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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ilan Pappé notes, in an interview prefaced by a reference to the leaked Israeli document which outlines a plan to displace the entire Gaza population into the Sinai Desert, “what unfolds in front of our eyes is a genocidal situation …this is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing of the population. The pretext for that kind of savagery is revenge for what the Hamas did on the 7th of October but I think the real intention here is … to create new realities in historical Palestine.” He goes on to state that the Nakba has never really ended for the Palestinians so it’s a new horrific chapter in the ongoing Nakba.” Pappé is a professor of history and the director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. See also an earlier interview here – Terrorism and Genocidal Revenge
The Koboi Project 
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