Yossi Schwartz ISL the RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Israel, 27.11.2023
Hadash -The Stalinist front, and Socialist struggle the Israeli section of the ISA, are proving themselves as loyal opposition to Israel’s war on Hamas to prove to the Israeli ruling class that they are loyal to the Zionist apartheid state. The following is a translation from Hebrew.
Hadash from two articles
A from an article reporting the position of the Zionist Doctors for Human rights:
“The Physicians’ Association for Human Rights (RLA) published this morning (Sunday) a position paper on gender violence and sexual violence as a weapon of war during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. The RLA stated, “In the position paper, we tried to gather the reports and testimonies heard so far. It is based on the reports of the survivors of the attack, who testified that they noticed sexual abuse in their surroundings, on the testimonies of members of the aid and security forces, and on visual testimonies that were distributed on the Internet”
“Last October 7, Hamas launched an indiscriminate murderous attack, and in recent weeks, the Israel Defense Forces have begun to gather pieces of information about the events of that Black Sabbath. “We are trying to assemble from them as complete a picture as possible of the events, and above all – to understand the totality of the harm to the victims. As a human rights organization, whose guiding compass is the preservation of the right to health of everyone who lives between the river and the sea, our professional and moral duty is to investigate, analyze and look honestly at every injury and violation of this right. The position paper we are publishing now seeks to turn the spotlight on the gender and sexual violence perpetrated in that attack. Before our eyes stand first and foremost the injured and the injured, the testimonies and the witnesses, their pain and their physical and mental needs on their long road to recovery”, it was reported.
At the same time, the research is partial, in the absence of a systematic analysis of forensic evidence, which has the power to point to sexual abuse. This, due to the condition of some of the victims’ bodies and due to the need to quickly evacuate the scenes, sometimes under fire. Barla points out the importance of preparing the health system for proper, professional and sensitive treatment of women and men who have experienced gender and sexual abuse or been exposed to it. They also demand the release of the abductees and the abductees, any of them who have gone through or witnessed sexual violence need immediate medical and psychological treatment and this is being denied to them”. [1]
In real world Hadash that does not attack the position of the Zionist doctors for human rights, it supports it and the claim that Hamas raped Jewish women in spite of the fact that there is no forensic evidence like pictures to this alleged rape and what they have is hearsay.
The second article is an attack on those who see Israel as a brutal occupier and settle colonialism.
“On anti-colonialism and ‘the betrayal of the global intellectual left’ – as they define it in Israel November 26, 2023
Anti-colonialism and Martin Scorsese: so much has already been written about the “betrayal of the global intellectual left” in Israel, and even here in Germany the storm was bigger than the thing itself. Still, I will try to jump into this cauldron that has cooled. It is true, even in the academy there are idiots, wicked and heartless – and they did write a lot of outrageous letters. But in my opinion, a superficial infatuation with anti-colonial theories is less and less a problem of intellectuals, and more of a Tik Tok problem.
It has long been clear to broad parts of the academy that anti-colonialism has been ridiculed, trampled and turned into a dogmatic and dangerous meta-narrative, that is, a framework through which anything can be explained – provided that it is distorted enough. As the degenerates on TikTok prove, careless and blatant anti-colonialism is blind and destructive, just like the white theories it opposes. But none of this is new – for quite some years now the most interesting parts of the academy, at least in my opinion, have been moving towards a much more subtle and reciprocal perception of relations between center and periphery and between oppressors and oppressed, in recognition of two-way dependence and the fact that there are no simple divisions into good and bad. While understanding that the conquered can also be cruel and make mistakes, that the conquerors also behave well sometimes, and that everyone has responsibility for themselves. In fact, the entire discipline I study in – global history – is built on exactly this. Here, one must not assume in advance that the Europeans are shit. Instead, one should be frustrated with concrete power relations in time and space, while dismantling the “self-evident” national/racial/religious categories.
This understanding also permeates the world of cinema. Director Scorsese’s new film, “Killers of the Moon Flower” (not yet released in Israel due to the war – but no spoilers), follows a Native American (“Indian”) tribe that became insanely rich after they discovered oil under their reservation. Thus, the simplistic division into “strong and weak” dissolves at the very beginning of the film, and instead – complex relationships between different types of power are presented. The whites have developed technology, and the law and the police are on their side. But on the other hand the native tribe has much more money, so all the natives in the film also have luxury cars and white servants. The Osage tribe was oppressed and exploited by the whites, but like any conquered group – it was an active and significant partner in shaping the conditions of its oppression. For example, he did not keep his religion, and became a Christian (sort of) – but he did keep his language, when the whites who lived on the reservation next to him had to learn the native language.
This is a true story. We can also cite examples from books, say from Zaidi Smith, whose amazing novel, “On Beauty”, traces a shocking rivalry between a white left-wing intellectual and a conservative, right-wing, Christian – and black – professor. Both the film and the book also have a central and complex gender aspect, which further complicates matters. In the field of thought there is Laila Gandhi, and in history there are people like Sven Beckert and Sebastian Konrad, and they all prove again, and again, and again how the all-too-clear division into the strong and the weak is itself a colonial lie. I wish someone would translate them into Hebrew already.
Perhaps completely theoretical faculties (philosophy or literature) lag behind more empirical faculties (history or political science) in this matter, and perhaps this is also a defense mechanism, and it is only important to me to justify my study program, which I stick to while my country is bleeding.
But in my opinion, the “global intellectual left” has not fallen in love with anti-colonialism now. If anything, he has been gradually moving away from it for a long time. Instead of blind admiration and careless application of Franz Fanon, the transition from anti-colonialism to post-colonialism and the global turn that followed gave birth to more subtle, humane concepts. Analyzes in which it is quite clear that in the general balance of forces Israel is much more powerful than Hamas – but that Hamas has committed diabolical atrocities. Analyzes in which it is clear that the occupation is bad and that the conduct of the IDF in Gaza is brutal, even before the war. But it is equally clear to them that no occupation in the world justifies what happened in the horrific massacre or the holding of hostages. It is possible to both support Palestinian independence and oppose Hamas – from a precise, sensitive perspective. I think that significant parts of the “global intellectual left” understand this – and that even before the war it was clear that they were the most interesting parts of culture and academia” [2]
Thus, according to Hadash Israel and Hamas have very complicated relations when both are good and bad and not that Israel is committing genocide.
Socialist struggle is competing with Hadash who will condemn and vilified Hamas as an evil rather than national liberation organization:
“The Israeli attack on the Palestinians in Gaza, which is supposedly aimed at “eliminating Hamas” or “collapsing the rule of Hamas”, is accompanied by a criminally cynical exploitation of the abominable massacre led by the reactionary forces of Hamas. The surprise attack by Hamas was carried out under the false pretext of a “resistance” operation. Admittedly, the documents from the organized breaching of the siege fence at Mokadim Row allowed Hamas to present the entire attack in a different light for the Palestinian public opinion, as an act of partisan resistance against a power that controls the siege of the population, and the enormous destruction and bereavement created by the Israeli attack even strengthened such an impression among many for the time being. However, the heart of the attack was the planned massacre in which nearly a thousand civilians from working class and middle-class communities in Israel perished, including babies and children – most of them Jews, but also Palestinian Arabs and migrant workers – on the bloodiest day ever for the Israeli population.
The Marxist left is careful in the use of political terms in an effort to accurately refer to historical political phenomena as they develop. We take and unreservedly take part in an active struggle to stop the historical bloodbath in Gaza. With each passing day, as the invasion and bombings in the Strip continue, the scale of the catastrophe intensifies. Officials at the UN called for stopping the spiraling of the crisis into genocide (11.16). The Netanyahu government, which leads the ever-expanding bloodbath in the Gaza Strip, admittedly, has not now adopted a project whose political purpose is to “solve” the national issue directly through mass murder for the systematic physical destruction of a nation or large parts of it – and such an idea in itself does not at this stage have a mass support base In Israeli society, despite the wave of nationalist reaction. However, the same government continues to kill and destroy the most basic living conditions of the residents of Gaza, despite all the minimal “humanitarian” measures. The widespread and unprecedented extreme harm to the population in Gaza is part of a work plan that knowingly perpetuates a mass genocide of historic proportions. In this sense, similar to the barbarism of many imperialist wars throughout history against oppressed nations, the attack on Gaza also blatantly carries genocidal elements, which are getting stronger” [3]
Thus, Israel according to them does not commit genocide by killing 16,000 Palestinians 40% children and 30% women. To them, bombing hospitals, schools, ambulances is only some elements of genocide.
They are not even familiar with what is genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Article II defines what is genocide
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Elements of the crime
The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide” [4]
So much for their precise definition of genocide that fits the Zionist interests.
Endnotes:
[1] https://hadash.org.il/%d7%a8%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%90%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%9c%d7%96%d7%9b%d7%95%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%90%d7%93%d7%9d-%d7%99%d7%a9-%d7%9c%d7%97%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%a8-%d7%90%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9e%d7%95%d7%aa/
[2] https://hadash.org.il/%d7%a2%d7%9c-%d7%90%d7%a0%d7%98%d7%99-%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%96%d7%9d-%d7%95%d7%91%d7%92%d7%99%d7%93%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%a9%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%9c-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%99%d7%a0/
[3] https://socialism.org.il/maavak/2023/11/%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%97-%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%A8-%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99
[4] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml