Think about this for a moment. I look forward to the denials and dismissals, as well as excuses. Crickets probably.
It’s Not Antisemitic to Say That Israel Is Responsible for the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza
The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.
Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.
But the US is following Israel here. We are the dogs—a country leashed to a genocide, without an electoral path to stop the arming of a military that is killing Palestinian children seeking food for sport. The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well. It does not correspond with what Israel is perpetrating, nor does it take into account the politics of genocide.
The malignant growth of end-times Christian Zionism—there are more Christian Zionists in the US than the entire Jewish population of the world—has metastasized within the GOP over the past 15 years. What started with accruing votes from megachurch freak shows has become a powerful bloc central to all decision-making in foreign and domestic policy. Christian Zionist anti-intellectualism—which simultaneously seeks dominion in all walks of life while waiting impatiently for the rapture—also needs to be central to our understanding, foremost because Benjamin Netanyahu has largely played its adherents like a fiddle.
We can’t allow an endless argument about what is and isn’t antisemitism when it moves us away from confronting the central issue: the question of how to stop a genocide. A recent poll shows that 82 percent of Israelis support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.” In other words, a majority of Israelis support ethnic cleansing. “Genocide is not just a murderous madness,” the author Michael Ignatieff wrote. “It is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.”
This is what we are dealing with: a quasi-religious, sub-imperial madness beyond anything seen since the Nakba. It’s not antisemitic to point out that this is no longer about the needs of the United States, whether for oil or cultivating influence in the Middle East. Trump has already shown in the “Abraham Accords” of his first term that the US can buy friends—or, in the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, allow themselves to be bribed and bought off. This is not 1993, with the US seeking friends in the region and a “cop on the beat.” It is about Israel’s desire—and the US’s Christian Zionist Pavlovian response—to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” It is driven by fascist Israeli politicians and an Israeli public overwhelmingly comfortable with this agenda. It is being supported by this administration because it dovetails with the end-times fascism that drives much of their agenda and inhabits their base. Southern Baptist—not a Jew!—Mike Huckabee being appointed as US ambassador to Israel gives the game away.
You really WANT a reply? You never discuss honestly and only make jokes about anyone that disagrees, and play strawman, never seeking balance.
if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
Think about this for a moment. I look forward to the denials and dismissals, as well as excuses. Crickets probably.
It’s Not Antisemitic to Say That Israel Is Responsible for the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza
The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.
Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.
But the US is following Israel here. We are the dogs—a country leashed to a genocide, without an electoral path to stop the arming of a military that is killing Palestinian children seeking food for sport. The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well. It does not correspond with what Israel is perpetrating, nor does it take into account the politics of genocide.
The malignant growth of end-times Christian Zionism—there are more Christian Zionists in the US than the entire Jewish population of the world—has metastasized within the GOP over the past 15 years. What started with accruing votes from megachurch freak shows has become a powerful bloc central to all decision-making in foreign and domestic policy. Christian Zionist anti-intellectualism—which simultaneously seeks dominion in all walks of life while waiting impatiently for the rapture—also needs to be central to our understanding, foremost because Benjamin Netanyahu has largely played its adherents like a fiddle.
We can’t allow an endless argument about what is and isn’t antisemitism when it moves us away from confronting the central issue: the question of how to stop a genocide. A recent poll shows that 82 percent of Israelis support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.” In other words, a majority of Israelis support ethnic cleansing. “Genocide is not just a murderous madness,” the author Michael Ignatieff wrote. “It is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.”
This is what we are dealing with: a quasi-religious, sub-imperial madness beyond anything seen since the Nakba. It’s not antisemitic to point out that this is no longer about the needs of the United States, whether for oil or cultivating influence in the Middle East. Trump has already shown in the “Abraham Accords” of his first term that the US can buy friends—or, in the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, allow themselves to be bribed and bought off. This is not 1993, with the US seeking friends in the region and a “cop on the beat.” It is about Israel’s desire—and the US’s Christian Zionist Pavlovian response—to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” It is driven by fascist Israeli politicians and an Israeli public overwhelmingly comfortable with this agenda. It is being supported by this administration because it dovetails with the end-times fascism that drives much of their agenda and inhabits their base. Southern Baptist—not a Jew!—Mike Huckabee being appointed as US ambassador to Israel gives the game away.
You really WANT a reply? You never discuss honestly and only make jokes about anyone that disagrees, and play strawman, never seeking balance.
if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
We're living in the 21st Century. Deal with it. How many cards left in that victim deck?
You're okay with forcibly relocating 600,000 Palestinians to a ghetto, aren't you? But you'll never admit that "river to the sea" is an Israeli construct, will you? Talk about "discussing honestly.'
Think about this for a moment. I look forward to the denials and dismissals, as well as excuses. Crickets probably.
It’s Not Antisemitic to Say That Israel Is Responsible for the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza
The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.
Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.
But the US is following Israel here. We are the dogs—a country leashed to a genocide, without an electoral path to stop the arming of a military that is killing Palestinian children seeking food for sport. The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well. It does not correspond with what Israel is perpetrating, nor does it take into account the politics of genocide.
The malignant growth of end-times Christian Zionism—there are more Christian Zionists in the US than the entire Jewish population of the world—has metastasized within the GOP over the past 15 years. What started with accruing votes from megachurch freak shows has become a powerful bloc central to all decision-making in foreign and domestic policy. Christian Zionist anti-intellectualism—which simultaneously seeks dominion in all walks of life while waiting impatiently for the rapture—also needs to be central to our understanding, foremost because Benjamin Netanyahu has largely played its adherents like a fiddle.
We can’t allow an endless argument about what is and isn’t antisemitism when it moves us away from confronting the central issue: the question of how to stop a genocide. A recent poll shows that 82 percent of Israelis support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.” In other words, a majority of Israelis support ethnic cleansing. “Genocide is not just a murderous madness,” the author Michael Ignatieff wrote. “It is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.”
This is what we are dealing with: a quasi-religious, sub-imperial madness beyond anything seen since the Nakba. It’s not antisemitic to point out that this is no longer about the needs of the United States, whether for oil or cultivating influence in the Middle East. Trump has already shown in the “Abraham Accords” of his first term that the US can buy friends—or, in the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, allow themselves to be bribed and bought off. This is not 1993, with the US seeking friends in the region and a “cop on the beat.” It is about Israel’s desire—and the US’s Christian Zionist Pavlovian response—to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” It is driven by fascist Israeli politicians and an Israeli public overwhelmingly comfortable with this agenda. It is being supported by this administration because it dovetails with the end-times fascism that drives much of their agenda and inhabits their base. Southern Baptist—not a Jew!—Mike Huckabee being appointed as US ambassador to Israel gives the game away.
You really WANT a reply? You never discuss honestly and only make jokes about anyone that disagrees, and play strawman, never seeking balance.
if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
We're living in the 21st Century. Deal with it. How many cards left in that victim deck?
You're okay with forcibly relocating 600,000 Palestinians to a ghetto, aren't you? But you'll never admit that "river to the sea" is an Israeli construct, will you? Talk about "discussing honestly.'
If I had a vote I would have voted against bibi.
I’m not saying Palestine isn’t the only one to celebrate that song, but they sing it most loudly. “ In the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) used it to call for what they saw as a "decolonized" state encompassing the entirety of Mandatory Palestine.[7] By 1969, after several revisions, the PLO used the phrase to call for one-state solution, that would mean "one democratic secular state that would supersede the ethno-religious state of Israel".[7]”
So the rules to you are only 1948 counts? Not what the British promised twenty years earlier, not the genocides of the last four thousand years, they all don’t count to you? So all the things you complain about that was perpetrated for thousands of years, it’s all perfectly acceptable because it happened before your magic date? Will Russia soon get to make that claim about crimea 2014?
Think about this for a moment. I look forward to the denials and dismissals, as well as excuses. Crickets probably.
It’s Not Antisemitic to Say That Israel Is Responsible for the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza
The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.
Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.
But the US is following Israel here. We are the dogs—a country leashed to a genocide, without an electoral path to stop the arming of a military that is killing Palestinian children seeking food for sport. The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well. It does not correspond with what Israel is perpetrating, nor does it take into account the politics of genocide.
The malignant growth of end-times Christian Zionism—there are more Christian Zionists in the US than the entire Jewish population of the world—has metastasized within the GOP over the past 15 years. What started with accruing votes from megachurch freak shows has become a powerful bloc central to all decision-making in foreign and domestic policy. Christian Zionist anti-intellectualism—which simultaneously seeks dominion in all walks of life while waiting impatiently for the rapture—also needs to be central to our understanding, foremost because Benjamin Netanyahu has largely played its adherents like a fiddle.
We can’t allow an endless argument about what is and isn’t antisemitism when it moves us away from confronting the central issue: the question of how to stop a genocide. A recent poll shows that 82 percent of Israelis support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.” In other words, a majority of Israelis support ethnic cleansing. “Genocide is not just a murderous madness,” the author Michael Ignatieff wrote. “It is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.”
This is what we are dealing with: a quasi-religious, sub-imperial madness beyond anything seen since the Nakba. It’s not antisemitic to point out that this is no longer about the needs of the United States, whether for oil or cultivating influence in the Middle East. Trump has already shown in the “Abraham Accords” of his first term that the US can buy friends—or, in the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, allow themselves to be bribed and bought off. This is not 1993, with the US seeking friends in the region and a “cop on the beat.” It is about Israel’s desire—and the US’s Christian Zionist Pavlovian response—to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” It is driven by fascist Israeli politicians and an Israeli public overwhelmingly comfortable with this agenda. It is being supported by this administration because it dovetails with the end-times fascism that drives much of their agenda and inhabits their base. Southern Baptist—not a Jew!—Mike Huckabee being appointed as US ambassador to Israel gives the game away.
You really WANT a reply? You never discuss honestly and only make jokes about anyone that disagrees, and play strawman, never seeking balance.
if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
We're living in the 21st Century. Deal with it. How many cards left in that victim deck?
You're okay with forcibly relocating 600,000 Palestinians to a ghetto, aren't you? But you'll never admit that "river to the sea" is an Israeli construct, will you? Talk about "discussing honestly.'
If I had a vote I would have voted against bibi.
I’m not saying Palestine isn’t the only one to celebrate that song, but they sing it most loudly. “ In the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) used it to call for what they saw as a "decolonized" state encompassing the entirety of Mandatory Palestine.[7] By 1969, after several revisions, the PLO used the phrase to call for one-state solution, that would mean "one democratic secular state that would supersede the ethno-religious state of Israel".[7]”
So the rules to you are only 1948 counts? Not what the British promised twenty years earlier, not the genocides of the last four thousand years, they all don’t count to you? So all the things you complain about that was perpetrated for thousands of years, it’s all perfectly acceptable because it happened before your magic date? Will Russia soon get to make that claim about crimea 2014?
AI-Wiki guy is back!
And yea, fuck 4,000 years ago. Can you acknowledge the Nakba of 1948? Was it justified? How about 1967 and the attack on the USS Liberty? Do you acknowledge that Israeli history? Or how about 1982 and Sabra and Shatila? What about yesterday or last week? Or does only what occurred 4,000 years ago matter?
Dont bother responding, I know the answer.
Guess you missed “one, democratic secular state” in your rush to wiki? I should know better to try and engage you in “honest discussion.”
Think about this for a moment. I look forward to the denials and dismissals, as well as excuses. Crickets probably.
It’s Not Antisemitic to Say That Israel Is Responsible for the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza
The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.
Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.
But the US is following Israel here. We are the dogs—a country leashed to a genocide, without an electoral path to stop the arming of a military that is killing Palestinian children seeking food for sport. The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well. It does not correspond with what Israel is perpetrating, nor does it take into account the politics of genocide.
The malignant growth of end-times Christian Zionism—there are more Christian Zionists in the US than the entire Jewish population of the world—has metastasized within the GOP over the past 15 years. What started with accruing votes from megachurch freak shows has become a powerful bloc central to all decision-making in foreign and domestic policy. Christian Zionist anti-intellectualism—which simultaneously seeks dominion in all walks of life while waiting impatiently for the rapture—also needs to be central to our understanding, foremost because Benjamin Netanyahu has largely played its adherents like a fiddle.
We can’t allow an endless argument about what is and isn’t antisemitism when it moves us away from confronting the central issue: the question of how to stop a genocide. A recent poll shows that 82 percent of Israelis support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.” In other words, a majority of Israelis support ethnic cleansing. “Genocide is not just a murderous madness,” the author Michael Ignatieff wrote. “It is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.”
This is what we are dealing with: a quasi-religious, sub-imperial madness beyond anything seen since the Nakba. It’s not antisemitic to point out that this is no longer about the needs of the United States, whether for oil or cultivating influence in the Middle East. Trump has already shown in the “Abraham Accords” of his first term that the US can buy friends—or, in the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, allow themselves to be bribed and bought off. This is not 1993, with the US seeking friends in the region and a “cop on the beat.” It is about Israel’s desire—and the US’s Christian Zionist Pavlovian response—to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” It is driven by fascist Israeli politicians and an Israeli public overwhelmingly comfortable with this agenda. It is being supported by this administration because it dovetails with the end-times fascism that drives much of their agenda and inhabits their base. Southern Baptist—not a Jew!—Mike Huckabee being appointed as US ambassador to Israel gives the game away.
You really WANT a reply? You never discuss honestly and only make jokes about anyone that disagrees, and play strawman, never seeking balance.
if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
palestine is not a country. because israel will not let it be.
hamas started the current war. not your everyday palestinian person.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
I said a million times, if not two, they should negotiate and share the disputed lands. And we will need things like dmzs until they begin to accept each other.. But that doesn’t fit in with yer strawman politics. Just lookin for a scape goat.
Think about this for a moment. I look forward to the denials and dismissals, as well as excuses. Crickets probably.
It’s Not Antisemitic to Say That Israel Is Responsible for the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza
The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.
Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.
But the US is following Israel here. We are the dogs—a country leashed to a genocide, without an electoral path to stop the arming of a military that is killing Palestinian children seeking food for sport. The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well. It does not correspond with what Israel is perpetrating, nor does it take into account the politics of genocide.
The malignant growth of end-times Christian Zionism—there are more Christian Zionists in the US than the entire Jewish population of the world—has metastasized within the GOP over the past 15 years. What started with accruing votes from megachurch freak shows has become a powerful bloc central to all decision-making in foreign and domestic policy. Christian Zionist anti-intellectualism—which simultaneously seeks dominion in all walks of life while waiting impatiently for the rapture—also needs to be central to our understanding, foremost because Benjamin Netanyahu has largely played its adherents like a fiddle.
We can’t allow an endless argument about what is and isn’t antisemitism when it moves us away from confronting the central issue: the question of how to stop a genocide. A recent poll shows that 82 percent of Israelis support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.” In other words, a majority of Israelis support ethnic cleansing. “Genocide is not just a murderous madness,” the author Michael Ignatieff wrote. “It is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.”
This is what we are dealing with: a quasi-religious, sub-imperial madness beyond anything seen since the Nakba. It’s not antisemitic to point out that this is no longer about the needs of the United States, whether for oil or cultivating influence in the Middle East. Trump has already shown in the “Abraham Accords” of his first term that the US can buy friends—or, in the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, allow themselves to be bribed and bought off. This is not 1993, with the US seeking friends in the region and a “cop on the beat.” It is about Israel’s desire—and the US’s Christian Zionist Pavlovian response—to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” It is driven by fascist Israeli politicians and an Israeli public overwhelmingly comfortable with this agenda. It is being supported by this administration because it dovetails with the end-times fascism that drives much of their agenda and inhabits their base. Southern Baptist—not a Jew!—Mike Huckabee being appointed as US ambassador to Israel gives the game away.
You really WANT a reply? You never discuss honestly and only make jokes about anyone that disagrees, and play strawman, never seeking balance.
if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
We're living in the 21st Century. Deal with it. How many cards left in that victim deck?
You're okay with forcibly relocating 600,000 Palestinians to a ghetto, aren't you? But you'll never admit that "river to the sea" is an Israeli construct, will you? Talk about "discussing honestly.'
If I had a vote I would have voted against bibi.
I’m not saying Palestine isn’t the only one to celebrate that song, but they sing it most loudly. “ In the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) used it to call for what they saw as a "decolonized" state encompassing the entirety of Mandatory Palestine.[7] By 1969, after several revisions, the PLO used the phrase to call for one-state solution, that would mean "one democratic secular state that would supersede the ethno-religious state of Israel".[7]”
So the rules to you are only 1948 counts? Not what the British promised twenty years earlier, not the genocides of the last four thousand years, they all don’t count to you? So all the things you complain about that was perpetrated for thousands of years, it’s all perfectly acceptable because it happened before your magic date? Will Russia soon get to make that claim about crimea 2014?
you keep referring to "palestine" as if it is its own country. it's not.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Think about this for a moment. I look forward to the denials and dismissals, as well as excuses. Crickets probably.
It’s Not Antisemitic to Say That Israel Is Responsible for the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza
The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.
Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.
But the US is following Israel here. We are the dogs—a country leashed to a genocide, without an electoral path to stop the arming of a military that is killing Palestinian children seeking food for sport. The contention that the US is in the driver’s seat with Israel the “cop on the beat” is an old and musty one from the 1990s that has not aged well. It does not correspond with what Israel is perpetrating, nor does it take into account the politics of genocide.
The malignant growth of end-times Christian Zionism—there are more Christian Zionists in the US than the entire Jewish population of the world—has metastasized within the GOP over the past 15 years. What started with accruing votes from megachurch freak shows has become a powerful bloc central to all decision-making in foreign and domestic policy. Christian Zionist anti-intellectualism—which simultaneously seeks dominion in all walks of life while waiting impatiently for the rapture—also needs to be central to our understanding, foremost because Benjamin Netanyahu has largely played its adherents like a fiddle.
We can’t allow an endless argument about what is and isn’t antisemitism when it moves us away from confronting the central issue: the question of how to stop a genocide. A recent poll shows that 82 percent of Israelis support “the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries.” In other words, a majority of Israelis support ethnic cleansing. “Genocide is not just a murderous madness,” the author Michael Ignatieff wrote. “It is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.”
This is what we are dealing with: a quasi-religious, sub-imperial madness beyond anything seen since the Nakba. It’s not antisemitic to point out that this is no longer about the needs of the United States, whether for oil or cultivating influence in the Middle East. Trump has already shown in the “Abraham Accords” of his first term that the US can buy friends—or, in the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, allow themselves to be bribed and bought off. This is not 1993, with the US seeking friends in the region and a “cop on the beat.” It is about Israel’s desire—and the US’s Christian Zionist Pavlovian response—to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” It is driven by fascist Israeli politicians and an Israeli public overwhelmingly comfortable with this agenda. It is being supported by this administration because it dovetails with the end-times fascism that drives much of their agenda and inhabits their base. Southern Baptist—not a Jew!—Mike Huckabee being appointed as US ambassador to Israel gives the game away.
You really WANT a reply? You never discuss honestly and only make jokes about anyone that disagrees, and play strawman, never seeking balance.
if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
We're living in the 21st Century. Deal with it. How many cards left in that victim deck?
You're okay with forcibly relocating 600,000 Palestinians to a ghetto, aren't you? But you'll never admit that "river to the sea" is an Israeli construct, will you? Talk about "discussing honestly.'
If I had a vote I would have voted against bibi.
I’m not saying Palestine isn’t the only one to celebrate that song, but they sing it most loudly. “ In the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) used it to call for what they saw as a "decolonized" state encompassing the entirety of Mandatory Palestine.[7] By 1969, after several revisions, the PLO used the phrase to call for one-state solution, that would mean "one democratic secular state that would supersede the ethno-religious state of Israel".[7]”
So the rules to you are only 1948 counts? Not what the British promised twenty years earlier, not the genocides of the last four thousand years, they all don’t count to you? So all the things you complain about that was perpetrated for thousands of years, it’s all perfectly acceptable because it happened before your magic date? Will Russia soon get to make that claim about crimea 2014?
you keep referring to "palestine" as if it is its own country. it's not.
They certainly invade other countries like they are a country. They certainly signed peace deals regarding the West Bank as if they were a country
since they're an agressive authoritarian country they're not responsible for their actions, I guess is that point.
for decades we had to believe Arafat- that he's not aligned with the terrorists. then we found that that was all false he was. then after he left we got this new group that got elected - look they had elections!! but whoops they went back to authoritarianism since then.
they never seem to go to the moderates in the region for help like Egypt or jordan, it's always to Iran , the most extreme of the extreme regimes. so none of this can't be their fault they're not responsible for their leadership
so I guess in a way we agree, before they can come to a reasonable agreement with their neighbor they need to get rid of Hamas and have democracy first.
Yes, they need to rid themselves of Hamas and Israel needs to cough up some land. Two state solution....been discussed forever and it doesn't happen because of Israel.
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Yes, they need to rid themselves of Hamas and Israel needs to cough up some land. Two state solution....been discussed forever and it doesn't happen because of Israel.
They’re never going to do that, not when they’re in the midst of a genocide and the “civilized” world isn’t doing anything to stop them.
Now tell us again about 4,000 years ago. Plenty of jobs, good pay and I’m sure no DEI to worry about. I wonder what AI would say about this?
Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced
The systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Now, the IDF is posting Facebook ads for bulldozer operators to help demolish the strip
Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American historian and one of the foremost scholars on genocide in the world. He has spent over 25 years teaching a class on the subject. He deals with atrocities for a living, analyzing some of the very worst things that human beings are capable of. And yet even Bartov has said he can’t bear looking at some of the excruciating images coming out of Gaza any more.
What’s happening, Bartov says, is unprecedented in the 21st century. “I don’t know of any comparable situation. Recent estimates show that about 70% of the structures in Gaza are either completely destroyed or severely damaged,” Bartov says. “The argument that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is conducting a war in Gaza is simply cynical, there is no war in Gaza. What the IDF is doing in Gaza is demolishing it. Hundreds of buildings are being bulldozed every week. This is not a secret, but mainstream media coverage has been insufficient.”
Part of the reason that mainstream coverage has been insufficient is because reporting about what’s happening in Gaza is difficult: foreign reporters are still not allowed into Gaza to see what is happening for themselves and Israel is slaughtering Palestinian journalists on the ground. I feel like I’m screaming into the void every time I repeat some version of that sentence and yet there still seems to be apathy about this assault on press freedom from some of my colleagues in the mainstream media.
As Bartov said, despite the lack of coverage, the systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Indeed, the Israeli military is so desperate for extra bulldozers that, over the last couple of months, there have been ads for bulldozer drivers to help demolish Gaza posted on Facebook – some apparently offering as much as 3,000 shekels ($882) a day for the work. I found around a dozen of these ads on Meta since the end of May, many of them on a public Facebook page for bulldozer operators. Meanwhile a Haaretz article from this week looking into the outsourcing of bulldozer drivers found that they are paid per building: 2,500 shekels for the demolition of a small building, 5,000 shekels for a large building.
“The idea that the bulldozer has become a major article of genocide and warfare is quite new,” says Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London. “What is happening in Gaza is not a building here or there being demolished; it’s the destruction of whole villages and towns.”
Also new is the outsourcing of bulldozer drivers. “The Israeli military usually does not work in this way,” says Gordon. “It can sequester bulldozers and draft the drivers as reserve soldiers.” Reports from Israeli outlets show that the IDF is facing a shortage of drivers and is recruiting civilians for military operations in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. “I would consider this as a form of ‘outsourcing demolitions’ used to advance a genocidal project,” Gordon says.
International law doesn’t seem to hold much weight any more, but is the wholesale bulldozing of villages and neighbourhoods in Gaza legal? Gordon says it isn’t. “If military necessity requires bulldozing a civilian house, you might find arguments for bulldozing. But if a village or neighbourhood is bulldozed, as we see throughout Gaza, then it is a flagrant violation.
“The problem is that the law doesn’t look at the whole picture, it looks at the event and whether that’s illegal or not.” If during hostilities a sniper is on the roof of a civilian’s home, for example, you can target that house, provided you abide by legal principles such as proportionality and precaution. But you can only target it at that moment; you can’t target it because there’s a possibility that a sniper might use it in the future.”
Gordon notes that Israel’s argument for the extensive bulldozing is that any civilian home is potentially an entrance or shield for military tunnels underneath the strip. However, says Gordon: “the international community doesn’t rate these arguments”. Particularly as Israel has been caught lying about certain things multiple times now: “They told us for months that Hamas’s headquarters were under al-Shifa hospital [which was once Gaza’s biggest medical complex].” No such headquarters was ever found.
And here’s the crucial thing, Gordon says: “In order to determine if Israel’s claims have any basis, you need an independent investigation. You need to let in an investigative team. Israel isn’t allowing that.” You can draw your own conclusions as to why that is.
Meta isn’t just hosting posts looking for bulldozer drivers. Gordon notes it’s also been platforming videos by a bulldozer driver, Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, who promotes what Gordon describes as “illegal military operations and violence involving the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure in Gaza”. Zarbiv glorifies the destruction of Gaza with bulldozers as a new way of fighting which saves Israeli lives, says Gordon.
After I flagged one of Zarbiv’s videos to Meta, it was taken down. However, the ads (which are Facebook posts rather than paid advertisements) looking for bulldozer operators in Gaza are still up. Meta declined to provide any specific comments on these but directed me to their various policies about what sort of content is allowed on their platform. One presumes this means they are allowed.
While that may be Meta’s interpretation, they seem to be on somewhat shaky ground with these posts. “Ads that seek to employ people for jobs that require them to participate in and/or support acts that can constitute incitement to violence and may contribute to the commission of international crimes would be unlawful,” Gordon says.
Dr John Reynolds, associate professor at the School of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University in Ireland, similarly notes that “there’s grounds to say this could be a form of aiding/facilitating war crimes in violation of international humanitarian law, a form of propaganda for war in violation of human rights law, and potentially also in conflict with the duty to prevent genocide, which is primarily a responsibility of states but can also be applied to corporations”.
All this bulldozing comes with a very clear end goal. “Israeli government officials and media have made [their plans] fairly public,” says Bartov, who, like many other respected scholars, characterises what is happening in Gaza as a genocide. “What they appear to be aiming for – and are in the process of implementing – is for the IDF to take over roughly 75% of the Gaza Strip and demolish it entirely, with bombs and bulldozers, many of which are massive D9s recently imported from the US. The goal seems to be to concentrate the entire Gazan population into the remaining 25% of the territory, in the al-Mawasi area, and to debilitate them to the extent that they either flee, are permitted to leave or simply wither away.”
I had this conversation with Bartov a few weeks ago. Now lawmakers are being even more brazen about their plans: defence minister Israel Katz has said they plan to concentrate peoplein Gaza into an internment camp on the rubble of Rafah.
Meanwhile, western governments and big tech companies like Meta seem happy to not just let all this happen, but to facilitate it. The revolution may not be televised, but genocide is certainly getting privatized.
Yes, they need to rid themselves of Hamas and Israel needs to cough up some land. Two state solution....been discussed forever and it doesn't happen because of Israel.
Not happening. Israel will not give land to the Palestinians. Ever. They can deal with the Israeli military forces. Good luck with that.
Former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters faces possible prosecution in the U.K. for declaring his support for the banned terrorist organization Palestine Action.
Waters praised Palestine Action as a "great organization" and expressed solidarity with Bob Vylan, who led anti-Israel chants at the Glastonbury Festival.
The U.K. government proscribed Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws after activists damaged planes in protest of Britain's support for Israel, with violations punishable by up to 14 years in prison and/or a fine.
In Britain’s increasingly authoritarian society, any sort of protest can find itself at odds with the law. You might even go to jail
Wed 9 Jul 2025 03.00 EDT
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This piece must be carefully written to avoid my being imprisoned for up to 14 years. That’s a curious sentence to say as a newspaper columnist in Britain in 2025. But since the government voted to proscribe the direct action protest group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act, any statement seen as expressing support could lead to arrest and prosecution.
You may justifiably respond that Guardian journalists are not above the law. For example, if I penned a column in support of al-Qaida, you might be sympathetic to incarceration: it did, after all, kill nearly 3,000 people on 9/11, as well as perpetrate multiple terrorist atrocities such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the 7 July London bombings two decades ago. Similarly, you may conclude that a polemic in favour of Islamic State should be met with a hefty prison sentence.
Personally, I’m not in favour of carceral solutions for political problems: I didn’t support the neo-Nazi football hooligan who attacked me six years ago being locked up (his sentence was two years and eight months), nor the racists who posted inflammatory hatred during last August’s attempted national pogrom. But that is a legitimate political disagreement, one that places me in a small minority.
Clearly, I would never write a defence of murderous hijackers, bombers, beheaders and indeed génocidaires. But this column concerns a movement which is, legally speaking, now equivalent to al-Qaida and IS, and that is Palestine Action. Rather than decapitating people, or filling mass graves with innocent victims, they were proscribed after throwing red paint at military planes in what they say is a protest against Britain’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
Last week, our home secretary joined other female Labour MPs in a photoshoot celebrating the suffragettes, who planted bombs, burned down private homes and smashed up art galleries. They then voted to classify a movement which positions itself as opposing violence against people as a terrorist organisation.
And this weekend, an 83-year-old retired priest, Sue Parfitt, was arrested after holding a placard that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Twenty-eight others were also arrested on those grounds. Questioned about her detention, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, responded: “It is not about protest. This is about an organisation committing serious criminality.”
Note how even Britain’s top police officer could not bring himself to claim Palestine Action was “an organisation committing terrorism”, which is what the law proclaims. I suspect he knows that, in doing so, he would have exposed the grotesque absurdity of this legislation. Yes, those who have helped drown Gaza in blood have turned the world upside down – treating the opponents of this mass extermination as dangerous, hateful extremists – but words have still not been entirely emptied of their meaning.
Do not expect that to last. An injury to democracy, once inflicted, cannot be contained. It becomes immediately infected, and the sickness spreads.
One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian society is that the state sanctifies what everybody knows is not true, even if they are legally compelled to act otherwise. Britain remains far from totalitarianism, but a society that arrests an 83-year-old retired vicar for holding a placard supporting non-violent direct action, and opposed to genocide, is firmly on an authoritarian pathway.
This has been a long time in the making. When New Labour introduced anti-terrorism laws, opponents warned the legislation would be abused to persecute peaceful protesters. Indeed, then 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Walter Wolfgang was held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act after he heckled the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, over the Iraq war at the 2005 Labour party conference.
While many commentators portrayed Boris Johnson as a hands-off libertarian, his government introduced legislation that allows police to ban virtually any protest, with the Policing Act permitting action against demonstrations deemed too noisy. You may well ask what sort of protest is not noisy.
Alas, it should always have been obvious that authoritarianism pulses through the veins of the Labour faction underpinning Keir Starmer’s leadership. As former Labour MP – and indeed adviser to Tony Blair – Jon Cruddas once put it, this is “the most rightwing, illiberal faction in the party”. As anyone who has ever encountered these factionalists in person can testify, they are defined by a raw hatred of the left. Lobby groups committed to Israel, or with links to the defence industry, pushed for this sort of legislation, and the Labour top brass lapped it up.
Once a movement committed to non-violence has been designated as terrorists, then a Rubicon has been crossed. “Terrorism” has been emptied of any real meaning, and can be applied far more widely. Indeed, earlier this year, more than 70 peaceful protesters were arrested at a demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). None of this was direct action: they were deemed to have breached arbitrary restrictions by marching down Whitehall clutching flowers commemorating Palestine’s dead. The PSC leader, Ben Jamal, is among those being put on trial.
Yes, the authoritarian descent predates the slaughter of Gaza. But we have certainly learned that the consequences of a state facilitating genocide will have profound consequences on society at home. Millions of people are aware that their government has facilitated a grave crime, and to protect themselves from scrutiny and accountability, the powers that be must silence those challenging the crime. Democracy becomes ever more imperilled.
Remember: it is an offence to show support for Palestine Action, which is deemed legally equivalent to al-Qaida and IS. If that law is broken, prison awaits. The proscribed organisation promotes civil disobedience and non-violent direct action in protest at genocide. This column has been checked over with that in mind. Ask yourself if this is normal in a self-described democracy. Then ask yourself searching questions about where this is all headed
In Britain’s increasingly authoritarian society, any sort of protest can find itself at odds with the law. You might even go to jail
Wed 9 Jul 2025 03.00 EDT
Share
This piece must be carefully written to avoid my being imprisoned for up to 14 years. That’s a curious sentence to say as a newspaper columnist in Britain in 2025. But since the government voted to proscribe the direct action protest group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act, any statement seen as expressing support could lead to arrest and prosecution.
You may justifiably respond that Guardian journalists are not above the law. For example, if I penned a column in support of al-Qaida, you might be sympathetic to incarceration: it did, after all, kill nearly 3,000 people on 9/11, as well as perpetrate multiple terrorist atrocities such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the 7 July London bombings two decades ago. Similarly, you may conclude that a polemic in favour of Islamic State should be met with a hefty prison sentence.
Personally, I’m not in favour of carceral solutions for political problems: I didn’t support the neo-Nazi football hooligan who attacked me six years ago being locked up (his sentence was two years and eight months), nor the racists who posted inflammatory hatred during last August’s attempted national pogrom. But that is a legitimate political disagreement, one that places me in a small minority.
Clearly, I would never write a defence of murderous hijackers, bombers, beheaders and indeed génocidaires. But this column concerns a movement which is, legally speaking, now equivalent to al-Qaida and IS, and that is Palestine Action. Rather than decapitating people, or filling mass graves with innocent victims, they were proscribed after throwing red paint at military planes in what they say is a protest against Britain’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
Last week, our home secretary joined other female Labour MPs in a photoshoot celebrating the suffragettes, who planted bombs, burned down private homes and smashed up art galleries. They then voted to classify a movement which positions itself as opposing violence against people as a terrorist organisation.
And this weekend, an 83-year-old retired priest, Sue Parfitt, was arrested after holding a placard that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Twenty-eight others were also arrested on those grounds. Questioned about her detention, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, responded: “It is not about protest. This is about an organisation committing serious criminality.”
Note how even Britain’s top police officer could not bring himself to claim Palestine Action was “an organisation committing terrorism”, which is what the law proclaims. I suspect he knows that, in doing so, he would have exposed the grotesque absurdity of this legislation. Yes, those who have helped drown Gaza in blood have turned the world upside down – treating the opponents of this mass extermination as dangerous, hateful extremists – but words have still not been entirely emptied of their meaning.
Do not expect that to last. An injury to democracy, once inflicted, cannot be contained. It becomes immediately infected, and the sickness spreads.
One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian society is that the state sanctifies what everybody knows is not true, even if they are legally compelled to act otherwise. Britain remains far from totalitarianism, but a society that arrests an 83-year-old retired vicar for holding a placard supporting non-violent direct action, and opposed to genocide, is firmly on an authoritarian pathway.
This has been a long time in the making. When New Labour introduced anti-terrorism laws, opponents warned the legislation would be abused to persecute peaceful protesters. Indeed, then 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Walter Wolfgang was held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act after he heckled the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, over the Iraq war at the 2005 Labour party conference.
While many commentators portrayed Boris Johnson as a hands-off libertarian, his government introduced legislation that allows police to ban virtually any protest, with the Policing Act permitting action against demonstrations deemed too noisy. You may well ask what sort of protest is not noisy.
Alas, it should always have been obvious that authoritarianism pulses through the veins of the Labour faction underpinning Keir Starmer’s leadership. As former Labour MP – and indeed adviser to Tony Blair – Jon Cruddas once put it, this is “the most rightwing, illiberal faction in the party”. As anyone who has ever encountered these factionalists in person can testify, they are defined by a raw hatred of the left. Lobby groups committed to Israel, or with links to the defence industry, pushed for this sort of legislation, and the Labour top brass lapped it up.
Once a movement committed to non-violence has been designated as terrorists, then a Rubicon has been crossed. “Terrorism” has been emptied of any real meaning, and can be applied far more widely. Indeed, earlier this year, more than 70 peaceful protesters were arrested at a demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). None of this was direct action: they were deemed to have breached arbitrary restrictions by marching down Whitehall clutching flowers commemorating Palestine’s dead. The PSC leader, Ben Jamal, is among those being put on trial.
Yes, the authoritarian descent predates the slaughter of Gaza. But we have certainly learned that the consequences of a state facilitating genocide will have profound consequences on society at home. Millions of people are aware that their government has facilitated a grave crime, and to protect themselves from scrutiny and accountability, the powers that be must silence those challenging the crime. Democracy becomes ever more imperilled.
Remember: it is an offence to show support for Palestine Action, which is deemed legally equivalent to al-Qaida and IS. If that law is broken, prison awaits. The proscribed organisation promotes civil disobedience and non-violent direct action in protest at genocide. This column has been checked over with that in mind. Ask yourself if this is normal in a self-described democracy. Then ask yourself searching questions about where this is all headed
It’s too fucking late when showing support for a people facing genocide is deemed terrorism by a state that mourned, recognized and apologized for the death of an innocent as it relates to 7/7. What the UK didn’t realize then was that sort of state sanctioned violence against citizens was a common occurrence and practice in the US, and maybe, just maybe, they wanted to be more like us, two decades on as it is. Congratulations. Oh, and sorry EU, the rest of the west is shit.
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if you want to discuss genocide against a country where its peoples had expansive population thousands of years ago in the region, one of the oldest groups of people, yet now their population is now around a smallish ten million, that not being result of multiple genocides, but somehow Palestine is the genocide victim, but their population has been steadily growing for decades.
centrists don’t like mamdani because his policies have been rejected for many years by voters and business, and it never sells to middle America. So it’s a movement going nowhere, and can hurt NYs economy. And his Palestinian positions seem nothing more than his religious bias. That article is nothing more than using the Israel extreme right as a strawman. Had Palestine not started the current war, there was a much better chance of Netanyahu getting VOTED out.
You're okay with forcibly relocating 600,000 Palestinians to a ghetto, aren't you? But you'll never admit that "river to the sea" is an Israeli construct, will you? Talk about "discussing honestly.'
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And yea, fuck 4,000 years ago. Can you acknowledge the Nakba of 1948? Was it justified? How about 1967 and the attack on the USS Liberty? Do you acknowledge that Israeli history? Or how about 1982 and Sabra and Shatila? What about yesterday or last week? Or does only what occurred 4,000 years ago matter?
Dont bother responding, I know the answer.
Guess you missed “one, democratic secular state” in your rush to wiki? I should know better to try and engage you in “honest discussion.”
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hamas started the current war. not your everyday palestinian person.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
since they're an agressive authoritarian country they're not responsible for their actions, I guess is that point.
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Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced
Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American historian and one of the foremost scholars on genocide in the world. He has spent over 25 years teaching a class on the subject. He deals with atrocities for a living, analyzing some of the very worst things that human beings are capable of. And yet even Bartov has said he can’t bear looking at some of the excruciating images coming out of Gaza any more.
What’s happening, Bartov says, is unprecedented in the 21st century. “I don’t know of any comparable situation. Recent estimates show that about 70% of the structures in Gaza are either completely destroyed or severely damaged,” Bartov says. “The argument that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is conducting a war in Gaza is simply cynical, there is no war in Gaza. What the IDF is doing in Gaza is demolishing it. Hundreds of buildings are being bulldozed every week. This is not a secret, but mainstream media coverage has been insufficient.”
Part of the reason that mainstream coverage has been insufficient is because reporting about what’s happening in Gaza is difficult: foreign reporters are still not allowed into Gaza to see what is happening for themselves and Israel is slaughtering Palestinian journalists on the ground. I feel like I’m screaming into the void every time I repeat some version of that sentence and yet there still seems to be apathy about this assault on press freedom from some of my colleagues in the mainstream media.
As Bartov said, despite the lack of coverage, the systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Indeed, the Israeli military is so desperate for extra bulldozers that, over the last couple of months, there have been ads for bulldozer drivers to help demolish Gaza posted on Facebook – some apparently offering as much as 3,000 shekels ($882) a day for the work. I found around a dozen of these ads on Meta since the end of May, many of them on a public Facebook page for bulldozer operators. Meanwhile a Haaretz article from this week looking into the outsourcing of bulldozer drivers found that they are paid per building: 2,500 shekels for the demolition of a small building, 5,000 shekels for a large building.
“The idea that the bulldozer has become a major article of genocide and warfare is quite new,” says Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London. “What is happening in Gaza is not a building here or there being demolished; it’s the destruction of whole villages and towns.”
Also new is the outsourcing of bulldozer drivers. “The Israeli military usually does not work in this way,” says Gordon. “It can sequester bulldozers and draft the drivers as reserve soldiers.” Reports from Israeli outlets show that the IDF is facing a shortage of drivers and is recruiting civilians for military operations in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. “I would consider this as a form of ‘outsourcing demolitions’ used to advance a genocidal project,” Gordon says.
International law doesn’t seem to hold much weight any more, but is the wholesale bulldozing of villages and neighbourhoods in Gaza legal? Gordon says it isn’t. “If military necessity requires bulldozing a civilian house, you might find arguments for bulldozing. But if a village or neighbourhood is bulldozed, as we see throughout Gaza, then it is a flagrant violation.
“The problem is that the law doesn’t look at the whole picture, it looks at the event and whether that’s illegal or not.” If during hostilities a sniper is on the roof of a civilian’s home, for example, you can target that house, provided you abide by legal principles such as proportionality and precaution. But you can only target it at that moment; you can’t target it because there’s a possibility that a sniper might use it in the future.”
Gordon notes that Israel’s argument for the extensive bulldozing is that any civilian home is potentially an entrance or shield for military tunnels underneath the strip. However, says Gordon: “the international community doesn’t rate these arguments”. Particularly as Israel has been caught lying about certain things multiple times now: “They told us for months that Hamas’s headquarters were under al-Shifa hospital [which was once Gaza’s biggest medical complex].” No such headquarters was ever found.
And here’s the crucial thing, Gordon says: “In order to determine if Israel’s claims have any basis, you need an independent investigation. You need to let in an investigative team. Israel isn’t allowing that.” You can draw your own conclusions as to why that is.
Meta isn’t just hosting posts looking for bulldozer drivers. Gordon notes it’s also been platforming videos by a bulldozer driver, Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, who promotes what Gordon describes as “illegal military operations and violence involving the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure in Gaza”. Zarbiv glorifies the destruction of Gaza with bulldozers as a new way of fighting which saves Israeli lives, says Gordon.
After I flagged one of Zarbiv’s videos to Meta, it was taken down. However, the ads (which are Facebook posts rather than paid advertisements) looking for bulldozer operators in Gaza are still up. Meta declined to provide any specific comments on these but directed me to their various policies about what sort of content is allowed on their platform. One presumes this means they are allowed.
While that may be Meta’s interpretation, they seem to be on somewhat shaky ground with these posts. “Ads that seek to employ people for jobs that require them to participate in and/or support acts that can constitute incitement to violence and may contribute to the commission of international crimes would be unlawful,” Gordon says.
Dr John Reynolds, associate professor at the School of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University in Ireland, similarly notes that “there’s grounds to say this could be a form of aiding/facilitating war crimes in violation of international humanitarian law, a form of propaganda for war in violation of human rights law, and potentially also in conflict with the duty to prevent genocide, which is primarily a responsibility of states but can also be applied to corporations”.
All this bulldozing comes with a very clear end goal. “Israeli government officials and media have made [their plans] fairly public,” says Bartov, who, like many other respected scholars, characterises what is happening in Gaza as a genocide. “What they appear to be aiming for – and are in the process of implementing – is for the IDF to take over roughly 75% of the Gaza Strip and demolish it entirely, with bombs and bulldozers, many of which are massive D9s recently imported from the US. The goal seems to be to concentrate the entire Gazan population into the remaining 25% of the territory, in the al-Mawasi area, and to debilitate them to the extent that they either flee, are permitted to leave or simply wither away.”
I had this conversation with Bartov a few weeks ago. Now lawmakers are being even more brazen about their plans: defence minister Israel Katz has said they plan to concentrate people in Gaza into an internment camp on the rubble of Rafah.
Meanwhile, western governments and big tech companies like Meta seem happy to not just let all this happen, but to facilitate it. The revolution may not be televised, but genocide is certainly getting privatized.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/09/bulldzoer-gaza-genocide-idf-meta
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Not happening. Israel will not give land to the Palestinians. Ever. They can deal with the Israeli military forces. Good luck with that.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/10/middleeast/israeli-strike-gaza-medical-center-intl
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This column does not express support for Palestine Action – here’s why
In Britain’s increasingly authoritarian society, any sort of protest can find itself at odds with the law. You might even go to jail
This piece must be carefully written to avoid my being imprisoned for up to 14 years. That’s a curious sentence to say as a newspaper columnist in Britain in 2025. But since the government voted to proscribe the direct action protest group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act, any statement seen as expressing support could lead to arrest and prosecution.
You may justifiably respond that Guardian journalists are not above the law. For example, if I penned a column in support of al-Qaida, you might be sympathetic to incarceration: it did, after all, kill nearly 3,000 people on 9/11, as well as perpetrate multiple terrorist atrocities such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the 7 July London bombings two decades ago. Similarly, you may conclude that a polemic in favour of Islamic State should be met with a hefty prison sentence.
Personally, I’m not in favour of carceral solutions for political problems: I didn’t support the neo-Nazi football hooligan who attacked me six years ago being locked up (his sentence was two years and eight months), nor the racists who posted inflammatory hatred during last August’s attempted national pogrom. But that is a legitimate political disagreement, one that places me in a small minority.
Clearly, I would never write a defence of murderous hijackers, bombers, beheaders and indeed génocidaires. But this column concerns a movement which is, legally speaking, now equivalent to al-Qaida and IS, and that is Palestine Action. Rather than decapitating people, or filling mass graves with innocent victims, they were proscribed after throwing red paint at military planes in what they say is a protest against Britain’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
Last week, our home secretary joined other female Labour MPs in a photoshoot celebrating the suffragettes, who planted bombs, burned down private homes and smashed up art galleries. They then voted to classify a movement which positions itself as opposing violence against people as a terrorist organisation.
And this weekend, an 83-year-old retired priest, Sue Parfitt, was arrested after holding a placard that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Twenty-eight others were also arrested on those grounds. Questioned about her detention, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, responded: “It is not about protest. This is about an organisation committing serious criminality.”
Note how even Britain’s top police officer could not bring himself to claim Palestine Action was “an organisation committing terrorism”, which is what the law proclaims. I suspect he knows that, in doing so, he would have exposed the grotesque absurdity of this legislation. Yes, those who have helped drown Gaza in blood have turned the world upside down – treating the opponents of this mass extermination as dangerous, hateful extremists – but words have still not been entirely emptied of their meaning.
Do not expect that to last. An injury to democracy, once inflicted, cannot be contained. It becomes immediately infected, and the sickness spreads.
One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian society is that the state sanctifies what everybody knows is not true, even if they are legally compelled to act otherwise. Britain remains far from totalitarianism, but a society that arrests an 83-year-old retired vicar for holding a placard supporting non-violent direct action, and opposed to genocide, is firmly on an authoritarian pathway.
This has been a long time in the making. When New Labour introduced anti-terrorism laws, opponents warned the legislation would be abused to persecute peaceful protesters. Indeed, then 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Walter Wolfgang was held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act after he heckled the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, over the Iraq war at the 2005 Labour party conference.
While many commentators portrayed Boris Johnson as a hands-off libertarian, his government introduced legislation that allows police to ban virtually any protest, with the Policing Act permitting action against demonstrations deemed too noisy. You may well ask what sort of protest is not noisy.
Alas, it should always have been obvious that authoritarianism pulses through the veins of the Labour faction underpinning Keir Starmer’s leadership. As former Labour MP – and indeed adviser to Tony Blair – Jon Cruddas once put it, this is “the most rightwing, illiberal faction in the party”. As anyone who has ever encountered these factionalists in person can testify, they are defined by a raw hatred of the left. Lobby groups committed to Israel, or with links to the defence industry, pushed for this sort of legislation, and the Labour top brass lapped it up.
Once a movement committed to non-violence has been designated as terrorists, then a Rubicon has been crossed. “Terrorism” has been emptied of any real meaning, and can be applied far more widely. Indeed, earlier this year, more than 70 peaceful protesters were arrested at a demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). None of this was direct action: they were deemed to have breached arbitrary restrictions by marching down Whitehall clutching flowers commemorating Palestine’s dead. The PSC leader, Ben Jamal, is among those being put on trial.
Yes, the authoritarian descent predates the slaughter of Gaza. But we have certainly learned that the consequences of a state facilitating genocide will have profound consequences on society at home. Millions of people are aware that their government has facilitated a grave crime, and to protect themselves from scrutiny and accountability, the powers that be must silence those challenging the crime. Democracy becomes ever more imperilled.
Remember: it is an offence to show support for Palestine Action, which is deemed legally equivalent to al-Qaida and IS. If that law is broken, prison awaits. The proscribed organisation promotes civil disobedience and non-violent direct action in protest at genocide. This column has been checked over with that in mind. Ask yourself if this is normal in a self-described democracy. Then ask yourself searching questions about where this is all headed
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Its too late to wake up, go back to sleep.
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