amongst whom are these staunch allies of Palestine! I hope that the good Dr. will be more nuanced in his use of the terms ‘Jewish’, ‘Zionist’ and even ‘Israeli’ before he ends his time on the world’s stage.