Brilliantly assessed. We are all responsible for the badness of our leaders to varying degrees. Most of us are powerless other than the vote (and it’s the uni party so the vote increasingly impotent). However, we can try to share truth - to give others the full picture - I have tried (as I’m sure many who read what I read do to) and have come face to face with the unhappiness and annoyance of those who don’t want to hear ‘bad things’ about their government/leaders - these elected officials after all represent us right? America’s values are about truth, freedom and justice, right?
Persevere we must because slowly people awaken. Just today I had a good friend tell me she was revisiting her thinking on Russia/Ukraine because she was appalled at the one-sided reporting on Israel/Palestine a subject she knows more about as her son works in the UN on this matter.
The bubble can be popped, we just need to find the trigger that causes people to reconsider. As you say Patrick, we are all responsible, some of us can only do our best to try to complete the picture for those who only know propaganda - but doing so is not without risking friendships and social isolation.
"The interpretation Western governments and corporate media have imposed on the available imagery since last Saturday has been as uniform and predictable as it is simplistic. It is as easily described as it is utterly standard: Virtuous, decent, minding-their-business Israelis encounter the “terrorists,” the “gunmen,” the “killers” of Gaza."
Whenever the MSM is at such pains to tell you that an attack in "unprovoked" that is a sure tell that the attack was provoked.
"For some days after violence erupted last Saturday I was struck by the absence in the mainstream coverage of any explanation as to why Hamas determined to launch an attack against a power it cannot hope to defeat."
For the same reason that the Jews of Warsaw launched The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Also, I would not be so sure about the political career of Nikki Haley. Ambitious as Lucifer, she is, and she has a talent for saying what people o0f influence and authority want said, and thereby grooming herself For Bigger And Better Things.
The source of this problem is bigotry against Jews on the part of Muslims broadly and Palestinians are useful as pawns to be made into victims The broader Muslim world sees Palestinians as losers.
I think the Jews are sui generous, a special case. Yes, they practice apartheid, but I think they should be allowed to given history. We tried to exterminate them just 80 years ago, and now the Muslims would love to kill them off. They should be allowed to run a nation of only Jews. So I’m defending apartheid..
LOL, before the Zionist movement set its sights on what is now Israel, Muslim lands were a safe haven for Jews.
And your excuses for apartheid are duly noted. Should Zairians be permitted to practice apartheid, given the richly documented history of atrocities inflicted under colonialism? Should blacks be permitted to practice apartheid, given their sufferings under Jim Crow? For that matter, should Palestinians be permitted to practice apartheid, given what they are undergoing right now?
Sui generis: special genius. Jews are in a category of one. They get apartheid no one else.
Muslim bigotry is, so far, much less harmful than our Christian bigotry towards Jews. Our bigotry remains and is only slightly muted.
Jews are right to embrace war, they have no choice. Your moralistic argument and peters moralistic argument are both correct. My assertion of their right to apartheid cannot be won as an argument: yet it must win in the world if Israel is to exist. Israel is for Jews only.
Accommodation of the Palestinians would be the end of Israel. They have no choice, if Zionism going to work it requires apartheid.
I don’t think Zionism has to work. The Jews don’t need their own nation, per say. But for them to have a nation, it requires apartheid.. I am a goyim Canadian and as such should not be allowed to be Israeli.
Interesting. If I understand correctly, you are saying that Zionism is de facto apartheid. And also that you aren't necessarily defending it, just that for Israel to exist as a state, for Zionism to exist, it necessarily will express itself as apartheid. That is absolutely correct. The UN passed a resolution, later rescinded, defining Zionism as racism. The State of Israel is the best example of the truth of that. Israel is a racist apartheid state.
Apartheid state yes, but probably not racist because there are Arab Jews and European Jews , Africas and the like. So not racist.
Owing to the persecution of Jews a Jewish state was created, a state based on religion. Maybe the world cannot tolerate that. Maybe it is going to fail. However, if you allowed it to become Canada, it will fail that way. Is it worth fighting for? We’re going to find out and sooner rather than later. I believe the events of last weekend I’ve started some thing.
Talk about special pleading. Such demands for special treatment have done more to create genuine antisemites than all the imbeciles ever to post on Stormfront.
And of course, the only place that Israel could possibly be established is in Palestine. Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was against the idea, favoring the idea of purchasing otherwise mostly uninhabited land in Argentina. I would even ask whether there needs to be an "Israel" at all, unless there is a Tamil ethnostate or a Karen ethnostate that I and the rest of the world are unaware of.
And of course, the insistence that "might is right" so beloved of Zionists ever always only goes one way. Boy howdy do the Zionists love to bring up past historical outrages, but not they outrages they commit today, now that they have the whip hand.
So which is it? If might makes right, then why are Nazi atrocities not equally justified?
Special pleading: I think I’m describing what took place. Post holocaust the Zionist movement had enough backing to create a state with the express purpose of creating a state for the Jews. Yes, it was a special pleading. Now the apartheid argument is offered up as proof that it should be dismantled. But it was always apartheid. It’s apartheid because the hundreds of millions of Arabs would swap out the worlds 15 million Jews. Zionism is the Jewish state estate based on religion. You seem hostile towards me for describing the simple logic of it. Apartheid, of course, is loaded with moral indignation.
Let me get this straight - you are a non-Jewish Canadian arguing in ways which appear to be advocating for Zionist apartheid policies? (Even if you say you are not so arguing.) Why? Are you playing a kind of Devil's Advocate to encourage reaction? It seems a distraction to the realities of Palestinians whose country has been stolen from beneath them over the past century and more but most particularly since the intervention of the British/French and then 1948 onwards.
"....Zionist movement had enough backing to create a state..."
It turns out Israel likely would have failed as a UN-endorsed new nation had the Haganah not had an already extensive spy network.
They got purloined documents on Nelson Rockefeller showing his deep ongoing business involvement with the Third Reich throughout the war which they threatened to expose if “Rocky” did not deliver the ‘yea’ votes from 15 Latin American countries.
So the ‘Rock’ delivered. But with the caveat that no bankers (not one) would be prosecuted or tried for association with Germany during WW II. Nelson reportedly said—“You can have your vengeance or you can have your country. Not both.”
At the other end of the telephone, David Ben-Gurion assented.
Truman was vexed, his entire military staff, including and especially General George C Marshall, wanted no part of it, foreseeing strategically just what we have today.
It was definitely far from a slam dunk, especially if it had been played on the up and up. But so little is. Period.
Yeah, some back country in Argentina looks pretty good now.
I think the Jewish state is going to fail. Demographics is destiny. That’s why apartheid. The Arabs would swamp the 8 million Jews. Ultimately it will probably fail. The world cannot except a state based on religion, especially Jews. They are the chosen people.
I think their plight is unique and deserving of special treatment. You clearly do not.
I think you are uncharacteristically political on this topic. I normally find your judgement sound. This time you seem to have an axe to grind.
I simply apply the Zionists own arguments and standards to themselves, without special pleading.
By your own admission, your arguments depend on special pleading, even though plenty of other people throughout history have suffered genocides and nobody has said that this gives them the right to forcibly occupy some other land and displace the inhabitants in consequence.
The Duran had an excellent conversation with Alastair Crooke who has had a lot more experience on the ground in Israel than I had realized. He spoke at some length of the al–Aqsa Mosque intrusion by the ultranationalists and their quest to rebuild the temple destroyed in 70 AD at the very site of the Mosque. One begins to appreciate just how far beyond a simple provocation this intrusion was perceived by Palestinians.
Of course, one can hardly ignore the sadness of our humanitarian limitations that we should destroy each other over which religious building stands to honor and worship the one Abrahamic god. As the story goes, Isaac and Ishmael were kindly brothers before the jealous woman who set it all in motion in the first place had them torn asunder. There is no hate or enmity between the half brothers. I'm sure they must weep from their graves for what their story has become. That the father loved both is something we all must remember if we are to rediscover the love needed to heal centuries of hate.
In one of his essays Seamus Heaney says something along the lines that good work nourishes the soul. Your essay made me think of that line as recently I seem to have started and dropped far too many shouty polemics and rote articles that even some of their authors seem bored with. So thanks PL for a genuinely thoughtful essay. Am also a fan of Levinas and you’ve prodded me to dig out of some of his books again and (again) think about truth and reconciliation with First Nations; that history is also my story. I hope this finds you both well. Hoisting a jar ;-)
Thank you PL for this thoughtful - and wearily melancholy - exploration of the why and who of the current situation in Palestine - including its Israeli sector - and of the context to be considered by the citizens of the US should they ever be awake enough to do so. Or of those of us of other nations whose leaders leap into the fray of ignorant responses...
Having closely followed any and all news for much of my 63 years, I long ago realized I couldn't afford to get emotional about it, if I wanted to keep following the news. Consequently I've tried to understand it as objectively as possible. Not picking sides, or judging, just letting the pieces sort themselves out. Given there is nothing I can do, having studiously avoided much of society, the only result is clarity.
As such; Physics. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. No matter how big and powerful we, or our group might be, we are still these tiny little organisms milling about on this tiny little orb in space.
Those people at that rave were like houses built too close to a river, that flooded and washed them away. We can certainly blame Hamas, but those inclined not to look any deeper are not going to have their minds changed, either because they are complicit in creating the conditions, or they are just dumb.
So there really isn't much use in analyzing their minds. They are also pawns in ever larger dynamics and those are where it might be useful to explore.
To the extent the core of Western culture is monotheism, Israel is its geographic and cultural heart.
There are probably far more fundamentalist Christian Americans gnashing their teeth over this war, than Jewish Americans. Whatever the eschatology driving the various components, there is simply too much momentum to turn that herd. It's the people who don't really feel they have a dog in this fight who might be willing to give the deeper dynamics some thought, especially as we will be seeing some serious nuclear brinksmanship for the next few months.
So what this situation does offer is an opportunity to publicly debate some of the concepts and assumptions that drive our society, that most people would totally ignore and go back to watching the games.
Monotheism really does need analysis. Consider democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family and cycle of life as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god.
The Romans adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion around the time the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. Basically validating The Big Guy Rules.
While it might have been politically useful, it enshrined the assumption of the ideal as absolute at the core of Western culture.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives played out on it.
Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. Every creed has some core set of principles around which it coalesces. Yet to assume one's own creed is absolute and therefore universal and beyond question necessarily means all others are false and misleading. So there can be no "live and let live." No multipolarity permitted.
While the Jewish concept of god was and largely remains effectively tribal, if egocentric, the Christian and Islamic interpretations are evangelistic. The original form of globalism. The logical basis that drove colonialism, especially for Christianity.
Consider that when the West went back to more democratic and republican political principles, it required separation of church and stare, effectively culture and civics. That is extremely sociologically schizophrenic.
These are some of the cultural dynamics driving this mess and while we can break down over all the trauma being inflicted on a lot of people just going about their lives, it will do them no good.
The only ones we can help are the future generations.
I am a paid subscriber to the Floutist and I think Patrick is trying to get at something important, at least I thought he was. The contrast between the innocents (those who don’t know there is evil in the world or who at least act like it), and cold hard realism of Hamas is striking. Anyone who thinks Hana’s and Hezbollah actually care about Palestinians has not been a Palestinian in Gaza who disagrees with Hamas and has made this known. Nearly all those Palestinians are, well, dead. Kind of like the Catholic loyalists in early 20th century Ireland. For some reason they disappeared.
This is a two-headed coin. Your generous focus on the Israeli "non-innocence" with the attendant and obligatory disavowal of Hamas' butchery, is a mirror image of the non-innocence of the Palestinians. The total support of the people for Hamas; the intuitive violence toward Jews who they regard as only worth death; their political, religious, and cultural myopathy which blinds them just as equally to better solutions is as in-excusable as what you attribute to the Israelis. If the Jews all are not innocent, neither are the Palestinians all innocent, and to be sure they have committed as many offenses as they could, and have never laid down their philosophies of hatred, either.
So, in a place where none are innocent, why do we look for some sense of balance? Do we need to excuse away our own "non-innocence?" Or, do we just always intuit that the underdog must be the victim, as simplistic as that sounds? "We shouldn't be surprised," we seem to say when the underdog "non-innocent" bites, but then we should not be surprised, either, when they are also bitten.
It's senseless to try to find the original sin in this situation--the history is too long. This is only about power and there are no innocents.
The Hebrew were already far ahead of PL philosophically when they discovered that humankind left innocence behind when God expelled Adam and Eve from paradise.
The age of reason is a historical period in western thought. It did not occur to me that he was simply referring to the individuals were old enough to be able to reason on their own. I was thinking in a historical context, and he was speaking in a fancy way when that “they were old enough to know better”
That’s sad, I love this authors, rhetorical style. It’s a true pleasure.
It was not meant to be an insult. The "age of reason" is also a common phrase for the age when a child is able to make reasoned decisions--it's a phrase left over from early child development texts.
“I think, at the outset, it is extremely difficult to be innocent in our time, in the world as we have made it—to avoid complicity, this is to say. Setting aside the very young and the otherwise powerless, who among us is not complicit, who is truly innocent?”
Great quote! Thanks for this article.
It’s so nice to read a well thought and reasoned approach to the recent events in the Middle East!
I follow a lot of writers on Substack, mostly at the free level. The events in Palestine have given me the opportunity to purge my feed. A lot of writers I followed because I valued their opinion on the Covid crimes have come out with very war mongering, Zionist views! I have unsubscribed from all of them!
I will support you and seriously consider a paid subscription. I have a limited budget for paid subscriptions. Yours will be at the top of the list for the future.
In mainstream meadow, rather than accurately and completely describe their subject, the terms used manufacture permissions and consents, i.e. their object, and you can interpret what the political intentions are if you learn 'the language'.
On the situation in Israel/Palestine, most people are ignorant of Zionism and what transpired behind the scenes in the 20th century, and now, Jewish goal of exterminating the Palestinians with the help of Israel's subordinate vassal, the United States.
A good read or you can watch it on YouTube, is "The Hidden History of Zionism" by Ralph Schoenmann, a longtime hero of mine, plus two books I also recommend.
"The Case Against Israel" by Micheal Neumann, and "Against Our Better Judgement" by Alison Weir.
As usual, the Jewish nazis will justify the murder and maiming of Palestinian men, women, and children, and get away with it. Repulsives and DemoRATS in Congress will continue to swear allegiance to Israel, as they love their bread buttered and act like obedient vassals to the moneyed people.
As for the UN....it's worthless! They've never stopped one war. But then Edward Bernays wrote the book, "Propaganda" back in the 1920's, and it's still effective today, almost a century later!
In 2014, over a skirmish between Hamas and the Israeli army, where 6 Jewish soldiers were killed, the Israeli air force bombed Gaza non-stop, including blowing up schools, hospitals, as well as apartment buildings in retaliation, killing approximately 20, 000 Palestinian civilians, and again, the UN did nothing. RTAmerica covered the bombing exclusively as the corporate media wouldn't touch it. Same with the bombing of the USS Liberty intelligence gathering vessel during the "Six Day War" in 1967. President Johnson hushed it up, as not to offend Israel, even though several dozen America sailors were killed and more injured. So now you know who the "real winners" of WW2 were. And I'm not condoning the Final Solution either. All genocide is wrong, period!
Aside from that it must be said that it is not surprising if Israel, with its war-politics, murder-politics and criminal-politics sits in the nettles more and more and produces more and more enemies world-wide in the Islamic world and in their circle of friends.
What will be murderously, criminally and irresponsibly plotted through Israel there, for war on Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, ...
That, quite especially then, if the Islamic world suddenly openly unites against Israel and razes it to the ground, ...
If the enemies, Israel and the Arabic countries, and therewith also the Islamic believers and Jewish believers worldwide, as well as their followers, do not change their behaviour and ...
In Jerusalem the few still living people will wade in ankle-deep human blood.
Our author is wonderful, but he is wrong. There is a telltale sign of his incorrectness. He uses the phrase “war crimes.” The proper phrase is simply war. War is part of us, our alma matter, but war crimes means something different.Israelis are prosecuting war, nothing more.
The Palestinians deny the right of the state of Israel to exist. That is a declaration of war. Israelis have been patient or more accurately, forced to be patient by their patrons in America.
Our author is typical in his left-wing belief that War is avoidable, war is a failure, war is the exception. Jews know better. They appreciate peace is simply a cessation of war, an interregnum, and they embrace it, war, as a skill set, as they should. They have been at war through their entire history, and they will be for another 500 years. Best to be good at it.
Brilliantly assessed. We are all responsible for the badness of our leaders to varying degrees. Most of us are powerless other than the vote (and it’s the uni party so the vote increasingly impotent). However, we can try to share truth - to give others the full picture - I have tried (as I’m sure many who read what I read do to) and have come face to face with the unhappiness and annoyance of those who don’t want to hear ‘bad things’ about their government/leaders - these elected officials after all represent us right? America’s values are about truth, freedom and justice, right?
Persevere we must because slowly people awaken. Just today I had a good friend tell me she was revisiting her thinking on Russia/Ukraine because she was appalled at the one-sided reporting on Israel/Palestine a subject she knows more about as her son works in the UN on this matter.
The bubble can be popped, we just need to find the trigger that causes people to reconsider. As you say Patrick, we are all responsible, some of us can only do our best to try to complete the picture for those who only know propaganda - but doing so is not without risking friendships and social isolation.
"The interpretation Western governments and corporate media have imposed on the available imagery since last Saturday has been as uniform and predictable as it is simplistic. It is as easily described as it is utterly standard: Virtuous, decent, minding-their-business Israelis encounter the “terrorists,” the “gunmen,” the “killers” of Gaza."
Whenever the MSM is at such pains to tell you that an attack in "unprovoked" that is a sure tell that the attack was provoked.
"For some days after violence erupted last Saturday I was struck by the absence in the mainstream coverage of any explanation as to why Hamas determined to launch an attack against a power it cannot hope to defeat."
For the same reason that the Jews of Warsaw launched The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Also, I would not be so sure about the political career of Nikki Haley. Ambitious as Lucifer, she is, and she has a talent for saying what people o0f influence and authority want said, and thereby grooming herself For Bigger And Better Things.
I fear you may be right about Haley. We already have Tim Scott not only endorsing her, but cheering others on to do likewise.
I suspect that the RNC learned from 2016 that you need to get the never-Trumpers unified around a single candidate.
Precisely!
The source of this problem is bigotry against Jews on the part of Muslims broadly and Palestinians are useful as pawns to be made into victims The broader Muslim world sees Palestinians as losers.
I think the Jews are sui generous, a special case. Yes, they practice apartheid, but I think they should be allowed to given history. We tried to exterminate them just 80 years ago, and now the Muslims would love to kill them off. They should be allowed to run a nation of only Jews. So I’m defending apartheid..
LOL, before the Zionist movement set its sights on what is now Israel, Muslim lands were a safe haven for Jews.
And your excuses for apartheid are duly noted. Should Zairians be permitted to practice apartheid, given the richly documented history of atrocities inflicted under colonialism? Should blacks be permitted to practice apartheid, given their sufferings under Jim Crow? For that matter, should Palestinians be permitted to practice apartheid, given what they are undergoing right now?
Sui generis: special genius. Jews are in a category of one. They get apartheid no one else.
Muslim bigotry is, so far, much less harmful than our Christian bigotry towards Jews. Our bigotry remains and is only slightly muted.
Jews are right to embrace war, they have no choice. Your moralistic argument and peters moralistic argument are both correct. My assertion of their right to apartheid cannot be won as an argument: yet it must win in the world if Israel is to exist. Israel is for Jews only.
Accommodation of the Palestinians would be the end of Israel. They have no choice, if Zionism going to work it requires apartheid.
I don’t think Zionism has to work. The Jews don’t need their own nation, per say. But for them to have a nation, it requires apartheid.. I am a goyim Canadian and as such should not be allowed to be Israeli.
Interesting. If I understand correctly, you are saying that Zionism is de facto apartheid. And also that you aren't necessarily defending it, just that for Israel to exist as a state, for Zionism to exist, it necessarily will express itself as apartheid. That is absolutely correct. The UN passed a resolution, later rescinded, defining Zionism as racism. The State of Israel is the best example of the truth of that. Israel is a racist apartheid state.
Apartheid state yes, but probably not racist because there are Arab Jews and European Jews , Africas and the like. So not racist.
Owing to the persecution of Jews a Jewish state was created, a state based on religion. Maybe the world cannot tolerate that. Maybe it is going to fail. However, if you allowed it to become Canada, it will fail that way. Is it worth fighting for? We’re going to find out and sooner rather than later. I believe the events of last weekend I’ve started some thing.
Talk about special pleading. Such demands for special treatment have done more to create genuine antisemites than all the imbeciles ever to post on Stormfront.
And of course, the only place that Israel could possibly be established is in Palestine. Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was against the idea, favoring the idea of purchasing otherwise mostly uninhabited land in Argentina. I would even ask whether there needs to be an "Israel" at all, unless there is a Tamil ethnostate or a Karen ethnostate that I and the rest of the world are unaware of.
And of course, the insistence that "might is right" so beloved of Zionists ever always only goes one way. Boy howdy do the Zionists love to bring up past historical outrages, but not they outrages they commit today, now that they have the whip hand.
So which is it? If might makes right, then why are Nazi atrocities not equally justified?
Special pleading: I think I’m describing what took place. Post holocaust the Zionist movement had enough backing to create a state with the express purpose of creating a state for the Jews. Yes, it was a special pleading. Now the apartheid argument is offered up as proof that it should be dismantled. But it was always apartheid. It’s apartheid because the hundreds of millions of Arabs would swap out the worlds 15 million Jews. Zionism is the Jewish state estate based on religion. You seem hostile towards me for describing the simple logic of it. Apartheid, of course, is loaded with moral indignation.
Let me get this straight - you are a non-Jewish Canadian arguing in ways which appear to be advocating for Zionist apartheid policies? (Even if you say you are not so arguing.) Why? Are you playing a kind of Devil's Advocate to encourage reaction? It seems a distraction to the realities of Palestinians whose country has been stolen from beneath them over the past century and more but most particularly since the intervention of the British/French and then 1948 onwards.
"....Zionist movement had enough backing to create a state..."
It turns out Israel likely would have failed as a UN-endorsed new nation had the Haganah not had an already extensive spy network.
They got purloined documents on Nelson Rockefeller showing his deep ongoing business involvement with the Third Reich throughout the war which they threatened to expose if “Rocky” did not deliver the ‘yea’ votes from 15 Latin American countries.
So the ‘Rock’ delivered. But with the caveat that no bankers (not one) would be prosecuted or tried for association with Germany during WW II. Nelson reportedly said—“You can have your vengeance or you can have your country. Not both.”
At the other end of the telephone, David Ben-Gurion assented.
Truman was vexed, his entire military staff, including and especially General George C Marshall, wanted no part of it, foreseeing strategically just what we have today.
It was definitely far from a slam dunk, especially if it had been played on the up and up. But so little is. Period.
You are the one who brought up apartheid. Not I.
Zionism doesn't necessarily have anything to do with religion. It's an ethnostate, pure and simple.
Yeah, some back country in Argentina looks pretty good now.
I think the Jewish state is going to fail. Demographics is destiny. That’s why apartheid. The Arabs would swamp the 8 million Jews. Ultimately it will probably fail. The world cannot except a state based on religion, especially Jews. They are the chosen people.
I think their plight is unique and deserving of special treatment. You clearly do not.
I think you are uncharacteristically political on this topic. I normally find your judgement sound. This time you seem to have an axe to grind.
I simply apply the Zionists own arguments and standards to themselves, without special pleading.
By your own admission, your arguments depend on special pleading, even though plenty of other people throughout history have suffered genocides and nobody has said that this gives them the right to forcibly occupy some other land and displace the inhabitants in consequence.
The Duran had an excellent conversation with Alastair Crooke who has had a lot more experience on the ground in Israel than I had realized. He spoke at some length of the al–Aqsa Mosque intrusion by the ultranationalists and their quest to rebuild the temple destroyed in 70 AD at the very site of the Mosque. One begins to appreciate just how far beyond a simple provocation this intrusion was perceived by Palestinians.
Of course, one can hardly ignore the sadness of our humanitarian limitations that we should destroy each other over which religious building stands to honor and worship the one Abrahamic god. As the story goes, Isaac and Ishmael were kindly brothers before the jealous woman who set it all in motion in the first place had them torn asunder. There is no hate or enmity between the half brothers. I'm sure they must weep from their graves for what their story has become. That the father loved both is something we all must remember if we are to rediscover the love needed to heal centuries of hate.
In one of his essays Seamus Heaney says something along the lines that good work nourishes the soul. Your essay made me think of that line as recently I seem to have started and dropped far too many shouty polemics and rote articles that even some of their authors seem bored with. So thanks PL for a genuinely thoughtful essay. Am also a fan of Levinas and you’ve prodded me to dig out of some of his books again and (again) think about truth and reconciliation with First Nations; that history is also my story. I hope this finds you both well. Hoisting a jar ;-)
Thank you !!
Thank you PL for this thoughtful - and wearily melancholy - exploration of the why and who of the current situation in Palestine - including its Israeli sector - and of the context to be considered by the citizens of the US should they ever be awake enough to do so. Or of those of us of other nations whose leaders leap into the fray of ignorant responses...
An interesting essay on the history of Zionism and Israel;
https://dlieb10gmailcom.substack.com/p/goodbye-to-political-zionism-hello
Having closely followed any and all news for much of my 63 years, I long ago realized I couldn't afford to get emotional about it, if I wanted to keep following the news. Consequently I've tried to understand it as objectively as possible. Not picking sides, or judging, just letting the pieces sort themselves out. Given there is nothing I can do, having studiously avoided much of society, the only result is clarity.
As such; Physics. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. No matter how big and powerful we, or our group might be, we are still these tiny little organisms milling about on this tiny little orb in space.
Those people at that rave were like houses built too close to a river, that flooded and washed them away. We can certainly blame Hamas, but those inclined not to look any deeper are not going to have their minds changed, either because they are complicit in creating the conditions, or they are just dumb.
So there really isn't much use in analyzing their minds. They are also pawns in ever larger dynamics and those are where it might be useful to explore.
To the extent the core of Western culture is monotheism, Israel is its geographic and cultural heart.
There are probably far more fundamentalist Christian Americans gnashing their teeth over this war, than Jewish Americans. Whatever the eschatology driving the various components, there is simply too much momentum to turn that herd. It's the people who don't really feel they have a dog in this fight who might be willing to give the deeper dynamics some thought, especially as we will be seeing some serious nuclear brinksmanship for the next few months.
So what this situation does offer is an opportunity to publicly debate some of the concepts and assumptions that drive our society, that most people would totally ignore and go back to watching the games.
Monotheism really does need analysis. Consider democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family and cycle of life as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god.
The Romans adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion around the time the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. Basically validating The Big Guy Rules.
While it might have been politically useful, it enshrined the assumption of the ideal as absolute at the core of Western culture.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives played out on it.
Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. Every creed has some core set of principles around which it coalesces. Yet to assume one's own creed is absolute and therefore universal and beyond question necessarily means all others are false and misleading. So there can be no "live and let live." No multipolarity permitted.
While the Jewish concept of god was and largely remains effectively tribal, if egocentric, the Christian and Islamic interpretations are evangelistic. The original form of globalism. The logical basis that drove colonialism, especially for Christianity.
Consider that when the West went back to more democratic and republican political principles, it required separation of church and stare, effectively culture and civics. That is extremely sociologically schizophrenic.
These are some of the cultural dynamics driving this mess and while we can break down over all the trauma being inflicted on a lot of people just going about their lives, it will do them no good.
The only ones we can help are the future generations.
I am a paid subscriber to the Floutist and I think Patrick is trying to get at something important, at least I thought he was. The contrast between the innocents (those who don’t know there is evil in the world or who at least act like it), and cold hard realism of Hamas is striking. Anyone who thinks Hana’s and Hezbollah actually care about Palestinians has not been a Palestinian in Gaza who disagrees with Hamas and has made this known. Nearly all those Palestinians are, well, dead. Kind of like the Catholic loyalists in early 20th century Ireland. For some reason they disappeared.
This is a two-headed coin. Your generous focus on the Israeli "non-innocence" with the attendant and obligatory disavowal of Hamas' butchery, is a mirror image of the non-innocence of the Palestinians. The total support of the people for Hamas; the intuitive violence toward Jews who they regard as only worth death; their political, religious, and cultural myopathy which blinds them just as equally to better solutions is as in-excusable as what you attribute to the Israelis. If the Jews all are not innocent, neither are the Palestinians all innocent, and to be sure they have committed as many offenses as they could, and have never laid down their philosophies of hatred, either.
So, in a place where none are innocent, why do we look for some sense of balance? Do we need to excuse away our own "non-innocence?" Or, do we just always intuit that the underdog must be the victim, as simplistic as that sounds? "We shouldn't be surprised," we seem to say when the underdog "non-innocent" bites, but then we should not be surprised, either, when they are also bitten.
It's senseless to try to find the original sin in this situation--the history is too long. This is only about power and there are no innocents.
The Hebrew were already far ahead of PL philosophically when they discovered that humankind left innocence behind when God expelled Adam and Eve from paradise.
Indeed: Original
Sin.
“These are people who clearly achieved the age of reason” what does that mean?
It means they were not children. Sheesh.
Why the insult.
The age of reason is a historical period in western thought. It did not occur to me that he was simply referring to the individuals were old enough to be able to reason on their own. I was thinking in a historical context, and he was speaking in a fancy way when that “they were old enough to know better”
That’s sad, I love this authors, rhetorical style. It’s a true pleasure.
Polite: polite is better.
It was not meant to be an insult. The "age of reason" is also a common phrase for the age when a child is able to make reasoned decisions--it's a phrase left over from early child development texts.
“I think, at the outset, it is extremely difficult to be innocent in our time, in the world as we have made it—to avoid complicity, this is to say. Setting aside the very young and the otherwise powerless, who among us is not complicit, who is truly innocent?”
Great quote! Thanks for this article.
It’s so nice to read a well thought and reasoned approach to the recent events in the Middle East!
I follow a lot of writers on Substack, mostly at the free level. The events in Palestine have given me the opportunity to purge my feed. A lot of writers I followed because I valued their opinion on the Covid crimes have come out with very war mongering, Zionist views! I have unsubscribed from all of them!
I will support you and seriously consider a paid subscription. I have a limited budget for paid subscriptions. Yours will be at the top of the list for the future.
In mainstream meadow, rather than accurately and completely describe their subject, the terms used manufacture permissions and consents, i.e. their object, and you can interpret what the political intentions are if you learn 'the language'.
On the situation in Israel/Palestine, most people are ignorant of Zionism and what transpired behind the scenes in the 20th century, and now, Jewish goal of exterminating the Palestinians with the help of Israel's subordinate vassal, the United States.
A good read or you can watch it on YouTube, is "The Hidden History of Zionism" by Ralph Schoenmann, a longtime hero of mine, plus two books I also recommend.
"The Case Against Israel" by Micheal Neumann, and "Against Our Better Judgement" by Alison Weir.
As usual, the Jewish nazis will justify the murder and maiming of Palestinian men, women, and children, and get away with it. Repulsives and DemoRATS in Congress will continue to swear allegiance to Israel, as they love their bread buttered and act like obedient vassals to the moneyed people.
As for the UN....it's worthless! They've never stopped one war. But then Edward Bernays wrote the book, "Propaganda" back in the 1920's, and it's still effective today, almost a century later!
In 2014, over a skirmish between Hamas and the Israeli army, where 6 Jewish soldiers were killed, the Israeli air force bombed Gaza non-stop, including blowing up schools, hospitals, as well as apartment buildings in retaliation, killing approximately 20, 000 Palestinian civilians, and again, the UN did nothing. RTAmerica covered the bombing exclusively as the corporate media wouldn't touch it. Same with the bombing of the USS Liberty intelligence gathering vessel during the "Six Day War" in 1967. President Johnson hushed it up, as not to offend Israel, even though several dozen America sailors were killed and more injured. So now you know who the "real winners" of WW2 were. And I'm not condoning the Final Solution either. All genocide is wrong, period!
Wednesday, 12th July 2006
Contact Report 429
Billy:
Aside from that it must be said that it is not surprising if Israel, with its war-politics, murder-politics and criminal-politics sits in the nettles more and more and produces more and more enemies world-wide in the Islamic world and in their circle of friends.
What will be murderously, criminally and irresponsibly plotted through Israel there, for war on Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, ...
That, quite especially then, if the Islamic world suddenly openly unites against Israel and razes it to the ground, ...
If the enemies, Israel and the Arabic countries, and therewith also the Islamic believers and Jewish believers worldwide, as well as their followers, do not change their behaviour and ...
In Jerusalem the few still living people will wade in ankle-deep human blood.
https://www.futureofmankind.co.uk/Billy_Meier/Contact_Report_429
Our author is wonderful, but he is wrong. There is a telltale sign of his incorrectness. He uses the phrase “war crimes.” The proper phrase is simply war. War is part of us, our alma matter, but war crimes means something different.Israelis are prosecuting war, nothing more.
The Palestinians deny the right of the state of Israel to exist. That is a declaration of war. Israelis have been patient or more accurately, forced to be patient by their patrons in America.
Our author is typical in his left-wing belief that War is avoidable, war is a failure, war is the exception. Jews know better. They appreciate peace is simply a cessation of war, an interregnum, and they embrace it, war, as a skill set, as they should. They have been at war through their entire history, and they will be for another 500 years. Best to be good at it.