Digest 3 – Selected Additional Reading
JVL Introduction
Another roundup of interesting and informative articles which we have not chosen to foreground in individual posts for various reasons, but all of which we’d like to draw to our readers’ attention.
This digest links to the following articles:
The New Zionist Ideal: A Generation of Israelis Devoid of Shame Over the Gaza War, Gideon Levy
How Devaluing Palestinian Lives Became a Western Obsession, Daniel Finn
Weaponizing Jewish fear, from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam, Em Hilton
Zionism’s long 20th century, Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Video: Albanese dismantles ‘genocide denier’ Lammy
The translation of solidarity: From Amsterdam to Jerusalem, Kate Greenberg
Mike Huckabee’s old-school Christian Zionism is bad news for anyone who wants Middle East peace, Tristan Sturm
Sha’ban al-Dalou burned alive before the world. May his death awaken us, Zak Witu
The global arms trade has never been more lawless, more deadly, more corrupt – or more profitable, Mike Phipps
Leaving Zion, Arielle Angel
30 years ago, Grace Paley foresaw today’s clash over antisemitism, Michael Rothberg
RK
The New Zionist Ideal: A Generation of Israelis Devoid of Shame Over the Gaza War
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 17 Nov 2024
Archived here.
Levy is scathing about the values of the soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon described by Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in these words:
“A generation of lions has arisen in Israel. I have no doubt that these guys, the combatants and the reservists, will return to civilian life as more idealistic people, people who are more compassionate, and they are the people who will rebuild this country for the next 50 years. There is hope!”
[And here is a brief post on X/Twitter, 15 Nov: “The Israeli occupation forces destroyed all the dialysis machines at al-Shifa Hospital on purpose – 60 machines catering to 350 patients, including children”]
How Devaluing Palestinian Lives Became a Western Obsession
Daniel Finn, Jacobin, 4 Nov 2024
Openly racist attitudes to the Palestinian people are pervasive in the European and American political mainstream, from the liberal center to the far right. This form of bigotry is a gateway through which old-fashioned colonial racism can gain new legitimacy.
“Not only is anti-Palestinian racism ubiquitous — it is the most virulent and pervasive form of racism to be found in the Euro-American political mainstream, the one that can be expressed most blatantly, with the least stigma attached to it.”
Weaponizing Jewish fear, from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam
Rhetoric about ‘pogroms’ and ‘Jew hunts’ aims to obscure reality by generating mass hysteria — which can then be used to advance a far-right agenda.
Don’t miss this important article which puts the reporting of events in Amsterdam in a wider context:
“This is, of course, a common tactic in the far-right playbook: generating chaos and fear to reassert its worldview. The erasure of the racist violence of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans through negligent reporting by much of the mainstream media only accelerated it in this instance. At a time when genuine antisemitism is on the rise and Jewish people feel particularly under threat around the world, this instrumentalization of Jewish fear was especially galling.”
“The question we must ask ourselves in the wake of these events and the discourse surrounding them is: what kind of politics does this serve? It is certainly in the interest of the Israeli government to frame the violence as solely motivated by anti-Jewish racism, and thus shut down any efforts to connect it to the genocidal war in Gaza. Israeli leaders are hellbent on reinforcing the core Zionist tenet that Israel is the only safe place for Jews, and that Muslims and Arabs pose an existential threat to us wherever they are. To keep us afraid is to keep us in line — how else will they continue to manufacture consent for the war?
“The longer the onslaught on Gaza continues, the greater the likelihood that hostility toward Israelis abroad will continue to result in violence, and that the spillover of anti-Israel hostility into antisemitism will become harder and harder to contain. Indeed, we saw this in Amsterdam with people shouting “kanker jood” (cancer Jew) during attacks on Maccabi fans. “
Zionism’s long 20th century
With the Middle East in flames, Britain’s relationship with Israel will transform again.
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New Statesman, 13 Nov 2024
“At a time of widespread anger and revulsion against Israel and its campaign in Gaza, completely submerging the anger and revulsion which might have been expected after the Hamas atrocity in October 2023, most people reading this will find it quite hard to believe – even those of us old enough find it quite hard to recall – just how broadly popular Israel was at one time, notably on the liberal left.”
Wheatcroft sums up the change in feeling well when he writes:
“Students demonstrating for Palestine today are the grandchildren of the students who cheered Israel to victory in 1967.”
And he points out that, as Tony Judt foresaw, “Palestinians have now displaced Jews as the emblematic persecuted minority: vulnerable, humiliated and stateless.”
Video: Albanese dismantles ‘genocide denier’ Lammy over wilful ignorance of international law
Skwawkbox, 16 Nov 24
Francesca Albanese’s short video interview is unmissable! She simply cannot contain her disbelief that layer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy should be so ignorant as to how genocide is defined in international law…
The translation of solidarity
From Amsterdam to Jerusalem
Kate Greenberg, Vashti, 15 Nov 24
“…then came recordings of chants calling for the death of Arabs, the selfsame chant I hear sometimes from my bedroom in Jerusalem…”
Kate Greenberg reflects on the real meaning of solidarity: not for example the US missions that are flying Jews over the Israel to visit the site of the Nova festival or burnt out houses in order to reconnect them to Jewish values”, where “solidarity begins to sound very much like choosing a side in a sports match”. But genuine solidarity, like in Amsterdam where “in spite of a temporary ban on all protests in the city, Amsterdammer activists protesting genocide and war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon continued to gather… resulting in hundreds of their arrests.”
Greenberg cites queer feminist scholar Sara Ahmed: “Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.”
Mike Huckabee’s old-school Christian Zionism is bad news for anyone who wants Middle East peace
Tristan Sturm, Forward, 15 Nov 24
“For Huckabee,” says Sturm, “what happens next in the Middle East will not be about politics. It will be about a violent vision of religion, one in which conflict, war and dismal fates for Palestinians and Jews alike are preordained by God.”
Huckabee is an old-school Christian Zionist, with the goal of establishing full Israeli sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank. His millennial vision might not be compatible with Donald Trump’s for it is the removal of Palestinians from the biblically defined land of Israel to facilitate Christ’s return.
“Under Huckabee’s ambassadorship, Israel will become markedly less likely to find a peaceful resolution to this brutal conflict.”
“I never use the term West Bank,” [Hukabee] told the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “I find it offensive. We are talking about Judea and Samaria … We need to use the biblical language.” Previously he had said that he doesn’t see the West Bank “as occupied, that makes it appear as if someone is illegally taking land.”
“Huckabee envisions a state of Israel that extends from the river to the sea: from the Mediterranean to the river Euphrates, and down to the River Nile.”
Sha’ban al-Dalou burned alive before the world. May his death awaken us
Zak Witus, Guardian 17 Oct 2024
The author is the young leadership and education coordinator at the New Israel Fund. While applauding his sentiments all evidence suggests that he is wildly over-optimistic…
“We must make this moment a watershed that quenches the hellfire that threatens to envelop Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and the entire region”
“I clicked on the accompanying video and I could not believe what I saw: an inferno blazing, people running around screaming, and there, amidst the flame, a body writhing, crackling; a raised arm, reaching out for help, still attached to an IV. I waited for the following morning to share the video, until the event had been reported by reputable news outlets, because the images appeared too gruesome to be real – like they were something out of a movie – but they were real: an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah and killed at least four people. The man that we saw burning alive? His name was Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student.”…
The global arms trade has never been more lawless, more deadly, more corrupt – or more profitable
Labour Hub, 22 Oct 2024
Mike Phipps reviews Monstrous Anger of the Guns: How the Global Arms Trade is Ruining the World and What We Can Do About It, edited by Rhona Michie, Andrew Feinstein and Paul Rogers, with Jeremy Corbyn, published by Pluto.
“With over $2.2 trillion spent on defence in 2022, the global arms trade has never been more lawless, more deadly, more corrupt – or more profitable,” argue the editors of this collection of essays.
World military expenditure is rising significantly, as new wars create new markets. Arms companies are a spearhead of neoliberal fundamentalism, working hard to avoid regulation, and lobbying states to promote their interests.
These developments are carefully chronicled and analysed as is the global compaign against the arms trade.
Leaving Zion
Arielle Angel NLR 148, Jul/Aug 2024
The editor in chief of Jewish Currents interviewed about her journey from Zionism to Palestinian solidarity and activism.
NLR starts the interview by describing the importance of Jewish Currents: “Publishing Palestinian voices from Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora, it has broken a series of American taboos, not least in advancing a concrete plan for the realization of Palestinian refugees’ right to return, a start on what one writer has called the hard work of ‘decolonization, reparation, reconciliation’.
30 years ago, Grace Paley foresaw today’s clash over antisemitism
Michael Rothberg, Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2024
A short essay in which the author reflects on Jewish American author and activist Grace Paley’s 1991 is short, autobiographical tale “Three Days and a Question.”
“Paley’s [first-day]story also presciently predicts a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly prominent: the weaponization of charges of antisemitism to stifle dissent about Israeli actions. As Paley emphasizes, even a critic with the most radical personal experience of antisemitism — deportation to Auschwitz — can be accused of anti-Jewishness. Paley seems to have grasped decades in advance just how politically charged and consequential the issue of antisemitism would become.”
Another bit of reading – from today’s “Middle East Eye” that may provide useful data for individuals trying to stop the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank:-
“A new database of over 400 companies that operate in the UK and are deemed complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza has been launched by a collective of unions and organisations led by Progressive International. The Watermelon Index …“a tool for worker-led resistance against the occupation and genocide in Palestine” will allow employees to connect with each other and with activists to challenge their bosses over connections to Israel.
Among the companies listed are Barclays, shipping firm Maersk, e-commerce giant Amazon, software company Microsoft and holiday rental outfit Airbnb. As well as these multinationals, there are a host of other operations with ties to Israel, in industries including finance, insurance, technology, logistics and energy. Progressive International is focusing its efforts within these sectors.
A company’s complicity with Israel’s war on Gaza is measured through “the different kinds of support, including financial, military, diplomatic, cultural, trade and social” it provides, according to Progressive International.”