From Acapulco to Gaza City
How do you respond to this? How do you find words? As you look-on and your so-called political leaders find it impossible to condemn children being bombed from the sky, find it politically expedient to soft-soap and shuffle around war crimes and atrocities, as you look-on as public discourse spews out a toxicity that’s being brewing for decades and now manifests itself as a grotesque censorious hysteria, what do you do? These political leaders, the ones supposedly on the left, the supposed ‘alternative’, that cannot find it in themselves to support a ‘ceasefire’ are part of a political class that is not fit for purpose, that are a moral and political failure.
This is a generational crisis built on a series of seismic failings and catastrophic failure of leadership.
But now the ‘centre’ of British politics, the supposed mainstream of British life lies exposed. The sickening episode in Palestine unfolding on our timelines and on our television has exposed the moral bankruptcy of so-called “moderate” commentators. Everything must be disavowed, ridiculed and marginalised. Here’s David Aaronovitch desperately trying to put-down the First Minister’s call for a cease-fire: “Absolutely absurd stuff. Everyone has gone bonkers. Like Keir Starmer is responsible or can even affect what’s happening in Gaza.”
The simple call is supported by hundreds of countries, and today by the Labour Mayor of London, but such a straightforward human call is considered unthinkable and absurd by England’s commentariat. Starmer is held to be a statesman as he holds a position on Ukraine – but an irrelevance if he says *anything at all* on the bombardment of Gaza.
It is everywhere. All resistance or decency must be put down, expunged. Noticing that the peace mural spray-painted by young Palestinian refugees from Beirut has been removed from Tynemouth Metro Station, the Irish activist Joe Guinan writes: “The petty minded smallness of this is also an indication of the stakes. Every possibility of human sympathy has to be attacked lest the dangerous realisation break through as to who is actually doing what to whom, and with whose complicity.”
Guinan is right, something is breaking and something significant is being protected. It’s the hegemony of right-thinking and at times a brutal and fascistic right-thinking that’s been completely normalised. Insider-centrist influencers like Aaronovitch are not alone, sometimes drifting with the times, sometimes leading the change, here’s Andy McKiver (of Holyrood Sources bro-cast, Message Matters, and a dozen media gigs) crying because the Scottish Parliament wasn’t going to fly the flag of a regime now engaging in genocidal warfare against a civilian population:
“I just feel quite a lot of shame.”@akmaciver‘s emotional reaction to Scotland’s politicians’ response to the conflict in Israel/ Gaza.
“In London, in Paris, in Berlin, in New York they’re flying Israeli flags. But we’ve decided that we’re going to sit this one out.” pic.twitter.com/Xwb7wL5W9S
— Holyrood Sources (@HolyroodSources) October 11, 2023
The situation in Gaza, and the wests response to it, is a breaking point. The levels of absurdism are unsustainable. When Braverman calls for ‘more powers for the police’ because someone shouts ‘Jihad’ at a demo you realise something has fundamentally broken. This isn’t credible. None of this is credible anymore.
The response, everywhere is ‘do nothing’.
When the storm lands in Acapulco, and the river breaks and the houses flood in NE Scotland, the answer is ‘Rosebud’.
Acapulco
One the the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall directly impacts a world famous city of 1 million people with almost no warning, killing dozens and causing billions of $ of damage.
Yet still barely a mention. pic.twitter.com/JgbGfCcHxG
— Dave Throup (@DaveThroup) October 27, 2023
When the next level of abject poverty is revealed – (a million children in destitution) – the answer is to scrap the cap on millionaire bankers’ bonuses.
The gap between the gatekeepers, the influencers, the editors and the general public is becoming unbridgeable. As Aditya Chakrabortty has written:
“…the British media and political class is again preparing for the vicarious thrill of war. As our prime minister told Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv: “We want you to win.” Something similar is happening elsewhere in Europe. France has tried to ban pro-Palestinian rallies. In Germany, the leader of the CDU – the party of Angela Merkel and Helmut Kohl – has called for all immigrants to pledge their commitment to Israel’s security.”
“In the UK, anyone not willing to join the cheerleaders should prepare to have their motives questioned. No matter that 6,500 Palestinians have already been slaughtered these past three weeks, to sling on the pile of 1,400 Israelis murdered by Hamas. No matter that more children have died in Gaza this October than all the people killed on 9/11. No matter that war is hardly the right noun for conflict between one of the most militarised states on Earth – Israel has 10 times more tanks than the British army – and Gaza, which has no planes, no Iron Dome (all-weather air defence system), barely any money. It is a daily pulverising.”
This yawning gap between the media-lens and the public is going to be a problem. Polling shows huge support for an immediate ceasefire – three out of four want an “immediate ceasefire” . That’s an overwhelming majority that neither of the two main parties represents – and a position treated with utter contempt by the commentariat.
The political class, and its media allies are indulging in absurdism. It will not be forgotten. As the horror unfolds and people take to the streets the narrative being presented to you will be understood for the grotesque distortion it is.
The celebration on the streets of Western cities of Hamas’ vile behaviour is a deeply shameful thing.
Tell Hamas to stop firing rockets and to release the hostages. That would be a good way to persuade the Israelis.
Its the hitherto weakness of Western governments that allows this whole madness to happen. Hamas and their supporters are illegal in Britain. Lets start by being decisive and clear that nest of vipers out! Allowing them to stay and allowing antisemitic protests on our streets unchallenged merely encourages these criminals and adds to the fear felt by British Jews.
Do you actually exist or are you a bot programmed to spew out the kind of ‘centrist’ right wing propaganda which Mr Small is attacking in his article?
Hamas and other organisations in other parts of the world and in recent years do not exist in a vacuum, hermetically sealed from the actual circumstances in which billions of people are living.
The killing of Israeli citizens was wrong as was the taking of hostages, but the bombardment of Gaza has killed hundreds of innocent people, who were living in appalling overcrowded conditions and bereft of many powers and human rights. The residents of Gaza and Palestinians on the West Bank and in countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt as well as in Israel have rights, too. They are human beings.
The stances adopted by Messrs Sunak and Starmer are shameful.
Well said Alasdair.
steveH regurgitates unproven Zionist propaganda about babies, rapes, be-headings, etc.
I have researched many sources of Hamas’s (and other pro-Palestinian faction’s) behaviour on Oct 7th and found it difficult to find clarity.
Personally I believe that Hamas’s likening with ISIS is a Zionist smear and has absolutely no factual grounds.
Who is going to decide who has committed war crimes? Will such investigations be fair.
We await the UN GA vote this afternoon (27 Oct).
Well said, Alasdair. That first comment is absurdist boilerplate.
Collective punishment is a war crime. The Nazis were rightly punished for it, and if there was any justice in the world, Israel would be too, but they won’t.
When the Palestinians attacked Israel it was clearly an action by people at theend of their tether. Prior to the attack the day and daily actions of the Israeli government against the palestinians are the stuff of Nazi Germany. They are permitted little or nothing in Gaza and the Palestinian residents on the West Bank are routinely evicted and or shot by “Settlers” as “terrorists”, regardless of what they do. The aim is to make “the land between the river Jordan and the sea” a place where only Jews can live.
The USA is afraid to condemn the actions and are driven to support Israel in anything they do, for fear of losing any chance of being elected. In the UK Jeremy Corbyn spoke out against the Israeli actions and was pilloried as an “AntiSemite”, despite being nothing of the kind. The accepted definition of antisemitism includes anyone, as I do, that compares the present action of the State of Israel with the Nazi regime.
If the Nazis were in charge of Israel there wouldn’t be a single man, woman or child left alive in either Gaza or the left bank.
1/3 of Israeli citizens are Arabs and they sit in Parliament as MP’s and take an active role in Israeli civil society.
Your ‘Nazi’ slur says a great deal more about you than it does the good people of Israel.
As for the article does the author even consider why Israel is a highly militarised society?
Could it possibly be down to the fact that it’s surrounded by regimes that given the opportunity would destroy it and kill every Jew.
In the words of Golda Meir ‘peace will only come to the region when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us’.
I can understand why Muslims hate Jews, their own ‘prophet’ commanded them to do so, but the level of anti-semitic hatred from the so called ‘progressive left’ has left me aghast. You do know that without Jewish intellectuals there probably would be no such thing as ‘the left’.
Considering that Islington may have the largest Jewish community in W. Europe, it’s a wonder he gets elected 🙂
Excellent post Mike – thoughts that many will share.
Many in power and media in UK seem to think that It is impossible:
1.to be horrified by both the slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians on 7th October and the subsequent slaughter of innocent Palestinians especially children.
2.to accept that Israel has a right to defend itself but insist that it should comply with international law and respect humanitarian rights of civilians.
3.to decry Hamas attack of 7th October as a war crime but also understand that these events have a historical context to them.
4.to want all hostages to be released immediately.
5.to want a truce/ceasefire in hostilities from both sides to prevent further bloodshed.
It is interesting (& heartening) that all polls indicate that majority of people in this country are not taking a side in this conflict apart from the side of humanity.
The route to a peaceful solution has to be through USA and Arab states to work together as Israeli’s & Palestinians(not Hamas) will find talking very difficult at present.
The UK has little power or role to play apart from humanitarian role and needs to accept this and stop posturing on world stage. I would suggest Sunak & Starmer would be best advised to try and persuade USA to lower temperature on Israeli side and keep talking to Arab states to deal with Hamas.
The longer this violence continues the greater the number of innocent civilians on all sides will be killed and the doctrine of Hamas will be accepted by the next generation in Gaza and Middle East. There is also an increasing risk that the violence will spread far beyond Gaza.
Who is this Mike you refer to?
I canna see any comments from a Mike.
Mike is Mr Small who wrote the article and has nobly sustained this site for more than 10 years.
Mike Small who wrote the article.
I apologise if it was not clear or appeared overly familiar.
If the Israeli authorities didn’t care what the leader of the UK Labour Party said about them, they wouldn’t have bothered smearing Jeremy Corbyn. Analysis of such political propaganda has been done by the Glasgow Media Group over the years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Media_Group
When a land-and-freedom struggle erupts against settler-colonialists, the circumstances may vary but the tropes are predictable, and it can take a long time before the official position begins to shift, pushed by testimonies and research and activists, as it did for Mau Mau in Kenya. Of course, eliminating the people who could testify might just work, as the British tried quite successfully in their Tasmanian genocide.
I get that few people might assume the BBC tentatively suggesting that Israel might have bombed a Palestinian hospital was a ‘blood libel’, but what lies behind the settler-colonialist view that they will get away with it? In the case of Israel, whose education system was described by Yuval Noah Harari as teaching Jews to believe in the centrality and heroism of their tribe, that Orthodox Jews cling to the racist notion that “Jews are intrinsically superior to all other humans” (21 Lessons, p216), that there never was a Palestinian people. While I don’t necessarily accept everything Harari says, I don’t know anything about Israeli education, and I suspect he is correct in writing:
“In most cases, this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than the terrorists themselves.” (21 Lessons, p191)
Thanks for a fine article. Staggering also to watch Mr McKiver’s performance, confirming everything you say – as if we needed confirmation.
Just so. No Oscar. Not even a BAFTA.
Thank you Mike for your article and Sleeping Dog for your comments. Having mentioned Yuval Noah Harari, I then watched the Piers Morgan (not someone I follow!) interview with him. It reflected many of the points you both have made and provided an insightful context on the history of the Israel/Gaza conflict. His closing statement that Peace Treaties are rarely based on justice but primarily on compromise is surely the message we should be prosecuting not the extreme views that we are being subjected to by our “leaders” and the mainstream media.
There might be a cease-fire in 10 generation’s time. It would involve taking the borders down, putting the star of David in the Palestinian flag, and a lot of forgive and forget. At least Netanyahu looks like he will be on his way soon. In the meantime, ‘we stole your grandad’s farm because it says so in a book we partly like’ reigns.
The current collective punishment looks like the waffen-SS in Oradour. Or more accurately the British fire-bombing Dresden.
Excellent.
Thanks Daniel
Conventional politics is morally bankrupt, the media is morally corrupt, liberal democracy is a farce; anyone with any decency or sense of justice is waiting for an intimation of an alternative which will not come. The end, fortunately, is climatically nigh. The future ended forty years ago.