Sadly, the Grumpiest Grandma is stuck, like a broken record, in one neurotic thought-pattern. The horror of the violence of the Hamas attack has fixated in her mind. Her feelings dominate and direct her apperception and render her incapable of a more removed analysis which, in my own view, is certainly needed here.vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 7:02 pmWhat is your scenario for 'what happened'? Please share. Are you saying that 'something' happened on 7 October? Please take us through it.
I say that we all need to look as deeply as possible into what has happened, and what is happening, but from a wider and more removed perspective. But since my focus and objective is *understanding* and not so much activism, this approach is fitting to my *project* as I call it. For those who come here to rehearse their social and political conflicts, and to take some specific side or other, but always to locate and encounter their one true enemy, their undertaking is as it always seems here: endless bickering.
(But I must say here that there really is something glorious in finding, and exploiting to the max, a favored enemy! Mine obviously is the dreary but articulate fanatic Immanuel. However, I am aware that I am not setting up a battle with an individual but with something far larger.)
I will try to work out in list-form what I see as the important elements that come up in relation to these terrible events in Israel and the Middle East generally.
Let me start with the most obvious one: Jewish and Israeli identity and also social, political, ideological and cultural projects. If you follow, as I do, the Far Right and the so-called Extreme Right you will know that the Hamas attack, and the Israeli response, invokes a great deal of critical opinion about Jews, Jewishness, Jewish power, and I suppose I should say Jewish ideology. In brief, the opinion of the Radical Right is that Jews have taken for themselves far too much power. And I suppose that everyone reading here is aware, or has the sense, that -- somehow -- it comes about that large media enterprises seem to *cover* for Jewish and Israeli interests. The fact that the United States -- a very powerful nation with a tremendous amount of *say* -- has indicated that it is subservient to Israeli interests, well that is something that raises eyebrows everywhere. How shall one decide what the real dynamic is? How can one talk about it when the danger of being labeled an *antisemite* is acute?
And here is another dimension in this Israel-Palestine blow-up: that it seems to bring out of the woodwork, in Europe and in America, that Arab-Islamic social and political element. They -- if I can speak of them as a block -- have very good reasons to defend Palestinians against genuine horrific violence, but there is another aspect as well. I am uncertain how to characterize it except to describe it as general Islamic activism. For example in England and France with larger North African and Middle Eastern populations. The contempt for Jews and Israel does indeed border into a broader general contempt for Judaism (Jews, Jewish interests, Jewish power) but takes shape within the demographic shifts in European culture. By this I make reference to a general, if still submerged, opposition to the rising demographic power of the North African/Middle Eastern (Islamic?) populations in some European capitals. There is definitely a reactive movement (said to be directed by the hard right) in England, in France, in Denmark, in Germany, in Poland, which is described by the Progressive-Left as fascistic.
For this reason the general opposition to *what Israel is doing in Gaza* (and the Occupied Territories) is predominantly a Left-Progressive reaction and the desire to *liberate Palestine* among Europeans is largely a European Liberal movement that would seek to have those European democratic forms take root in the Middle East. The Conservative factions seem, overall, to take the side of Israel and this reveals a sort of hypocrisy which is very difficult to disguise. You know: that the conservative powers were *genuinely appalled* when Russia invaded Ukraine and condemned Putin as an embodiment of sheer evil but hardly anyone could take such a view of Netanyahu and the Israeli elite running that show.
It looks as if the anti-Israel movement dovetails with Left-Progressive projects in Europe and America (Australia, Canada and NZ are included) but it seems to me quite hard to sort through it and decide on which side one should stand. So for example the (fringe) ideological and political movement that believes that the *only solution* for the Israel-Palestinian problem is the same as took place in South Africa -- to allow the creation of one democratic state -- is seen and felt by everyone (I am intuitively guessing here) as completely absurd and impossible. Traditional Jewish identity, even of a Left-tending sort, could never sacrifice Jewish identity to such a project. And it surely does not look as though Arab-Palestinian and Islamic interests would ever surrender its directives to such a democratic, equalizing project. Such a movement, and such an outcome, could only occur among Jewish and Islamic peoples who had become, more or less, European Liberals. Can you imagine the reaction against such a *democratic* project among hard Orthodox Jewry? Or among dedicated Islamic ideologues.
Turning back to *what happened* I don't think it is hard to describe it. The Hamas attack was extraordinarily bold and *militarily brilliant* if one concedes that it was undertaken by desperate people for desperate political purposes. It has completely upended Netanyahu's *Abraham Accord* project in which the Palestinian interests were totally neglected as if they did not exist. (Remember the map of Israel Netanyahu recently displayed that did not show either Gaza or the West Bank). It has been made plain, at least to some and perhaps many, that so-called Jewish power and Jewish influence in the Occident is *concerning*, and yet is an issue that cannot be examined squarely for a group of reasons. It also points to the *problematic* of Jewish support for Israel and the issue of divided allegiance among Jews. This is largely a problem in the US given that it has been so pro-Zionist. Indeed that the last 5-6 administrations, with a possible Obama administration exception, have been completely pro-Zionist.
Will what Hamas did turn out to be an advantage for the Palestinian cause? Will Israel do enough harm to the Hamas organization to drive it back and render it impotent? Will the region eventually settle down again? Will the project of the *elite powers* then continue forward again which seemed to involve a *globlist-directed* plan to create a 'connected market region' in the Middle East with Israel as a leader? What will happen with South Africa's case that Israel is engaging, has engaged, in genocide? How will Gaza ever rebuild? Who will pay for it? What will happen if, as seems at least possible, Donald Trump wins the next election? How will the present Republican anti-war movement and the sentiment against *foreign involvement* be resolved under a Trump presidency? How will the general trends in US culture toward diversity equity inclusion react to a Trump presidency in the context of the Israel-Palestine problem that will go one for months if not years and take years and even a decade to resolve if it is resolved?
Sorry to blurt all this out, I realize it is sort of unstructured. But the point is to indicate there is a great deal to examine and to think about here.
