Tag: Palestine

Gaza; “The West” takes its mask off.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

On Friday the International Court of Justice threw out Israel’s objection to proceeding with South Africa’s case that it is committing genocide in Gaza, on the grounds that it is plausible that it is, gave it specific instructions on what it had to do, and ordered it to report back to the court by February 26th on what it has done to comply.

Simply put, it has to cease attacking civilians and allow in aid. There was a brief moment of hope that this might provide some pressure towards a change of course. But, hope, above all else, must be crushed.

Over the weekend there was no let up in the Israeli assault. This is from the latest UN daily report:

  • “Intense Israeli bombardment from air, land, and sea continued across much of the Gaza Strip on 27 and 28 January, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction.”
  • Between the afternoons of 26 and 28 January, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 339 Palestinians were reportedly killed (165 people on 28 January, 174 people on 27 January), and 600 Palestinians were injured (290 on 28 January and 310 on 27 January).

Incoming truckloads of aid, averaging 156 a day in the preceding week, are now being held up at Kerem Shalom by Israeli demonstrators.

On Saturday Israel’s leaders responded to the ICJ ruling by demanding that countries cease to fund UNWRA – the backbone of what aid structure there is in Gaza – on the grounds of “allegations” that 12 of its employess “participated” in some undefined way in the attacks on Oct 7th. These allegations have not been published. UNWRA has sacked the named individuals while an investigation takes place.

These Israeli allegations put even more of a target on the back of every aid worker in Gaza, 154 of whom have already been killed by the IDF.

The UN Reports that UNRWA is the main humanitarian agency in Gaza, with over two million people now dependent on its services and some 3,000 out of its 13,000 staff in Gaza continuing to report to work, despite the ongoing hostilities.

So, far from seeking to comply with the Court, and recognise what a deep hole they are digging themselves into with their armoured bulldozers, Israeli leaders have sought to bluster, calling the South African case “outrageous”, carried on as though no ruling had been issued, and to hit back by undermining what limited aid has been getting in.

This is in a situation in which the UN reports that

  • 2.2 million people are at imminent risk of famine.
  • 378,000 of these are at “catastrophic” level (extreme lack of food, starvation, exhaustion of coping capacities)
  • 939,000 are at emergency level.

The ICJ will take a long time to come up with a definitive judgement. Without a ceasefire, the scale of this famine could well have made the case de facto for them by the time they decide de jure.

The response of “the West” has been instructive. A rush further down the rabbit hole towards confrontation with the rest of the world.

Faced with “plausible” accusations of genocide from the ICJ – the World Court on these questions – they issued diplomatic versions of Itamar Ben Gvir’s dismissive tweet “The Hague schmague. The UK with characteristic patronising condecension snarked that the South African case was “not helpful”. Its “plausibility” in the eyes of the court was not acknowledged. Instead we had the worn out mantra that Israel is “entitled to defend itself”; while the Palestinians, presumably, must suffer what they must with no right to resist. The same mind set that led the Observer to write that Israeli violnece is “understandable” while Palestinian violence “defies comprehension” (Editorial Oct 15th).

Faced with unpublished allegations of a tiny number of UNWRA employees being involved in Oct 7th, the US and nine of its core subordinates have leapt to broadcast Israel’s case from their bully pulpits and to cut UNWRA’s funds.

The ICJ ordered Israel “to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”. UNWRA is the body that organises that. In striking at UNWRA, Israel is signalling that, in doing the exact opposite of what it has been ordered to do, far from respecting international law, it is doubling down on defying it.

This was an opportunity for “the West” to de escalate, if that were their intention. Perfect legal cover. In backing Israel up, and actively imposing its own collective punishment on the people of Gaza, “the West” is tearing off its moral mask.

So, even after the ICJ ruling, the UK and US continue to supply Israel with weapons and argue that the condition for a viable ceasefire is for Israel to have achieved its military objectives before one happens. Given the way that Israel is doing that, that makes them overtly complicit in the ongoing slaughter.

They are, perhaps, hoping that by doubling down they can make what the ICJ says to Israel in a month’s time irrelevant, drowned in a brute display of unaccountable force.

This is what the West’s “rules based international order” looks like with the pretences stripped away. Not naked in the conference chamber, or courtroom, but strutting across the world with their big swinging dicks horribly on display.

Even if we avoid the wider war that is now looming, and which this stance has made more likely, this will neither be forgotten nor forgiven. Now we see you.

The flawed logic of David Cameron and Lisa Nandy

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Both have argued this week that a ceasefire is not a route to a durable peace because Israel’s declared war aim of eliminating Hamas will not be achieved; therefore further October 7th attacks could take place.

The core moral flaw in this argument is that there is an October 7th attack on Gaza every four days. Another way of looking at it is that the price for stopping a further October 7th is twenty of them inflicted on the Palestinians so far, and an incalculable number of them henceforth.

The only logic of this is that Palestinian lives are worth less than a twentieth of Israeli lives.

There’s a word for that.

Doing the Maths

Total Israeli casualties on Oct 7th: 1,200

Total Palestinian casulaties in Gaza so far: 23,000. This is an underestimate, as it does not include any of the people buried under the rubble and not yet accounted for. Attempts by Israeli spokepeople to cast doubt on this figure by quibbling that this estimate is made by Hamas ignores the fact that previous Hamas estimate of casualties caused by IDF attacks on Gaza have been found to be accurate, that these figures are used as a working assumption by the UN. In any case, they present no figures of their own, other than the absurd claim that just about every male Palestinian they have killed is a “Hamas terrorist”. This follows the sort of practice carried out by some NATO units in Afghanistan, which counted all Afghan males killed as “Taliban”.

23,000/1,200 = 20 (rounded off)

80 days / 20 = one Oct 7th every 4 days.

The limits of dissent on Gaza in “The Observer”

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

While claiming no entitlement to have letters published, I think its indicative of the ideological limits of the challenges The Observer is prepared to publish that neither of these, or anything like it, made it into print. The only response they put in to the Karen Pollock article, which was a way to package Suella Braverman’s accusation that demonstrations calling for a ceasefire are actually “hate marches” in a way that might be acceptable for readers who think of themselves as liberals, was a letter that followed her framing of the conflict as religious intolerance, nothing to do with occupation and oppression (and was pessimistic that anything could be done about it). Narrowing the range of challenge, and excluding challenge to ideological frameworks, is a sign of waning political self confidence. As the old order fades, it has no option but to shut people up.

Eyeless in Gaza

Karen Pollock uses some odd constructions in her article (Anti Semitism and Holocaust denial are rife, just look at Stephen Fry’s Twitter Feed Observer 24/12/23) stepping across the thin ice of distortion on the snow shoes of euphemism.

Conceding that you “can“ be “appalled by the scenes we are witnessing in Gaza and critical of the choices made by the Israeli government and not be an antisemite” is just as well. If you read the daily UN updates there is such utter horror there, expressed in the most dispassionate prose, that it becomes numbing to read it. That’s why a majority of people in this country want a ceasefire, almost every country in the world has voted for one at the UN, and why there have been such huge demonstrations, here and everywhere else.

Implying that  is driven by “hatred” rooted in “antisemitism”, not by the reality of a genocide unfolding in front of our eyes, inverts reality; and would even if there weren’t such large and vibrant Jewish contingents and speakers on all of the marches.

Her use of the word “scenes”, for the utter carnage we are all seeing, possibly indicates a shying away in her own mind from the consequences of seeing it for what it is, as the logic of racism leads to genocide, and no people are immune from following it.

In that spirit, I hope that the Holocaust Education Trust would agree that Israeli politicians have learned the wrong lessons from the Holocaust when they 

  • build their state on racially discriminatory laws, 
  • say “the Gaza Strip should be flattened, and there should be one sentence for everyone there—death”, 
  • or back settlers who terrorise villagers in the West Bank and chant “Death to Arabs” and “May your villages burn”? 

This one was written in the middle of October and calls out the fundamental imbalance in their editorial response to October 7th. The figure quoted in this letter understates the asymmetry in casualties since 2000, which is almost 7 Palestinians for every Israeli killed. And this has got far worse since then, with the casualty rate since October 7th being “at least” (in the UN’s words) 18 Palestinians killed for every Israeli.

In the last decade the casualty rate from the conflict in Israel Palestine has been five Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Given that the suffering on the Palestinian side is so much higher, just on that level and leaving aside everything else, it is therefore strange that your editorial finds calls for violence  from Israel “understandable”, while considering that violent actions from Palestinians “defy comprehension”. 

Perhaps you should write another editorial explaining the asymmetry of your empathy. 

Questions for Education Ministers. Will you stop your complicity in genocide?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

FAO: Gillian Keegan, Nick Gibb, Robert Halfon.

On October 17th you sent a letter to school leaders advising them on how to deal with the war in Israel/Palestine.

The following statement was the basis of your position: “following the barbaric terrorist attacks in Israel, we are writing to provide advice for schools and colleges. The UK unequivocally condemns these terrorist attacks and stands in solidarity with Israel in its hour of need.”

The scale of the attack by Hamas on October 7th, is taken to be reason enough to give Israel a blank cheque in its response. But, if you look at the history, this is revealed to be blatantly one sided on your part.

You must be aware that the IDF invaded and bombed Gaza seven times between 2006 and 2022, and in two of these operations the Palestinian casualties were greater than the 1200 suffered in Israel on Oct 7th.

  • Operation Cast Lead (in 2008) killed 1400.
  • Operation Protective Edge (in 2014) killed 2,100.
  • The current attack has killed over 14,000. Why do none of these amount to an “hour of need” for the Palestinians, in your view?

If you want a lesson in barbarism, consider the punitive Israeli air strike on Gaza in 2008, which took place at 11:20 in the morning, just as the morning and afternoon shifts in schools changed over, ensuring the maximum number of children in the streets when the bombs were dropping.

But, even if you want to start the clock on October 7th, does the impact on children of this current offensive not register with you?

Before the bombing started again on Dec 1st, over six thousand children had been killed according to the UN. This is probably an underestimate. According to the official Israeli death list, thirty three children were killed in the Hamas raid on Oct 7th. If you work it out, that’s one hundred and eighty one Palestinian children killed, so far, for every Israeli child.

Why does this not yet weight heavier with you? We should note that 63 further children have been killed by settlers and the IDF in the West Bank since October 7th, where attacks have been running at an average of five a day, and thousands of olive trees have been uprooted.

To make these statistics more graspable for you. 6,000 dead children is equivalent to

  • fifty two Aberfan disasters,
  • or three hundred and seventy five Dunblane massacres.

How can you not grasp the horrific scale of this?

Seven to eight hundred children, two schools full, have had to have limbs amputated. Some of them multiple limbs. Many of them without anaesthetic. Imagine your child going through that.

61% of the population of Gaza is now displaced, about half of them children, with 46,000 homes totally destroyed and more than 243,000 damaged. Imagine that in your neighbourhood. Some of us can’t help but do so.

No children are going to school. They are too busy trying to survive.

51% of education facilities have been bombed.

Children have been writing their names on their arms or legs in case they are killed.

Doctors have had to write WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) on children’s case notes; where they have been able to treat them at all, as 26 hospitals and 55 health care facilities are out of service from bombing and lack of resources.

Children are being denied water, sanitation, health care. Lice are endemic. There have been more than 30,000 cases of diarrhea in children under five, the historic child killer in the Global South. Cholera, measles, chicken pox, typhus are all looming; and the WHO was warning that more would die from malnutrition and disease in the coming weeks even than in the bombing so far, even if it stopped, without a qualitative increase in aid starting now.

Instead, the bombing has started again, making the aid impossible, guaranteeing a horrific escalation in deaths even from what we’ve seen so far.

This is the consequence of standing with Israel.

So, for you, is this still Israel’s “hour of need”, are these attacks barbaric enough for you to condemn them, will you withdraw your advice to school leaders and stand with humanity and the global majority that is calling for a permanent ceasefire now?

Questions for people who think “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” is a racist slogan.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

News coverage of Saturday’s colossal ceasefire now march in London in the right wing press has used the phrase “anti-semitic slogans were heard” in an attempt to bracket a massive outpouring of diverse humanity, all ages, faiths, communities, nearly a million strong, united in a call to stop a massacre – with the 1,000 almost entirely white male thugs who attacked the police in Whitehall, presumably in an attempt to “defend our statues”.

I’ve been on all of these demos and have not heard any “antisemitic slogans”. And the papers don’t specify what they are, which is always suspicious.

But, the Right has attempted to define the slogan, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as antisemitic, so perhaps that’s what they mean.

The vibrant Jewish contingents that have been part of all these demos, and led the inspiring Railway Station occupations in the US have joined in with it of course, but these are never reported in the Daily Mail or Sun; as with most inconvenient truths.

So, what can be the objection to this slogan? If we change the tense, and make it a description of the current situation, its hard to argue that “From the river to the sea, Palestine ISN’T free!” is not accurate.

The area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is controlled by Israel. Palestinian Israeli citizens do not have the same rights as Israeli Jewish citizens and key state provisions, like education, are segregated. This is like Apartheid South Africa, or the Jim Crow South in the USA. Palestinians in the occupied territories are at the mercy of the Israeli army and settlers and have no recourse or standing when they are attacked by them. If someone wants to argue that between the river and the sea Palestinians are already free, they are welcome to try, but I’ve never heard that argument.

So, as this is an accurate description, the objection must be to the aspiration contained in “will be”.

Wanting to maintain the status quo means that “From the river to the sea, Palestine WON’T be free!” indefinitely. That the Palestinians should permanently accept inequality and injustice.

Perhaps people think that Palestinians not being free is OK.

We have heard a lot of “Israel’s right to defend itself”. But, under international law, an occupied people also has the right to resist occupation, with arms if need be; so stating the former without acknowledging the latter is an ideological reflection of a racist primacy. Only one side has the right to fight.

Put bluntly, the only basis on which this slogan can be interpreted as antisemitic is on a never stated but always present racist zero sum presumption that freedom for one people has to mean dispossession or genocide for the other.

This is rarely explicitly stated in the media here, but this is precisely what the Likud Party Constitution states. Likud is the core governing Party in Israel and is led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel).

a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace: therefore Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the sea and the river there will only be Israeli sovereignty. (My emphasis)

b. A plan which relinquishes parts of Western Eretz Israel, undermines our right to the country, unavoidably leads to the establishment of a “Palestinian state” (my emphasis, their inverted commas) jeopardises the security of the Jewish population, endangers the existence of the state of Israel, and frustrates any prospect of peace.

No ambiguity there. When Netanyahu showed his map of the “new Middle East” at the UN in September, showing Israel covering the whole territory with no Palestinian entity, he was expressing that view, in which Israeli security is predicated on the permanent subjection or erasure of the Palestinians, and there will never, ever be a Palestinian state.

The settler I heard interviewed by Jeremy Bowen last month, who was talking about driving out all the Palestinians “between the river and the sea”, was implementing that programme from below. These are the people who have just been given 10,000 assault rifles. The UN reports that since October 7th, attacks by settlers on Palestinian villages have been running at seven a day. But they were running at three a day before October 7th. Something to bear in mind when Tzipi Hotovely, or someone like her, says “we had a ceasefire before October 7th”.

Norman Finkelstein has compiled an enormous list of statements by Israeli politicians, spokespeople, IDF officers and journalists calling for Gaza to be bombed flat, everyone driven out, Israeli settlers moved in, often spiced up by defining the Gazan population as “human animals”. I think we’ve all seen or heard some of these, but the length of the list is as numbing as the UN casualty summaries. Its like stepping into a river of the most genocidal racism that just goes on and on and on.

Benjamin Netanyahu describes the war in Gaza as a war between civilisation and barbarism, and the Gazans as “savages”. And we all know how “civilisation” treated “savages” in North America, Africa, Australasia. Back to the Heart of Darkness. “Exterminate all the all brutes”.

The logic of basing a state on racial grounds is at least discriminatory, at worst genocidal. And that is what we are seeing playing out now.

The alternative is the same as almost every other country in the world in which different ethnicities, faiths, linguistic groups and cultures live side by side on the basis of legal equality. In that sense, freedom for Palestine, also means freedom for the Israeli population.

There was a terrible fear among white South Africans under Apartheid that freedom for the Black majority would mean dispossession and death for them – partly as an awareness of the violence and humiliation that they had dealt out to them. It didn’t happen. There are lots of problems in South Africa, but the collapse of Apartheid was experienced as a liberation by almost everyone remarkably quickly. Rainbow nation.

Contrary to Suella Braverman, multiculturalism hasn’t failed. Its how most of us live in most places. And its better than zero sum racial conflict.

A ceasefire is the first step to peaceful resolution. Letting the IDF offensive continue or, worse, cheering it on, with or without weaselly qualifications, is the road to genocide, with Netanyahu citing “Dresden” and “Hiroshima” as models.

Never again. For anyone.

Manufacturing consent for a massacre…

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This is an expanded version of my complaint to Radio 4. You can’t say everything you need to in 2000 characters.

The way that I feel about your coverage this evening is summarised in a letter I wrote to the Observer last week,

In the last two decades the casualty rate from the conflict in Israel Palestine has been twenty Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Given that the suffering on the Palestinian side is so much higher, it is therefore strange that your editorial finds calls for violence  from Israel “understandable”, while considering that violent actions from Palestinians “defy comprehension”. 

Perhaps you should write another editorial explaining the asymmetry of your empathy. 

They didn’t publish it.

Like them, your bias comes out in two main ways.

The tone in which you say things and the presumption you have about who can be trusted. As if Rishi Sunak, the US administration and MI6 don’t have gigantic axes to grind and have never knowingly misled anyone for political purposes.

What you cover.

  • This evening you relegated Palestinian suffering to its customary background level of attention and concern – something to be taken for granted, like wallpaper, like all Global South deaths.
  • You broadcast an item that argued for the Police to suppress people on a small Hizb ut Tahrir demo on Saturday shouting “jihad” on the basis that this could be interpreted as threatening, while managing to falsely imply that this was the character of the main, massive and diverse PSC ceasefire demonstration on the same day – which actually included Jewish people and organisations – and without reflecting for a moment that taking the flag of a country that is imposing collective punishment on 2.3 million people, and has killed over 5,000 of them in the past week, and flying it on public buildings might also be offensive and threatening to many people in this country, and is opposed by most of us.
  • you followed up with a report on the IDF press conference on Hamas atrocities on October 7th,
  • then followed that up with an individual story of what happened to one family on Oct 7th.
  • Then you repeated the Prime Minster’s endorsement of the Israeli claim that the attack on the hospital last week was from a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad (rockets that have never managed to kill even a handful of people when they have got through to Israel but in this case managed to kill over 400 somehow) without reflecting either the serious debunking the Israeli claims have had, nor noting the other 5 hospitals the IDF have hit, nor the Church that runs the hospital stating that the IDF have warned them twice, nor the Israeli- US rejection of calls for an independent investigation (which is always a bit of a give away).
  • mentioned that 20 lorries have been allowed into Gaza with humanitarian aid, without noting that this is 480 short of the normal daily total after two weeks of a total siege
  • then repeated the rocket claim from our ever trustworthy intelligence agencies (who have never been known to be economical with the truth) just in case anyone missed it the first time.

All of this is designed to build up empathy for one side over the other in a way that reflects the agenda of the IDF, which is to generate compliance for its current and future operations in Gaza.

These have already killed three times as many as died on Oct 7th and will kill many many more if there isn’t a ceasefire; something the overwhelming majority of people in this country support (76% according to a YouGov poll last week).

When you cover an individual story it generates an emotional bond with the people being covered. If you primarily cover one side in this way, it indicates that this is deliberate.

Here’s a suggestion. To be properly balanced and properly to match the current ratio of death and suffering, for every individual story you cover from the Israeli side, you should cover three from the Palestinian side, and keep adding to the ratio as the death toll goes up. As it will. A process that coverage like yours is now enabling.

1,000 eyes for an eye?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

“Also, I guess its permissible for a gentleman to kill children and women, as long as they are peasants”. Jason Lee Burke. Flags on the Bayou.

When Rishi Sunak says “There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance. I stand with Israel” he is stating his position in reverse order.

He stands with Israel, therefore there is no question of balance, and therefore there can be no acknowledgement that other side to the conflict can have anything legitimate to say.

Nor can he acknowledge that the ultimate cause of that conflict is the racially oppressive nature of the Israeli state; nor that the balance of power and therefore the balance of death and damage is overwhelmingly in Israel’s favour; with five Palestinians killed for every Israeli.

This year alone 49 Palestinian children have been killed by the IDF and settlers; something that stokes no moral outrage in our media, from our Prime Minister or leader of the opposition, let alone the despatch of two aircraft carrier task forces to the Eastern Med by the United States.

Because Palestinian children being killed is normal, expected, nothing to remark on. The natural order of things. Just as the inexorable dispossession of Palestinians from their land and the entrenchment of racist laws (over 50 of them) in Israel carries on with barely a comment, as though it were a force of nature.

Nothing anyone can do about it. Its just where the power lies.

And so it does. The “West” supports Israel because Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians is like that of the West to the rest of the world in microcosm, and the fault line between the Global North and the Global South runs through the territory controlled by Israel. Israel itself is generally seen as being part of the Global North. The Palestinian territories are definitely not.

Rishi Sunak stands with Israel because it is defending Western wealth and power, and capacity to discriminate and deny wealth and power to others, with force in the same way that the UK and USA do. They are doing it within territory they control, rather than in a series of expeditionary forces far from home, but its the same relation of power that is being “defended”, or enforced, depending on what side of the process you are on.

Power, wealth, dominance. Being seen as human comes from having it. Those who do not have it, the dispossessed, are not, and cannot be, counted as fully human. “Human animals” as the Israeli defence Minister put it. Who deserve their punishment. Kay Burley might not say that “Gaza has it coming” but its the unspoken presumption behind every broadcast and the framing of every report.

Because Apartheid was, and is, not an aberration. It is the normative racial expression of colonial power. And that is shown most starkly in whose lives matter, and whose don’t.

That’s why its possible for Sir Keir Starmer to say that it is legitimate for Israel to “defend itself” by cutting off food, water, power and medicine to all of the two and half million people who are trying to survive in the Gaza strip.

Just think about that for a moment. Imagine it the other way around. Would it be legitimate for the Palestinians to cut Israel off from food, water, medicines and power, if they could, as an act of self defence from the regular bombing and shelling it gets from the IDF? Or is it only acceptable for those that have the power to do so. The strong have the right to defend themselves against the weak, because they can? Might makes right?

This is also normative. It is how the “West”, that embodiment of enlightenment values, “defends” itself against any regime, of whatever sort, that challenges it, from the half million children starved to death in Iraq in the 1990s through sanctions to the 40,000 who died in Venezuela in the last decade.

The humanity of those who die cannot be allowed to come into it. Some lives matter more than others and therefore the deaths of those that do can be pressed into service to create a great tsunami of moral outrage that can justify horror on a far grander scale to restore the natural order of things. The most lurid stories about this – widespread rapes, the beheading of 40 babies on a Kibbutz – are now being quietly withdrawn for lack of evidence. But they have served their purpose on the front pages and social media feeds to prepare the ground for the retaliation; which will be on a terrible scale.

All the more terrible because Israel has suffered the humiliation of having one of its army bases overrun. “Facts on the ground” will have to be reasserted so they can carry on trying to keep themselves safe, not by seeking peace and equal rights for everyone in the territory they control, but by doubling down on the exclusion and repression that has generated this reaction in the first place. The human losses in the immediate term will be appalling. In the longer term, a state that will have to become ever more violent and repressive, simply postpones the point at which this breaks and makes the eventual reckoning apocalyptic.

This is the pattern as we saw with 9/11. Three thousand five hundred people died on that day in 2001. Their stories were told, their loved ones interviewed, their last messages played back, the rubble was sifted through for traces of DNA that could be buried. There was no doubt that these people’s lives mattered. The “war on terror” that the USA unleashed in response killed four and a half million people. Their lives did not matter. The ratio of deaths is over 1,000 to one.

And that is the scale of the barbarism of the “enlightened West”. They kill on such a large scale, with such sophisticated weaponry, in so many places, so often, even at home sometimes against the “lesser breeds without the law” that live among them, partly because they are terrified of the consequences of what they know they have done.

The atavistic fear of the slave rebellion subconsciously acknowledges the terrible injustices done to the enslaved, in terror at their vengeful uprising; and tries to assuage itself by redoubling the injustice, building walls and bombing harder. Impossible to live with that unless you deny the humanity of the people you are doing it to.

And so it is with flags. Showing a Palestinian flag in the UK can now be a matter for the police -as it can be seen as a form of threatening behaviour. Flying the Israeli flag on public buildings at a time they are bombing Gaza more intensely than at any point in the last 16 years, smashing six neighbourhoods, hitting 18 health facilities, killing 1,200 people so far, is considered a fine gesture of solidarity.

In the second wave of the wars for the New American Century, dissent will increasingly be defined as treason, extending humanity to the oppressed considered inhumane.

On one level, its possible simply to turn questions like that of Richard Littlejohn on the front page of the Daily Mail on Tuesday on its head. “How can the British Left make excuses for a terrorist group that murders women and children?” And that would be valid as far as it goes. “How can the British Right make excuses for a terrorist state that murders women and children?” But the deeper question is what the answer is and where the solution lies.

For the Right the conflict in Israel-Palestine is posed as between two ethnic groups. Power relations are ignored, or taken as the natural order of things. So, the motivation for resistance becomes a flaw in character. Evil terrorism from people who can’t accept their place. “The Palestinians have to accept that they are a defeated people” as US neocon Daniel Pipes put it. There is therefore no solution but endless repression to keep those who currently have the upper hand, one of “our allies” and therefore the good guys, in power forever. And, if that looks like a boot stamping on a child’s face over and over again until the end of time, so be it. Not “our” children after all. “Little snakes” according to former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

For the Left, the conflict is about power and equal rights and the solution is everyone having them. The slogan “No justice, no peace” is not a threat, it is a description.