Re: <nettime> silence on Palestine?

[Andrew Ross via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Thanks for the valuable commentaries on this thread!


Another of the many casualties of foggy media coverage is any explanation
of the popular character of Hamas itself. However “organic” its emergence,
there’s no question that the existence of Hamas as a demonizable “Islamist
threat” has been indispensable to the maintenance of Israeli power, and,
some would argue, no more so than right now. The counterpoint in the West
Bank is the Palestinian Authority, though for quite different reasons--its
corruption and proxy status have been exemplary of a colonial comprador
entity.



It’s not easy to gauge how much popular support there is for Hamas (the PA
itself has none left). But if free elections were to be allowed in the West
Bank, Hamas might well win, as they did in 2006--only for the results to be
“cancelled” by Washington and its clients. Why would they win? Primarily
because Hamas is the only organized Palestinian force that has been able to
confront colonial Israeli power, at immeasurable cost, of course, to
Palestinians in terms of lives lost and infrastructure pounded to dust.
Another explanation has to do with the turn to religion on the part of
younger Palestinians. I myself have seen that shift, even in the eight or
nine years that I have been visiting the West Bank regularly. As the hopes
for national liberation have faded, more and more people have moved away
from the secular, or ecumenical, goals and vehicles that drove the two
intifadas. If you visit refugee camps, where the youth resistance is
strongest, you will see how widely “martyrdom” (more "shaheen" than in the
era of the fedayeen) is lionized, and normalized. Of course, this shift is
apparent across the entire SWANA region over the last several decades, and
Israel has played an outsized role in this development. Its armies broke
the back of the largely secular Arab nationalist movement in 1967, for
which the US owes Israel an enduring debt, since the unity of Arab
nationalism was much more of a threat to US hegemony than the fragmented
terrain of Islamic tendencies is today.



In any anti-colonial struggle, people do not make history under conditions
of their choosing, but they do try to liberate themselves, by any means
available to them. The alternative is the slow drip of poison into every
corner of their lives, and in the last year, since the far right came to
power in Israel, the drip has become a stream, as the pace of land theft,
brutal military incursions, and settler belligerence has rapidly
accelerated.



Speaking of flow, here is a piece I wrote about warfare through water
policy, based on research in the West Bank this summer.


https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/warfare-dressed-as-water-policy/


ar/
https://andrewtross.com



On Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 5:58 AM Allan Siegel via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Hello Nettime...
>
> "On 09/10/2023 22:06, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
> > In the situation of chaos it is important, not only to state one's own
> > beliefs, but to actually listen to others. The debates within civil
> > society, and the formation of public opinion, do exert some influence
> > over the behavior of states. If left/progressive voices are not heard,
> > well, that's our fault, we need to be more convincing.
> AND
>
> There is no reason to believe that a simple breakdown of the Euro-American
> hegemony is positive in and of itself. But the world has embarked on a
> bloody political transformation, under the shadow of catastrophic
> earth-system changes." both of these from Brian's post.
>
> And, I would add to Brian's comments that not only do we need to be more
> convincing but also to persistently update concepts of what the public
> sphere encompasses and the forms of communication that enliven debates
> within civil society. The chorus of progressive voices is very
> fragmented with the sopranos not listening (or simply paying lip
> service) to the tenors. This is very problematic because the droning
> sounds of neo-fascism have a consistency that appeals to large segments
> of our various societies. Brian's second point I think is extremely
> important "catastrophic earth-system changes"are inseparable from the
> other political issues that we are contending
> with (like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict) and we need to maintain
> political networks that reinforce these connections. best allan
>
>
> --
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