A tribute to Refaat Alareer
 

“The Democratic Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza genocide perpetrated by Israel.” Refaat Alareer’s last tweet

See if you agree.

Duncan

Duncan, what is the point of this stupid thread and your flippant "see if you agree" as if it were clickbait?

I attended his vigil in New York, in which former students, friends, or people from his neighborhood (now completely destroyed and unreturnable) held back their tears or didn't while they recited his poems. SEE IF YOU AGREE.

Not following your line of thought, Orwn, I'm afraid. By posting the link to the tribute to Refaat Alareer, I was merely wanting to share it with others who might not have seen it. Is that stupid? My remark, "See if you agree", was far from flippant.

I'm glad to hear you paid tribute to him too.

Duncan

"Why US double standards on Israel and Russia play into a dangerous game" by Patrick Wintour in the Guardian today

The question is stupid. Why would Biden be more responsible than Reagan or Clinton or the Bushes. Harry Truman. Donald Trump and his master negotiator son-in-law/slum lord. I don’t need to read the article to know a tragedy is being cheapened for superficial political points. Sounds a bit like Russian propaganda.

The war started when Hamas attacked. That only answers that one question. If it was necessary or justified or evil or whatever is not a question I’ll have decided for me by fake news stories. U.S. policy in the entire Middle East has been inept and tragic and driven by greed and political influence and other dangerous as well as well-intentioned motivations. It’s a cluster fuck. To try to pin all that on Biden and Democrats is the worse sort of click-shit that grabs fake intellectuals by their little index fingers.

And who is responsible for the Jewish genocide perpetrated by Hamas, which has repeatedly said that October 7th was just the beginning of their plans to wipe out an entire country and its population? And who is responsible for not releasing Jewish children whose parents were raped and killed before their eyes and who are now being held hostage in tunnels and being literally "branded" as prisoners by pressing their bodies up against burning hot tailpipes? Was that also Biden? I don't think so.

I'm not defending Israel's response, but it's worth noting that Israel's response is exactly what Hamas was hoping for and counting on. By viciously attacking Israel on October 7th, killing 1,200 and raping and mutilating women and children in the process, they were begging Israel to respond as it has done, so in that sense it is Hamas that is responsible for every death that has come out of the war they started. Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis, but is also responsible for having deliberately invited a response that killed the people they are pretending to defend (and which gullible people throughout the world believe they are defending).

I truly wish Israel hadn't taken the bait and responded as it did. But it was a fact that no one could have doubted that the October 7th attack would result in a massive Israeli response, leaving thousands dead, so perhaps you should take that into account when you are assigning blame.

I think this only makes sense if you ignore all of history before 2023. Israel's slow torturing of folk in the Gaza Strip has been very long indeed. Hamas, in my understanding, is the maniac, inhuman daemon of the oppressed forced to insanity.
Everywhere I look there seems to be side-taking: this group started the war: they are responsble for it, or this group did. In the video linked there is a moment where the two men attempt to discredit out of existence all allegations of rape by Hamas militants on Israeli women: not true atrocities, unlike the "true" coin of those carried out by Israel. It is always sickly fascinating to watch the ease with which some men on the "left" slip into a kind of contempt for women when they can find a reason for it. Why must we always seek to make one side more justified than the other? I guess because the alternative: a pit of slaughter where there is no "right" and no "wrong" is a hundred times darker a vision.

Refaat Alareer's brief, quotable accusation was the cri de cœur of someone who knew that his community in general, and his family specifically, were increasingly unlikely to survive.

In those desperate life-and-death circumstances, I would have lashed out at any meddler whose meddling didn't intervene in the exact way I wanted, too. And my brief, quotable accusation would be taken as ammunition by lots of people who cared more about scoring points in arguments than about my personal situation.

Refaat Alareer said lots of other things, too, but this statement is so quotable by Biden-haters that it's getting most of the attention.

There's certainly plenty of American blame to go around for the current situation in Gaza, going back at least to President George W. Bush's and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's intense pressure to hold "free and fair" Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006, open to all parties, including the terrorist organization Hamas's "Change and Reform" party.

Winner-take-all district elections are never truly "free and fair" expressions of the will of the people, because the system is so game-able—which Bush of all people should surely have known, having famously won the White House in 2000 despite having lost the popular vote. Nonetheless, Bush kept pushing his fervent belief that democracy is magic and would solve all the problems in the Middle East.

Hamas did not win a majority of the popular vote, but it won the majority of seats, taking legitimate power from the then-governing (moderate) Fatah party. Hamas then used that power to suppress and murder their Fatah opponents.

A few examples of how the winner-take-all system did not truly express the will of the Palestinian voters, from a 2006 analysis by FairVote (an American nonproft group that promotes alternatives to winner-take-all election systems, including ranked choice voting):

TL;DR: A one-line remark can launch many longer statements (such as my own), many of them having absolutely nothing to do with the intentions of the person quoted. Probably not the best way to honor the life, work, and memory of the person who said it, upon his death.

Israel is responsible for it. Do you seriously think that the Palestinians will never fight back? They should just accept it? They should have more and more of their land taken? That Hamas and Hezbollah magically appeared out of nowhere and for no reason?

Look at a map of Israel in 1948 and a map of it now. It is very clear who has wiped whom off the map.

Your framing, Roger, of the Hamas attack as genocide against Jews is exactly why the Zionist project is antisemitic. It equates violence, colonialism and apartheid as part and parcel of Judaism. For younger generations, the Holocaust (a sin of the Europeans, not the Arabs) is a thing of history and textbooks. What is very real to them, what is proliferated across social media, are images of the Star of David spraypainted on bombed out mosques and theaters, of the Israel flag fluttering over crumpled children and demolished cityscapes.

Israel has turned the Star of David into a hate symbol. This symbol grows and spreads. How is this not antisemitic?

And we don't know Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis. That's just what Israel said and Israel has lied every step of the way, including the beheaded babies and the Hamas HQ under various hospitals. And I think you have to admit that the IDF has a terrible record of friendly fire, including the recently murdered hostages. This is bound to happen when the policy is to shoot first. It is hard to imagine that the 1,200 dead on October 7 were all killed by Hamas, especially as it doesn't seem that Hamas had the literal fire power to scorch the corpses in the way they were found (the IDF, however, does). A more recent source rounds the number to fewer than 700 civilians.

You may not think Hamas's tactics are smart or useful but they are bound to happen and will continue to happen. Hamas is not the problem. You could eradicate them tomorrow and another group of people will take its place because the other option for the Palestinians is to let Israel do what it has done since its creation: take more and more land and turn the Palestinians into permanent exiles.

This thread should be locked. The topic did not need to be brought up on Eratosphere and Duncan frankly does not have the wherewithal or knowledge to direct the conversation, which was never about Alareer in the first place.

"Everything is rotten in Israel.
It is rotten to the core.
Its letters:
The "I" is not an eye;
They do not see here.
The "S" snakes into my prison.
Ra
Eel.
Yuck!
Look who is in prison now!

israel."

Someone had to talk about the elephant in the room. I've been on Eratosphere for 18 years, and every major political event has been brought up on "General Talk".

????? I'm a European, is that it?

If the assassination of a major poet isn't a good enough pretext, I don't know what is.

Duncan

If this was about Alareer, you would have talked about his poems or his Shakespeare scholarship. You could have posted one of the wonderful essays by his students about how he bridged Western and Eastern literary cultures.

Instead you post a tweet, bait us with an incendiary question, and then ask us if we agree regarding as aspect of US policy.

Start your own thread then, Orwn. I'm sure I won't ask to have it shut down.

Duncan

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I watched the Grayzone interview and found it troubling. There was little context. Not one word about the horrific actions of Hamas, et al. that precipitated the horrific response by Israel. Not one ounce of effort put into "where we go from here" discussion. No sign of knowing how political “sausage” is made nor any mention that there is blame to spread on all sides. They both struck me as amateur journalists with an ax to grind. Of course, I'm not saying that Jake Tapper is any better… I don’t know Refaat Alareer’s poetry but admire his tenacity. He is absolutely right when he says in his interview clip that the toughest thing to do is provide shelter/protection to family members (see webinar below). It just baffles me that he chose to be a pawn in the war. He could have accomplished so much more; his loss is the loss of a poet/spirit guide to healing the psyche of the region.


I attended a presentation/Q&A by Martin Fletcher, a 32 yearveteran journalist/reporter for NBC news and PBS whose area of expertise is the Middle East and specifically Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Following the presentation those interested in continuing the conversation gathered in the basement hall of the Anglican Church where he spoke (this was in San Miguel Mexico of all places) and the discussion continued on in pockets for another hour or so. When the crowd finally thinned out, there was Martin Fletcher: still talking, still giving insight into what has kept the hatred at the boiling point for so many generations, still saying that there is sober hope that a solution will be found, likely through negotiation. I hardly slept that night.

The next day as I researched a book he recommended by Irish writer/journalist Colm McCann entitled, Apeirogon (a polygon with an infinite yet countable number of sides). I came across a remarkable interchange of ideas and perspectives in a webinar hosted recently (after 10/7) by Parents Circle, Families Forum. The participants in the webinar are Colm McCann, a Palestinian father living in Gaza, and an Israeli father — both fathers have lost family members in the fighting. Most impressive is the discussion around solutions and the grassroots peaceful reconciliation movement that is gaining traction even as the bodies continue to pile up. Here it is: Voices of Apeirogon, with Colum McCann and Bereaved Fathers
It is a compelling hour that I’d urge everyone to give a watch/listen.



(The presentation by Martin Fletcher is also available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/gL_3tZuiYLE?si=BpAMBXi9XuRLrqS4



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I see no real difference between Roger Slater and Walter here. Both seem focused on only defending one side: only hating another.
I keep seeing stories of anti-semitism in the country I live in: so no, I'm not going to pretend like it is all one way violence, no matter how it seems to me like Israel is bent on committing genocide.

I believe this; and yet, when Walter attempts to deflate accusations against "Hamas" by saying only 700 were killed, then my reaction is: "Oh, well, that's alright then!" Why must we insist on the complete humanity of all involved on one side and the inhumanity of the other? Does picking sides really mean that we cannot mourn 700 Jewish deaths beside the genocide of Palestinians: even if it is "only" 700 and not over a thousand (and what does that matter actually? does that make "Hamas" more moral assassins?)

It's not that it is "only" 700, it's that we actually have no idea how many were actually killed by Hamas and not the IDF, since the source is Israel. My comments are to this point exactly.

Israel's insistence on being an ethnostate in which citizenship for non-Jews is extremely difficult if not impossible means that any attack on it will seem like an attack on Jewish people for being Jewish and not because it's an occupying power that refuses Palestinian statehood. Of course there is antisemitism, but look how muddied the waters become when this term is used to label any criticism of Israel. This is another reason why Zionism is antisemitic.

Must I really come out and say I am not in support of Hamas or that I think those killed on October 7th deserved to be mourned? This is always expected of us. But if the people mourning the killed Israelis really wanted there to be an end to bloodshed, they'd realize the Zionist project cannot continue and that so long as it continues there will be attacks on citizens. I don't think the government of Israel even cares about those citizens (it is on record that Israel has funded Hamas in the past) beyond PR optics--it's just the necessary price someone else pays so Israel can continue its settlements.

(But you are right, Cameron, that Roger and I share a view. It's just not the one you think. The view, expressed implicitly in his comments and explicitly in mine, is that Israel is utterly insane. But he thinks it's foolish of Hamas to not realize Israel would use what is sometimes called the "Samson option" in response to the attack, and I think it's foolish, actually oblivious and stupid, of Israelis to not expect such attacks so long as they deny Palestinians full rights and land.)