More on the Hamas Offensive

Below is an LTE I might not actually submit to a newspaper, but it says some things that I need to say. The first post I did on this theme is here.

I have been a supporter of the Palestinians since somewhere around 12th grade. I have protested in support of them here in America, and also in Belfast, N. Ireland. In 2002 I convinced the other members of a CU-Boulder group (Students for Justice in Northern Ireland) that we should endorse the campus Coalition for Justice in Palestine. In the last 15 years one of the main topics on my blog is supporting the Palestinians. But an even bigger part of my blog is about opposing anti-Semitism, and I’m proud to say that those two parts of my blog overlap heavily.

I know that there are many progressives who are not anti-Semitic but who have failed to condemn Hamas’ early October offensive. Although that failure is not necessarily bigoted, what Hamas has done IS bigoted. They are religious fundamentalists and overwhelmingly went after civilian life, and it was Jews they were targeting. As someone who looks back and supports almost everything the IRA did in The Troubles, I would not condemn a Palestinian effort that resembled the IRA’s campaign- targeting the military and (using methods that almost always prevent civilian death) destroying government and commercial property.

I say that because the Palestinians have very serious and legitimate grievances. Those who are Israeli citizens experience a fair amount of inequality (the State is officially Jewish, it cannot be simultaneously democratic). Those in the West Bank have it even worse (they are state-less (they have no citizenship, and thus no civil rights)). And those in  the Gaza Strip live in the world’s largest open-air prison.

They have every reason to be furious at the Israeli state and Israel’s Jewish population. But intentionally killing civilians in war is, to one degree or another, wrong, and in this case bigoted.

Tom Shelley

Fuck Hamas

This is my position on what happened in Israel and Palestine in early Oct.

First, as far as the history of that conflict, about 20% of my knowledge comes from Juan Cole’s site Informed Comment and about 20% is from the BBC. The rest, about 60% is from various sources, some  mainstream, some progressive, including The Nation, the Washington Post, the Times of Israel, etc. In the last week it’s something like 50% the BBC, 10% Juan Cole, 10% CNN and the rest is miscellaneous.

I have been a supporter of the Palestinians pretty much since I started becoming more than a tiny bit political. I sort of explain my general thoughts about the conflict in a post here. I have only briefly been VERY familiar with Israeli and Palestinian politics, and that was the first 2-3 months of 2020 when I was reading about 15 articles a day on the web-based newspaper The Times of Israel. I used to be a member of what used to be the American section of the Socialist International (the Democratic Socialists of America) and in 2001 learned that Fatah, the leading part of the PLO (Arafat was a leader of Fatah), was a less-than-full member of the SI. Until recently I basically supported them.

That was increasingly (in recent years as more and more criticisms were made of the PLO) because of who the main alternative was. My position has always been- “Fuck Hamas.” To one degree or another Hamas is a lot more socially conservative than Fatah is, and I think that the activities of the military wing of Hamas were more likely to intentionally kill innocent civilians than the PLO was when they were fighting Israel.

But for decades now I have heard about the PLO being corrupt and abusing their power. They also have done a horrible job of advancing the interests of their people. Although that’s been clear to one degree or another for decades now, there was a BBC article that really explained that just recently. And then there was a BBC article accusing the President of the Palestinian Authority (sort of an extension of the PLO, in the West Bank) of giving a VERY anti-Semitic speech. As you’ll understand if you read that article, Abbas said that European Jews were targeted because they had money. This is not true and even if all Jews were rich, how in the world would that justify killing them- especially when rich people outside the Jewish population were not targeted as well.

I won’t discuss this in this essay, but I am not sure who I can support among the political movements in the Palestinian population.

The Palestinians have very serious and legitimate grievances. Those who are Israeli citizens experience a fair amount of inequality. Those living in the West Bank have it worse (they are state-less), and in different ways the residents of the Gaza Strip have it even worse than that. The first two of the three aspects of the Israeli state I just referred to are often referred to as being governed by “Israeli Apartheid.” I explain how that’s a legitimate term for how the Palestinians are treated here. The two state solution has been dying a slow death for decades as Israel plants settlers in the West Bank, changing the “facts on the ground” that will make an independent Palestine non-viable.  The Israeli Right, who are in power right now, wants to annex all of the West Bank, at the expense of the Palestinians living there.

So, yes, the Palestinians have every reason to be FURIOUS with the Israeli state and the Israeli people. But what Hamas has done in the last few days is horrible. IF it had been aimed at the military and (using methods that avoid civilian death) government and commercial buildings, I would at least sort of approve. But that’s not what happened. What happened was a massacre of civilians and, especially with a right-wing extreme Zionist government in Jerusalem, it will provoke an even greater (UPDATE 310/10/23 bigger, and/or more extensive) response than what we have seen in the last few days. It will probably bury any chance at peace for a generation.

Is that guaranteed? Fortunately it is not. We need to continue our efforts to change American policy on Israel. That effort will be boosted if we do more to incorporate opposition to anti-Semitism into our solidarity work in support of the Palestinians. That is one of the main themes in my post on Zionism and a one state solution. At the risk of scheming internationally, this is one more reason to support the Irish political party Sinn Fein. After SF got within striking distance of leading a left-wing and republican government in Dublin in 2020, Juan Cole wrote a post about what that might mean for the Palestinians. In recent years there has been a trend of bigger and bigger percentages of the Jewish-American population supporting the Palestinians, and this will help.

In general I am a supporter of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, although I worry that a CULTURAL boycott could fuel anti-semitism. But an economic and political BDS network would be awesome.

So, we need to do a better job than we have done. And I think that a good place to start is to react to recent events by condemning Hamas, talking up a one state solution, and doing more of what we have already done.

 

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UPDATE 10/12/23 There is another item on the same theme here.