Condemn if you wish, but Palestinians will pay a heavy price
JVL Introduction
How should we think about what happened on 7 October?
Your web editor has had no reservations condemning what Hamas did in relation to civilians.
But Jonathan Cook’s important contribution, reposted here, makes uncomfortable reading for me, explaining how such condemnation is being weaponised against Palestinians as a whole.
He recognises that Hamas committed war crimes on that day and does not condone them, but he refuses to condemn.
For the demand to condemn is not innocent, he argues: it is being cynically weaponised as part of an agenda to demonise Hamas, to present its actions as being of an order of magnitude worse than anything Israel has ever done – those of a special kind of depraved, inhuman, barbarous enemy.
It starts the clock on 7 October, ignoring the scores of Israeli war crimes committed before that date.
And it acts as a justification for unspeakable war crimes being committed now by Israel, acting as a rationalisation for the murderous ongoing bombardment and starvation of the people of Gaza.
In our topsy-turvy world, it is being used as a justification for genocide.
We must refuse to accept that.
RK
This article was originally published by Joathan Cook's blog on Fri 10 Nov 2023. Read the original here.
Condemn if you wish, but Palestinians will pay a heavy price
The act of condemnation has been cynically weaponised. The aim is not to show solidarity with Israelis. It’s to fan the flames of hatred to rationalise crimes against Palestinians
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I am in absolute agreement with Jonathan’s analysis of this heirarchy of horror and condemnation. Why is it that the media and governments only react when Israeli civilians are slaughtered? And now these very people who have been demanding that we condemn Hamas’ action without looking at the context are oh so very quiet in their condemnation of Israel’s genocide. When did anyone last here an interview with a pro Israeli person begin with the question – ” do you condemn the horror and brutality of the Israeli action on civilians in Gaza”?
It seems Jonathan Cook wants to exceptionalise atrocities committed by Hamas as somehow worthy of immunity from public condemnation because those against whom they commit such atrocities are equally guilty of atrocities against the Palestinian people. Therefore, so his logic goes, demonising and condemning Hamas merely provides cover for Israeli atrocities on Palestinians.
This is a dangerous relativisation and instrumentalisation of morality in the name of Palestinian liberation that culminates in the justification of silence about the methods and ideology used to achieve its end, Palestinian liberation. But two wrongs can never make a right, and the ends cannot justify the means if the means are immoral. Ultimately the end will be as rotten as the means.
It is just as easy to argue that those in solidarity with Palestinian justice and liberation, by failing to condemn Hamas, provide all manner of excuse for Israel to withdraw further into the laager visiting its vengeance on the Palestinian people. If ever this conflict is to be resolved it is essential that the oppressor is not offered cheap points to justify its paranoia and intransigence driving its oppressive violence, by failing to call out the wrongdoing of Palestinian organisations such as Hamas.
On one of the solidarity marches I picked up a leaflet from ‘Workers’ Liberty’. They summed up the issue thus. “The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by Hamas cannot possibly serve emancipatory ends. One video circulating on social media appeared to show fighters parading the mangled corpse of an Israeli child, stripped almost naked, through the streets on a truck, while chanting “god is great”. These are actions carried out by partisans of a violent reactionary ideology, hostile not only to the Israeli military or state but to Israelis as such, and specifically to Jews. Socialists who cannot see this worldview has nothing in common with our own – egalitarian, democratic, humanist – perspective have utterly lost their bearings.”
I say “Don’t condemn if you wish, but Palestinians, – is it only Palestinians? – will pay a heavy price.”
It is lovely to hear that a large block of Jewish people took part in the March
I am very pleased that JVL has published this. However there is an additional argument why it is essential to distinguish revulsion at a human atrocity from unthinking condemnation of the presumed perpetrators.
I would note that our society has only recently taken steps to make this distinction in relation to the sudden violence of women or minors who have silently suffered years of abuse.
Norman Finkelstein makes this distinction powerfully in his comparison of the events of October 7 to Nat Turner’s slave rebellion of 1831.
“….The 2,000 young men who burst the gates of Gaza on October 7, 2023, had been born into a concentration camp…..The vast majority of them could never hope to leave but only to pace each day the camp’s suffocating perimeter; never aspire to gainful employment or eat a full meal; never expect to marry or raise a family. Abandoned by everyone, they were “remaindered” to languish and die. To expedite this process, Israel periodically launched “operations” visiting death and destruction on Gaza: thousands methodically mowed down; homes and critical infrastructure systematically pulverized….
On the night of October 6 each of those 2,000 men probably kissed his mother, then his father, goodbye. Forever. And then each silently vowed to vindicate the remorseless torture of a twilight existence, and to avenge the murder of a grandparent, sister, brother, niece, nephew by that Satanic power that cursed their lives..”
See below for Finkelstein’s full argument
https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/nat-turner-in-gaza
In the view of legal expert Marjorie Cohn, quoted in Saturdays ‘Morning Star’, is that ‘The Palestians have the right to self-determination and the right to resist Israel’s occupation of their territory, including through armed struggle’. ‘Gaza, together with the West and, including East Jerusalem, is part of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. The Occupied Palestinian Territory is a single territorial unit over which the Palestinian peoples right to self-determination is enshrined in international law, according to the ICJs Wall decision. The legal test for ‘effective control’, which exists if the military forces of the adversary could assume physical control of any part of the country at any time’.
Gaza and its inhabitants remain under Israeli effective control and are, therefore, occupied. The Palestinians have the right to use military force to resist Israel’s military occupation’.
If this legal assessment is correct then Jonathan Cook is quite correct; Hamas, democratically elected to govern the Gaza Strip, is within its rights to attack Israel’s military occupation and should not be condemned for having done so.
Thank you for this comment; I do want to point out that Hamas did much more than attack military targets and its attacks on, and capture of, civilians goes beyond armed resistance and has, for example, been called a war crime by Amnesty as they also label Israel’s actions.
If what Hamas did was wrong, then how can it ever be said that what Israel is doing is right? If Israel’s answer to what Hamas did is to do even worse and for longer then what does Israel think the question is? Committing the same sort of crime which has been committed against you using as justification that you were the victim of a crime is pure ‘chutzpah’. It seems we have reached the point where Israel’s ability to reason has been replaced by unreasoning attitudinising. It certainly is incapable of listening to reason. Hamas, wrongly, offered Israel a great provocation; but how Israel has responded to that provocation now goes far beyond anything that could be called proportionate. Israel is losing credibility by the minute. Good.
At last, a journalist who spells out the true reality.
Israel turns everything upside down to maintain their position of victim
Who said ‘the holocaust is Israels get out of gaol card’
7th October was Netanyahu’s fault
Hamas have the right of self defence or Israel is also acting like barbarians and savages, take your pick
What is the current exchange rate on both sides
Hostages
200 Hamas 12000 Israel
Innocent deaths
170 Hamas 17000 Israel
Refer to Gaza as a death camp
Ask yourself is it possible for Jews to commit Genocide, to dehumanise and lie on an industrial scale to justify the slaughter of innocents, aided and abetted by the West
Who are these people and how do you introduce Moral Hazard into the equation
Although I recognise and agree with the force of many of the points made, I would dissent from the central argument. If the distinction between “condemning” and “not condoning” has any meaning at all, then it means that the killing of one child is somehow less horrifying than the killing of another. I could not imagine explaining this to the ghost of any dead child. (Understanding the history which gave rise to such a barbarous act is a different matter). This difference in the value of a child’s life is exactly of course what the Israeli government promulgates. When we say, as we have to, what we find right or wrong, we have to do it in terms of our own moral standards, and not by a calculation of how our words might be distorted. They inevitably will be distorted, but truth spoken clearly is usually recognisable. To do anything else leads us into a moral quagmire – for instance, the author is a reporter, and there is no doubt that reporting other incidents/atrocities by Hamas (perhaps in their administration of Gaza) could be used as propaganda by the Israeli government. Would this potential distortion then be a good reason to fail to report these, to deny them, or to participate in covering them up? Ditching truth in what may seem to be a greater cause is always a dicey policy.
Norman Finkelstein has it grievously wrong on this.
Hamas’ murderous assault on 7 October was a crime that cannot be mitigated by Israel’s murderous retaliatory assault on Gaza.
This is a great column and I fully support the sentiments expressed therein.
James O’Brien on LBC asked a caller: ” if Hamas were hiding in Israel, do you think that the IDF would have inflicted the same punishment to the Israeli civilians as they have done to the Gazans?”
Hamas is a resistance movement fighting the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. They should not be labelled as terrorists. When Nazis occupied France, we had a French resistance movement, Freedom Fighters) but the Nazis called it a terrorist organisation. Our politicians are repeating the same mistake.