BLATANT HYPOCRISY! Gaza Exposes Western Liberals For The Frauds They Are
Everything that mainstream liberals claim to oppose is on full display in Israel’s actions in Gaza. Racism. Fascism. Tyranny. Injustice. Genocide.
Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
They squirm this way and that, twisting their gaze toward empty nonsense like Barbie movie Oscar snubs and Trump’s latest instance of verbal diarrhea to avoid looking at what’s happening.
By Caitlan Johnstone
Caitlan’s Newsletter (1/24/24)
The entire western liberal worldview is currently balanced on the ability to psychologically compartmentalize away from the mass atrocities in Gaza and what western governments are doing to perpetuate them.
Everything that mainstream liberals claim to oppose is on full display in Israel’s actions in Gaza. Racism. Fascism. Tyranny. Injustice. Genocide. Yet they must necessarily avoid throwing themselves into opposing these things there at all cost, because it would mean acknowledging that their own political allegiances are inseparably interwoven with them.
The job of the so-called liberal “moderate” has never been to oppose racism, fascism, tyranny, injustice or genocide, their job is to perpetually give the thumbs-up to one head of the two-headed monster that is the murderous western empire.
It would mean turning against Biden during an election year. It would mean admitting that their entire political posture against Trump all these years has been a phony performance, because they’re tacitly endorsing all the things they claimed to hate about him. It would mean admitting their entire worldview is a lie, and that all their critics to their left have been correct.
Exhausting nonstop mental gymnastics
The western liberal is therefore in the year 2024 engaged in an exhausting regimen of nonstop mental gymnastics to avoid having an authentic relationship with the reality of what’s happening Gaza. They squirm this way and that, twisting their gaze toward empty nonsense like Barbie movie Oscar snubs and Trump’s latest instance of verbal diarrhea to avoid looking at what’s happening. On those odd occasions when they are forced to confront the reality of Gaza they start spouting gibberish about how “complicated” and “heartbreaking” it is and how they hope there can be peace as soon as possible, while frenetically avoiding saying precisely how that “peace” should be brought about.
Gaza exposes the mainstream western liberal ideology for the kayfabe performance it always has been. The job of the so-called liberal “moderate” has never been to oppose racism, fascism, tyranny, injustice or genocide, their job is to perpetually give the thumbs-up to one head of the two-headed monster that is the murderous western empire. Their job is to help put a positive spin on a globe-spanning power structure that is fueled by human blood. To help elect Bidens and Starmers and Trudeaus and Albaneses who will ensure that the gears of the empire keep on turning completely unhindered while paying lip service to human rights and social justice.
The one faint glimmer of brightness in this profoundly dark chapter in human history is that it might start opening some eyes to the fraudulence of the mainstream fake-left political faction that has been marketed to the western public as an alternative to far right depravity. That westerners might start awakening to the reality that everything they’ve been trained to believe about politics, their government and their world is a lie. Such an awakening would be the first step toward a mass-scale movement into health.
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COURAGE IN A TIME OF COWARDICE: I Refuse To Endorse Zionism, So I Am Resigning From My Leadership Position
FREEDOM OF SPEECH? Not When It Comes to the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Nicole Morse speaks on behalf of Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida at a march organized by the South Florida Coalition for Palestine on Nov. 11, in South Beach, Florida. (Photo by Glory Jones)
By Nicole Erin Morse
Truthout (1/25/24)
Today, I submitted my resignation as director of the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Although it might at first appear that this choice was driven by the ever-intensifying political attacks against gender studies in Florida, these attacks are precisely why I would have wanted to remain as director. As a genderqueer scholar, I have been deeply committed to defending the center and advocating for the value of our research and teaching. However, I am also an anti-Zionist Jewish scholar, and since October 7, I have experienced unrelenting pressure from the university to disavow my religious practice, my religious community and my ethical commitments.
Although there were many eyewitnesses, including six police officers, I faced stonewalling from the police department when I attempted to report the students’ rape threats, transphobic slurs and shouts of “zonah” (prostitute).
On January 16, FAU administrators made it explicitly clear to me that to be a leader at the university, I must support Israel. I have chosen to resign from the directorship in order to speak out about what I have experienced, and to add my experience to the hundreds of stories of academics and cultural workers who are being targeted in order to silence criticism of the state of Israel amid its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
One of Many Anti-Zionist Jews
Growing up as a third-generation American Jew, I learned about the Shoah and I was taught that Jews have responded to our experience of genocide by understanding that resisting oppression is an ethical and a religious imperative. Although I also grew up immersed in hasbara (Israeli state propaganda), my parents’ values and my commitment to justice led me to the conviction that an ethnonationalist state built on ethnic cleansing, occupation/siege and apartheid is fundamentally contrary to Judaism’s values of tzedek (justice) and shalom (peace).
This is a perspective that is shared by many Jews, whether religious or secular. In fact, until World War II, anti-Zionism was quite common among world Jewry. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the International Jewish Labor Bund rejected Zionism in favor of internationalism, diasporism and socialist solidarity. In response to the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the only Jewish member of the British Parliament, Edwin Montagu, described the declaration’s Zionist position as antisemitic.
In the 21st century, anti-Zionist Jews include everyone from ultra-orthodox groups like Satmar Hasidim and Neturei Karta, to Jews organizing for social justice with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), to my home synagogue, Tzedek Chicago. For many Jews worldwide, anti-Zionism is a principled political commitment and an important part of our religious identity and religious practice.
Prejudice and Repression in the Academy
FAU, however, has deep ties to the state of Israel and any hint of anti-Zionism is swiftly silenced. These dynamics are longstanding and predate October 7. In September 2023, I was pressured by FAU administration not to serve as the faculty adviser for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) because, like myself, some members of the group are committed to the democratic principle of “one person, one vote” in Israel/Palestine. During one meeting, I was told by a horrified administrator that democracy in the region “would mean an Arab majority.” The implication was that racialized people are dangerous, untrustworthy and incapable of participating in civic life, which is a longstanding colonialist trope.
Harassment and threats
After October 7, the situation at FAU rapidly became untenable for many Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students, as they faced racist harassment, eliminationist rhetoric, death threats and rape threats — all while receiving no institutional support. They were characterized by FAU leadership as violent, even implicitly as antisemitic. Some of these dynamics are chronicled in a University Press story about the repression of pro-Palestinian voices at FAU.
Simultaneously, as I participated in Jewish efforts advocating for a ceasefire (including my synagogue’s weekly Jewish Fast for Gaza and peaceful protests organized by South Florida JVP), I found myself similarly targeted and smeared as “antisemitic,” despite being an observant Jew. …
When Yemen Does It It's Terrorism, When The US Does It It's "The Rules-Based Order"
What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people.
By Caitlan Johnstone
Caitlan’s Newsletter / Substack (1/18/24)
The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.
The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism.” Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.
We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise. Our world can never know health as long as these monsters remain in charge.
One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in. One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.
In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people, “history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.” DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.
So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that’s still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide. …
