Every now and then my blog loses a bunch of followers, and I look back at the last few articles to see who I’ve offended, and how.  Occasionally, someone tells me, then I do a lot of thinking. I don’t get anywhere near everything right but for some reason, that doesn’t bother me the way it does some people. I share my blogs and book recommendations with other bloggers and I mine all the libraries in the county in an on-going mission to check and compare stuff. I don’t seek agreement, but mutual inquiry. I heartily wish more blog readers would offer criticisms or alternative takes, but most don’t – they post comments when they approve, and do nothing — or unsubscribe — when they don’t.

I suppose that’s not surprising when we as a society have got ourselves into a place where people can be kicked out of party roles, unions and even jobs for expressing ‘wrong’ opinions or beliefs, but it makes it very hard to learn stuff.

I’m currently thinking about a fascinating article by Hadley Freeman who I personally think was as wrong as you can be about Corbyn; right about women’s rights (and brave and sensible with it) and is now in a very interesting place on Israel / Palestine (although not remotely where I am). So, I ask those who try so hard to avoid coming up against different views, does that make me Freeman’s friend, or her enemy?

Here’s a medley of her past works…

Her latest tells me she’s more into comparing ideas than many mainstream journalists. It looks as though she’s trying to help people think things through, or else trying to show where her circle are at, which should help us all communicate, so all respect to her for writing this…

I’m currently reading a Left Book Club work by Lindsey McGoey called The Unknowers: How strategic ignorance rules the world.

There could not be a better time to pick this book up because I believe our government is a particularly troublesome offender in the ‘strategic ignorance’ game. A few days ago, David Lammy’s office instructed civil servants not to log phone calls from people reporting Israel’s abduction of the Madleen (a UK registered ship), presumably because if the government is officially told of an act of piracy, they are legally obliged to act.

In the same vein, the official response to a group of 300 civil servants who are concerned that their work is leading them into law breaking was that they should resign — but what’s interesting at the moment is that most people noticed these things.

A shifting in the sands

It’s very, very good that some long-hidden things are beginning to be visible, and that people are questioning the embedded denials we’ve all been subjected to. It’s why feminists are managing now to persuade the authorities that women really do exist as a sex-class.

And it’s why the #FreePalestine movement is beginning to get some action from some governments.

What is not good is that the shifting sands so often cause people to fall out, to rage and to blame, rather than questioning what they think they know. That’s why I am grateful for Hadley Freeman’s beautiful illustration of a moment of questioning (in this case, questioning the long-embedded establishment view of Israel’s actions in Gaza). I do hope though, that people like her get on with their work a bit faster, because Gaza’s people are dying at a distressing rate. 

But, these things take as long as they must take. Here’s the article again, for ease of reference…

Here comes my commentary. The headings are quotes from the article, so you can find the points I’m responding to.

Squaring it in your own head

This feels impossible to do for as long as you’re trying to square an untruth you’ve digested with the facts you’ve seen. Once you realize that’s what you’re trying to do, you need to choose between scrapping the wrong ideas in your head or shutting your eyes to the facts.

The ‘yes but Hamas’ points:

I don’t support Hamas. No serious feminist can tolerate government by a conservative, militarist, religious organization. Most Gazans don’t support Hamas either. Yes, Hamas won an election – a long time ago, and Gaza has an unusually young population (because the longer you live in Palestine, the more likely Israel is to have you shot or abducted) so very few of those currently alive in Gaza were of voting age when Hamas were elected.

Nevertheless, Israel is determined to call everyone and everything in Gaza ‘Hamas’.

“But the figures come from Hamas”

 Because Hamas was the government, all public service workers and officials were, technically, Hamas – as in government employees. Not the Qassam brigades, who are the nearest Hamas has to a military. The Hamas Health ministry is not Qassam. It’s Hamas employees – civil servants. On behalf of the government of Gaza, the health ministry, made up of civil servants, put out the figures for deaths and they only included those for which they had evidence and identification.

All the aid agencies and human rights organizations we know and trust agree that Hamas under-reports deaths and, as their own systems and communications have been progressively destroyed by daily bombardment, the scale of the under-reporting has increased – exponentially.

 “And who still trusts the BBC about Israel”

No-one who’s doing any critical thinking trusts the BBC any more – the difference is that those of us who aren’t defenders of Israel don’t trust the BBC because of the vast amount of research and evidence that shows the BBC is biased in favour of Israel. And the evidence includes that of our own eyes. Just look how this disgraceful reporter treats a distressed doctor talking about colleagues’ families being targeted and mown down by the Israeli military.

That’s as good as the BBC gets, and it’s painful to watch.

“But what are you going to do, only read pro-Israeli propaganda?”

Both sides in this debate do this to themselves for as long as they’re still trying to trust the BBC. The choice is not between the BBC and a bunch of biased nationalists (of whatever your political stripe is). The choice is between the BBC and everyone and everything else. There is a world of information sources out there. Trust yourself, and go explore.

“Yes, but at least those outlets acknowledge that this war started with October 7”

You know I said up there that Hamas’ reporting of deaths has been dropping behind reality since their systems began to be broken down by bombardment? I didn’t mean since October 7^th, I meant since 2008. Any outlet that is trying to pretend that the genocide of Gaza is a ‘war’ that started on October 7^th, is precisely a mouthpiece for pro-Israeli propaganda.

“Is it genocide if you’re going after the terrorist group that explicitly wants to wipe Israel off the map and kill Jews?”

There are terrorist groups that explicitly want to wipe Israel off the map and kill Jews. That might be a sensible thing to say if you were talking about ISIS ( the likes of whom Israel currently appears to be arming ) but it is not true of Hamas.

Who decides who is a terrorist group? The group that has committed the most extra-judicial killings of civilians anywhere in the world, for the most dubious reasons imaginable, is the government of United States of America, the very institution that decided to designate Hamas a terrorist group. I’d say they’re all, each according to the scale of their capabilities, as bad as each other. Let us seek out organizations that don’t go in for the killing of civilians for political purposes at all, shall we?

“The former Israeli PM Ehud Barak wrote last month that continuing this war was exacerbating antisemitism.”

Pretty much all Israeli politicians insist on saying ‘Jews’ when they mean ‘Israelis’, and ‘antisemitism’ when they mean ‘anti-Zionism’. Just think how different things would look if Hamas, and everyone else, reported Israeli actions the way Israel reports everyone else’s. For example, ‘Israel has killed at least 57 000 Muslims, mostly women and children, in Gaza’ but they didn’t say that, they said ‘people’. Israel weaponizes antisemitism every step of the way. By and large, the Palestinians don’t do that, because they do what Israel just can’t – they acknowledge that the natural population of any country must be allowed to include, in naturally occurring proportions, people of many religions, and people of none.

Of course, Israel attacking Arabs and saying they do it for Jews exacerbates antisemitism, it always has, that’s why so many Jewish socialists now go around wearing teeshirts saying ‘not in my name’. It’s actually quite remarkable how many people manage to see round Israel’s propaganda, and do not think it’s ‘the Jews’ who are attacking Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq and any ships they don’t like that they see in international waters anywhere near Palestine, despite what Zionists claim.

“Lefty cranks have been desperate to stick the accusation of genocide on Israel for years”

Just how many ‘lefty cranks’ do you think there are? Are you still thinking the Labour Party was full of them? If so, you’re still labouring under a misapprehension seeded and nurtured by the BBC. The Labour Party, under its Corbynite General Secretary Jennie Formby, would instantly expel a member who said anything as remotely dreadful as ‘stop whining about the Holocaust’. The truth is that most real socialists are internationalists, so they tend to know what’s happening around the world, so they recognized Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine as an unacceptable reality long before BBC-watchers did and yes, as a result, they were the ones who were warning that Israel’s actions were going to lead to genocide.

Are you angry with them now because they were right? I understand that, I really do. I can be prideful too. It can be infuriating when others are right, and it takes a while to forgive them. But are you still going to accuse them of ‘crankiness’ and antisemitism anyway?

[the number of] Palestinians has quintupled since the founding of Israel. Meanwhile, there are just over a million Jews in Europe now; compared with more than nine million before the Second World War.

Well we all know the Holocaust was a genocide but what made the Holocaust so uniquely dreadful was the industrial nature and scale of the killing. Genocide is not necessarily about numbers. It’s about setting out to destroy a people by combining the killing or displacement of civilians with the destruction of culture and infrastructure. (50 minutes into this video, you can see Keir Starmer explaining that.) In the case of Palestine, we are overwhelmed by the volume of evidence of all those things – not least is that the IDF is unique amongst national militaries for having a huge fleet of gigantic bulldozers in constant use.

By the way, if it’s an explanation of Palestinian numbers you want, then most sociology text books can give it to you. When a people find themselves in a place where life is orderly, predictable and relatively safe, they have fewer children, because there are other things they can do with their lives. By contrast, when a people is under constant stress and attack, with no clear routes to prosperity or fulfillment, they tend to have more kids. I don’t know, maybe they’re seeking safety in numbers — but it’s what humans do.

“And Israel has offered it to them, over and over again, in previous decades.”

This, again, is what both sides do in any long-running political disputes. They carefully remember and make lists of everything their side has offered, but choose to forget the tricks, the traps and the strings attached. The biggest, most glaring thing forgotten by people who talk about what Palestinians have been ‘offered’ over the years is that legally, an agreement made by a country under illegal military occupation has no standing, as they are assumed to be acting under duress. No ‘offer’ made by Israel has legal or practical standing unless they first withdraw from agreed Palestinian territory, and guarantee Palestinian safety, so that Palestinians can organize and consult properly, the way any free country would, before accepting or rejecting anything.

“all the activists who act as if all the wrongdoing is on one side”

Are you sure there are many of these? I mean, when you’re trying to stop a genocide obviously you’re going to spend most of your time talking about what the perpetrators are doing but you know, I’ve been right in there with the #FreePalestine campaigners long before it was fashionable and I have hardly ever heard anyone claiming Hamas are innocent – even Hamas don’t claim that. The leader who was in charge on October 7^th  (long since killed by Israel) acknowledged that the events of that day ran out of his control, and that crimes were committed.

And why do you think #FreePalestine campaigners disregard Israelis’ problems? I have often heard them talking about the predicament of non-genocidal Israelis, and the persecution, in the UK where I live, of Jewish socialists. What we do do however, that commentators from the Israel supporting side don’t seem to, is put things in proportion. Israel is an extremely well-provided for military force of occupation. Palestine meanwhile, with not a tenth, not a hundredth of Israel’s resources, is merely reacting, sometimes effectively, other times desperately or even criminally, to an occupation that’s been relentlessly squeezing its victim for decades.

“And those who want a ceasefire at least and a two-state solution at best are the moderates.”

Why on earth do people think the establishment’s choice of ‘a two-state solution’ is moderate? For a start, are you going to uproot the half-a-million-and-rising Israeli settlers, some of whom are second or third generation inheritors of illegally occupied land? And secondly, are you really planning to draw a line and say ‘okay, Jews over here, Muslims over there’ … or would it be Israel supporters run this way, Palestine supporters run that way? Have we really learned nothing from the bloody demise of the British Empire? Before any more talk of ‘a two-state solution’, could you please listen to the descendants of those who managed to live through the partition of India / Pakistan? Ask them what happened to people whose families, social and business networks and properties did not fit neatly into the prescribed categories.

“Hamas started this war because it hates Jews.”

If ‘war’ is what you think this is, please consider this: Hamas was founded in 1987. The first ‘suicide bombing’ that appeared to be a Hamas action was in 1994, in response to the Baruch Goldstein memorial. Goldstein shot 29 Palestinians at prayer at a mosque in Hebron during Ramadan. Wearing his IDF uniform and noise-reducing headphones, he fired 111 rounds into the dawn prayer gathering. He was killed by the shocked and angry crowd that piled on to stop him killing more. All Palestinians were punished for this by a wide range of repressive measures such as curfew, meanwhile Goldstein’s tombstone, in Kiryat Arba municipal park, which became a shrine and pilgrimage site for Israelis, reads ‘he gave his soul for the people of Israel, its Torah, and land – clean hands and a pure heart.’  (source – A Day in the Life of Abed Salama).

It feels as though Israel has never, for one moment, doubted its right to kill Palestinians and hail their killers as heroes.

I think what Hamas hates is Israeli soldiers who constantly glorify the killing of Palestinians.

“Every Jew I know”

I saved the title of Freeman’s article until near the end, as I think it may be the most important point to remember. ‘A conversation every Jew I know is having’ flags up a very important weapon of ‘the unknowers’ which we have to challenge if we are to move forward. It’s the single-opinion bubble.

JVL, an organization made up largely of ex-Labour Party Jewish socialists, have a series on their website called Jewish journeys away from Zionism. I hope Freeman’s article is the beginning of such a journey, but my point here is that Freeman’s title tells the world, loud and clear, that those who’ve managed all this time not to see Israel’s crimes have maintained their blindness by efficiently failing to know any anti-Zionist Jews (they really aren’t that rare) and part of the problem I have is that almost all the Jews I know well enough to discuss all this with have already taken that journey away from Zionism – if, indeed, they were Zionist in the first place.

Have we all become estranged – polarized – as a result of (delete according to preference) Labour Party antisemitism / the weaponization of antisemitism claims in the Labour Party?

“What possible solution is there?”

Well done, Hadley Freeman for articulating the struggle this far. Governments can’t sort this out. Nor, it seems, can the mainstream media help us – but hope lies in the fact that people as a whole do not take kindly to unfairness, and see the ultimate unfairness in the killing of children. It was people, not governments or the establishment, who brought down South African apartheid and people are mustering now to save the Palestinians. The Madleen was not a lone action by cranks. It was backed up by anti-genocide actions all round the world, and is to be followed up by a march of thousands from Cairo, and a convoy from Tunisa.

As we found with the women’s rights campaign, people’s actions need time to build and be understood, and the waiting is painful but while we’re waiting for the warmongering establishment to catch up on Israel / Palestine, take heart from the words of Bassam Aramin, whose little daughter was shot by the IDF. (I paraphrase, but this is about right…)

He said…

Has Israel killed six million Palestinians? No. Have the Palestinians killed six million Israelis? No – but now there is an Israeli ambassador in Berlin and a German one in Tel Aviv. Anything is possible.

( Check out Apierogon for more about Aramin and his friend )

Drawing conclusions

If Freeman’s piece truly is representative of how Israel’s former defenders are thinking, there is some hope. I think to take the next step in her imagined conversation she needs to realize that the situation will never make sense for as long as you insist on making October 7^th the start-point. I read a social media post yesterday by someone who’d just watched a video of one of the many versions of what happened that day. She said, she’d been ‘on the Palestinians’ side’ up to that point but had now changed her mind.

You know, there are other ways of reacting to whichever versions of that day you believe. Yes, horrible things undoubtedly happened but drawing conclusions about who did what and working up a hatred as a result does not help, not least because the perpetrators are most likely long-dead (if it’s Palestinian perpetrators you’re angry with, I think you can be sure of that).

You could equally well stand back and say well, if you keep the lid on a boiling pot long enough, you know what’s going to happen, whatever it is you’re cooking. Did anyone really think Israel could continue the blockade of Gaza forever? Isn’t that what they meant by ‘conflict management’? If it was, it undoubtedly failed. Another kind of answer is necessary and surely, surely, genocide is not an acceptable one, whoever you blame.

For a counterpoint to the conversation every Jew Hadley Freeman knows is having, here’s a recent post by an associate of mine, which could well stand as representative of the kind of conversation most of the socialists – including Jewish socialists – I know are having at the moment…

Different world, isn’t it? Are we the ‘lefty cranks’ Freeman talks about?

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