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sistersmith's avatar

That last paragraph! It truly is a test of submission. As ritualised as kissing a cardinal's ring. I listen only to people who 'fail' it, there is no better lithmus test of a truly principled thinker and an anti-imperialist, a of a person who does not kiss rings.

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CW's avatar

Come back to senses. You promised in categorical terms to show that Hamas aimed at military targets and Israeli civilians on Oct 7 are collateral damage ("see below"). Not a word of it, let alone any shred of evidence in this text. More importantly your recent contributions omit central facts. Of course the Netanyahu government is to be blamed, a majority of Israelians can tell: precisely for supporting Hamas, dividing the Muslims (and importantly, playing some colonial cards). "Hamas's goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such," [Hamas leader] al-Hayya said. That is an almost consistent policy throughout the years falling on the feet of those Hamas supposedly rule. Yet in your version, nobody seems to have persecuted Jews in the Ottoman Empire and its successors who found, among people from other places, shelter in what is now Israel and was part of the Ottoman Empire. In your view, there is Naqba (important as it is) but no place for new-fangled late 19th and 20th century antisemitism (with Nazi propaganda help) in Muslim areas previously mainly devoid of this plague bedeviling Europe in increasingly vile versions since the middle ages. Why are you supporting something so un-Muslimic? Hamas ideas are more European than Muslim: they are imperialistic concepts condemning the Muslim world to self-destruction. In your version of history, Israelis are perpetrators, full stop (and blame the German "master values" for seeing them [also] as victims). I can understand your emotional involvement. Still, this is too one-sided for an Ivy League scholar.

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