Mubarak Awad: 7 steps to end the Cycle of Violence in Israel and Palestine

Mubarak Awad discusses 7 steps to end the Cycle of Violence in Israel and Palestine

For the international community: The two-state solution, unfortunately, is no longer an option. Support solutions that provide rights to all peoples in the region. Keeping Gaza as an open-air prison is criminal. Therefore, have it declared as such, by international and political bodies. Provide humanitarian aid and denounce apartheid. Work for justice and equality.

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The State of Israel has to be subsumed into a secular State of Palestine. The continued brutality of the Israeli occupation feeds the growth of Hamas and successor groups. The initiative for change has to come from the Israelis as they have the power. Individual Israelis should start with passive resistance against participation in the occupation.

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Peter Boyle: After the referendum: Don’t agonise, organise!

Peter Boyle writes After the referendum: Don’t agonise, organise!

The Yes campaign was deeply flawed from the start.

It was designed to be minimalist and conservative in the hope of getting bipartisan support, which it failed to get. Consequently, its arguments were contradictory and its promises did not match its proposals.

It purported that token constitutional recognition (already inserted into every state constitution) and the establishment of a First Nation’s advisory body would somehow close the yawning gap.

The Yes campaign could not even tell the truth about the differences between First Nations peoples. There was no hiding the fact that most of the most militant and grassroots-mobilising First Nations activists argued for a progressive No vote, based on demands for sovereignty, truth telling, treaties and rights-based measures to close the gap between First Nations communities and the rest of the population.

The Yes campaign insisted that the referendum proposal had the unanimous support of First Nations people when, in fact, it was devised by a small number of conservative, bureaucratic First Nations leaders in consultation with conservative political and corporate elites.

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The proposal was for a body with undefined powers which the NO case said was the thin edge of the wedge for a third chamber of parliament even though the parliament had to pass legislation to create the body. Now the NO case want to scrap any movement towards a treaty and truth telling. They say that Australia cannot have a treaty with itself thereby obliterating the sovereignty of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. And they say truth telling is merely an excuse for spreading lies about the colonisation of Australia.

Settler colonial societies go to great lengths to erase the identity of the indigenous societies by denying them their sovereignty and history. Until Aborigines can assert their sovereignty through a Treaty, control their futures through self governance, and tell their stories through truth telling, there can be no reconciliation in Australia.

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Amy McQuire: The No vote was a racist vote

Amy McQuire says The No vote was a racist vote

We must recentre this No vote on what we already know is true: the racism and white supremacy of a settler-colonial state which, even now, even as the country votes against us, refuses to acknowledge its true face.

It is not time to be silent — not for our own people, but also for our Indigenous and brothers and sisters in Gaza and across the world.

Many genocide scholars have already stated that what is happening in Gaza is a textbook case of genocide. I repeat that: this is not a war.

This is mass ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the Israeli government has already perpetrated war crimes on the people of Gaza.

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Racism is the basis for settler-colonial states, such as Australia, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel. One cannot displace the indigenous peoples without treating them as lessers by destroying their cultures and connections to the land. Settler-colonialism is all about replacing the indigenous populations.

The struggles against settler-colonialism are linked around the world. It is not identity politics to promote the struggles of the dispossessed. The ruling class will try everything to discredit and suppress the resistance groups because the power of the ruling class comes from oppression. They are riding the tiger and cannot get off.

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Seth Godin: What are the defaults?

Seth Godin asks What are the defaults?

It could be that the constraints that led to the default are long gone.

They might be perpetuating bad choices, injustice or sub-optimal outputs.

The best way to fix something is to look at what we assume is the ‘right’ starting spot.

In persistent systems, it might be difficult to change the default setting, but knowing what it is and how it got there is a great place to begin.

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This is great advice whether one is investigating:

• The occupation of Palestine
• The invasion of Ukraine
• The division of Korea
• Settler-colonial societies
• Patriarchy
• Etc.

For Marxists, history is paramount. This includes exploration of the unofficial histories as well, not just the official ones. The Black Armband stories need to be told and heard.

With the interrogation of these histories, Marxists can reconstruct the trajectories that society took to reach the current state.

The default setting of any society is the status quo. As Godin writes, one should start with investigation of how the status quo came to be. This gives us a starting point to consider how change to be effected.

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Ted Rall: Israel Should Respond, Not React

Ted Rall discusses Israel Should Respond, Not React

Israel could turn the power back on, let food and water back in and beef up its lame security along its border with Gaza. It could treat the attacks as a police matter and demand that Hamas turn over suspects for prosecution. It could jumpstart negotiations to finalize a two-state solution, which everyone knows is the only viable long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It could embrace the wisdom of Nelson Mandela, who understood that a cycle of violence would never end unless one side, the side in charge that happened to be the African National Congress after he was elected president, declared amnesty so the country could move past apartheid. And if it finally did—after careful consideration—decide to invade Gaza, it could so with full knowledge and understanding of what form of governance would follow Hamas.

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The calls for blood-thirsty revenge by ethnic cleansing lays the basis for the escalation of the conflict. The future Palestinian resistance will make the actions of Hamas seem rational and restrained, just as PLO is now seen to be far better than Hamas. Maybe the delay in the Gaza incursion will allow cooler heads to prevail.

The two-state solution is now dead. Israel has to be subsumed into a secular Palestine. Israel has become toxic due to its current form as a jewish apartheid state.

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Mike Shedlock: If You Don’t Openly Condemn Hamas, Then Don’t Complain What Happens Next

Mike Shedlock writes If You Don’t Openly Condemn Hamas, Then Don’t Complain What Happens Next

However, it is certain Hamas had swarmed through crowds, killing at least 260 people and taking an unknown number hostage at a music festival.

…

New Rule: If you cannot openly and honestly blast Hamas for these actions, then do not bother complaining about any response by Israel.

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This is a common tactic of all those who support the settler-colonial states—history only starts with something bad happening to the settler-colonial state. This tactic is used to deprive the event of any context and history. It is used to frame the discussion as something bad has happened to 'the good people', and you must condemn 'the bad people'. It is used, as here, as gate keeping—you cannot participate in the discussion unless you accept this statement.

Without understanding the context and the history, you are left with the impression is that these acts occur in a vacuum, and therefore the colonised are simply mindless brutes who must be exterminated because there is no reasoning with them.

This tactic has the negative effect of reinforcing this terrorist behaviour—if the only time you in the issues confronting the colonised is when atrocities occur, then the terrorists have the incentives to commit more horrific atrocities.

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