Our Wednesday News Analysis | Colin Sheridan: A letter to all my friends who tell me to feel happy

Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Hospital where displaced people live in tents, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Pictures: AP /Abdel Kareem Hana

Writing about Palestine often feels immoral, even if the purpose of that writing is to advocate and enlighten. To profit in any way off the misery of others — whether monetarily, reputationally, or even self-righteously — seems counterintuitive to that goal.

While it is despair more than self-interest that motivates many of us, there exists a heaviness that marinates every written word. That weight is dwarfed in the context of the suffering of those you hope to help, but it’s debilitating, nonetheless.

Even to be praised for sitting at a desk and raging is problematic. The abuse sits easier, probably because there is an element of truth to it. I am not a genocide scholar, nor an academic. I am not even an Arabic speaker. I am not a survivor. I am not Palestinian or Lebanese. I live in Ireland, one of the safest, whitest countries on earth.

Screaming from this remove is a bit like a billionaire lamenting poverty. With my electric vehicle (cobalt, Congo) and my Nikes (Cambodia, child labour), I am absolutely part of the problem. Pissing off bigots while depriving myself of Starbucks and McDonalds is hardly a sacrifice. It’s a blessing...

Read more: Colin Sheridan: A letter to all my friends who tell me to feel happy

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‘WE HELD OUT UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH’: PALESTINIANS FLEEING THE NORTH ARRIVE IN GAZA CITY’S FIRST REFUGEE CAMP

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/we-held-out-until-our-last-breath-palestinians-fleeing-the-north-arrive-in-gaza-citys-first-refugee-camp/

By Tareq S. Hajjaj
Published November 7, 2024

Civilians fleeing north Gaza arrive in Gaza City and stay in newly established refugee camps. The camps are already overflowing and there aren’t any more tents.

Displaced Palestinians from northern Gaza set up tents at Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, November 5, 2024. (Photo: Hadi Daoud /APA Images)

Hundreds of families gather in Yarmouk Stadium, west of Gaza City. The large stadium’s field is now the site of the first refugee camp established in the city, “Gaza Village.”

Children, women, and men carrying their belongings as they flee the Israeli extermination campaign in north Gaza are streaming into the stadium hoping to find a tent.

The camp was established on October 28, over a year into the Gaza genocide, and currently includes 250 tents. UNRWA did not set it up, the agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, but through charitable organizations and individuals under the auspices of the Ministry of Development in the Gaza Strip.

The number of displaced people arriving from the northern Gaza Strip has exceeded the camp’s capacity, and not everyone there has a tent. Many families have been sleeping on the stadium’s stands and on the ground, waiting for more tents to arrive...

Read more: ‘We held out until our last breath’: Palestinians fleeing the north arrive in Gaza City’s first refugee camp

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WEAPONIZING JEWISH FEAR, FROM TEL AVIV TO AMSTERDAM

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/weaponizing-jewish-fear-from-tel-aviv-to-amsterdam/

Em Hilton writes in +972 November 15, 2024

Rhetoric about ‘pogroms’ and ‘Jew hunts’ aims to obscure reality by generating mass hysteria — which can then be used to advance a far-right agenda. 

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in the arrivals hall of Ben Gurion Airport, near Tel Aviv, November 8, 2024. (Jonathan Shaul/Flash90)

“Tomorrow, 86 years ago, was Kristallnacht — an attack on Jews just for being Jews, on European soil. It’s back now; we saw it yesterday on the streets of Amsterdam. There’s only one difference: in the meantime, the Jewish state has been established. We need to deal with it.”

There is a lot to unpack in this statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the unrest and violence surrounding last week’s soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax. Those events began ahead of the game with the Israeli club’s fans charging around the city tearing down Palestinian flags from apartment windows, attacking a taxi driver, and chanting “Let the IDF win and fuck the Arabs” (upon their return to Israel, they were also filmed chanting “Why is school out in Gaza? Because there are no children left there”). What followed for hours after the game finished on Thursday night was a series of attacks on Maccabi fans by locals, some of them wearing Palestinian flags and shouting pro-Palestine slogans, which left as many as 30 people wounded and five hospitalized.

Many prominent media outlets and world leaders readily adopted the narrative that the unrest was a straightforward case of antisemitic violence. Israeli President Isaac Herzog was quick to label it a “pogrom.” Geert Wilders, head of the far-right Party for Freedom, currently the largest party in the Netherlands’ House of Representatives, described it as a “Jew hunt.” The Dutch king told Herzog: “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.”

Social media was awash with the crassest parallels imaginable — including memes of Anne Frank wearing a Maccabi Tel Aviv shirt — taking the debasement of the memory of Jews’ persecution at the hands of the Nazis and their allies to new levels. How darkly ironic that these events overshadowed the actual anniversary of the Kristallnacht, at a time when the consequences of racist, state-backed violence feel so relevant.

In the wake of October 7, scholars of antisemitism, genocide, and Jewish history have warned of the ways that particularly traumatic episodes in Jewish history have been evoked to justify Israel’s onslaught on Gaza and crack down on those who criticize it. As antisemitism scholar Brendan McGeever articulated clearly, despite being brutal and disturbing, the incident in Amsterdam was no pogrom — the term for an attack on an oppressed group with the backing of the authorities. The proliferation of this term and others like it in the aftermath of the violence only served to obfuscate the reality of those events through creating mass hysteria...

Read more: Weaponizing Jewish fear, from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam