...she of 'State of Fear' fame, which criticised the UK govt for exploiting peoples' fears in order to implement its chosen policies during covid:
'This is a book about fear. Fear of a virus. Fear of death. Fear of losing our jobs, our democracy, our human connections, our health and our minds. It’s also about how the government weaponised our fear against us – supposedly in our best interests – until we were the most frightened country in Europe.
But why did the government deliberately frighten us, and how has this affected us as individuals and as a country? Who is involved in the decision-making that affects our lives? How are behavioural science and nudge theory being used to subliminally manipulate us? How does the media leverage fear? What are the real risks to our wellbeing?'
Well, guess who is repeating all of Israel's most lurid atrocity porn, campaigning for media to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organisation, smearing pro-Palestine activists & protestors as antisemites and accepting at face value the expressions of fear from British Jews without examining the manipulative framework that has exaggerated & stoked these responses, weaponising them against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and those on the left who stand up for them? Yup:
[trigger warning: extended quote from Maureen Lipman]
The Free Mind Why I started The October Declaration. Laura Dodsworth 24 Oct 2023
It’s been two weeks since the horrific terrorism of 7 October. Within days, the balance of sympathy in the West tilted rapidly away from the atrocities and towards pro-Hamas sympathies. Antisemitism has skyrocketed here in Britain, which has been a safe home for Jews for hundreds of years.
A small group of us urgently felt the need to redress the balance and show support to British Jews. The result was the October Declaration which launched on Monday with over 200 high profile signatories from politicians to playwrights, including Sir Tom Stoppard, Professor Richard Dawkins, Lord Frost, Dame Maureen Lipman, Andrew Neil and Professor Nail Fergusson.
What we all share is the belief that antisemitism has no place in British life and firm solidarity with British Jews.
Who would have thought this should even be necessary?
Sadly the response in some quarters was extraordinary and shameful. Before the people of Israel had the chance to count the bodies, there were marches around the world with chants of ‘death to Israel’ and ‘gas the Jews’. To some academics in the West, Hamas’s blood-soaked pogrom was a fine example of decolonisation. Student unions who are normally all over the concept of ‘safe spaces’ tweeted cartoons of paragliders. People who normally obsess over hate speech failed to condemn acts of hate.
It was dizzying that after the worst examples of terrorism I’d ever heard of (and the stories and photographic evidence have only got worse) people were on the streets in this country to celebrate mass murder.
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorism a friend told she was worried about how her half-Israeli children would be treated at school. I’m ashamed to say I had no idea how correct her fears were. In the first week, four Jewish schools felt compelled to close, in London, in 2023. A letter was sent to a Jewish school in London, saying, ‘well done Hamas. You Jews will pay the price for what you have done From a PLO Team’. I know of another family sending their children to school in non-uniform because they feel unsafe. No British child should be afraid to go to school.
In the days that followed 7 October there have been 24 assaults, 35 cases of damage & desecration to Jewish property, 64 direct threats, 475 cases of abusive Behaviour, including verbal abuse, graffiti on non-Jewish property, hate mail and online abuse and two instances of mass-produced antisemitic literature. The litany of examples on the Community Security Trust makes shameful reading. It is abhorrent that British Jews are being called ‘filthy Jew’, ‘dirty fucking Jew’ and children have been told to ‘go back to the chambers’.
I was naive and didn’t know antisemitism was this serious, alive and ready to burst through the surface.
The disproportionate treatment meted out to Israel and Hamas by the media makes it clear. The media quickly replicated Hamas’s false report that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza. Intelligence experts expressed their surprise that anyone could have known who was responsible so soon after the explosion. The BBC and other media organisations around the world chose to put due diligence and restraint to one side and believe Hamas, an organisation which butchers babies and parades desecrated corpses through the streets.
The refusal of the media, including our national broadcaster to call Hamas what it is in fact and law - a terrorist organisation - has not helped. This misleads the public and creates a false impression that the State of Israel and a terrorist group are moral equivalents. They are not. It’s also an abominable affront to the dead, the bereaved and those living under the threat of terrorism. It is shameful that the media are being dragged kicking and screaming to call Hamas a ‘proscribed terrorist organisation’. Monsters would be better.
One letter signed by over 2,000 actors and artists - ‘bleeding heartless liberals’ as Dame Maureen Lipman called them - condemned Israel’s military response but did not once mention the terrorism itself. When I first read it I was sure I’d made a mistake, missed the part where they expressed shock and grief about the butchering of babies and condemned Hamas. They did not. This letter was a stinging slap in the face to British Jews at a time when they should have expected commiseration, solidarity and friendship.
This felt very wrong.
I exchanged emails with Dame Maureen Lipman about signing the October Declaration. She told me she had written a letter of her own. You can read quotes from it in this moving article about the October Declaration by Allison Pearson, but I wanted to share her words in full.
I find it astounding that any newspaper published the heinous letter (by Artists for Palestine UK), signed with a flourish by the great and the not-so-great of our trendiest actors and the usual Jew-ish ashamed Jews of the peripheral left. How dare they accuse the Israelis of war crimes against Gaza without (Itals)once(enditals)mentioning the bestial slaughterhouse which was perpetrated on Israel in that very same week or the hostages taken by Hamas – these are the entire cause of the current retaliation.
When babies were garrotted, women dragged by their hair and a family had eyeballs gouged out and fingers chopped off in front of their children - do they really think that Israeli blockades on the border with Gaza are a justification for such acts of violence?
Those bigoted signaturists, do they have no soul as well as no judgement? These bleeding heartless liberals care so deeply for the Palestinians (who, since 1937, have turned down no fewer than five offers of a two-state solution) that they espouse their cause at the expense of every other oppressed people of the world. The Palestinians are not Hamas, I agree; they just elected them. And, seventeen years later, Hamas has done nothing for the Palestinians save stealing the millions donated in aid money while keeping them in penury.
I would love the signaturists to answer me this question: If your beloved country had been under attack for seventy years, with concrete tunnels under Birmingham and York and Ipswich, and rockets landing daily on Oxford University and Penny Lane and the Tiny Tim toddlers club, and the world despised your success in turning a desert into the most beautiful and innovative and free-thinking democracy in the region and wanted it handed back. And if the world felt that it was deserved when your country’s neighbours carried out bloody pogroms. Again. So, tell me, how angry and exhausted and how determined to defend your country against any future attacks would you be?
If there was a charter signed by a terrorist group which vowed to kill every Protestant and drive every English institution into the sea, which abducted two hundred men women and children in Oxford Street (on Christmas Day) including Chelsea Pensioners and Nadiya Hussain and Mary Berry - and tortured and raped your sons and daughters - if that happened, Messrs Social Conscience, tell me, please tell me, in your view, what would be a PROPORTIONATE RESPONSE? To give the English coast back to the Normans?
What do you want of these beleaguered people of the book who are forced by their neighbours to be people of the tank? Do you want them, perhaps, to give back the land given to them by the UN – perfectly legally? Or To give up Gaza? Again. Or maybe you want them to sit down and have gentle talks sitting on Persian carpets with avowed murderers backed by Iranian mullahs.
You artists purport to work in a business which, above all, demands empathy. Yet, you cannot see an inch past your own prejudice that the only good Jew is a homeless, victimised, impoverished one.
Shame. Shame. Shame on every one of you.
As the book of Proverbs says (12:18), ‘The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.’ If one letter pierced, another can heal. This is what the October Declaration seeks to do for British Jews. It has three clear purposes: to show solidarity with British Jews, unequivocally condemn the terrorism and ask the media to call Hamas what it is: a terrorist organisation. If there is a time to show we stand with British Jews it is now.
Our group has received messages from Jewish friends which communicate how necessary this was. Here are just a few:
I really wanted to share with you how completely empowered I felt signing the October Declaration today. Both, the Declaration and Alison Pearson’s article in today’s Telegraph, made me stand a little taller and steadier. Everyone I spoke to felt the same way. So many of us feel like the rug has been ripped from under our feet. We feel alone, unheard and a little frightened about what the future holds for our jewish communities in the UK and around the world. I am so grateful to all those who worked on this declaration and all those who signed it. We have a greater chance of creating a world we can all live in, if we are proactive about taking a stand on the important issues that are needed to maintain the healthy fabric of our society.
I felt heartened and then more so to read about the British Friends and Declaration and to know we have friends brave enough to speak out in the way you, along with Toby, Allison, Francis and your other co-organisers, are doing.
As a British Jew, I wanted to thank you sincerely for your involvement in putting together the October Declaration.
It means a lot to me and my family to know that at least some of our compatriots "have our back".
It goes some way towards neutralising the shock I have experienced at the reaction of many of my fellow colleagues, many of whom have never once called for the Israeli hostages to be released - which has shaken me to my core.
It’s no good to say it ‘goes without saying’. It does need to be said. We do have your backs.
The public response has been overwhelming and it’s just getting started, which shows the importance of the initiative. More public figures have signed, including former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, as well as 35,000 members of the public.
We’re humbled to play a small role in highlighting the underlying decency and wisdom of the British people. Please add your name. Sometimes all you can do is speak up and use your words to heal. Sign the October Declaration: britishfriendsofisrael.org Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
tl;dr - Acknowledge the suffering of worthy victims and cater to the feelings of those who identify with them. Ignore the suffering of unworthy victims and vilify those who stand up for them.
A remarkable number of signatories with titles and double-barreled surnames. I counted 13 lords, 1 lady, 8 sirs, 2 dames and 27 baron/nesses. Probably because it was promoted in the Telegraph (by Alison Pearson), unless Dodsworth is incredibly well connected among the chinless class.
We are a group of concerned British citizens and residents from a wide range of backgrounds and professions who stand in solidarity with British Jews and condemn all forms of antisemitism, whether in Britain or elsewhere.
We unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism against civilians in Israel, especially the massacre on 7 October 2023.
On 7 October 2023 the State of Israel and her citizens, both Jews and non-Jews, were subjected to a brutal terrorist attack, which resulted in the murder, torture, rape and kidnapping of over 1,500 people.
More Jews were killed on that day than on any other day since the Holocaust.
We are aware that Jews are not the only victims of this tragedy. Hamas knew that there would be consequences to 7 October, but the consequences did not weigh with Hamas.
Its ongoing terrorist operation is calculated to cause maximum fear and distress. The people of Israel have been subjected to a near constant bombardment of rockets from Gaza and Lebanon. Civilians of all kinds – including the elderly, disabled, women, children and babies – have been targeted in a direct breach of the rules of war.
We share the shock and distress of Israelis, British Jews and compassionate people around the world at the unfolding horror and its consequences.
We call for all the hostages taken on 7 October to be released immediately. It is an essential step on the path to peace and the cessation of hostilities.
We stand in support of British Jews and condemn acts of antisemitism
Following the terrorist attack on Israel, antisemitism is surging in the UK. The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded at least 533 antisemitic incidents across the UK between 7-20 October 2023, representing an increase of 651% compared to the same period in 2022.
Children have not been spared. Four Jewish schools in Britain felt compelled to close. One school was vandalised. It is abominable that British children should now live in fear just because they are Jews. All children should be able to attend school without fear.
British Jews should not live in fear because of actions taken by the state of Israel to defend itself. The British state must do everything in its power to protect them.
While we respect the right of all groups to engage in peaceful protest, we urge the police to enforce the law without fear or favour.
We ask the media, members of all political parties and everyone in public life to call out Hamas for what it is: a terrorist organisation.
Hamas, whose actions have led directly and indirectly to the tragic deaths of many Palestinian civilians as well as Israelis, is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK as well as in many other states. The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have identified Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Failure to use the correct language – describing Hamas as ‘militants’ or ‘fighters’, for instance – creates the false impression that Hamas and Israel’s armed forces are morally equivalent and is an affront to the group’s victims – the dead, their families, and those currently being held hostage.
It really is strange that some types of killing are labeled 'terrorism' and ar therefore an abomination before the world; whilst another type of killing, which greatly outnumbers the first type and also involves the deaths of children and civilians, doesn't qualifiy as... 'terrorism'.
Why are 'we' in the West so determined to ignore the results of war, the deaths of thousands of civilians, seeing it as 'just' and 'lawful' killing, merely because we put the correct label on the action, regardless that the result is the same, the death of civilians?
Isn't it just way too convenient for us in the West to justify our mass killing, by means of us controlling how we define and label the killing?
I recall my children asking me what a "terrorist" was when they started to take an interest in the news and world events.
I told them it was "...Usually the name given to the man with the smaller bomb."
-They puzzled over that for years but I think it opened their minds a little as to how the media manipulates its audience through words and definitions.
DTJ said: 'It really is strange that some types of killing are labeled 'terrorism' and ar therefore an abomination before the world; whilst another type of killing, which greatly outnumbers the first type and also involves the deaths of children and civilians, doesn't qualifiy as... 'terrorism'. '
As was once put to me by a green party wonk, violent resistance by palestinians wasn't legitimate because they didn't have 'designated combatants wearing insignia that follow international humanitarian law', therefore you couldn't justify sending them arms to defend themselves the way the UK state saw fit to do in other situations under the guise of Responsibility to Protect:
*****
IM: Where is the R2P crowd every time Israel moves to brutalise the populations in Gaza and the West Bank? No imposed no-fly zones, no training of resistance fighters, no military or diplomatic aid worth speaking of. It sounds ridiculous to even mention it as a possibility, doesn't it? Same goes for other client states where 3rd world leaders are doing what the West wants, eg: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen. No problem when +they+ massacre protestors and violate human rights norms left, right and center. [...]
GPW: I would tentatively be in favour of establishing no-fly zones over the Palestinian territories and certainly for pursuing an international accord that breaks the Israeli naval blockade, but training of resistance fighters? You want to arm Hamas? This is not a peaceful or sustainable solution. We should be working to disarm Hamas just as we should refuse to arm the IDF. Regarding state aid and reconstruction, the situation is that these things happen post conflict and once a state has been established, which is not the case. [...]
IM: [...] re: Israel/Palestine my point was about the hypocrisy of R2P advocates, not a recommendation of policy towards that particular conflict. If they were to follow the same principles, as with Official Enemies like Gaddafi in Libya, when Israel decided to once again 'mow the lawn' (their description not mine) in Palestine they would be urging a no-fly zone, preventive attacks on Israeli offensive forces, sanctions or even regime change in Tel Aviv, and Palestinian fighters would be swimming in funding, arms and warm nods of approval for any number of atrocities they committed. Instead, silence. Or even blaming the victim. Which to me indicates they're puppets, or worse, active shills for western foreign policy goals rather than the principled moral agents they make themselves out to be.
'We should be working to disarm Hamas just as we should refuse to arm the IDF.' - Not working to disarm the IDF? That leaves them with a considerable arsenal as you know... Why shouldn't the elected government of Palestine have a military? And what gives us outsiders the right to decide that they shouldn't have one when they so obviously need it? FWIW I wouldn't argue in favour of supplying them with arms, when there is so much good Britain could do by +not doing anything+ for a change (ie: stop supporting Israel). [...]
GPW:'Why shouldn't the elected government of Palestine have a military?' - They absolutely should be allowed to have a military. That is to say, designated combatants wearing insignia that follow international humanitarian law. That's not what Hamas do though. There is no military, they arm civilians and launch attacks from civilian buildings (such as the al-Arabiya building
IM: [...] Talking about the latest Israeli assault last summer the Palestine Solidarity Campaign stated that it: 'does not support the firing of rockets on civilian Israeli targets. However people living under military occupation are allowed under international law to resist that occupation, using violence under certain circumstances.' (https://www.palestinecampaign.org/faqs/)
I don't know what circumstances those might be and I'm no expert on humanitarian law, but I imagine mitigating factors like the occupation, blockade, economic strangulation of Gaza coupled with the routine, often unprovoked violence by the Israeli military and settlers would figure strongly in any honest judgement of Hamas' actions (although not all militant resistance comes from them). It's important to note that, despite what the Israeli propaganda apparatus says (always faithfully relayed by the major international media platforms) rocket fire and other military actions from the Palestinians almost invariably come as a response to Israeli provocations, and the ceasefires are almost always broken by the Israeli military - see: http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/02/06/the-truth-about-cease-fire-violations-between-israel-and-gaza/
Personally I refuse to condemn desperate acts of resistance when all other options have been closed off. Surely Hamas have been +reduced+ to arming civilians and firing rockets 'indiscriminately' - because they have no guidance system - since they have no access to the kinds of resources necessary to create the kind of fighting force you would find acceptable? It seems like you're the one now suggesting that we provide them with the funds for this! I think a lot of people, and probably a majority of Palestinians view international/humanitarian law as a joke, seeing as the major powers routinely violate it when it's in their interest to do so. Some say Israel's very existence is against international law - certainly the settlements are, although debating this in public is apparently verboten - http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2015/790-when-free-speech-becomes-dead-silence-the-israel-lobby-and-a-cowed-academia.html . When a succession of US, UK and Israeli leaders are behind bars then maybe the laser-like focus on Palestinian rocket fire will be justified, as opposed to a deflection from Israel's far greater crimes. Chomsky put it this way in a recent interview:
'It’s very easy to recommend to victims, “You be nice guys.” That’s cheap. Even if it’s correct, it’s cheap. What matters is what we say about ourselves. Are we going to be nice guys? That’s the important thing, particularly when it’s the United States, the country which, quite rightly, is regarded internationally as the leading threat to world peace, and the decisive threat in the Israeli case.' (http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/8/8/noam_chomsky_what_israel_is_doing)
Anyhow, I think this all supports my original argument about double standards. Western govts had no qualms about the FSA not being an official military. Ditto the rebels in Libya and any number of other examples through recent history, eg: the contras, the mujaheddin, the death squads under Pinochet and Suharto. Hamas are routinely referred to as a religious-fundamentalist terrorist organisation, not as the elected government of Palestine; the contras were described by Reagan's speechwriters as 'the moral equivalent of our country's founding fathers' even as they were going around decapitating people they suspected of supporting the Sandinistas (the elected govt of Nicaragua). One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and vice versa...
GPW: 'people living under military occupation are allowed under international law to resist that occupation, using violence under certain circumstances - This is very much not a standard of international law, even considering the Martens Clause - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martens_Clause , and indeed the status of those who do use violence under such circumstances is very much open to interpretation, hence the wildly different perspectives on how to justly address terrorism. If someone asserts this, ask them to point to the exact article of the convention.
In any case even if there were such a right, it would still not be permitted for those using violence to target civilians (aka protected persons in the legislation) or attack indiscriminately in such a way that civilians would probably be harmed. Both of these are very definitely features of Hamas attacks, and war crimes just as much as Israel's actions that you correctly identify as such.
IM: Interesting, thanks. I've seen various writers independently assert the legality of palestinian militant resistance, but not point to a specific clause as far as I can remember. Presumably it's based on something, albeit maybe not a majority interpretation. Will query it as you suggest and/or do some more research... So it's not even legal for them to defend themselves directly against military incursions if they don't do this as part of an officially recognised military of their own? Seems like a travesty of justice to me.
Thanks also for the Martens link. Was fascinating to read the history behind that and some of the related wiki articles. I enjoyed this quote on the 'Francs-tireurs' from G.K. Chesterton responding to German general Erich Ludendorff's defense of the German army's treatment of French guerrilla fighters in WW1:
"It is astounding how clumsy Prussians are at this sort of thing. Ludendorff cannot be a fool, at any rate, at his own trade; for his military measures were often very effective. But without being a fool when he effects his measures, he becomes a most lurid and lamentable fool when he justifies them. For in fact he could not have chosen a more unfortunate example. A franc-tireur is emphatically not a person whose warfare is bound to disgust any soldier. He is emphatically not a type about which a general soldierly spirit feels any bitterness. He is not a perfidious or barbarous or fantastically fiendish foe. On the contrary, a "franc-tireur" is generally a man for whom any generous soldier would be sorry, as he would for an honourable prisoner of war. What is a "franc-tireur"? A "franc-tireur" is a free man, who fights to defend his own farm or family against foreign aggressors, but who does not happen to possess certain badges and articles of clothing catalogued by Prussia in 1870. In other words, a "franc-tireur" is you or I or any other healthy man who found himself, when attacked, in accidental possession of a gun or pistol, and not in accidental possession of a particular cap or a particular pair of trousers. The distinction is not a moral distinction at all, but a crude and recent official distinction made by the militarism of Potsdam." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francs-tireurs)
Also interesting how dependent the legal distinctions are on indefinite notions of 'the principles of humanity' and 'the dictates of the public conscience' - these are clearly not set in stone and can change over time, whether through consciousness raising (eg: dark-skinned people recognised as fully human) or deliberate manipulation of narratives by propaganda campaigns (eg: Afghan 'freedom fighters' in the 80's when they were fighting Soviet invader-occupiers vs. Afghan 'terrorists' when they fight US/UK invader-occupiers). I'd say the 'public conscience' is v. malleable, and can be directed to feel a certain way about certain people regardless of the reality of their situation. G.K. Chesterton is at liberty to defend the Franc-tireurs because they were allies in a fight against a common enemy. Would he have been so magnanimous towards people fighting their own similar resistance battles against the British empire of the time, and as such being subject to constant vilification in the press and popular culture? Somehow I doubt it...
Anarchists wisely reject the state's monopoly on violence (well, some do it unwisely because they just like violence), and clearly resistance movements in colonised countries are obliged to operate outside the monopoly because it's either that or be eradicated. But look at what manifests in reality and the words melt away. Blokes with guns go around taking stuff by force and killing people who get in the way. States are just mafia gangs that wanted to feel good about themselves so they dressed up their predatory behaviour in fancy uniforms and hifalutin' words about God and Law and Freedom and Democracy etc etc etc. They would be fine with Hamas violence if they used it to conquer and subjugate a neighbouring people rather than out of some quaint notion of trying to achieve justice for the chronically downtrodden.