Genocidal statements

Genocide is the crime of the intended destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

Normally, intent has to be inferred by actions, which are listed in the Genocide Convention.

1. Killing

2. Causing serious bodily Harm.

3. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or part

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births

5. Forcibly transferring children to another group

However, in the case of Israel, we have both the actions (all of those proscribed except #5) AND the clearly expressed intent.

Letter to Congress

[Boilerplate:] 

I am a constituent and I have been horrified at the loss of life in Palestine/Israel over the past week. Over 10,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis have been killed and many more are at risk every day this conflict continues. 2.2 million people are under siege in Gaza, almost half of whom are children. Every human life is precious and President Biden and Congress must act to save both Palestinian and Israeli lives. I urge you to support the Ceasefire Now Resolution introduced by Representative Cori Bush and Representative Rashida Tlaib as the only way to prevent more bloodshed is de-escalation and an immediate cease-fire.

[Original from me:]

The time for the supposed "two state solution" came and went in 1967 when Israel refused to relinquish conquered Palestinian and Syrian territories, and soon began settling them.  The idea of a "Jewish State" which discriminates against all other people in housing and other crucial matters was an ethnic supremacist and fascist one from the beginning, so it is no surprise that Zionist Israel more and more resembles Nazi Germany, with concentration camps (or open air prisons) for the out groups, checkpoints, starvation protocols applied to Gaza, and the use of terror and carpet bombing instead of gas chambers to accomplish ethnic cleansing and genocide (carpet bombing using US supplied weapons is also quite efficient in Israeli time and effort).

The clock didn't start on October 7, 2023.  It didn't even start in 1948 when Zionists ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians in order to steal their land and build the Zionist fascist state of "Israel", creating the ongoing Palestinian Issue ever since. There were many previous incidents of Zionist terror, and longstanding Zionist claims and threats from the beginning of Zionism have to be understood as a looming threat over the sovereignty of the Palestinian people even prior to and certainly ever since the British Mandate.

The only solution that should really be acceptable to everyone now is the creation of a new government in the whole area of Israel/Palestine with equal rights and non-discrimination for people of all ethnicities who have legitimate claims to live there.  That includes the now millions of Palestinian refugees and Gazans.  They should have the same rights as everyone else in getting their property back.

Only then will there be at least a shred of justice for those who suffered from the catastrophe caused by the Ethnic Supremacism known as Zionism, and until then there will never be peace.

The many Jews I most respect have always been critical of if not opposed to the Zionist idea of Israel as a "Jewish" supremacist state, including Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Aaron Mate, and Tony Greenstein.  Sadly many other Jews fell for Zionism after the horrors of the holocaust were revealed and also due to brilliant Israeli propaganda.  The majority of every group are fools.  But future generations can and seem to be learning.  I completely reject the idea that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.  If anything it is Zionism itself which is antisemitic by attacking a different set of Jews, including more and more Jewish youth, not to mention all true Jewish leftists, and calling them names such as Self-Hating.

Hamas

I've already told many people I'm not inclined to denounce Hamas.

For one thing, Hamas and indeed all Palestinians have the right of violent self defense against Israel, which has:

1) Stolen their entire country.

2) Stolen their homes, their communities, and their livelihoods.

3) Murdered and terrorized them since before the violent creation of Israel--itself through a terror based ethnic cleansing of 750,000 people, and through many episodes later, including the 1967 war (and refusal with withdraw to internationally agreed borders afterwards).

4) Threatened an important religious landmark, important to 1.8 billion people.

Given that the Palestinians are a nation of people under apartheid, occupation, and siege, they have a right to self defense by violent means.

The perpetrators of that apartheid, occupation, and siege have no such primary right.  They have the responsibility to end their apartheid, occupation, and siege first.  Once that has been done, they will have the right of self defense.

So, firstly, I denounce Israel and Zionists.  I cannot denounce Palestinians, including Hamas.  I do not denounce Jews and Judaism, perhaps all of my most favorite anti-Zionists are Jewish, many of the same are also among my favorite anti-Imperialists, and Jews are among my favorite experts in other fields.  

That a majority of Jews may or may not be known as Zionist today means little to me, the majority of any group of people are fools, and Zionism has always been built on the slickest lies that were particularly salable to Jews after the Holocaust and may take some outside knowledge to debunk.  So I don't see Zionism as a peculiar weakness of the Jews as such, but it was something that happened to many Jews which could happen to many other nations, and historically has, as it once did to the forward and objective thinking Germans once who fell for Naziism.  The siren call to ethnic supremacism should be understood as fundamentally evil, but the creators of Zionism disguised it for the gullible as left and liberal and Zionism was there at just the right time(s) and the world is filled with such gullible people of all kinds, not just Jews and Zionists (and Zionism has become part of much of Christianity and White Man's Rule as well).

I further understand that what the west calls Hamas for simplification purposes, may include other militant sectors, some perhaps even left or communist.  I'm not sure about the dynamics, but I do believe multiple political identities exist(ed) in Gaza, and some or all may have had collaborating militant groups.

Were Hamas successful in bringing the destruction of the Zionist Entity, I'd prefer to see a Communist identity, or even a liberal one, than an Islamic one.  But it is not my choice.  Those who win decide.  And though I'd prefer the fully political dismantlement of the Zionist State with a Communist State, or a Liberal State, I'm not doing it either way.  It's for the people doing these things, or not, not mine, someone who lives elsewhere in comfort and (comparative) safety and "freedom" (except bodily choices, recreational drugs, etc, and subject to various penalties for criticizing the powers that be--so I hate to call this "freedom" except in quotes though I well understand it could be worse, and sometimes is worse though in different ways in other countries).

And if I'm asked what Hamas had in mind, presuming they'll be stuck with another defeat for the Palestinian people just like before, I'd say perhaps they thought with the US tied down in Ukraine, and other things, this was their best opportunity for success (and maybe it will be so, ultimately most likely if somehow the US decides to give up the effort at some point).

All else being equal*, I'd certainly prefer that Hamas win than the 10-40 times more murderous AND apartheiding, occupying and besieging power.  Even though I may, myself, find still find this hard to imagine, as I did many other things, South African Apartheid among them, it is not impossible, exactly, and worth wishing for rather than against.

So I'd simply prefer not to say anything against Hamas, even though I'd say it's fair to say that I prefer political and non-violent methods performed by Communist organizations.  I know Palestinians have already tried these methods too.  And since I am not doing those things myself, it depends on those there, what they have been doing, what their plans are, etc., about which I have little information (though I do have a recently released video by a Hamas leader, that's in public now fwiw).

And that includes not predicting or even presuming that Hamas will fail.

(*An astute observer will notice the qualification has quite a lot of importance here.  It's easy to imagine a swift Israeli Mowing-The-Lawn "victory."  It's harder to imagine a Hamas victory without something like world war.  And that's why I dislike being forced to simplify this statement, or even being held to rationalize the trade-offs.  I don't like world war, nor the prospect of nuclear winter, but at some point a world war may be "needed" by nations-as-they-exist to re-balance power relationships which have been quite warped for awhile.  I'd point out that the US is due for internal dissolution within 40 years anyway, so why not just wait.  And I'd say that to Palestinians in Gaza too.  But I'm the guy with a suburban home and a luxury car, not the one living in a prison which I could barely concieve.)

A related talk by Finkelstein a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/live/x6dJMvZi5Zw?si=64eNt5McgZ9JiIxB

Finkelstein points out the insanity of insisting Hamas must be destroyed rather than negotiated with.  Israel has inflicted far more than 10 times as much death and other crimes.  By that principle then Israel must therefore be destroyed rather than negotiated with.

In days, Israel killed more far children than had been killed in all the wars in the world in several previous years, including Russia in Ukraine.

He explains proportionality, the value of the target vs the value of nearby civilians.  And he describes this as insanity, and that if a leading expert finds it complicated to determine the 'proportionality' of dropping two 2000 pound bombs on a refugee camp in which hundreds of children are killed, it's insane.

Sustainable Population

I've been going with the variously proposed 500 million (though one friend thinks that's inadequate for the technological society we need to get into space, I disagree with the goal of needing that in any time in which it couldn't be developed better by smaller population).

But that's cornucopian compared to other estimates I've been hearing.  This author comes up with 35 million by two methods of estimation, and 10 million by another, favoring 35 million as our best (largest) sustainable.

It's pointed out that even before the use of fossil fuels, humans were causing deforestation and extinctions locally.

Anyway, almost regardless of numbers, if the best sustainable is so small we're not going to get there without some kind of collapse.  He suggests (but underlines, he does not predict) that we could "tumble" down in decade long stretches of slow collapse.  That sounds overoptimistic to me.  There will be big large collapses, though likely not just one.  I predict.

Anyway, he says it's hopeless to achieve such a goal politically.  The best we can do is be helpful to those around us.

I can hardly argue with that, but sometimes I still do (I argue for my two couples per child rule).

Bertrand Russel on Palestine

…. The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment. The Vietnamese who have endured years of American heavy bombing have responded not by capitulation but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow countrymen resisted Hitler’s bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world. The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to “reason” and has suggested “negotiations”. This is the traditional role of the imperial power because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression.

The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate. The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by the Washington journalist I.F. Stone as “the moral millstone around the neck of world Jewry.” Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements.

The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their number have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled in masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.

We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery, not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.

(Read to the public shortly after his death)

The "Concert Attack"

A video posted on Twitter and Telegram shows what actually happened during the Hamas attack.

Hamas fighters were headed to different Israeli military bases.  In between two of the many bases they were planning to attack there was a concert, which had been originally planned for somewhere else, but was moved to this location and started the previous day (looks like Human Shielding).

Concertgoers heard the attack and started trying to leave in their cars.  But IDF forces blocked the roads in order to stop Hamas.

When Hamas actually arrived, shooting broke out and concertgoers were stuck in the crossfire, with most of the shooting being done by IDF who probably was responsible for most of the civilian deaths at this location.

Some concertgoers left by running through an open field instead.

https://x.com/propandco/status/1714019234680832369?s=20

Israelis excuse their genocidal attacks in Gaza (which kill many times more civilians than Hamas kills) with the claim that they are not deliberately "targeting civilians" (even though it clearly looks that way, and some have confessed that is the real strategy).

They should know that by blowing up apartment blocks, hospitals, and refugee camps they are certainly going to kill civilians whether they are "deliberately" targeting them or not.

But nothing about the Hamas attack suggests they target civilians at all.  They are waging war by attacking their captors armed forces.

There are several Israelis who have testified on videos that they were treated kindly and respectfully by Hamas militants.

https://x.com/propandco/status/1711885898017632524?s=20

Endless videos and reports show the Zionist Entity over the past 75 years gives basically no respect to Palestinians, their homes, or their lives.

Palestinians often show huge reluctance to give up their homes, even at the cost of their lives.  But who can blame them?

It takes very tough people to stay in the Levant for thousands of years.  People who basically aren't going to budge from the world's most contested lands, no matter what terrible empire comes along.

That's among the reasons why the Zionist program was simply impossible from the get go.  No matter how many Palestinians you attempt to push away, more keep coming back to reclaim THEIR homeland.

The secret to a successful national homeland is to take a place that nobody else wants.  Good luck.

Even then, about 100 years is about all such an enterprise can last, before it implodes from the fact that ethnic supremacism is fundamentally unremitting violence directed at someone.

So if it's not crushed by changing geopolitical winds, it collapses from internal distrust.

Even in the pre and post nazi state of USA it was clearly recognized decades ago that non-discrimination, especially with regards to home buying, is essential to internal peace.

Israel has chosen to be the experiment showing the catastrophic results of the ethno-supremacist state.  One way or another.  As if it needed more demonstration.

Sadly, such is the appeal of nationalisms, even very intelligent people can be turned into babbling idiots, reciting fairy tales as if complete truths.

And such is human nature, the tendency to re-justify over and over to match one's beliefs, themselves a social product.

The ongoing Gaza Genocide is a sad spectacle we must resist in every way with our emails, calls, and protests, if nothing more.

Canaanites and their descendants

The best genetic evidence shows that Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Levant share a common ancestry.

"Jews or people like Jews," which is to say Canaanites, since Jews were a sect of Canaanites (also shown genetically).

Differences among them can be readily explained by what other groups they married into.

Levantine Christians and Samaritans didn't much marry into other groups, so their genetics is closest to the original Canaanites.

Muslims married into other groups a bit more, because it wasn't forbidden in the Ottoman empire (whereas intermarriage with Christians and Jews was restricted).

Thus the best evidence is not that Jews were replaced en masse by other nations, but that after many Jews left in diaspora, many of the Jews and others left behind converted to Christianity and some of those later to Islam.

I've read this on Wikipedia, and heard it from knowledgeable people, but here's an X thread with some details.