Lindsey German, do you remember what you said about Hamas…
Lindsey German, formerly of Respect, now Counterfire, had this to say about Hamas on 17 July 2006:
whatever disagreements I have with Hamas and Hezbollah, I would rather be in their camp…they want democracy. Democracy in the Middle East is Hamas, is Hezbollah.
Why as a socialist would she say this, knowing that in their charter they state: “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims”.
While watching the rolling news on Saturday, German wrote:
Most people in the Middle East have a combination of economic and political grievances; the task of the left is to build mass united movements which can address those grievances and take the struggles forward to challenging capitalism and imperialism across the region.
The Egyptians have made a brilliant start.
According to German, in taking to the streets against Mubarak, the Egyptians have made a “brilliant start” at uniting against capitalism and imperialism.
A pity that Hamas authorities have decided to prevent demonstrations in the Gaza Strip aimed at showing solidarity with anti-government protesters in Egypt.
Perhaps it’s time for German to withdraw her comments about Hamas.
Maybe it’s time for you to get over your obsessions, Carl. Hamas and Hezbollah were at that point two major anti-imperialist forces in the region, and their success was an essential pre-condition for democracy. Hamas had just won a popular election and was resisting a Fatah-Israeli putsch, while Hezbollah was defeating an Israeli invasion. Their defeat in either case would have been a defeat for democracy.
This reflex of dragging up the antisemitism in the charter, which has no practical effect on Hamas policy (as virtually every serious analysis concludes), is something of a propaganda trump for every pro-Israel apologist. It is always the first weapon in the hasbara arsenal. If you’re going to resort to that level of non-argument, as if that has any bearing on how forces for democracy were aligned at that time, then you’re effectively placing yourself in the camp of unthinking propaganda.
With regards to your point on Hamas policy, the only way we’d find out whether it did filter into their actions is if Israel was to be blown sky high, so I hope it isn’t effected – which leads one wondering why it’s their at all, and why leftists pledge their support to a party with it (not strategically tail end Hamas until something socialistic comes along, actually support it, or as German says “be in their camp”).
Richard, I hope you know that I indefinitely support a peaceful two state solution, and am even handed with my criticism of its counterproduction, but I’m not compelled to support Hamas because they’re the lesser of two, or a dozen, evils.
You know as well as I do that democracy is a tool that can quite often be used only when it’s to the benefit of some players, whether that’s the Bush administration or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt when the former started to put pressure on Mubarak in 2004. Bearing in mind my principles, I know full well that it’s not always safe in the long run to support the “devil you know”, and I sincerely hope this wave of Arab revolutionising highlights this viz Hamas.
I can tolerate strategy, and I do so in the Middle East, but ask of me to withdraw my socialist principles in the Middle East and support Hamas and I’ll say no – I call on you and any other socialist to do the same.
Carl – you seriously wonder why Hamas has anti-Jewish rhetoric in their charter? Did no-one tell you that Israel purports to be the state of the Jewish people as whole? How about the fact that, in the name of the Jewish people as a whole, Israel has ethnically cleansed the majority of the non-Jewish native population of what was Palestine? Bullshitting for Israel has yielded all sorts of results for Israel and for bullshitters but honesty is still the nest policy for those of us who find racist rule repugnant.
Yes Mark, after that spurt of bile I’m still left wondering why Hamas has anti-Jewish rhetoric in their charter? I however do have this to say; I don’t know who to hate more: Israel for thinking it acts on behalf of all Jews (does it?); Hamas for hating Jews because of this; or you for believing/accepting either/both.
Why two states Carl? It isn’t peaceful, that’s for sure.
A single secular state is the only alternative. Two states argument is not only politically wrong and dishonest but geographically impossible. What will the Palestinian state be like? A Bantustan. Who will have the control of the airspace and substrata especially regards to extraction of artesian water…? And all that will depend on what kind of settlement is reached and who gets what in relation to land. Again, the only equitable way forward is a single secular state.
To speak frankly, there’s as much chance of a secular two-state solution as there is a secular Palestine covering all territories. But if we’re being idealistic about this a settlement will be agreed by two nations that consider one another equal, diplomatically. I may not like the inequality that is a reality today both between the two nations, and with Palestinian Arabs and Israelis inside Israel, but I can no more see the rewards of fighting for a one-state nation as I can making Europe one state, or indeed the one state world.
Carl, I can’t help noticing that you make comments irrespective of what has actually been said. You accuse others of bile and then list your hatreds based on issues you know nothing about.
But anyway, you say “I however do have this to say; I don’t know who to hate more: Israel for thinking it acts on behalf of all Jews (does it?)”
So you don’t know your subject. Perhaps you should <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/20/taboo-arabs-israel-jewish-characterread up on it a little.
Reasons a progressive sort of a person might have for “hating” Hamas are how it oppresses its own people. Two thirds of the imprisoned population of Gaza are refugees from what became Israel in 1948. The ethnic cleansers were Jews establishing a state for Jews. Even now Israel appears to be in an endgame to establish Israel as exclusively Jewish. To assume that there is some kind of innate Jew hatred among Arabs is racism pure and simple. And you accuse others of being simple.
I didn’t notice you calling yourself a socialist. There I have to agree with harpymarx. Segregation whether internal or by way of partition or repartition should be anathema to socialists. Perhaps you didn’t notice that in the Palestine Papers where the Palestinian negotiators ask for 10k refugees to be allowed to return out of 4.4 m, Tzipi Livni countered that when the Palestinians have a state Israel wants to send Arabs from Israel to the new powerless entity. And you support that? I’m not sure of your right to lecture others on what amounts to bile, racism and simple-mindedness.
I should really delete the first three paragraphs of yours, since my comment was a reply to your question “you seriously wonder why Hamas has anti-Jewish rhetoric in their charter?” The answer to which is of course yes. Furthermore, my beef is with this line: “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims” – don’t you dare come here and call me racist, because I am being nothing of the sort.
You are something of the sort (ie a racist) because you don’t try to understand why the victims of ethnic cleansing say the things they do about the community their ethnic cleansers purport to represent.
BTW, I don’t seem to be getting notifications.
Can I say for the purposes of the debate, my support for a two-state solution does not implicate me in the segregational crimes of the Israeli government (that have hitherto been raised), nor seek to mitigate crimes of any side. I don’t seek to succomb to any side, but I do see a two-state solution as being the most realistic state to fight for. I’m a secularist and socialist, but that is besides the point. The point of putting the original post up was to highlight the lousy reasoning of Lindsey German, and how that should’ve come back to haunt her now.
In German’s recent article, she says: “The rise of Islamic parties … has been a direct product of the policies of imperialism in the region”. I wonder whether she thinks Arabs can think for themselves; as much as I take opposition with Islamic or Islamist parties, to suggest they have the memberships they do can only be attributed to a naive, unthinking reaction to imperialism is both overly presumptuous, politically naive, and, at worst, of the opinion that Arabs are simpletons – a most neo-imperialist view.
Might I take a third way? Ideas like the two state/one state solution are worth discussing; Lindsey German’s views are, well – each to their own, I guess…
haha, I prefer it down your way actually Ben
Ok carl, you don’t support segregationism for segregationist reasons but for the sake of realism. you think there should be two states in Palestine, one for the world’s Jews and the other for Palestine’s non-Jews. I am only guessing of course because you haven’t said who these two states in Palestine/Israel and the occupied territories should be for.
Many people see the rise of islamism as the result of imperialism in the middle east though of course all people bare some responsibility for their own beliefs and behaviours. But what is you explanation for the rise of islamism? For someone who effects such umbrage at being accused of racism you are very accuse others others of the same thing with far less evidence than the evidence against you.
But go on, explain the rise of islamism in the middle east and of hamas in occupied palestine.
“I wonder whether she thinks Arabs can think for themselves”
But where do thoughts and ideas come from? They come from your surroundings, they do not come ready made before you are born. Imperialism has contributed to the politics of the region, to think otherwise is to believe in mysticism.
I would give this one to Levi, Harpy and Seymour by a knockout in the first round!
Even if they are right and I am wrong, you haven’t convinced me either way. But you carry on pondering where thoughts and ideas come from. Sure, life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life, however this is not a morality statement, but a statement of someone’s historical situation. Expressed as a morality it rather rings of relativism; the scourge of left wing politics.
“Carl – you seriously wonder why Hamas has anti-Jewish rhetoric in their charter?”
Uh, yes. I do “seriously wonder” why Hamas has anti-Semitic rhetoric in their charter? Just like I “seriously wonder” why the EDL and BNP are racist. I may understand in a material sense why white working-class people are attracted to fascistic idea, but that doesn’t lead me to accept such bigoted views as the norm – exactly what you are doing. You are legitimising anti-Semitism with such statements.
If you are ok with that and you are willing to accept that anti-Semitism is, by default, somehow the fault of the Jewish people themselves, and did not exist before the existence of the state of Israel, then be my guest. Not a “leftism” I will be any fucking part of.
P.S. Good post Carl.
Cheers mate
JBloodworth, you are equating zionism and the State of Israel with the Jewish people as a whole. No wonder you think (or at least claim to think) that Carl has done a good post. Hamas’s antisemitic rhetoric is a direct result of what the State of Israel has done to the Palestinians. The error of Hamas is to assume, as you do, that the State of Israel and the Jewish people are the same thing.
Equating Hamas with the EDL is ludicrous. The membership and constituency of Hamas are formed of the victims of ethnic cleansing and segregation by a state purporting (with your agreement) to represent all of the world’s Jews. The membership of the EDL and BNP purport to represent people who enjoy a higher status in the UK than their targets. EDL members and supporters are not victims of ethnic cleansing and their targets are not perpetrators.
The EDL and BNP (and you and Carl) are supporters and promoters of ethnic cleansing. Hamas represent and have been chosen to represent the victims of ethnic cleansing.
But if only you would drop your support for Jewish and white supremacy you could muster some legitimate and relevant criticism of Hamas. They stop women smoking in public places, they make women wear head coverings and they prevented solidarity demonstrations for Egypt. But the coded message for western hegemony is “is it good (or bad) for Jews?”, so you focus on what you imagine to be the feelings of people hurt the least by Hamas.
So go ahead ban me or threaten to ban me. I’ve been thrown out of better places. Then you racists can talk among yourselves and pretend you’re having a debate.
I don’t understand your reply Carl. You say ‘I wonder whether she thinks Arabs can think for themselves’, well yes they can, all humans can. But that ability to think is not done in a vacuum, it is influenced by all the things we take in from the outside environment. So your ‘clever’ comment against Lindsey was cheap, misplaced and senseless. Palestinians have been susceptible to anti Jewish views because of their direct suffering at the hands of people who claim to be acting in the name of the ‘Jewish state’. Conservative values, the rise of reactionary utopian ideas have spread due to oppression and the lack of progress. Who was it that said religion was the sigh of the oppressed, the heart of a heartless world?Well there are few more oppressed than the Palestinians and few more heartless than those that patrol Israeli checkpoints.
Support the one state solution. Israeli and Palestinian workers unite!