Recognize Hamas
Today's symbolic actions make no difference, but there are symbolic actions that could.
Meaningless gestures
Israel’s most genocidal Western supporters are planning to “recognize” a “Palestinian state”. France, Britain, maybe even Canada if the Palestinian state meets the Canadian Prime Minister’s novel criterion (the Canadian PM said he thinks there needs to be a “Zionist Palestinian State”).
This “Palestinian State” will be run by the “Palestinian Authority” and will derive its authority not from its arms or the electoral legitimacy of its people, but from an agreement with Israel signed in Oslo in 1993 under American auspices, one that binds the Palestinian Authority but not Israel. For this agreement, the Palestinian Authority imprisons, tortures, and kills Palestinians, while the Israelis enthusiastically break every obligation and provision that is supposed to compel their side.
Meanwhile, some United Nations committee, following some group of something called “genocide scholars”, has decided two years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later, that Israel is, indeed, committing genocide in Gaza.
Genocidal politicians like Bernie Sanders followed - they too, discovered that there’s a genocide in Gaza.
Do not find hope in these gestures.
That’s not because they are symbolic. The US / Israel and Western allies are more dependent on propaganda than any other tool. Symbolism is extremely important to them. If they were deprived of their symbols, they would have a far harder time committing this genocide.
But these gestures do not do that. These gestures are meaningless.
The Heated Exchange
What is a sort of symbolic gesture that would have an effect on the genocide?
There’s a clue to be found in the viral video of a Chinese academic confronting an Israeli official. The Chinese academic states a figure (probably one tenth of the actual death toll) of 70,000 killed, and says that Israel lost legitimacy when they killed so many women and children. The Israeli official says that is not factual. Prof. Xuetong rejoins that Israel does not get to determine what is factual and what isn’t.
Prof. Xuetong gets right to the heart of Israel’s symbolic power: it is to determine what is factual and what isn’t.
But the truth is that even Prof. Xuetong accepts much, far too much, of Israel’s “facts”.
Through its disciplined spokesman, Israel tells the professor that “the terror organisation Hamas is still holding our hostages”.
Prof. Xuetong replies: “Your military people should [have shot] the terrorists. Not the children! Not the women! When [you] shot the women and the children, you lost the legitimacy to carry out any actions [for] that reason.”
You agree they’re genociding. Why do you still believe them?
But if it’s the case that Israel is committing genocide, why is the “international community” that decides the facts accepting Israel’s claim that Palestine is full of terrorists that are to be killed?
Why is the “international community” accepting Israel’s claim that Hamas is a terrorist organization at all?
Why is the “international community” accepting Israel’s lies about what happened on October 7, 2023?
It’s been two years. Official bodies now accept that Israel’s committing genocide. Now how about some skepticism about the claims Israel made to justify that genocide?
Reject both Israeli facts and Israeli logic
The international community to which Prof. Xuetong refers has some serious rethinking to do. It is not solely the acceptance of Israeli facts, but the acceptance of Israeli logic that must stop.
If the international community accepts that terrorists are simply to be eliminated, there is a lot more genocide in our future. What is the definition of terrorism? Israelis and their followers would say, “a terrorist is whoever we say it is”, but to try to apply any non-racist logic, the only viable definition of terrorism is something like the “killing of noncombatants for political objectives”. Israeli logic is that everyone involved in the entire chain is a terrorist: those who fire the weapons, those who make the weapons, those who transport them, those who manufacture them, those who finance them, and those who justify their use. And furthermore, Israelis state that eliminating terrorists is so important that it’s acceptable to kill 2-10 others per terrorist if they are “human shields”. This is the declared, accepted doctrine (Israeli practice, which includes rape, torture, and infrastructure destruction, is much worse) which Israeli lawyers defend in public and under which they are committing this genocide.
Imagine if the “international community” applied this logic about eliminating terrorists consistently. The Israelis are, after all, killing people all over the world, and especially Palestinians, for political objectives - terrorism. There are hundreds of thousands of people in their army, navy and air force firing these weapons. Between Israel, Europe, the US and beyond, there are millions of people involved in the production and distribution of these weapons and in the ideological and media terrorist apparatus of rationalization and justification.
If the “international community” wishes to apply Israel’s logic about terrorism, it has three choices:
Accept racism. Accept that the US / Israel has a right to label terrorists, commit genocide, and the rest of the world can just hope not to be on the list.
Commit a counter-genocide. Start drawing up their own list of millions of people in the US, Israel, and Europe, who, by way of their participation in the production, distribution, and justification of bombing and famine in Gaza, meet the Israeli definition of terrorists, to be eliminated.
The third choice is to discard this logic altogether, get out of the genocidal Israeli mentality, and focus on what will stop genocide, not proliferate it.
Symbolic gestures
Symbolic gestures should attack Israel’s symbolic powers:
Israel’s lies about October 7th.
Israel’s ability to label the Palestinian people - and the people of the whole world, increasingly - as “terrorists” or “human shields”, who Israel has the right to kill.
Israel’s ability to label anyone resisting them as illegitimate, as outside of politics, and as people who Israel is allowed to kill. Yesterday it was the PLO. Today it’s Hamas. Symbolic demons, symbolic targets when the real target is the entire Palestinian people and especially their children.
If the Israelis succeed in their genocide and “wipe out Amalek”, tomorrow there will be a new Amalek - and the Israelis will be there to extract the world’s condemnations of Amalek one way or another. Israel conjures up enemies to continue its supremacist and colonialist aims.
A Meaningful Gesture: Recognize Hamas
Imagine if the “international community”, instead of “you should have killed the terrorists and spared the children,” were to say “We don’t give a damn if you call them terrorists, you have no right to kill anybody anywhere.”
Imagine if the “international community” were to say, “we have investigated your claims and we don’t believe your lies about October 7th.”
Imagine if the “international community” were to say, “the military actions taken by Palestinian armed organizations against the Israeli army are legitimate, but the genocidal actions taken by Israel, including mass Hannibal actions killing hundreds of Israelis on October 7, are not. We recognize the Palestinian resistance, but Israel has lost its right to be recognized.”
Imagine if the “international community” were to say, “none of the things Israel has said about them can disqualify the Palestinian resistance, but Israel’s genocidal actions and statements have disqualified Israel.”
Imagine if the “international community” were to say, “after your long record of atrocities, the only sensible conclusion is not that the future Palestinian state must be disarmed, but that Israel must be disarmed.”
Imagine if the “international community,” instead of making a fantastical distinction between “offensive” weapons and “defensive” weapons, were to say, “with no sign of a halt to the genocide on the horizon, we are going to work towards ensuring parity of weapons between the Palestinians and the Israelis, so there is meaningful deterrence from genocide now and in the future.”
Yes, today’s symbolic gestures are meaningless. But symbolic gestures are not inherently meaningless.
If the “international community” wants to take meaningful, purely symbolic action, the thing to do isn’t to recognize a disarmed, Zionist, Palestinian statelet. It isn’t to attend to Israel’s chosen collaborators. It’s to begin negotiating the future of the region directly with the people that Israel wants to kill. It’s to recognize that resistance to genocide is legitimate by recognizing the people resisting. It’s to say, yes, people resisting now will indeed have a say in the future of Palestine, while the people committing genocide now will not.
It’s to recognize Hamas.
Thank for this piece. Yes, the G’cide regime should have no say in the governance of Palestinians. The governance of Palestinians should be left to freedom fighters and the people of Palestine, Palestinians will decide who they want to lead them. Oppressors should NEVER be trusted to rule the oppressed.
This is a very powerful argument, which I think deserves to be discussed and debated in a wide range of forums. The Electronic Intifada livestream, and such podcasts as Dialogue Works (Nima), Glenn Diesen, India & Global Left, The Grayzone, Danny Haiphong and Rania Khalek come to mind. At the very least, I hope this essay is shared far and wide.