May 10 2024 Anniversary of the Third Intifada of 2021, Now Ongoing In the Tenth Theatre of World War Three Which Contains and Supersedes the Gaza War

       Both visitors to the Holy Land seeking signs of the Invisible manifest in its Disneyland of conflicted faiths and those trapped within its nightmare of walls, checkpoints, razor wire, pervasive surveillance, universalized violence, identitarian politics, and the tyranny and terror of one of our world’s most horrific regimes of force and control are here become the ghosts of the Holocaust; Israel echoes with the silent screams of stolen voices and the devouring shadows of a history weaponized in service to power as narratives of victimization and security as power, a strategy designed to first break our solidarity with division and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil as falsification and then dehumanize and subjugate us as masters and slaves and as genocide and ethnic cleansing.

     Israel as a dream of refuge and of universal brotherhood and love has been betrayed and subverted by Israel as a xenophobic theocracy, military empire, and slave camp; here Auschwitz has been institutionalized on a national scale, its former prisoners now its guards.

     Why would anyone choose to recreate a hell they had escaped from, even as its masters rather than its slaves?

     I understand all too well the seduction of power as security in a world of hostile and chaotic forces, and how overwhelming and generalized fear can be shaped by authority to centralize power by offering us loaned power over Others as figures of existential threats; to be the arbiter of virtue through force and control. But security is an illusion, the state as embodied violence obeys Newton’s Third Law of Motion and creates its own Resistance, and our common pain unites us in ways which transcend the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force, which only love can free us from.

     Love as solidarity in action can redeem the flaws of our humanity and the brokenness of the world, Tikkun Olam in Hebrew, and liberate us to live as guarantors of each other’s humanity.

      As I wrote on the first anniversary of the Third Intifada on this night two years ago; This must be the most written about, studied, debated, experimented with and fought over issue in global politics since the Second World War of which it is a result, this nation wherein one people are divided by history as Israelis and Palestinians, and a measure of our humanity, as the classic example of the double minority; what do you do with one city and one nation claimed by two historical communities, as a basis of identity as faith and nationality and the consequences and praxis of identity politics as violence?

     Here a nation and a people are riven by dissociative identity disorder, conflicted and locked in titanic struggle as with the fragmentation of identity, memory, and consciousness of multiple personalities, madness on a national and civilizational scale born of the legacies of history and life disruptive events, epigenetic trauma, grief, terror, guilt, and despair.

     In the duality of Israel and Palestine are made plain the origins of evil as violence and tyranny in the recursive and interdependent Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force, as overwhelming and generalized fear and existential threats are weaponized in service to power by authority, which forms carceral states of force and control as unequal power and embodied violence, through elite hierarchies and divisions of belonging and otherness and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil.

     Here fascism as a systemic evil operates as possession and theft of the soul. What can we do about it?  As Lenin asked in his essay of 1902; “What is to be done?” How free ourselves of the systemic forces of our subjugation to authority, elites, and those who would enslave us?

    We must first recognize and be cautious of those who claim to speak for us and act in our name, for this is a primary strategy of fascism. To free ourselves of the lies and illusions, falsification and rewritten histories, conspiracy theories and alternate realities through which we become dehumanized, we must be truthtellers engaged in the pursuit of truth as a sacred calling, and perform the Four Primary Duties of a Citizen; Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.

    We must second seize our self-ownership and autonomy in refusal to submit to authority, for the great secret of power is that it is empty and hollow, and is delegitimized through refusal to trust and believe authority, and of force that it is brittle and finds its limit at the point of disobedience. Simple acts, but also inherent powers of human being which cannot be taken from us; for who refuses to submit is free, and becomes Unconquerable.

     Always there remains the struggle between the masks that others make for us, and those we make for ourselves. This is the first revolution in which we all must fight; the struggle for self-ownership and for freedom of identity.

     There is no just authority.

      Tonight I sit at home among the vast darkness of my hills, a night which follows days of rain and filled with the songs of frogs and birds, a serenity disturbed only by the chiaroscuro of my memories of this night one year ago, in the defense of al Aqsa. Like flashes of lightning, the hand of the past can bring the Chaos and reach out to seize and shake us, destabilizing us and our constructions of normality with unpredictable and sudden disruptive events unmoored from their anchorages in time.

      But Chaos is also a measure of the adaptive range of a system, which brings both the terror of our nothingness and the joy of total freedom in our reimagination and transformative rebirth of ourselves and our limitless possibilities of becoming human.

      Guillermo del Toro, in his magnificent epic of migration and racial equality Carnival Row, has a scene in which two young successors to leadership of traditionally rival factions find themselves in love and in need of allies in a subplot which reimages Romeo and Juliet; the rebellious hellion Jonah Breakspear asks his Machiavellian lover Sophie Longerbane, “Who is chaos good for?” To which she replies, “Chaos is good for us. Chaos is the great hope of the powerless.”

     One may think of Bringing the Chaos in terms of the redemptive power of love, of solidarity, of our duty of care for others, of seizures of power as the restoration of balance, of Resistance and revolutionary struggle as placing our lives in the balance with those of the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, and as tikkun olam or healing the brokenness of the world.

     In Jerusalem and al Quds, we are betrayed by the normality of submission to authority and the divisions of unequal power, dehumanized by those who commit atrocities in our name, and made complicit in crimes against humanity through narratives of victimization which as Voltaire teaches us permit anything.

     Gott mitt uns; it is an ancient terror. And this we must resist.

     Old myths, and old grievances, woven into the fabric of our psyche and our civilization. And like all history, memory, and authorized identity, mimetic forces from whose legacies we must emerge.

     In this moment I turn once again to the brilliant diagnosis of the illness of power as captured identity as written by Alon Ben-Meirin in Huffpost, though his prescription of a two state system is debatable and for myself must be superseded in time with a secular state with one law for all and no official divisions of tribe, language, or faith, in an article entitled In The Grip Of Powerful Illusions; “The deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process appears to be illogical and unsettling as a majority of Israelis and Palestinians realize that coexistence, whether under conditions of enmity or friendship, is a fact that neither side can change short of a catastrophe.

     The deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process appears to be illogical and unsettling as a majority of Israelis and Palestinians realize that coexistence, whether under conditions of enmity or friendship, is a fact that neither side can change short of a catastrophe. Both sides understand that the general parameters of a sustainable peace agreement must rest on a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with some land swaps. However, both sides choose to revel in illusions and live in defiance of time and circumstances. They seem to prefer continuing violent clashes and bloodshed over peaceful coexistence, while blaming each other for the unending destructive path that tragically both have chosen to travel.

     There are fundamental imperatives, coupled with long-term mutual security measures, which represent what was on the negotiating table in 2000 at Camp David and in 2010/2011 and 2013/2014 under the Obama administration’s auspices in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Each round, with various degrees of progress, aimed at finalizing an agreement and yet ultimately failed to do so. The question is: why?

     Biased and selective perceptions, reinforced by historical experiences, religion, and incompatible ideologies, have locked both sides into immobile positions. The factors that maintain and enhance these patterns include emotions such as fear, distrust, and insecurity. The psychological outcome is mutual denial of the narrative of the other and mutual delegitimization.

     Put together, the operative result is stagnation and polarization. What is therefore needed is a consensus-oriented dialogue at the leadership level by both officials and non-officials, and people-to-people interactions, to resolve the issue of perception – a tall order given the current environment that buttresses rather than ameliorates prejudiced perceptions.

     There are certain psychological concepts which are relevant to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the concept of illusion is an essential one. In The Future of an Illusion, Freud offers the following definition: “…we call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification.”

     What is characteristic of illusions is that: 1) they are derived from deep human wishes, and 2) the belief is held (or would be held) in the absence of any compelling evidence, or good rational grounds, on its behalf.

     It is impossible to deny that both Israelis and Palestinians are in the grip of very powerful illusions which only serve to prolong the conflict and prevent any mutual understanding. In particular, the belief shared by many Israelis that they have a biblical right to the land (including Judea and Samaria) and that God gave it to the Jews in perpetuity is undoubtedly an illusion of yesterday.

     This belief is not affirmed because there is real evidence that God deemed it to be (although two Jewish kingdoms did exist–the first in the tenth century BCE and the second beginning in 539 BCE–on the same land), but because it satisfies a deep-seated psychological need for a God-given Jewish homeland.

     The belief that by expanding the settlements Israel will augment its national security and maintain its hold on the entire land is an illusion of tomorrow, which generally ignores the presence of Muslims in the same land for more than 1,300 years.

     It is important to note how these illusions sustain and reinforce one another, and constitute a psychological barrier which is much more impervious to critical reflection. Israel’s illusions have served to create the logic for occupation.

     The Palestinians, for their part, are not without their own illusions. They also believe that God has reserved the land for them, and appeal to the fact that they had inhabited the land for centuries. From their perspective, the presence of the al-Aqsa Mosque, which was built in 705 AD in Jerusalem, attests to their historical and religious affinity to the Holy City.

     They also cling to the idea that they will someday return to the land of their forbearers, as they have and continue to insist on the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, even though this has become a virtual impossibility.

     The Palestinians hold fast to their illusions of yesterday and tomorrow just as blindly and desperately as the Israelis, which leads to resistance to and fear of change. As such, unless both sides change course and accept each other’s affinity to the same land, specifically because it is religiously-based, the situation is bound to lead to a catastrophe.

      This has contributed to making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both chronic and intractable, as the various illusions are continuously and consciously nurtured by daily hostile and often violent encounters between the two sides.

     In seeking to bridge concepts that could link between the domains of psychology and politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it could be proposed that a collective mutual resistance to change (both conscious and deliberate, and inner unconscious) protects a vulnerable identity.

     Compared, for example, to the stable and mature political identities of the American, British, and French nations, the political identities of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are, in a way, in their adolescence.

     Identities in this setting are more vulnerable, and the protagonists are naturally more defensive and resistant to change. By its very nature, the players must find it difficult (if not impossible) to articulate this publicly, as to do so is to admit to this vulnerability.

     The concept of psychological resistance to change may well affect the political setting in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular; it is closely connected to perceptions at many levels and provides protection for vulnerable identity formation.

     It is this mindset, strengthened by historical experiences, which transcends the more than seven decades since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began. Individuals and groups, Israelis and Palestinians alike, have and continue to interpret the nature of the discord between them as “you versus me” in a prejudiced and selective way.

     In turn, this has stifled any new information and enabled the continuing resistance to change, which could shed new light on the nature and substance of the conflict and help advance the peace process.

     The concept of unconscious resistance to change in this setting links well to the view of perceptions driving the polarization in the conflict. Historical experience, which formulates perceptions, serves among other things to enhance the sense of identity of “who we really are,” a formative collective assumption that sits at the bedrock of both key players and drives functional and dysfunctional behavior.

     In principle, such a mindset prevents either side from entertaining new ideas that might lead to compromises for a peaceful solution. The paradox here is that majorities on both sides do want and seek peace, knowing full well that this would require significant concessions, but are unable to reconcile the required concessions with imbedded perceptions that have precluded these compromises as a result of resistance to and fear of change.

     Therefore, any framework for peace must include provisions that would dramatically increase the odds in favor of a solution. First, both sides need to commit to reaching an agreement based on a two-state solution out of the conviction that change, which translates to coexistence, is inevitable. Therefore, they ought to adjust to each other’s requirements, which of necessity requires them to make significant concessions.

     Second, to facilitate that, they must undertake reconciliatory people-to-people social, economic, cultural, and security interactions to mitigate their resistance to change, which must begin, at a minimum, one year before the negotiations commence to create the psychological and political atmosphere to cultivate the trust necessary for substantive and successful peace negotiations.

     The resumption of peace talks will go nowhere unless Israelis and Palestinians change their prejudiced perception and resistance to and fear of change, and finally come to the realization that their fate is intertwined and neither can live in peace and security without the other.

     I feel compelled to conclude my last article for the year with a dire warning that both Israelis and Palestinians alike will do well to ponder upon as they approach the end of the seventh decade of their tragic conflict.

     Every Israeli extremist and Palestinian militant, those who want it all must stop and think where Israel and the Palestinians will be in ten years if the current situation persists?

     Your illusions of today will not become a reality of tomorrow, and what tomorrow will bring is nothing but more pain, tears, and agony.

     Your conflict is evolving ever faster into a religious war. A Muslim-Jewish Armageddon is in the making that will set the whole region on unfathomable fire.

     If you are true believers, dare not defy God’s will, for he has thrust you together to put you to the test–you must either live in peace and harmony, or you will be condemned to oblivion and despair.

     You possess the power to choose your own destiny. Will it be self-destruction or will it be the fulfilment of a glorious dream?

     Rise up and pass a legacy of hope to every Israeli and Palestinian child, for they have the God-given right to grow up and prosper and none should die for your illusions in vain.”

     As I wrote in my post of November 9 2023, A Mirror of Our Darkness: Kristallnact; Israel is commemorating this tragedy which opened a door to an even greater tragedy in the Holocaust by doing exactly the same thing to the Palestinians, one people divided by history and faith weaponized in service to power. And this too will open doors to greater state terror and tyranny, unless both peoples can unite against authorities who commit atrocities in their name as a strategy of subjugation and liberate each other from those who would enslave them.

     If you think of nations as children who are survivors of abuse, much becomes clear; for once they have seized power they are far more likely to become abusers themselves. This is how fear works, why it is the true basis of exchange, why politics is the Art of Fear, and why states are embodied violence. Both Israelis and Palestinians have been savaged by existential threats long before they began savaging, brutalizing, and dehumanizing each other.

     That predatory regimes on both sides have used division and identity politics to centralize power and legitimize authoritarian dominion is a predictable phase of liberation struggle, especially of anti-colonial revolution.

      The trick of becoming human, friends, is to embrace ones own darkness in struggle as well as one’s enemies, and emerge from the legacies of our history which shadow us like an invisible crocodile tail.

      There is a line spoken by the villain in the series The Magicians, a survivor of childhood abuse and tyrant known as The Beast for his horrific crimes, once the powerless and terrified boy Martin Chatwin and now a monstrous god; “You know, when I was a boy, a man who was meant to care for me bent me over his desk and had me over and over every time I was alone with him. It helps me understand a truth. You’re powerful or you’re weak. “

      Here is the original lie of the tyrant and the fascist in the apologetics, self-justification, and psychopathy of power; the lie that only power has meaning and is real, that there is no good or evil. How we use power is of equal importance as who holds it. Fear and force are a primary means of human exchange, but not the only means; love, membership, and belonging are as important.

      It’s a line which captures perfectly the inherent contradictions of the  Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force as an origin of evil; for the use of social force is subversive of its own values. Yet the imposed conditions of revolutionary struggle often require violence, and until the gods of law and order have been cast down from their thrones I must agree with the famous dictum of Sartre in his 1948 play Dirty Hands, quoted by Frantz Fanon in his 1960 speech Why We Use Violence, and made immortal by Malcolm X; “by any means necessary.”

     As written by Walter Rodney in The Groundings with my Brothers; “We were told that violence in itself is evil, and that, whatever the cause, it is unjustified morally. By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master? By what standards can we equate the violence of blacks who have been oppressed, suppressed, depressed and repressed for four centuries with the violence of white fascists. Violence aimed at the recovery of human dignity and at equality cannot be judged by the same yardstick as violence aimed at maintenance of discrimination and oppression.”

     And here is the passage he references from Leon Trotsky in Their Morals and Ours: The Class Foundations of Moral Practice; “A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!”

     Yet in reflection I think of those great figures who have been both heroes of liberation and villains of tyranny; my teenage role model Napoleon, Washington who is central to our family history and coined the motto on our coat of arms in the passcode during the Battle of Trenton, Victory or Death, when the whole Revolution was wagered on a forlorn hope, of the tragic drama of fallen heroes like Robert Mugabe, the monstrous tyrants Stalin and Mao, the list is a near endless litany of woes and failures of vision wherein Brave New Worlds became hells and carceral states. In evidence I offer the American and Napoleonic Revolutions become Empires, the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party, India where the glory of liberation come hand in hand with the tragedy of Partition and is now under the boot of Hindu Nationalism, nearly all anticolonial revolutions which with the first period of liberty as new nations became dreadful tyrannies, and above all the state of Israel, a dream of refuge forged in the terror of the Holocaust whose victims learned the wrong lessons from the Nazis and assumed their role in the Occupation of Palestine. The dangers of Idealism are very real; but so are the dangers of submission to authority and the complicity of silence in the face of evil.

     I am a hunter of fascists, and mine is a hunter’s morality. For me there is a simple test for the use of force; who holds power?

     A great many wise people have written beautifully of the horrors of fascisms of blood, faith, and soil and of hierarchies of elite belonging and exclusionary otherness, as does Paul Oestreicher in the article which follows; herein I wish only to signpost that the forces which lie both within us and without as social conditions and epigenetic trauma, of atavisms of barbarism and systems of oppression, are universal to human beings as imposed conditions of struggle and operate continually even when obscured from view, beyond the horror and abjection of points of fracture of the human soul like those of Kristallnacht and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

     I write to you as one who has lived by the battle cry of Never Again! for over forty years now, and it is of deep and vital importance to apply this principle of action not only in Resistance to fascism as an intrusive enemy of all that is human in us, but also to ourselves and our own use of violence and social force toward others.

    In the end, all that matters is what we do with our fear, and how we use our power.

     No matter where you begin with divisions and hierarchies of elite belonging and exclusionary otherness, you always end up at the gates of Auschwitz.

    As Nietzsche teaches us in Beyond Good and Evil; “Those who hunt monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

     In the dark mirror of Gaza, with its monstrous reflections of Kristallnacht and of Auschwitz, do you like what you see, O Israel?

     As I wrote in my post of May 10 2021, The Defense of al Aqsa: Liberty versus Tyranny in Jerusalem;  We may have witnessed the advent of a Third Intifada this night, in the Defense of al Aqsa and the street fighting in Gaza which followed, ignited by the perfidy and imperial conquest of a xenophobic and fascist state of Israel which regards no one but their own tribe and faith as truly human, and which has perpetrated an unprovoked and deadly attack as an act of state terror and a crime against humanity on the peaceful worshippers at one of the most sacred mosques in the Islamic world, a demonstration of power and dominion which follows weeks of provocations, assaults, and acts of propagandistic dehumanization against the people of Palestine.

      Like the Second or al Aqsa Intifada which lasted four years from 28 September 2000 to 8 February 2005, unresolved issues of an Occupation now in its fifty fourth year since the June 7 1967 Conquest of Old Jerusalem by Israel, which the State of Israel celebrated according to the Hebrew calendar as Jerusalem Day today by attacking al Aqsa, and a Catastrophe ongoing now for seventy three years since Nakba Day May 15 1948, have coalesced around the symbolic value of al Aqsa, which has a contested dual identity as the Temple Mount in Judaism.

     Chances of de-escalation and averting a war depend now not on local factors but on the response of the international community, for history has here become a trap which collapses to ensnare us in its jaws, and outside forces must liberate us from the failures of our system’s internal contradictions.

     Will America disavow and renounce its colony of Israel, Queen of her imperial policy in the Middle East and control of the strategic resource of oil? Can international unity and the pressure of Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction free us from the tyranny and terror of an Apartheid regime as it did in South Africa?

     Or is war the only reckoning humankind can offer, or will accept?

     As written by Ishaan Tharoor in The Washington Post; “On Monday night, militants in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli military exchanged rocket fire and airstrikes amid a deadly escalation of violence. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, armed groups based in blockaded Gaza, launched a barrage of rockets that landed near Jerusalem and in parts of southern Israel, injuring at least one person. Israeli airstrikes in retaliation killed at least 20 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, including nine children.

     Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the “terrorist groups” in Gaza had “crossed a red line” with their rocket attacks. But the latest explosion of hostilities has a long tail, following numerous aggressive actions by both Israeli security forces and far-right Jewish supremacist groups in Jerusalem. Two weeks ago, bands of Jewish extremists, including some settlers from the West Bank, marched through Palestinian-populated areas of the holy city, chanting “Death to Arabs,” attacking bystanders and damaging Palestinian property and homes. Israeli attempts to evict a number of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah — a microcosm of what Palestinians view as part of a long history of dispossession and erasure at the hands of the Israeli state — had stirred Palestinian solidarity protests in various parts of the occupied territories and Israel proper.

     It also raised tensions ahead of the commemoration of Jerusalem Day on Monday, an official Israeli holiday celebrating the capture of the city during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. A planned annual march by far-right ultranationalist Israelis was called off after authorities rerouted its path at the last minute.    Large numbers still made their way to the Western Wall and sang an extremist vengeance song against Palestinians.

     “The Hamas rocket attacks, which included the first strikes against Jerusalem in several years, came after running clashes among Israeli police, Palestinian protesters and far-right Jewish Israelis around the Old City,” my colleagues reported. “Among the hundreds injured were seven who were hospitalized in serious condition, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Video footage circulated on social media of Israeli police officers brutally beating a detained Palestinian man.”

      How can America support the state of Israel in tyranny and terror, conquest and plunder? It’s a question asked in tones of outrage, sorrow, and bafflement since the advent of the Nakba on May 15 1948, the Day of Catastrophe which began the Occupation of Palestine and the systematic enslavement and genocide of its people in the wake of the Israeli conquest of Jerusalem. How is this legitimized?

      A friend has recently reframed this question for me; “I loved and embraced the Jewish tradition, joining a synagogue and working alongside its Rabbi. When I witness the treatment of Palestinians by the Jewish government of Israel, I am overwhelmed by feelings of confusion and anger. Unable to reconcile this immorality, I question the very foundation of my faith. Where is the good and moral uprising of international Jewish voices condemning the government’s path? I’ve lost faith in being Jewish.”

     What is clear to me is that this crisis of faith is also an existential crisis of identity, a situation of utmost gravity and danger which also holds the potential for reimagination and transformative rebirth, a personal echo of a parallel civilizational crisis from which humankind and the global community of nations must find a way to emerge and free ourselves of the legacies of our history. Here is my reply:

     The state of Israel is not identical with the Jewish faith, though the fascist-imperialist faction which Netanyahu represents would like everyone to think so. 

    A nation based on the assignment of its citizens to a tribal identity, the sectarian weaponization of faith in service to power and an authorized national identity, a military society with universal compulsory service and a pervasive fetishization of myths of martial valor and its symbols including guns, and a reconstructed Hebrew language of national unity has used identity politics to subjugate its citizens to the centralized power of tyranny; Israel is a fascist state of blood, faith, and soil no less than that of the Nazis.

     Add to this toxic mix a kleptocratic regime which has propagandized narratives of historical victimization to legitimize massive theft and imperial conquest of other people’s nations and one thing is clear; Israel has learned the wrong lessons from the Nazis.

     You may know from my many references to the incident in my writing that I am an antifascist, sworn to the Oath of the Resistance by Jean Genet in 1982 in Beirut, during our fight against the Israeli invasion and siege. In the 39 years after, I have been a hunter of Nazis and a revolutionary of democracy engaged in struggle for the liberation of humankind against tyranny and authoritarian regimes of force and control.

      A Palestinian homeland, and justice for its people, has been among my goals since that summer so long ago. Like the goal of liberation of Ireland from British colonial rule, it remains to be achieved. In question is the idea of freedom and citizenship as the sovereignty and independence of peoples from foreign colonialism and authoritarian tyranny, and the primacy of a nonsectarian state free from divisions and hierarchies of faith, for who stands between each of us and the Infinite serves neither.

     I also support the idea of an Israeli homeland, and see no reason these two states, Palestine and Israeli, should be mutually exclusive or antagonistic. Some Israelis who would disagree with me on the question of Palestine and militarism in imperial conquest and regional dominion have been allies in the cause of hunting Nazis and fascists generally throughout the world, but are blind to their own complicity in this evil due to seeing themselves as victims rather than perpetrators of crimes against humanity. This is about fear, and the destructive cycle of abuse and violence.

     When faith is appropriated by authority for legitimation in identity politics, identity itself becomes confused and ambiguous. To become free, we must seize ownership of ourselves as self-created and autonomous beings.

     This is why the primary duties of a citizen are to question authority, expose authority, mock authority, and challenge authority.

     Always there remains the struggle between the masks others make for us and those we make for ourselves; this is the first revolution in which we all must fight.

     I think of the problem of human evil and its cycle of fear, power, and force in the case of states which become the tyrannies they fought to liberate themselves from, and this is true of anticolonial revolutionary states generally because of the historical legacies of victimization, in this way; victims often become abusers because their identity is organized around power as the only means of escape in a world wherein no one can be trusted.

     When trust has been abrogated and proven empty and without meaning, when the capacity to bond with and feel the pain of others in empathy has been broken and one is without pity or remorse, when fear is overwhelming and generalized and has been shaped by authority to the service of power, victims learn that only power has meaning and is real. We must not allow our abusers to become our teachers.

     While every such issue has its own unique origins and history, the problem itself is universal, and relates to what one fears, and how that fear is shaped by authority as identity. From our perspective as Americans interpreting events in the classic problem of the double minority typified by Israel and Palestine, how we perceive issues has much to do with how they are framed by our informing and motivating sources.

      In the end we are defined by what we do with our fear, and how we use our power.

      The first question to ask of any story, and the most important, is simple; whose story is this?

      We are lost in a Wilderness of Mirrors, of lies and illusions, falsifications of ourselves, distorted images and reflections, echoes and authorized identities which disfigure, disempower, and steal our souls.

      How shall we answer those who would enslave us? Our authenticity and autonomy is realized through seizure of power, and the reimagination and transformation of ourselves and humankind as a free society of equals.

      We Americans tend to see things in terms of white hats and black hats, as in the Western films which serve as origin myths and archetypes of our national character. Once victim status has been conferred, such groups and persons become white hats and good guys, incapable of evil and diametrically opposed to whomever must then be black hats. It’s a terrible way of choosing national policy.

     Sadly, we humans can be good and evil at once, the flaws of our humanity echo and reflect the brokenness of the world. It is a truth proven once again tonight in al Quds or Jerusalem depending on to whom one is speaking and in what language, as Gaza burns from the onslaught of an Israeli Defense Forces run amok much the same as the night almost four decades ago in Beirut when they tried to burn Genet and I alive in our café, as a dozen human beings from whom everything but hope has been stolen swear vows to each other to hold a position covering the escape of the women and children trapped by the Israeli attack until all are safe, in a final defense not of al Aqsa Mosque, magnificent and beautiful and filled with significance, monument to the human impulse to reach beyond ourselves and to the limitless possibilities of becoming human, a stage fit for the glorious deaths of heroes, but of the disembodied screams of strangers among the nameless warrens of a derelict antiquity.

     Against the chasms of emptiness and nihilistic barbarism of a world of darkness and fire, of fear and force, I have only words to offer, and I write to you what I have said to my comrades who have chosen to stand with me; I’ve lost count of Last Stands, but I’ve risked everything against impossible odds and survived more times than I can remember, and all that matters is that we abandon neither ourselves nor one another, that we refuse to submit, for this is the moment of our freedom, and it can never be taken from us.

      From this night, Palestine is free, for we can be killed, but we cannot be conquered.

 On the Origins of Evil and Our Monstrosity: a portrait of Hitler and Netanyahu in the character of Martin Chatwin in The Magicians

 Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, by Slavoj Žižek

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2638701-violence

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/11/shireen-abu-akleh-friends-and-family-call-for-justice-on-anniversary-of-killing?CMP=share_btn_link

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/09/discord-in-israel-threatens-benjamin-netanyahus-hold-on-power?CMP=share_btn_link

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/27/netanyahu-national-guard-deal-with-ben-gvir-raises-fears-of-violence?CMP=share_btn_link

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/10/militants-in-gaza-fire-60-rockets-following-israeli-airstrikes-palestine?CMP=share_btn_link

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/israel-bombs-gaza-strip-killing-three-islamic-jihad-leaders?CMP=share_btn_link

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/in-the-grip-of-powerful-i_b_8818032

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/03/israel-strikes-gaza-as-unrest-continues-after-death-of-hunger-striker-khader-adnan?CMP=share_btn_link

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/10/jerusalem-seethes-as-the-rockets-begin-on-day-of-rising-tension

https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/what-is-happening-in-sheikh-jarrah-of-east-jerusalem-past-and-present

https://theprint.in/theprint-essential/al-aqsa-violence-why-palestinians-jews-have-often-clashed-at-this-holy-site-in-jerusalem/655579/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/10/world-reacts-after-israeli-forces-wound-hundreds-in-al-aqsa-raid

Arabic

10 مايو 2024 ذكرى الانتفاضة الثالثة لعام 2021، الجارية الآن في المسرح العاشر للحرب العالمية الثالثة التي تحتوي وتحل محل حرب غزة

        يسعى كل من زوار الأرض المقدسة إلى ظهور علامات غير مرئية في ديزني لاند التي تضم أديانًا متضاربة وأولئك المحاصرين داخل كابوس الجدران ونقاط التفتيش والأسلاك الشائكة والمراقبة المنتشرة والعنف العالمي وسياسات الهوية والطغيان والإرهاب في أحد بلداننا. إن أفظع أنظمة القوة والسيطرة في العالم أصبحت هنا أشباح الهولوكوست؛ تردد صدى إسرائيل مع الصرخات الصامتة للأصوات المسروقة والظلال المفترسة لتاريخ تم تسليحه في خدمة السلطة كسرديات عن الإيذاء والأمن كقوة، وهي استراتيجية مصممة أولاً لكسر تضامننا مع الانقسام وفاشية الدم والعقيدة والتربة كما التزوير ومن ثم تجريدنا من إنسانيتنا وإخضاعنا كأسياد وعبيد وإبادة جماعية وتطهير عرقي.

      لقد تعرضت إسرائيل، باعتبارها حلم اللجوء والأخوة والمحبة العالمية، للخيانة والتخريب من قبل إسرائيل باعتبارها دولة دينية كارهة للأجانب، وإمبراطورية عسكرية، ومعسكرًا للعبيد؛ وهنا تم إضفاء الطابع المؤسسي على أوشفيتز على نطاق وطني، وأصبح سجناؤه السابقون الآن حراسه.

      لماذا يختار أي شخص إعادة خلق الجحيم الذي هرب منه، حتى لو كان أسياده وليس عبيده؟

      إنني أفهم جيدًا إغراء القوة كأمن في عالم مليء بالقوى المعادية والفوضوية، وكيف يمكن تشكيل الخوف الساحق والمعمم من خلال السلطة لمركزية السلطة من خلال منحنا سلطة معارة على الآخرين كرموز للتهديدات الوجودية؛ ليكون حكم الفضيلة من خلال القوة والسيطرة. لكن الأمن وهم، والدولة كعنف متجسد تطيع قانون نيوتن الثالث للحركة وتخلق مقاومتها الخاصة، وألمنا المشترك يوحدنا بطرق تتجاوز حلقة فاغنر من الخوف والقوة والقوة، والتي لا يمكن أن يحررنا إلا الحب. من.

      الحب كتضامن في العمل يمكن أن يخلص عيوب إنسانيتنا وانكسارات العالم، تيكون أولام بالعبرية، ويحررنا لنعيش كضامنين لإنسانية بعضنا البعض.

       وكما كتبت في الذكرى الأولى للانتفاضة الثالثة في مثل هذه الليلة قبل عامين؛ يجب أن تكون هذه هي القضية الأكثر كتابةً ودراسةً ومناقشةً وتجريبًا وخوضًا حولها في السياسة العالمية منذ الحرب العالمية الثانية التي كانت نتيجة لها، هذه الأمة التي يقسم فيها التاريخ شعبًا واحدًا إلى إسرائيليين وفلسطينيين، ومقياسًا إنسانيتنا، كمثال كلاسيكي للأقلية المزدوجة؛ ماذا تفعل بمدينة واحدة وأمة واحدة يطالب بها مجتمعان تاريخيان، كأساس للهوية كإيمان وجنسية وعواقب وممارسة سياسات الهوية كعنف؟

      هنا أمة وشعب يمزقهما اضطراب الهوية الانفصامية، متضاربان ومنغلقان في صراع هائل كما هو الحال مع تجزئة الهوية والذاكرة والوعي لشخصيات متعددة، والجنون على المستوى الوطني والحضاري المولود من تراث التاريخ ومعطل الحياة الأحداث، والصدمة اللاجينية، والحزن، والرعب، والشعور بالذنب، واليأس.

      في ازدواجية إسرائيل وفلسطين، تتضح أصول الشر كالعنف والطغيان في حلقة فاغنري المتكررة والمترابطة من الخوف والقوة والقوة، حيث يتم استخدام الخوف الساحق والمعمم والتهديدات الوجودية كسلاح في خدمة السلطة عن طريق السلطة. والتي تشكل حالات القوة والسيطرة الجسيمية كقوة غير متكافئة وعنف متجسد، من خلال التسلسلات الهرمية النخبوية وتقسيمات الانتماء والغيرية وفاشية الدم والإيمان والتربة.

      هنا الفاشية كشر نظامي تعمل كحيازة وسرقة للروح. مالذي يمكننا فعله حيال هذا؟ وكما سأل لينين في مقالته عام 1902؛ “ما الذي يجب عمله؟” كيف نحرر أنفسنا من القوى النظامية لخضوعنا للسلطة والنخب وأولئك الذين يريدون استعبادنا؟

     يجب علينا أولاً أن ندرك ونحذر من أولئك الذين يدعون أنهم يتحدثون باسمنا ويتصرفون باسمنا، فهذه هي الإستراتيجية الأساسية للفاشية. لتحرير أنفسنا من الأكاذيب والأوهام، والتزييف وإعادة كتابة التاريخ، ونظريات المؤامرة والحقائق البديلة التي من خلالها نصبح مجردين من إنسانيتنا، يجب أن نكون رواة للحقيقة ونشارك في السعي وراء الحقيقة باعتبارها دعوة مقدسة، ونؤدي الواجبات الأساسية الأربعة للمواطن؛ سلطة السؤال، وسلطة الكشف، وسلطة المحاكاة، وسلطة التحدي.

     يجب علينا ثانيًا أن نستغل ملكيتنا الذاتية واستقلالنا في رفض الخضوع للسلطة، لأن السر الأعظم للسلطة هو أنها فارغة وجوفاء، ويتم فقدان شرعيتها من خلال رفض الثقة في السلطة والتصديق بها، والقوة هي هشة وهشة. ويجد حدوده عند نقطة العصيان. أفعال بسيطة، ولكنها أيضًا قوى متأصلة في الإنسان لا يمكن أن تؤخذ منا؛ لأن من يرفض الخضوع فهو حر، ولا يُقهر.

      دائمًا يبقى الصراع بين الأقنعة التي يصنعها الآخرون لنا، وتلك التي نصنعها لأنفسنا. هذه هي الثورة الأولى التي نحن جميعا فيها

جب أن يقاتل؛ النضال من أجل الملكية الذاتية وحرية الهوية.

      لا توجد سلطة عادلة.

       الليلة أجلس في منزلي وسط الظلام الدامس لتلالي، ليلة تتبع أيامًا من المطر ومليئة بأغاني الضفادع والطيور، هدوء لا يزعجه إلا ضوء الضوء في ذكرياتي عن هذه الليلة قبل عام، في الدفاع. الأقصى. مثل ومضات البرق، يمكن ليد الماضي أن تجلب الفوضى وتمتد لتسيطر علينا وتهزنا، وزعزعة استقرارنا واستقرارنا وبنياتنا الطبيعية من خلال أحداث مدمرة مفاجئة وغير متوقعة غير مربوطة بمرتكزاتها في الوقت المناسب.

       لكن الفوضى هي أيضًا مقياس للمدى التكيفي للنظام، الذي يجلب كلاً من الرعب من عدمنا ومتعة الحرية الكاملة في إعادة تصورنا وإعادة ميلادنا التحويلي لأنفسنا وإمكانياتنا اللامحدودة في أن نصبح بشرًا.

       لدى غييرمو ديل تورو، في ملحمته الرائعة عن الهجرة والمساواة العرقية كرنفال رو، مشهد يجد فيه شابان خلفاء لقيادة الفصائل المتنافسة تقليديًا نفسيهما في حالة حب وبحاجة إلى حلفاء في حبكة فرعية تعيد تصوير روميو وجولييت؛ يسأل الجحيم المتمرد جونا بريكسبير عشيقته المكيافيلية صوفي لونجيربان: “لمن تصلح الفوضى؟” فأجابت: “الفوضى جيدة لنا. الفوضى هي الأمل العظيم للضعفاء.”

      قد يفكر المرء في جلب الفوضى من حيث القوة الخلاصية للحب، والتضامن، وواجبنا في رعاية الآخرين، والاستيلاء على السلطة كاستعادة للتوازن، والمقاومة والنضال الثوري كوضع حياتنا في التوازن مع أولئك الذين لا حول لهم ولا قوة والمحرومين، والمُسكتين والممحيين، وtikkun olam أو شفاء انكسار العالم.

      في القدس والقدس، نتعرض للخيانة بسبب طبيعة الخضوع للسلطة والانقسامات غير المتكافئة للسلطة، ويتم تجريدنا من إنسانيتنا من قبل أولئك الذين يرتكبون الفظائع باسمنا، ويصبحون متواطئين في جرائم ضد الإنسانية من خلال روايات الإيذاء التي يسمح بها كما يعلمنا فولتير. أي شئ.

      حصلت على قفاز غيرنا. إنه إرهاب قديم. وهذا يجب أن نقاومه.

      الأساطير القديمة، والمظالم القديمة، منسوجة في نسيج نفسيتنا وحضارتنا. ومثل كل التاريخ والذاكرة والهوية المعتمدة، تحاكي القوى التي يجب أن نخرج من تراثها.

      في هذه اللحظة، أعود مرة أخرى إلى التشخيص الرائع لمرض السلطة باعتبارها هوية مستولى عليها، كما كتب ألون بن ميرين في هافبوست، على الرغم من أن وصفه لنظام الدولتين مثير للنقاش، وبالنسبة لي يجب استبداله بمرور الوقت بنظام علماني. دولة بقانون واحد للجميع وبدون تقسيمات رسمية للقبيلة أو اللغة أو العقيدة، في مقال بعنوان “في قبضة الأوهام القوية”؛ “يبدو أن الطريق المسدود الذي وصلت إليه عملية السلام الإسرائيلية الفلسطينية غير منطقي ومثير للقلق، حيث أن غالبية الإسرائيليين والفلسطينيين يدركون أن التعايش، سواء في ظل ظروف العداء أو الصداقة، هو حقيقة لا يمكن لأي من الطرفين تغييرها إلا بحدوث كارثة.

      يبدو أن الطريق المسدود الذي وصلت إليه عملية السلام الإسرائيلية الفلسطينية غير منطقي ومثير للقلق، حيث أن أغلبية من الإسرائيليين والفلسطينيين يدركون أن التعايش، سواء في ظل ظروف من العداء أو الصداقة، يشكل حقيقة لا يستطيع أي من الطرفين أن يغيرها إلا بالكارثة. ويدرك الجانبان أن المعايير العامة لاتفاق سلام مستدام يجب أن ترتكز على حل الدولتين على أساس حدود 1967 مع بعض تبادل الأراضي. لكن كلا الطرفين اختار الاستمتاع بالأوهام والعيش في تحدي الزمن والظروف. ويبدو أنهما يفضلان استمرار الاشتباكات العنيفة وإراقة الدماء على التعايش السلمي، في حين يلقي كل منهما اللوم على الآخر في المسار المدمر الذي لا ينتهي والذي اختار كل منهما أن يسلكه بشكل مأساوي.

      هناك ضرورات أساسية، مقرونة بتدابير أمنية متبادلة طويلة الأمد، تمثل ما كان على طاولة المفاوضات في عام 2000 في كامب ديفيد وفي 2010/2011 و2013/2014 تحت رعاية إدارة أوباما في القدس ورام الله. وكانت كل جولة، بدرجات متفاوتة من التقدم، تهدف إلى وضع اللمسات النهائية على الاتفاق، لكنها فشلت في نهاية المطاف في القيام بذلك. السؤال هو: لماذا؟

      وكانت التصورات المتحيزة والانتقائية، والتي عززتها التجارب التاريخية، والدين، والإيديولوجيات غير المتوافقة، سبباً في حبس كلا الجانبين في مواقف جامدة. وتشمل العوامل التي تحافظ على هذه الأنماط وتعززها المشاعر مثل الخوف وعدم الثقة وانعدام الأمن. والنتيجة النفسية هي الإنكار المتبادل لسردية الآخر ونزع الشرعية المتبادلة.

      والنتيجة العملية مجتمعة هي الركود والاستقطاب. ولذلك فإن ما نحتاج إليه هو حوار موجه نحو الإجماع على مستوى القيادة بين المسؤولين وغير المسؤولين، والتفاعلات بين الناس، لحل مسألة التصور – وهي مهمة صعبة نظراً للبيئة الحالية التي تدعم التحيز بدلاً من تحسينه. التصورات.

      هناك بعض المفاهيم النفسية ذات الصلة بفهم العلاقة الإسرائيلية الفلسطينية

فلكت؛ مفهوم الوهم هو مفهوم أساسي. في كتابه مستقبل الوهم، يقدم فرويد التعريف التالي: “… نحن نسمي الاعتقاد وهمًا عندما يكون تحقيق الرغبة عاملاً بارزًا في دوافعه، وبذلك نتجاهل علاقاته بالواقع، تمامًا كما الوهم في حد ذاته لا يشكل أي أهمية للتحقق.”

      ما يميز الأوهام هو: 1) أنها مستمدة من رغبات إنسانية عميقة، و2) الاعتقاد قائم (أو سيتم الاعتقاد به) في غياب أي دليل مقنع، أو أسس عقلانية جيدة، لصالحه.

      من المستحيل إنكار أن كلا من الإسرائيليين والفلسطينيين يقعون في قبضة أوهام قوية للغاية لا تؤدي إلا إلى إطالة أمد الصراع ومنع أي تفاهم متبادل. وعلى وجه الخصوص، فإن الاعتقاد الذي يتقاسمه العديد من الإسرائيليين بأن لديهم حق كتابي في الأرض (بما في ذلك يهودا والسامرة)، وأن الله أعطاها لليهود إلى الأبد، هو بلا شك وهم من وهم الأمس.

      لم يتم تأكيد هذا الاعتقاد لأن هناك دليل حقيقي على أن الله اعتبره كذلك (على الرغم من وجود مملكتين يهوديتين – الأولى في القرن العاشر قبل الميلاد والثانية في بداية عام 539 قبل الميلاد – على نفس الأرض)، ولكن لأنه يرضي حاجة نفسية عميقة الجذور لوطن يهودي وهبه الله.

      والاعتقاد بأن إسرائيل من خلال توسيع المستوطنات سوف تعزز أمنها القومي وتحافظ على قبضتها على الأرض بالكامل هو وهم الغد، وهو وهم يتجاهل عموماً وجود المسلمين في نفس الأرض لأكثر من 1300 عام.

      من المهم أن نلاحظ كيف تدعم هذه الأوهام وتعزز بعضها البعض، وتشكل حاجزًا نفسيًا أكثر مناعة للتفكير النقدي. لقد ساهمت أوهام إسرائيل في خلق منطق الاحتلال.

      الفلسطينيون، من جانبهم، لا يخلو من أوهامهم. كما يعتقدون أن الله قد حفظ لهم الأرض، ويحتجون بحقيقة أنهم سكنوا الأرض لعدة قرون. ومن وجهة نظرهم فإن وجود المسجد الأقصى الذي بني عام 705م في القدس يشهد على ارتباطهم التاريخي والديني بالمدينة المقدسة.

      كما أنهم يتمسكون بفكرة أنهم سيعودون يوماً ما إلى أرض أسلافهم، كما فعلوا وما زالوا يصرون على حق العودة للاجئين الفلسطينيين، على الرغم من أن ذلك أصبح مستحيلاً فعلياً.

      يتمسك الفلسطينيون بأوهام الأمس والغد بشكل أعمى ويائس مثل الإسرائيليين، الأمر الذي يؤدي إلى مقاومة التغيير والخوف منه. وعلى هذا النحو، ما لم يغير الجانبان مسارهما ويقبلا انتماء كل منهما إلى نفس الأرض، خاصة لأنها قائمة على أساس ديني، فمن المحتم أن يؤدي الوضع إلى كارثة.

       وقد ساهم ذلك في جعل الصراع الإسرائيلي الفلسطيني مزمناً وعصياً على الحل، حيث تتغذى الأوهام المختلفة بشكل مستمر وواعي من خلال المواجهات العدائية اليومية والعنيفة في كثير من الأحيان بين الجانبين.

      في السعي إلى سد المفاهيم التي يمكن أن تربط بين مجالات علم النفس والسياسة في الصراع الإسرائيلي الفلسطيني، يمكن اقتراح أن المقاومة الجماعية المتبادلة للتغيير (سواء الواعي أو المتعمد، أو اللاوعي الداخلي) تحمي الهوية الضعيفة.

      فمقارنة، على سبيل المثال، بالهويات السياسية المستقرة والناضجة للدول الأمريكية والبريطانية والفرنسية، فإن الهويات السياسية لكل من الشعبين الإسرائيلي والفلسطيني، بطريقة ما، في مرحلة المراهقة.

      تكون الهويات في هذا السياق أكثر عرضة للخطر، والأبطال بطبيعة الحال أكثر دفاعية ومقاومة للتغيير. بحكم طبيعتها، يجب على اللاعبين أن يجدوا صعوبة (إن لم يكن من المستحيل) في التعبير عن ذلك علنًا، لأن القيام بذلك يعني الاعتراف بهذه الثغرة الأمنية.

      إن مفهوم المقاومة النفسية للتغيير قد يؤثر على الوضع السياسي بشكل عام وعلى الصراع الإسرائيلي الفلسطيني بشكل خاص. فهو يرتبط ارتباطًا وثيقًا بالتصورات على العديد من المستويات ويوفر الحماية لتكوين الهوية الضعيفة.

      وهذه العقلية، التي تعززها التجارب التاريخية، هي التي تتجاوز أكثر من سبعة عقود منذ بدأ الصراع الإسرائيلي الفلسطيني. وما زال الأفراد والجماعات، الإسرائيليون والفلسطينيون على حد سواء، يفسرون طبيعة الخلاف بينهم على أنه “أنت ضدي” بطريقة متحيزة وانتقائية.

      وهذا بدوره أدى إلى خنق أي معلومات جديدة ومكن من استمرار مقاومة التغيير، الأمر الذي يمكن أن يلقي ضوءا جديدا على طبيعة وجوهر الصراع ويساعد في دفع عملية السلام.

      يرتبط مفهوم المقاومة اللاواعية للتغيير في هذا الإطار جيدًا بوجهة نظر التصورات التي تحرك الاستقطاب في الصراع. إن الخبرة التاريخية، التي تصوغ التصورات، تعمل من بين أمور أخرى على تعزيز الإحساس بالهوية “من نحن حقًا”، وهو افتراض جماعي تكويني يقع في حجر الأساس لكل من اللاعبين الرئيسيين ويحرك السلوك الوظيفي والمختل.

ومن حيث المبدأ، فإن مثل هذه العقلية تمنع أياً من الطرفين من طرح أفكار جديدة قد تؤدي إلى تنازلات من أجل التوصل إلى حل سلمي. والمفارقة هنا هي أن الأغلبية على كلا الجانبين تريد السلام وتسعى إليه، وهي تعلم جيداً أن ذلك يتطلب تنازلات كبيرة، لكنها غير قادرة على التوفيق بين التنازلات المطلوبة والتصورات المتأصلة التي حالت دون هذه التنازلات نتيجة المقاومة والخوف من ذلك. يتغير.

      ولذلك، فإن أي إطار للسلام يجب أن يتضمن بنوداً من شأنها أن تزيد بشكل كبير من احتمالات التوصل إلى حل. أولاً، يتعين على الجانبين الالتزام بالتوصل إلى اتفاق على أساس حل الدولتين انطلاقاً من الاقتناع بأن التغيير، الذي يترجم إلى التعايش، أمر لا مفر منه. ولذلك، يتعين عليهم أن يتكيفوا مع متطلبات بعضهم البعض، الأمر الذي يتطلب منهم بالضرورة تقديم تنازلات كبيرة.

      ثانياً، لتسهيل ذلك، يجب عليهم إجراء تفاعلات تصالحية اجتماعية واقتصادية وثقافية وأمنية بين الناس للتخفيف من مقاومتهم للتغيير، والتي يجب أن تبدأ، على الأقل، قبل عام واحد من بدء المفاوضات لخلق الحالة النفسية والاجتماعية. مناخ سياسي لبناء الثقة اللازمة لمفاوضات سلام موضوعية وناجحة.

      إن استئناف محادثات السلام لن يؤدي إلى أي نتيجة ما لم يغير الإسرائيليون والفلسطينيون تصوراتهم المتحيزة ومقاومتهم للتغيير وخوفهم منه، ثم يدركون أخيراً أن مصيرهم متشابك ولا يستطيع أي منهما أن يعيش في سلام وأمن دون الآخر.

      أشعر بأنني مضطر إلى اختتام مقالتي الأخيرة لهذا العام بتحذير شديد من أنه من الأفضل للإسرائيليين والفلسطينيين على حد سواء أن يفكروا فيه مع اقترابهم من نهاية العقد السابع من صراعهم المأساوي.

      يجب على كل متطرف إسرائيلي ومتشدد فلسطيني، أولئك الذين يريدون كل ذلك، أن يتوقفوا ويفكروا أين ستكون إسرائيل والفلسطينيون بعد عشر سنوات إذا استمر الوضع الحالي؟

      أوهامك اليوم لن تصبح حقيقة غدًا، وما سيأتي به الغد ليس سوى المزيد من الألم والدموع والعذاب.

      صراعكم يتطور بشكل أسرع من أي وقت مضى إلى حرب دينية. إن هرمجدون بين المسلمين واليهود يجري الإعداد له الآن، وهو ما من شأنه أن يشعل المنطقة بأكملها على نار لا يمكن تصورها.

      إذا كنتم مؤمنين حقيقيين، فلا تجرؤوا على تحدي مشيئة الله، لأنه جمعكم معًا ليضعكم في الاختبار – يجب عليكم إما أن تعيشوا في سلام ووئام، أو سيحكم عليكم بالنسيان واليأس.

      لديك القدرة على اختيار مصيرك. هل سيكون تدميرًا ذاتيًا أم سيكون تحقيقًا لحلم مجيد؟

      انهضوا ومرروا إرثًا من الأمل لكل طفل إسرائيلي وفلسطيني، لأن لديهم الحق الذي منحه الله لهم في أن يكبروا ويزدهروا ولا ينبغي لأحد أن يموت من أجل أوهامكم عبثًا”.

      كما كتبت في رسالتي بتاريخ 9 نوفمبر 2023، مرآة ظلامنا: كريستالناكت؛ إن إسرائيل تحيي ذكرى هذه المأساة التي فتحت الباب أمام مأساة أكبر في المحرقة من خلال فعل الشيء نفسه بالضبط مع الفلسطينيين، شعب واحد منقسم بسبب التاريخ والدين الذي تم استخدامه كسلاح في خدمة السلطة. وهذا أيضاً سيفتح الأبواب أمام المزيد من إرهاب الدولة وطغيانها، ما لم يتمكن الشعبان من الاتحاد ضد السلطات التي ترتكب الفظائع باسمهما كإستراتيجية لإخضاع وتحرير بعضهما البعض من أولئك الذين يستعبدونهما.

      إذا كنت تفكر في الأمم باعتبارها أطفالًا ناجين من سوء المعاملة، يصبح الكثير واضحًا؛ لأنه بمجرد استيلائهم على السلطة، فمن المرجح أن يصبحوا هم أنفسهم مسيئين. هذه هي الطريقة التي يعمل بها الخوف، ولماذا هو الأساس الحقيقي للتبادل، ولماذا السياسة هي فن الخوف، ولماذا تتجسد الدول في العنف. لقد تعرض كل من الإسرائيليين والفلسطينيين للتهديدات الوجودية بوحشية قبل وقت طويل من بدء ممارسة الوحشية والوحشية وتجريد بعضهم البعض من إنسانيتهم.

      إن استخدام الأنظمة المفترسة على كلا الجانبين لسياسات الانقسام والهوية لمركزية السلطة وإضفاء الشرعية على الهيمنة الاستبدادية هي مرحلة يمكن التنبؤ بها من النضال من أجل التحرير، وخاصة الثورة المناهضة للاستعمار.

       إن الحيلة في أن نصبح بشرًا، وأصدقاء، هي أن نحتضن ظلامنا في النضال وكذلك أعداءنا، ونخرج من تراث تاريخنا الذي يظللنا مثل ذيل تمساح غير مرئي.

       هناك سطر يتحدث به الشرير في مسلسل The Magicians، وهو أحد الناجين من إساءة معاملة الأطفال والطاغية المعروف باسم The Beast لجرائمه المروعة، وكان في السابق الصبي الضعيف والمرعوب مارتن شاتوين والآن إله وحشي؛ “كما تعلم، عندما كنت صبيًا، كان الرجل الذي كان من المفترض أن يعتني بي، يثنيني على مكتبه ويحتضنني مرارًا وتكرارًا في كل مرة كنت وحدي معه. إنه يساعدني على فهم الحقيقة. أنت قوي أو أنت ضعيف. “

       وهنا تكمن الكذبة الأصلية للطاغية والفاشي في الدفاعيات وتبرير الذات وسيكوباتية السلطة؛ الكذبة القائلة بأن القوة وحدها هي التي لها معنى وهي حقيقية، وأنه لا يوجد خير أو شر. إن كيفية استخدامنا للسلطة لا تقل أهمية عن من يملكها. الخوف والقوة هما الوسيلة الأساسية للتبادل البشري، ولكن

ليست الوسيلة الوحيدة؛ الحب والعضوية والانتماء لا تقل أهمية.

       إنه خط يجسد بشكل مثالي التناقضات المتأصلة في حلقة فاغنر من الخوف والقوة والقوة كأصل للشر؛ لأن استخدام القوة الاجتماعية هو أمر تخريبي لقيمه الخاصة. ومع ذلك، فإن الظروف المفروضة للنضال الثوري غالبا ما تتطلب العنف، وإلى أن يتم إسقاط آلهة القانون والنظام من عروشهم، يجب أن أتفق مع القول المأثور الشهير لسارتر في مسرحيته “الأيدي القذرة” عام 1948، والتي اقتبسها فرانتز فانون في خطابه عام 1960. لماذا نستخدم العنف، والذي جعله خالدًا مالكولم إكس؛ “بأي وسيلة ضرورية.”

      كما كتب والتر رودني في The Groundings with my Brothers؛ “لقد قيل لنا أن العنف في حد ذاته شر، وأنه، مهما كان سببه، فهو غير مبرر أخلاقيا. بأي معيار أخلاقي يمكن اعتبار العنف الذي يستخدمه العبد لكسر أغلاله مثل عنف سيد العبد؟ بأي معايير يمكننا أن نساوي عنف السود الذين تعرضوا للاضطهاد والقمع والاكتئاب لمدة أربعة قرون مع عنف الفاشيين البيض. ولا يمكن الحكم على العنف الذي يهدف إلى استعادة الكرامة الإنسانية والمساواة بنفس مقياس العنف الذي يهدف إلى الحفاظ على التمييز والقمع.

      وهذا هو المقطع الذي يشير إليه من ليون تروتسكي في كتابه “أخلاقهم وأخلاقنا: الأسس الطبقية للممارسة الأخلاقية”؛ “مالك العبيد الذي من خلال المكر والعنف يقيد عبدًا مقيدًا بالسلاسل، والعبد الذي يكسر القيود من خلال المكر أو العنف – لا تدع الخصيان المحتقرين يخبروننا أنهم متساوون أمام محكمة الأخلاق!”

      ومع ذلك، أفكر في تلك الشخصيات العظيمة التي كانت أبطال التحرير وأشرار الطغيان؛ قدوتي المراهقة نابليون، واشنطن، الذي يعد محوريًا في تاريخ عائلتنا وصاغ الشعار على شعار النبالة الخاص بنا في رمز المرور خلال معركة ترينتون، النصر أو الموت، عندما كانت الثورة بأكملها تراهن على أمل بائس، من المأساوية دراما الأبطال الذين سقطوا مثل روبرت موغابي، والطغاة المتوحشين ستالين وماو، والقائمة عبارة عن سلسلة لا نهاية لها تقريبًا من الويلات وإخفاقات الرؤية حيث تحولت عوالم جديدة شجاعة إلى جحيم وحالات جنونية. في الدليل الذي أقدمه، أصبحت الثورات الأمريكية والنابليونية إمبراطوريات، والاتحاد السوفييتي، والحزب الشيوعي الصيني، والهند حيث يأتي مجد التحرير جنبًا إلى جنب مع مأساة التقسيم، وهي الآن تحت حذاء القومية الهندوسية، وجميع الثورات المناهضة للاستعمار تقريبًا. والتي أصبحت، مع الفترة الأولى من الحرية كأمم جديدة، أنظمة استبدادية مروعة، وقبل كل شيء دولة إسرائيل، حلم اللجوء الذي نشأ في إرهاب المحرقة التي تعلم ضحاياها الدروس الخاطئة من النازيين وتولوا دورهم في احتلال إسرائيل. فلسطين. إن مخاطر المثالية حقيقية للغاية؛ ولكن كذلك مخاطر الخضوع للسلطة والتواطؤ في الصمت في وجه الشر.

      أنا صياد الفاشيين، وأخلاقي هي أخلاق الصياد. بالنسبة لي هناك اختبار بسيط لاستخدام القوة؛ من يملك السلطة؟

      لقد كتب عدد كبير من الحكماء بشكل جميل عن أهوال فاشية الدم والإيمان والتربة والتسلسلات الهرمية للانتماء النخبوي والاختلاف الإقصائي، كما يفعل بول أوستريشر في المقالة التالية؛ أود هنا فقط أن أشير إلى أن القوى التي تكمن في داخلنا وخارجها، مثل الظروف الاجتماعية والصدمات اللاجينية، والحركات الرجعية للهمجية وأنظمة القمع، هي قوى عالمية بالنسبة للبشر كشروط مفروضة للنضال وتعمل باستمرار حتى عندما تكون محجوبة عن الأنظار. أبعد من الرعب والإذلال الناتج عن نقاط الانكسار في الروح الإنسانية مثل تلك التي حدثت في ليلة الكريستال والتطهير العرقي في غزة.

      أكتب إليك كشخص عاش صرخة معركة “لن يحدث مرة أخرى أبدًا”! منذ أكثر من أربعين عامًا، ومن الأهمية العميقة والحيوية تطبيق مبدأ العمل هذا ليس فقط في مقاومة الفاشية كعدو متطفل على كل ما هو إنساني فينا، ولكن أيضًا على أنفسنا واستخدامنا للعنف والوسائل الاجتماعية. القوة تجاه الآخرين.

     في النهاية، كل ما يهم هو ما نفعله بمخاوفنا، وكيف نستخدم قوتنا.

      بغض النظر عن المكان الذي تبدأ فيه بالانقسامات والتسلسلات الهرمية للانتماء النخبوي والاختلاف الاستبعادي، فإنك دائمًا ينتهي بك الأمر عند أبواب أوشفيتز.

     كما يعلمنا نيتشه في كتابه ما وراء الخير والشر؛ “أولئك الذين يصطادون الوحوش يجب أن ينتبهوا لئلا يصبح وحشًا. وإذا حدقت طويلا في الهاوية، فإن الهاوية ستحدق فيك أيضا.”

      في مرآة غزة المظلمة، بانعكاساتها الوحشية على ليلة الكريستال وأوشفيتز، هل يعجبك ما تراه يا إسرائيل؟

      وكما كتبت في رسالتي بتاريخ 10 مايو 2021، الدفاع عن الأقصى: الحرية مقابل الاستبداد في القدس؛ ربما شهدنا قدوم الانتفاضة الثالثة هذه الليلة، دفاعًا عن الأقصى ومعارك الشوارع في غزة التي أعقبت ذلك، والتي أشعلها الغدر والغزو الإمبراطوري لدولة إسرائيل الفاشية والكارهة للأجانب والتي لا تنظر إلا إلى أحد.

قبيلتهم ودينهم كإنسان حقيقي، والذي ارتكب هجومًا مميتًا غير مبرر كعمل من أعمال إرهاب الدولة وجريمة ضد الإنسانية على المصلين المسالمين في أحد أكثر المساجد قدسية في العالم الإسلامي، وهو استعراض للقوة والقوة. الهيمنة التي تأتي بعد أسابيع من الاستفزازات والاعتداءات وأعمال الدعاية التجريدية من الإنسانية ضد شعب فلسطين.

       مثل انتفاضة الأقصى الثانية التي استمرت أربع سنوات من 28 سبتمبر 2000 إلى 8 فبراير 2005، فإن القضايا التي لم يتم حلها للاحتلال هي الآن في عامها الرابع والخمسين منذ احتلال إسرائيل للقدس القديمة في 7 يونيو 1967، والذي احتفلت به دولة إسرائيل وفقًا لـ إلى التقويم العبري باعتباره يوم القدس اليوم من خلال مهاجمة الأقصى، والكارثة المستمرة الآن منذ ثلاثة وسبعين عامًا منذ يوم النكبة في 15 مايو 1948، تضافرت حول القيمة الرمزية للأقصى، الذي له هوية مزدوجة متنازع عليها مثل جبل الهيكل في القدس. اليهودية.

      إن فرص التهدئة وتجنب الحرب لا تعتمد الآن على العوامل المحلية، بل على استجابة المجتمع الدولي، لأن التاريخ هنا أصبح فخًا ينهار ليوقعنا في شركه، ويجب على القوى الخارجية أن تحررنا من إخفاقات الغرب. التناقضات الداخلية لنظامنا.

      فهل ستتنصل أمريكا وتتخلى عن مستعمرتها إسرائيل، ملكة سياستها الإمبراطورية في الشرق الأوسط وسيطرتها على المورد الاستراتيجي للنفط؟ هل يمكن للوحدة الدولية وضغوط المقاطعة وسحب الاستثمارات وفرض العقوبات أن تحررنا من طغيان وإرهاب نظام الفصل العنصري كما حدث في جنوب أفريقيا؟

      أم أن الحرب هي الحساب الوحيد الذي يمكن للبشرية تقديمه أو قبوله؟

      كما كتب إيشان ثارور في صحيفة واشنطن بوست؛ ليلة الإثنين، تبادل المسلحون في قطاع غزة والجيش الإسرائيلي إطلاق الصواريخ والغارات الجوية وسط تصعيد مميت للعنف. أطلقت حماس والجهاد الإسلامي، الجماعتان المسلحتان المتمركزتان في غزة المحاصرة، وابلًا من الصواريخ التي سقطت بالقرب من القدس وفي أجزاء من جنوب إسرائيل، مما أدى إلى إصابة شخص واحد على الأقل. وأدت الغارات الجوية الإسرائيلية ردا على ذلك إلى مقتل ما لا يقل عن 20 شخصا في غزة، وفقا لوزارة الصحة في غزة، من بينهم تسعة أطفال.

      وقال رئيس الوزراء الإسرائيلي بنيامين نتنياهو إن “الجماعات الإرهابية” في غزة “تجاوزت الخط الأحمر” بهجماتها الصاروخية. لكن الانفجار الأخير للأعمال العدائية له ذيل طويل، في أعقاب العديد من الأعمال العدوانية التي قامت بها قوات الأمن الإسرائيلية والجماعات اليهودية اليمينية المتطرفة في القدس. قبل أسبوعين، قامت مجموعات من المتطرفين اليهود، بما في ذلك بعض المستوطنين من الضفة الغربية، بمسيرة عبر المناطق المأهولة بالسكان الفلسطينيين في المدينة المقدسة، وهم يهتفون “الموت للعرب”، وهاجموا المارة وألحقوا أضرارًا بالممتلكات والمنازل الفلسطينية. أثارت المحاولات الإسرائيلية لطرد عدد من العائلات الفلسطينية في حي الشيخ جراح بالقدس الشرقية – وهو نموذج مصغر لما يعتبره الفلسطينيون جزءًا من تاريخ طويل من السلب والمحو على يد الدولة الإسرائيلية – احتجاجات التضامن الفلسطيني في أجزاء مختلفة للأراضي المحتلة وإسرائيل.

      كما أثارت التوترات قبيل إحياء يوم القدس يوم الاثنين، وهو يوم عطلة إسرائيلية رسمي يحتفل بالاستيلاء على المدينة خلال الحرب العربية الإسرائيلية عام 1967. تم إلغاء مسيرة سنوية كان من المقرر أن يقوم بها إسرائيليون من اليمين المتطرف بعد أن غيرت السلطات مسارها في اللحظة الأخيرة. ولا تزال أعداد كبيرة تشق طريقها إلى حائط المبكى وتغني أغنية انتقامية متطرفة ضد الفلسطينيين.

      أفاد زملائي أن “هجمات حماس الصاروخية، والتي تضمنت الضربات الأولى ضد القدس منذ عدة سنوات، جاءت بعد اشتباكات بين الشرطة الإسرائيلية والمتظاهرين الفلسطينيين والإسرائيليين اليهود اليمينيين المتطرفين حول المدينة القديمة”. ومن بين مئات الجرحى سبعة نقلوا إلى المستشفى في حالة خطيرة، بحسب الهلال الأحمر الفلسطيني. وتم تداول مقطع فيديو على وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي يظهر ضباط شرطة إسرائيليين يضربون بوحشية رجلاً فلسطينيًا معتقلًا.

       فكيف يمكن لأمريكا أن تدعم دولة إسرائيل في الطغيان والإرهاب والغزو والنهب؟ إنه سؤال يُطرح بلهجة الغضب والأسى والحيرة منذ حلول النكبة في 15 مايو/أيار 1948، يوم النكبة التي بدأ فيها احتلال فلسطين والاستعباد الممنهج والإبادة الجماعية لشعبها في أعقاب الغزو الإسرائيلي. القدس. كيف يتم إضفاء الشرعية على هذا؟

       لقد أعاد أحد الأصدقاء صياغة هذا السؤال لي مؤخرًا؛ “لقد أحببت التقليد اليهودي واعتنقته، وانضممت إلى كنيس يهودي وعملت جنبًا إلى جنب مع حاخامه. عندما أشاهد معاملة الحكومة اليهودية في إسرائيل للفلسطينيين، تغمرني مشاعر الارتباك والغضب. ولأنني غير قادر على التوفيق بين هذا الفجور، فإنني أشكك في أساس إيماني. أين الانتفاضة الطيبة والأخلاقية للأصوات اليهودية العالمية المنددة بمسار الحكومة؟ لقد فقدت الثقة في كوني يهودية”.

      ما هو واضح بالنسبة لي هو أن أزمة الإيمان هذه هي أيضًا أزمة هوية وجودية

ن الوضع في غاية الخطورة والخطر والذي يحمل أيضًا إمكانية إعادة التصور والولادة التحويلية، وهو صدى شخصي لأزمة حضارية موازية يجب على البشرية والمجتمع العالمي للأمم أن يجدوا منها طريقة للخروج وتحرير أنفسنا من تراث الحضارة الإنسانية. تاريخنا. وهنا ردي:

      دولة إسرائيل ليست متطابقة مع الديانة اليهودية، على الرغم من أن الفصيل الإمبريالي الفاشي الذي يمثله نتنياهو يرغب في أن يعتقد الجميع ذلك.

     أمة تقوم على تخصيص مواطنيها لهوية قبلية، والتسليح الطائفي للعقيدة في خدمة السلطة والهوية الوطنية المصرح بها، ومجتمع عسكري مع خدمة إلزامية عالمية، وصنم منتشر لأساطير الشجاعة العسكرية ورموزها بما في ذلك البنادق. واستخدمت لغة الوحدة الوطنية العبرية المعاد بناؤها سياسات الهوية لإخضاع مواطنيها لسلطة الاستبداد المركزية؛ إسرائيل دولة فاشية من الدم والإيمان والأرض لا تقل عن دولة النازيين.

      أضف إلى هذا المزيج السام النظام الكليبتوقراطي الذي روج لسرديات الإيذاء التاريخي لإضفاء الشرعية على السرقة الجماعية والغزو الإمبراطوري لشعوب أخرى، وهناك شيء واحد واضح؛ لقد تعلمت إسرائيل الدروس الخاطئة من النازيين.

      ربما تعلمون من إشاراتي العديدة إلى الحادثة في كتاباتي أنني مناهض للفاشية، وقد أقسمت قسم المقاومة على يد جان جينيه عام 1982 في بيروت، أثناء معركتنا ضد الغزو والحصار الإسرائيلي. وفي الأعوام التسع والثلاثين التي تلت ذلك، كنت صائدًا للنازيين وثوريًا للديمقراطية منخرطًا في النضال من أجل تحرير البشرية ضد الطغيان والأنظمة الاستبدادية التي تعتمد على القوة والسيطرة.

       لقد كان الوطن الفلسطيني، والعدالة لشعبه، من بين أهدافي منذ ذلك الصيف منذ فترة طويلة. ومثله كمثل هدف تحرير أيرلندا من الحكم الاستعماري البريطاني، فلا يزال يتعين تحقيقه. موضع التساؤل هو فكرة الحرية والمواطنة باعتبارها سيادة واستقلال الشعوب عن الاستعمار الأجنبي والطغيان الاستبدادي، وأولوية دولة غير طائفية خالية من الانقسامات والتسلسلات الهرمية للإيمان، لأن من يقف بين كل واحد منا وبين اللانهائي لا يخدم أيًا منهما. .

      كما أنني أؤيد فكرة إقامة وطن إسرائيلي، ولا أرى أي سبب يجعل هاتين الدولتين، فلسطين وإسرائيل، متنافيتين أو متعارضتين. بعض الإسرائيليين الذين يختلفون معي حول قضية فلسطين والنزعة العسكرية في الغزو الإمبراطوري والسيطرة الإقليمية كانوا حلفاء في قضية مطاردة النازيين والفاشيين عمومًا في جميع أنحاء العالم، لكنهم غافلون عن تواطؤهم في هذا الشر بسبب رؤيتهم لأنفسهم. كضحايا وليس كمرتكبي جرائم ضد الإنسانية. يتعلق الأمر بالخوف والدورة المدمرة للإساءة والعنف.

      عندما تستولي السلطة على الإيمان لإضفاء الشرعية على سياسات الهوية، تصبح الهوية نفسها مشوشة وغامضة. لكي نصبح أحرارًا، يجب علينا أن نمتلك ملكية أنفسنا ككائنات مخلوقة ذاتيًا ومستقلة.

      ولهذا السبب فإن الواجبات الأساسية للمواطن هي مساءلة السلطة، وكشف السلطة، والسخرية من السلطة، وتحدي السلطة.

      دائمًا يبقى الصراع بين الأقنعة التي يصنعها الآخرون لنا وتلك التي نصنعها لأنفسنا؛ هذه هي الثورة الأولى التي يجب علينا جميعا أن نقاتل فيها.

      أفكر في مشكلة الشر البشري ودورة الخوف والقوة والقوة في حالة الدول التي أصبحت أنظمة استبدادية قاتلت من أجل تحرير نفسها منها، وهذا ينطبق على الدول الثورية المناهضة للاستعمار بشكل عام بسبب الموروثات التاريخية من الإيذاء. ، في هذا الطريق؛ غالبًا ما يصبح الضحايا مسيئين لأن هويتهم منظمة حول السلطة باعتبارها الوسيلة الوحيدة للهروب في عالم لا يمكن الوثوق فيه بأحد.

      عندما يتم إلغاء الثقة وإثبات أنها فارغة وبلا معنى، عندما تنكسر القدرة على الارتباط بالآخرين والشعور بألمهم في التعاطف، ويصبح المرء بلا شفقة أو ندم، عندما يكون الخوف طاغيًا ومعممًا وتشكله السلطة على التعامل مع الآخرين. وفي خدمة السلطة، يتعلم الضحايا أن القوة وحدها هي التي لها معنى وهي حقيقية. يجب ألا نسمح للمسيئين أن يصبحوا معلمينا.

      وفي حين أن كل قضية من هذا القبيل لها أصولها وتاريخها الفريد، فإن المشكلة في حد ذاتها عالمية، وتتعلق بما يخشاه المرء، وكيف يتشكل هذا الخوف من خلال السلطة كهوية. من وجهة نظرنا كأميركيين يفسرون الأحداث في المشكلة الكلاسيكية المتمثلة في الأقلية المزدوجة التي تمثلها إسرائيل وفلسطين، فإن كيفية إدراكنا للقضايا لها علاقة كبيرة بكيفية تأطيرها من خلال مصادرنا الإعلامية والمحفزة.

       في النهاية، يتم تعريفنا بما نفعله بخوفنا، وكيف نستخدم قوتنا.

       السؤال الأول الذي يجب طرحه في أي قصة، والأهم، هو سؤال بسيط؛ من هذه القصة؟

       نحن ضائعون في برية المرايا، من الأكاذيب والأوهام، وتزييف أنفسنا، والصور والانعكاسات المشوهة، والأصداء والهويات المرخصة التي تشوه وتشوه.

مكين، وسرقة أرواحنا.

       فكيف نجيب أولئك الذين يستعبدوننا؟ يتم تحقيق أصالتنا واستقلالنا من خلال الاستيلاء على السلطة، وإعادة تصور وتحويل أنفسنا والبشرية كمجتمع حر متساوين.

       نحن الأمريكيون نميل إلى رؤية الأشياء من منظور القبعات البيضاء والقبعات السوداء، كما هو الحال في الأفلام الغربية التي تعتبر بمثابة أساطير أصلية ونماذج أولية لشخصيتنا الوطنية. بمجرد منح مكانة الضحية، تصبح هذه المجموعات والأشخاص من القبعات البيضاء والأخيار، غير قادرين على الشر ومعارضين تمامًا لأي شخص يجب أن يكون من القبعات السوداء. إنها طريقة فظيعة لاختيار السياسة الوطنية.

      للأسف، نحن البشر يمكن أن نكون خيرًا وأشرارًا في الوقت نفسه، فعيوب إنسانيتنا تتردد وتعكس انكسار العالم. إنها حقيقة تم إثباتها مرة أخرى الليلة في القدس أو القدس اعتمادًا على من يتحدث وبأي لغة، بينما تحترق غزة من هجوم قوات الدفاع الإسرائيلية المسعورة تمامًا كما حدث في الليلة التي مضت قبل أربعة عقود تقريبًا في بيروت. عندما حاولوا حرقي أنا وجينيه أحياء في المقهى الخاص بنا، كعشرات البشر الذين سُرق منهم كل شيء ما عدا الأمل، أقسموا لبعضهم البعض أن يتخذوا موقعًا يغطي هروب النساء والأطفال المحاصرين بالهجوم الإسرائيلي حتى النهاية. نحن آمنون، في دفاع أخير ليس عن المسجد الأقصى، رائع وجميل ومليء بالأهمية، نصب تذكاري للدافع البشري للوصول إلى ما هو أبعد من أنفسنا والإمكانيات اللامحدودة لأن نصبح بشرًا، مرحلة مناسبة للموت المجيد للأبطال، ولكن من صرخات الغرباء بلا جسد بين المحاربين المجهولين في العصور القديمة المهجورة.

      في مواجهة هوة الفراغ والهمجية العدمية في عالم من الظلام والنار، من الخوف والقوة، ليس لدي سوى الكلمات لأقدمها، وأنا أكتب إليكم ما قلته لرفاقي الذين اختاروا الوقوف معي؛ لقد فقدت عدد مرات الوقوف الأخيرة، لكنني خاطرت بكل شيء ضد احتمالات مستحيلة ونجوت مرات أكثر مما أستطيع أن أتذكر، وكل ما يهم هو أننا لا نتخلى عن أنفسنا ولا عن بعضنا البعض، وأن نرفض الاستسلام، لأن هذا هو لحظة حريتنا، ولا يمكن أن تؤخذ منا أبدا.

       من هذه الليلة تتحرر فلسطين، يمكن أن نقتل ولكن لا يمكن أن نفتح.

Hebrew

10 במאי 2024 יום השנה לאינתיפאדה השלישית של 2021, מתקיים כעת בתיאטרון העשירי של מלחמת העולם השלישית המכיל ומחליף את מלחמת עזה

        הן המבקרים בארץ הקודש המחפשים סימנים של הבלתי נראה המתגלים בדיסנילנד של אמונות מסוכסכות והן אלה שנלכדו בתוך הסיוט של חומות, מחסומים, תיל תער, מעקבים נרחבים, אלימות אוניברסלית, פוליטיקה זהותית, והעריצות והטרור של אחד מאיתנו. משטרי הכוח והשליטה הנוראיים ביותר בעולם הפכו כאן לרוחות הרפאים של השואה; ישראל מהדהדת עם הצרחות השקטות של הקולות הגנובים והצללים הטורפים של היסטוריה שנושקה בשירות לשלטון כנרטיבים של קורבנות וביטחון ככוח, אסטרטגיה שנועדה לשבור תחילה את הסולידריות שלנו עם פילוג ופשיזם של דם, אמונה ואדמה. זיוף ולאחר מכן דה-הומניזציה והכניעתנו כאדונים ועבדים וכרצח עם וטיהור אתני.

      ישראל כחלום מקלט ושל אחווה ואהבה אוניברסליים נבגדה וחתרנה על ידי ישראל כתיאוקרטיה שנאת זרים, אימפריה צבאית ומחנה עבדים; כאן אושוויץ התמסד בקנה מידה לאומי, אסיריה לשעבר עכשיו השומרים שלה.

      מדוע שמישהו יבחר לשחזר גיהנום ממנו נמלט, אפילו כאדוניו ולא כעבדיו?

      אני מבין היטב את הפיתוי של כוח כביטחון בעולם של כוחות עוינים וכאוטיים, וכיצד ניתן לעצב פחד מוחץ ומוכלל על ידי סמכות לרכז כוח על ידי הצעת לנו כוח מושאל על אחרים כדמויות של איומים קיומיים; להיות פוסק המידות באמצעות כוח ושליטה. אבל ביטחון הוא אשליה, המדינה כאלימות מגולמת מצייתת לחוק התנועה השלישי של ניוטון ויוצרת התנגדות משלה, והכאב המשותף שלנו מאחד אותנו בדרכים שמתעלות מעל הטבעת הווגנרית של פחד, כוח וכוח, שרק אהבה יכולה לשחרר אותנו מ.

      אהבה כסולידריות בעשייה יכולה לגאול את פגמי אנושיותנו ואת שברו של העולם, תיקון עולם בעברית, ולשחרר אותנו לחיות כערבים לאנושיותו של זה.

       כפי שכתבתי ביום השנה הראשון לאינתיפאדה השלישית בלילה הזה לפני שנתיים; זה חייב להיות הנושא הנכתב ביותר, הנלמד, התווכח, התנסה בו ונלחם בנושא בפוליטיקה הגלובלית מאז מלחמת העולם השנייה שהוא תוצאה ממנה, העם הזה שבו עם אחד מחולק לפי ההיסטוריה כישראלים ופלסטינים, ומדד של האנושות שלנו, כדוגמה הקלאסית של המיעוט הכפול; מה עושים עם עיר אחת ואומה אחת שתיבעות על ידי שתי קהילות היסטוריות, כבסיס לזהות כאמונה ולאום וההשלכות והפרקסיס של פוליטיקת זהויות כאלימות?

      כאן אומה ועם נקרעים על ידי הפרעת זהות דיסוציאטיבית, מסוכסכים ונעולים במאבק טיטאני כמו עם פיצול הזהות, הזיכרון והתודעה של מספר אישים, טירוף בקנה מידה לאומי וציוויליזציוני שנולד ממורשת ההיסטוריה והחיים משבשים אירועים, טראומה אפיגנטית, אבל, אימה, אשמה וייאוש.

      בדואליות של ישראל ופלסטין מתבררים מקורות הרוע כאלימות ועריצות בטבעת הווגנרית הרקורסיבית והתלויה הדדית של פחד, כוח וכוח, כאשר פחד סוחף ומוכלל ואיומים קיומיים מופעלים בנשק בשירות לשלטון על ידי הסמכות. היוצר מצבי כוח ושליטה קרסראליים ככוח לא שוויוני ואלימות מגולמת, באמצעות היררכיות עילית וחלוקות של שייכות ואחרות ופשיזם של דם, אמונה ואדמה.

      כאן פועל הפשיזם כרע מערכתי כהחזקה וגניבה של הנשמה. מה אנחנו יכולים לעשות לגבי זה? כפי ששאל לנין במאמרו משנת 1902; “מה יש לעשות?” איך להשתחרר מהכוחות המערכתיים של ההכנעה שלנו לסמכות, לאליטות ולאלה שישעבדו אותנו?

     ראשית עלינו להכיר ולהיזהר מאלה המתיימרים לדבר בשמנו ולפעול בשמנו, שכן זוהי אסטרטגיה ראשית של הפשיזם. כדי לשחרר את עצמנו מהשקרים והאשליות, הזיוף וההיסטוריה המשוכתבת, תיאוריות הקונספירציה והמציאות החלופית שבאמצעותן אנו הופכים לדה-הומניזציה, עלינו להיות דוברי אמת העוסקים במרדף אחר האמת כקריאה קדושה, ולבצע את ארבע החובות העיקריות של אזרח; רשות שאלה, רשות חשיפה, רשות מדומה ורשות אתגר.

     שנית עלינו לתפוס את הבעלות העצמית והאוטונומיה שלנו בסירוב להיכנע לסמכות, שכן הסוד הגדול של הכוח הוא שהוא ריק וחלול, והוא עובר דה-לגיטימציה דרך סירוב לסמוך ולהאמין בסמכות, ושל כוח שהוא שביר ו מוצא את הגבול שלו בנקודה של אי ציות. מעשים פשוטים, אבל גם כוחות טבועים של האדם שלא ניתן לקחת מאיתנו; שכן מי שמסרב להיכנע הוא חופשי, והופך לבלתי ניתן לכיבוש.

      תמיד נשאר המאבק בין המסכות שאחרים עושים לנו, לבין אלה שאנחנו עושים לעצמנו. זו המהפכה הראשונה שבה כולנו

חייב להילחם; המאבק לבעלות עצמית ולחופש הזהות.

      אין סמכות צודקת.

       הלילה אני יושב בבית בין החושך העצום של גבעותיי, לילה שעוקב אחרי ימים של גשם ומלא בשירי צפרדעים וציפורים, שלווה המופרעת רק בגלל הכירוסקורו של זיכרונותיי מהלילה הזה לפני שנה, בהגנה. של אל אקצא. כמו הבזקים של ברק, יד העבר יכולה להביא את הכאוס ולהושיט יד לתפוס ולטלטל אותנו, ולערער אותנו ואת מבני הנורמליות שלנו עם אירועים בלתי צפויים ופתאומיים משבשים שנפרמו מעגןיהם בזמן.

       אבל הכאוס הוא גם מדד לטווח ההסתגלותי של מערכת, שמביאה הן את אימת האין שלנו והן את השמחה על החופש המוחלט בדמיון המחודש שלנו והלידה מחדש המשנה של עצמנו ושל האפשרויות הבלתי מוגבלות שלנו להפוך לאנושות.

       לגיירמו דל טורו, באפוס המפואר שלו של הגירה ושוויון גזעי קרנבל רואו, יש סצנה שבה שני ממשיכים צעירים להנהגה של פלגים יריבים מסורתיים מוצאים עצמם מאוהבים וזקוקים לבעלי ברית בעלילת משנה המדמה מחדש את רומיאו ויוליה; הגיהנום המורד, ג’ונה ברייקספיר, שואל את אהובתו המקיאוולית, סופי לונגרבין, “למי כאוס טוב?” על כך היא משיבה, “כאוס טוב לנו. כאוס הוא התקווה הגדולה של חסרי הכוח”.

      אפשר לחשוב על הבאת הכאוס במונחים של כוח הגאולה של אהבה, של סולידריות, של חובת הדאגה שלנו לזולת, של תפיסות כוח כהחזרת האיזון, של התנגדות ומאבק מהפכני כמו העמדת חיינו באיזון עם אלה של חסרי הכוח והמנושלים, המושתקים והנמחקים, וכתיקון עולם או ריפוי שברו של העולם.

      בירושלים ובאל קודס, אנו נבגדים על ידי הנורמליות של כניעה לסמכות וחלוקת הכוח הלא שוויוני, דה-הומניזציה על ידי אלה שמבצעים זוועות בשמנו, ונעשים שותפים לפשעים נגד האנושות באמצעות נרטיבים של קורבנות, כפי שוולטר מלמד אותנו מאפשרים. כל דבר.

      Gott mitt uns; זה טרור עתיק יומין. ולכך עלינו להתנגד.

      מיתוסים ישנים, ותלונות ישנות, שזורים במרקם הנפש שלנו והציוויליזציה שלנו. וכמו כל היסטוריה, זיכרון וזהות מורשית, כוחות מימטיים שממורשתם עלינו לצאת.

      ברגע זה אני פונה שוב לאבחנה המבריקה של מחלת הכוח כזהות שנתפסה כפי שכתב אלון בן-מאירין בהאפפוסט, אם כי המרשם שלו למערכת שתי מדינות שנוי במחלוקת ובשבילי יש להחליפו בזמן עם חילוני. מדינה עם חוק אחד לכולם וללא חטיבות רשמיות של שבט, שפה או אמונה, במאמר שכותרתו In The Grip Of Powerful Illusions; “המבוי הסתום בתהליך השלום הישראלי-פלסטיני נראה לא הגיוני ומטריד, שכן רוב הישראלים והפלסטינים מבינים שדו-קיום, בין אם בתנאי איבה או ידידות, הוא עובדה שאף צד לא יכול להשתנות מלבד קטסטרופה.

      המבוי הסתום בתהליך השלום הישראלי-פלסטיני נראה לא הגיוני ומטריד, שכן רוב הישראלים והפלסטינים מבינים שדו-קיום, בין אם בתנאי איבה ובין אם בתנאי ידידות, הוא עובדה שאף אחד מהצדדים אינו יכול להשתנות מלבד קטסטרופה. שני הצדדים מבינים שהפרמטרים הכלליים של הסכם שלום בר קיימא חייבים להישען על פתרון שתי מדינות המבוסס על גבולות 1967 עם כמה חילופי קרקעות. עם זאת, שני הצדדים בוחרים להתענג על אשליות ולחיות בהתרסה לזמן ולנסיבות. נראה שהם מעדיפים המשך התנגשויות אלימות ושפיכות דמים על פני דו-קיום שליו, תוך שהם מאשימים זה את זה בדרך ההרסנית הבלתי נגמרת, שבאופן טרגי שניהם בחרו לעבור.

      ישנם ציווי יסוד, יחד עם אמצעי ביטחון הדדיים ארוכי טווח, המייצגים את מה שהיה על שולחן המשא ומתן בשנת 2000 בקמפ דיוויד ובשנים 2010/2011 ו-2013/2014 בחסות ממשל אובמה בירושלים וברמאללה. כל סבב, עם דרגות שונות של התקדמות, נועד להשלים הסכם ועם זאת בסופו של דבר לא הצליח לעשות זאת. השאלה היא: למה?

      תפיסות מוטות וסלקטיביות, שמחוזקות על ידי חוויות היסטוריות, דת ואידיאולוגיות לא תואמות, נעלו את שני הצדדים בעמדות חסרות תנועה. הגורמים המשמרים ומעצימים דפוסים אלה כוללים רגשות כמו פחד, חוסר אמון וחוסר ביטחון. התוצאה הפסיכולוגית היא הכחשה הדדית של הנרטיב של האחר ודה-לגיטימציה הדדית.

      ביחד, התוצאה האופרטיבית היא סטגנציה וקיטוב. לכן, מה שנדרש הוא דיאלוג מכוון קונצנזוס ברמת המנהיגות של פקידים ולא פקידים כאחד, ואינטראקציות בין אנשים, כדי לפתור את סוגיית התפיסה – סדר גבוה בהתחשב בסביבה הנוכחית שמתבססת ולא משפרת דעות קדומות. תפיסות.

      ישנם מושגים פסיכולוגיים מסוימים הרלוונטיים להבנת השיתוף הישראלי-פלסטיני

 מושג האשליה הוא מושג חיוני. ב”עתידה של אשליה”, פרויד מציע את ההגדרה הבאה: “…אנו קוראים לאמונה אשליה כאשר הגשמת משאלות היא גורם בולט במוטיבציה שלה, ובכך אנו מתעלמים מיחסיה למציאות, בדיוק כפי שה האשליה עצמה אינה מגדירה אימות”.

      מה שמאפיין אשליות הוא ש: 1) הן נגזרות משאלות אנושיות עמוקות, ו-2) האמונה מוחזקת (או תוחזק) בהעדר כל ראיה משכנעת, או נימוקים רציונליים טובים, מטעמה.

      אי אפשר להכחיש שהן הישראלים והן הפלסטינים נמצאים באחיזת אשליות חזקות מאוד שרק משמשות להארכת הסכסוך ולמנוע כל הבנה הדדית. בפרט, האמונה המשותפת לישראלים רבים שיש להם זכות מקראית על הארץ (כולל יהודה ושומרון) ושאלוהים נתן אותה ליהודים לנצח היא ללא ספק אשליה של אתמול.

      אמונה זו אינה מאושרת משום שיש ראיות אמיתיות לכך שאלוהים ראה אותה (למרות ששתי ממלכות יהודיות אכן קיימות – הראשונה במאה העשירית לפנה”ס והשנייה החלה בשנת 539 לפנה”ס – על אותה אדמה), אלא משום שהיא מספק צורך פסיכולוגי עמוק במולדת יהודית שניתנת לאלוהים.

      האמונה שבאמצעות הרחבת ההתנחלויות ישראל תגביר את ביטחונה הלאומי ותשמור על אחיזתה בכל הארץ היא אשליה של המחר, שמתעלמת בדרך כלל מנוכחותם של מוסלמים באותה אדמה במשך יותר מ-1,300 שנה.

      חשוב לציין כיצד אשליות אלו מקיימות ומחזקות אחת את השנייה, ומהוות מחסום פסיכולוגי שהוא הרבה יותר אטום לרפלקציה ביקורתית. אשליותיה של ישראל שימשו ליצירת ההיגיון לכיבוש.

      הפלסטינים, מצדם, אינם חפים מאשליות משלהם. הם גם מאמינים שאלוהים שמר להם את הארץ, ופונים לעובדה שהם ישבו את הארץ במשך מאות שנים. מנקודת המבט שלהם, נוכחותו של מסגד אל-אקצא, שנבנה בשנת 705 לספירה בירושלים, מעידה על זיקתם ההיסטורית והדתית לעיר הקודש.

      הם גם נאחזים ברעיון שהם יחזרו מתישהו לאדמת אבותיהם, כפי שיש להם וממשיכים להתעקש על זכות השיבה של הפליטים הפלסטינים, למרות שזה הפך לבלתי אפשרי כמעט.

      הפלסטינים נאחזים באשליותיהם מאתמול ומחר באותה עיוורון ונואש כמו הישראלים, מה שמוביל להתנגדות ופחד משינויים. ככזה, אלא אם שני הצדדים ישנו מסלול ויקבלו את הזיקה של זה לאותה ארץ, במיוחד בגלל שהיא מבוססת דתית, המצב צפוי להוביל לאסון.

       זה תרם להפיכת הסכסוך הישראלי-פלסטיני לכרוני ובלתי פתיר כאחד, שכן האשליות השונות ניזונות באופן רציף ומודע ממפגשים עוינים ולעתים קרובות אלימים בין שני הצדדים.

      בניסיון לגשר בין מושגים שיכולים לקשר בין תחומי הפסיכולוגיה והפוליטיקה בסכסוך הישראלי-פלסטיני, ניתן להציע שהתנגדות הדדית קולקטיבית לשינוי (הן מודעת ומכוונת, והן בלתי מודעת פנימית) מגינה על זהות פגיעה.

      בהשוואה, למשל, לזהות הפוליטית היציבה והבוגרת של האומות האמריקאיות, הבריטיות והצרפתיות, הזהות הפוליטית של העם הישראלי והפלסטיני כאחד נמצאת, במידה מסוימת, בגיל ההתבגרות.

      זהויות בסביבה זו פגיעות יותר, והגיבורים באופן טבעי מתגוננים יותר ועמידים בפני שינויים. מעצם טבעו, על השחקנים להתקשות (אם לא בלתי אפשרי) לבטא זאת בפומבי, שכן לעשות זאת הוא להודות בפגיעות זו.

      הרעיון של התנגדות פסיכולוגית לשינוי עשוי בהחלט להשפיע על המסגרת הפוליטית בכלל ועל הסכסוך הישראלי-פלסטיני בפרט; הוא קשור קשר הדוק לתפיסות ברמות רבות ומספק הגנה על גיבוש זהות פגיעה.

      הלך הרוח הזה, המחוזק על ידי חוויות היסטוריות, הוא שמתעלה על יותר משבעת העשורים מאז החל הסכסוך הישראלי-פלסטיני. ליחידים ולקבוצות, ישראלים ופלסטינים כאחד, יש וממשיכים לפרש את אופי המחלוקת ביניהם כ”אתה נגדי” בצורה דעות קדומות וסלקטיביות.

      בתורו, זה חנק כל מידע חדש ואפשר את ההתנגדות המתמשכת לשינוי, מה שיכול לשפוך אור חדש על מהות הסכסוך ומהותו ולעזור לקדם את תהליך השלום.

      הרעיון של התנגדות לא מודעת לשינוי במסגרת זו מתקשר היטב לתפיסה של תפיסות המניעות את הקיטוב בקונפליקט. התנסות היסטורית, המגבשת תפיסות, משמשת בין היתר להגברת תחושת הזהות של “מי שאנחנו באמת”, הנחה קולקטיבית מעצבת היושבת בסלע של שחקני מפתח כאחד ומניעה התנהגות תפקודית ולא מתפקדת.

באופן עקרוני, חשיבה כזו מונעת משני הצדדים לבדר רעיונות חדשים שעלולים להוביל לפשרות לפתרון של שלום. הפרדוקס כאן הוא שהרוב משני הצדדים אמנם רוצים ומחפשים שלום, ביודעים היטב שהדבר ידרוש ויתורים משמעותיים, אך אינם מסוגלים ליישב את הוויתורים הנדרשים עם תפיסות טבועות שמנעו את הפשרות הללו כתוצאה מהתנגדות וחשש מפני שינוי.

      לכן, כל מסגרת לשלום חייבת לכלול הוראות שיגדילו באופן דרמטי את הסיכויים לטובת פתרון. ראשית, שני הצדדים צריכים להתחייב להגיע להסכם המבוסס על פתרון שתי מדינות מתוך אמונה ששינוי, שמתורגם לדו-קיום, הוא בלתי נמנע. לכן, עליהם להתאים את עצמם זה לדרישותיו של זה, מה שמחייב אותם בהכרח לעשות ויתורים משמעותיים.

      שנית, כדי להקל על כך, עליהם לבצע אינטראקציות חברתיות, כלכליות, תרבותיות וביטחוניות פייסות בין אנשים, כדי למתן את התנגדותם לשינוי, אשר חייבת להתחיל, לפחות, שנה אחת לפני תחילת המשא ומתן ליצירת הפסיכולוגיות וה אווירה פוליטית כדי לטפח את האמון הדרוש למשא ומתן לשלום מהותי ומוצלח.

      חידוש שיחות השלום לא יוביל לשום מקום אלא אם ישראלים ופלסטינים ישנו את תפיסתם הדעות הקדומות ואת התנגדותם לשינוי ופחדם משינוי, ולבסוף יגיעו להכרה שגורלם שזור זה בזה ואינם יכולים לחיות בשלום ובביטחון ללא השני.

      אני מרגיש נאלץ לסיים את המאמר האחרון שלי לשנה באזהרה חמורה שישראלים ופלסטינים כאחד יעשו אם להרהר בה כאשר הם מתקרבים לסוף העשור השביעי לסכסוך הטראגי שלהם.

      כל מיליטנט ישראלי קיצוני ופלסטיני, מי שרוצה הכל חייב לעצור ולחשוב היכן יהיו ישראל והפלסטינים בעוד עשר שנים אם המצב הנוכחי יימשך?

      אשליותיך של היום לא יהפכו למציאות של מחר, ומה שהמחר יביא אינו אלא עוד כאב, דמעות ויסורים.

      הסכסוך שלך מתפתח מהר יותר למלחמת דת. מתקיים ארמגדון מוסלמי-יהודי שיעלה את כל האזור באש בלתי נתפסת.

      אם אתם מאמינים אמיתיים, אל תעזו להתריס נגד רצונו של אלוהים, כי הוא דחף אתכם יחד כדי להעמיד אתכם במבחן – עליכם לחיות בשלום ובהרמוניה, או שתיגזרו על שכחה וייאוש.

      יש לך את הכוח לבחור את הגורל שלך. האם זה יהיה הרס עצמי או שזה יהיה הגשמת חלום מפואר?

      קום והעביר מורשת של תקווה לכל ילד ישראלי ופלסטיני, כי יש להם את הזכות הנתונה מאלוהים לגדול ולשגשג ואף אחד לא צריך למות על האשליות שלך לשווא”.

      כפי שכתבתי בפוסט שלי מ-9 בנובמבר 2023, מראה של החושך שלנו: בדולח; ישראל מנציחה את הטרגדיה הזו שפתחה דלת לטרגדיה גדולה עוד יותר בשואה בכך שהיא עושה בדיוק את אותו הדבר לפלסטינים, עם אחד המחולק על ידי ההיסטוריה והאמונה המזוהה עם נשק בשירות לשלטון. וגם זה יפתח דלתות לטרור ועריצות מדינות, אלא אם כן שני העמים יוכלו להתאחד נגד רשויות המבצעות זוועות בשמם כאסטרטגיה של הכנעה ולשחרר זה את זה מאלה שישעבדו אותם.

      אם אתה חושב על עמים כילדים שהם ניצולי התעללות, הרבה מתברר; שכן ברגע שהם תפסו את השלטון יש סיכוי גבוה יותר שהם יהפכו למתעללים בעצמם. כך פועל הפחד, מדוע הוא הבסיס האמיתי לחילופי דברים, מדוע פוליטיקה היא אמנות הפחד, ומדוע מדינות מגולמות באלימות. הן הישראלים והן הפלסטינים נפגעו מהאיומים הקיומיים הרבה לפני שהחלו לחבל, להתאכזר ולעשות דה-הומניזציה אחד את השני.

      העובדה שהמשטרים הדורסניים משני הצדדים השתמשו בפוליטיקת פילוג וזהות כדי לרכז כוח ולהעניק לגיטימציה לשליטה אוטוריטרית היא שלב צפוי של מאבק השחרור, במיוחד של מהפכה אנטי-קולוניאלית.

       הטריק של להיות אנושי, חברים, הוא לאמץ את החושך של עצמך במאבק, כמו גם את אויביו, ולצאת מהמורשת של ההיסטוריה שלנו שמצלה עלינו כמו זנב תנין בלתי נראה.

       יש קו שאמר הנבל בסדרה הקוסמים, ניצול של התעללות בילדות ועריץ הידוע בשם החיה על פשעיו הנוראיים, פעם הילד חסר הכוח והמבועת מרטין צ’טווין וכיום אל מפלצתי; “אתה יודע, כשהייתי ילד, גבר שנועד לטפל בי כופף אותי מעל השולחן שלו וקיבל אותי שוב ושוב בכל פעם שהייתי איתו לבד. זה עוזר לי להבין אמת. אתה חזק או שאתה חלש. “

       הנה השקר המקורי של העריץ והפשיסט באפולוגטיקה, בהצדקה העצמית ובפסיכופתיה של הכוח; השקר שרק לכוח יש משמעות והוא אמיתי, שאין טוב או רע. אופן השימוש בכוח הוא בעל חשיבות שווה למי שמחזיק בו. פחד וכוח הם אמצעי עיקרי לחילופי בני אדם, אבל

לא האמצעי היחיד; אהבה, חברות ושייכות חשובים לא פחות.

       זהו קו אשר לוכד בצורה מושלמת את הסתירות הטבועות בטבעת הוואגנרית של פחד, כוח וכוח כמקור של הרוע; שכן השימוש בכוח חברתי הוא חתרני לערכיו שלו. עם זאת, התנאים המוטלים של מאבק מהפכני מצריכים לעתים קרובות אלימות, ועד שאלי החוק והסדר יופלו מכסאותיהם אני חייב להסכים עם הכתבה המפורסמת של סארטר במחזהו “ידיים מלוכלכות” מ-1948, שצוטט על ידי פרנץ פאנון בנאומו מ-1960. למה אנחנו משתמשים באלימות, והפכו לאלמוות על ידי מלקולם אקס; “בכל דרך אפשרית.”

      כפי שכתב וולטר רודני ב-The Groundings with my Brothers; “אמרו לנו שאלימות כשלעצמה היא רוע, ושלא משנה מה הסיבה, היא לא מוצדקת מבחינה מוסרית. לפי איזה סטנדרט של מוסר יכולה האלימות שבה משתמש עבד כדי לשבור את שלשלאותיו להיחשב זהה לאלימות של אדון עבדים? לפי אילו אמות מידה נוכל להשוות את האלימות של שחורים שדוכאו, מדוכאים, מדוכאים ומדוכאים במשך ארבע מאות שנים עם אלימותם של פאשיסטים לבנים. לא ניתן לשפוט אלימות שמטרתה החזרת כבוד האדם ושוויון לפי אותו קנה מידה כמו אלימות שמטרתה לשמור על אפליה ודיכוי”.

      והנה הקטע שאליו הוא מתייחס מפי ליאון טרוצקי ב-Their Morals and Ours: The Class Foundations of Moral Practice; “בעל עבדים שבאמצעות ערמומיות ואלימות כובל עבד בשלשלאות, ועבד שבאמצעות ערמומיות או אלימות שובר את השלשלאות – שלא יאמרו לנו הסריסים הבזויים שהם שווים בפני בית דין מוסר!”

      אולם בהשתקפות אני חושב על אותן דמויות גדולות שהיו גם גיבורי השחרור וגם נבלי העריצות; המודל לחיקוי בגיל ההתבגרות שלי נפוליאון, וושינגטון, שהוא מרכזי בהיסטוריה המשפחתית שלנו וטבע את המוטו על הסמל שלנו בקוד הסיסמה במהלך קרב טרנטון, ניצחון או מוות, כאשר המהפכה כולה התנהלה על תקווה עזובה, של הטרגי דרמה של גיבורים שנפלו כמו רוברט מוגאבה, העריצים המפלצתיים סטלין ומאו, הרשימה היא אוסף כמעט אינסופי של צרות וכישלונות חזון שבהם עולמות חדשים אמיצים הפכו לגיהנום ולמדינות קרסרליות. לראיה אני מציע למהפכות האמריקניות והנפוליאון להפוך לאימפריות, ברית המועצות, המפלגה הקומוניסטית הסינית, הודו, שם תהילת השחרור באה יד ביד עם הטרגדיה של החלוקה וכעת היא תחת מגף הלאומיות ההינדית, כמעט כל המהפכות האנטי-קולוניאליות. שעם תקופת החירות הראשונה כאומות חדשות הפכו לעריצות איומה, ובעיקר למדינת ישראל, לחלום מקלט שנרקם באימת השואה שקורבנותיו למדו את הלקחים הלא נכונים מהנאצים ונטלו על עצמם את תפקידם בכיבוש פלשתינה. הסכנות של האידיאליזם הן אמיתיות מאוד; אבל כך גם הסכנות שבכניעה לסמכות ובשותפות השתיקה מול הרוע.

      אני צייד של פשיסטים, ושלי הוא מוסר של צייד. מבחינתי יש מבחן פשוט לשימוש בכוח; מי מחזיק בכוח

      הרבה מאוד אנשים חכמים כתבו יפה על זוועות הפשיזם של דם, אמונה ואדמה ועל היררכיות של השתייכות עילית ואחרות מוציאה מהכלל, כפי שעושה פול אוסטרייכר במאמר שלאחר מכן; כאן ברצוני רק להצביע על כך שהכוחות הטמונים בתוכנו ובחוץ כתנאים חברתיים וטראומה אפיגנטית, של אטאביסטים של ברבריות ומערכות דיכוי, הם אוניברסליים לבני אדם כתנאי מאבק כפויים ופועלים ללא הרף גם כשהם מעורפלים מהעין. , מעבר לאימה ולמחסור של נקודות השבר של נפש האדם כמו אלו של ליל הבדולח והטיהור האתני של עזה.

      אני כותב לך כמי שחיה לפי קריאת הקרב של לעולם לא שוב! כבר למעלה מארבעים שנה, ויש חשיבות עמוקה וחיונית ליישם את עקרון הפעולה הזה לא רק בהתנגדות לפשיזם כאויב חודרני של כל מה שאנושי בנו, אלא גם לעצמנו ולשימוש שלנו באלימות ובחברתי. כוח כלפי אחרים.

     בסופו של דבר, כל מה שחשוב הוא מה אנחנו עושים עם הפחד שלנו, ואיך אנחנו משתמשים בכוח שלנו.

      לא משנה היכן אתה מתחיל עם פילוגים והיררכיות של השתייכות עילית ואחרות מדריגה, אתה תמיד מגיע בשערי אושוויץ.

     כפי שמלמד אותנו ניטשה במעבר לטוב ולרע; “מי שצד מפלצות עשוי לדאוג שלא יהפוך בכך למפלצת. ואם אתה מסתכל זמן רב לתוך תהום, התהום מביטה גם בך.”

      במראה האפלה של עזה, עם ההשתקפויות המפלצתיות של ליל הבדולח ושל אושוויץ, אתה אוהב את מה שאתה רואה, הו ישראל?

      כפי שכתבתי בפוסט שלי מ-10 במאי 2021, ההגנה על אל אקצא: חירות מול עריצות בירושלים; ייתכן שהיינו עדים להופעת האינתיפאדה השלישית הלילה, בהגנת אל-אקצא ובקרבות הרחוב בעזה שבאו בעקבותיה, שהוצתו בעקבות הבגידה והכיבוש האימפריאלי של מדינת ישראל שנאת זרים ופשיסטית שאינה מתייחסת לאיש מלבד

השבט והאמונה שלהם כאנושיים באמת, ואשר ביצעו מתקפה בלתי מעוררת וקטלנית כמעשה טרור ממלכתי ופשע נגד האנושות על המתפללים השלווים באחד המסגדים הקדושים ביותר בעולם האסלאמי, הפגנת כוח ו שלטון שבא בעקבות שבועות של פרובוקציות, תקיפות ופעולות של דה-הומניזציה תעמולתית נגד העם הפלסטיני.

       כמו אינתיפאדת אל-אקצא השנייה או אל-אקצא שנמשכה ארבע שנים מה-28 בספטמבר 2000 עד ה-8 בפברואר 2005, נושאים לא פתורים של כיבוש שנמצא כעת בחמישים וארבעה שנים מאז כיבוש ירושלים העתיקה ב-7 ביוני 1967 על ידי ישראל, שמדינת ישראל חגגה על פי ללוח העברי כיום ירושלים היום על ידי תקיפת אל אקצא, ואסון הנמשך כבר שבעים ושלוש שנים מאז יום הנכבה ה-15 במאי 1948, התלכדו סביב הערך הסמלי של אל אקצא, בעל זהות כפולה שנויה במחלוקת כהר הבית ב. יַהֲדוּת.

      סיכויי הסלמה ומניעת מלחמה תלויים כעת לא בגורמים מקומיים אלא בתגובת הקהילה הבינלאומית, שכן ההיסטוריה הפכה כאן למלכודת שמתמוטטת כדי ללכוד אותנו במלתעותיה, וכוחות חיצוניים חייבים לשחרר אותנו מהכישלונות של הסתירות הפנימיות של המערכת שלנו.

      האם אמריקה תתנער ותתנער ממושבה ישראל, מלכת המדיניות האימפריאלית שלה במזרח התיכון והשליטה במשאב האסטרטגי של הנפט? האם האחדות הבינלאומית והלחץ של חרם, ביטול וסנקציה יכולים לשחרר אותנו מהעריצות והטרור של משטר אפרטהייד כפי שעשה בדרום אפריקה?

      או שמא מלחמה היא ההתחשבנות היחידה שהמין האנושי יכול להציע או לקבל?

      כפי שנכתב על ידי ישאן ת’ארור בוושינגטון פוסט; “ביום שני בלילה, חמושים ברצועת עזה והצבא הישראלי החליפו ירי רקטות ותקיפות אוויריות על רקע הסלמה קטלנית של האלימות. חמאס והג’יהאד האיסלאמי, ארגונים חמושים שבסיסם בעזה המצוררת, שיגרו מטח רקטות שנחתו ליד ירושלים ובחלקים מדרום ישראל, ופצעו לפחות אדם אחד. תקיפות אוויריות ישראליות בתגמול הרגו לפחות 20 בני אדם בעזה, לפי משרד הבריאות של עזה, כולל תשעה ילדים.

      ראש ממשלת ישראל בנימין נתניהו אמר כי “קבוצות הטרור” בעזה “חצו קו אדום” עם התקפות הרקטות שלהם. אבל לפיצוץ הלחימה האחרון יש זנב ארוך, בעקבות פעולות תוקפניות רבות הן של כוחות הביטחון הישראליים והן של ארגוני עליונות יהודים מהימין הקיצוני בירושלים. לפני שבועיים צעדו להקות של קיצונים יהודים, כולל כמה מתנחלים מהגדה המערבית, דרך אזורים מאוכלסים בפלסטינים בעיר הקדושה, קראו “מוות לערבים”, תקפו עוברי אורח ופגעו ברכוש ובבתים פלסטינים. ניסיונות ישראלים לפנות מספר משפחות פלסטיניות בשכונת שייח ג’ראח במזרח ירושלים – מיקרוקוסמוס של מה שהפלסטינים רואים כחלק מהיסטוריה ארוכה של נישול ומחיקה בידי מדינת ישראל – עוררו מחאות סולידריות פלסטיניות בחלקים שונים. של השטחים הכבושים וישראל עצמה.

      היא גם העלתה את המתיחות לקראת ציון יום ירושלים ביום שני, חג ישראלי רשמי שחוגג את כיבוש העיר במהלך מלחמת ערב-ישראל ב-1967. צעדה שנתית מתוכננת של ישראלים אולטרה-לאומיים מהימין הקיצוני בוטלה לאחר שהרשויות ניתבו את דרכה ברגע האחרון. מספרים גדולים עדיין עשו את דרכם לכותל ושרו שיר נקמה קיצוני נגד הפלסטינים.

      “התקפות הרקטות של חמאס, שכללו את התקיפות הראשונות נגד ירושלים מזה מספר שנים, הגיעו לאחר עימותים בין משטרת ישראל, מפגינים פלסטינים וישראלים יהודים מהימין הקיצוני ברחבי העיר העתיקה”, דיווחו עמיתיי. “בין מאות הפצועים היו שבעה שאושפזו במצב קשה, כך לפי הסהר האדום הפלסטיני. קטעי וידאו שהופצו ברשתות החברתיות של שוטרים ישראלים מכים באכזריות גבר פלסטיני עצור”.

       איך אמריקה יכולה לתמוך במדינת ישראל בעריצות ובטרור, בכיבוש ובגזל? זו שאלה שנשאלת בטונים של זעם, צער ותמיהה מאז הופעת הנכבה ב-15 במאי 1948, יום הקטסטרופה שהחל את כיבוש פלסטין והשעבוד השיטתי ורצח העם של אנשיה בעקבות הכיבוש הישראלי. של ירושלים. איך זה מקבל לגיטימציה?

       חבר ניסח לי לאחרונה מחדש את השאלה הזו; “אהבתי ואימצתי את המסורת היהודית, הצטרפתי לבית כנסת ועבדתי לצד רבו. כשאני עד ליחס של ממשלת ישראל היהודית לפלסטינים, אני מוצף ברגשות של בלבול וכעס. אני לא מצליח ליישב את חוסר המוסריות הזה, אני מטיל ספק בעצם היסוד של אמונתי. היכן ההתקוממות הטובה והמוסרית של הקולות היהודיים הבינלאומיים המגנה את דרכה של הממשלה? איבדתי את האמון בלהיות יהודי”.

      מה שברור לי הוא שמשבר האמונה הזה הוא גם משבר קיומי של זהות

מצב של כובד ראש וסכנה אשר טומן בחובו גם פוטנציאל לדמיון מחודש ולידה מחדש טרנספורמטיבית, הד אישי למשבר ציוויליזציוני מקביל ממנו על המין האנושי וקהילת האומות העולמית למצוא דרך לצאת ולשחרר את עצמנו מהמורשת של ההיסטוריה שלנו. הנה תשובתי:

      מדינת ישראל אינה זהה לאמונה היהודית, אם כי הפלג הפשיסטי-אימפריאליסטי שנתניהו מייצג היה רוצה שכולם יחשבו כך.

     אומה המבוססת על הקצאת אזרחיה לזהות שבטית, נשק עדתי של אמונה בשירות לשלטון וזהות לאומית מורשית, חברה צבאית עם שירות חובה אוניברסלי ופטישיזציה נרחבת של מיתוסים של חיל לחימה וסמליה כולל רובים , ושפה עברית משוחזרת של אחדות לאומית השתמשה בפוליטיקת זהויות כדי להכפיף את אזרחיה לכוח הריכוזי של העריצות; ישראל היא מדינה פשיסטית של דם, אמונה ואדמה לא פחות מזו של הנאצים.

      הוסיפו לתמהיל הרעיל הזה משטר קלפטוקרטי שהפיץ נרטיבים של קורבנות היסטורית כדי לתת לגיטימציה לגניבה מסיבית וכיבוש אימפריאלי של מדינות אחרות ודבר אחד ברור; ישראל למדה את הלקחים הלא נכונים מהנאצים.

      אתה אולי יודע מההתייחסויות הרבות שלי לתקרית בכתיבתי שאני אנטי-פשיסט, שנשבע לשבועת ההתנגדות על ידי ז’אן ז’נה ב-1982 בביירות, במהלך מאבקנו נגד הפלישה והמצור הישראלים. ב-39 השנים שאחרי, הייתי צייד נאצים ומהפכן של דמוקרטיה העסוק במאבק לשחרור המין האנושי נגד עריצות ומשטרים אוטוריטריים של כוח ושליטה.

       מולדת פלסטינית, וצדק לאנשיה, היו בין המטרות שלי מאז אותו קיץ לפני כל כך הרבה זמן. כמו המטרה של שחרור אירלנד מהשלטון הקולוניאלי הבריטי, עוד נותרה להשיגה. מדובר ברעיון החירות והאזרחות כריבונות ועצמאות של עמים מקולוניאליזם זר ועריצות אוטוריטרית, והקדימות של מדינה לא-כתתית נקייה מפילוגים והיררכיות של אמונה, שכן מי שעומד בין כל אחד מאיתנו לבין האינסופי אינו משרת אף אחד מהם. .

      אני גם תומך ברעיון של מולדת ישראלית, ולא רואה סיבה ששתי המדינות הללו, פלסטין וישראלית, יהיו סותרות זו את זו או אנטגוניסטיות. כמה ישראלים שלא יסכימו איתי בשאלת פלסטין ומיליטריזם בכיבוש אימפריאלי ובשליטה אזורית היו בעלי ברית במטרת ציד הנאצים והפשיסטים בדרך כלל ברחבי העולם, אבל הם עיוורים לשותפותם שלהם ברוע זה בגלל שהם רואים את עצמם כקורבנות ולא כמבצעי פשעים נגד האנושות. מדובר בפחד, ובמעגל ההרסני של התעללות ואלימות.

      כאשר האמונה מנוכסת על ידי סמכות ללגיטימציה בפוליטיקת זהויות, הזהות עצמה הופכת מבולבלת ומעורפלת. כדי להיות חופשיים, עלינו לתפוס בעלות על עצמנו כיצורים שנוצרו בעצמנו ואוטונומיים.

      זו הסיבה שהתפקידים העיקריים של האזרח הם להטיל ספק בסמכות, לחשוף סמכות, ללעוג לסמכות ולערער על סמכות.

      תמיד נשאר המאבק בין המסכות שאחרים עושים לנו לבין אלה שאנחנו עושים לעצמנו; זו המהפכה הראשונה שבה כולנו צריכים להילחם.

      אני חושב על בעיית הרוע האנושי ומעגל הפחד, הכוח והכוח שלו במקרה של מדינות שהופכות לעריצות מהן נלחמו כדי להשתחרר מהן, וזה נכון לגבי מדינות מהפכניות אנטי-קולוניאליות בדרך כלל בגלל המורשת ההיסטורית של הקורבנות , בדרך זו; קורבנות הופכים לעתים קרובות למתעללים מכיוון שזהותם מאורגנת סביב כוח כאמצעי המילוט היחיד בעולם שבו לא ניתן לסמוך על איש.

      כאשר האמון בוטל והוכח כריק וללא משמעות, כאשר היכולת להתחבר ולהרגיש את כאבם של אחרים באמפתיה נשברה ואדם ללא רחמים או חרטה, כאשר הפחד הוא מכריע ומוכלל ועוצב על ידי סמכות בשירות הכוח, הקורבנות לומדים שרק לכוח יש משמעות והוא אמיתי. אסור לנו לאפשר למתעללים שלנו להפוך למורים שלנו.

      בעוד שלכל נושא כזה יש מקורות והיסטוריה ייחודיים משלו, הבעיה עצמה היא אוניברסלית, וקשורה למה שחוששים, ואיך הפחד הזה מעוצב על ידי סמכות זהות. מנקודת המבט שלנו כאמריקאים המפרשים אירועים בבעיה הקלאסית של המיעוט הכפול האופיינית על ידי ישראל ופלסטין, האופן שבו אנו תופסים נושאים קשורים רבות לאופן שבו הם ממוסגרים על ידי מקורות המידע והמניעים שלנו.

       בסופו של דבר אנחנו מוגדרים לפי מה אנחנו עושים עם הפחד שלנו, ואיך אנחנו משתמשים בכוח שלנו.

       השאלה הראשונה שיש לשאול על כל סיפור, והחשובה ביותר, היא פשוטה; של מי הסיפור הזה

       אנחנו אבודים במדבר של מראות, של שקרים ואשליות, זיופים של עצמנו, דימויים והשתקפויות מעוותים, הדים וזהויות מורשות שמעוותות, משבשות.

להעצים ולגנוב את נשמתנו.

       איך נענה למי שישעבד אותנו? האותנטיות והאוטונומיה שלנו מתממשות באמצעות תפיסת כוח, ודמיון מחדש והפיכתנו של עצמנו ושל המין האנושי כחברה חופשית של שווים.

       אנו האמריקאים נוטים לראות דברים במונחים של כובעים לבנים וכובעים שחורים, כמו בסרטי המערבון המשמשים כמיתוסים וארכיטיפים של המקור הלאומי שלנו. ברגע שהוענק מעמד של קורבן, קבוצות ואנשים כאלה הופכים לכובעים לבנים ולחבר’ה טובים, חסרי יכולת לרוע ומנוגדים בתכלית למי שחייבים להיות כובעים שחורים. זו דרך איומה לבחור במדיניות לאומית.

      למרבה הצער, אנו בני האדם יכולים להיות טובים ורעים בבת אחת, פגמי האנושות שלנו מהדהדים ומשקפים את השבר של העולם. זו אמת שהוכחה שוב הלילה באל קודס או בירושלים תלוי למי מדברים ובאיזה שפה, בעוד עזה בוערת מהסתערות של צבא הגנה ישראלי משתוללת בדומה ללילה לפני כמעט ארבעה עשורים בביירות. כשניסו לשרוף את ג’נט ואני בחיים בבית הקפה שלנו, כתריסר בני אדם שנגנב מהם הכל מלבד התקווה נשבעים נדרים זה לזה להחזיק בתפקיד שיכסה את בריחת הנשים והילדים שנלכדו בתקיפה הישראלית עד שכל בטוחים, בהגנה סופית לא על מסגד אל אקצא, מפואר ויפה ומלא במשמעות, אנדרטה לדחף האנושי להגיע אל מעבר לעצמנו ולאפשרויות הבלתי מוגבלות להפוך לאנושיות, במה המתאימה למותם המפואר של גיבורים, אבל של צרחות חסרות גוף של זרים בין המלחמות חסרות השם של עתיקות נטושה.

      אל מול תהום הריקנות והברבריות הניהיליסטית של עולם של חושך ואש, של פחד וכוח, יש לי רק מילים להציע, ואני כותב לך את מה שאמרתי לחבריי שבחרו לעמוד איתי; איבדתי את ספירת היציעים האחרונים, אבל סיכנתי הכל כנגד סיכויים בלתי אפשריים ושרדתי יותר פעמים ממה שאני יכול לזכור, וכל מה שחשוב הוא שאנחנו לא נוטשים לא את עצמנו ולא אחד את השני, שאנחנו מסרבים להיכנע, כי זה רגע החופש שלנו, ולעולם לא ניתן לקחת אותו מאיתנו.

       מהלילה הזה, פלסטין חופשית, כי אנחנו יכולים להיהרג, אבל אי אפשר לכבוש אותנו.

May 1 2024 A Festival in Red and Green, As the World Burns: May Day

     We celebrate this day a festival in Red and Green; socialism as labor solidarity and class struggle, and ecology as stewardship of our world. What unites these two origins and purposes of May Day is the idea of interconnectedness, mutualism, and interdependence in the social and natural worlds, and of our duty of care for each other and our fragile ark of life on our journey together through the unimaginable vastness of the cosmos.

   This day also finds our universities embattled by forces of repression of dissent, as a new generation finds its heart and its voice in solidarity with the people of Palestine against genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity paid for by our taxes and authorized by Genocide Joe and the apparatus of state terror and tyranny he represents. We refuse to be made complicit by silence in the face of this historic abandonment of our universal human rights and the role of America as their guarantor throughout the world.

    We have brought the war home. Now our universal human rights in the genocide of the Palestinians paid for by our taxes and our rights of dissent and co ownership of the state will be tested; has democracy become performative  in America, or does it still stand and have meaning? This, friends, is the true reason the Netanyahu regime engineered October 7; to aide Trump in the subversion of democracy and to create a casus belli for the conquest of the Middle East and the Final Solution if the Palestinians.

     The divestiture, peace, and Occupy movement and protests have gathered momentum as an unstoppable tide as did the Black Lives Matter wave of mass action, and to the tyrants of death and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil let us say with the Mockingbird; “If we burn, you burn with us.”  

    Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

    I think now of the iconic May Day speech of Jean Genet for the Black Panthers at a university under siege by authorities to whom the function of universities is as a success filter which enforces elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege and authorizes hierarchies and identities of reified membership and exclusionary otherness in terms of race, class, and gender.

     Sadly, in this nothing has changed, which can be read all too clearly in the police terror and repression of dissent at the peace protests and encampments for divestiture throughout our nation’s universities. The struggle between conservative and revolutionary forces in universities reflects that of all our institutions and systems of oppression; states and the wealthy who operate and  fund them understand universities as a success filter and intend to enforce and control membership in elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege as class war, white supremacist tyranny, and theocratic patriarchal sexual terror, while universities are at the same time a forge of questioning and organizing for a true free society of equals, for seizures of power as class struggle, for the constitution of a revolutionary intelligentsia able to lead an engaged citizen electorate, and for change and liberation struggle of all kinds.

     For many years as a Forensics teacher and debate coach whose methods centered Socratic dialog, I taught my students that the uniqueness of our civilization founded in the deimos of the Forum of Athens and in the Trial of Socrates was that it is a self-questioning system which totally rejects authority as a source of truth. This I call the Primary Duties of a Citizen; Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.  

     Education comes from the Greek educatus; to bring forth, not to stuff facts in; we must choose between training and education. The great question for us now regarding education at all levels is whether it serves tyranny and obedience to authority or democracy and the questioning of ourselves and of the world.

    As written by Jacqueline Frost in Social Text, in an article entitled Jean Genet’s May Day Speech, 1970: “Your Real Life Depends on the Black Panther Party”; “In Genet’s final call to action, he asks white intellectuals to follow the directives of the BPP, even if this means “desert[ing] your universities” in order to support Bobby Seale. In a time of recession, which promises to be even more hostile to radical intellectuals, this call to desertion is one among many of the experiments in political inheritance that Genet’s example conjures. His desire to “destroy all the habitual reasons for living in order to discover others,” as recounted in his Thief’s Journal, reminds us to promote mischief in our intellectual comportments, the kind that existentially threatens “good student”-type university meritocrats.

      More pressing however, is the experiment that Genet’s May Day Speech generates in the form of a question, a question which we cannot but feel as our own today: how will the whites, through the elaboration of solidarity and the relinquishment of power, destroy racism and salvage love?”

     As I wrote in my post of May 1 2023, Socialism is Compassion in Action: On Compassion as a Defining Quality of Humankind;  What is human? Of the transgression of our boundaries I have often written; it remains the primary act of individuation and the creation of identity as a seizure of power from Authority and from the Forbidden, but what quality defines us and sets humankind apart from beasts, from the artificial intelligences of the transhuman, and from the future possibilities of posthuman species?

     To this role as a defining human quality I nominate love as altruism, compassion, and empathy; the ability to bond and connect with others as extensions of ourselves, to feel the pain of others and respond to our common needs and frailties, mercy and charity, and the whole spectrum of our emotional awareness which shapes, informs, and motivates us and which we recognize as forms of love.

    As Wagner teaches us in Der Ring des Nibelungen, only those who renounce love may wield the Ring of Fear, Power, and Force. Those who would enslave us and claim power over others as tyrants in the theft of our souls must first dehumanize themselves. Against such tyranny we have inherent powers of  hope as refusal to submit which confers autonomy and of love as solidarity of action.

     Love defines what is human. That which is without love is wholly other.

     To be human is to share a continuity of being which is transpersonal; love makes us greater than ourselves. Through love we transcend the limits of the flags of our skin, and the divisions and hierarchies of elite belonging and exclusionary otherness.

     How then may we describe the action of this value in social relations and in political context? Love is mutable and a fulcrum of change, a process of transformation and redemption, embracing contradictions and filled with resonances and echoes, is at once immanent in nature and transcendent as the rapture and terror of our awareness of the Infinite. It is also the way in which we experience our connection and interdependence with others; Socialism is compassion in action, and it is this praxis and function of our humanity which I call to your attention as we celebrate May Day.

     As Christina Feldman writes in Lions Roar; “In Buddhist iconography, compassion is embodied in the bodhisattva Kuan Yin, who is said to manifest wherever beings need help. Engendering such compassion is not only good for others, says Christina Feldman, it is also good for us. By putting others first, we loosen the bonds of our self-fixation, and in doing so, inch closer to our own liberation.

     Compassion is no stranger to any of us: we know what it feels like to be deeply moved by the pain and suffering of others. All people receive their own measure of sorrow and struggle in this life. Bodies age, health becomes fragile, minds can be beset by confusion and obsession, hearts are broken. We see many people asked to bear the unbearable—starvation, tragedy, and hardship beyond our imagining. Our loved ones experience illness, pain, and heartache, and we long to ease their burden.

     The human story is a story of love, redemption, kindness, and generosity. It is also a story of violence, division, neglect, and cruelty. Faced with all of this, we can soften, reach out, and do all we can to ease suffering. Or we can choose to live with fear and denial—doing all we can to guard our hearts from being touched, afraid of drowning in this ocean of sorrow.

     Again and again we are asked to learn one of life’s clearest lessons: that to run from suffering—to harden our hearts, to turn away from pain—is to deny life and to live in fear. So, as difficult as it is to open our hearts toward suffering, doing so is the most direct path to transformation and liberation.

     To discover an awakened heart within ourselves, it is crucial not to idealize or romanticize compassion. Our compassion simply grows out of our willingness to meet pain rather than to flee from it.”

     How can we respond to the suffering that is woven into the very fabric of life? How can we discover a heart that is truly liberated from fear, anger, and alienation? Is there a way to discover a depth of wisdom and compassion that can genuinely make a difference in this confused and destructive world?

     We may be tempted to see compassion as a feeling, an emotional response we occasionally experience when we are touched by an encounter with acute pain. In these moments of openness, the layers of our defenses crumble; intuitively we feel an immediacy of response and we glimpse the power of nonseparation. Milarepa, a great Tibetan sage, expressed this when he said, “Just as I instinctively reach out to touch and heal a wound in my leg as part of my own body, so too I reach out to touch and heal the pain in another as part of this body.” Too often these moments of profound compassion fade, and once more we find ourselves protecting, defending, and distancing ourselves from pain. Yet they are powerful glimpses that encourage us to question whether compassion can be something more than an accident we stumble across.

     No matter how hard we try, we can’t make ourselves feel compassionate. But we can incline our hearts toward compassion. In one of the stories in the early Buddhist literature, the ascetic Sumedha reflects on the vast inner journey required to discover unshakeable wisdom and compassion. He describes compassion as a tapestry woven of many threads: generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity. When we embody all of these in our lives, we develop the kind of compassion that has the power to heal suffering.

     A few years ago, an elderly monk arrived in India after fleeing from prison in Tibet. Meeting with the Dalai Lama, he recounted the years he had been imprisoned, the hardship and beatings he had endured, the hunger and loneliness he had lived with, and the torture he had faced.

     At one point the Dalai Lama asked him, “Was there ever a time you felt your life was truly in danger?”

     The old monk answered, “In truth, the only time I truly felt at risk was when I felt in danger of losing compassion for my jailers.”

     Hearing stories like this, we are often left feeling skeptical and bewildered. We may be tempted to idealize both those who are compassionate and the quality of compassion itself. We imagine these people as saints, possessed of powers inaccessible to us. Yet stories of great suffering are often stories of ordinary people who have found greatness of heart. To discover an awakened heart within ourselves, it is crucial not to idealize or romanticize compassion. Our compassion simply grows out of our willingness to meet pain rather than to flee from it.

     We may never find ourselves in situations of such peril that our lives are endangered; yet anguish and pain are undeniable aspects of our lives. None of us can build walls around our hearts that are invulnerable to being breached by life. Facing the sorrow we meet in this life, we have a choice: Our hearts can close, our minds recoil, our bodies contract, and we can experience the heart that lives in a state of painful refusal. We can also dive deeply within ourselves to nurture the courage, balance, patience, and wisdom that enable us to care.

     If we do so, we will find that compassion is not a state. It is a way of engaging with the fragile and unpredictable world. Its domain is not only the world of those you love and care for, but equally the world of those who threaten us, disturb us, and cause us harm. It is the world of the countless beings we never meet who are facing an unendurable life. The ultimate journey of a human being is to discover how much our hearts can encompass. Our capacity to cause suffering as well as to heal suffering live side by side within us. If we choose to develop the capacity to heal, which is the challenge of every human life, we will find our hearts can encompass a great deal, and we can learn to heal—rather than increase—the schisms that divide us from one another.

     In the first century in northern India, probably in what is now part of Afghanistan, the Lotus Sutra was composed. One of the most powerful texts in the Buddhist tradition, it is a celebration of the liberated heart expressing itself in a powerful and boundless compassion, pervading all corners of the universe, relieving suffering wherever it finds it.

     When the Lotus Sutra was translated into Chinese, Kuan Yin, the “one who hears the cries of the world,” emerged as an embodiment of compassion that has occupied a central place in Buddhist teaching and practice ever since. Over the centuries Kuan Yin has been portrayed in a variety of forms. At times she is depicted as a feminine presence, face serene, arms outstretched, and eyes open. At times she holds a willow branch, symbolizing her resilience—able to bend in the face of the most fierce storms without being broken. At other times she is portrayed with a thousand arms and hands, each with an open eye in its center, depicting her constant awareness of anguish and her all-embracing responsiveness. Sometimes she takes the form of a warrior armed with a multitude of weapons, embodying the fierce aspect of compassion committed to uprooting the causes of suffering. A protector and guardian, she is fully engaged with life.

     To cultivate the willingness to listen deeply to sorrow wherever we meet it is to take the first step on the journey of compassion. Our capacity to listen follows on the heels of this willingness. We may make heroic efforts in our lives to shield ourselves from the anguish that can surround us and live within us, but in truth a life of avoidance and defense is one of anxiety and painful separation.

     True compassion is not forged at a distance from pain but in its fires. We do not always have a solution for suffering. We cannot always fix pain. However, we can find the commitment to stay connected and to listen deeply. Compassion does not always demand heroic acts or great words. In the times of darkest distress, what is most deeply needed is the fearless presence of a person who can be wholeheartedly receptive.

     It can seem to us that being aware and opening our hearts to sorrow makes us suffer more. It is true that awareness brings with it an increased sensitivity to our inner and outer worlds. Awareness opens our hearts and minds to a world of pain and distress that previously only glanced off the surface of consciousness, like a stone skipping across water. But awareness also teaches us to read between the lines and to see beneath the world of appearances. We begin to sense the loneliness, need, and fear in others that was previously invisible. Beneath words of anger, blame, and agitation we hear the fragility of another person’s heart. Awareness deepens because we hear more acutely the cries of the world. Each of those cries has written within it the plea to be received.

     Awareness is born of intimacy. We can only fear and hate what we do not understand and what we perceive from a distance. We can only find compassion and freedom in intimacy. We can be afraid of intimacy with pain because we are afraid of helplessness; we fear that we don’t have the inner balance to embrace suffering without being overwhelmed. Yet each time we find the willingness to meet affliction, we discover we are not powerless. Awareness rescues us from helplessness, teaching us to be helpful through our kindness, patience, resilience, and courage. Awareness is the forerunner of understanding, and understanding is the prerequisite to bringing suffering to an end.

     Shantideva, a deeply compassionate master who taught in India in the eighth century, said, “Whatever you are doing, be aware of the state of your mind. Accomplish good; this is the path of compassion.” How would our life be if we carried this commitment into all of our encounters? What if we asked ourselves what it is we are dedicated to when we meet a homeless person on the street, a child in tears, a person we have long struggled with, or someone who disappoints us? We cannot always change the heart or the life of another person, but we can always take care of the state of our own mind. Can we let go of our resistance, judgments, and fear? Can we listen wholeheartedly to understand another person’s world? Can we find the courage to remain present when we want to flee? Can we equally find the compassion to forgive our wish to disconnect? Compassion is a journey. Every step, every moment of cultivation, is a gesture of deep wisdom.”

     “As the etymology of the word indicates, “compassion” is the ability to “feel with,” and that involves a leap of empathy and a willingness to go beyond the borders of our own experience and judgments. What would it mean to place myself in the heart of that begging child? What would it be like to never know if I will eat today, depending entirely on the handouts of strangers? Journeying beyond our familiar borders, our hearts can tremble; then, we have the possibility of accomplishing good.

     Milarepa once said, “Long accustomed to contemplating compassion, I have forgotten all difference between self and other.” Genuine compassion is without boundaries or hierarchies. The smallest sorrow is as worthy of compassion as the greatest anguish. The heartache we experience in the face of betrayal asks as much for compassion as a person caught in the midst of tragedy. Those we love and those we disdain ask for compassion; those who are blameless and those who cause suffering are all enfolded in the tapestry of compassion. An old Zen monk once proclaimed, “O, that my monk’s robes were wide enough to gather up all of the suffering in this floating world.” Compassion is the liberated heart’s response to pain wherever it is met.

     When we see those we love in pain, our compassion is instinctive. Our heart can be broken. It can also be broken open. We are most sorely tested when we are faced with a loved one’s pain that we cannot fix. We reach out to shield those we love from harm, but life continues to teach us that our power has limits. Wisdom tells us that to insist that impermanence and frailty should not touch those we love is to fall into the near enemy of compassion, which is attachment to result and the insistence that life must be other than it actually is.

     Compassion means offering a refuge to those who have no refuge. The refuge is born of our willingness to bear what at times feels unbearable—to see a loved one suffer. The letting go of our insistence that those we love should not suffer is not a relinquishment of love but a release of illusion—the illusion that love can protect anyone from life’s natural rhythms. In the face of a loved one’s pain, we are asked to understand what it means to be steadfast and patient in the midst of our own fear. In our most intimate relationships, love and fear grow simultaneously. A compassionate heart knows this to be true and does not demand that fear disappear. It knows that only in the midst of fear can we begin to discover the fearlessness of compassion.

     Some people, carrying long histories of a lack of self-worth or denial, find it most difficult to extend compassion toward themselves. Aware of the vastness of suffering in the world, they may feel it is self-indulgent to care for their aching body, their broken heart, or their confused mind. Yet this too is suffering, and genuine compassion makes no distinction between self and other. If we do not know how to embrace our own frailties and imperfections, how do we imagine we could find room in our heart for anyone else?

     The Buddha once said that you could search the whole world and not find anyone more deserving of your love and compassion than yourself. Instead, too many people find themselves directing levels of harshness, demand, and judgment inward that they would never dream of directing toward another person, knowing the harm that would be incurred. They are willing to do to themselves what they would not do to others.

     Anger can be the beginning of abandonment or the beginning of commitment to helping others.

     In the pursuit of an idealized compassion, many people can neglect themselves. Compassion “listens to the cries of the world,” and we are part of that world. The path of compassion does not ask us to abandon ourselves on the altar of an idealized state of perfection. A path of healing makes no distinctions: within the sorrow of our own frustrations, disappointments, fears, and bitterness, we learn the lessons of patience, acceptance, generosity, and ultimately, compassion.

     The deepest compassion is nurtured in the midst of the deepest suffering. Faced with the struggle of those we love or those who are blameless in this world, compassion arises instinctively. Faced with people who inflict pain upon others, we must dive deep within ourselves to find the steadfastness and understanding that enables us to remain open. Connecting with those who perpetrate harm is hard practice, yet compassion is somewhat shallow if it turns away those who—lost in ignorance, rage, and fear—harm others. The mountain of suffering in the world can never be lessened by adding yet more bitterness, resentment, rage, and blame to it.

     Thich Nhat Hanh, the beloved Vietnamese teacher, said, “Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made.” It is not that the compassionate heart will never feel anger. Faced with the terrible injustice, oppression, and violence in our world, our hearts tremble not only with compassion but also with anger. A person without anger may be a person who has not been deeply touched by harmful acts that scar the lives of too many people. Anger can be the beginning of abandonment or the beginning of commitment to helping others.

     We can be startled into wakefulness by exposure to suffering, and this wakefulness can become part of the fabric of our own rage, or part of the fabric of wise and compassionate action. If we align ourselves with hatred, we equally align ourselves with the perpetrators of harm. We can also align ourselves with a commitment to bringing to an end the causes of suffering. It is easy to forget the portrayal of Kuan Yin as an armed warrior, profoundly dedicated to protecting all beings, fearless and resolved to bring suffering to an end.

     Rarely are words and acts of healing and reconciliation born of an agitated heart. One of the great arts in the cultivation of compassion is to ask if we can embrace anger without blame. Blame agitates our hearts, keeps them contracted, and ultimately leads to despair. To surrender blame is to maintain the discriminating wisdom that knows clearly what suffering is and what causes it. To surrender blame is to surrender the separation that makes compassion impossible.

     Compassion is not a magical device that can instantly dispel all suffering. The path of compassion is altruistic but not idealistic. Walking this path we are not asked to lay down our life, find a solution for all of the struggles in this world, or immediately rescue all beings. We are asked to explore how we may transform our own hearts and minds in the moment. Can we understand the transparency of division and separation? Can we liberate our hearts from ill will, fear, and cruelty? Can we find the steadfastness, patience, generosity, and commitment not to abandon anyone or anything in this world? Can we learn how to listen deeply and discover the heart that trembles in the face of suffering?

     The path of compassion is cultivated one step and one moment at a time. Each of those steps lessens the mountain of sorrow in the world.”

     May Day remains an international celebration of the promise and triumph of socialism, labor organization, and mass action as a praxis or value in action of love, and it is this political and social context of revolutionary struggle that we think of it today throughout the world as a holiday for all humankind.

      As written by Jonah Walters in Jacobin;’’ “The first May Day was celebrated in 1886, with a general strike of three hundred thousand workers at thirteen thousand businesses across the United States. It was a tremendous show of force for the American labor movement, which was among the most militant in the world.

     Many of the striking workers — who numbered forty thousand in Chicago alone — rallied under the banners of anarchist and socialist organizations. Trade unionists from a variety of ethnic backgrounds — many of them recent immigrants — marched shoulder-to-shoulder, making a unified demand for the eight-hour day.

     The movement to limit the workday posed a significant threat to American industrialists, who were accustomed to demanding much longer hours from their workers.

     In the late nineteenth century, successive waves of immigration brought millions of immigrants to the United States, many of whom sought work in factories. Because unemployment was so high, employers could easily replace any worker who demanded better conditions or sufficient wages — so long as that worker acted alone. As individuals, workers were in no position to oppose the dehumanizing work their bosses expected of them.

     But when workers acted together, they could exercise tremendous power over their employers and over society as a whole. Working-class radicals understood the unique power of collective action, fighting to ensure that the aggression of employers was often met by a groundswell of workers’ resistance.

     For the last decades of the nineteenth century, industrial titans like Andrew Carnegie and George Pullman could get no peace. Periodic explosions of working-class activity provided a check on their power and prestige. But industrialists and their allies in government often responded with brutal force, quelling waves of worker militancy that demanded a fundamentally different kind of American prosperity, one in which the poor and downtrodden were included.

     The movement for the eight-hour day was one such mass struggle. On May 1, 1886, workers all over the country took to the streets to demand a better life and a more just economy. The demonstrations lasted for days.

     But this surge of working-class resistance ended in tragedy. In Chicago’s Haymarket Square, a police massacre claimed the lives of several workers after someone — likely a provocateur working for one of the city’s industrial barons — tossed a homemade bomb into the crowd. The Chicago authorities took the bombing as an opportunity to arrest and execute four of the movement’s most prominent leaders — including the anarchist and trade unionist August Spies.

     It was a severe setback to the workers’ movement. But the repression wasn’t enough to douse the struggle for good. As August Spies said during his trial:

     [I]f you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement — the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery, the wage slaves, expect salvation — if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand.

     These words would prove prophetic. The next May Day, and every May Day since, workers across the world took to the streets to contest the terms of capitalist prosperity and gesture toward a fundamentally different world — a world in which production is motivated not by profit, but by human need.

     Today, the power of the American labor movement is at a low. Many of its most important gains — including the right to the eight-hour day — have been dismantled by the anti-labor neoliberal consensus. But May Day still looms as a lasting legacy of the international movement for working-class liberation.

     Obviously, a great deal has changed since those explosive decades at the end of the nineteenth century. The defeats suffered by the American workers’ movement may seem so profound that it can be tempting to regard the militancy that once rattled tycoons and presidents alike as nothing more than a piece of history.

     But we don’t have to gaze so far into the past for inspiring examples of struggle. Far more recent May Days provide glimpses at the transformative potential of worker movements.

     Just ten years ago, in 2006, immigrant workers across the country stood up to restrictive immigration laws and abusive labor practices, organizing a massive movement of undocumented laborers that culminated in the so-called Great American Boycott (El Gran Paro Estadounidense). On May Day of that year, immigrant organizations and some labor unions came together to organize a one-day withdrawal of immigrant labor — dubbed “A Day Without Immigrants” — to demonstrate the essential role of immigrant workers in American industry.

     Protests began in March and continued for eight weeks. The numbers are staggering — 100,000 marchers in Chicago kicked off the wave of demonstrations, followed by half a million marchers in Los Angeles a few weeks later, and then a coordinated day of action on April 10, which saw demonstrations in 102 cities across the country, including a march of between 350,000 and 500,000 protesters in Dallas.

     By May Day, the movement had gained momentum, winning popular support all over the United States and around the world. On May 1 of that year, more than a million took to the streets in Los Angeles, joined by 700,000 marchers in Chicago, 200,000 in New York, 70,000 in Milwaukee, and thousands more in cities across the country. In solidarity with Latin American immigrants in the United States, labor unions around the world celebrated “Nothing Gringo Day,” a one-day boycott of all American products.

     Ever since, May Day has been recognized as a day of solidarity with undocumented immigrants — a fitting reminder of May Day’s origins in a movement that saw native-born and immigrant workers standing together to defend their common interests.

     And this year, May Day presents us with more opportunities to mobilize support around an American labor movement showing signs of revitalization. This May Day, workers and activists across the country will stand in solidarity with the almost forty thousand striking Verizon workers, whose intransigent managers have thus far refused to bargain with the union in good faith.

     This May Day we follow in the footsteps of generations of labor radicals. These radicals saw in capitalism the horrors of an unjust economy, but dared to dream of something different — a reimagined economy in which the fruits of prosperity could be shared equally, among all people, in a just and democratic society.

     Despite the setbacks of the labor movement — at home and worldwide — that dream is still living. The struggle continues.

     Happy May Day. Take to the streets.”

     Yet there are other ideas of May Day, though interrelated; the Red and the Green, which reawakens our interdependence with nature and echoes the primordial celebration of May Day as a rite of renewal and of spring. 

    As written by Paul Street in 2020 in Counterpunch; “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

     If the United States were not plagued by Orwellian, capital-induced amnesia regarding its own labor and sociopolitical history, much of the nation would have recoiled in historical disgust when Donald Trump designated May First – May Day – as the date for the premature “re-opening of America.”

     It’s terrible that Trump wants to send tens of millions of Americans back to work before COVID-19 has ceased to pose grave health risks within and beyond workplaces and shopping centers.

     Red May Day

Unbeknownst to Trump (in all likelihood), picking May First as his target added rich historical insult to injury. May Day has been the real international and American Labor and Working-Class holiday ever since the great U.S. Eight Hour strikes and marches of May 1st, 1886. Headquartered in industrial Chicago, the Eight Hour Movement was dedicated to the notion that working people need and deserve enough leisure beyond the supervision of their capitalist bosses to enjoy balanced and healthy lives and to participate meaningfully in the nation’s much ballyhooed “democracy.” The Eight Hour struggle’s leaders were radical militants who shared young Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ idea that the capitalist profits system would either between overthrown and replaced with socialism by the proletariat or give rise to the “common ruin” of all.

     The 1886 struggle ended with the Haymarket bomb, a giant wave of anti-union repression, and the brutal execution of four top radical leaders – the Haymarket Martyrs. May 1st been labor and the Left’s special historical day – celebrated by workers, radicals, and laborites the world over – ever since. It ought to be understood as deeply offensive for Trump to try to please his fellow right-wing capitalists and his deluded white-nationalist minions by trying to order millions of people back into hazardous working conditions on that day of the year.

     Green May Day

But that’s not all. May Day has different and older, “green” roots in a time-honored pagan celebration of nature’s beauty and fertility amid spring’s full flowering in northern temperate zones. Dating to ancient Rome, this naturalist May Day is rooted in the seasonal rhythms of Mother Earth and agriculture. It reached across the Atlantic with the European conquest of what became known as the Americas. It is a day of leisure, to be spent outdoors, dancing and wearing flowers and soaking up the wind and sun. While rooted in custom, it was an official holiday in the British Tudor monarchy by at least the early 16th century. (The bourgeois-revolutionary Puritan Parliaments of 1649-1660 suspended the holiday, which was reinstated with the restoration of Charles II.)

     Red and Green Common Ground

It is not hard to imagine the ancient green May Day merging with the modern red and proletarian May Day. “Eight Hours for What We Will,” union banners proclaimed in 1886. “For what we will” included time out of doors, in the free-flowing presence of nature, beyond the dirty, dangerous and depressing mills, mines and factories of Dickensian and Gilded Age capitalism—and away from the rigid “time-work discipline” (a term coined by British historian E.P. Thompson) imposed by despotic employers in what Marx called “the hidden abode of production.” It was an era when many, perhaps most, wage-earners retained connections to pre-industrial and more communalist and rural ways of life.

     The workers’ movements of 19th century North America drew on the rolling, recurrently immigration-fed tension between the more naturally embedded and pre-industrial agricultural and artisanal ways of life on one hand and the authoritarian, speeded-up and nonstop “jungle” (detailed by American author Upton Sinclair) of industrial capitalist “modernity” on the other.

     One delicious connection is that the eight-hour-day struggle in Chicago was particularly focused on the city’s McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant, manufacturer of a farm technology that famously displaced millions of laborers from agricultural work while helping industrialize the North American and global countryside.

     Consistent with this melding of the red and green May Days, “modern” capitalism assaulted nature and created the wage-dependent proletariat at one and the same time through the long enclosure of “the commons.” The commons are the vast swaths of land, stream and forest in which pre-capitalist people found sustenance, insulating them from having to rent out their labor power to capitalists to garner the money required to purchase life’s necessities as commodities. As the brilliant left historian Peter Linebaugh notes in his book “Stop Thief!” “A single term, ‘the commons,’ expresses, first, that which the working class lost when subsistence resources were taken away, and, second, the idealized visions of liberté, egalité, fraternité,”

     Rooted in a vast human history that long predated the ascendancy of “the commodity with its individualism and privatization,” the commons, Linebaugh writes, “is antithetical to capital.” The Protestant radical group known as Diggers and others with roots in the village commons who opposed capital’s rise to supremacy understood that “expropriation leads to exploitation, the Haves and the Have Nots.”

     The Diggers, the first modern communists, were led by Gerrard Winstanley. They sought to pre-empt the coming new soulless wage, money and commodity slavery of the capitalist order (the bourgeois regime that Marx and Engels would justly accuse of “resolv[ing] personal worth into exchange value”) by claiming earth as “a common treasury for all.” Writing as England was becoming the first fully capitalist nation where most of the adult working-age population toiled for wages, Winstanley and his followers practiced what Linebaugh calls “commoning,” the merging of “labor” and “natural resources” in the spirit of “all for one and one for all.”

     “The Most Dangerous Criminal in Human History”

     Trump has insulted the green May Day as well the related red and proletarian one. His ruthless shredding of environmental regulations, recently escalated under the cover of COVID-19, is a frontal assault on livable ecology. The fossil-fuel-mad president of the United States seems hellbent on the doing everything he can to turn the planet to turn the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber. In the name of economic recovery, Trump has granted American corporations an “open license to pollute.” As CBS reported three weeks ago, “The Trump administration introduced a sweeping relaxation of environmental laws and fines during the coronavirus pandemic. According to new guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), companies will largely be exempt from consequences for polluting the air or water during the outbreak.”

     Last week, Trump’s EPA announced that it would weaken controls on the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-powered plants.

     It’s with Trump’s frankly ecocidal agenda in mind above all that our leading intellectual, Noam Chomsky has recently and properly identified Trump as “the most dangerous criminal in human history” – as a person wielding the most powerful office in world history to bring about the end of an decent and organized human existence. Adolph Hitler’s goal, Chomsky notes, “was to rid the German-run world of Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other ‘deviants,’ along with tens of millions of Slav ‘Untermenschen.’ But [unlike Trump,] Hitler was not dedicated with fervor to destroying the prospects of organized human life on Earth in the not-distant future [along with millions of other species.”

     Mayday! Mayday!

The 20th Century brought a third meaning to the phrase “Mayday.” I am referring to what a pilot says into his radio as her plane plummets to earth: “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”

     It is environmental “Mayday” indeed for humanity under the command of capital and far-right authoritarian lunatics like Trump and Jair Bolsonaro these days. “Spaceship Earth” is on exterminist path that is rapidly accelerating, as the latest findings on melting Arctic ice cover, rising global temperature, ocean acidification, species die-offs. and looming permafrost release regularly tell us. The capitalogenic COVID-19 crisis – a consequence of capital’s relentless quest for accumulation and profit – is just one among many eco-exterminist symptoms, many worse than even a virulent pandemic in the ever-shortening “long term.”

     If the current environmental trajectory is not significantly reversed (and one silver lining in the COVID-19 nightmare is the drastic reduction of carbon emissions and other forms of capitalist pollution), the left’s long-standing struggle for equality and democracy is reduced to a debate over how to more equitably share a poisoned pie. Who wants to “turn the world upside down” (Winstanley’s phrase) only to find out that it is a steaming pile of overheated toxic and pathogen-ridden waste?

     If the Earth celebrated by the Green May Day is irreversibly poisoned in a capital-imposed environmental and epidemiological Mayday!, then the radical social justice and democracy sought by friends of the Red May Day becomes sadly beside the point. The “common ruin of the contending classes” will have trumped the “revolutionary reconstitution of society-at-large,” rendering it obsolete.

    Postscript

     Here is one of the smartest calls to action I have ever read – from Cooperation Jackson last March 31st: “A Call to Action: Toward a May 1st General Strike to End the COVID 19 Crisis and Create a New World.” Please read it and then act on its call:

    “We must stop the worst most deadly version of this pandemic from becoming a reality, and we have to ensure that we never return to the society that enabled this pandemic to emerge and have the impact it is having in the first place. We must do everything that we can to create a new, just, equitable and ecologically regenerative economy. “

    “The question is how? To fight back we have to use the greatest power we have at our disposal – our collective labor. We can shut the system down to break the power of the state and capitalist class. We must send a clear message that things cannot and will not go back to normal. In order to do this, we need to call for collective work and shopping stoppages, leading to a general strike that is centered around clear, comprehensive demands. We must make demands that will transform our broken and inequitable society, and build a new society run by and for us – the working class, poor, oppressed majority. “

     Rosa Luxemburg explains the history of May Day; “he happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day.

     The day of this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.

     In fact, what could give the workers greater courage and faith in their own strength than a mass work stoppage which they had decided themselves? What could give more courage to the eternal slaves of the factories and the workshops than the mustering of their own troops? Thus, the idea of a proletarian celebration was quickly accepted and, from Australia, began to spread to other countries until finally it had conquered the whole proletarian world.

     The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage. On this day two hundred thousand of them left their work and demanded the eight-hour day. Later, police and legal harassment prevented the workers for many years from repeating this [size of] demonstration. However in 1888 they renewed their decision and decided that the next celebration would be May 1, 1890.

     In the meanwhile, the workers’ movement in Europe had grown strong and animated. The most powerful expression of this movement occurred at the International Workers’ Congress in 1889. At this congress, attended by four hundred delegates, it was decided that the eight-hour day must be the first demand. Whereupon the delegate of the French unions, the worker Lavigne from Bordeaux, moved that this demand be expressed in all countries through a universal work stoppage. The delegate of the American workers called attention to the decision of his comrades to strike on May 1, 1890, and the congress decided on this date for the universal proletarian celebration.

     In this case, as thirty years before in Australia, the workers really thought only of a one-time demonstration. The congress decided that the workers of all lands would demonstrate together for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. No one spoke of a repetition of the holiday for the next years.

     Naturally no one could predict the lightning-like way in which this idea would succeed and how quickly it would be adopted by the working classes. However, it was enough to celebrate the May Day simply one time in order that everyone understand and feel that May Day must be a yearly and continuing institution.

     The first of May demanded the introduction of the eight-hour day. But even after this goal was reached, May Day was not given up. As long as the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, May Day will be the yearly expression of these demands.

     And, when better days dawn, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honor of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past.”

     Here is the historic 1923 May Day speech of Eugene V. Debs, with a preface by Shawn Gude, published in Jacobin; “In 1923, Eugene V. Debs wrote a powerful May Day address for the black socialist magazine the Messenger that called for “the emancipation of all races from the oppressive and degrading yoke of wage slavery.” We republish it here in full, for the first time since it appeared 100 years ago.

     In the spring of 1923, the black socialist magazine the Messenger published a May Day greeting from leading US socialist Eugene V. Debs.

     The Harlem-based magazine had gotten its start in 1917. Edited by two young radicals, A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, it vehemently opposed World War I (both editors were briefly taken into police custody for polemicizing against the war) and relentlessly criticized the “Old Crowd” of moderate black leaders. In place of elite-led, accommodationist “racial uplift,” the Messenger proposed an unrelenting fight against Jim Crow, lynch law, and economic exploitation using the battering ram of mass organization.

     Debs was an early friend of the Messenger, and he shared the magazine’s pro-labor, “New Negro” politics. Especially toward the end of his life (he died in 1926), Debs supported a militant struggle for racial equality as part of a broader struggle for worker emancipation. That socialist vision was on full display in his May Day remarks.

     Racial domination had kept Africans Americans “in abject servitude beneath the iron heel of his exploiting master,” Debs declared. “But our black brother is beginning to awaken from his lethargy in spite of all the deadening influences that surround him . . . and he is coming to realize that his place is in the Socialist movement along with . . . the worker of every other race, creed and color.”

     Jacobin is pleased to reprint Debs’s May Day remarks in full for the first time since they appeared in 1923.—Shawn Gude

     “It is more than gratifying to me in looking over the current Messenger to note the high excellence of its contents as a literary periodical and as a propaganda publication. It is edited with marked ability and it contains a variety of matter that would do credit to any magazine in the land.

     All my life I have been especially interested in the problem of the Negro race, and I have always had full sympathy with every effort put forth to encourage our colored fellow-workers to join the Socialist movement and to make common cause with all other workers in the international struggle for the overthrow of capitalist despotism and the emancipation of all races from the oppressive and degrading yoke of wage slavery.

     Due to the ignorance, prejudice, and unreasoning hatred of the white race in relation to the Negro, the latter has fared cruelly indeed and he has had but little encouragement from the “superior” race to improve his economic, intellectual and moral condition, but on the contrary, almost everything has been done to discourage every tendency on the part of the Negro toward self-improvement and to keep him in abject servitude beneath the iron heel of his exploiting master.

     But our black brother is beginning to awaken from his lethargy in spite of all the deadening influences that surround him; he has had his experience in the war and especially since the war, and he is coming to realize that his place is in the Socialist movement along with the white worker and the worker of every other race, creed and color, and the Messenger is doing its full share to spread the light in dark places and to arouse the Negro masses to the necessity of taking their place and doing their part in the great struggle that is to emancipate the workers of all races and all nations from the insufferable curse of industrial slavery and social degradation.

     May Day is now dawning and its spirit prompts me to hail the Messenger as a herald of light and freedom.

     On May Day the workers of the world celebrate the beginning of their international solidarity and register the high resolve to clasp hands all around the globe and to move forward in one solid phalanx toward the sunrise and the better day.

     On that day we drink deeply at the fountain of proletarian inspiration; we know no nationality to the exclusion of any other, nor any creed, or any color, but we do know that we are all workers, that we are conscious of our interests and our power as a class, and we propose to develop and make use of that power in breaking our fetters and in rising from servitude to the mastery of the world.”

If we burn, you burn with us/ Mockingjay

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/europe-may-day-rallies-labor_n_626ea82de4b050c90f41837c

‘This machine bonks fascists’: US student protester’s water jug becomes symbol of resistance

A pro-Palestine demonstrator used a jug to defend against officers. Now the image has become a meme of the movement

Rosa Luxemburg on the History of May Day

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/may-day-rosa-luxemburg-haymarket?fbclid=IwAR2RYjB03mDIZ5bQCGhintI_WH0tnPYQvUiKgGpM_owVtPFN9yoljzi9mpQ

Eugene V. Debs May Day Speech

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/05/eugene-debs-may-day-address-black-workers

America Is Trembling: Jean Genet’s Answer to Donald Trump

Jean Genet believed that money was inherently evil and the quest for power was a form of necrophilia

Jean Genet’s May Day Speech, 1970: “Your Real Life Depends on the Black Panther Party”

The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, Jean Genet, Albert Dichy (Editor),

Jeff Fort (Translation)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/909258.The_Declared_Enemy

Remembering Jean Genet: The United States and Palestine

https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/remembering-jean-genet-the-united-states-and-palestine

The Trial of Socrates, I.F. Stone

On Compassion

https://www.lionsroar.com/she-who-hears-the-cries-of-the-world

Protests continue at university campuses across the US – in pictures

After major police raids on universities in New York and Los Angeles on Tuesday, students continued to demonstrate against the war in Gaza

Police Clear Columbia Protest — Just As They Did On Same Day 56 Years Ago

On April 30, 1968, police flooded onto Columbia University’s campus to end a demonstration students had staged — a scene that was eerily repeated 56 years later.

Flares, arrests and a police ramp: NYPD break up student protests at Columbia – in pictures

Could student protesters turn the 2024 election?

(I am voting for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whether or not she runs for the Presidency. Give us a President with heart, moral vision, and the courage to speak truth to power.

     To Biden whom I endorsed in the last election in a televised speech and the Democratic Party of which I am an elected precinct captain; If you sponsor genocide or other crimes against humanity, I cannot vote for you, and I will fight you.

In Rafah I saw new graveyards fill with children. It is unimaginable that worse could be yet to come

                                         History of May Day

https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/international-mayday-online-rally-2022.html

https://archive.iww.org/history/library/misc/origins_of_mayday

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/05/workers-debtors-union-financialization-labor-debt

https://jacobinmag.com/2016/05/may-day-history-iww-haymarket-american-labor-movement/?fbclid=IwAR1J59okTNM9sgLVfdpc2ESG9teDCMO3WgxoDJQJRtyHiozBaUbsb6eZRwU

https://www.lionsroar.com/she-who-hears-the-cries-of-the-world

March 23 2024 On Purim: What Do We Mean When We Use the Phrase; “Never Again!”

     On this holiday of Purim which begins at sunset today and ends with the fall of night tomorrow, the Jewish peoples of the world celebrate their salvation from genocide in 5th century Persia as written in the Book of Esther, and all of humankind may celebrate the triumph of love over hate, solidarity over division, and resistance over tyranny which it commemorates.

     As we are confronted in the news with images of terrible violence and crimes against humanity in two wars which challenge our world order; the Israeli invasion of Gaza which has made America complicit in genocide and calls into question the idea of human rights, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a war of total destruction unlike anything Europe has seen since the Second World War which echoes its atrocities and uses thermobaric weapons as mobile crematoriums against civilians, I think of these things today in terms of the historical legacies of resistance to tyranny, slavery, wars of imperial conquest and dominion, and genocide.  

      How shall we defend the peoples of Palestine and Ukraine from the horrific war crimes of Netanyahu’s theocratic fascism of blood, faith, and soil and Putin’s mad imperial conquest, without ourselves becoming an empire?

     The seduction of power begins with fear, especially overwhelming and generalized fear given forms of Otherness by authority in service to power; to find safety and security in becoming the arbiter of virtue. This too we must resist.

     Moreover such strategies of force and control must always fail and come to ruin, for security is an illusion, and the use of social force creates its own resistance.

      Never Again! is a phrase I have used often as a reply to tyranny and fascism, both in my writing and to my comrades personally as a call to total resistance without limits, and herein I wish to interrogate its meaning and consequences.

      How can we use Never Again! as a principle of direct action which preserves and empowers the wellbeing and autonomy of others, without such action becoming a point of moral fracture, subversion of ideals, and the cascade failure of unequal power?

      For myself the history of its use is connected to a category of my Defining Moments which I call Last Stands, the stories of which I have told many times. These include only moments in which I chose solidarity and refusal to submit over personal survival; refusing to step aside from the child behind me when ordered to surrender by the police bounty hunters in Brazil 1974, when soldiers set fire to the house Jean Genet and I were in, surrounded and unarmed, in Beirut 1982 when he swore me to the Oath of the Resistance, a forlorn hope at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola 1988 for the liberation from Apartheid, and numberless others beyond my accounting.

      Last Stands are choices of refusal to surrender our humanity and universal human rights, our duty of care and stewardship of one another, regardless of the consequences as lines we cannot cross without becoming something less than human.

    In the ongoing Gaza War and genocide of the Palestinians, this is also a refusal to abandon the cause of “freedom of faith for all humankind” as the legend on the monument of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden’s 1631 victory at the Battle of Breitenfeld which secured this right declares, the principle of a nonsectarian state on which America is founded and of the inherent right of independence and sovereign self-determination of all peoples, and solidarity with all those whom Frantz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth against  force and control, state terror and tyranny, war and imperial conquest.

      Among my personal role models in antifascism and revolution is the fictional character of Harry Tuttle played by Robert de Niro in the film Brazil, whose line “we’re all in this together,” echoes through forty some years of my life and adventures.

     Let me place this in context; Brazil was my first solo foreign travel experience, flying to Sao Paulo when I was fourteen, in the summer of 1974, to train with some fellow fencers for the Pan American Games which were planned to be held there, though later the venue was moved to Mexico. I had some newly learned conversational Portuguese, an invitation to stay at the home of a boy my age I knew from the fencing tournament circuit with whom I could discover the local mischief, and visions of beach parties.

     So it was that I entered a world of courtly manners and white-gloved servants, gracious and brilliant hosts who were local luminaries and threw a magnificent formal ball to introduce me, and a friend with whom I shared a mad passion for martial and equestrian sports, but also a world of high walls and armed guards.

     My first view beyond this illusion came with the sounds of rifle fire from the guards; when I looked from my balcony to see who was attacking the front gate I discovered the guards were firing into a crowd of beggars, mostly children, who had mobbed a truck carrying the weekly food supplies. That day I made my first secret excursion beyond the walls, from which I have never truly returned.

     What truths are hidden by the walls of our palaces, beyond which it is Forbidden to look? It is easy to believe the lies of authority when one is a member of the elite in whose interest they claim to wield power, and to fail to question one’s own motives and position of privilege. Terrifyingly easy to believe lies when we are the beneficiaries of hierarchies of exclusionary otherness, of wealth and power disparity and inequalities systemically manufactured and weaponized in service to power, and of white and patriarchal privilege, genocide, slavery, conquest, and imperialism. 

     Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain. For there is no just authority, and as Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz, he’s “just an old humbug”, and his lies and illusions, force and control, serve no interests but his own.

     Being a naïve American boy, I felt it was my duty to report the incident; but at the police station I had difficulty making myself understood, not because of language but of implicit systems of oppression. They thought I was there to place a bet on my guard in an ongoing monthly contest for which police officer bagged the most street children; there was a chalkboard on the station wall for this, and a jar of tagged ears to prove the count. This was how the elites of Brazil had chosen to solve the problem of abandoned street children, fully ten per cent of the national population. Another betting game called “the Big One”, was for which policeman kicked the most pregnant girls in the stomach and ranked among the top ten causes of death in Brazil for teenage girls, invariably living within slum zones containing the most impoverished and most Black of citizens; this in a city founded by escaped African slaves as a free republic.

     I learned much in the weeks that followed; above all I learned who is responsible for these inequalities; we are, if we do not challenge and defy tyranny and unjust systems.

     During the nights of my adventures beyond the walls and actions to help the bands of child beggars and to obstruct the police bounty hunts I had a traumatic near death experience, similar to the mock executions of Maurice Blanchot by the Nazis in 1944 as written in The Instant of My Death and Fyodor Dostoevsky by the Czar’s secret police in 1849 as written in The Idiot; fleeing pursuit through a warren of tunnels with an injured child among others and trapped in the open by two police riflemen who took flanking positions and aimed at us while the leader called for surrender beyond the curve of a tunnel. I stood in front of a boy with a twisted leg who could not run while the others scattered and escaped or found hiding places, and refused to stand aside when ordered to do so. This was reflexive and a decision of instinct beneath the level of conscious thought or volition, where the truths of ourselves written in our flesh are forged and revealed. Asked to let someone die to save myself, I simply said no. When thought returned to me from this moment of panic or transcendence of myself, I asked how much to let us walk away, whereupon he ordered his men to fire. But there was only one shot instead of a demonstration of crossfire, and that a wide miss; he had time to ask “What?” before falling to the ground.

       And then our rescuers revealed themselves, having crept up on the police from behind; the Matadors, who might be described as vigilantes, a criminal gang, a revolutionary group, or all three, founded by Brazil’s notorious vigilante and criminal Pedro Rodrigues Filho, infamous for avenging his mother’s savage murder by killing his father and eating his heart, who had been arrested the previous year after a spectacular series of one hundred or more revenge killings of the most fiendish and monstrous of criminals, powerful men beyond the reach of the law or who were the law and who had perpetrated atrocities on women and children. Into this fearsome brotherhood I was welcomed, with the words; “You are one of us, come with us” and in the streets of Sao Paulo that summer I never again stood alone.

    “We can’t save everyone, but we can avenge”; so they described themselves to me, and this definition of solidarity as praxis or the action of values remains with me and shadows my use of the battle cry Never Again! As Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene I; “If you wrong us, shall we not avenge?”

     From the moment I saw the guards of the aristocratic family with whom I was a guest firing on the crowd of homeless children and beggars swarming the food supply truck at the manor gate, naked and skeletal in starvation, scarred and crippled and misshapen with diseases unknown to any people for whom healthcare and basic nutrition are free and guaranteed preconditions of the universal right to life, desperate for a handful of food which could mean one more day of survival; in that moment I chose my side, and my people are the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased; all those whom Frantz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth.  

    Second is the day when Jean Genet set me on my life’s path with the Oath of the Resistance in Beirut during the summer of 1982.

     Israeli soldiers had set fire to the houses on my street, and called for people to come out and surrender. They were blindfolding the children of those who did and using them as human shields.

     We had no other weapon than the empty bottle of champagne we had just finished with our breakfast of strawberry crepes; I asked “Any ideas?”, at which he shrugged and said “Fix bayonets?”

     And then he gave me a principle of action by which I have lived for forty two years now; “When there is no hope, one is free to do impossible things, glorious things.”

     He asked me if I was going to surrender, and I said no; he smiled and replied, “Nor will I.” And so he swore me to the Oath he devised in 1940 in Paris at the beginning of the Occupation for such friends as he could gather, reworded from the oath he had taken as a Legionnaire in 1918. He said it was the finest thing he ever stole; “We swear our loyalty to each other, to resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.”

     So it was that I became the bearer of a tradition now over eighty years old and forged in the most fearsome and terrible conflict the world has ever known, shortly before I expected to be burned alive in the second of many Last Stands.

     This was the moment of my forging, this decision to choose death over subjugation, and ever since being struck by it I have been a bell, ringing. And like the Liberty Bell, I am broken open to the suffering of others and the flaws of our humanity. This has been the greatest gift I have ever been given, this empathy borne of a sacred wound, and I shall never cease the call to liberty, nor hesitate to answer as I am able the call for solidarity with others.

     Of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, the largest battle ever fought in Africa, even more vast than El Alamein; this was where the system of Apartheid was broken. In a massive campaign involving over 300,000 Cuban volunteer soldiers between December 1987 and March 1988, in coordination with Angolan and other indigenous forces, international volunteers, and with Soviet aid and advisors, defeated the far larger and technologically superior South Africa and their UNITA and American allies and mercenaries in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, an Angolan military base which South Africa had failed to capture with five waves of assaults.

     While the spectacle of this grand final battle in a decades long liberation struggle was unfolding, I was making mischief behind enemy lines in the bush. Here I discovered a lost unit, mainly Zulu, which was encircled by Apartheid forces. After reporting what I knew of the area to the command group and a brief conference in several languages, an old fellow who had heretofore been silent stood up from the shadows of the tent, whose shirtless form displayed a fearsome and magnificent scar from a lion’s claws, and said; “We are surrounded and outnumbered with no ammunition and worse, no water, and no one is coming to help us. We must attack.”

    The sergeant smiled at this as if he had been given a marvelous gift, strode outside, and gave the order which if you are lucky you will never hear; “Fix bayonets!”

     And the men about to die erupted in song. “Usuthu! Umkhonto wami womile!” The first is a universal Zulu battle cry, which asks the spirits of ones ancestors to awake and bear witness to the glorious acts of heroism one is about to perform. “My spear is thirsty”, that last.

   And we were victorious, though the cost was terrible. No such costs are too great to bear compared to the costs of submission to slavery, commodification, falsification, and dehumanization; for in refusal to submit we become Unconquered and free, and this power of self-ownership as victory in the struggle for our humanity cannot be taken from us. As Max Stirner wrote; “Freedom cannot be granted; it must be seized.”

    Long ago I lost count of Last Stands; these have become truths written in my flesh, and I bear such marks without number. As doubtless will those who now stand with Palestine, Ukraine, or any people under threat of annihilation.

     In all of this what matters is that in refusal to submit to authority and to force we become Unconquered and free; this is victory as a condition of being which cannot be taken from us, much like the heroic Ukrainian soldier guarding a desolate island who refused to surrender to a Russian warship with the words; “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Such a man cannot be conquered, and his immortal words speak for his whole nation.

     The secret of force, power, and authority is that these things are hollow and fragile, and fail when met with disobedience and the simple refusal to believe and to submit.

     How do we find the will to do these things, to claw our way out of the ruins and make yet another Last Stand, beyond hope of victory or even survival?

     The truth is we need nothing beyond ourselves and our moment of decision to do such things; no great universal principles, not even the negative space of a heroic figure to inhabit and perform before the stage of the world. All we need is this; that others who rely on us will die if we do not.

     This is what makes us human, and its something we must continue to affirm no matter what the cost.

     There may be one more thing that can help us in such moments of decision; if we remember who we are, and not how others imagine us.

     Are we not the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves and to others?

      History, memory, identity; we are a prochronism, a history expressed in our form of how we have solved problems of adaptation across vast gulfs of time, like the shell of a fantastic sea creature.

     Always there remains the struggle between the masks that others make for us, and those we make for ourselves. This is the first revolution in which we all must fight; the struggle for ownership of ourselves.

      We have begun to remember who we are, we Americans, after the long spell of falsification cast by Traitor Trump and his Fourth Reich propagandists; we have now called for a ceasefire in Gaza, after half a year of secretly arming Israel’s Gaza War at the orders of Genocide Joe. Europe too is reawakening as NATO coheres its resistance to the imperial conquest of Ukraine and to the threat of a Russian conquest of Europe. As yet America has done nothing to bring regime change to either outlaw nation, nor silenced the bombs, nor liberated Ukraine or Palestine, nor opened the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid; but all of this remains possible, if we all help as we can.

     At moments of doubt such as this I read again Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Henley’s Invictus, I.F. Stone’s The Trial of Socrates; myths, stories, poetry, and history of the grandeur of resistance which confers freedom.

      Here too, in a moment which parallels that of Spain in 1936 and Poland in 1939, we must say Never Again!

      As I defined the phrase in my post of March 6 2022, How if Vladimir Putin Should Be Assassinated? An Interrogation of the Origins of Evil and the Social Use of Force, and of the State as Embodied Psychopathy and Violence; “I cannot be complicit in silence with these crimes against humanity, to which as with fascism there can be but one reply: Never Again! A rallying cry complicated by its popularization in the title of founder of the Jewish Defense League Meir Kahane’s book “Never Again!: A Program for Survival, its origin is in Isaac Lambdan’s 1926 poem Masada; “Never shall Masada fall again”; it first appeared  in its current form on signs written by the prisoners of Buchenwald after its liberation.

     Elie Wiesel defines the phrase in his novel Hostage; “Never again” becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow. There will never again be hatred, people say. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children. And never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence. It’s a prayer.”

    As written in the article The Persistence of Genocide at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University: “According to the great historian of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, the phrase “Never Again” first appeared on handmade signs put up by inmates at Buchenwald in April, 1945, shortly after the camp had been liberated by U.S. forces.”

     As written by Emily Burack in the Jerusalem Post; “After a gunman took the lives of 17 students and staff at their high school in Parkland, Florida, students there launched a national campaign to promote gun control. They called for a major protest in Washington, DC, on March 24, and are encouraging similar protests and student walkouts across the country.

     And they took a name for their campaign, #NeverAgain, that has long been linked to Holocaust commemoration.

     Parkland junior Cameron Kasky is credited with coining the hashtag. A Twitter account for the movement, NeverAgainMSD, is described as “For survivors of the Stoneman Douglas Shooting, by survivors of the Stoneman Douglas Shooting.”

     Some supporters of the students’ efforts are put off by their use of Never Again. Lily Herman, writing in Refinery29, said “it’s very uncomfortable to watch a term you’ve used to talk about your family and people’s own heritage and history be taken away overnight.”

     Malka Goldberg, a digital communications specialist in Maryland, tweeted, “When I saw they’re using #NeverAgain for the campaign it bothered me, b/c many Jews strongly [associate] that phrase w/ the Holocaust specifically. For a second it felt like cultural appropriation, but I doubt the kids knew this or did it intentionally.”

     Hasia Diner, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, is unfazed by the students’ use of the phrase. While some may object to the phrase Never Again being reappropriated for gun control, it “does not mean that reaction is appropriate or reasonable,” she told JTA.

     While some have traced the phrase to the Hebrew poet Isaac Lambdan’s 1926 poem “Masada” (“Never shall Masada fall again!”), its current use is more directly tied to the aftermath of the Holocaust. The first usage of Never Again is murky, but most likely began in postwar Israel. The phrase was used in secular kibbutzim there in the late 1940s; it was used in a Swedish documentary on the Holocaust in 1961.

     But the phrase gained currency in English thanks in large part to Meir Kahane, the militant rabbi who popularized it in America when he created the Jewish Defense League in 1968 and used it as a title of a 1972 book-length manifesto. As the president of the American Jewish Committee, Sholom Comay, said after Kahane’s assassination in November 1990, “Despite our considerable differences, Meir Kahane must always be remembered for the slogan Never Again, which for so many became the battle cry of post-Holocaust Jewry.”

     For Kahane, Never Again was an implicitly violent call to arms and a rebuke of passivity and inactivity. The shame surrounding the alleged passivity of the Jews in the face of their destruction became a cornerstone of the JDL. As Kahane said, “the motto Never Again does not mean that ‘it’ [a holocaust] will never happen again. That would be nonsense. It means that if it happens again, it won’t happen in the same way. Last time, the Jews behaved like sheep.”

     Kahane used Never Again to justify acts of terror in the name of fighting antisemitism. In the anthem of the Jewish Defense League, members recited, “To our slaughtered brethren and lonely widows: Never again will our people’s blood be shed by water, Never again will such things be heard in Judea.”

     Later, however, Kahane’s violent call for action was adapted by American Jewish establishment groups and Holocaust commemoration institutions as a call for peace, tolerance and heeding the warning signs of genocide.

     These days, when the phrase is used to invoke the Holocaust, it can be either particular or universal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tends toward the particular when he uses it to speak about the need for a strong Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust.

     “I promise, as head of the Jewish state, that never again will we allow the hand of evil to sever the life of our people and our state,” he said in a speech at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp marking International Holocaust Memorial Day in 2010.

     But Netanyahu has also used the phrase in its universal sense of preventing all genocides. After visiting a memorial to the victims of the Rwanda genocide in 2010, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, wrote in the guestbook, “We are deeply moved by the memorial to the victims of one history’s greatest crimes — and reminded of the haunting similarities to the genocide of our own people. Never again.”

     Then-President Barack Obama also used the phrase in its universal sense in marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2011. “We are reminded to remain ever-vigilant against the possibility of genocide, and to ensure that Never Again is not just a phrase but a principled cause,” he said in a statement. “And we resolve to stand up against prejudice, stereotyping, and violence – including the scourge of anti-Semitism – around the globe.”

     That’s similar to how the US Holocaust Memorial Museum uses the phrase. In choosing the name Never Again as the theme of its 2013 Days of Remembrance, its used the term as a call to study the genocide of the Jews in order to respond to the “warning signs” of genocides happening anywhere.

     And Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and author who came to be associated with the phrase, also used it in the universal sense. ”Never again’ becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow …  never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence,” the Nobel  laureate wrote in 2012.

     Never Again is a phrase that keeps on evolving. It was used in protests against the Muslim ban and in support of refugees, in remembrance of Japanese internment during World War II and recalling the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. And now the phrase is taking on yet another life: in the fight for gun control in America.

     Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish studies at Indiana University who is presently a visiting scholar at the Center for Jewish History in New York, told JTA, “For [Kahane], Never Again was not ‘this will not happen again because we will have a country’ but ‘we Jews will never be complacent like we were during the war.’ That is, for Kahane, Never Again was a call to militancy as the only act of prevention. In Parkland it is a call for gun control. In a way, a call for anti-militancy.”

     So the dialectical forces of history have unfolded Never Again! Like an origami Moebius Loop toward Infinity, from the defense of victims as our duty of care for others to general principles of action. I am uncomfortable with such abstractions; for they begin again a recapitulation of the cycle of centralization of authority and the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force which makes genocides possible. Gott Mitt Uns; it is an ancient evil.

     As Voltaire has written; “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

     Let us send no armies to enforce virtue. To protect and defend others from harm, our universal human rights, and democracy as a free society of equals, yes. Resistance and solidarity in the struggle against tyranny and fascism, always, and by any means necessary.

     But we must never legitimize the use of social force because some of us are less human than others. No matter where you begin in authorizing identities, normalities, or the tyranny of imposed ideas of virtue, with elite hierarchies of belonging and exclusionary otherness, with fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, you always end up at the gates of Auschwitz.

     And now I will ask the same questions as in the beginning of my dialog herein, but I will reverse the order of the questions.

     So, how can we use Never Again! as a principle of direct action which preserves and empowers the wellbeing and autonomy of others, without such action becoming a point of moral fracture and unequal power?

     How shall we defend the peoples of Palestine and Ukraine from the horrific war crimes of Israeli and Russian imperial conquest and genocide, without ourselves becoming an empire?

         As written by David Rieff in The Persistence of Genocide; “According to the great historian of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, the phrase “Never Again” first appeared on handmade signs put up by inmates at Buchenwald in April, 1945, shortly after the camp had been liberated by U.S. forces. “I think it was really the Communists who were behind it, but I am not sure,” Hilberg said in one of the last interviews he gave before his death in the summer of 2007. Since then, “Never Again” has become kind of shorthand for the remembrance of the Shoah.  

     At Buchenwald, the handmade signs were long ago replaced by a stone monument onto which the words are embossed in metal letters. And as a usage, it has come to seem like a final word not just on the murder of the Jews of Europe, but on any great crime against humanity that could not be prevented. “Never Again” has appeared on monuments and memorials from Paine, Chile, the town with proportionately more victims of the Pinochet dictatorship than any other place in the country, to the Genocide Museum in Kigali, Rwanda. The report of conadep, the Argentine truth commission set up in 1984 after the fall of the Galtieri dictatorship, was titled “Nunca Mas” — “Never Again” in Spanish. And there is now at least one online Holocaust memorial called “Never Again.”

     Since 1945, “never again” has meant, essentially, “Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.”

     There is nothing wrong with this. But there is also nothing all that right with it either. Bluntly put, an undeniable gulf exists between the frequency with which the phrase is used — above all on days of remembrance most commonly marking the Shoah, but now, increasingly, other great crimes against humanity — and the reality, which is that 65 years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, “never again” has proved to be nothing more than a promise on which no state has ever been willing to deliver. When, last May, the writer Elie Wiesel, himself a former prisoner in Buchenwald, accompanied President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel to the site of the camp, he said that he had always imagined that he would return some day and tell his father’s ghost that the world had learned from the Holocaust and that it had become a “sacred duty” for people everywhere to prevent it from recurring. But, Wiesel continued, had the world actually learned anything, “there would be no Cambodia, and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”

     Wiesel was right: The world has learned very little. But this has not stopped it from pontificating much. The Obama administration’s National Security Strategy Paper, issued in May 2010, exemplifies this tendency. It asserts confidently that “The United States is committed to working with our allies, and to strengthening our own internal capabilities, in order to ensure that the United States and the international community are proactively engaged in a strategic effort to prevent mass atrocities and genocide.” And yet again, we are treated to the promise, “never again.” “In the event that prevention fails,” the report states, “the United States will work both multilaterally and bilaterally to mobilize diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, and — in certain instances — military means to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”

     Of course, this is not strategy, but a promise that, decade in and decade out, has proved to be empty. For if one were to evaluate these commitments by the results they have produced so far, one would have to say that all this “proactive engagement” and “diplomatic, financial, and humanitarian mobilization” has not accomplished very much. No one should be surprised by this. The U.S. is fighting two wars and still coping (though it has fallen from the headlines) with the floods in Pakistan, whose effects will be felt for many years in a country where America’s security interests and humanitarian relief efforts are inseparable. At the same time, the crisis over Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons capability is approaching its culmination. Add to this the fact that the American economy is in shambles, and you do not exactly have a recipe for engagement. The stark fact is that “never again” has never been a political priority for either the United States or the so-called international community (itself a self-flattering idea with no more reality than a unicorn). Nor, despite all the bluff talk about moral imperatives backed by international resolve, is there any evidence that it is becoming one.

     And yet, however at variance they are with both geopolitical and geoeconomic realities, the arguments exemplified by this document reflect the conventional wisdom of the great and the good in America across the “mainstream” (as one is obliged to say in this, the era of the tea parties) political spectrum. Even a fairly cursory online search will reveal that there are a vast number of papers, book-length studies, think tank reports, and United Nations documents proposing programs for preventing or at least halting genocides. For once, the metaphor “cottage industry” truly is appropriate. And what unites almost all of them is that they start from the premise that prevention is possible, if only the “international community” would live up to the commitments it made in the Genocide Convention of 1948, and in subsequent international covenants, treaties, and un declarations. If, the argument goes, the world’s great powers, first and foremost of course the United States, in collaboration with the UN system and with global civil society, would act decisively and in a timely way, we could actually enforce the moral standards supposedly agreed upon in the aftermath of the Holocaust. If they do not, of course, then “never again” will never mean much more than it has meant since 1945 — which, essentially, is “Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.”

     The report of the United States Institute for Peace’s task force on genocide, chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, is among the best of these efforts. As the report makes clear, the task force undertook its work all too painfully aware of the gulf between the international consensus on the moral imperative of stopping genocide and the ineffectiveness to date of the actual responses. Indeed, the authors begin by stating plainly that 60 years after the United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention and twenty years after it was ratified by the U.S. Senate, “The world agrees that genocide is unacceptable and yet genocide and mass killings continue.” To find ways to match words and “stop allowing the unacceptable,” Albright and Cohen write with commendable candor, “is in fact one of most persistent puzzles of our times.”

     Whether or not one agrees with the task force about what can or cannot be done to change this, there can be no question that sorrow over the world’s collective failure to act in East Pakistan, or Cambodia, or Rwanda is the only honorable response imaginable. But the befuddlement the authors of the report confess to feeling is another matter entirely. Like most thinking influenced by the human rights movement, the task force seems imbued with the famous Kantian mot d’ordre: “Ought implies can.” But to put the matter bluntly, there is no historical basis to believe anything of the sort, and a great deal of evidence to suggest a diametrically opposing conclusion. Of course, history is not a straitjacket, and the authors of the report, again echoing much thinking within the human rights movement, particularly Michael Ignatieff’s work in the 1990s, do make the argument that since 1945 there has been what Ignatieff calls “A revolution of global concern” and they call a “revolution in conscience.” In fairness, if in fact they are basing their optimism on this chiliastic idea, then one better understands the degree to which the members of the task force came to believe that genocide, far from being “A Problem From Hell,” as Samantha Power titled her influential book on the subject, in reality is a problem if not easily solved then at least susceptible to solution — though, again, only if all the international actors, by whom the authors mean the great powers, the un system, countries in a region where there is a risk of a genocide occurring, and what they rather uncritically call civil society, make it a priority.

     Since it starts from this presupposition, it is hardly surprising that the report is upbeat about the prospects for finally reversing course. “Preventing genocide,” the authors insist, “is a goal that can be achieved with the right institutional structures, strategies, and partnerships — in short, with the right blueprint.” To accomplish this, the task force emphasizes the need for strengthening international cooperation both in terms of identifying places where there is a danger of a genocide being carried out and coordinated action to head it off or at least halt it. Four specific responses are recommended, one predominantly informational (early warning) and three operational (early prevention, preventive diplomacy, and, finally, military intervention when all else has failed). None of this is exactly new, and most of it is commonsensical from a conceptual standpoint. But one of the great strengths of the report, as befits the work of a task force chaired by two former cabinet secretaries, is this practical bent — that is to say, its emphasis on creating or strengthening institutional structures within the U.S. government and the un system and showing how such reforms will enable policymakers to respond effectively to genocide.

     However, this same presupposition leads the authors of the report to write as if there were little need for them to elaborate the political and ideological bases for the “can do” approach they recommend. Francis Fukuyama’s controversial theory of the “End of History” goes unmentioned, but there is more than a little of Fukuyama in their assumptions about a “final” international consensus having been established with regard to the norms that have come into force protecting populations from genocide or mass atrocity crimes. It is true that there is a body of such norms: the Genocide Convention, the un’s so-called Responsibility to Protect doctrine, adopted by the World Summit (with the strong support of the Bush administration) in 2005, and various international instruments limiting impunity, above all the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court. And, presumably, it is with these in mind that the report’s authors can assert so confidently that the focus in genocide prevention can now be on “implement[ing] and operationalizing the commitments [these instruments] contain.”

     It is here that doubt will begin to assail more skeptical readers. Almost since its inception, the human rights movement has been a movement of lawyers. And for lawyers, the establishment of black-letter international law is indeed the “end of the story” from a normative point of view — an internationalized version of stare decisis, but extended to the nth degree. On this account such a norm, once firmly established (which, activists readily admit, may take time; they are not naifs), can within a fairly short period thereafter be understood as an ineradicable and unchallengeable part of the basic user’s manual for international relations. This is what has allowed the human rights movement (and, at least with regard to the question of genocide, the members of the task force in the main seem to have been of a similar cast of mind) to hew to what is essentially a positivist progress narrative. However, the human rights movement’s certitude on the matter derives less from its historical experience than it does from its ideological presuppositions. In this sense, human rights truly is a secular religion, as its critics but even some of its supporters have long claimed.

     Of course, strategically (in both polemical and institutional terms) the genius of this approach is of a piece with liberalism generally, of which, in any case, “human rights-ism” is the offspring. Liberalism is the only modern ideology that will not admit it is an ideology. “We are just demanding that nations live up to the international covenants they have signed and the relevant national and international statutes,” the human rights activist replies indignantly when taxed with actually supporting, and, indeed, helping to midwife an ideological system. It may be tedious to have to point out in 2010 that law and morality are not the same thing, but, well, law and morality are not the same thing. The problem is that much of the task force report reads as if they were.

     An end to genocide: It is an attractive prospect, not to mention a morally unimpeachable goal in which Kantian moral absolutism meets American can do-ism, where the post-ideological methodologies (which are anything but post-ideological, of course) of international lawyers meet the American elite’s faith, which goes back at least to Woodrow Wilson if not much earlier in the history of the republic, that we really can right any wrong if only we commit ourselves sufficiently to doing so. Unfortunately, far too much is assumed (or stipulated, as the lawyers say) by the report’s authors. More dismayingly still, far too many of the concrete examples either of what could have been done but wasn’t are presented so simplistically as to make the solutions offered appear hollow, since the challenge as described bears little or no resemblance to the complexities that actually exist.

     The calls for an intervention in Darfur reached their height after the moral imperative for intervention had started to dissipate.

     Darfur is a good example of this. The report mentions Darfur frequently, both in the context of a nuts and bolts consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of various states and institutions such as the UN and the African Union, which have intervened, however unsatisfactorily, over the course of the crisis, and as an example of how the mobilization of civil society can influence policy. “In today’s age of electronic media communication,” the report states, “Americans are increasingly confronted in their living rooms — and even on their cell phones — with information about and images of death and destruction virtually anywhere they occur. . . . The Internet has proven to be a powerful tool for organizing broad-based responses to genocide and mass atrocities, as we have seen in response to the crisis in Darfur.”

     The problem is not so much that this statement is false but rather that it begs more questions than it answers, and, more tellingly still, that the report’s authors seem to have no idea of this. There is no question that the rise in 2005 and 2006 of a mass movement calling for an end to mass killing in Darfur (neither the United Nations nor the most important relief groups present on the ground in Darfur agree with the characterization of what took place there as a genocide) was an extraordinarily successful mobilization — perhaps the most successful since the anti-Apartheid movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Beginning with the activism of a small group of college students who in June 2004 had attended a Darfur Emergency Summit organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and addressed by Elie Wiesel, and shortly afterwards founded an organization called Save Darfur, the movement rapidly expanded and, at its height, included the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, right-wing evangelicals, left-leaning campuses activists, mainline human rights activists, and American neoconservatives. But nowhere does the task force report examine whether the policy recommendations of this movement were wise, or, indeed, whether the effect that they had on the U.S. debate was positive or negative. Instead, the report proceeds as if any upsurge in grassroots interest and activism galvanized by catastrophes like Darfur is by definition a positive development.

     In reality, the task force’s assumption that any mass movement that supports “more assertive government action in response to genocide and mass atrocities” is to be encouraged is a strangely content-less claim. Surely, before welcoming the rise of a Save Darfur (or its very influential European cousin, sos Darfour), it is important to think clearly not just about what they are against but what they are for. And here, the example of Save Darfur is as much a cautionary tale as an inspiring one. The report somewhat shortchanges historical analysis, with what little history that does make it in painted with a disturbingly broad brush. Obviously, the task force was well aware of this, which I presume is why its report insists, unwisely in my view, that it was far more important to focus on the present and the future more than on the past. But understanding the history is not marginal, it is central. Put the case that one believes in military intervention in extremis to halt genocide. In that case, intervening in late- 2003 and early-2004, when the killing was at its height, would have been the right thing to do. But Save Darfur really only came into its own in late 2005, that is, well after the bulk of the killing had ended. In other words, the calls for an intervention reached their height after the moral imperative for such an intervention had started to dissipate. An analogy can be made with the human rights justification for the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein. As Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, has pointed out, had this happened during Baghdad’s murderous Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1988, there would have been a solid justification for military intervention, whether or not Human Rights Watch would have agreed with it. But to intervene fifteen years later because of the massacre was indefensible on human rights grounds (though, obviously, there were other rationales for the war that would not have been affected by such reasoning).

     If you want to be a prophet, you have to get it right. And if Save Darfur was wrong in its analysis of the facts relevant to their call for an international military intervention to stop genocide, either because there had in reality been no genocide (as, again, the un and many mainstream ngos on the ground insisted) or because the genocide had ended before they began to campaign for intervention, then Save Darfur’s activism can just as reasonably be described in negative terms as in the positive ones of the task force report. Yes, Save Darfur had (and has) good intentions and the attacks on them from de facto apologists for the government of Sudan like Mahmood Mamdani are not worth taking seriously. But good intentions should never be enough.

     In fairness, had the task force decided to provide the history of the Darfur, or Bosnia, or Rwanda, in all their frustrating complexity, they would have produced a report that, precisely because of all the nuance, the ambiguity, the need for “qualifiers,” doubtless would have been of less use to policymakers, whose professional orientation is of necessity toward actionable policies. But when what is being suggested is a readiness for U.S. soldiers (to be sure, preferably in a multilateral context) in extreme cases to kill and die to prevent genocide or mass atrocity crimes, then, to turn human rights Kantianism against them for a change, it is nuance that is the moral imperative. Again, good intentions alone will not do. Qui veut faire l’ange, fait la bete, Pascal said. Who wishes to act the angel, acts the beast.

     History, in all its unsentimentality, is almost always the best antidote to such simplicities. And yet, if anything, the task force’s report is a textbook case of ahistorical thinking and its perils. The authors emphasize that, “This task force is not a historical commission; its focus is on the future and on prevention.” The problem is that unless the past is looked at in detail, not just conjured up by way of illustrations of the West’s failures to intervene that the task force hopes to remedy, then what is being argued for, in effect, are, if necessary, endless wars of altruism. To put it charitably, in arguing for that, I do not think the authors have exactly established their claim to occupying the moral high ground. If they had spent half the time thinking about history in as serious a way as they did about how to construct the optimal bureaucratic architecture within the U.S. government, then what the task force finally produced would have been a document that was pathbreaking. Instead, they took the conventional route, and, in my view, will simply add their well-reasoned policy recommendations to the large number that came before and, indeed, as in the case of the recent initiative of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies on the so-called Will to Intervene, have already begun to come after.

      With the best will in the world, what is one to make of arguments made at the level of generalization of the following?

     Grievances over inequitable distribution of power and resources appear to be a fundamental motivating factor in the commission of mass violence against ethnic, sectarian, or political groups. That same inequality may also provide the means for atrocities to be committed. For example, control of a highly centralized state apparatus and the access to economic and military power that comes with it makes competition for power an all-or-nothing proposition and creates incentives to eliminate competitors. This dynamic was evident in Rwanda and Burundi and is serious cause for concern in Burma today.

The fact is that, vile as they are, there is actually very little likelihood of the butchers in Rangoon committing genocide — their crimes have other characteristics. It is disheartening that the members of the task force would allow the fact that they, like most sensible people, believe that Burma is one of the worst dictatorships in the world, to justify their distorting reality in this way, when they almost certainly know better. And since they do precisely that, it is hard not to at least entertain the suspicion — whose implications extend rather further than that and beg the question of what kind of world order follows from the task force’s recommendations — that consciously or (and this is worse, in a way) unconsciously they reasoned that if they could identify the Rangoon regime as genocidal, this would make an international intervention to overthrow it far more defensible. If this is right, then, if implemented, the report (again, intentionally or inadvertently) would have the effect of helping nudge us back toward a world where the prevention of genocide becomes a moral warrant for other policy agendas (as was surely the case with Saddam Hussein in 2003, and was the case with General Bashir in Khartoum until the arrival of the Obama administration).

     I write this in large measure because the task force’s description of why mass violence and genocide occur could be a description of practically the entire developing world. Analysis at that level of generalization is not just useless, it is actually a prophylactic against thought.

     It gets worse. The authors write:

     “It is equally important to focus on the motivations of specific leaders and the tools at their disposal. There is no genocidal destiny. Many countries with ethnic or religious discrimination, armed conflicts, autocratic governments, or crushing poverty have not experienced genocide while others have. The difference comes down to leadership. Mass atrocities are organized by powerful elites who believe they stand to gain from these crimes and who have the necessary resources at their disposal. The heinous crimes committed in Nazi-occupied Europe, Cambodia, and Rwanda, for example, were all perpetrated with significant planning, organization, and access to state resources, including weapons, budgets, detention facilities, and broadcast media.

     There are also key triggers that can tip a high-risk environment into crisis. These include unstable, unfair, or unduly postponed elections; high-profile assassinations; battlefield victories; and environmental conditions (for example, drought) that may cause an eruption of violence or heighten the perception of an existential threat to a government or armed group. Sometimes potential triggers are known well in advance and preparations can be made to address the risk of mass atrocities that may follow. Poorly planned elections in deeply divided societies are a commonly cited example, but deadlines for significant policy action, legal judgments, and anniversaries of highly traumatic and disputed historical events are also potential triggers that can be foreseen.”

     I tax the reader’s patience with such a long quotation to show how expertise can produce meaninglessness. For apart from the mention of poorly planned elections — a reference to Rwanda that is perfectly correct as far as it goes — the rest of this does not advance our understanding one iota. To remedy or at least alleviate these vast social stresses, the task force recommends “effective [sic] early prevention”! The authors themselves were obliged to admit that, “Such efforts to change underlying social, economic, or political conditions are difficult and require sustained investment of resources and attention.” Really, you think? But about where these resources, as opposed to institutional arrangements, are to come from, they are largely silent, apart from emphasizing the need to target with both threats and positive inducements leaders thought likely to choose to commit such crimes. But the authors know perfectly well that, as they themselves put it, “early engagement is a speculative venture,” and that “the watch list of countries ‘at risk’ can be long, due to the difficulty of anticipating specific crises in a world generally plagued by instability.” Surely, people like Secretary Albright and Secretary Cohen know better than anyone that such ventures are never going to be of much interest to senior policymakers, just as the global Marshall Plan that would be required to effectively address the underlying causes of genocidal wars is never going to be on offer.

    To a great power, and to the citizens of great power, powerlessness is simply an unconscionable destiny. The task force report, with its strange imperviousness to viewing historical tragedy as much more than an engineering problem, is a perfect illustration of this. Unsound historically, and hubristic morally, for all its good intentions, the task force report is not a blueprint for a better future but a mystification of the choices that actually confront us and between which we are going to have to choose if we are ever to prevent or halt even some genocides. My suspicion is that the reason that the very accomplished, distinguished people who participated in the task force did not feel obliged to face up to this is because the report gives as much weight to the national interest basis for preventing or halting genocide as it does to the moral imperative of doing so. As the report puts it:

    “ First, genocide fuels instability, usually in weak, undemocratic, and corrupt states. It is in these same types of states that we find terrorist recruitment and training, human trafficking, and civil strife, all of which have damaging spillover effects for the entire world.

     Second, genocide and mass atrocities have long-lasting consequences far beyond the states in which they occur. Refugee flows start in bordering countries but often spread. Humanitarian needs grow, often exceeding the capacities and resources of a generous world. The international community, including the United States, is called on to absorb and assist displaced people, provide relief efforts, and bear high economic costs. And the longer we wait to act, the more exorbitant the price tag. For example, in Bosnia, the United States has invested nearly $ 15 billion to support peacekeeping forces in the years since we belatedly intervened to stop mass atrocities.

     Third, America’s standing in the world — and our ability to lead — is eroded when we are perceived as bystanders to genocide. We cannot be viewed as a global leader and respected as an international partner if we cannot take steps to avoid one of the greatest scourges of humankind. No matter how one calculates U.S. interests, the reality of our world today is that national borders provide little sanctuary from international problems. Left unchecked, genocide will undermine American security.

     A core challenge for American leaders is to persuade others — in the U.S. government, across the United States, and around the world — that preventing genocide is more than just a humanitarian aspiration; it is a national and global imperative.”

     Again, apologies for quoting at such length. but truthfully, is one meant to take this seriously? There is absolutely no evidence that terrorist recruiting is more promising in failed states than, say, in suburban Connecticut where the (very middle-class) Faisal Shahzad, son of a retired Pakistani Air Force vice-marshal, plotted to explode a car bomb in Times Square. Nor, in the U.S. case is there any basis for concluding that the main source of immigration is from places traumatized by war. To the contrary, most of our immigrants are the best and the brightest (in the sense not of the most educated but most enterprising) of Mexico, the Philippines, India, and China. The proportion of migrants from Sudan or Somalia is small by comparison. As for the costs of peacekeeping, are the authors of the report serious? Fifteen billion dollars? The sum barely signifies in the rubric of the military budget of the United States. And lastly, the report’s claim that the U.S. won’t be viewed as a global leader and respected as an international partner if it doesn’t take the lead to stop genocide is absurd on its face. Not respected by whom, exactly? Hu Jintao in Beijing? Merkel in Berlin? President Felipe Calderon in Mexico City? To put it charitably, the claim conjures up visions of Pinocchio, rather than Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson.

     The report calls for courage, but courage begins at home. Pressed by Armenian activists at one of the events held to launch the report as to why they had both earlier signed a letter urging the U.S. not to bow to Armenian pressure and formally recognize the Armenian genocide, Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright refused over and over again to characterize the Armenian genocide as, well, a genocide. It is true that the Armenian activists had come looking for a confrontation. But there can be little question that both secretaries did everything they could to avoid committing themselves one way or the other. “Terrible things happened to the Armenians,” Secretary Albright said, refusing to go any further. The letter, she explained, had been primarily about “whether this was an appropriate time to raise the issue.” For his part, Secretary Cohen, emphasized that angering the Turks while the Iraq war was raging could lead to Turkish reactions that would “put our sons and daughters in jeopardy.” And, in any case, the task force was not “a historical commission.”

     This is a perfectly defensible position from the perspective of prudential realpolitik. The problem is that what the task force report constantly calls for is political courage. And whatever else they were, Secretaries Albright and Cohen’s responses were expedient, not courageous. There will always be reasons not to intervene — compelling pressures, I mean, not trivial ones. Why should a future U.S. government be less vulnerable to them than the Bush or Obama administrations? About this, as about so many other subjects, the task force report is as evasive as Secretary Albright and Secretary Cohen were at the press conference at which the Armenian activists confronted them. Doubtless, they had to be. For the solutions they propose are not real solutions, the history they touch on is not the actual history, and the world they describe is not the real world.”

Schindler’s List: What The Girl In The Red Coat Represents, Explained

https://screenrant.com/schindlers-list-girl-red-coat-meaning-explained/#When%20The%20Girl%20in%20The%20Red%20Coat%20Is%20Seen

Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, Ben Kiernan

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Never-Again-From-a-Holocaust-phrase-to-a-universal-phrase-544666

https://www.hoover.org/research/persistence-genocide

The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Instant of My Death / Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, by Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida

The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre (Preface),

Never Again! A Program for Survival, by Meir Kahane

Hostage, by Elie Wiesel

The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

The Trial of Socrates, by I.F. Stone

Invictus, by William Ernest Henley

The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosiński

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt

Robert De Niro as Harry Tuttle in Brazil

Hebrew

23 במרץ 2024 בפורים: למה אנחנו מתכוונים כשאנחנו משתמשים בביטוי; “לעולם לא שוב!”

      בחג פורים זה שמתחיל היום בשקיעה ומסתיים עם סתיו הלילה מחר, חוגגים עמי העולם את ישועתם מרצח העם בפרס המאה ה-5 כפי שכתוב במגילת אסתר, וכל האנושות עשויה לחגוג את הניצחון. של אהבה על שנאה, סולידריות על פילוג והתנגדות על עריצות שהיא מנציחה.

      כאשר אנו מתמודדים בחדשות עם תמונות של אלימות נוראה ופשעים נגד האנושות בשתי מלחמות המאתגרות את סדר העולם שלנו; הפלישה הישראלית לעזה שהפכה את אמריקה לשותפה ברצח עם ומעמידה בספק את רעיון זכויות האדם, והפלישה הרוסית לאוקראינה, מלחמת הרס מוחלט שלא דומה לשום דבר שאירופה ראתה מאז מלחמת העולם השנייה, המהדהדת את הזוועות והשימושים שלה. נשק תרמברי כמשרפות ניידות נגד אזרחים, אני חושב על הדברים האלה היום במונחים של המורשת ההיסטורית של התנגדות לעריצות, עבדות, מלחמות כיבוש ושליטה אימפריאלית ורצח עם.

       איך נגן על עמי פלסטין ואוקראינה מפני פשעי המלחמה הנוראיים של הפשיזם התיאוקרטי של נתניהו של הדם, האמונה והאדמה והכיבוש האימפריאלי המטורף של פוטין, מבלי שעצמנו נהיה אימפריה?

      פיתוי הכוח מתחיל בפחד, במיוחד פחד מוחץ ומוכלל הנתון בצורות של אחר על ידי סמכות בשירות לכוח; למצוא ביטחון ובטחון בהפיכתו לבורר המידות. גם לזה עלינו להתנגד.

      יתרה מכך, אסטרטגיות כאלה של כוח ושליטה חייבות תמיד להיכשל ולהתקלקל, שכן ביטחון הוא אשליה, והשימוש בכוח חברתי יוצר התנגדות משלו.

       לעולם לא שוב! הוא ביטוי שהשתמשתי בו לעתים קרובות כתשובה לעריצות ולפשיזם, הן בכתיבתי והן לחבריי באופן אישי, כקריאה להתנגדות מוחלטת ללא גבולות, ובזה אני מבקש לחקור את משמעותו והשלכותיו.

       איך נוכל להשתמש ב- Never Again! כעיקרון של פעולה ישירה המשמר ומעצים את הרווחה והאוטונומיה של אחרים, מבלי שפעולה כזו תהפוך לנקודת שבר מוסרית, חתרנות לאידיאלים וכישלון מפל של כוח לא שוויוני?

       עבורי, ההיסטוריה של השימוש בו קשורה לקטגוריה של הרגעים המגדירים שלי, שאני קורא להם עמודים אחרונים, שאת סיפוריהם סיפרתי פעמים רבות. אלה כוללים רק רגעים שבהם בחרתי בסולידריות ובסירוב להיכנע על פני הישרדות אישית; מסרב לזוז הצידה מהילד שמאחורי כשציידי הראשים של המשטרה קיבלו פקודה להיכנע בברזיל 1974, כאשר חיילים הציתו את הבית בו ז’אן ז’נה ואני היינו, מוקפים ולא חמושים, בביירות 1982 כשהשביע אותי בשבועה. של ההתנגדות, תקווה עזובה בקרב Cuito Cuanavale באנגולה 1988 לשחרור מהאפרטהייד, ועוד אינספור אחרים מעבר לחשבון שלי.

       עמדות אחרונות הן בחירות של סירוב לוותר על האנושות שלנו וזכויות האדם האוניברסליות שלנו, חובת הזהירות והניהול שלנו זה בזה, ללא קשר להשלכות כקווים שאנו לא יכולים לחצות מבלי להפוך למשהו פחות אנושי.

     במלחמת עזה המתמשכת ורצח העם של הפלסטינים, זהו גם סירוב לנטוש את מטרת “חופש האמונה לכל המין האנושי” כאגדה על האנדרטה של ניצחונו של גוסטבוס אדולפוס משבדיה ב-1631 בקרב ברייטנפלד, שהבטיחה זאת. הימין מצהיר, העיקרון של מדינה לא עדתית שעליה מושתתת אמריקה ושל הזכות הטבועה לעצמאות והגדרה עצמית ריבונית של כל העמים, וסולידריות עם כל אלה שפרנץ פאנון כינה עלובי כדור הארץ נגד כוח ושליטה, מדינה טרור ועריצות, מלחמה וכיבוש אימפריאלי.

       בין המודלים האישיים שלי לחיקוי באנטי-פשיזם ובמהפכה היא דמותו הבדיונית של הארי טאטל בגילומו של רוברט דה נירו בסרט ברזיל, שהשורה שלו “כולנו בזה ביחד”, מהדהדת לאורך ארבעים שנים מהחיים וההרפתקאות שלי.

      תן לי לשים את זה בהקשר; ברזיל הייתה חווית הסולו הראשונה שלי בנסיעות חוץ, טסתי לסאו פאולו כשהייתי בן ארבע עשרה, בקיץ 1974, כדי להתאמן עם כמה סייפים אחרים לקראת המשחקים הפאן אמריקאים שתוכננו להתקיים שם, אם כי מאוחר יותר הועבר המקום ל מקסיקו. הייתה לי קצת פורטוגזית שיחה חדשה שלמדתי, הזמנה להתארח בביתו של ילד בגילי שהכרתי ממעגל טורנירי הסייף שאיתו יכולתי לגלות את השובבות המקומית, וחזיונות של מסיבות חוף.

      אז נכנסתי לעולם של נימוסים חצרניים ומשרתים עם כפפות לבנות, מארחים אדיבים ומבריקים שהיו מאורות מקומיים וזרקו כדור פורמלי מפואר כדי להציג אותי, וחבר שאיתו חלקתי תשוקה מטורפת לספורט לחימה ולספורט סוסים. , אבל גם עולם של חומות גבוהות ושומרים חמושים.

      המבט הראשון שלי מעבר לאשליה זו הגיע עם קולות של ירי רובה מהשומרים; כשהסתכלתי מהמרפסת שלי לראות מי תוקף את החזית

בשער גיליתי שהשומרים יורים לתוך קהל של קבצנים, בעיקר ילדים, שהסתערו על משאית שהובילה את אספקת המזון השבועית. באותו יום עשיתי את הטיול הסודי הראשון שלי מעבר לחומות, שממנו מעולם לא חזרתי באמת.

      אילו אמיתות מסתתרות בחומות הארמונות שלנו, שמעבר להן אסור להביט? קל להאמין לשקרי הסמכות כשאדם חבר באליטה שבאינטרס שלה הם טוענים שהוא מחזיקים בכוח, ולא להטיל ספק במניעים ובעמדת הפריבילגיה של עצמו. קל להחריד להאמין בשקרים כאשר אנו הנהנים מהיררכיות של אחרות מוציאה מהכלל, מפערי עושר וכוח ואי-שוויון המיוצרים באופן מערכתי ומיוצרים נשק בשירות לשלטון, ומפריבילגיות לבנים ופטריארכליים, רצח עם, עבדות, כיבוש ואימפריאליזם.

      תמיד שימו לב לאיש שמאחורי הווילון. כי אין סמכות צודקת, וכפי שדורותי אומרת בקוסם מארץ עוץ, הוא “רק זקן זקן”, והשקרים והאשליות שלו, הכוח והשליטה שלו, אינם משרתים אינטרסים מלבד שלו.

      בהיותי נער אמריקאי נאיבי, הרגשתי שחובתי לדווח על התקרית; אבל בתחנת המשטרה התקשיתי להפוך את עצמי למובן, לא בגלל שפה אלא בגלל מערכות דיכוי מרומזות. הם חשבו שאני שם כדי להמר על המשמר שלי בתחרות חודשית מתמשכת שעבורה השוטר הכניס הכי הרבה ילדי רחוב; היה לוח גיר על קיר התחנה בשביל זה, וצנצנת עם אוזניים מתויגות כדי להוכיח את הספירה. כך בחרו האליטות של ברזיל לפתור את בעיית ילדי הרחוב הנטושים, עשרה אחוזים מהאוכלוסייה הלאומית. משחק הימורים נוסף שנקרא “הגדול”, היה בו השוטר בעט בבטן של הנערות ההריוניות ביותר ודורג בין עשרת גורמי המוות המובילים בברזיל עבור נערות מתבגרות, המתגוררות תמיד באזורי שכונות עוני המכילים את העניים והשחורים ביותר. אזרחים; זאת בעיר שהוקמה על ידי עבדים אפריקאים שנמלטו כרפובליקה חופשית.

      למדתי הרבה בשבועות שלאחר מכן; מעל הכל למדתי מי אחראי לאי השוויון הללו; אנחנו כן, אם לא נאתגר את העריצות ומערכות לא צודקות ומתריסות אותן.

      במהלך לילות הרפתקאותיי מעבר לחומות ופעולות כדי לעזור ללהקות הילדים הקבצנים ולחסום את ציד הראשים של המשטרה חוויתי חוויה טראומטית של כמעט מוות, בדומה להוצאות להורג המדומה של מוריס בלאנשו על ידי הנאצים ב-1944 כפי שנכתב ב” מיידי מותי ופיודור דוסטויבסקי על ידי המשטרה החשאית של הצאר ב-1849 כפי שנכתב ב”אידיוט”; נמלט מרדף דרך מערך מנהרות עם ילד פצוע בין היתר ונלכד בשטח הפתוח על ידי שני רובאי משטרה שתפסו עמדות אגפים וכיוונו אלינו בעוד המנהיג קרא להיכנע מעבר לעיקול של מנהרה. עמדתי מול נער עם רגל מעוותת שלא יכול היה לרוץ בזמן שהאחרים התפזרו ונמלטו או מצאו מקומות מסתור, וסירבתי לעמוד מהצד כשהצטוו לעשות זאת. זה היה רפלקסיבי והחלטה של אינסטינקט מתחת לרמה של מחשבה או רצון מודע, שבו האמיתות של עצמנו שנכתבו על בשרנו מזויפות ומתגלות. ביקשתי לתת למישהו למות כדי להציל את עצמי, פשוט אמרתי שלא. כשחזרה אלי המחשבה מרגע זה של בהלה או התעלות של עצמי, שאלתי כמה לתת לנו להתרחק, ואז הוא הורה לאנשיו לירות. אבל הייתה רק ירייה אחת במקום הפגנה של אש צולבת, והחטאה רחבה; היה לו זמן לשאול “מה?” לפני נפילה ארצה.

        ואז גילו את עצמם המצילים שלנו, לאחר שהתגנבו למשטרה מאחור; המטאדורים, שאפשר לתאר אותם כאנשי משמר, כנופיית פושע, קבוצה מהפכנית, או שלושתם, שהוקמה על ידי הכונן והפושע הידוע לשמצה של ברזיל פדרו רודריגס פילו, הידוע לשמצה בכך שנקם את הרצח הפראי של אמו על ידי הריגת אביו ואכילת ליבו, אשר נעצר בשנה הקודמת לאחר סדרה מרהיבה של מאה רציחות נקמה או יותר של הפושעים המטומטמים והמפלצתיים ביותר, גברים חזקים מעבר להישג ידם של החוק או שהיו החוק ושעשו זוועות בנשים וילדים. לתוך האחווה האימתנית הזו התקבלתי, עם המילים; “אתה אחד מאיתנו, בואי איתנו” וברחובות סאו פאולו באותו קיץ לא עמדתי שוב לבד.

     “אנחנו לא יכולים להציל את כולם, אבל אנחנו יכולים לנקום”; אז הם תיארו לי את עצמם, וההגדרה הזו של סולידריות כפרקסיס או פעולת ערכים נשארת איתי ומצללת את השימוש שלי בזעקת הקרב לעולם לא שוב! כפי שכתב שייקספיר ב”סוחר מוונציה”, מערכה שלישית, סצנה א’; “אם אתה טועה בנו, האם לא ננקום?”

      מהרגע שראיתי את השומרים של משפחת האצולה שאיתם התארחתי יורים על קהל הילדים חסרי הבית והקבצנים רוחשים את משאית אספקת המזון בשער האחוזה, עירומים ושלדיים ברעב, מצולקים ונכים ומשובשים במחלות לא ידועות. לכל אדם שעבורם שירותי בריאות ותזונה בסיסית א

מחדש תנאים מוקדמים חופשיים ומובטחים של הזכות האוניברסלית לחיים, נואשים לקומץ מזון שיכול להיות עוד יום אחד של הישרדות; באותו רגע בחרתי בצד שלי, ועמי הם חסרי הכוח והמנושלים, המושתקים והנמחקים; כל אלה שפרנץ פאנון כינה עלובי כדור הארץ.

     השני הוא היום שבו ז’אן ז’נה הוביל אותי למסלול חיי עם שבועת ההתנגדות בביירות בקיץ 1982.

      חיילים ישראלים הציתו את הבתים ברחוב שלי וקראו לאנשים לצאת ולהיכנע. הם כיסו את עיניהם של הילדים של אלה שעשו זאת והשתמשו בהם כמגן אנושי.

      לא היה לנו נשק אחר מלבד בקבוק השמפניה הריק שסיימנו זה עתה עם ארוחת הבוקר שלנו של קרפ תותים; שאלתי “יש רעיונות?”, והוא משך בכתפיו ואמר “לתקן כידונים?”

      ואז הוא נתן לי עקרון פעולה שלפיו אני חי כבר ארבעים ושתיים שנה; “כשאין תקווה, אדם חופשי לעשות דברים בלתי אפשריים, דברים מפוארים.”

      הוא שאל אותי אם אני מתכוון להיכנע, ואמרתי שלא; הוא חייך וענה, “גם אני לא.” וכך הוא השביע אותי לשבועה שהגה ב-1940 בפריז בתחילת הכיבוש עבור חברים שהוא יכול לאסוף, מנוסח מחדש מהשבועה שנשא כלגיונר ב-1918. הוא אמר שזה הדבר הטוב ביותר שהוא אי פעם. צָעִיף; “אנו נשבעים את נאמנותנו זה לזה, להתנגד ולא להיכנע, ולא לנטוש את חברינו.”

      אז הפכתי להיות נושאת מסורת בת למעלה משמונים שנה וחיצפתי בסכסוך המפחיד והנורא ביותר שידע העולם, זמן קצר לפני שציפיתי להישרף בחיים בדוכן האחרון מבין רבים.

      זה היה רגע הזיוף שלי, ההחלטה הזו לבחור במוות על פני כפיפות, ומאז שנפגעתי ממנו אני פעמון, מצלצל. וכמו פעמון החירות, אני פתוח לסבלם של אחרים ולפגמי האנושות שלנו. זו הייתה המתנה הגדולה ביותר שניתנה לי אי פעם, האמפתיה הזו שנושאת מפצע קדוש, ולעולם לא אפסיק את הקריאה לחירות, ולא אהסס לענות כפי שאני יכול לקריאה לסולידריות עם אחרים.

      מבין קרב Cuito Cuanavale, הקרב הגדול ביותר שנלחם אי פעם באפריקה, עצום אפילו יותר מאל עלמיין; זה היה המקום שבו נשברה שיטת האפרטהייד. במערכה ענקית שכללה למעלה מ-300,000 חיילים מתנדבים קובנים בין דצמבר 1987 למרץ 1988, בתיאום עם כוחות אנגולה וילידים אחרים, מתנדבים בינלאומיים, ועם סיוע ויועצים סובייטים, הביסו את דרום אפריקה הגדולה והעדיפה בהרבה מבחינה טכנולוגית ואת UNITA והאמריקאית שלהם. בעלי ברית ושכירי חרב בקרב Cuito Cuanavale, בסיס צבאי אנגולי שדרום אפריקה לא הצליחה לכבוש בחמישה גלי תקיפות.

      בעוד המחזה של הקרב האחרון הגדול הזה במאבק שחרור ארוך של עשרות שנים התגלגל, עשיתי שובבות מאחורי קווי האויב בשיח. כאן גיליתי יחידה אבודה, בעיקר זולו, שהוקפתה על ידי כוחות האפרטהייד. לאחר דיווח על מה שידעתי על האזור לקבוצת הפיקוד וכנס קצר במספר שפות, קם בחור זקן שעד כה שתק מצללי האוהל, שצורתו ללא חולצתו הראתה צלקת אימתנית ומרהיבה מציפורני אריה. , ואמר; “אנחנו מוקפים וחסרי מספרם בלי תחמושת וגרוע מכך, בלי מים, ואף אחד לא בא לעזור לנו. אנחנו חייבים לתקוף”.

     הסמל חייך על כך כאילו ניתנה לו מתנה נפלאה, פסע החוצה ונתן את הפקודה שאם יתמזל מזלך לעולם לא תשמע; “תקן כידונים!”

      והגברים שעומדים למות התפרצו בשירה. “אוסוטו! Umkhonto wami womile!” הראשון הוא קריאת קרב זולו אוניברסלית, המבקשת מרוחות אבותיו להתעורר ולהעיד על מעשי הגבורה המפוארים שעומדים לבצע. “החנית שלי צמאה”, זה האחרון.

    וניצחנו, למרות שהמחיר היה נורא. אין עלויות כאלה גדולות מכדי לשאת בהשוואה לעלויות הכניעה לעבדות, סחורה, זיוף ודה-הומניזציה; כי בסירוב להיכנע אנו הופכים לבלתי נכבשים וחופשיים, ואי אפשר לקחת מאיתנו את הכוח הזה של בעלות עצמית כניצחון במאבק על האנושיות שלנו. כפי שכתב מקס סטירנר; “לא ניתן להעניק חופש; יש לתפוס אותו.”

     מזמן איבדתי את ספירת היציעים האחרונים; אלה הפכו לאמיתות הכתובות על בשרי, ואני נושא סימנים כאלה ללא מספר. ללא ספק יהיו אלה שעומדים כעת לצד פלסטין, אוקראינה או כל עם שנמצא בסכנת השמדה.

      בכל זה מה שחשוב הוא שבסירוב להיכנע לסמכות ולכפות אנו הופכים לבלתי נכבשים וחופשיים; זהו ניצחון כתנאי הוויה שאי אפשר לקחת מאיתנו, בדומה לחייל האוקראיני הגיבור השומר על אי שומם שסירב להיכנע לספינת מלחמה רוסית במילים; “ספינת מלחמה רוסית, לך תזדיין.” אדם כזה אי אפשר לכבוש, ודבריו האלמותיים מדברים בעד כל האומה שלו.

      ט

סוד הכוח, הכוח והסמכות הוא שהדברים האלה חלולים ושבירים, ונכשלים כשהם נתקלים בחוסר ציות ובסירוב פשוט להאמין ולהיכנע.

      איך אנחנו מוצאים את הרצון לעשות את הדברים האלה, לצאת מהחורבות ולעשות עוד עמדה אחרונה, מעבר לתקווה לניצחון או אפילו הישרדות?

      האמת היא שאנחנו לא צריכים שום דבר מעבר לעצמנו ולרגע ההחלטה שלנו לעשות דברים כאלה; אין עקרונות אוניברסליים גדולים, אפילו לא המרחב השלילי של דמות גיבורה לאכלס ולהופיע לפני בימת העולם. כל מה שאנחנו צריכים זה זה; שאחרים שסומכים עלינו ימותו אם לא.

      זה מה שהופך אותנו לאנושיים, וזה משהו שאנחנו חייבים להמשיך לאשר לא משנה מה המחיר.

      יכול להיות שיש עוד דבר אחד שיכול לעזור לנו ברגעים כאלה של החלטה; אם נזכור מי אנחנו, ולא איך אחרים מדמיינים אותנו.

      האם אנחנו לא הסיפורים שאנו מספרים על עצמנו, לעצמנו ולאחרים?

       היסטוריה, זיכרון, זהות; אנחנו פרוכרוניזם, היסטוריה המתבטאת בצורתנו של האופן שבו פתרנו בעיות של הסתגלות על פני מפרצי זמן עצומים, כמו קונכייה של יצור ימי פנטסטי.

      תמיד נשאר המאבק בין המסכות שאחרים עושים לנו, לבין אלה שאנחנו עושים לעצמנו. זו המהפכה הראשונה שבה כולנו חייבים להילחם; המאבק לבעלות על עצמנו.

       התחלנו להיזכר מי אנחנו, אנחנו האמריקאים, אחרי התקף הארוך של הזיוף שהטילו הבוגד טראמפ ותעמולי הרייך הרביעי שלו; קראנו כעת להפסקת אש בעזה, לאחר חצי שנה של חימוש חשאי במלחמת עזה של ישראל בהוראת רצח העם ג’ו. גם אירופה מתעוררת מחדש כאשר נאט”ו מאחד את התנגדותה לכיבוש האימפריאלי של אוקראינה ולאיום של כיבוש אירופה הרוסי. עד כה אמריקה לא עשתה דבר כדי להביא שינוי משטר לאומה מחוץ לחוק, לא השתיקה את הפצצות, לא שחררה את אוקראינה או פלסטין, ולא פתחה את המצור הישראלי של סיוע הומניטרי; אבל כל זה נשאר אפשרי, אם כולנו נעזור ככל שנוכל.

      ברגעים של ספק כמו זה קראתי שוב את המיתוס של סיזיפוס של קאמי, את הזקן והים של המינגווי, את Invictus של הנלי, I.F. משפט סוקרטס של סטון; מיתוסים, סיפורים, שירה והיסטוריה של הוד של ההתנגדות המקנה חופש.        גם כאן, ברגע המקביל לזה של ספרד ב-1936 ופולין ב-1939, עלינו לומר לעולם לא ש

February 27 2024 Biden’s 2024 Electoral Campaign, A Referendum On the Idea and Meaning of Our Universal Human Rights and the Historic Role of America as Their Guarantor and a Beacon of Hope to the World: Case of the Uncommitted Protest Vote in the Michigan Primary

    In a mass protest of electoral political action, the people of Michigan have in their Democratic Party primary issued a signal rebuke and vote of no confidence to Biden, for his sponsorship of Israeli genocide and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians and war crimes in the Gaza War in which the refugees in Rafah now await Netanyahu’s Final Solution of the Palestinians.

    This is not the first genocide authorized, orchestrated, and funded by an American President to whom no war crimes charges have been brought before the Hague; the Mayan Genocide of the 1980’s enacted by Ronald Reagan and his puppet tyrant Rios Montt is an example of the performative nature of our use of the idea of human rights.

    Nor will it be the last, unless we the people begin to hold our leaders and the systems and institutions of our nation to moral standards of action applied equally and to all human beings everywhere as declared in the founding documents of our democracy and our civilization, the parallel and interdependent sets of rights in the American Bill of Rights of citizens and the 1789 universal Rights of Man of the French Revolution.

    Until we begin to live as we have together sworn as citizens, and until our President ends the rain of death and terror in Gaza which makes us all complicit in genocide and other crimes, I must concur with the delightful and wickedly transgressive dance theatre of the Cheerleaders For Change flash mob ensembles now bringing chaos to school games and streets throughout our nation; “Hey hey, ho ho, Genocide Joe Has Got To Go.”

     Let us perform the Four Primary Duties of a Citizen; Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.

     If you commit genocide or crimes against humanity, I cannot vote for you, and I will fight you. This I say to President Biden and the Democratic Party, and also to all masters, lords, and tyrants in all lands and throughout all of time.

    To refuse to submit is to become Unconquered and victorious in seizure of power over our own liberty and autonomy. This and more has been demonstrated to us once again in the glorious protest vote of the Michigan primary; the power of our voice and witness, the change potential of solidarity, the necessity of confronting evil and resisting those who would divide, dehumanize, and enslave us.

     Because fascism and strategies of the centralization of power to a carceral state of force and control, of imperial conquest and dominion, and of the weaponization of fear in service to power which has been employed in Gaza by Israel and America are rooted in, instrumental to, and symptomatic of a far greater tidal force of history; the erosion of empathy and the degradation of our humanity which is essential to war and crimes of violence and control, and to this we have as Wagner teaches us one defining and inherent human capacity which can free us from the Ring of fear, power, and force; only love triumphs over fear, and solidarity triumphs over division. Such is the natural law beneath the surfaces of our universal human rights, and the driving force of revolutionary struggle as an inevitable principle of history.

      In the long game democracy and the universalizing solidarity of our humanity will triumph over tyranny, and in the protest vote of Michigan we can see the future toward which we are moving, regardless of the horrors which lay directly in our path.

      For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.

 Our 2024 elections; our hungry ghosts whisper from the darkness; “Set me free, and I’ll make you powerful.”

Biden wins Michigan primary but sheds support over Gaza

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/27/biden-wins-michigan-primary-election

Uncommitted’ vote in Michigan a warning shot over Biden’s support of Israel

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/28/michigan-uncommitted-vote-biden-israel-support?fbclid=IwAR03Uy4uHEu2y4ZqHOqCrp_ywT8mQ9LLt_dYe7ImpGKTeCd2hUKcZULfrb4

The longer Biden enables Netanyahu, the more his presidency is at risk

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/biden-netanyahu-israel-gaza-war-2024-election

Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside an Israeli embassy. It is our loss he is no longer with us

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/aaron-bushnell-self-immolation-gaza-israel?fbclid=IwAR32Hn0s35NiiOhP-qFf3kc88PouCPbIchd2orQhK6GQtEizS2dsPeAuSio

At least 104 people killed and hundreds injured in Gaza while waiting for food

Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, UN rights expert says

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide?fbclid=IwAR1HbMrIxgdkr9ftgzcyoh2m-Pj67tXqgwUySboa3m0f-IMRAGJXLyNqzKY

May 18 2019 Angela Saini exposes race science

Superior: the return of race science by Angela Saini, is a brilliant work of scholarship and provocation which interrogates the idea of race and calls out the malign political and historical contexts and purposes to which it has been harnessed by dubious charlatans and fanatic apologists of eugenics who use the camouflage of science to advance fascist theories of white supremacy and the master race.

     Genocide, colonialism, and slavery number among the greater evils of these purposes, which run parallel to those of the Patriarchy in the repression of women and to the dehumanization of workers as a class by plutocratic capitalists.

     These arguments and intentions by those who would enslave others to their own aggrandizement and gain are structurally and typologically similar to the extent that we may consider asymmetries of race, gender, and class as parts of a whole and very flawed system.

     To see the ideological frameworks of one leg of the tripod of tyranny parsed, codified, and described with taxonomic precision is a joy to behold and a powerful work of liberation. As half of a set which began with her earlier work Inferior: How science got women wrong- and the new research that’s rewriting the story, Angela Saini has given us empowering ideas with which to challenge and monkeywrench authority; both works counterargue and illuminate the premises of our social division into masters and slaves on the basis of claimed natural differences.  

     In the words of anthropologist Jonathan Marks, “We have two nested fallacies here. The first is that the human species comes packaged up in a small number of discrete races, each with their own different traits. Second is the idea that there are innate explanations for political and economic inequality. What you’re saying is, inequality exists, but it doesn’t represent historical injustice. These guys are trying to manipulate science to construct imaginary boundaries to social progress.”

   Why race science is on the rise again

May 18, 2019 Why race science is on the rise again

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/18/race-science-on-the-rise-angela-saini?CMP=share_btn_

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