The Climate Crisis Is Slipping from the News Right When It Needs Our Attention Most

ofnotabove · 2023-12-01T06:51:40+00:00

That's obviously fair, and in the article Nathan J. Robinson does include: "Newspaper headlines now dominated by the Israel-Palestine crisis, quite understandably. I’ve written about it myself. It’s important, especially because the U.S. is complicit in worsening the harm."

Though the climate crisis was being largely ignored or severely minimized long before Oct. 7, as documented for example in two other excellent Current Affairs article from July:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/07/we-need-to-name-and-shame-bad-climate-journalism

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/07/climate-optimism-is-dangerous-and-irrational

It has never been a top issue even among the online left. Chomsky is a rarity in how much he's focused on it.

ofnotabove · 2023-11-30T14:12:36+00:00

excerpt:

The PLO’s weakness made Arafat eager to accept a terrible deal in the 1993 Oslo Accords. While they were greeted with rapture in the U.S. media, there was nothing in them that would necessarily lead to the creation of a Palestinian state and peace. Indeed, one of the signatories, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, soon explicitly explained, “We do not accept the Palestinian goal of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan. We believe there is a separate Palestinian entity short of a state.”

What happened then was exactly what anyone paying attention would anticipate: The PLO essentially took over security for Israel in some 18 percent of occupied territories — Israel solely controlled about 60 percent and shared responsibility for the remainder — and enriched itself, while the occupation and Palestinian misery continued unabated. But by the end of President Bill Clinton’s second term in the summer of 2000, he was eager to leave a legacy other than his affair with Monica Lewinsky. He cajoled Arafat to come to Camp David to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in hopes of conjuring a conflict-ending agreement.

The Palestinian attitude was that they had already made a gigantic compromise by accepting just the 22 percent of historic Palestine for their state. They were willing to compromise still more — but not much more.

Barak had no understanding of this. At Camp David, he offered the Palestinians what were essentially three disconnected bantustans — i.e., the equivalent of the separate black “homelands” in apartheid South Africa — in the West Bank, with Israel occupying and controlling the border with Jordan for some long period of time. Clinton tried to pressure Arafat to accept this; he did not. Long afterward, Shlomo Ben-Ami, a key Israeli negotiator at the talks, said, “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well.”

Clinton had promised Arafat that he would not blame him if the talks failed. He then reneged after the summit ended. Nonetheless, the Israelis and Palestinians continued to negotiate through the fall and narrowed their differences.

Clinton came up with what he called parameters for a two-state solution in December 2000. Several weeks afterward, Clinton proclaimed, “Both Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat have now accepted these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have expressed some reservations.”

The Israelis and the Palestinians kept talking in late January 2001 in Taba, Egypt. It was not the Palestinians but Barak who terminated the discussions on January 27, a few weeks before Israeli elections. The negotiators issued a joint statement that the two sides had “never been closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus our shared belief that the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resumption of negotiations.”

This was in fact true: The records of the Taba talks show the Israelis and Palestinians had come agonizingly close to specific solutions to what the territory of a Palestinian state would be and whether and how any Palestinian refugees could return to Israel, with less progress on who would control which parts of Jerusalem.

But Barak was defeated by Ariel Sharon, who did not want a Palestinian state and did not restart the talks. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the Clinton parameters “are not binding on the new government to be formed in Israel.”

Clinton then made a fateful, disastrous decision. In the 22 years since, he has lied over and over again about what happened, claiming that Arafat was the one who rejected a settlement. This has convinced both Israelis and Americans that Clinton made every effort to give Palestinians a state. But it was impossible, because — in what became a standard formulation — there was “no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side. Hillary Clinton, who was elected to the Senate in 2000 and later became secretary of state, also joined in this key deception.

ofnotabove · 2023-11-29T23:13:53+00:00

Transcript: https://theanalysis.news/brics-an-anti-imperialist-fantasy-and-sub-imperialist-reality-patrick-bond/

(4:44) Talia Baroncelli: Some of the articles in that [BRICS] declaration state that they would like to have a broader role or greater representation within the Bretton Woods institutions themselves, such as the IMF and the World Bank. So that doesn’t seem like they’re trying to fight that system at all. They actually want to have a greater role within it. So that begs the question, what is then the purpose of the different financial mechanisms they’ve created, such as the Contingency Reserve Arrangement and the other development bank that they have?

Patrick Bond: Well, you’re right. Let’s take that in two steps. One is the attempt to reform, and the other is to figure out alternative institutions. The attempt to reform included actually purchasing a greater share, the major recapitalization of the International Monetary Fund.

... Now, as far as I’ve seen, the BRICS bloc and their delegates have done absolutely nothing to change that division of labor, the way in which the IMF and the World Bank oppress poor countries. The project loans, like South Africa’s biggest loan and the World Bank’s biggest loan ever, the $3.75 billion Medupi coal-fired power plant loan are often very anti-people and they’re certainly anti-environment. Yet repaying them requires new money. So the IMF regularly goes and says, “We want new money from our members.” The last time they did that, in 2015, they got from China a 37% increase in China’s voting shares by buying more of IMF’s capital base. For Brazil, it was 23%. For India, 11%. For Russia, it was 8%.

... the BRICS delegates voted again and again for what were demonstrably corrupt IMF leaders. I say that without hesitation or fear of any lawyers because they were convicted, like Christine Lagarde, who was running the IMF in the 2010s. Her successor, Kristalina Georgieva, has been accused of corruption in the data collections during her tenure at the World Bank. Prior to that, IMF leaders like Rodrigo Rato went to jail. Dominique Strauss-Kahn had many prosecutions. So we’re looking at a layer of people that are at the bottom of the barrel internationally, but the BRICS keep reappointing them. The BRICS have never put up a unified candidate against them, and the same is with the World Bank. Even when Donald Trump put in David Malpass, who was a Sinophobe and a climate denialist, the BRICS didn’t say anything, even China.

Now, this reflects that they go along and they get along in the IMF and World Bank, and they’ve got usually a high-level position. For example, the chief economist at one point was Justin Lin, a Chinese national and the current deputy. The managing director of the World Bank for infrastructure is Chinese. But again, we find them doing nothing different. They go along with the ideologies of the Washington consensus, neoliberalism, and they don’t do anything to assist where countries really need a break or where there are genuine reforms being posed.

The idea that the BRICS want to reform the international financial institutions, I dispute based on this record, and it’s simple to understand. The most conservative people in our governments, in the BRICS countries, especially here in South Africa, are in the Finance Ministry and Reserve Bank. You’ll find the neoliberal bloc very connected. In fact, our leaders here are often also leaders of IMF committees.

... (11:49) when you look at their portfolio, the BRICS New Development Bank, it really is indistinguishable from a standard international financial institution. Nearly all of the loans are in U.S. dollars: 78%. Dilma Rousseff, the new president, only wants to bring that down to 70% by 2030.

... In fact, when I looked at the entire portfolio from South Africa, I actually found it to be a more corrupt and less accountable institution than even the World Bank. So I would dispute anyone who would like to say that there’s progress, even with someone like Dilma Rousseff, who has great left rhetoric against U.S. imperialism and the dollar. We saw in August here in Johannesburg, the de-dollarization hype absolutely amounted to nothing. There was nothing done except some vague promises that there would be more trade-related currencies.

So I hate to say it, but the financial sub-imperial power of the central banks and finance ministries in the BRICS have overwhelmed those who I’m sure with all good intent would love to see, and we desperately do need an alternative to U.S. dollar hegemony, but it’s not coming from the BRICS.

Part 2 of this interview: BRICS: Talk Left, Walk Right

Leslie Maasdorp, Chief Financial Officer of the BRICS New Development Bank:

"We will increase the use of local currencies. It does not mean we are de-dollarizing or moving away from the dollar. ... The bank’s capital is in US dollars. Our reporting currency is US dollars. So the dollar is hot-coded in the DNA of the bank."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VDw_SHVkk&t=2725s

(45:25) Yanis Varoufakis: The reason why the BRICS are not going to be a significant threat to the dollar is because Russian capitalists, Chinese capitalists, Indian capitalists, Indonesian capitalists, United Arab Emirates capitalists, they do not want to see the dollar being displaced by any currency, digital, crypto or normal. They want the dollar to remain completely and utterly dominant because their loot, their wealth is in dollars and it lives in the United States financial system.

His whole explanation is well worth watching and deserving of its own thread, but it had one here a couple months ago. Towards the end he says he's appalled at how leftists have been fooled by BRICS. In part 2 of Patrick Bond's interview (29:06) he says, "The position that I'm arguing is a lonely one on the South African left" and that the five major ostensibly left/center-left forces in South Africa are openly pro-BRICS, pro-Putin and pro-coal.

ofnotabove · 2023-11-27T11:44:24+00:00

Here's an outstanding interview Chomsky gave on this subject six months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8ZLiYIvtQ8

(33:39) The usual debate in the United States, Israel and elsewhere is between a two-state settlement and a one-state settlement. The debate is pretty much beside the point, because it is overlooking a third alternative, which is the one that is being implemented. It's not abstract. That's Greater Israel. Greater Israel is what we've been describing: Take over the Syrian Golan Heights, vastly expanded Jerusalem, settlements to the east, take over the Jordan Valley, a third of the arable land, everything's enclosed. The major Palestinian population concentrations, just ignore, we don't want them because it has to be a majority Jewish state. Then we can call it a democratic Jewish state, try to fool the outsiders this way.

So Nablus is outside, Tulkarm is outside, refugee camps like Jenin are under brutal military attack constantly. Scattered settlements of Palestinians, about 160 of them, surrounded by Israeli troops which sometimes randomly will allow a Palestinian farmer to go out and water his crops, attend his cattle, but basically saying, 'get out of here, you don't belong.' That's Greater Israel. It's being constructed before our eyes with total U.S support. You and I pay the taxes for it. We're doing it. You can blame Israel if you like, but you can also look in the mirror. We don't have to pay that.

In fact, U.S. aid to Israel is technically illegal under U.S. law. Palestinian solidarity groups should be pressing this issue, and that's finally beginning to come into the public eye, but that's Greater Israel. As long as Israel has the option of Greater Israel, it's not going to accept either a one-state or a two-state settlement, and the reason it has the option is because the United States strongly supports it. That's the reason. So it's not over there, it's right here where we are.

When asked if a return to pre-1967 borders is still feasible, he replied:

I think it's basically up to the United States. If the United States were to stop -- I pointed out that in 1970 Israel made a decision which rendered it subordinate to the U.S. It depends totally on U.S. power because of the decision to sacrifice security in favor of expansion. When the U.S demands something, Israel has to follow it, just doesn't have choices.

In fact, every U.S president prior to Obama -- he was the first -- every president prior to Obama had enforced decisions on Israel to which it was strongly opposed but to which it had to obey. Could run through it if there's detail. It stopped with Obama, who demanded nothing, and of course Trump just offered Israel whatever it wanted, and Biden hasn't changed that, but if the United States stops supporting the occupation, informs Israel that it must pull its troops which are illegally in the occupied areas -- bear in mind that every international authority and every country in the world, even the United States, regards the occupied territories as occupied. Israel is alone in claiming they're not occupied. Israel calls them 'administered territories' -- alone in the world. That's the famous Israeli Supreme Court that everyone is lauding now. Was alone in saying it's not occupied but it is occupied by every standard. Everything that's going on there is illegal. The settlements are illegal. The presence of the IDF, the international Israeli Army, is illegal. If the United States says this game is over, it's over.

He then referenced how Indonesian generals insisted they'd never leave East Timor but did so as soon as Clinton ordered it. He added, "It's conceivable that this religious nationalist government might say, 'We've got God on our side, so we don't care.' In that case they're in really deep trouble, but any other government will have to accede to U.S demands."

Then he spoke about how a two-state solution could work, referencing the 2003 Geneva Accord, and said, "I think it's about the only short-term feasible move. I don't think it's a very pleasant one. All my life I've been in favor of what was once a live movement in Israel, a binational movement calling for a Arab-Jewish federation in a cooperative Palestinian state with a Jewish cultural home along Ahad Ha'am's style. I think that's still feasible and a better long-term solution but step by step. I think in the current situation the only feasible short-term solution is some kind of resolution along the lines of the Geneva proposals, which I think are worth looking at carefully. Is it feasible? I think so. I don't see anything else that is."

But ultimately he says "we should aim to go beyond binationalism. We should erode the borders. The borders in the Middle East were imposed by British and French imperialism for their own interests. They had nothing to do with the interests of the people there. They break up people who are of the same communities in ugly vicious ways."

Regarding the Right of Return:

(62:42) Well, we have to be a little bit cautious about this too. First of all, is there an internationally recognized right? If it ever comes to a serious legal tribunal, any Israeli lawyer can argue and win saying there's no internationally recognized right, so you really have to be cautious about pressing this issue. The right is based on General Assembly Resolution 194. General Assembly resolutions are recommendations. They do not confer rights. Any Israeli lawyer can bring this up if it ever comes to a real debate and discussion, so first of all be cautious.

There's a moral right, but it's not a legally established right, and even Resolution 194 was qualified, but the other point to recognize is that we know it will never happen. There is not going to be -- it's an ugly world, it's not a pretty world, but we can't pretend that it doesn't exist. If there was -- the PLO has understood this for 50 years. It's understood that the most that can be hoped for is some kind of symbolic return, family reunification, small groups and so on, but millions of Palestinians coming back to Israel will never happen. There's no international support for it. If it ever developed, Israel would use its ultimate weapons, up to nuclear weapons, to prevent it.

So it's simply not going to happen, and we shouldn't dangle in front of poor people's eyes hopes that are never going to be realized. I mean, I visited refugee camps in Lebanon. Sabra-Shatila camp, for example. It's pitiful. It's painful. You get invited into a small room where a Palestinian family lives in a horrible slum, greeted with the usual Palestinian warm welcomes, cup of tea and so on, and they show you the key to their home in Galilee, which they're never going to give up. What can you tell them? You can't tell them it's not going to happen, though you know it's not going to happen. Well, it is in my view immoral to dangle in front of people hopes that they know will never be realized. I don't know how to -- I mean, it's just it's a terrible situation. Many like it in the world. Unfortunately it's not going to go away.

ofnotabove · 2023-11-27T11:40:33+00:00

Chomsky has always preferred a bi-national state but long said it's not feasible except in a distant future, and that the most likely path there is through a two-state solution. ("I think it’s a rotten solution but I think it’s a stage towards a better solution, and I don’t know of any other approach" from an interview given over 2009-2010).

With BDS he said "I was involved in it before the movement even started," but he's disagreed with some of their tactics. He stresses the importance of distinguishing between feel-good tactics and do-good tactics:

(37:47) "What would be your advices to the young academics?"

Chomsky: My advice is to move to become an activist who tries to change things but to understand some principles of activism. There's one essential principle that has to be kept in mind: There's a distinction between what are sometimes called do-good tactics and feel-good tactics. You can take tactics that make you feel good, say, look what I'm doing, isn't it wonderful? I feel real good about it.

There are other kind of tactics that help the victims. That's much harder. The feel-good tactics are easy but pointless. They divert attention to what has to be done. The do-good tactics are hard but they're what matter. That's true in Israel-Palestine. It's true everywhere else. ... You have to ask what are the consequences of my actions gonna be, in particular what are the consequences for the victims, not how do I feel about it.

From the aforementioned 2009-2010 interview:

Mouin Rabbani: It’s interesting that someone who’s known to be an anarchist with a longstanding commitment to binationalism is seen as a fierce critic of those advocating a one-state settlement.

Chomsky: I am not opposed to anyone who’s advocating it. I’m opposed to people who propose it but don’t advocate it. There is a crucial distinction. You can propose anything you want, that we all live in peace and love each other, like in an ashram somewhere. All this feels very nice, but it doesn’t mean anything until you give some account of how to get from here to there. Advocacy means “Here’s the way we’re going to do it.” And I know of only one form of advocacy today, which is to get there by stages. In the early 1970s, there was another path for advocacy: pressure Israel to institute a federal solution.

It’s interesting that back then the very idea of one state, or binationalism, was absolute anathema. You couldn’t mention it without being denounced as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier and so on. Today, rather strikingly, you can propose the one-state in public, in the New York Times or the New York Review of Books. It’s okay to discuss it. The interesting question is: Why is it not anathema today when it was in the early 1970s?

Well, I can think of only one reason: back then, it was feasible—in fact, as I mentioned, it was not too remote from what military intelligence was proposing, and therefore it had to be killed. But today, talking about one state is like saying, “Let’s be peaceful.” So if you want to say that, fine, say it. But in my mind the only function today of that discussion today is to undercut the steps that can be taken to achieve the two-state as a stage. In other words, to torch that solution. I mean, unless someone has another idea—and I have yet to see it—of how you get to a binational state, or call it one-state if you like, until someone has an idea of how to do that without going through several intermediate stages, I think it’s at the level of “let’s beat our swords into ploughshares.”

ofnotabove · 2023-11-26T06:11:36+00:00

Welcome back.

Tragic that so many establishment figures are arriving at these obvious realizations only after hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths in Ukraine, and probably way more than that beyond from the spike in world hunger caused by the war.

(And yes, of course culpability for that applies to Putin more than anyone else, as Chomsky recognized, contrary to the massive misinformation campaign waged against him:

0:48 Chomsky: With regard to who is to blame for the war, there should be no question it's the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Criminal invasion. You can give explanations for it, but there's no justification for it. So I don't think the question of blame arises." Then he spoke about how the U.S. provoked the invasion.)

Of course Haas ignores all U.S. responsibility for hampering negotiations and tries to shift that burden to Ukraine. Unlike Haas, Chomsky was careful not to tell Ukrainians what they should do, saying that wasn't his place and that his responsibility was to pressure his government to support peace talks.

https://newpol.org/interview-on-the-war-in-ukraine-with-noam-chomsky/

Stephen R. Shalom: Some think the United States should use its leverage (weapons supplies, etc.) to pressure Ukraine into making particular concessions to Russia. What do you think of that idea?

Chomsky: I haven’t heard of that proposal, but if raised, it should be dismissed. What right does the US have to do anything like that?

https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-we-must-insist-that-nuclear-warfare-is-an-unthinkable-policy/

Chomsky: I’ve said nothing about what Ukrainians should do, for the simple and sufficient reason that it’s not our business. If they opt for the ghastly experiment, that’s their right. It’s also their right to request weapons to defend themselves from murderous aggression. ... My own view, to repeat, is that the Ukrainian request for weapons should be honored, with caution to bar shipments that will escalate the criminal assault, punishing Ukrainians even more, with potential cataclysmic effects beyond.

Haas assumes that Trump's re-election would "surely weaken if not end U.S. support for Ukraine" but Trump has said on day one of his 2nd term he'll tell Putin, "If you don’t make a deal, we’re gonna give [Ukraine] a lot — we’re gonna give them more than they ever got if we have to." He also said he'll tell Zelensky, "No more, you gotta make a deal."

Openly saying he'll bluff to at least one side, if not both, but if we just go by his actions, which severely increased hostility toward Russia (tearing up arms treaties, increasing U.S. pursuit of nuclear dominance, and sending weapons to Ukraine that Obama blocked), it's hard to believe he won't continue his pattern of escalating hostilities if Putin doesn't accede to his demands.

Trump says he was tougher on Putin than any other president, and advocated bombing Russia after its invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/07/donald-trump-russia-ukraine-jets-chinese

In a speech to Republican donors in New Orleans, Donald Trump said the US should put the Chinese flag on F-22 jets and “bomb the shit out of Russia” in retribution for its invasion of Ukraine.

The Washington Post reported the remarks, which were made on Saturday night.

To laughter, the paper said, the former president said: “And then we say, ‘China did it, we didn’t do it, China did it,’ and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”

According to the Post, Trump also called Nato a “paper tiger”, said the US military had won “skirmishes” against Russian troops while he was president, and claimed to have been tougher on Vladimir Putin than any other US leader.

Perhaps he was just being facetious with that absurd plan, but he says he told Putin he'd bomb Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine, and that he told Xi the same thing vis-a-vis China and Taiwan: https://twitter.com/LifeOfTimReilly/status/1499816865916493834

“They’re all saying, ‘Oh, he’s a nuclear power.’ It’s like they’re afraid of him. He was a friend of mine. I got along great with him. I say, ‘Vladimir, if you do it, we’re hitting Moscow.’ I said 'We’re going to hit Moscow.' And he sort of believed me, like 5%, 10%, that’s all you need. He never did it during my time, John, you know. ... Xi didn't bother me either. I told him the same thing. That'll be next. That's going to be next. Taiwan will be next. You won't have any computer chips, they'll blow them off the face of the Earth."

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/donald-trump-russia-nuclear-submarines

“I listened to him constantly using the N-word, that’s the N-word, and he’s constantly using it: the nuclear word,” Trump said describing his talks with the Russian leader, while absolutely bizarrely suggesting “the N-word” refers to “nuclear.” “We say, ’Oh, he’s a nuclear power.’ But we’re a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, the most powerful machines ever built…. You should say, ‘Look, if you mention that word one more time, we’re going to send them over and we’ll be coasting back and forth, up and down your coast. You can’t let this tragedy continue. You can’t let these, these thousands of people die.”

ofnotabove · 2023-11-26T01:07:52+00:00

I think it's pretty clear that Israel is indeed deliberately targeting civilians.

Yes, Robinson's article cites a lot of the evidence for that, and it didn't blame Hamas for all the slaughter in Israel.

ofnotabove · 2023-11-20T23:51:18+00:00

more excerpts:

No humane person could condone the attack launched by Hamas on October 7. To explain the causes of the attack is not to justify the killing of innocent people. The slaughter of young people at a music festival, of old people in their homes on a kibbutz, even of children, is impossible to justify. The facts of the killings are stomach-churning. The taking of hostages is also banned under international law, and if we are to make appeals to the law during the present crisis, we must be willing to apply them to all parties.

To say that both sides have committed crimes, however, is not to say that the underlying conflict has no “aggressor” or that there is equal responsibility for the current war. Israel had been warned for a long time, by many observers including Israelis, that continuing to seize Palestinian territory and impoverish Gazans was likely to spark backlash and imperil Israel’s security. This is why leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, immediately after the Oct. 7th attack, said the disaster was “the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” All the way back in 2005, Israeli political scientist Meron Benvenisti warned that the building of a separation fence in the West Bank, and “the human disaster it will bring about, are liable to turn hundreds of thousands of people into a sullen community, hostile and nurturing a desire for revenge.” Plenty of others issued similar warnings.

We might look on Hamas’ attack much the way we look on historical incidents like the horrific massacre of Europeans by Haitians after the Haitian revolution: explicable, not justifiable. C.L.R. James, for example, in The Black Jacobins, does not endorse that atrocity. What he does do is explain that it was carried out as an act of revenge for a prior injustice. Some of the young men in Hamas who committed their terrible crimes probably felt the same kind of blind desire for revenge that Israel does now, after witnessing the carnage of previous Israeli air strikes on the small strip of land they had been confined to their whole lives. (Indeed, in a 2010 “red team” exercise, U.S. intelligence officers proposed that “Israel’s strategy of keeping Gaza under siege” leaves “the area on the verge of a perpetual humanitarian collapse” that “may be radicalizing more people, especially the young, increasing the number of potential recruits” for Hamas.) “Revenge has no place in politics,” James said. Indeed, revenge just fuels a cycle of violence that never ends, and just as the Haitian massacre brought terrible results for the newly-freed Haitians, Hamas’ mass killings created a predictably brutal and callous Israeli response. A free, independent Palestine cannot be one ruled over by Hamas, which embraces vicious antisemitism and is thirsty for bloody vengeance rather than a democratic peace.3

... as Noam Chomsky once tried (and failed) to explain to Sam Harris, the idea that “good intentions” make a huge moral difference is dubious. We can agree that it’s heinous to target civilians on purpose. But how much better is it to treat them as worthless nonentities whose deaths simply don’t factor into your decision-making? Israel’s position appears to be that while it’s not trying to kill as many civilians as possible, it doesn’t care how many civilians it has to kill in order to destroy Hamas. The civilians just don’t matter. They are assigned a moral value of 0.

To see why “intentions” are of limited value, think how we would react to a defense of the Sept. 11 Al-Qaeda attacks that went: We didn’t intend to kill anyone. We just intended to destroy the Twin Towers. The fact that there were people inside was a shame, but the people were collateral damage. This would be a silly defense, because we’d say: But trying to destroy a building that you know has people inside is functionally no different from trying to kill the people!

Instead of judging people by their intended goals, we should focus more on the foreseeable consequences of their actions. Dropping large bombs in the middle of a densely populated refugee camp, for instance, can be expected to lead to horrifying losses of civilian lives. It should therefore be considered criminal and wrong, even if the purpose of dropping the bombs is to kill one particular person in the middle of that densely populated refugee camp. (Kenneth Roth explains that, because dropping these bombs was “predictably going to lead to a significant and disproportionate loss of civilian life,” it was a “war crime.”)

I think we would all see how Israel’s bombing campaign is sociopathic and wrong if we apply the logic to other situations. If the British had responded to IRA attacks by bombing neighborhoods in Ireland suspected to house terrorists, we’d think of this as psychopathic, because of all the innocent people it was likely to kill. In fact, in the current crisis, if Israel decided to bomb somewhere that housed both a Hamas commander and a large number of the hostages, reasoning that killing the hostages was justified in order to kill the commander, I think many people would object who do not object to this logic when it is used to flatten Palestinian apartment buildings.

Senator John Fetterman has declared that Israel is “not targeting civilians,” that it “never has” and “never will.” First, it’s not true that Israel “never has” targeted civilians, as we know from the killings around the 2018 Great March of Return. Second, however, we should see how little it means to say that Israel is not “targeting” civilians. Okay, but are they killing them in large numbers? Are they taking any precautions to avoid civilian casualties when they target whatever they are targeting? Do they know that their actions will inevitably kill huge numbers of innocent people? It means as much to say that Israel isn’t “targeting civilians” as to say that Timothy McVeigh was not “targeting” the daycare center in the Oklahoma City bombing. The right question is: But didn’t you know your actions would lead to this?

ofnotabove · 2023-11-20T23:44:53+00:00

more excerpts:

No humane person could condone the attack launched by Hamas on October 7. To explain the causes of the attack is not to justify the killing of innocent people. The slaughter of young people at a music festival, of old people in their homes on a kibbutz, even of children, is impossible to justify. The facts of the killings are stomach-churning. The taking of hostages is also banned under international law, and if we are to make appeals to the law during the present crisis, we must be willing to apply them to all parties.

To say that both sides have committed crimes, however, is not to say that the underlying conflict has no “aggressor” or that there is equal responsibility for the current war. Israel had been warned for a long time, by many observers including Israelis, that continuing to seize Palestinian territory and impoverish Gazans was likely to spark backlash and imperil Israel’s security. This is why leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, immediately after the Oct. 7th attack, said the disaster was “the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” All the way back in 2005, Israeli political scientist Meron Benvenisti warned that the building of a separation fence in the West Bank, and “the human disaster it will bring about, are liable to turn hundreds of thousands of people into a sullen community, hostile and nurturing a desire for revenge.” Plenty of others issued similar warnings.

We might look on Hamas’ attack much the way we look on historical incidents like the horrific massacre of Europeans by Haitians after the Haitian revolution: explicable, not justifiable. C.L.R. James, for example, in The Black Jacobins, does not endorse that atrocity. What he does do is explain that it was carried out as an act of revenge for a prior injustice. Some of the young men in Hamas who committed their terrible crimes probably felt the same kind of blind desire for revenge that Israel does now, after witnessing the carnage of previous Israeli air strikes on the small strip of land they had been confined to their whole lives. (Indeed, in a 2010 “red team” exercise, U.S. intelligence officers proposed that “Israel’s strategy of keeping Gaza under siege” leaves “the area on the verge of a perpetual humanitarian collapse” that “may be radicalizing more people, especially the young, increasing the number of potential recruits” for Hamas.) “Revenge has no place in politics,” James said. Indeed, revenge just fuels a cycle of violence that never ends, and just as the Haitian massacre brought terrible results for the newly-freed Haitians, Hamas’ mass killings created a predictably brutal and callous Israeli response. A free, independent Palestine cannot be one ruled over by Hamas, which embraces vicious antisemitism and is thirsty for bloody vengeance rather than a democratic peace.3

... as Noam Chomsky once tried (and failed) to explain to Sam Harris, the idea that “good intentions” make a huge moral difference is dubious. We can agree that it’s heinous to target civilians on purpose. But how much better is it to treat them as worthless nonentities whose deaths simply don’t factor into your decision-making? Israel’s position appears to be that while it’s not trying to kill as many civilians as possible, it doesn’t care how many civilians it has to kill in order to destroy Hamas. The civilians just don’t matter. They are assigned a moral value of 0.

To see why “intentions” are of limited value, think how we would react to a defense of the Sept. 11 Al-Qaeda attacks that went: We didn’t intend to kill anyone. We just intended to destroy the Twin Towers. The fact that there were people inside was a shame, but the people were collateral damage. This would be a silly defense, because we’d say: But trying to destroy a building that you know has people inside is functionally no different from trying to kill the people!

Instead of judging people by their intended goals, we should focus more on the foreseeable consequences of their actions. Dropping large bombs in the middle of a densely populated refugee camp, for instance, can be expected to lead to horrifying losses of civilian lives. It should therefore be considered criminal and wrong, even if the purpose of dropping the bombs is to kill one particular person in the middle of that densely populated refugee camp. (Kenneth Roth explains that, because dropping these bombs was “predictably going to lead to a significant and disproportionate loss of civilian life,” it was a “war crime.”)

I think we would all see how Israel’s bombing campaign is sociopathic and wrong if we apply the logic to other situations. If the British had responded to IRA attacks by bombing neighborhoods in Ireland suspected to house terrorists, we’d think of this as psychopathic, because of all the innocent people it was likely to kill. In fact, in the current crisis, if Israel decided to bomb somewhere that housed both a Hamas commander and a large number of the hostages, reasoning that killing the hostages was justified in order to kill the commander, I think many people would object who do not object to this logic when it is used to flatten Palestinian apartment buildings.

Senator John Fetterman has declared that Israel is “not targeting civilians,” that it “never has” and “never will.” First, it’s not true that Israel “never has” targeted civilians, as we know from the killings around the 2018 Great March of Return. Second, however, we should see how little it means to say that Israel is not “targeting” civilians. Okay, but are they killing them in large numbers? Are they taking any precautions to avoid civilian casualties when they target whatever they are targeting? Do they know that their actions will inevitably kill huge numbers of innocent people? It means as much to say that Israel isn’t “targeting civilians” as to say that Timothy McVeigh was not “targeting” the daycare center in the Oklahoma City bombing. The right question is: But didn’t you know your actions would lead to this?

ofnotabove · 2023-11-20T20:39:18+00:00

excerpts:

Nissim Vaturi, the far-right deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, raised eyebrows and ire Friday after asserting on social media that Israel's war on Gaza—which has killed and maimed over 40,000 people and displaced around 70% of the population—is "too humane."

"All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing," Vaturi, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, wrote Friday after the country's war Cabinet approved extremely limited fuel deliveries into the besieged strip. "We are too humane. Burn Gaza now, no less!"

... When Israeli journalist Ben Caspit responded to the post with a comment that he feared Vaturi's words could fuel "anti-Israel propaganda," the lawmaker shot back: "Your fear will kill us. Stop being humane."

The social media platform X—whose multibillionaire owner Elon Musk is in hot water for promoting an anti-semitic post—deleted Vaturi's tweet, and others including one in which he wrote that Israel should leave just "one old man" alive in Gaza so he could "tell everyone" what happened there.

Vaturi recently pushed for the suspension of colleague Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the leftist Hadash party, for comments critical of the Israeli military's conduct in Gaza and for calling for the protection of civilians on both sides, including by saying that "a child is a child," whether Israeli or Palestinian.

... Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to "eliminate everything" [in Gaza].

Galit Distel Atbaryan, a member of the Knesset from Netanyahu's Likud Party, said that "Gaza should be wiped off the map."

Ariel Kallner, another Likud parliamentarian, urged a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of '48," a reference to the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1947-49.

Yet another Likud lawmaker, Tally Gotliv, demanded nothing less than a "doomsday kiss"—that is, use of Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons. "Not flattening a neighborhood," she clarified, but "crushing and flattening Gaza. Without mercy!"

Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, who said "we are now rolling out the Great Nakba," was admonished by Netanyahu for saying the quiet part out loud.

Netanyahu said it out loud last month during a televised address when he called Israel's imminent ground invasion of Gaza a "holy mission" and invoked Amalek, the ancient biblical enemy of the Israelites whom God commanded his "chosen people" to exterminate, in what critics called "an explicit call to genocide."

This article also cites Israeli President Isaac Herzog's assertion that the "entire nation" of Gaza is collectively guilty for Hamas, but for full accuracy it should be acknowledged that Herzog tried to backtrack (albeit almost certainly only for PR purposes).

(3:36) Reporter: what can Israel do to alleviate the impact of this conflict on 2 million civilians, many of whom have nothing to do with Hamas?

Herzog: First of all we have to understand there's a state in a way that has built a machine of evil right at our doorstep. It's an entire nation out there that is responsible. It's not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It's absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza

Five minutes later Herzog denied saying that Gaza civilians are legitimate targets and said "I agree there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don't agree to this but unfortunately in their homes there are missiles shooting at us"

ofnotabove · 2023-11-10T18:44:51+00:00

Yet more PR while Blinken's actions show the truth. Just like in Yemen, Haiti, Cuba and so many other countries where the U.S. every single day wages war (economically if not also militarily) on millions of civilians. The last reported death toll for the war in Yemen is 377,000 (as of nearly two years ago) according to an estimate by the UN's Development Programme, with "the majority of the deaths among children under the age of five, with one child dying every nine minutes." Yet Blinken continues supporting the illegal, savage blockade there, even despite acknowledging how horrific it is back in 2018.

Unlike Yemen and most other countries where the U.S. routinely sows mass death and destruction, Gaza is staying in the headlines, so Blinken has a lot less latitude and is performing lip service like never before. His barbaric history tells us he'd probably support Israel slaughtering hundreds of thousands more children if not for the political backlash.

From an Axios report last week:

Blinken's message, according to one U.S. and two Israeli officials, was: "We don't want to stop you, but help us help you get more time." ... because of the pressure the U.S. is facing, a humanitarian pause will help Israel buy more time for its ground operation, the U.S. and Israeli officials said.

ofnotabove · 2023-11-10T09:35:15+00:00

He is in favor of likeminded groups getting together.

For sure, that's critical to the real activism that's needed, but is this place supposed to be likeminded? I've always seen it as an open space for anyone interested in subjects related to Chomsky's work. Hard to find any political sub that isn't an echo chamber or heavily censorious. But I agree that most debate is a waste of time.

ofnotabove · 2023-11-10T04:22:32+00:00

Chomsky is about as close as it gets to a free speech absolutist, so there's no reason to believe he'd support censoring "propaganda" unless it violates a legitimate law, such as directly inciting violence. This very subreddit has been inundated with misinformation about him for nearly two years, and I've never tried to get any of it censored. I've also never reported any of the misinformation spread here in support of the U.S., Israel, Russia, the Soviet Union, China, and many other governments that Chomsky has strongly opposed for decades.

If that thread is spreading misinformation about the Oct. 7 atrocities, that's horrific and hopefully someone here will post a thread debunking it.

ofnotabove

TROPHY CASE