Oct 10 You wanted a multipolar world? You got it. The Hamas terror attack has triggered war in Gaza, a geopolitical crisis and now – from Sydney to NYC – an anti-Semitism challenge in the West. How to respond? 0/…🧵
1/ Hamas’ offers truce/ negotiations having “achieved its objective”: if so, the objective was to demonstrate proof of concept of an unstoppable pogromist terror, forcing itself (and Iran) back into the power-broking process in the ME region… “talk to us or we do this again”…
2/ Israel in response is signalling its objective is to destroy Hamas. I’ve covered a Gaza war: that’s possible, but only with a land offensive, sustained military occupation, massive loss of civilian life, an existential refugee crisis and ammunition from the USA. So the global community has a stake in the outcome…
3/ Israeli pledges of collective punishment of civilians, switching off electricity and water supply, are disproportionate and breach IHL. It will quickly create a humanitarian crisis at the fence-line in all directions. Ditto reckless bombing of civilian housing...
4/ Israel has a right to defend itself, rescue the hostages, arrest and prosecute Hamas and engage in lawful armed combat with its enemy. But the international community has a right to demand proportionality, restraint, respect for international law, and condemn breaches of it…
5/ A new factor is the intervention of Russian proxies in the West to push long-standing solidarity movements with Palestine into the direction of overtly celebrating Hamas terror. The overlap between pro-Kremlin/anti-Ukraine agitation and pro-Hamas agitation is strong – both on the far left and far right.
6/ Both sides risk miscalculating. Hamas is a death cult in charge of a 2m strong captive population. It does not care what happens to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, many of whom hate Hamas. It is fighting for Iranian geopolitical objectives using racist terror as a weapon….
7/ People claiming the Hamas attack is the “violence of the oppressed” are wrong. It could only achieve victory by triggering mass anti-Semitic unrest in Western countries and/or a regional all-out war that (as Tehran calls for) destroys Israel. Sternhell’s rule applies: take fascists at their word…
8/ Netanyahu’s far-right government completely missed the threat, stoked tensions and could easily now miscalculate the response. You cannot hold 2m people in an open-air prison without a gaoler: either Hamas, the PA, the IDF or a UN force would have to do it.
9/ Hence the need for an internationally mediated peace and a functional 2-state solution, that allows the people of Gaza to live in peace, exercise democracy and travel across borders. If the endame is a revenge fantasy of flattening Gaza and pushing its inhabitants into the Sinai, that is not an endgame: it’s the trigger for regional conflict…
10/ The West is only now waking up to what we on the democratic left have been warning about: the emergence of a new red-brown politics that is celebrating the murder of Israeli “hipsters” in NYC and chanting “gas the Jews” in Sydney. It’s serious and we have to defeat it through thought leadership, not just suppression of hate speech…
11/ There is an over-arching “BRICS+” ideology that celebrates all breakdowns in the global order – you can see it echoed in the Harvard student declarations. Paradoxically, the one people it will never benefit is the Palestinians, whose entire project of secular, Arab nationalism has depended on UN resolutions and international law.
12/ Solidarity to all my friends in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
So mister "OMG send all the money and arms to Ukraine because genocide imperialism solidarity" when presented with an actual policy of genocide, views this as merely 'disproportionate' and is only concerned about whether it is 'possible' to achieve the stated aim of destroying Hamas, albeit with some regrettable civilian casualties. And his only view of the resistance is that it's anti-semitic, terrorist and not representative of the will of the people. The irony and doublethink is almost enough to make your head explode, but on he goes without a care in the world. It's a marvel, really...
...and at one point even appear to support sending arms to Hamas in theory - though that post was before the latest outbreak of the conflict, they prob wouldn't dare to suggest that now. Quite amusing to see them tie themselves into knots over how to approach this:
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign @UkraineSol Oct 7 Solidarity with the Palestinians AND Israeli internationalists
Sir Bonkalot @bizzlewizzle22t This is depressingly reminiscent of Corbyn's weasel words regarding Ukraine. If you are going to single out a portion of Israeli society you support why not specify on today of all days that you stand against Hammas?
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign @UkraineSol We are a campaign about Ukraine and don't have detailed positions on Israel-Palestine. But yes we oppose Hamas - in the same way we oppose the far right in Ukraine.
Lesia Vasylenko @lesiavasylenko Oct 7 I totally agree with the prevailing opinion that #russia = hamas. Likely #putin is the sponsor of the terrorist regime, as well as of the one in #Iran
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign @UkraineSol We oppose Hamas but isn't there an irony here because clearly a another dynamic is that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians in the same way Russia wants to oppress Ukraine.
Stop the War @STWuk Sep 8 "Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are being fed into a military meat-grinder, abetted by foreign arms supplies including, from Britain, depleted uranium and from the USA cluster bombs. So now is a moment for peace talks. But not for the GMB." #PeaceNow labourlist.org/2023/09/why-u… ‘Why unions must not vote to support open-ended war against Russia’ – LabourList | Latest UK Labour...
Last year GMB general secretary Gary Smith persuaded the TUC Congress to vote, shamefully if narrowly, to campaign for increased military spending. At a time… labourlist.org
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign @UkraineSol And would this have applied to the Vietnam war? Or did the Vietnamese have a right to resist the US and win peace through self-determination? So what's the difference?
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign @UkraineSol How bully? How smear?
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign @UkraineSol As for oppose the war, what a telling phrase... We oppose Russia's war of colonial conquest. We support Ukraine's war of self-defence.
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign @UkraineSol We're for the right of all oppressed peoples to get weapons to defend themselves / fight for their liberation. No contradiction. There is a complication in that Hamas are the equivalent of the most noxious extreme-right Ukrainian nationalists. But in general yes.