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Nov 16, 2023, 06:24AM

Disappearing Palestine

An interview with Hugh Lanning.

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Photo of Chris Stone and Hugh Lanning by Jonathan Elliott.

I conducted the following interview on November 7th in Canterbury, UK with Hugh Lanning, the Labour Parliamentary candidate for the Canterbury constituency in 2015. Prior to that he was the Deputy Secretary General of the Public and Commercial Services Union. In 2009 he was elected the chairman of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK. In 2017 he was the first British national to be refused entry into Israel after the Knesset passed Amendment No. 28 to the Entry Into Israel Law. He was interrogated for eight hours before being put on a flight back to the UK.

Hugh Lanning: I’m struck that a lot of people haven’t even got the basic history in their minds, particularly the UK role. I often use the disappearing Palestine map, just telling the story. Before the second world war, in the late-1930s, the Palestinians owned over 90 percent of the land of historic Palestine, the land “from the river to the sea.” Israel now has well over 90 percent of that land, and it took it by military control.

There was a process whereby they tried to legitimize it. Having kicked three-quarters of the population out, around 700,000, they did a census in 1948 whereby Palestinians—not Israelis—had to be in their residence, and if they weren’t in and didn’t go through the process they weren’t eligible to be an Israeli citizen or claim that as their place of residence. Only tens of thousands of Palestinians were able to comply. This was after the Nakba, when they’d just driven everyone out to the West Bank and Gaza. But then they passed a law saying that the Palestinians who’d been expelled weren’t allowed to go back. It would be a criminal offense. They’d be refugees. Then they passed a law saying if you weren’t a resident, in your place of residence for so many years, you didn’t want your land, we’ll take it. They’re still using those laws now to claim the land: you’ve been an absentee. We’re blocking you from returning.

It’s settler colonialism. The difference between settler colonialism and colonialism is, in settler colonialism you want to take the land and eliminate the people from it, physically remove them, so you take possession of the land—live on it, own it, farm it—whereas in colonialism you want to control the people. The Oslo Accords gave the Palestinians just over 20 percent of historic Palestine, and that’s now been settled by between 700,000 and a million illegal settlers. People ask, “How’s the war come about?” It’s just because the indigenous people have been driven off their land, and it’s been occupied, not by another people locally, but by people coming from around the world, mainly Eastern Europe and the States. People think there’s a “Palestine” that’s at war and lobbing bombs into Israel, but Israel has never recognized Palestine, and has never said what its own borders should be, whereas the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) did recognize Israel as part of the Oslo agreement.

The second thing that people don’t recognize is the occupation. After the Six-Day War, in 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. That’s a military occupation. I think it’s a problem here, probably in the States too: unless you go back to the Vikings or the French, or unless you’re indigenous in the States, we don’t understand what an occupation is. We’ve no conception about what it means to be imprisoned in your own country. So one of the transformations for me, going there, is that you see it. The wall is eight meters high. It surrounds Bethlehem. When you go there, when you see it, you know this is wrong. You go to the refugees camps that have been there since ‘48 or ‘67, you see the wall. I remember phoning my Mum from Bethlehem. It was Orthodox Christmas Eve. My Mum was a Catholic. I said, “Hello I’m in Bethlehem and it’s Christmas Eve.” But I was just trying to explain what life’s like, that Holy Land tourists are bussed in by Israelis and taken to see the manger and then bussed out again, but that Bethlehem is surrounded by the wall.

People don’t conceive what life is like under occupation. There was a young woman who came to a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference. She lives in Nabi Salih. She was saying you lie awake at night waiting for the sirens. Then you know there’s going to be a raid, and you’ll get dragged out. You try to go to school and you go through checkpoints. She wasn’t saying it as a drama. She said this is normal daily life. It takes three-and-a half-hours to get to school, you get rubbish thrown over you by the settlers.

I made a mistake. I was in Gaza, sitting next door to an old guy, having lunch. We’re all on benches sitting outside. He’d been really polite. He asked about my family, where they were and did I have children, and I said, naively, how about your family? And he told me: they’re all dead. And he went through the list: they died then, and they died there. It’s like the war now. We have no understanding of what life’s like for Palestinians. Where the fighting took place on the seventh, they had been Palestinian villages and towns. Half the population in Gaza are refugees, from that area, from Southern Israel.

I was chatting to the Palestinian ambassador about the reaction after the seventh, and his first observation is, there’s never anything about context. Israel never acknowledges that there was ever anything before. It can’t possibly be as a consequence of what they’ve been doing to the Palestinians for whatever period you want to count.

I think it’s worth saying that since Netanyahu came to power there’s been a huge increase in Israeli violence: in East Jerusalem, in Al Aqsa, as well as multiple attacks on Gaza. The general position of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is: you don’t favor breaches in international law by anyone. Israel should’ve complied with international law. They should end the occupation. They should end the siege of Gaza. They should stop the illegal settlements. They should allow refugees to return. You can’t say you want international law to apply for Israel and then say that it doesn’t apply for Palestinians. This isn’t self-defense. This is Israel using their overwhelming military power to get revenge. Hamas has breached international law, but this isn’t about that now. Israeli war objectives are not a two-state solution, or any solution: their objectives are the physical and political elimination of Palestine.

When the Labour Party and others are saying, “We support self-defense,” actually what we’re supporting are the tactics and the war methods that Israel is using: to carpet bomb Gaza, to kill, now, over 10,000 people. People describe Gaza as all Hamas, but that’s like saying that England’s all Labour or Tory. In Gaza there are people who are fighters, but not that all two million people are Hamas. Fatah exists. There’s Christians, there’s non-aligned: a wide range of people.

We’ve given the green light, with no limits. We’re saying, “There’s nothing you can’t do.” So Israel projects all the images and the life stories of the 1300 people who were killed on October 7th, in detail: but it’s no better to be killed by a bomb. Whole families have been wiped out. Pregnant women. Children. Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestine National Initiative lives and works in the West Bank. He stood as an independent candidate. He’s a doctor and visits Gaza. There’s a story he tells where he’d been working with a couple who’d been having IVF treatment and they’d just had four children. The wife and the four children were all killed, in one hit. That’s happening all the time.

There’s a dehumanisation that’s taken place with the Palestinians. For Israel, all Palestinians are Arabs, all Arabs are Muslims, all Muslims are terrorists, and now they’re animals. In fact, Palestine’s first constitution was a secular one. Bethlehem used to be a majority of Christians. There’s a still a significant Christian community. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, recently made a statement condemning the Hamas attacks and affirming Israel’s right to self-defence. The Palestinian Christians’ response to that is to point out that they’ve been being killed for years and the Church has never said anything about that.

There’s this attempt by Israel to frame the narrative as a religious war, but it has nothing to do with religion. There were Jews living in Palestine in reasonable numbers before WWII. It’s the settlements that’ve caused the anger. As for the accusations of anti-Semitism, this isn’t accidental. After (Operation) Cast Lead, they lost the global media war, and acknowledged they lost it. They were portrayed as the oppressors. So they had a strategy. They commissioned a political think tank (the Reut Group) asking, how do we counter this? And since then they’ve tried to delegitimize their opponents. That has involved using anti-Semitism and accusations that people support terror.

When I was detained and interviewed by the Israeli security (in 2017) one of the questions was: “Who have you seen? Who are you going to see, who are you planning to see?” I went through all these trade unions and NGOs, Palestinian Authority people: all the people I worked with.

“Not them. The others.”

“What do you mean by ‘the others’?”

“Hamas.”

I said, “I’m not planning to see Hamas. We’re visiting the West Bank.”

“But you are a friend of Hamas.” And they brought out these photos of me standing in Gaza at a reception, with Hamas people there. It was a huge delegation, standing on the same platform.

They said, “Look, there’s the guy who is one of the leaders of Hamas at the moment.”

I said, “I’ve stood on the same platform as Margaret Thatcher and other people I don’t agree with.”

It was a civic reception. But they had what they described as evidence: “Here you are look, this is a photo of you.”

So they’ve had this strategy. They trawled through every PSC branch, all the people who were prominent figures, to find something they could use. They produced a dossier. Attack scenario, which is what they did on Jeremy (Corbyn). They set up a strategy department responsible for this, challenging the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement (BDS). This is all in the public domain. It isn’t conspiracy theory. It is their public strategy.

The second element was to demonize the Palestinians. And the third component was mobilizing the Jewish communities around the world. They said, “We’ve got supporters of Israel in all these countries, we need to be using them to follow this agenda.” Groups like the Board of Deputies (of British Jews), Labour Friends of Israel, Jewish Labour Movement, all of those: they put money in and supported them, whether that’s directly from Israel, or from the embassy, or whether it’s people with money. Corbyn was a huge opportunity for them to push that agenda, which they did, and it coincided with where the right-wing of the Labour Party were, where the establishment was, and all those forces came together.

Equally, Israel is terrified about being labeled as an apartheid regime, because they saw what happened to South Africa and the boycott campaigns around that. They’re committing the crime of apartheid. B’Tselem did one of the major reports, as did Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. All three described Israel as operating an apartheid policy. Their regime controls the whole of that area, “from the river to the sea.” It’s a regime they operate, in the whole of that territory and wherever you live, if you’re a Palestinian, the laws are different for you. The laws, education, money, water, food. People say it’s really complicated, and I say it’s not, it’s simple. There’s an oppressor and there’s an oppressed. There’s an occupied. There’s an occupier. Israel is the occupier, and if it wants peace it has to end the occupation.

I think it’s a false debate, the argument that goes on between one-state and two-state solutions. The current state is a no-state solution. The current position is: there’s no Palestinian state. There’s an Israeli regime. Until there’s a shift in the balance of power between Israel and Palestine, there can be no solution. It’s not the Palestinian negotiating demands that are the problem. It’s not whether they're going in asking for a one-state or a two-state solution, it’s the fact that if they ever get to a negotiating table, there’s Israel, there’s the US, there’s the EU, everybody ranged against them. They're not going to get any solution out of that unless BDS, world opinion, other forces make Israel negotiate to a fair solution.

More and more Palestinians are saying that any solution has to be based upon equality and human rights. In whatever state-formation there is, every person living in that area has to have the same status and the same human rights, the same equality. However you parcel it up into whatever nation state formulations you have—if it’s a federation, a confederation, one state, two state—within all of that it’s up to the Palestinians to decide what the precise formulation is. It’s not for us to say we know better.

There can’t be a solution without the decolonization of Palestinian land, and them being given back the land. If they’re corralled into the little bit of the West Bank, with all the settlements, a tiny bit of East Jerusalem, whatever’s left of Gaza, that’s no basis for a state. Most of them have had most of their land taken away. You see quotes of up to a million settlers in the West Bank. 700,000 is the minimum. Settlements aren’t “settlements.” These are towns and cities. They’ve got their own roads, water systems, electricity. They aren’t little houses on the prairie. So those need to be got rid of, taken over. There has to be an acceptance by Israel that they are there illegitimately. They have to give back the Palestinians their land: at least what’s been seized since 1967. And then: if you know how much land it’s going to be, you can start talking about what shape and form and type of state there’s going to be. Then there’s the refugees, the ones in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

In terms of a solution: the only possible good thing that can come out of what’s going on is that it’s now back on to the agenda, that there has to be a search for a solution. A ceasefire isn’t just about ending the atrocity. A pause is no good because they’re just going to carry on. If there’s going to be something that flows on from that, I think that land and occupation, which are linked, are critical. And the shift of power, it means that “the world,” global western governments, have to put their weight behind a Palestinian state or a solution, whereas all their weight at the moment is behind Israel. If military arms and aid were stopped Israel would run out of money and bombs. Israel is portrayed as an economic miracle, but essentially it’s been funded by the West, mainly in the form of arms, by the American taxpayer. Europe has put in a lot too. Crudely speaking, Europe has funded the occupation and America has funded the army.

There’s one other point. People don’t understand Britain’s historic role. With the Balfour Declaration we gave away what wasn’t ours, largely for anti-Semitic reasons. We didn’t want Jews coming to the UK so we supported them and allowed to have their own homeland. People don’t know that we ran Palestine, the British Mandate, from 1918 through to 1948. We were the military power. And you still see it. In Nablus there’s an old post box, and a lot of the dispossessed people, they’ve got imprimaturs from the Mandate to say they own a house or a piece of land. It was the British who walked away in 1948. We had the forces there, we could’ve stopped the Nakba. We armed the Zionist terrorists and let them get on with it. And we’ve supported Israel ever since. Why is the UK, London, promoting Israel? Because it’s our fault. We did it. But if you ask people questions—how long has Israel been around, what involvement have the British had, is there an occupation going on—a lot of people don’t know. It’s very simple. We gave away land that wasn’t ours, and the Israelis took it from the people it belonged to. They’ve made it so that the indigenous people are strangers in their own land, outlaws in their own country.

You can read the latest by Hugh Lanning here.

Discussion
  • This ís the first "interview" I've seen in which no questions appear..

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  • My favorite line is: you don’t favor breeches in international law.

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  • Because Hamas would never break international law.

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  • I thought you two were never going to read one of my pieces again? Anyway, glad you're back. I've missed our exchanges.

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  • Beck: It says that Hamas breached international law. No one is denying that. The question is, have Israel? According to many, it has.

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  • Glad you enjoyed my typo Ken. It will be corrected.

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  • I said I wasn't going to fact-check anymore, but this was just a copyediting job.

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  • Writing rule # 2: "There's always another typo."

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  • I probably would have read the so-called interview if it actually had questions in it, as interviews do.

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  • Oh well. But you read enough to see that the questions were missing. That's 'cos I edited them out, but they're still there by implication.

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  • Happy for you to fact-check me as I said before Ken.

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  • Okay, will weigh in now and then.

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  • Thanks. I appreciate that. It will help me to focus my attention.

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  • The wall was built in response to the Palestinian terrorism of the Second Intifada. Palestinians are never going to be allowed to move into Israel. Every attempt by Palestinians to use violence to attempt that leads them into further disaster. Every essay like this that you write encourages them to think otherwise. It is you who are the cause of Palestinians dying in futility.

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  • Since you edited out the questions, which makes no sense, this is not an interview by any definition of an interview. It's an essay by the "interviewee" that you've affixed your name to.

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  • I'm sorry you think that Beck. It was cleared with our editor. It was actually the most amount of work I've ever done for one of these articles. Transcribing and editing took over a week. I'd be more interested in hearing your opinions of the substance of the piece, however, rather than the form. Your criticism seems a little petty to me given the seriousness of the material.

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  • You sure reply fast here, unlike the question from the guy who asked you to name the hospitals you were referring to.

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  • >>There’s this attempt by Israel to frame the narrative as a religious war, but it has nothing to do with religion. There were Jews living in Palestine in reasonable numbers before WWII. It’s the settlements that’ve caused the anger. << Allow me to add some historical context. Here's a scene from 1929 (includes graphic descriptions): >> Some fifty Jews, men, and women, had taken refuge outside the ghetto in the Anglo-Palestine Bank, which was managed by one of their own, the son of Rabbi Slonim. They were huddled in one room. The Arabs, the soldiers of the grand mufti, soon sniffed them out. It was Saturday, August 24, nine in the morning. After blowing open the door of the bank… But here’s the story in a nutshell: They cut off hands, they cut off fingers, they held heads over a stove, they gouged out eyes. A rabbi stood immobile, commending the souls of his Jews to God – they scalped him. They made off with his brains. On Mrs. Sokolov’s lap, one after the other, they sat six students from the yeshiva and, with her still alive, slit their throats. They mutilated the men. They shoved thirteen-year-old girls, mothers, and grandmothers into the blood and raped them in unison. << https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-hebron-massacre-of-1929 Here' a meeting that took place in 1941: >> The Grand Mufti began by thanking the Fuhrer for the great honor he had bestowed by receiving him. He wished to seize the opportunity to convey to the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich, admired by the entire Arab world, his thanks of the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially the Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches. The Arab countries were firmly convinced that Germany would win the war and that the Arab cause would then prosper. The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews and the Communists. << https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-official-record-what-the-mufti-said-to-hitler/

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  • Ah, so, in the face of a current near-genocide, with tens of thousands of men, women and children being slaughtered by Israeli high-tech weaponry, being paid for by your tax-dollars, you want us to start trading historical atrocity stories do you Ken? I'm disappointed in you. If you want stories of historical violence, maybe you should look up the Deir Yassin massacre: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/9/the-deir-yassin-massacre-why-it-still-matters-75-years-later Or maybe not. Maybe we should concentrate on the current violence, which is to do with land and occupation, as Hugh Lanning says. As he also points out, it's not just Mulsims who are being targetted, but Christians and the non-religious too. And children. Lots and lots of children, which is why your own American youth are so incensed by what's going on. Try this as an example: https://twitter.com/inovajon/status/1725191919947461047

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  • As for your point Beck, I have a policy of only answering my fellow Splice Today writers. I'm not going to engage with every hasbara agent who decides to thrust his well-practised opinions onto my feed. If I did I'd be here for the next ten years wasting my time listening to Israeli propaganda. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-art-of-deception-how-israel-uses-hasbara-to-whitewash-its-crimes-46775

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  • I'm surprised at your reply, Christopher. What is the point of giving (or having Lanning give) the statement about Jews living in Palestine "in reasonable numbers" before WWII long before "the settlements .. caused the anger," if you're only going to dismiss a discussion of it as irrelevant?

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  • I'm not responsible for everything that Hugh Lanning said, and I'm not pretending to be a student of history. Obviously there was tension in Palestine when refugees from Nazi Germany started flooding in in the 30s, but I also believe there's been a Jewish population in Palestine for many centuries who lived in peace with their neighbours, both Christian and Muslim.

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  • You might be interested in this: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=906239053873535 Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, flying the Palestinian flag.

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  • A British-American Jew explaining why it's important that Jews and Muslims come together to reject the orthodoxy that pits them against each other: https://www.facebook.com/reel/7319874751358989

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  • If you want to do a fact check Ken, try this: https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/the-empire-never-ended All my own words and written in direct response to your comments on my earlier piece.

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  • I've now read that in full, which I hadn't done earlier. I"m not clear what points specifically respond to comments I made, though I take your word for it that was a motivation. I don't see why you imply the crowd in Australia didn't chant "Gas the Jews," given the Auatralian government statement https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/sydney-government-apologizes-for-pro-palestine-protest-that-had-gas-the-jews-chants/amp/ . I think if the Roman Empire's relevance to Israel or Jews is something you're trying to make an argument from, the history of Masada, Hadrian etc should've come up.

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  • In other words, you won't name the hospitals.

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  • Yes it was broadly motivated by comments you had made in the previous piece. It's not about the Roman Empire's relevance to Jews, although that is a fascinating subject, rather it's a comparison (or meant to be) of Roaman Empire tactics and US Empire tactics, showing how war becomes an economic process in both cases. You only have to watch the "Gas the Jews" video to see it's fake. You never see people's mouths moving, and there are obvious jump cuts where the chanting continues despite the fact the scene has changed. I'm sure there are antisemites in amongst the pro-Palestinian crowds, but I'm also pretty certain the bulk of people, who are not, would not only not join in with such a chant, but they would stop it if they heard it. Every march I've been on has been friendly and welcoming to Jews, who attand in significant numbers. Indeed, in the US, some of the protests (ie Grand Central) have been led by Jews.

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  • Beck: Al Shifa has been specifically targeted, as I'm sure you know. Other hospitals have been significantly damaged, as this report from the BBC tells you: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67401064

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  • To both of you. I'm happy to accept that I make mistakes sometimes, that I might pick up on false reporting, or use a suspect link. That happens. But the general thrust of the material is clear to me. We are witnessing a crime of historic proportions in Gaza, and while politicians and governments may be paid off advocates for allowing the genocide, it is up to us, the people to speak out, which I will continue to do. I will also continue to welcome your input. As I said earlier, it helps to keep me focussed.

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  • No problem. While we're here, I'd like to add that the "disappearing Palestine" maps are highly contested, eg https://www.catholicsforisrael.com/articles/israel-today/188-israel-palestine-when-the-map-lies

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  • Yes I know. Everything is contested, but without having a degree in history, sometimes you have to take a simpler approach. There is a broad truth, about the loss of Palestinian land, which is incontestable. Meanwhile, here is the story I wrote specifically to answer you: https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/fascism-by-any-other-name

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  • Wonder why Al Shifa would have so much ordnance on the premises. Maybe it's not just a hospital, as is well known, so that needs to be factored into the analysis. But you don't do that in your polemics. I recall you writing that the BBC has disgraced itself with its biased Israel-Palestine reporting, even though its reporting is far from pro-Israel, yet you cite them here when its convenient for you. Either BBC is reliable or it isn't - make a choice.

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  • BTW, just looking at your link, there is much to contest in there too. Like this line: "This map is ridiculous, not only because the term "Palestinian" in 1946 referred, generally speaking, to the Jews who lived in Palestine, not the Arabs, but because there was no Palestine in 1946 (nor was there an Israel.) There was only the British Mandate. Jews lived throughout the territory then occupied by the British, including on land that today constitutes the West Bank." The full name of the British Mandate was The Mandate for Palestine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine Historic maps of the era refer to the country as "Palestine". There are numerous photos taken at the time, which are labelled "Palestine". It's a Zionist trick, which the Catholics have obviously fallen for, to pretend that Palestine didn't exist. It indubitably did.

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  • Here is a map of Palestine dated 1947: https://www.palestinianhistorytapestry.org/map-showing-palestinian-villages/

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  • Beck, I think the BBC might have changed its tune somewhat, as there have been reports of BBC staff crying in the toilets over its coverage, as reported here: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45466 As for the ordinance found in Al Shifa, I suspect, like a lot of what Israel ttells us, it was fake. The weapons were brought in by the troops. I read a piece somewhere by someone expert in the use of MRI who said that it would be impossible to hide guns behind an MRI scanner as an MRI scanner is bascially "a great big fucking magnet." Meanwhile the BBC says that the guns they were shown were different thatn the ones that the IDF showed on its video tour. There were two kalashnikovs instead of one, which shows that they had been interfered with. Also, the IDF wre claiming that Al Shifa was a command center, something which they are yet to prove. We are awaiting independent verification for all of this. Just because one of the belligerents says something, doesn't mean we have to believe them. Same goes for Hamas, of course.

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  • Christopher, I mentioned recently the relevance of Hadrian. He named the whole area Syria Palaestina circa CE 135 after putting down the Jewish revolt, and priobably drew on older Greek names in so doing. The Arabs of course arrived with the Muslim conquests in the 6th century onward. Palestine is an old name, that became the name of an Ottoman sub-province, but was not particularly associated with the Arab inhabitants until the 20th century. Jews and Arabs alike during the British Mandate had passports saying Palestine Mandate.

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  • I should say 7th century onward, re Muslim conquests.

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  • Ken, it's always been my view that not all the inhabitants of historic Palestine left after the Jewish revolt, that some of the inhabitants remained and are the ancestors of at least some of the Palestinians. Not only Jews lived in the area at the time.The Philistines lived there, plus there were Greek cities, and of course the Samaritans. The Samaritans are still there, just about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans. I believe that DNA tests have shown that many Palestinians are indigenous to the land (I would have to check up on this). What is certainly true is that many of the people driven out in the Nakba could show that their families has been there for many centuries. Palestine was always multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural, wheras Israel is a state only for Jews. In this it is an ethno-supremicist state: tantamount to fascism.Here is a wonderful speech by the Palistinian ambassador to the UN, which I recommend: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1502238743962254

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  • Beck: an example of Israeli fakery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTcEL1BQ2qc

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  • Israel has various policies I disagree with. But it also has Arab citizens, including ones who serve in the Knesset and others who fly for the Israeli Air Force, among other roles. BTW I agree that not everyone who speaks Arabic in the area is exclusively descended from invaders post 7th century.

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  • Please read the B'Tselem document that shows how Israel is an aparthied state. Arab citizens of Israel are part of the patchwork fabric that makes up the Israeli attitude to Palestinians as a whole: https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid

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  • MRI machine is a magnet, as explained here by a doctor: https://twitter.com/AqHammad/status/1725297926895710324

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  • BBC: https://twitter.com/sarphireee/status/1725554993246171189

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  • Israel killed some of its own at the music festival: https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1726179537950539875

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  • Christopher, I have just read the B"Tselem document and was already familiar with the argument that Israel is an apartheid state. I think it is significant that that topic is debated in Israel, as other countries in the region overwhelmingly lack similar debates about their forms of government, treatment of minorities etc. In any case I agree that the current situation of the Palestinians is unacceptable. For a perspective on how that situation arose over decades, Christopher, I ask that you read this article in Commentary (the paywall can be circumvented with an incognito window): https://www.commentary.org/articles/sol-stern/century-of-palestinian-jew-hatred/

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  • I will read it, thanks. I have a new piece in the pipeline which I'll be concentrating on once it is published.

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  • So now Israel participated in the rape and slaughter of its own citizens at the music festival? No, that's what's known as friendly fire, and it's really shameless of you to make such a response worded in that manner. I don't know what you'll stop at. Probably nothing.

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  • As for Al Shifa, the hospital is a Hamas facility, making it one of the war crimes you're very concerned with.Eyewitness testimony, cited in a 2015 report by Amnesty International (no friend of Israel) states specifically that Hamas used the hospital for torture, interrogation, and detention.

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  • Beck, I said "Killed" not "slaughter". Slaughter is your word. What I was pointing out was that some of the bodies Israel displayed to show the barbarity of Hamas, burnt beyond recognition, were actually killed by Israeli fire. That's what's shocking. As for Al-Shifa, I'm awaiting independent verification as so far we only have Israel's word for it.

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  • You'll have to give me the link for the Amnesty International reoprt.

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  • Indonesian hospital now being targeted: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/nov/20/israeli-forces-gaza-indonesian-hospital-video-report

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  • Ken, just looking at that link I'm already suspicious. Opening para: "Too bad the secretary general didn’t identify the party to the conflict that is doctrinally opposed (through its founding charter) to any statehood at all for the Jewish people." That's true of Hamas's original charter but it is disengenuous of him not to mention the fact that its 2017 revised Charter does allow for a compromise, saying that it is willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full. Also, the tone is polemical. It's an opinion piece, not a piece of history. Will continue to read and get back to you.

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  • I'm noticing that there's no mention of the Nakba. Is he saying it didn't happen? This is a very selective reading of history which amounts to propaganda.

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  • "The occupation of Gaza was ended unilaterally by Israel 18 years ago." Not true. As the B'Tselem (and other) reports make clear, Israel controls Gaza, it's water, its electricity, its borders, its imports and exports. It is part of the complex of arrangements whereby Palestinians are subjected to apartheid, a crime under international law.

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  • Ah so the Nakba is reduced to "the Palestinian Nakba narrative" and weaponized "into a declaration of permanent war against the Jewish state". He should try reading Ilan Pappe and some of the other new historians about whether the Nakba was only a narrative or not. Pappe says that the Palestinian narrative is substantially true, while the Israeli narrative (which Sol Stern is repeating here) is a myth.

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  • His interpretation of Arafat's statement is also polemical. He was not ending the Oslo accords by invoking the Nakba. The PLO accepted Israel's right to exist, whereas Israel has never accepted Palestine's right to exist, and has never defined its own borders. When Netanyahu went before the UN recently he showed a map of Israel "from the river to the sea" that did not include Palestine, which shows his intentions.

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  • So, all in all, to summarise: a piece of polemical journalism, not serious history. Here's something that might interest you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8M0mYzD8ZY Miko Peled, Israeli ex Zionist from a promenent Zionist family, on how he became converted to the Palestinian cause.

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  • It's amazing that someone can't believe that Hamas, which kidnaps babies, proudly broadcasts a highlight reel of its atrocities, and openly admits it uses its citizens as human shields, would not locate a command center under a hospital. The huge surprise would be if Hamas did NOT use a hospital in such a way, but the tunnels underneath the hospital suggest how the hospital is being used. Being a Hamas defender seems to either twist people's minds in knots or render them as naive as a child. What's also amazing is that someone would think that IF the IDF did accidentally kill some of its own - I'm still waiting for "independent verification" - that it somehow mitigates the barbarity committed by Hamas at the music festival. Talk about grasping for straws! Wonder if there's any other info out there that also mitigates the barbarity of the kidnappings of old women and children, the rapes, the spitting on dead bodies being paraded in the streets of Gaza, the mutilations, etc. Re: the spitting, I'm referring to the German woman who the writer told us was alive and well, which she certainly wasn't at the time. I certainly hope the author has seen that highlight reel of the atrocities, because he's lost any right to weigh on on the moral aspects of this conflict if he hasn't. I'm guessing he hasn't seen it, even though it's his duty to do so.

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  • The Amnesty International report is at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestinians-tortured-summarily-killed-by-hamas-forces-during-2014-conflict/ One can now see videos and maps of Hamas' tunnels there, as I noted at https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/facts-maps-and-worlds#comment_28345

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  • For a detailed discussion of how the Grayzone cobbled together selected portions of news pieces to create a misleading impression of IDF-caused casualties on Oct 7, please see https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-27/ty-article-opinion/.premium/exposing-max-blumenthals-deceptive-claim-israel-is-responsible-for-most-october-7-victims/0000018c-102f-d65f-a7dd-f0ff7b550000

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