Tag: occupation

Bertrand Russell on Israel and Palestine

~ The Koboi Project

Paul Williams contextualizes and reads a statement by British Philosopher Bertrand Russell dated 31st January 1970 that was read on 3rd February, the day after Bertrand Russell’s death, at an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo. Below, I have identified key recommendations, made in 1970, that remain moral imperatives today –

The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annex foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.

A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.

What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.

Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June 1967.

Ethnic Cleansing by Expulsion or Extermination

~ The Koboi Project

“Our right to defend ourselves from extermination does not give us the right to oppress others. Occupation leads to foreign rule. Foreign rule leads to resistance. Resistance leads to repression. Repression leads to terror and counter-terror. The victims of terror are mostly innocent people. Holding on to the occupied territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims. We must leave the occupied territories immediately.”

This intervention in the form of an advertisement first appeared in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 1967. It was inserted and signed by 12 members of Matzpen which was an organization consisting of Jewish and Arab activists who were committed to a socialist revolution in Israel, opposed to Zionism, and champions of Palestinian rights. Sadly, it’s warning about the escalatory causal mechanics of the Zionist/ Palestinian conflict seems prophetic in light of the horrific events of October 7th and what has ensued.

In the video below Moshé Machover, the document’s only surviving signatory explains that it was not a moral statement but a definition of a process. He says,

” … It is inherent in this process that it escalates because the victims of oppression resist and the perpetrator of oppression, the colonizer, can only find one way of dealing with this resistance and that is to increase the repression. Increased repression creates more resistance, escalates more resistance, and this is a dynamic process … it escalates…”

This escalatory process has led to what is happening in Gaza today, to what Machover describes in another interview as ethnic cleansing by expulsion or extermination.

Image: https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/ethnic-cleansing-in-the-current-conflict/

https://matzpen.org/english/about-matzpen/?mc_cid=c0f61aa411&mc_eid=c19c9f61fe

This is not a Religious Conflict

~ 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

~ 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.

Forms of Government 2

~ 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

The Situation in Palestine

~ 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 –

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

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