The Left’s Defence of Hamas’s Brutal Attack as Resistance Against an ‘Apartheid State’ is “False and Grotesque”
Just when you thought that parts of the Left couldn’t sink any lower in their response to Hamas’s brutal assault in Israel, along comes Yanis Varoufakis defending it as resistance against an ‘apartheid state’ – a comparison as false as it is grotesque, writes Normal Lewis in Spiked. Here’s an excerpt.
The black masses’ often brutalising struggle against Apartheid, which cost the lives of thousands, was never about violence as an end in itself. It was about the pursuit of the political ideals of democracy and freedom.
The contrast between the struggle against Apartheid and Hamas’s war with Israel could hardly be starker. This weekend, Hamas carried out a pogrom against Jewish civilians. As Daniel Ben-Ami highlights, Hamas is not a national-liberation movement engaged in trying to free Palestine. It’s an antisemitic death cult, hell-bent on eliminating all Jews in the quest for an international Islamic order. There is not one iota of democratic idealism in Hamas’s make-up.
In equating Hamas with Umkhonto, Yanis Varoufakis and his fellow cheerleaders not only arrogantly malign the sacrifices of South Africa’s black masses. They also perpetuate a damaging falsehood about Israel, which helps to isolate the Jewish state globally – namely, that Israel is an apartheid state. That it is just like South Africa used to be.
This is simply untrue. Arabs in Israel can vote in elections and Arab parties sit in parliament. There are Arab justices on the Supreme Court and Arab doctors in the health service. Similar equality for black people in Apartheid South Africa would have been unthinkable.
Yes, Arabs do suffer discrimination over jobs, education and housing. And the Israeli state’s abuse of human rights should be condemned. There are grounds for a serious debate about Israel’s problematic policies towards Palestinians. But the comparison with Apartheid South Africa is grotesque.
Worth reading in full.
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Like the overwhelming majority of people I don’t want to know anything about that. The whole complex, fraught situation, with its myriad of subtleties and nuances is far too much for me to process. I will put the Israeli flag on my Tweets, and bask in a warm glow of virtue and morality, knowing that I am ‘doing something’…
/sarc in case you wondered…
Sorry, but what has this got to do with the reality on the ground for the last 70 plus years?
Israel has killed Palestinians on a ratio of at least 100 to one during that time.
Look at the UN declarations which Israel has deliberately flouted. Consider the illegal settlements/Golan heights and land grabs, bulldozing of Palestinian homes, all deliberately perpetrated by Israel with the consent of the USA.
The Palestinians are living in an open prison.
When a populace has been subjected to the above – what do you expect?
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country”
David Ben Gurion Letters to his son.
“I am extremely sorry for all those who die, as in all wars. I am sorry even for the deaths of individual Israeli soldiers, and more so for all the innocents who died and are now dying.
But I will not condemn Hamas.
For this I do not even need to delve into the backstory of Hamas’ initial sponsoring by Israel to split Fatah. They have grown well past that. I do not condemn Hamas because the resistance of the Palestinian people is a reflex response to their slow genocide.
Yes it is an inchoate and violent response. Of course I wish it did not have innocent victims.
The people I do condemn are the political class internationally who, with one voice, put out statements supporting “Israel’s right to self-defence”. A right they grant to the oppressor but deny to the oppressed.
Those are the people who need to be condemned.”
Wise words from Craig Murray
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory is ‘apartheid’: UN rights expert,https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114702
Interesting perspective on this complex mess, from a military person. *The final paragraph of the article is duplicated for some reason.* ”Israel has the right to be a normal country, like any other; but it cannot allow itself to believe that it can be surrounded by barbarians whose ultimate goal is to throw all the Jews into the sea. It is sad and unfair, but that makes it no less true. A mistake in Spain or France entails costs, without a doubt, but a mistake by Israel can lead to its extinction. The woke mentality is suicidal for the West, but for Israel it is an imminent danger. And one would be as woke to believe outright that Hamas can be appeased through economic incentives as to believe that Iran can be contained in the Israeli periphery, or that the Americans will always be there to defend Israel. And why even consider that climate change should be the number one concern? The Israeli left is already holding Prime Minister Netanyahu responsible for this catastrophe. They blame him for bringing troops into the West Bank, not because the situation has deteriorated substantially (and just look at Jenin, for example), but to… Read more »
Israel has the right to be a normal country, like any other.
Israel is an entirely artificial construct, like all other states, BTW, and such constructs don’t and cannot have any rights. They’re created and maintained by force, tend to take whatever they can, and usually end because of force as well.
The one thing which bugs me about this conflict is that I’m always supposed to take sides in it, despite I really don’t want to. The state of Israel came into being because of military violence and it’s ultimatively maintained in this way. OTOH, most of the Arab countries around it would gladly eradicate it again with military violence if they only could. All of this is happening in the middle east where Jews and Arabs have been habitually at each others throats for centuries. Looks like a an outright classic problem of other people to me.
Yes, Bad Stuff™ is happening all over the world. It always does. I have no power to influence or even prevent it and I certainly wouldn’t want to have this power.
Yep, it’s a no-win situation for everyone. I find the argument about how Israel came about moot – it’s there, it’s not going away, so harping on about 1947 is pointless. I believe the Palestinians have had much taken from them since that time and believe that Israel has behaved badly. But as you say, the desire to eradicate Israel is strong, how should they behave? How should they react to an attack like Saturday’s? Say sorry, our bad, let’s sit down and talk it over? The reaction in Gaza is as hard as it is as Israel believes it has to do so to remain standing. I suspect there is some truth to that, even though I am not one of the people saying flatten Gaza, turn it into a parking lot. The devastation is heart breaking, the water and food supplies should not be shut off, nor every structure razed to the ground. Make no mistake though – Hamas will have known full well that this would be the reaction, this is what it wanted. What never gets brought into these conversations is that the Middle East as a whole is violent and unstable, regardless of Israel. Little… Read more »
You are right that the different sects within the Muslim religion mean there will never be peace. I wonder if it is a reaction to Israel & Saudi Arabia making efforts towards mutual projects together which has unsettled the more traditional Muslims who need to keep their people under control.
The whole thing is just dreadfully sad
The whole thing is dreadfully irrelevant to ordinary people. OTOH, something I still very unfondly remember is BBC footage of people living ordinary lives in the horrible open air prison Afghanistan while we in the enlightened west were still very much forced to dance the Corona all day. Thank God the Taliban aren’t in control here. We could all have been wiped out by this dreadful virus with so much too much freedom!
[That’s obviously sarcasm — never assume a one-sided picture really captures the whole truth.]
Israel purports to somehow be a ‘civilised’ Western country though, which makes it’s actions more open to criticism (and that’s got nothing to do with Judaism).
Having said which, the actions of this country, and the US, in another part of the Middle East 20 years ago are equally reprehensible.
Not sure I quite understand that last sentence, but yes, on the whole, couldn’t agree more.
Probably not worded that great, you’re right.
What I meant is that during the corona time, people were intentionally being turned against each other – those who were taken over by the fear and propaganda that every instruction of the government, no matter how ridiculous or unlawful, had to be followed, and those who were sceptical and spoke out against it.
The same has been done with Ukraine-Russia, but that is too remote for most people and a lot of people don’t care whether they are called Russian trolls.
This one, though, is psychological warfare’s best so far – the choices for most is sympathise with a group of people whose ‘representatives’ have just committed senseless, outrageous slaughter primarily to provoke a violent response, or sympathise with what many perceive to be a bully that is far stronger than the group it is fighting. The reality is far more nuanced, but black/white thinking is just so much easier.
And the proper choice is still none of the above. Like Africa and Europe, the middle-east is a hodge-podge of countries England and France created by drawing lines on a map. For as long as the occupation troops which came in 1918 were still in the area, it was probably somewhat peaceful. And since then, it isn’t anymore. We have problems much closer to home which need sorting out first.
“I find the argument of how Israel came about mute……harping on about 1947 is pointless” It ain’t a moot point for those who have been dispossessed .
What I do know is that one side will happily use women and children as human shields and the other does not. One side locates their weapons dumps and missile launchers in schools and hospitals and the other doesn’t. One side indiscriminately slaughters innocents whilst the other does not. That’s all I need to know.
And the really cool thing about this is: It’s always the other side which commits all of the atrocities. All other sides, mind you, always depending on whom you’re listening to at the moment.
Just a rather alarming reality check of how the indoctrination starts from a very young age as kids are radicalized into becoming little Jihadist wannabes. The antisemitism force is strong in these kids. No wonder we’re seeing all of these sick celebrations all over the world if this is what they’re producing behind closed doors. And our politicians welcome them all to our shores! (<2mins );
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1712130285221896283
Just maybe because they’ve seen their parents, brothers and sisters killed over the last 70 years
The actual shame here is that this article doesn’t represent what Varoufakis actually said….and that this it egregiously tries to conflate Hamas as being the same as the civilian Palestinian population..which is the only ‘false and grotesque’ statement here….
Shameful….
I just asked my Alexa ‘Is Tony Blair the Anti-Christ?’
Alexa answered ‘Yes’.
Go figure 🤷♂️
The Daily Sceptic needs placing within this Israeli web of control..
What a disgraceful article, something I’d expect from the Daily Mail
So you acknowledge that Israel has ‘problematic policies towards Palestinians’ and that’s just those lucky enough to be in Israel.
In Gaza, by contrast, the population has been incarcerated in a small overpopulated area of land, with high levels of unemployment and poverty. This is solely due to the policies of the Israeli State, which on occasions also bombs the densely urbanised areas of Gaza. This is portrayed by the MSM(yes them!) as being targeted against militants, but of course most of those killed are innocent civilians. The ratio of Palestinians vs Israelis killed in ongoing conflicts over the past few decades is 20 to 1.
The comparisons with Apartheid are completely valid.
Balfour caused a right mess, didn’t he?
Crazy idea, the whole thing, right from the start.
Jews have always been travelling money lenders. And why not, there was nothing wrong with that.
In response to your final paragraph:
No, not if you read the Old Testament, which records the history of the Jews pre Jesus, and believe it. They have not ALWAYS been that; and not ALL of them have been involved in “money lending” ie banking.
This is worth a read to give some
historical context to it all
http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2008/02/benny-morris-on-fact-fiction-propaganda.html
I am rather shocked at Will Jones’s response to all this. I am a Christian and therefore believe that God wants his special people (the Jews) to return to him. But that does not mean that they should be able to get away with treating the Palestinians in Gaza cruelly, which is what they have been doing all these years. Yes, Hamas have perpetrated an evil act of aggression, but what about Israel? In any case, it is difficult to believe (and I don’t) that Israel, with its super sophisticated intelligence service, didn’t know about this beforehand. Their retaliation is out of proportion. What is awful is that both sides have attacked defenceless civilians (many women and children). Why aren’t we all calling for peace? Do we really all want WW3? Personally, though, this whole scenario, given that I don’t believe that Israel didn’t know about this attack beforehand, could well be a false flag. Funny how Ukraine has now disappeared from the news. Also, make sure you look and see that nothing else is being slipped through Parliament while our attention is elsewhere! (I think Miri AF is very good on all this. Read her – a simple search… Read more »
Q: What’s the opposite of shampoo?
A: Real poo.
Risible from DS. Just a reminder as many of the records have been expunged, here’s Moshe Dayan on the subject: ‘Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. We have no solution… you [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads’.
Here’s a more level headed (than DS) take from James Delingpole: https://delingpole.substack.com/p/israel-and-palestine-this-time-it
How are countries created? Most all have been as a result of conquest of some sort. This has occurred over millennium. Manny countries in Middle East were created by a few Western Men in Versaille. The Kurd’s land done away with. All of North America was taken over by conquest by Britain, France and other European countries. The Ukraine conflict is about conquest and control. The Soviet Union held many countries in Eastern Europe in it’s iron grip. Countries continue to exist if they can be defended. Most all have armies to do that. I don’t think much has changed in the last 80 years. There are no laws when it comes to this just power to defend what you have taken. Most of us sit hypocritally comfortable in our homes watching this conflict unfold through rose colored glasses.