Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
On this day in particular, I would like to express my deepest sympathies for the victims of Israeli murderousness over the past year.
On this day in particular, I would like to mourn the thousands upon thousands of children who have been killed by western-supplied bullets and bombs in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the last twelve months.
On this day in particular I would like to express my sincerest condolences to the Palestinian parents who have had to bury their children, or pieces of their children, or bags of shapeless carnage they’ve been told were their children — if those parents are still alive themselves.
On this day in particular I would like to lift up my heart to the people who are being ethnically cleansed from northern Gaza right at this very moment, and the people in southern Lebanon who are being subjected to daily Israeli massacres.
I wish I could bring myself to express sympathy for other groups on this particular day, like the Israelis who were killed in the Hamas attack one year ago. But I think there’s been enough of that. I really do.
Sympathy for Israel has been used over this past year to manufacture consent for the slaughter of mountains of human beings in advancement of land grabs and military agendas that were planned long before the seventh of October 2023. The sympathy which Israel received after the Hamas attack was immediately weaponized in advancement of those agendas, and has been weaponized every single day since.
When someone is using a weapon to hurt people, a good person will take their weapon away, and won’t give them any more weapons. This is true of actual, physical weapons like the ones the western empire has been pouring into the Israeli war machine, and it is true of the weaponized sympathy that Israel apologists have been using to justify its genocidal atrocities.
Expressing sympathy for Israel on this particular day would be like expressing sympathy for a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy who is poisoning her children in order to garner sympathy and attention from her community. That sympathy — which would normally be a very healthy response to the deaths and trauma of others — is in this case the actual problem.
And even if this were not the case, Israel has received more than enough sympathy already. It is an extensively documented fact that the western press have been vastly more sympathetic toward the Israeli victims of the Hamas attack than they have been to Israel’s victims in Gaza, despite the victims of Israeli atrocities being orders of magnitude greater in number. This discrepancy in sympathy is so extensive that it can only be called journalistic malpractice, which is only made possible by the fact that Arabs are not recognized as fully human under the rules of the western empire.
So on this day in particular I will be expressing sympathy for the populations upon whom Israel has inflicted many, many times more death and trauma than it received one year ago — and for those populations only.
The Hamas attack was a response from a desperate colonized people against a tyrannical occupying oppressor, and many of the Israelis who were killed on that day are known to have been killed by the Israeli military and its barbaric “Hannibal directive” of murdering its own people to prevent their being taken hostage. Not another word of sympathy needs to be expressed toward Israel for this, here or anywhere else.
So on this day in particular I do not express sympathy toward Israel — in fact, I condemn it.
I condemn Israel’s bombing of hospitals. I condemn Israel’s assassination of journalists. I condemn Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian buildings known to be packed full of children. I condemn Israel’s deliberate killing of humanitarian aid workers. I condemn Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war and extermination. I condemn Israel’s systematic rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners. I condemn Israel’s practice of murdering children and other noncombatants with snipers. I condemn Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territories.
I condemn Israel for bombing an orphanage in Gaza City last week. I condemn Israel for killing five year-old Hind Rajab and her family, and killing medical workers who tried to come to her rescue. I condemn Israel for knowingly targeting a World Kitchen convoy and killing seven aid workers. I condemn Israel for assassinating Refaat Alareer. I condemn Israel for bulldozing a dead man into the dirt like a piece of garbage, unknown and unaccounted for, like God knows how many others. I condemn Israel for the birth of the acronym WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) in Gaza’s medical facilities. I condemn Israel for making me learn what the insides of a dead child look like, and reminding me every motherfucking day for the last year. I condemn Israel for all the tortured, thirsty, lonely, drawn-out deaths of all the countless people buried alive under the rubble of Gaza.
On this day in particular I stand in solidarity with the victims of Israeli atrocities, which are being facilitated by the globe-spanning western empire under which I live. I extend my deepest sympathy to those victims, and my sincerest apologies for failing to do more to stop this nightmare.
_______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Possibly of interest (as I'm on Yanis V.'s email list):
Brian Eno’s & Yanis Varoufakis’ Open Letter to the Judges of the ICC, on the anniversary of 7th October: Act now or International Law withers forever.
7th October 2024
Dear Judges of the International Criminal Court,
When we heard in January that the Court on which you sit had decided to hear the case concerning the situation in Israel-Palestine, we were encouraged. Humanity needs an International Criminal Court that upholds the rule of law and is prepared to investigate the most serious allegations of violations of international law.
Today, on 7 October 2024, exactly one year after the start of the latest and most brutal phase of the seventy-six-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we feel the need to address you directly. Not only because of the increasing cruelty of what is happening west of the Jordan River, but also because of the dangerous precedent that would be set if a state could operate so far outside the international consensus of acceptable behaviour in times of conflict. Unless such violations are sanctioned by a court such as yours, states will carry out war crimes with greater impunity in the future.
For it is now beyond dispute: Israel’s Government has set out to eliminate systematically every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza. We have already seen:
1. The most intensive bombing of a densely populated urban area in living memory
2. The most deliberate starvation of a population since the Second World War
3. The systematic destruction of health facilities
4. An unprecedented number of journalists and UN personnel killed.
The Israeli government has attacked schools, universities, libraries, archives, cultural centres, heritage sites, mosques and churches. Professors and teachers have been killed, along with their students and often their entire families. Meanwhile, under the cover of the Gaza conflict, Israeli settlers, protected by IDF soldiers, are evicting Palestinians from their ancestral homeland in direct violation of every principle of international law.
These are not merely violations by a government. The international community has no reason to expect that a change of government will bring the Israeli state back into the fold of international law. On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice ruled as unlawful Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Five days later, the Israeli Knesset voted 65-9 to ignore the ICJ ruling and provocatively described the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as part of “the Land of Israel”. To prove further its contempt for international law and the institutions humanity created after the Second World War to support it, last Wednesday Israel’s government banned UN Secretary General Guterres from entering the country.
So here is the question: When can we expect indictments from your Court?
Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the bleakest chapter of a tragedy that our generation will be answerable for to future generations. Today humanity needs more than ever a court like yours, where impartial legal minds from around the world can reach consensus on standards of legal conduct in war and its aftermath. Your role is vital, and we implore you to act immediately.
Thank you
Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis
If you want to endorse our letter (anonymously also, if that’s your preference), please click here. http://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=26ca2d85f62b708684549ba7137bf4a51741680168b14a1f4d9d5f4ac54db71f&blog_id=132216091&post_id=25486&user_id=15757768&subs_id=6639698&signature=b05800f5b2171b174539c68af9391a58&email_name=new-post&user_email=freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com&encoded_url=aHR0cHM6Ly9pLmRpZW0yNS5vcmcvZW4vYW5zd2Vycy9uZXc/Zm9ybV9pZD03MzE
For a pdf copy of this letter, click here. http://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=ded4f3acc82bb728f869bd40a3557f70d6328103b9febd422f52232c6e17cf09&blog_id=132216091&post_id=25486&user_id=15757768&subs_id=6639698&signature=c9f329df664a49d90a44a78a6ae2567c&email_name=new-post&user_email=freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com&encoded_url=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cueWFuaXN2YXJvdWZha2lzLmV1L3dwLWNvbnRlbnQvdXBsb2Fkcy8yMDI0LzEwL0Vuby1WYXJvdWZha2lzLWxldHRlci10by10aGUtanVkZ2VzLW9mLXRoZS1JbnRlcm5hdGlvbmFsLUNyaW1pbmFsLUNvdXJ0LnBkZg=
For Brian Eno's post, click here. (link did not work, sorry)
Many thousands of us who protest and protest over this last year clearly are doing what we can do to let the Palestinians know we care and love every single one of them.
Israel with their barbarity should NOT exist.
This is Oct 7th 2024. Not medieval times.