Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Tag: Palestine (Page 1 of 2)

Selective repugnance

14.02.2026 /

Several questions and one hypothesis

Tell me, how should a teacher reply when his 17-year-old students in upper secondary school address the following question to him:

We see in the papers that the so-called Epstein files include correspondence with people who have had sex with young girls, girls who are even younger than us. We suspect that the girls mostly found the much older men repulsive. Moreover, according to our text books, sex with girls under a certain age is illegal, also in the USA. Surely, the US Department of Justice has had access to the files since 2019, when Epstein died.

Why has nobody been charged?

What on earth can the teacher tell them? That Trump is not exactly playing by the rules? Sure, such a reply will not warrant a parental complaint to the school authorities, since the overwhelming majority of Norwegians have hated Trump from day 1. But the students will point out that Trump has only been president for a year.

Should the teacher admit that the US Department of Justice, under Trump and certainly under Biden, must be protecting powerful persons who have committed criminal acts – a conclusion the students probably arrived at on their own? Goodness knows what the school authorities would recommend. If he “takes the fifth”, as they say in the USA, his students will hardly be able to disguise their contempt of his intellectual cowardice.

Regardless of how he responds: his students and 17-year-olds all over Europe are drawing the obvious conclusion that the rule of law has long since ceased to exist in the USA and by extension, probably also in Europe.

You may rightly point out, that most 17-year-olds don’t care one way or another. They are too busy following their social media feeds. They have turned into puppets of the tech-industry. Only the bright and/or ambitious few will remember, and as they grow old enough to make their imprint on the future world, they will have learnt the moral code our generation bequeathed to them: “anything goes”.

***

Walking her old dog along the seafront, the little old lady meets other old ladies walking their old dogs. They stop and exchange remarks about their respective dogs’ foibles and the icy cold weather, and one of them sighs, remembering that there are those who are truly suffering from the cold: “Why are they forcing those poor Ukrainian boys to keep fighting and dying, when the war is lost?”

***

There are also many people here, there and almost everywhere that shudder at the thought of Palestinians in Gaza, those who are still alive: They must be freezing!

Palestine is almost gone now, not least thanks to Epstein’s network of “dear friends”, among them Mona Juul and Terje Rød Larsen.

All over Europe, however, there have been massive demonstrations against Israel. According to Human Rights Watch over 2,700 peaceful protesters in the UK have been arrested under counter-terrorism legislation, no less, most for peacefully holding signs reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” (See also the Human Rights Watch article Silencing the Streets.) A number of Palestine Action members have been kept in pre-trial detention for more than 500 days. Six of them have now been acquitted but the prosecution has appealed the acquittal. Sitting in their cells, day in and day out, they must have wondered: “Why on earth did Norway’s Nobel Committee give the Nobel Peace Prize to a genocide supporter?

***

And why have four EU member states demanded, just this week, the resignation of UN rapporteur for the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese? Yes, she is reviled by Israel – all the better. But has she sodomised little boys or for that matter any other boys? Has she even taken bribes? No, her offence is “hate speech”, naming the State of Israel for what it is: a perpetrator of the most horrendous crimes since WWII. You are not allowed to do that if you are a public figure in the self-proclaimed bastion of free speech (i.e. the Democratic West).

***

A slight digression here about freedom of thought (remember 1984?). Most of us humans want to be accepted. In order to be accepted, we strive to be acceptable. From what is euphemistically referred to as “social media”, we learn what thoughts are acceptable. Thanks to EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), we have, here in Europe, a system that to a large extent shields us from social media content that is “undesirable”. My use of quotes here is meant to indicate that the perspective is that of the unelected EU leadership (mainly the EU Commission).

As a result, your thoughts and mine – some of which might show signs of rebelliousness – systematically get pruned and dry-cleaned, by the social media, and by our teachers, cousins, neighbours, colleagues, etc. who all follow the social media. For detail, I recommend an article by the ever delightfully facetious Tarik Cyril Amar.

***

Back to the Epstein files: Alastaire Crooke writes in an article:The Epstein Earthquake:

The elites understood that once the masses became aware of the rulers’ utter amorality, the West would lose the framework of moral narratives that so precisely underpin an ordered life. …What would then hold a nation together?

Well, probably just totalitarianism.

I have great respect for Alastaire Crooke. However, in this matter, I would like to interject a few thoughts: For one thing, the Democratic West was well on the way to totalitarianism before the Epstein avalanche started. The DSA, for instance, was enacted, I believe, in 2022.

Secondly, there is the matter of proportionality: Yes, divulging state secrets or influencing policies in return for favours is bad, very bad, not least if the favours involve sexual predation, but what about killing thousands and thousands of people, torturing thousands and thousands… do I really have to remind you? … for years and years and decades…

Dear Mr Alastaire Crooke, you are wise and impressive and have seen so very much, too much perhaps, of the evils of geopolitics, particularly in the Middle-East, and I have earnestly listened to your elegant analyses delivered with your habitual air of resigned sadness. Why, I ask you, do you now express such outrage about the Epstein files? Or have I misinterpreted you? Are you actually jubilantly shouting what you have known, silently, all along, that the system, our Western Democracy, has long been rotten to the core?

If so, “I salute you”, and here comes my hypothesis:

The EU and the USA were prepared to defend, in the social media: venal regime change operations, most recently those against Venezuela and Iran, murderous economic sanctions, and even Israel’s crimes against humanity … BUT they were not prepared to defend predatory sexual crime.

Let us use this flaw in the EU and US armour and shoot.

Alas, no Armageddon

15.01.2026 /

I had not listened to the grand old man of political science, John Mearsheimer, for a long time when, today, I heard his recent conversation with Glenn Greenwald. What he said about the currently burning matters of Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, Gaza and Ukraine did not surprise me. His position on these topics is above all reasonable and rational – as was his initial position on Ukraine in 2015. After all, he is a “realist”. He does not pretend to know what will happen in 24 hours, but he peers into the distance and assesses the long-term effects of today’s foreign policy. With regard to Ukraine, ten years after his warnings in 2015, he has been proven right.

Due to those warnings in 2015, the Western press dropped their former star political scientist as though he were a carrier of the Bubonic Plague.

Only on one point did Mearsheimer disappoint me today, not – I repeat not – because I assume he is wrong, but because I hope he is wrong. (The distance between hope and assumption is as that between myself and the moon.) Glenn Greenwald quoted President Lula of Brazil, who claims to dream every night of “de-dollarisation”. To my chagrin, Mearsheimer told Glenn Greenwald that he did not foresee “de-dollarisation” for at least five to ten years.

John Mearsheimer is the antithesis of a vulgar man. He is eminently courteous, soft-spoken, the perfect diplomat, you might say, because he makes no secret of being in every sense an “American”, although he so deeply regrets the foreign policies espoused by his country’s administrations over the past decades.

I recommend the said conversation.

For instance, on a topic about which I, who am anything but a diplomat. howl with rage, he tells us, smiling dangerously, what he thinks will happen next:

You have this so-called cease-fire. The fact is, it’s not been a cease fire from the Israeli perspective. The Israelis have basically continued to behave as if there were no cease-fire. By the way, they’ve done the same thing in Lebanon. … and what they’ll do, they’ll engineer some crisis where they blame Hamas for a gross violation of the cease-fire and say that this is reason for Israel to go in and “finish the job”. … The Israeli goal here is to either drive all the Palestinians out of Gaza into Somaliland or Egypt or whatever or if not do that, kill them. Right? Either starve them to death or bomb them to death or some combination of the two.

The Mearsheimer smile! Paraphrasing the Israelis who refer to the Palestinians as though they were cattle, he beamed his terrifyingly benign smile at us.

Alas, even Mearsheimer cannot foresee any Armageddon for that most vile of entities, Israel. Not as long as the USA, his country, still has its fangs planted in the world economy. Yes, there are many of us who dream of de-dollarisation.

Glenn Greenwald did not question him about Europe’s growing authoritarian tendencies. I wonder why. Does Glenn Greenwald not know how bad things are here now?

One morning last year, the above appeared on one of the walls of the British Royal Court of Justice.

The authorities wasted no time having the stencil removed, leaving its shadow. And this is where we are now: Liberal Democracy.

Reckless driving

03.10.2025 /

There are a lot of people who love the thrill of driving fast, who are intoxicated by the taste of danger. Most of them nevertheless refrain from reckless driving. If you are somebody who tends to not hold your horses when driving a motorised vehicle, you are probably an immature driver in that you don’t fully comprehend the danger to which you are subjecting others. If you do comprehend that danger, but simply don’t care or believe that your time is much more valuable than anybody else’s, you should consider the possibility that you’re a psychopath.

There are of course other reasons why people drive as though there were no tomorrow. Maybe you are so upset or angry that those who love you, if you are lucky enough be loved, tell you: don’t take the car now. Maybe you are not loved; your wife just told you she’s leaving you. Maybe your boss blamed you for something you haven’t done. Maybe a tree crashed over your house, or maybe you actually are fleeing from, say, a volcano or a tornado.

I don’t know which of these predicaments caused Trump to make that reckless deal with Netanyahu about Gaza. Let’s put it this way for a start: I am absolutely convinced he wanted to put an end to “all the killing”. He wanted to save those who are still alive from the ongoing industrial slaughter. Yes, or rather no, I don’t generally approve of Trump, but he does seem to have a humane streak in him.

But at what cost? To put it plainly, at the cost of Palestine. With this deal, there will be no Palestine, ever. Israel has made it clear, time and time again, most recently at the UN general assembly just a few days ago: Israel will never, ever, ever even consider accepting a Palestinian state. “Negotiations in five years” will be a waste of time and money, as have all previous negotiations headed by naive and/or deceitful mediators, including not least from my own country. Israel has even taken to killing negotiators.

Without Hamas, no Palestine. Israel knows this, which is why they want to eradicate Hamas. The Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, often referred to as PA, contents itself with doing Israel’s bidding. That’s what it gets paid for. Without Hamas, some Palestinians will be allowed to live in Gaza and the West Bank, as serfs for the Israelis and on subsistence wages.

Tony Blair, a malevolent figure (and war criminal) who turned the Labour Party into a neoliberal tool of the 1 %, but better known by most as a consummate liar, is vying for a job as the viceroy of Gaza. He will make sure that the handful of surviving Gazans cause no trouble while Jared Kushner and his ilk build their luxury hotels. That’s the deal.

So my tentative diagnosis of Trump’s decision so far: Yes, he does care about loss of lives. But he has no respect for international law, no more than does Israel, he has no understanding of Palestine’s decades long case and, worst of all, he does not really care if one people lives in servitude to another.

Better alive than dead? I’m not sure. The problem is that the Palestinians will not forget who they are. Those who are still alive have endured months and months and months of unimaginable conditions – conditions reminiscent, but worse, than those endured in Nazis concentration camps (cold, hunger, fear, no toilets, no sanitary napkins, no water, no electricity … ) They are formidable heroes! And they will not forget. Memory hurts.

Besides, Netanyahu is as treacherous as the Devil himself: He considers all Gazans members of Hamas, and will try to kill the rest of them even while the deal is being sealed.

Did Trump have any alternatives? Of course he did. He could have cut off all support for Israel. Simple as that. No more arms, no more money, no more trade, no more vetoes against the vast majority of the global community in the UN.

Yes, the US Zionist billionaires would have stopped financing him. He may have lost his entire fortune. But had he done the decent thing, he would have been universally celebrated. He would have been granted almost as much as he had lost but by non-Zionists. Had he done the decent thing. Even little Norway, I am sure, would have been able to provide him with a life in the lap of luxury, had he done the decent thing.

He did not. His recklessness has also had the following consequences:

1) It has killed what was so precariously won, in spite of all the deaths, after WWII: International Law.

What remains is the playground of filthy-rich bullies and psychopaths. With or without a 2000-year-old myth or legend, anybody with sufficient funds can go on a killing spree in neighbouring or even distant states and get away with it.

2) It effectively sounds the death knell of the Jewish state.

As Norman Finkelstein tells Aljazeera on 4 October: At least we have “the historical record” of what has happened. Indeed. We have the record of a new Holocaust committed by the “Jewish State” and endorsed by the USA.

Had Trump done the decent thing, the “Jewish State” might have continued to exist indefinitely. Instead, his recklessness has driven a nation into servitude, while the despicably racist Jewish state is a pariah. The state of Israel has proven to be so murderous that even right-wing evangelicals in the US are stunned.

The US and its adoring “Western” vassals, represent only 12 % of the world’s population. The remaining 88 % will not bow indefinitelyto the primitive Stone-Age will of the bully. Eventually, some semblance of International Law will be resuscitated, and the pariah Jewish State will not be invited to the party.

So what Trump actually achieved was probably more than he reckoned with.

The brave 12

07.07.2024 /

In the USA, 12 brave men and women have resigned their posts as United States government officials in protest over the part the USA is playing in the war against Palestine in general and the population of Gaza in particular. On 2 July, they issued and signed a JOINT STATEMENT explaining why they did so. To publish such a statement in defiance of a president who, to quote him, “is running the world” is a beautiful and — I repeat — brave act. The document is well worth reading. I particularly recommend what follows under the sub-headings “How did it go wrong?” and “What is to be done?”

In Europe there is hardly any mention of the Joint Statement signed by the 12.

Admittedly BBC, does refer to it quite briefly, but is more than tight-lipped: “Ex-officials say Gaza policy has put US at risk” (my emphasis). However, nearly half the brief article informs us of what (the politely hypocritical) “state department spokesperson” told the BBC (my emphasis) about the blessings of US freedom of expression.

On the other side of the planet, not only does Reuters (acquired by Thomson Corporation in Canada in 2008) devote at least three articles to the matter. They have listed the 12 “US officials who have quit over Biden’s support of Israel”, and more recently they have added a link to the Joint Statement itself and a subheading: “WHY IT IS IMPORTANT”.

Huffpost, too, has a long article about the joint statement and quotes much of it.

Even CNN has at least twice provided sympathetic coverage of what the 12 have done. Is the tide seriously turning in the USA?

A fitting name

30.04.2024 /

Genocide Joe. I like the sound of it. Craig Murrey firmly believes that the USA and vassal states in Europe actually want to hasten the extermination of Palestinians in Palestine. His argument is sound, I think:

Discontinuing aid to UNRWA would require the following in each country:

Views would have to be coordinated through written submissions and interdepartmental meetings between the departments dealing with the Middle East, with the United Nations, with the United States, with Europe and then of course between the diplomatic and development wings of the ministry. That process would include seeking the views of [the country’s] ambassadors to Tel Aviv, Doha, Cairo, Riyadh, Istanbul and Washington and to the United Nations in Geneva and in New York.

[Yet, several countries] announced all on the same day the destruction of the life support system for Palestinians, then in absolute need.

Craig Murrey, Consortium News April 26 2024

Why on earth would they all simultaneously cut off aid to an organisation that is vital for human survival in that Hell on earth if not to achieve a “final solution” on the Palestine issue.

There’s a lot of money involved, of course, from the Israel Lobby. Everybody knows that, but I doubt that anybody knows just how much, since every attempt will surely be made to conceal the extent of such donations. Here is a site that claims it knows. However I have no doubt that The Intercept has pretty solid documentation about a relatively trifling amount, which nevertheless proved to be significant.

Yes, Genocide Joe! And that is the country that promises to “defend” Finno-Scandinavia with 47 military bases? Defence, my foot!

I’ll be back soon. Yes, by Joe, I’ll be back!

PS: On May 4, I see in Reuters that Sanaa University has issued a statement applauding the “humanitarian” position of the students in the United States and said they could continue their studies in Yemen. “The board of the university condemns what academics and students of U.S. and European universities are being subjected to, suppression of freedom of expression,” the board of the university said in a statement, which included an email address for any students wanting to take up their offer.

The News

09.01.2024 /

As usual, every morning, I check Reuters, UPI, AP. What are they saying? What are they telling the US population and the press in the USA’s satellite states in Europe?

Every morning I hope “this day will be different”. Every morning I muse: “Surely, somebody will say, ‘This is it! I can’t take anymore!'”, and I will see, in Reuters, the UPI or the AP, a great big headline: THIS IS GENOCIDE. STOP IT!

But this morning was just as every other morning:

  • Cat flees from owner at truck stop, turns up 670 miles away (UPI)
    This was not, I admit, the top headline, nor even one of them. But I assure you that GAZA was not mentioned in any of the headlines.
  • Israeli strike kills an elite Hezbollah commander in the latest escalation linked to the war in Gaza (AP)
    Yes, this was the top headline. It was meant to bring joy to those worried that Israel’s war against the terrorists was not going well. It was meant as joyful tidings.

  • US secretary of state rallies Mideast leaders to prepare for Gaza’s post-war future (AP)
    Note the word “post-war”. As though the ongoing war is just any old war, not an extermination campaign. Later today, several US outlets proudly declare that the “Mideast leaders” have committed to some post-war efforts, as though Blinken had achieved something, anything at all. Of course the “Mideast leaders” will help Gaza, as they always do! Nothing to do with Blinken.

  • US top diplomat urges Israel to avoid harming civilians in Gaza. (Reuters)
    Isn’t that just sweet: Do please be careful, when you bomb hospitals, ambulances and aid convoys. And do please avoid hurting children when you raise apartment buildings to the ground.

Ugh.

A Christmas Carol

07.01.2024 /

I wept in front of Al Jazeera television for much of the holiday. That is the long and the short of it.

I still feel numb and shaken. The horror of what we have witnessed – are still witnessing – the evil of it, is beyond anything I had been able to fathom.

I check Associated Press, United Press International and Reuters every day! To the extent they report at all on the massacres taking place day after day after day in Gaza (and also the West Bank!!!) they all three refer to them offhandedly as to just any old, distant and – above all – minor event that is of little or no concern to us.

Ghastly! You find me for once tongue-tied. The nightmare is still going on, mind you, unchecked by moral scruples. Why hasn’t the corporate press voiced outrage? Because it is a puppet, an instrument of the US powers that be.

I feel like a child who has discovered that Santa Claus was just a fairytale. Worse, in fact, much worse. Santa Clause is in reality a very big, very black and immensely dangerous wolf. Worse, even: Santa is evil to the core.

Stunned, still, I really have nothing more to add other than a very warm recommendation for another book:

Patrick Lawrence, Journalists and their Shadows, 2023

Except, oh yes, except that there is a sliver of light between the black clouds:

  • My own servile-to-the-USA country’s pusillanimous public broadcasting company dutifully reports, every day, the number of Palestinians massacred over the past 24 hours. And every day it presents us with new heart-wrenching photos and scenes. It is bravely reporting what the USA does not want reported.
  • Learning of my despair, a friend in Iceland sent me a picture of his Christmas tree this year. It is decked in the Palestinian colours and with Palestinian flags. Surprised and grateful I started watching the Icelandic evening news on television.
  • One of the headlines of yesterday’s evening news from Iceland was the arrival at Keflavik Airport of a young Palestinian woman, who had been “gifted” with Icelandic nationality. She had never been to Iceland, but a Palestinian refugee there – her brother – had mobilised sympathy for her, and the government had decided to offer her a home in Iceland. The footage of her arrival was very moving as she appeared in a wheelchair.
    She had no legs.
    So the Icelandic public broadcasting company is also doing its bit.

The dog and I

03.11.2023 /

I have a dog. I’ve almost always had a dog. Big dog, small dog – no matter – I’m rather good at training dogs. Dogs, you see, are basically quite like humans. You tell a dog to “sit”, and the dog will sit. You tell the dog not to sniff the neighbour’s shoes – “the neighbour kicks”, you say – and it will not sniff the neighbour’s shoes. You tell the dog to bite the neighbour, and it’ll bite the neighbour.

The News tells us humans that Putin wants to conquer all of Europe, and we docilely repeat to each other that Putin wants to conquer all of Europe. “Egad!” we say, “have you heard? Putin wants to….” The News tells us that Hamas is fighting a holy Jihad against Jews and Christians, and we, of course, docile as we are, treat Hamas accordingly: as monsters.

In much of our Western world, being “good”, “upright”, “just” means considering everybody else morally inferior. Our norms, our values, our holy cows are of course the norms, the values and the holy cows that all of humankind must adhere to and venerate. Their norms, values and holy cows are inferior and must be annihilated, by force if necessary. Rule of law, you know. Just like dogs. (“My rules, you fool!”) Headline: “Big husky kills toy poodle”. From the big dog’s point of view, the toy poodle was superfluous. The world can do without. (The philosophical range of a big dog is no greater than that of a small dog.)

You also find vociferous small dogs baring their teeth, yapping their heads off at big dogs. Why do they do it, I wonder? As a warning, I guess: “I may be small, but believe me, I can bite!” And because they have a big human at their side: “You touch a hair on my head, and my human will report you to the police and have you killed, so there!” Indeed, if I pick up that little nuisance of a toy-sized dog next door that barks hysterically every five minutes – pick it up by the scruff of its neck and shake it till its teeth rattle, I’ll be reported to the police.

And some dogs bite, just as some humans. Big dogs, small dogs. Their philosophical range isn’t much greater than that of your average human: They believe what they’re told to believe. Each dog is convinced that its master is the best of all masters. So do most humans. If the master tells the dog that the neighbour kicks, the dog will believe the neighbour kicks. The statement “my master’s enemies, are my enemies.” applies to dogs and humans alike, though most humans don’t seem to realise that they have masters. “We just listen to the News,” humans say, “we just consider the facts“.

Morally, however, most dogs are far superior to the people at the top of the human food chain. Being at the top of the human food chain essentially means being willing to employ every underhanded trick in the book, crossing every red line – you know, those famous red lines that humans, as opposed to dogs, seem unable to remember – to stay there. Humans at the top of the food chain are geared only to stay at the top of the food chain, whereas the rest of us normally want to go about our business in peace. We don’t want to kick our neighbours, but we try to defend ourselves if our neighbours kick us.

Humans at the top of the food chain unleash considerable resources to distort narratives that expose the venality of their actions. The News has repeatedly told us that Hamas are monsters. Yes, Hamas committed horrendous crimes against humanity on October 8, but if you beat a creature long enough, hard enough, viciously enough, that creature – be it lion, kitten, dog, human or mother nature itself – will rise like a tsunami to kill you.

The News did not alert us to how the Palestinians have been treated worse than dogs for decades and decades and decades. The News did not tell us that Hamas wanted peace for the Palestinian people, peace and dignity.

This was Hamas in 2017:

28. Hamas believes in, and adheres to, managing its Palestinian relations on the basis of pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and the adoption of dialogue. The aim is to bolster the unity of ranks and joint action for the purpose of accomplishing national goals and fulfilling the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

29. The PLO is a national framework for the Palestinian people inside and outside of Palestine. It should therefore be preserved, developed and rebuilt on democratic foundations so as to secure the participation of all the constituents and forces of the Palestinian people, in a manner that safeguards Palestinian rights.

30. Hamas stresses the necessity of building Palestinian national institutions on sound democratic principles, foremost among them are free and fair elections. Such process should be on the basis of national partnership and in accordance with a clear programme and a clear strategy that adhere to the rights, including the right of resistance, and which fulfil the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

31. Hamas affirms that the role of the Palestinian Authority should be to serve the Palestinian people and safeguard their security, their rights and their national project.

My emphasis,

Say what you will, but this is not the Hamas “the News” told us about. This is not the “facts” we have been repeating with deference ever since we graduated from nursery school. “The News” obeyed its masters and failed the rest of us. The damage done by “the News” that obeyed its masters can never be undone.

FIE ON THE NEWS

Land of no return

24.10.2023 /

I watched the news today. Usually, I just read the news, but there was something I wanted to see, so I watched. Yes, I saw the news item I wanted to see. Afterwards, however, that news item was followed by news from Gaza.

It is bad enough reading about people being killed. But seeing people being killed is an entirely different matter. Meanwhile a toneless voice was saying that people are being operated without anaesthesia, and – the voice droned on as dead or dying kids were being carted this way and that – even without analgesics. I did not hear the rest of what he said, because I had switched off the damned television.

I just sat there, cold with horror. And then, as the blood started coursing through my veins again, I felt hot tears coursing down my cheeks, and only then did I realise what it was that was coalescing inside me: Hatred. Hatred against the people who are doing this, hatred against the people who are continuing to do this, again and again and again in cold – lizzard-cold – blood.

So many dead, so much suffering, such unbelievable evil.

I have calmed down now, but I wonder: If I, who am basically a pacifist, feel hatred against Zionism, how will other people feel who are not pacifists? Does President Biden really think that aiding and abetting this terrible crime against humanity in lizard-cold blood will help Israel in the long run? Surely he doesn’t think it will stop terrorism? I mean, he’s not stupid, is he? Or is he?

Let me tell you Mr Biden: Norwegian folk-tales are populated by many strange and scary creatures, among them trolls. I am sure you have heard of trolls. Well, the trolls, you see, have a curious asset you may or may not have heard of: If you cut off the head of a troll, he will grow a new one, and not only one, three! And for each of the three heads you cut off, he will grow three more. That’s the sort of thing you are dealing with, Mr Biden.

Hatred is not a smart think to nurture, Mr Biden. And you are nurturing hatred, Mr Biden, in a very big way.

Yes, but…

14.10.2023 /

To quote the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem:

Abandoning the basic moral principle that all human beings were created equal (“b’tselem elohim”) is a loss of humanity.

The Israeli state (with US and EU support), the Zionist movement and Israeli settlers on the occupied West bank have been treating Palestinians as inferior creatures for decades. Even the US-based outlet Vox understands that the Hamas attack:

… comes after nearly two decades of the US and world leaders overlooking the more than 2 million people living in Gaza who endure a humanitarian nightmare, with its airspace and borders and sea under Israeli control…. Gaza is in essence a refugee camp (about 70 percent of those living in Gaza come from families displaced from the 1948 war) and an open-air prison, according to human rights groups. The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.” Israel has blockaded Gaza since Hamas assumed control of the territory in 2007, and neighboring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.

We have seen that no peaceful efforts to persuade Israel to change its tack have had any effect whatsoever. Negotiations have had no effect whatsoever. Subservience on the part of Palestinians have had no effect whatsoever – they just continue getting killed, their homes continue being confiscated, their holy shrines continue being insulted.

Yes, Hamas has committed vicious war crimes. No doubt about it.

But I ask you: What else could they do? How do you propose keeping your hands clean when defending a country from inside a prison?

I don’t much like the preamble of the Document of General Principles & Policies, issued by Hamas; talk about the Islamic Ummah leaves me pretty cold, I must admit. But starting with paragraph 14, I find my interest roused. Here from pragraph 16:

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage.

The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.

And further on (paragraph 20) regarding a two state solution:

However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

(my emphasis)

Human rights organisations are being banned from Israel-occupied territory. Even B’Tselem is being restricted, not least due to articles such as this one, declaring that Israel is an apartheid state.

Again I quote Vox:

The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza,” writes the Israeli journalist Haggai Mattar in 972 Magazine. “The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.

« Older posts

© 2026 Pelshval

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑