The horrors in Gaza continue even if the press has only so much bandwidth for Israel’s continuing genocide. The focus so far has been on the consequences of Israel’s military campaign against civilians (and lack of success in eliminating Hamas), in particular the systematic destruction of hospitals.
But that death pattern is linear, in the sense that it is the result of Israel shellings and snipings. The urgency of recent reports from Gaza about conditions on the ground, and in particular, the effect of food shortages, filthy water, limited shelter, and disease spread seems to be reaching the point where their death count will exceed that of the Israeli armed campaign. And Israel will no doubt try to depict these deaths as an unfortunate consequence beyond their control.
The BMJ among many others has already, forcefully, staked out an opposing view. The prestigious journal ran an editorial at the start of January decrying the Israel campaign in Gaza as necrocide as a follow-on to an earlier piece decrying Israel’s conduct. Key sections:
The horrific scale of Israel’s latest attacks validates the concerns and calls raised in our editorial: namely that Israel’s ongoing military violence in Gaza is an extension of the long- standing, systemic violence intrinsic to the Israeli state’s colonisation and occupation of Palestine. Connections can be clearly traced between the exploitation and dispossession of people, land and resources that defined Euro- pean colonial violence, ongoing neocolonial exploitation worldwide, and every aspect of Israel’s settler colonial violence in Palestine today.6 We reaffirm our unwavering commit- ment to actions that expose and challenge sites of exploitative and extractive power and violence. People’s health, lives and freedoms are at risk…
Attempts to dehistoricise and decon- textualise the present encourage us to ignore the many ways in which the Israeli state dictates both life and death for the Palestinian people, either through the fast violence of aerial bombardments, or what Berlant referred to as ‘slow death’13: visible in the progressive dispossession of Palestinians who are crammed into ever-shrinking spaces, the denial of life-sustaining necessities and services, the destruction of livelihoods, repeated physical assaults and disablement, mass incarceration, extensive restrictions on movement (including to seek healthcare), and now ethnic cleansing in Gaza executed by mustering Palestin- ians through a dystopian grid of ever-shifting, supposedly ‘safe zones…
The recognition of the systematic nature of this violence, and the pervasiveness of Israeli state
control over almost every aspect of the everyday lives of Palestinians, made the philosopher Achille Mbembé declare that: ‘The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine’.It is the power to dictate the terms of life and death, and ultimately who lives and who dies. Repeatedly framing Palestinian violence as a provocation and Israeli violence as a response is a product of ignorance to the necropower exercised by the Israeli state. Necropower and necropolitics are enabled in places that Achille Mbembé termed ‘death-worlds’, where ‘vast populations are subjected to conditions of life’ that enable a precarious form of survival in perpetual proximity to death. Within this world, there is gross indifference to Palestinian suffering and extreme obfuscation of the horrors of Israeli necropolitics.
While the particulars will be familiar to anyone who has followed the genocide in Gaza, and in particular, the compelling oral presentation by South Africa at the ICJ, the proper use of words is important, Necropower is an important addition to the lexicon.
The UN gave a grim and urgent update on the deteriorating conditions in Gaza to the Security Council (hat tip BC).1 From its site yesterday (emphasis original):
Internally displaced Palestinians are facing acute shortages of food, water, shelter and medicine, while communicable diseases are rising sharply unsanitary conditions and there is a “near total breakdown” in law and order…
Also briefing the Council was Christopher Lockyear, Secretary General, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders
Fearful of further deadly Israeli attacks, he said he was “appalled” by the United States’ repeated use of its veto power to obstruct efforts to adopt the most evident of resolutions: one demanding an immediate ceasefire…
Calling Washington’s new proposed draft resolution “misleading at best”, he said the Council should reject any resolution “that further hampers humanitarian efforts on the ground and leads this Council to tacitly endorse the continued violence and mass atrocities in Gaza”.
“Attacks on healthcare is an attack against humanity,” he said, noting that while Israel claims Hamas is operating in hospitals, “we have seen no independently verified evidence of this.”
I hate to be grim, but one sign starvation is becoming widespread is when pets are being killed for food. This is hardly uncommon, witness the ship’s cat and sled dogs being sacrificed by the crew of the Endurance and only one cat surviving the siege of Leningrad, a city with just under million people before the German siege. We ran this tweet earlier but as a reminder:
This is Maxim the cat. He was born in 1937 into the Vologdin family in Leningrad. He lived through and survived the blockade with the family.
The Vologdins locked him in a room and did not let him out into the street in order to protect him from being eaten by hungry… pic.twitter.com/uqf3977CkV
— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) January 27, 2024
An estimated 630,000 died of starvation out of total mortality of 1.5 million. This was a fiercely fought conflict, and so the ratio of casualties to starvation and disease deaths is likely to become even higher if the siege of Gaza continues.
We have not seen anyone attempt to project a trajectory of deaths due to famine and disease. But as a basis for investigation, Johns Hopkins and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have modeled what the prospects for Gaza over the next six months are, factoring in disease but not starvation. If you look at the table on page 10 in the report,2 you will see the fatalities they estimate are traumatic injury, infectious diseases – endemic, infectious diseases – epidemic, maternal and neonatal health, and non-communicable diseases.
The findings are grim:
Over the next six months we project that, in the absence of epidemics, 6,550 excess deaths would occur under the ceasefire scenario, climbing to 58,260 under the status quo scenario and 74,290 under the escalation scenario. Over the same period and with the occurrence of epidemics, our projections rise to 11,580, 66,720, and 85,750, respectively.
Note that these are mean estimates. Within the 95th percentile confidence range, the ceasefire death count range is 4,200 to 80,370, the status quo range is 48,210 to 193,180 and the epidemic range is 62,350 to 259,680.
Since they are interrelated (starvation and malnutrition increase the odds of dying from contagion as well as from injuries), this would seem to be a major lapse. Perhaps assuming levels of malnutrition and starvation would have made model outcomes seem arbitrary. Or perhaps due to lack of good foundational information (sufficiently in depth reports out of conflict zones), the investigators felt they lacked an adequate basis for including that key variable explicitly, although if you read the text, the researchers do present their findings as including the impact of malnutrition on infectious diseases, leading to a high mortality rate.
As to the infectious diseases included in the estimates above:
Excess deaths from infectious diseases under all scenarios are a particular concern. The breakdown of water and sanitation measures combined with overcrowding in inadequate shelters and insufficient food intake causing acute malnutrition combines into a projected high risk of excess deaths from a variety of infectious diseases. Endemic diseases, particularly COVID-19, influenza and pneumococcal disease, are projected to be the leading causes of infectious disease deaths, similar to the pre-war period. Overall, we project between 1,520 and 2,720 excess deaths due to common endemic infections depending on the scenario, though with wide uncertainty intervals. If epidemics also occur, those that are projected to cause the most excess deaths are cholera (3,595-8,971), polio (both wild-type and vaccine-derived; 1,1145-2,444), measles (260-793), and meningococcal meningitis (24-143); however, the estimates bear high levels of uncertainty inherent in projecting epidemics.
Mind you, this is on top of the current death toll, estimated by Palestinian authorities at 29,410. That is sure to be an undercount, since it does not include bodies still buried in rubble.
Further indications of how desperate conditions in Gaza are now:
Doctors Without Borders says children as young as 5 in Gaza have told them they want to die pic.twitter.com/DvahWdC50v
— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) February 22, 2024
At the UN Doctors without Borders recounted some of the horrors in Gaza, including surgeons having to carry out amputations without anaesthesia on children, and they made clear they hold the USA complicit. pic.twitter.com/mgFvOx9h12
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 23, 2024
And the US is determined to keep the savagery going:
The US used its veto power to block a 4th UN Security Council resolution that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
The Biden admin keeps sending weapons to Israel, helping it violate an ICJ ruling that says Israel must stop killing Palestinians.https://t.co/fii9fXR4T9
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 23, 2024
Don’t buy the pretense that we can’t stop it:
Nancy Pelosi crumbles when asked: "But there are levers that Biden hasn't used. There are levers that previous presidents have used when Israel has, in their view, crossed a line"
Pelosi: "For example?"
"Eisenhower threatened sanctions..Reagan held up delivery of fighter… pic.twitter.com/Dh6LC5a7GE
— HalalFlow (@halalflow) February 22, 2024
You can see Pelosi wanting to try “That was then” to deflect the historical examples, when she could be cornered by the fact that the only difference between then and now was the level of Israel lobby spending.
____
1 The UN appears to be trying to open up another front against Israel, not that that wil make much difference in practice. From Law Society Gazette Ireland (hat tip BC):
The Attorney General (AG) Rossa Fanning SC has told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Ireland believes that Israel has committed “serious breaches” of international law by its activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem…
The AG was representing Ireland at hearings in The Hague arising from a request from the United Nations General Assembly for an advisory opinion from the court on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s action in the Palestinian territory it has occupied since 1967…
The AG said that Israel’s “continuous” settlement activity in the occupied territories “clearly demonstrate that Israel has been engaged in a process of annexation”.
He said that the construction of permanent settlements had “fundamentally altered” the demographics of the area, while Israel had also extended the application of domestic law to those living in settlements.
The AG argued that, by transferring parts of its own civilian population into the occupied territories, Israel had violated article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention…
The AG referred to the rules laid down by international law on military occupation, which was necessarily temporary, did not confer sovereignty, and could not be of indefinite duration.
“Prolonged occupation over an extended period of time raises unavoidable legal questions – in particular whether it constitutes a disguised form of annexation, and/or a determined effort to deny the people of an occupied territory the exercise of their right to self-determination,” he told the court.
“Neither the duration of the occupation nor the scale and extent of settlement activity is, in Ireland’s view, justified or permitted by the law regulating the use of force in self-defence,” the AG continued.
2 We would have embedded the document, but recent conventions in reports have led to them consistently being far too large to embed in WordPress.
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re: Pelosi, ultimately it comes down to the Hillary crowd would rather allow another genocide than take a blow to their pride, admit mistakes or adjust their worldview to fit new facts.
There’s a recurring pattern here, and not just Gaza, which must somehow be addressed before progress can be made and we can put a stop to these kinds of atrocities. But a core part of the problem is they don’t really and truly believe in human rights – human rights are for people, Palestinians aren’t people, they’ll say. So at bottom we’re still at the start of a civil rights movement and the Hillary crowd are on the wrong side of the issues at Selma.
To Pelosi and Clinton and their donors, very few of us are people. We were always at best human animals for them to manipulate and exploit and buy off as cheaply as possible. If we get restive, they are totally okay with packing us off to profitable private prisons or gunned down for purportedly “holding”.
The unconditional support of Israel is clearly not just the HRC/Pelosi crowd. It is fully BIPARTISAN and a glaring indicator of the institutional corruption of Congress. (political bribery is now legal after all)
Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich were the only ones to really stand up to Israel and the Lobby, however they are gone now. Other than Rashida Tlaib, is there any other Congress crook that is really standing up to the Lobby?
Meanwhile, China steps up to speak hard truths. (As per comment from Arch Bungle at Moon of Alabama):
Finally, the Chinese defend the Palestinian right to use violence to achieve self determination:
https://youtu.be/LaCrM0L3YBk?si=ZJrNo2Mf5R432reT
“China counters the US point by point at the ICJ: Israeli occupation of Palestine”
(Ma Xinming, China foreign ministry legal advisor)
China affirms:
– the Palestinians have a right to self determination
– the Palestinians are under foreign occupation
– are under colonial occupation by ‘israel’
– the occupation is unlawful and belligerent in nature
– are entitled to resistance to occupation by any means necessary
– including armed struggle
– all signatories to the UN charter have an obligation to assist Palestinians in the preservation of their rights
– have an obligation to avoid preventing the Palestinian achievement of their rights as affirmed by the UN charter.
– affirms the inadmissibility of Israeli acquisition of Palestinian territory by means of war
Most significantly: China affirms that acts of violence carried out by the Palestinians under occupation in order to break the occupation cannot be construed as terrorist acts
And here I believe Ma Xinming is effectively saying Hamas’ activities on 7 October cannot be considered “terrorism”.
I think this has implications far beyond Israel/Palestine. China has loathed to speak openly of support for the SMO until very recently as well, because they’ve been afraid it would weaken their arguments for taking back Taiwan and the various NED funded separatists movements.
So speaking so openly on right of national self determination of the Palestinian people, suggests that they’re moving into a different posture on this topic.
They have previously framed their foreign policy on Westphalian principles and were strictly non-interference. BRICS and SCO have been presented as harmless trade associations. It seems to me that with the recent tone changes, they may have concluded that further dialogue with the West is pointless and it’s time to build more formal alliances outside the West.
The thought occurs that this may portend an ICJ case against US as accessory to genocide.
—-
We seem to have mastered the art of antagonizing people and making enemies.
There is a tweet in today’s Links where an Israeli Minister says, among other things, ‘I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did.’
https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1760372482983567558
Not only do I think that her views are typical of the Netanyahu government but also a large portion of the Israeli population which means that they will keep up the genocide while receiving both military help and political cover from the Collective West. Now local powers like Turkiya, Saudi Arabia and the UAE may have their own reasons for staying out of this war but it does not end there. A story that we do not hear much about is how this is all being received by the countries of the Global Majority. Will these 150 odd countries be interested in hearing anything from the Collective West about “human rights” or will they want to now help the Collective West take on China? At this point the West has zero moral standing and there is the realization that the West may want to treat all these counties as future Gazans.
“will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did“. And the blood libel will this time be true and Israel will never be able to wash it away. Nice wirlwind are they going to reap.
Reminds me of the epic end in the “judas unchained” where such a storm is being manufactured by humans on a planet, that an alien outpost is absolutely uprooted and totally crashed. Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton really make for epic, epic, epic SciFi.
Not just other countries, but we in the west may all be considered future Gazans at the whim of our sociopathic overlords.
India may be a case study here as Modi is in tight with Israel as he probably wants all their tech to control all non-Hindus in India and turn India in a nationalist Hindu State – the Israel of the subcontinent. But the people have their sympathy with the Palestinians as they have for decades.
Modi probably thinks of Hindus as being analogous to Palestinians, expelling the settler colonialist Muslims etc. Sure India Muslims etc have lived there all their lives, but their bunch of dead ancestors got there after the Hindus’ bunch did, and since land rightfully belongs forever to the (alleged) descendants of the first bunch of dead people to get there (at least that anybody remembers) the Muslims etc have no right to live there.
There are hours and hours of testimonies on this 5 days marathon at Hague. While the chinese really cut to the chase and said it as it is, I did like the presentations of UAE and Colombia. I suspect Ireland was mentioned here just because is part of the Anglosphere, and definitely is in stark contrast with the US presentation who argued that the occupation is ok since it strenghtens Israel’s security, but there many non Anglophone presentations that really stood out.
Not sure what to do with my outrage/dismay. I’ve lost friend and alienated family for “obsessing” on the genocide being committed. I’ve excoriated people I follow on TwitterX for posting on other topics and not prioritizing their efforts. I’ve stopped buying any products made in Israel, giving up my favorite bath salts, and soaps, sent pleas to friends to stop getting their Starbucks fix each morning, emailed my reps (clown Fetterman), and so on…this has gone way way beyond standard party politics.
Take hart. You still have the NC community. Just watch the hearings at The Hague. Balm for the soul the see Israel being trashed in the highest court of justice in the world the way it is.
And the face Israel is showing is like the old Bilbo Baggins’ face when trying to retake the Ring from recovering Frodo in “The Fellowship of the Ring” movie. The walls are coming crashing down in a more dramatic way than the dynamited buildings in Gaza.
Going after people for not focusing on a very important topic, even genocide, doesn’t work. I know from experience with East Timor and Yemen. Actually I didn’t even blast people— I pointed out the inconsistency in saying so much about, say, Ukraine or worse, a completely nonsensical cal top oIf like Russiagate while not talking about Yemen and I would still be called the obsessive annoying person.
I don’t know what to do, but you don’t want to criticize people for not talking about issue X. They can rightly say that there are several massively important issues and no single person can talk about all of them.
But I do think it is fair and necessary to point out the hypocrisy of obsessing about enemy crines while ignoring our own. However, most people just become defensive. There are a few that don’t.
I am going in circles here because I have never figured out the answer. At least with Gaza some of the truth is in the MSM. Often, American crimes are covered sporadically or not at all and people who think they are well- informed know nothing about them and often conclude you are a crackpot. At best they think there must be a good reason why, for instance, Obama supported the Saudi bombing and blockade of Yemen. At worst I have been told ( before the internet was a commonly accessible thing) that I had to prove all the stuff I said about our policy in East Timor
Spellcheck on my iPad did something weird in my previous post. The word “ topic” became “ cal top off”.
I found this segment with Dr. Mate and his son Daniel to be quite helpful with trying to center on kindness and forgiveness. It is very hard and painful work. Thank you for trying.
https://youtu.be/fx2UMNNV6jk?si=OPa16vsXu1HmZ7oW
Caitlin Johnstone has talked about this too. She said-
‘I’ve actually stopped following people for getting Gaza wrong. People I’d previously followed for years. I disagree with literally everyone I follow on some issues at some times, but Gaza quickly became my red line. If you can’t get that one right, nothing else you have to say is worth a damn.’
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/nobody-who-gets-gaza-wrong-is-worth-listening-to-b854e402916a
Some things are harder. For me the saddest moment was when a friend stated that Biden cannot do anything because if he did he would lose to Trump.* Beating Trump is more important because what…why?
*And I think they have that wrong, too. Not that it wouldn’t cause Biden issues, but I believe this is one where he is damned either way.
If you are able, stay abreast of announcements of actions by American Muslims for Palestine (which organized the 400,000 person march in DC – NYT called it “thousands”) and Shut It Down for Palestine!. BDS also has many ongoing campaigns, for not only the boycotting consumer, but for institutional actors and communities.
Everyone seeing this is struggling with the pain and the fury it evokes. You are not alone.
This brings to mind an issue I have been chewing on: the street actions and other direct actions are often raucous, even fun, and there is an atmosphere of sympathy (everyone seems to be trying to keep others’ spirits up), but we have not cried together, and I feel it would be appropriate. As it is now, I’ll read about another child killed, or read Khaled Juma’s heartbreaking “Oh Rascal Children of Gaza” and sob, then pick myself up and put on a somber face to go and march. It’s emotionally unsustainable to not give voice to it.
Of course, it is physically unsustainable to live in Gaza. Use your pain to make apparent to politicians that this is unacceptable.
Vicky Cookies. I got an e-mail message this afternoon from ARCI (the umbrella organizer of organizations, started way back when by the Italian Communist Party). Piazza Albarello. Another torch-light parade.
So I will make an effort to show up. The parades are interesting (if one is inside them). We will march. No doubt we will head toward the Piazza Castello.
Showing that citizens exist (and showing that here in Italy the citizens don’t support what’s going on in Ukraine and Gaza) matters. As you write, “It’s emotionally unsustainable to not give voice to it.” One must be a physical presence, which is something that the powerful still fear.
So I probably owe an “on the ground” report later.
I look forward to your reflections! Be safe, and enjoy the community; precious few ways to feel a part of something worthwhile these days.
Always liked Italian Communists. They gave us Amedeo Bordiga, and, if it hadn’t been for the U.S., they would’ve given us a much nicer Italy.
I am feeling the same way. I cannot stop thinking about Gaza. It is haunting me. I grew up knowing a lot of Holocaust survivors, who have since passed away from old age. As a child, I heard about the camps and believed in the idea of a Jewish homeland as a safe haven that would guarantee “never again”. In college, my views about Israel began to change as I learned about the suffering of Palestinians but never did I think that Israel would so overtly commit a genocide against them with the total support of the US government. I was naive. I am seeing it now and I cannot turn away from it as so many people I know are able to do. I am angry, I am sickened, I don’t know what to do. I can’t talk to some people I have known for years. It makes me desperately sad for the memory of the Holocaust survivors I knew in my younger years because I do not believe they would support the genocide that is now being committed. They were compassionate people. I think they would be horrified.
I apologize if my comment is a bit rambling. It is hard to control the strong emotions I am having about this.
I cannot stop thinking about Gaza. It is haunting me. I grew up knowing a lot of Holocaust survivors, who have since passed away from old age. As a child, I heard about the camps and believed in the idea of a Jewish homeland as a safe haven that would guarantee “never again”. In college, my views about Israel began to change as I learned about the suffering of Palestinians but never did I think that Israel would so overtly commit a genocide against them with the total support of the US government….
[ Brilliantly evocative. ]
Your comment is not rambling at all, Lena. You are expressing what so many of us are feeling: sick, angry, frustrated, sad.
This past week, I worked on writing an email missive, to be sent to extended family members: why I can not vote for Biden, since he and the US government are enablers of genocide. Yeah, the alternatives are bad, but once you have brushed aside concerns about murdering an entire nation of Palestinians, you have lost any moral standing to object to relatively minor inconveniences as ‘loss of democracy.’
My email grew to two pages, single-space, with links to the ICJ proceedings, articles on the original Nakba, the Balfour Declaration, the King-David Hotel bombing, etc.
I still have not hit the ‘send’ button.
I am very glad to hear MSF speaking out on this. It’s courageous as the aid agencies often feel they need to be apolitical, but human rights have to come first.
There are moments when I think I will elapse from the moral injury of the suffering in Gaza, even if in experiencing only a distant shadow. Often then I think of Sudan and the Congo, where torment is also writ large, and wonder of the other places where tyranny holds forth. In dreams, I sometimes seem to solve the world’s problems, only to wake and find nothing has changed. I do not avert my gaze. I will never unsee Hind Rajab.
Necropower as a country that visits death on other regions and necropolitics as the politics of death and destruction are indeed words to add to our lexicon.
I am also reminded that we haven’t discussed enough a term defined and elucidated by Lambert Strether, SCAD, or state crimes against the democratic order.
So to repeat from the post above:
Achille Mbembé declare[s] that: ‘The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine’.35 It is the power to dictate the terms of life and death, and ultimately who lives and who dies. Repeatedly framing Palestinian violence as a provocation and Israeli violence as a response is a product of ignorance to the necropower exercised by the Israeli state. Necropower and necropolitics are enabled in places that Achille Mbembé termed ‘death-worlds’, where ‘vast populations are subjected to conditions of life’ that enable a precarious form of survival in perpetual proximity to death
And to add that other philosphers have also been working along the lines of Mbembé.
Donatella di Cesare also has discussed this necropolitica, politics of death, in an article evoking Ukraine, published in June 2023. “Benvenuti nell’era della necropolitica.” (It is paywalled, but I quote it for reinforcement.)
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2022/06/23/benvenuti-nelleradella-necropolitica/6636936/
The lesson here is that Ukraine is another death-world, and as we see from the Biden and Sunak administrations, in particular, it is inconvenient for our masters to end the massacres.
In the U S of A, it is scoundrel time. No way around it. I recently saw a video of protests against Hillary Clinton in Germany. A reporter (on stage, ergo embedded, toothless) asked Clinton if she was surprised by the numbers of death in Gaza. Clinton, lacking any compassion, replied “No, that’s what happens in war.” Oh. No agency. Just more deaths.
What the U S of A can visit on the world is its necropower. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
We are watching, living, witnessing, the Dance of Death. I am reminded again and again of Curzio Malaparte’s book of reporting, Kaputt. The flies have won.
Reporting? The meeting with the Princesse de Guermantes, The party with Generalgouverneur hans Frank? I have my doubts but it somehow reads as even better than real reporting
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1760677521815961747
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
This is quite extraordinary:
https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1760597515089416265/video/1
This is Ma Xinmin, China’s Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser, speaking on behalf of China, saying at the ICJ today that Israel is a colonizer and that the Palestinians have a right to resistance under international law, “including armed struggle”, which, he said, “in this context, is distinguished from acts of terrorism”.
Here is the exact quote (after the quote I’ll link to all the legal texts he refers to): “The UNGA resolution 3070 of 1973, I quote ‘reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle’.
This recognition is also reflected in international conventions. For example, the Arab Convention For The Suppression Of Terrorism of 1998, affirms, I quote: ‘the right of peoples to combat foreign occupation and aggression by whatever means, including armed struggle, in order to liberate their territories and secure their right to self-determination and independence’.
Armed struggle, in this context, is distinguished from acts of terrorism. It is granted in international law, this distinction is acknowledged by several international conventions. For example, article 3 of the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism of 1999 provides that, I quote: ‘the struggle waged by peoples in accordance with the principles of international law for their liberation or self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression and domination by foreign forces shall not be considered as terrorist acts’.”
– UNGA resolution 3070 of 1973..
– Arab Convention For The Suppression Of Terrorism of 1998..
– OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism of 1999..
9:46 AM · Feb 22, 2024
From the beginning, with attacks led by a threatening Lawrence Summers against Harvard’s president and severe criticism of supposed anti-Semitism on campus, what was made clear is that even showing overt interest in the Gaza savaging had to be considered personally dangerous. New York Times writers are openly threatening. Of course, Jeremy Corbyn was completely ruined at Britain’s Labour Leader by false charges of antiSemitism, but the attacks from Summers on strike me as more threatening.
Yes, I am afraid to be the least open or overt, but simply reading the New York Times day to day tells me to be afraid.
Boris Slutsky – one of the relatively few actual “Jewish commissars” in the Red Army during WWII, as well as one of my favourite poets – wrote about the “right of life and death” that he was granted as a political officer. He concluded, at least in retrospect, that his and everyone’s duty in such a position was to “abuse the right of life” (by erring on the side of letting people live, whenever possible) “until the right of death is no more”. I suppose “the right of death” is loosely what is called “necropower” here. Or “necropower” is its collective form, handed out in the form of “the right of death” to Slutsky’s modern colleagues who do not seem to share his principles.
As for Leningrad, Maxim was indeed very lucky to be so protected. Although this was hushed up in Soviet times, since the destruction of the Union there were plenty of interviews with and memoirs written by survivors who attest to widespread cannibalism under the siege. Apparently it was since confirmed by published materials. If over 2000 people could be arrested by the NKVD for eating human meat before the siege was even over (by December 1942), the place has clearly long since passed the point of merely eating pets.
The MassMedia McJunk news just glosses over this or ignores it. The enemies of the empire: Russians, Palestinians, Syrians, Libyans can be smeared, dehumanized and demonized, while the same sycophant-stenographers (so-called journalists) decry racism and discrimination in the most superficial and hypocritical manner.
The atrocities are horrific, graphic, and are impossible to ignore if one is honest and informed. The so-called rule of law is nothing but a cruel joke. As predicted, Israel and the US response to the ICJ ruling was, in effect: “fuck off, we will continue the genocide as we please, no one can stop us,” There will be no accountability, we can see Tony Blair and Bush Jr. for more examples of war criminals profiting from mass murder.
As outrageous as this sounds, this is accurate: the rule of law is irrelevant. The only way to stop Israel is to lay total siege to it, or other military action to force it to stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing. However, Israel has nuclear weapons and the so-called Samson Option.
Re words from above: “Attempts to dehistoricise and decon- textualise the present encourage us to ignore the many ways in which the Israeli state dictates both life and death for the Palestinian people… Berlant referred to as ‘slow death’13: visible in the progressive dispossession of Palestinians who are crammed into ever-shrinking spaces, the denial of life-sustaining necessities and services…”
I seem to recall that in Zola’s novel “The Debacle” French soldiers experiencing severe hunger ate raw flour when they came across it.
A thought I had as I read the following on how Israel just keeps sticking their boots on the necks on those (as Israels gov’t seems to deem) nonpersons. Evidence-free accusations of Hamas loyalists at UNRWA is the reason why daily bread just ain’t getting made soon enough.
From the link:
“Israel’s finance minister has blocked a major U.S. shipment of humanitarian aid meant to feed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip…The flour in the shipment, which is currently sitting in the Israeli port of Ashdod, would be sufficient to feed 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza for five months…”
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-aid-to-israel/
I have spoken to a few people who are Jewish. Ore such is a us citizen and a member of the Israeli army.
How such dual alliances are allowed very strange.
This person firmly states that the Palestinians need to be removed from Greater Israel, and quotes comments on Mowing the Lawn, to b e is used by the Israeli Army, is appropriate to rid the Israel of non Jewish people by any means.
I do no know if the attitude expressed is learnt in the Israeli army, or is-their personal opinion.
I know come with much baggage, based om My parents view, who were posted t Palestine in WW 2 and after before the British Mandate expired, and were of their firm beliefs on the matter.
My persona encounters are similarly conflicted between the horrors of the Nazi programs and some aggressive attacks on myself at Boarding School , in the work place and in Some face to face interactions. They quite caused me to assess my own thoughts and opinions.
Thus I do not trust myself to comment very much. However, it would be illuminating to review the meaning of phrase “Mowing the Lawn” in the light of comments of some Israelis.
Necrocide = killing death. Per web search (urban dictionary) it sometimes means killing the already dead, i.e. undead, i.e. zombies in zombie movies. I think it isn’t the word you wanted. The BMJ article doesn’t use it.
It’s definitely WAY past time for Hamas to unconditionally surrender, which if their leadership gave one nonhalal s**t about Gazans, they’d have done long ago. Failing that, nonHamas Gazans should start slitting the throats or poisoning Hamas members, even if they’re immediate family members. Hamas (and the 90% of Gazans that pre-October 8th supported it) gets 100% of the blame for every bomb, shell, missile, and bullet that came their way afterwards. They had peace with Israel, but chose to throw that away. They FA & FO.
Ahem:
Poll shows soaring Palestinian support for Hamas Times of Israel
No, Joe Biden, most Palestinians support Hamas – editorial Jerusallem Post
Like the members of the Warsaw Ghetto, some may even feel that dying in a lost cause is better than living with oppression and slow-progressing extermination.
I’m sure Palestinians would drop Hamas the second someone like USA started to fight for them. But for now, all they got is Hamas.
The only way to get rid of Hamas is to find somebody else to say “No!” to Israel – big enough for Israel to listen.