Israel as the Abyss
JVL Introduction
We have twice reviewed Anthony Lowenstein’s book The Palestine Laboratory, published last year.
It repays yet another visit in the light of the ongoing war on Gaza. All the inhumanity, and the atavistic genocidal desire for vengeance, revealed in this war, must have been lying close to the surface of Israeli society to erupt in quite the way it has.
At the core of Loewenstein’s analysis is an intransigent, far-right Zionist nationalism and an economy based on a weapons industry, its products tested and retested on a brutalised Palestinian population which it holds in subjugation. Far from this being a badge of shame it is a major Israeli selling-point.
Israel is revealed here as indeed a light unto nations, but the light is from exploding ordinance. It is “leading the global pacification industry”, a beacon for those for whom tolerance, equal rights for all and international law are anathema.
RK (h/t GL)
This article was originally published by Arena on Thu 11 Apr 2024. Read the original here.
Israel as the Abyss: On Antony Loewenstein’s ‘The Palestine Laboratory’
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As far as I can see (tho’ I may have missed it) we’re still not discussing Israel’s current crimes – the ongoing Nakba expressed now in blatant genocide – in the wider context of threatened human species extinction, knowing as we now do that global heating is already well under way. Of course the same applies not only to Russia/Ukraine but to literally everything, however I’m thinking of the Israeli (and Western) contribution to the ecocide.
I don’t know if campaigns for Palestinian freedom from oppression, campaigns for the dezionisation of the world, for the resiling from Israelocentric Judaism, for universal humanism as against nationalistic religion, I don’t know if they are already joined up officially, collectively, institutionally with such as Just Stop Oil, XR, ie all those against Fossil Capitalism, but I think they should be, we should be. As individuals probably most of us are, but we ought to make the connections together, overtly.
I know we may say we’ve got enough on our hands just fighting the genocidaires and accomplices, but look for example at ‘The climate costs of war and militaries can no longer be ignored’ by Doug Weir, The Guardian https://tinyurl.com/3m4f8tbx Israeli belligerency together with its major arms industry is contributing hugely to the threats to Earth’s life support systems.
Some pieces I’ve read say the middle east conflict wont be resolved for another 50 years. I’ve no idea if that’s true, but climate scientist James Hansen recently wrote that ‘Staggering acceleration of global warming is underway …’ Irreversible tipping points long before Israel is tamed? Probably.
We need mega-marches of combined forces for sanity against the homicidal, suicidal collective madness of the world.
Here is the late Uri Avnery [in 2011] explaining how Congress is controlled. Things have not changed.
IT WAS all rather disgusting.
There they were, the members of the highest legislative bodies of the world’s only superpower, flying up and down like so many yo-yos, applauding wildly, every few minutes or seconds, the most outrageous lies and distortions of Binyamin Netanyahu.
It was worse than the Syrian parliament during a speech by Bashar Assad, where anyone not applauding could find himself in prison. Or Stalin’s Supreme Soviet, when showing less than sufficient respect could have meant death.
What the American Senators and Congressmen feared was a fate worse than death. Anyone remaining seated or not applauding wildly enough could have been caught on camera – and that amounts to political suicide. It was enough for one single congressman to rise and applaud, and all the others had to follow suit. Who would dare not to?
The sight of these hundreds of parliamentarians jumping up and clapping their hands, again and again and again and again, with the Leader graciously acknowledging with a movement of his hand, was reminiscent of other regimes. Only this time it was not the local dictator who compelled this adulation, but a foreign one. http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1306359471
“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying – lying to others and to yourself.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
This is the most important history and analysis of Israel’s intentions that you have shared. It should be read by everyone who opposes Israel’s death-dealing actions and become the basis for finding a way to oppose them in the name of peace and justice. We have not yet found that way because we have yet understood the extent of the implications of what Loewenstein understood and Curthoys outlines. If there is a political history of the role of Gush-Shalom in addition to the outline you included, please share it too. It seems to be at least one place to start such a discussion.
IT IS NOT A WAR! It is ethnic cleansing / genocide and a little justified resistance to it.