Gaza – a few recent videos
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
A few interesting and relevant videos.
RK
Stephen Sackur interviews Gideon Levy
Stephen Sackur interviews Israeli journalist and commentator Gideon Levy, a long-time critic of his country’s leadership. Three months into this war prompted by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, what has happened to the Israeli mindset?
100 days of war on Gaza – Middle East Eye 3-minute video
Mustafa Barghouti | Palestine in 2024 – What the World should be doing
(or click here if that link doesn’t work)
Briefing with time for Q&A, direct from Palestine, with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti.
Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian physician, activist, & politician who serves as General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI). He has been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006 & is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council. In 2007, he was Minister of Information in the Palestinian unity government.
A snippet from the past
Parallels today suggest themselves…
Keir Starmer at the International Court of Justice in 2014, making a case for genocide. pic.twitter.com/qYXgMK52iQ
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 12, 2024
Daniel Levy on Right of Return
Sir Keir is a very interesting case study.
That War on Gaza video makes me think of some of those Isis videos of some years ago and also reminds me of Martin Amis’ coinage, ‘horrorism’. It’s beyond terrorism. Also — the really weak part of the legal convention on genocide is that ‘intent’ component. One might argue, to be generous beyond what perpetrators deserve, that a government or army collectively didn’t intend the consequences of their action *at the very start* of a process, but once they’ve seen (and they cannot not have) the consequences, then to continue surely signifies intent?
Gideon Levy is extraordinary. I feel it’s so easy for me to hold these views he expresses, living in the U.K. and surrounded by friends who agree with me. To be the lone voice in Israel, as he is, shows so much courage and integrity.
When Gideon Levy says Israelis don’t know what’s going on, of course I believe him and yet I’m puzzled. Just because it’s true that Israeli TV and radio aren’t informing their public doesn’t mean the people don’t know. There’s such a thing as convenient elective amnesia. And maybe IDF soldiers on leave don’t speak of what they’ve seen and done. (Are they under vows of silence imposed from above?)
At least those Germans who said, after the mass murders of the 1940s that “they didn’t know” had some measure of excuse (if it was true) because there was no social media, no free media. Israel, for all the harsh treatment of those who dare speak the truth, does have easy access — for those who want it — to the airwaves, the world online. Do any Israelis watch Al Jazeera? I hope someone can tell me.
So when, as was reported recently and Stephen Sackur quotes it, some very high percentage of Israelis support this “war” (and when even earlier it was reported that many Israelis were saying its government hadn’t been ferocious enough on Gazans) what were they (a) endorsing, (b) complaining about? Sounds to me like they had a pretty good idea (“flatten it!”) what they wanted.
So I’m so far unconvinced that we can exonerate the Israelis en masse. OK I’m not there, I have no contact with Israelis (out of touch with the cousins who did their aliyah decades ago) don’t know modern Ivrit and the rest of it, but from a distance it looks to me like they’re all in it up to their necks.
I’ve got a little more to add to what I wrote on the Gideon Levy video. I’ve just watched Paul Jay interview Shir Hever on the Analysis.news at http://tinyurl.com/xa9eejwm ‘Gaza: AI Targeting a Cover for Genocide’ posted 22 Jan 2024 and I’ve made a quick verbatim copy of what Shir said:
“This is the first war in Israeli history in which soldiers are completely banned from contacting their own families and friends. This has been 100, 101, days depending on when you’re broadcasting this [interview] and [during] this time the soldiers cannot call their girlfriend, their parents, cant tell them what’s happening in Gaza, but even more important, they cannot hear what people hear back home when they watch news and can follow the situation.
So this is not just to prevent the public from knowing what’s happening in Gaza, but to prevent soldiers from knowing that the world is watching and calling it genocide. Some soldiers who do receive a little bit of leave, and not many receive leave, but the ones who do are the ones who exhibit significant PTSD because the reality clashes completely with what they saw on the ground.”
So that answers the question I had above, or partly does.