At the outset, allow me to publicly denounce the terrorist actions of HAMAS targeting Israeli civilians, particularly those terrorist actions perpetrated against innocent women and children.
At the outset, allow me to publicly denounce the state-terrorist actions of the nation-state of Israel indiscriminately killing innocent Palestinian civilians, particularly those perpetrated against innocent women and children.
To state my own personal political and moral position on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, I am for a two-state solution. I am not an expert on historical and current geopolitics of this conflict. However, I have made a concerted effort to understand the (sometimes conflicting) views of people around me and in the diverse media landscapes of which I am a consumer.
Apart from my own personal view(s), it seems clear, by his decision-making actions, Prime Minister Netanyahu does not endorse, nor is he working towards, a bona fide two-state solution.
Thus, it is incumbent upon the Israeli people, and of the leaderships and peoples of all other nations, to hold Israeli leadership, and its complicit military forces, accountable in their actions which do not support, nor negotiate, for a diplomatic compromise that would see the establishment of a two-state solution. I allege, that there should be at the least partial redemption(s) for crimes against Palestinian civilians on offer, by Israel’s pro-war leaderships and its complicit military personnel, if through their actions and not mere words they are working towards a genuine two-state solution. Congruently, HAMAS terrorism should be held similarly accountable for attacks on Israeli civilians with the same rigour as in regards to the state-terrorism alluded above.
Moving on to questions of sovereign settlement for the Jewish people, what is absolutely crystal clear, is, that the Jewish people deserve a home-land with Jewish sovereignty; the question of where this homeland is established may be up for debate.
The erection of Israel in its current geopolitical position in the Middle-East is problematic for the reason that it was established in 1948, three years after the declaration of a postcolonial geopolitical age, era, and order in 1945, post-World War II. This is an extra layer of colonial inauthenticity and military forces are terrorising the Indigenous Palestinian populations, with Netanyahu and defence minister absolutely complicit in the terror campaign against innocent Palestinian women, children, and men.1 What gives it some credibility, in the abstract, as Israel’s present positioning in the Middle-East, is the U.N. sanctioning thereof, which gave rise to a nation-state.
Another pertinent and pressing issue is the funding and weaponising of the Israeli war-machine by countries including U.S., Germany, Italy, Britain, and Australia. These countries, at the leadership and grass-roots level, should not be complicit in their funding and support of genocide of the Palestinian peoples.
Unfortunately, in this instance, the U.N. favours the United States of America’s leadership interests, which sees itself as aligned with the Israeli war-machine, as it has the power to veto decisions. The U.N., for this reason, lacks a functional democratic political design, and thus, at least at times, of which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a part, it lacks an authenticity.
Whilst I sympathise with the show of solidarity for the Palestinian people around the world, I do not endorse blanket divestment actions against Israeli businesses nor sanctions against the Israeli nation-state, as these indiscriminately target Israeli persons who are not directly complicit in Palestinian civilian deaths. The people responsible are Israeli leadership behind the military offensives against Palestinians and those in the Israeli military who are or have carried out unwarranted attacks killing Palestinian civilians.
This has parallels with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which I would like to briefly make comment on. Firstly, no matter how much NATO provoked Russia, there is no legitimate cause for invasion of Ukraine which is a sovereign country. However, imposing sanctions on the entire Russian nation-state unfairly persecutes the masses of Russian peoples who did not make the executive decision to invade Ukraine, nor are the majority of the Russian peoples complicit members of the Russian armed forces deployed to attack Ukraine. Blanket sanctions also hurt the world’s populaces through increased prices and less efficient international production and trade. The banning of sports or musician peoples who innocently reside within Russia or Israel similarly applies a faulty ‘collectivist’ logic.
These above ploys against innocent Israelis and innocent Russians amount to a disgusting ‘collective guilt’, or ‘guilt by association’, which is not sufficiently targeted: a very primitive conception and enactment of justice, which is not just at all.
In concluding this blog-post, it is both simultaneously outrageous and disappointing that both Trump and Biden have given and vow to give Israel military aid. This is yet another reason why Senator Bernie Sanders should be elected President of the United States: see
See a speech from Sanders on this matter below; whilst I believe in the power(s) of political redemption(s) to at least some extent, please draw your own thinking conclusions in light of Senator Sanders’ call for accountability and what form and degree this may take:
- This form of violent settler colonialism can be compared to the colonial situation in Australia where the author resides, where there were atrocities committed against the Indigenous (e.g. massacres and Stolen Generation). There is still acute and material inequality between Indigenous populations and the rest of the Australian population. There is also a political denial of a form of governance based on the Indigenous traditional territories. Redressing extant material inequalities, and restoration of traditional governance of territories, is the proper ambit of the state. However, the military is not being deployed against Aboriginal peoples as it is in Palestine at the time of this writing, with the corollary dire need for international intervention to restore peaceful inter-ethnic relations preventing further Israeli genocidal state-terrorism and Hamas terrorism. See my related blog post Private: ‘A Bona Fide Politics of Enthno-Racial Identities, Nations, and Immigration, with an Australian Case-Study‘, https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2024/04/21/a-bona-fide-politics-of-enthno-racial-identities-nations-and-immigration-with-an-australian-case-study/ ↩︎
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