Posted by Ken Waldron on October 11, 2023, 2:32 pm
Gary Dunion @garydunion Oct 10
I feel like I'm going mad, every politician is like "the killing of civilians is never acceptable and that's why we must stand with Israel as it drops apartment blocks on children."
Oct 10, 2023 · 9:05 AM UTC
Re: Tweet of the day.
Posted by Dovetail Joint on October 11, 2023, 2:45 pm, in reply to "Tweet of the day."
In the West, there's no real 'left' opposition anywhere, to speak of. Socialism might a well be dead. It probably is. The 'opposition', the one that's organized, mobilized, with charismatic leaders, is coming from the nationalist right. It's a funny sort of... 'opposition' too.
Re: Tweet of the day.
Posted by Ian M on October 11, 2023, 6:44 pm, in reply to "Tweet of the day."
The obvious conclusion is that they don't view Palestinians as 'civilians' or even fully human in the way Israelis are. Look at all the people up in arms about the 'violence'. You know they're only talking about Hamas violence against Israelis, because Israel's violence against Palestinians is never cause for such gasps of outrage - in fact it's mostly just ignored. I looked at Angela Rayner's speech to the Labour conference again where she asked for the minute's silence, and I think she let the cat out of the bag:
'Conference, I know you will all be appalled by the shocking situation and events in Israel, where over a thousand people, including at least ten British citizens, are feared to have lost their lives. I would be grateful now to remember all the victims and sympathy with their bereaved. If you could join us in a moment's silence.' - https://nitter.net/UKLabour/status/1711462904803799458#m
That was tweeted out on October 9th on the Labour party account with the caption: 'Today, Labour Conference held a moment of silence for all those who have lost their lives as a result of the horrific terrorist attacks on Israel.' Clearly they are only referring to casualties in Israel despite mass airstrikes on Gaza starting on the first day of the conflict, October 7th - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#Airstrikes_in_the_Gaza_Strip Even if you credit them with an implied reference to Palestinians with the 'all those who have lost their lives' and Rayner's 'all the victims', Israel is cleared of responsibility for this by the follow-up that pins the blame squarely on Hamas and its 'horrific terrorist attacks'. The 'over a thousand' figure does at least seem to include Palestinian losses - possibly she got it from this graun article on Oct 8th: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/08/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-netanyahu-warns-of-long-and-difficult-war - but this was not made explicit, and I doubt she was even thinking of them when using the word 'people'. The only reference to the conflict on her soulless twitter account was an Oct 7th retweet of David Lammy's outrage reflex:
It recalls Derrick Jensen's fourth premise to the book 'Endgame':
'Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.' - https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/premises/