From a 7,000-word article, "Israel’s Descent," by Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, Vol. 46 No. 12 · 20 June 2024
"When Ariel Sharon withdrew more than eight thousand Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, his principal aim was to consolidate Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank, where the settler population immediately began to increase. But ‘disengagement’ had another purpose: to enable Israel’s air force to bomb Gaza at will, something they could not do when Israeli settlers lived there. The Palestinians of the West Bank have been, it seems, gruesomely lucky. They are encircled by settlers determined to steal their lands – and not at all hesitant about inflicting violence in the process – but the Jewish presence in their territory has spared them the mass bombardment and devastation to which Israel subjects the people of Gaza every few years.
The Israeli government refers to these episodes of collective punishment as ‘mowing the lawn’. In the last fifteen years, it has launched five offensives in the Strip. The first four were brutal and cruel, as colonial counterinsurgencies invariably are, killing thousands of civilians in retribution for Hamas rocket fire and hostage-taking. But the latest, Operation Iron Swords, launched on 7 October in response to Hamas’s murderous raid in southern Israel, is different in kind, not merely in degree."
If a nation begins with "other forms of persecution...including plunder, denial of the franchise, ghettoisation, ethnic cleansing and racist dehumanisation," then "a war defined as an existential battle for survival" may catalyze yet more intense violence.
What word best describes the violence?
"The scale of the destruction is reflected in the terminology: ‘domicide’ for the destruction of housing stock; ‘scholasticide’ for the destruction of the education system, including its teachers (95 university professors have been killed); ‘ecocide’ for the ruination of Gaza’s agriculture and natural landscape. Sara Roy, a leading expert on Gaza who is herself the daughter of Holocaust survivors, describes this as a process of ‘econocide’, ‘the wholesale destruction of an economy and its constituent parts’ – the ‘logical extension’, she writes, of Israel’s deliberate ‘de-development’ of Gaza’s economy since 1967.
But, to borrow the language of a 1948 UN convention, there is an older term for ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. That term is genocide, and among international jurists and human rights experts there is a growing consensus that Israel has committed genocide – or at least acts of genocide – in Gaza. This is the opinion not only of international bodies, but also of experts who have a record of circumspection – indeed, of extreme caution – where Israel is involved, notably Aryeh Neier, a founder of Human Rights Watch."
Israel hasn't been disengaged
Afeef Nessouli introduces "The Limits of the Law," an interview with Noura Erakat in the Fall 2024 issue of Acacia (Issue 2), by saying:
"Despite Israel’s argument that it completely withdrew from Gaza nearly two decades ago, the court ruling [by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19] reaffirms that Gaza remains occupied. Israel still controls entry points and exits, water space, airspace, access to resources, the freedom of movement, enacts surveillance, and, of course, strikes the area whenever it chooses.
* * *
The problem with international law is that it can’t be enforced. Enforcement falls to the Security Council, of which any of the permanent members (including the U.S.) can veto any resolution. Hence, in practice, there has been no meaningful accountability for Israel. The world’s inability to hold Israel to account has led us to this genocidal moment. The law will not be able to turn back time or bring those who have been senselessly murdered back to life, but sanctions and pressure are more likely when legal justice is clearly defined. The argument that two equal parties are simply unable to come to an agreement has always been a farce and a product of the peace process framework. The limitations of international law have allowed for a precedent in which an occupier can negotiate human rights away from those they occupy."
In this interview, Noura Erakat says that, "as a scholar of third world approaches to international law (TWAIL)," she "understands international law as the site of domination and as constitutive of its colonial form in order to protect colonial interests and powers. That’s certainly evident in the Genocide Convention as well." Europe didn't care about the Nazi genocide of the Jews. "They didn’t. Jews were also dehumanized, and there was a racial regime that excluded them from citizenship, that ghettoized them, that subjected them to premature death and ultimately to a logic of annihilation." Yes, the Genocide Convention arose as a response to that genocide, but that does not mean they cared about Jews nor about people who aren't white. Under the Genocide Convention, "brown and black people were not historically conceived as civilians or even as combatants—people who have the right to fight under the laws of war. They have been explicitly rendered 'The Savage.' They don’t become incorporated and recognized as civilians or as fighters that deserve protection until 1949, when they are recognized as civilians. And then in 1977 they are seen as fighters in the Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions."
False binaries
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Sep 2, 2024:
"I want to name the false binary of "hostages vs. Palestinians" when the real binary has always been, "soaking the earth with more and more blood" or "find a political solution." We’ve been talking about this for months. Eg here, here.
May the memories of everyone killed over the last 11 months be a revolution towards collective liberation, safety, wholeness, and a true future for everyone in the region."
Arguments over the anthem
Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikva,” is written from a Jewish point of view and refers to Jews living freely in their land of Zion. This often causes distress for the one-quarter of Israelis who are not Jewish. In the February 2013 swearing-in ceremony for new parliament members, several Arab politicians left the room to protest the lyrics. Suggestions to make the language more inclusive, even when those suggestions are vague and put forth by Jewish politicians, have been controversial.
