Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label resistance

Quote of the Week: They Call Resistance ’Terrorism’

The resilience of the Palestinians, tenacious, irrepressible, stubborn always amazes the occupiers and appears shocking in the eyes of many Westerners. As at the time of the first Intifada in 1987, or the second in 2000, at the time of the armed actions on the West Bank or the mobilisation in favour of Jerusalem or the clashes around Gaza, under siege since 2007 and which has suffered six wars in 17 years (400 dead in 2006, 300 in 2008–2009, 160 in 2012, 2,100 in 2014, nearly 300 in 2021 and several dozen in the spring of 2023). The Israeli rulers accuse their enemies of ‘barbarity’, of disrespect for human life, in a word, of ‘terrorism.’ The accusation allows the accusers to wrap themselves in the cloak of righteousness and a clear conscience, camouflaging the apartheid system of an unbelievable brutality which oppresses the Palestinians every single day of their lives. Let me remind readers once again that many ‘terrorist’ organisations, pilloried as such in the course of recent his

So Many ‘Terrorists’ in Sixteen Arab Societies

Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies, based in Qatar, conducted a poll of 8000 Arabs in 16 Arab societies . One of the results is: “67% of the polled agreed that Hamas attack on 7 October was ‘a legitimate resistance operation’.  If the poll is really reflective, it means there are so many ‘terrorists’ in the Arab societies and ‘the free world’ has a bigger task in eradicating them, which means it is ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ are to blame, it is in their history and character, they really hate ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ and therefore they ‘hate us and they are against our values’, and the ‘war on terror’ must indeed be an endless war.

Deployment of the Term ‘Terrorism’

As “the Israelis and the Americans understand very well, the ongoing discourse on terrorism is not about the victims of ‘terrorism’ but about the ‘perpetrators’ . The fact that state armies more regularly target the very same victims that ‘terrorists’  target, yet are not referred to as ‘terrorists’, clarifies that it is not the act of ‘terrorism’ that defines the actor as ‘terrorist’ but rather the opposite: it is the perpetrator’s conferred identity as ‘terrorist’ that defines his/her actions as ‘terrorist’ in nature. Evidently, the US, Israel and other imperial European countries understand well that the resistance of Palestinians, Algerians, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Somalis and other peoples around the world to colonial and imperial invasions and bombings is a legitimate and moral self-defence against imperial and colonial terror, which is why they have to launch political propaganda campaigns and fabrications, and deploy the term ‘terrorism’ to depict such resistance

What Would Malcolm X Say About Gaza and Black Resistance in the US Today?

“There are other times when I seek out the wisdom of those human beings who refused to turn their faces from forms of social terror and found strength to endure.” A good and stimulating interview . Contrary to the title though, the treatment of the relevance of Malcolm X’s ideas in the exchange between Yancy and Sawyer are marginal.  

Yes, This Is Not a War Against Hamas, But …

A photo  via The Intercept Jeremy Scahill:  “From the moment President Joe Biden spoke to his ‘great, great friend’ Netanyahu on October 7, in the immediate aftermath of the deadly Hamas-led raids into Israel, the U.S. has not just supplied Israel with additional weapons and intelligence support, it has also offered crucial political cover for the scorched-earth campaign to annihilate Gaza as a Palestinian territory. It is irrelevant what words of concern and caution have flowed from the mouths of administration officials when all of their actions have been aimed at increasing the death and destruction. Everything we know about Biden’s 50-year history of supporting and facilitating Israel’s worst crimes and abuses leads to one conclusion: Biden wants Israel’s destruction of Gaza — with more than 7,000 children dead — to unfold as it has.  Nothing justifies the killing of children on an industrial scale. What the Israeli state is engaged in has far surpassed any basic principles of prop

‘International Law’, Colonisation, Oppression, Resistance

Still from The Battle of Algiers - British Film Institute “Everything that is happening now in Israel-Palestine is taking place within the context of colonisation, occupation and apartheid, which according to international law, are illegal. Israel is a colonising power and the Palestinians are the colonised indigenous population. Any reference to international law that does not recall these circumstances is a distortion of the story. The context of colonisation and occupation was brushed to the side with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, which was presented to the international agreement as a ‘peace agreement’ that put an end to the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’. It, of course, did no such thing. The focus on the humanitarian element perpetuates aid dependency and sidelines demands for accountability and reparations. The laws of war were put together during colonial times to regulate the use of force between sovereign states. The colonies were obviously not considered sovereign

The Right to Resist Oppression

“Many terrorist organisations, pilloried as such in the course of recent history, have ceased to be pariahs and become legitimate interlocutors. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Algerian National Liberation Front, the African National Congress (ANC) and many others have been by turns described as ‘terrorists’, a word which serves to depoliticise their struggle, to present it as a confrontation between Good and Evil. Each time the Palestinians rebel, the West, – so prompt to glorify the resistance of the Ukrainians – speaks of terrorism. In 1967, following the Israeli aggression, General de Gaulle spoke these premonitory words: ‘Now Israel is organising, on the territories it has conquered, an occupation which will necessarily involve oppression, repression, and expulsions. If they encounter any resistance, they will call it terrorism…‘ Contrary to what many Israelis claim (…) this is not a ‘unilateral’ and ‘unprovoked’ attack. The fright which Israelis are experiencing just now, me

The Veil, the Discourse of the West and Resistance

In the discourses of geopolitics the reemergent veil is an emblem of many things, prominent among which is its meaning as the rejection of the West. But when one considers why the veil has this meaning in the late twentieth century, it becomes obvious that, ironically, it was the discourses of the West, and specifically the discourse of colonial domination, that in the first place determined the meaning of the veil in geopolitical discourses and thereby set the terms for its emergence as a symbol of resistance. In other words, the reemergent veil attests, by virtue of its very power as a symbol of resistance, to the uncontested hegemonic diffusion of the discourses of the West in our age. And it attests to the fact that, at least as regards the Islamic world, the discourses of resistance and rejection are inextricably informed by the languages and ideas developed and disseminated by the West to no less a degree than are the languages of those openly advocating emulation of the West or

Ursula Le Guin on Capitalism

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries— the realists of a larger reality . Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art.  We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.  … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. ...  The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. It

Imperialist Violence and Anti-Imperialist Resistance

“As the Israelis and the Americans understand very well, the ongoing discourse on terrorism is not about the victims of ‘terrorism’ but about the ‘perpetrators’. The fact that state armies more regularly target the very same victims that ‘terrorists’ target, yet are not referred to as ‘terrorists’, clarifies that it is not the act of ‘terrorism’ that defines the actor as ‘terrorist’ but rather the opposite: it is the perpetrator’s conferred identity as ‘terrorist’ that defines his/her actions as ‘terrorist’ in nature. “The binary world of terrorists and anti-terrorists”

Violence

 Very engaging! “I  think that Benjamin has never been as relevant to questions of politics as he is today with the exception of his own lifetime. As I read him, Benjamin offers one of the best explanations both for the ongoing resilience of capitalism, despite all of its predations and all the instability that it creates, as well as the connection between fascism and liberalism that we are seeing being expressed today. He also offers, I think, the best way to understand how to address our contemporary moment and how to resist and upend capitalism, liberalism, and fascism all round.” Histories of Violence: Why We Should All Read Walter Benjamin Today