Re: <nettime> silence on Palestine?

[Heiko Recktenwald via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Am 14.10.23 um 07:32 schrieb Rahul Goswami via nettime-l:
> Yes, I have picked out aspects of the post-1948 period. Historical 
> events and eras anterior to the formation of the state of Israel are a 
> subject too voluminous for a discussion in this forum.
> The immediate and recent facts remain:
> 1. What happened on 7 October 2023 was a terrorist attack. The death 
> toll from that attack is now at least 1,300 which is an enormous 
> number. The number of injured is much higher. This was an organised 
> and deliberate terrorist attack.


Language is very important. What is Gaza? What is the name of its 
government? Par in parem not habet iudicum. A states are equal.


> 2. The modes of killing and savage humiliation by Hamas terrorists 
> against Israeli citizens (and other citizens) have gone far beyond 
> what the world has come to associate with terrorism in recent decades. 
> These cannot and must never be sanitised.


First of all, it was an act or war. They knocked the state of Israels 
down with one drone. While the IDF was busy to protect looting. And then 
they showed what that did mean. The attackers are all dead. What does 
this mean for the right of self-defense?


> 3. In a number of cities in Europe, North America and Australia, later 
> on 7 October and during the days following, 'celebrations' for the 
> attack were on public display by supporters in those cities of Hamas, 
> the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian "resistance". This 
> points to the globalisation of the support for terrorism of this 
> nature. That this has happened is a concern serious enough for those 
> in the West, but that it has yet to be recognised academically signals 
> a blind spot that is already deadly.


You have to distinguish between the fact of some action, the knocking 
down of the state of Israel, and what they did later. They liked the 
action nobody said: I love the killing of civilians. And see their 
logic: No citizen of Israel is innocent. The Germans and the holocaust. 
Who was innocent? Again: All states are equal.


> 4. Media and commentary about the Israeli armed response to the 7 
> October terror attack has been generally one-sided. The Israeli 
> Defence Force has been criticised. However the IDF's methods have not 
> changed. As before, it warns civilians before an attack.


Everybody knows this. They dont have to go but then they are dead. The 
question of propoprtionality is the same. War in cities is hell. The 
Ukraine is a kindergarten. Aleppo comes to mind. Where does self-defense 
end and where does punishment begin? Regimechange, is it justified?


> What has escaped even passing comment by the Western media is the 
> wretched development track record of the Palestinian Authority and 
> Hamas (in Gaza), which collect huge sums every year (a) by taxing 
> Egyptian business in and with Gaza, (b) taxing Gazans who commute to 
> work daily to and from Israel, (c) from Qatar which has for the last 
> several years paid upwards of USD 200 million a year. To what uses has 
> this money been put?


Gaza is a state and needs a lot of money.



> 5. The Palestinian Authority and its supporters demand the right to 
> the existence of a Palestinian state. However Mahmoud Abbas has not 
> only repeatedly vowed never to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, but 
> in March 2014 lobbied the Arab League to issue a statement expressing 
> its "absolute and decisive rejection to recognising Israel as a Jewish 
> state." This symbolises the growing Islamism within Palestinian 
> society, and its apparent acceptance by particularly Western 
> supporters of the PA, which is as serious a matter as point 3 above.


This is the basic question. This is not Islamism but liberalism. States 
should be neutral.


Israel has not many options. (a) Kick all Pals out again, (b) the two 
state solution with the boerders of 1967 and Eastern Jerusalem aas the 
capital of the second starte of trhe P?als or (c) a one state solution 
with equal rights fof all. If you want to have a Jewish state you have 
the options (a) and (b). (b) means that the settlers in the westbank 
would have to live in the state of Palestine or have to go. Like they 
left Gaza. The option (c) would be a neutral state with Hamas in the 
parliament.


My 2 cents,


Best, H.


> Rahul Goswami

--
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org