A Zionist Instagram account called Babylonbee posted an image today of Professor Liz Magill superimposed in front of two Hamas militants. The caption read, ‘Ousted UPenn President Lands New Gig at Hamas Institute of Technology’ with the quotation, ‘We welcome Ms. Magill as the President who will lead HIT from the river to the sea.’
Underneath, someone, within the spirit of gallows humour, had written, ‘This is definitely fake news - Israel has already destroyed all the universities in Gaza.’ ROFL. But while obviously (darkly) amusing, on a more serious note, it felt like, in effect, the microcosm of the debate.
Thinking about it over the last few days, one of the things that struck me about Israelism was when Simone Zimmerman spoke about the three talking points instilled into young Zionist zealots and parroted by their useful idiots - rockets, antisemitism, double standards - over and over ad infinitum.
Because once you’ve seen it, it becomes impossible not to. Obviously, now we can throw October 7th into the mix - but it doesn’t really explain what’s going on in the West Bank or why, as reports are coming out today, Israel used US-supplied white phosphorus in built-up areas of Lebanon, a definitive war crime.
As such, one is left in the theatre of the absurd; a case in point being Rory Stewart trying to remain balanced, conscious that he must remain non-partisan in his future role as ‘Still Desperate to be Prime Minister’ and emphasise the complications, while giving a short course on the five main reasons why the two-state solution is fraught with difficulty. In a wonderful feat of politicking, he manages to go through them all (Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel & Israel) without once condemning Israel.
Or, along similar lines, the UK, on International Human Rights Day, abstaining from a vote to stop killing thousands of children because of semantic disagreement, which seems to me, at this point, about the most British thing imaginable. It’s redolent of Sunak’s recent press release: ‘I absolutely refuse to meet the Prime Minister of Greece to discuss such trivial matters as the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war and the climate crisis, if he’s going to bang on about our Elgin Marbles one more bloody time. Who on earth does he think he is? I don’t have time for this - I’ve got a country to ruin.’
Or to quote from someone on a mutual WhatsApp group in a discussion regarding a prospective podcast about failure, ‘TBF the Tories are doing ok. They get away with loading the country with debt, making sure that they and their donors got a load of PPE contract money from the taxpayer and have managed to get a COVID-19 inquest that has no teeth that they can lie to on the record with no consequence. Then they've also managed to shift the Overton Window so much that Labour is happily agreeing to hunt down asylum seekers as they've had to go right of Thatcher to be listened to.’
I used to advocate listening to and engaging with the other side of the debate - so one could understand their viewpoint and reinforce one’s own argument or even reevaluate it. I’m starting to think that’s redundant. There is no argument, and there is no viewpoint. It’s beyond the point of indefensible. It can feel like the only ones left are the ideologues, the extremists, the ignorant and the compromised.
Indeed, here is the level of debate that one has with Zionists on Substack:
Holly MathNerd: People who think that they can’t support Israel’s right to existence and self-defence because its government has done some bad things are telling you something important: either they fail to recognise that Hamas runs Palestine as a purely psychopathic society, or they truly believe that only sinless perfection (not normal-range flawed humanity) has the right to stand up to psychopathy. In either case, what those people are really telling you is to watch your goddamn back when they’re around.
RiwaqAllah: Is anyone actually making this argument, or have you just created one which you can then ‘debunk’? Very few people that I speak to - who would be defined as Pro-Palestinian - believe that Israel WILL not exist. They are just intelligent enough to hold two thoughts in their heads simultaneously. I.e. that Israel’s right to exist shouldn’t be at the expense of Palestine’s and that international law needs to be enforced. Also - diminishing the crimes of the Israel government to ‘some bad things’, such as 56 years of illegal occupation, illegal settlements in the West Bank and a policy of divide and conquer amongst the Palestinians - with a clearly stated aim, since before inception, to control the land between ‘the river and the sea’ would seem a little insensitive…
Holly MathNerd: Fuck your desire for sensitivity towards the elected government of Palestine as well as the rapist-murderers they train, equip, and spawn. Go fuck yourself. You’re muted, as I waste no time on terrorist sympathisers.
RiwaqAllah: I don’t think I mentioned the government of Palestine (which would, in actual fact, be the secular Palestinian Authority - as recognised by the UN…)
Holly MathNerd, whose love of numbers clearly doesn’t extend to caring about 7,000 dead Palestinian children or a two-state solution, didn’t respond because she had muted RiwaqAllah. To give credit where credit is due, though, it is one of the more coherent arguments I’ve witnessed in defence of genocide - because, once you’ve established that the spawn are rapist-murderers, then happy days. Remember, there are no innocents in Gaza.
But while the likes of Shapiro & Murray seem to revel in the ‘dropping truth bombs’ online, when you actually make the effort to tell the truth, it turns out it feels completely exhausting. One starts to realise how dystopian this all feels. And if it feels this dystopian from the outside, what must those in Gaza be feeling right now and for the 56 or 75 or 100 years before? It is beyond human comprehension until you remember that they are human, too.
For that is at the crux of where we are right now. This is not a fringe issue happening to a barbarian subculture somewhere far away. This is an assault on our shared humanity. And when it finishes, which it will, what does the West look like then? At best, weak but, more realistically, complicit. Words are not enough anymore - liberal democracy is at stake. When will there be a peaceful uprising - a global intifada, as some might say?
"I used to advocate listening to and engaging with the other side of the debate - so one could understand their viewpoint and reinforce one’s own argument or even reevaluate it. I’m starting to think that’s redundant. There is no argument, and there is no viewpoint. It’s beyond the point of indefensible."
This. I can't see the "other side of the debate" anymore when it comes to genocide. You either aren't a sociopath who enjoys watching innocent civilians get murdered, or you're a sane and moral individual who wants a permanent peace. There really isn't anything to argue or re-evaluate, IMO. The sociopaths are clearly in the wrong and need to be locked up for everyone's safety. But it's the sane folks who seem to get most of the grief online as you show in your example dialogue.
Thank you for your sharing your thoughts. Let's try to keep each other sane!
The quality of your writing is outstanding, Riwaq, with its clarity and empathy. It's good luck indeed to have found your work.