It’s something simultaneously very difficult and very easy to respond to. We feel crippled by unending complexity and our own intellectual humility. Or we feel called to respond decisively, at the risk of picking up narratives like placards handed out at street rally; written with other’s words, agendas and narratives.
This week I offer 66 questions, a series of reflections and a Culture Lab dialogue I participated in on the Voicecraft network exemplifying how to approach such a difficult conversation.
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As with most issues, I find a is a breadth of avenues for respond and a dearth of spaces for dialogue.
Response gives us a release of the tension and allows us to process some of the fragments of war pouring in to our awareness.
But how do we know when it is responsible to respond ?
When is it more responsible to be confused? When is it responsible to wait and reflect? When is it responsible to not respond at all?
One way of approaching this is to recognise that our response is deeply connected with our respons-ability.
How response-able are we to the matter at hand. How much connective tissue do we have?
In Mexico where I spent the last 6 months the streets of Oaxaca are covered with graffiti against Israel much of which is extremely vitriolic “Israel asesino” “Palestina Libre” “From the river to the sea Israel must disappear”. As far as I know Oaxaca has very few Muslims, Palestinians, Jews or Israelis. Most likely nobody here has ever visited the terrain in question, or had any lived experience with the worldviews involved. Mexico does not suffer significant Islamic Jihadism, it played little part in the war on Nazi Germany and doesn’t have a big history with Jews. So then, to what extent are the young graffitists of Oaxaca response-able to this conflict?
Are they seeing the conflict’s true complexity or is it merely appearing as a symbol that fits their existing narratives of ‘resistance’ ‘anti-oppression’ and so on.
The reality of (the) psyche is that we’re all actually doing this. Each person, each situation and event has a symbolic significance particular to us. Someone who’s suffered a particular injustice, perhaps a school or family bully, will have that trauma exapted into the ‘bully’ they perceive in a global situation. As I’ve often thought, we experience global conflicts through our own personal psycho-dramas. If someone is obsessively posting about a distant issue, you can usually expect find some personal trauma or experience of injustice driving the response.
So when we look at this conflict how much connective tissue do we personally have? how many layers of understanding are we holding?
How much have we sat with the paradoxes and inconsistencies?
How many times have we let our conclusions form, die and reform in the face of unending complexity?
If our answer to the above questions is “very little” then I’m afraid we’re likely to become morally charged and unthinking pawns to other’s agendas.
Furthermore, our highly charged but limited narrative about the conflict may be destroying nuances and perpetuating falsehoods that actually impede the possibility of dialogue.
Unhelpful or pernicious cliches can become obstacles to a greater collective understanding of what is at play.
To respond poorly impedes the possibility of understanding and addressing conflict. In this sense, a poor response is worse than not responding at all.
What is my respons-ability?
I studied Islamism and Jihadism for 5 years and undertook a Masters in Terrorism, Security & Society at King’s College London. I spent significant time trying to understand how Islamism, Jihadism and widespread Muslim opinion were and weren’t related. I came of age at the height of the Islamic State’s Caliphate in a London borough and university from which many left to join that project. I believed the ideological conflict of “Islam & the West” was deeply important and that I needed to go on a deep journey to begin to grasp it.
My best friend in the United States was an Israeli born jew. His parents welcomed me to their home many times with incredible hospitality and friendship. In my company I came to understand the virtues of Israeli and jewish character. I saw also how some over-simplified Israeli attitudes toward Jihadism could lack nuance and distinction. However, I also respected that what for me (often) intellectual was for them a lived experience.
I spent several weeks in Israel in 2018 visiting the wonderful metropolitan city of Tel Aviv and meeting the young people there. I smoked pot with young musicians all of whom had served in the military. I met met my friend’s orthodox family members with more ‘settler religious attitudes’. I met aunts who were liberal Bibi critics and uncles who were more pro-Bibi. We stayed with my friends grandmother who had been expelled from her home in Iraq in 1948 and spent her first years in Israel in a corrugated Iron shelter in the desert. A desert which had by all observable measures become green as soon as one passed from the West Bank to Israeli territory. Again, this is my context not a claim on expertise.
I spent the following 5 years practicing Dialogos, the practice of creating an alive and emergent fields of wisdom through dialogue. I’ve learned an enormous amount about collective trauma healing. I’ve come to faith through plant medicine. During my last journey with that medicine I saw how the conflict was part of my psyche with momentary visions of myself waking up in a bed with a young arab jihadi over me ready to kill me and imagining myself a child in rubble. I believe we are ultimately connected to what is happening in some unitive reality.
Despite many waves of significant engagement with the conflict I’ve chosen for the last 7 months to publish nothing. To observe the conflict and to observe how it is moving in me, noticing my own patterns in relation to the conflict. Trying to understand where the external reality and internal reality are mixing.
The most powerful thing about waiting and withholding conclusion is affording a space for my perspective to shift and integrate more
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Below I offer a 66 questions unpacking areas of tension and question. Being incomplete maps, in some areas I’ve offered responses, in others open questions.
Elite Campus protests: Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?
I came of age watching the strange alliance of left progressivism and Islamic political activism on campuses. Two group’s who’s values hold enormous conflicts who have been consistently allied. There is plentiful evidence that Islamic palestinian culture is a hostile environment for homosexuals. If you want to be a openly gay and live in Palestine you leave go to Tel aviv in Israel where there is a welcoming and thriving underground community. Today the most vocal and determined advocates of pride, tolerance and sexual liberation are more aligned with palestine than with Israel.
I believe what we’re seeing in this alliance is the ‘enemy of my enemy’ principle. Both progressivism and Islamism see western civilisation as corrupt, colonial, and in need of overturning.
However, is the enemy of my enemy my friend? In values, the progressive and Islamists are about as alignedas the Soviet Union and the United States in their war on Nazi Germany.
Digging Deeper:
Progressivism and intersectionalism are to some degree and outgrowth of old left anticolonialism. One of the primary lenses of this worldview was to distinguishes and categorise a world of colonisers and anti-colonisers, oppressors and victims. Generally the West was seen as imperialist and colonialist while the Soviet Union was seen as an anti-colonial ally.
Because muslims are a minority (in the west) and palestinian arabs are a minority (strictly comparing west bank-gaza and Israel) they are a minority and victim who should be supported in their struggle and resistance.
However, being an oppressed minority or anti-colonial has zero bearing on your ethics. Anti-colonial resistance can justify just about anything. The ideology of Hamas is fundamentally intolerant. It is true that pre-modern Islam had some place and legal status for minorities, in this century Islamist-Jihadist cultures tend to land somewhere between intolerance, persecution and outright genocide. Christians, kurds, leftists, human rights activists, gender rights activists all face suppression under Islamism. Not to mention the standing of other Islamic minorities from shi’ite to ahmadiyya. Hamas governance from what I can tell occupies some position between government, cartel (see how they recently robbed the banks of Gaza) and terror organisation. To add to all of the above, Hamas are violently intolerant to other competitors for power within their own society.
Because of the above, it’s clear that the alliance between progressivism and Islamism is not clear-sighted.
The misapprehension, in my experience, is not equal or symetric. When Islamists align with progressives they know deeply that they oppose their values and that this is a purely pragmatic choice. On the other hand, progressives don’t tend to really see Islamists. They project in an ironically colonial fashion their own anti-colonial ideology onto the Islamists; interpreting them largely through their own worldview. Confronting difference is deeply challenging and necesitates a real journey beyond their own worldview, their ontology (state of being) and their own presuppositions.
What is ‘From the River to the Sea’?
It’s a highly contested and highly catchy protest chant. Duh.
For generations, activists have picked up this slogan around the Western world. The ambiguity of it’s meaning is important to the confusion around this conflict. It’s popularity has set of alarm belles for many. It’s literal meaning would be ‘from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediteranean) Sea’. This part is uncontested. The implication being a free Palestine from the Jordan river to the sea.
However, for some this means a Palestine extending across all these lands. Eg. Israel would no longer exist because Palestine extends and predominates across the whole of the land.
For the progressive hearted this may seem an extreme interpretion. However, it must be taken in the context of long history of calls for the annihilation and removal of the state from historically Islamic lands. This is a call that has never fully gone away. Israel’s enemies in the region would definitely like to see her disappear from the map. There is also undoubtedly a form of hatred, expressed in Oct 7th ethnic cleansing, that really doesn’t distinguish between its desire to annihilate jews or zionists. Having faced the multi-front wars of 1948 and 1967. Having seen how following Oct 7th the world turned so quickly against Israel it is reasonable for them to oppose any popular chants that hold an ambiguity about genocidal intent.
Do I think most people adopting the chant hold that intent? No. Most of them think it means ‘no israeli presence in West bank and Gaza’. But the chant holds the ambiguity of ‘no israeli occupation’ and ‘destroy Israel’. Radicals in the Islamist movements thrive in a ‘hide and seek’ circumstance in which they can hold a radical hatred for Israel while being able to surf and benefit from the larger global progressive conscience.
One step toward’s greater clarity would be to have more conversation about what this means. Our universities ought to be the kind of institutions that could host that kind of conversation but they have trended in the opposite direction. The people most likely chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ are also likely to obstruct a dialogue occurring about the meaning of ‘from the river to the sea’.
Islamist-Jihadism, Zionism: The Religious Mind
Can we put ourselves into the Religious Mind of the Other?
Consider how difficult it is for a progressive or a conservative to inhabit one another’s worldview today. To really understand the other’s landscape of priorities. For many in the U.S it has become easier to imagine civil war than a healing of divisions and common unity across these perspectives.
This culture war is metaphorically religious. The war in Israel and Palestine is actually religious. You have groups of people for whom God, religion, sacred lands and ritual mean means a great deal. How can we in the west as people for whom God, religion, sacred lands and ritual mean nothing actually meaningfully understand and inhabit the worldview and priorities of the other (both Muslims and orthodox jews).
Can we hold the Zionist Vision and Islamist Vision with equal depth and reality?
Zionism has become for many enemy number 1. Capitalism, colonialism and racism are all readily hated but Zionism is seen to tie them all together in one particular group of people.
This morning on Instagram I saw a UK music producer visiting Auschwitz. He is muslim and sometimes posts on Palestine. While there to honour genocide he took a photo of a nazi qoute that ‘the jewish people must be exterminated’. He crossed out the the word ‘jewish’ and replaced it with ‘Zionist’. I found this rather jarring. The language of annihilation almost always betrays genocidal intent when applied to groups of people. Note, the call is to annihilate zionists not the ideology of zionism.
Today, there is another vision competing for supremacism in the Middle East. It’s a worldview that Israel’s opponent Hamas exhibits more than most. It has a far greater global impact than zionism and inspired jiahdists from 120+ countries to join a caliphate called ISIS. It’s a vision with profound idealism, fervour and capacity for violence. It seeks the reestablishment of a caliphate over all historically Islamic territories and in many cases an expansion of Islam to conquer western territories.
It seems that broadly classical liberals and conservatives see Islamism a lot more readily. Whereas intersectional progressives and leftists see zionism with super-salience. What would it mean to see both?
Are zionism and Islamist—Jihadism equally dangerous or unethical?
The Zionist movement, however unappealing and oppressive is one confined to very limited territorial goals. Zionist militants waged insurgency against the British, Zionist terrorists have attacked and massacred civilians in Palestinian territory, Zionist settlers have violated the rights of Palestinians. However, the scope of the zionist threat remains incredibly limited in relation to that of Islamist-Jihadism.
The Jihadist vision holds the potential to inspire violence around the entire world which we cannot track, predict or prevent. There has been **a global Jihadist insurgency for the last decades which has seen numerous massacres across western states of civilians, cartoonists, children priests and so on. The intimidation effect of Islamist—Jihadism has already curtailed our freedom significantly in the West and cast a shadow on our democratic process. Western state support for Zionism could undermine our standing or integrity but does it lead to the unravelling of the West itself?
Politicians who oppose Israel face a loss of financial or media support from more influential pro-Israeli networks.
Politicians who oppose Islamist-Jihadism face a young man with a knife or a bomb in their constituency office.
There is and has been a global Islamist-Jihadist insurgency. There is not a global zionist insurgency.
Why does Zionism seem more evil than other ideologies with far more expansive and horrific track records including Communism and Islamist-Jihadism?
How does the extreme repugnance of Zionism relate and not relate to historical anti-semitism?
Religious Lands
If Palestine were free and peaceful would anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli sentiment around the world diminish or continue?
A few weeks ago I saw on Instagram a UK imam expressing a prayer at Al Aqsa for the Muslims to once again “predominate on these lands”. It raised the follow question for me
Would the resolution of ‘Free Palestine’ bring an end to the desire for Islamic possession of these holy lands?
Accordingly, is ‘Free Palestine’ for some actually part of a religious ambition?
Does the preponderance Islamist-Jihadism in the world fundamentally conflict with the continuance of Israeli society?
Is the enemy of my enemy my friend: Does opposing Islamist-Jihadism necessarily mean allying with Israel?
Does the conflict between Israel and Islamist-Jihadism mean there cannot be peace with Arab states?
No. The Middle East is defined by the tension of religious idealism and brutal pragmatism. The Arab rulers, themselves contending with Islamic sentiment, seem to prefer stability and prosperity. In so far as stable relationship with Israel brings that and they can manage internal sentiments, there is a possibility. Relations have been normalised significantly in the last decades.
This seems to be a result of Israeli’s strong military and economic position, her position in the Sunni-Shi’ite state conflict and the role of U.S diplomacy. The Abraham accords seem to hold promise for a new era of ‘normalisation’ in which Israel’s neighbours no longer hold out the possibility of war with her. Stabilising this relationship such that conflict with Hamas does not equal war with Arab states fundamentally shifts the dynamic in the region.
Future States and Free Palestine:
Would Israeli jews fare well under a Palestinian or Arab state?
How would the Palestinians treat the Israeli’s if the balance of power was reversed?
How would Hamas treat Israeli’s if it held power over Israel?
Would Jewish citizens in a Palestinian state have equal status like Arab Israelis?
What is the vision of a Free Palestine, what kind of society will it be, who will it be free for?
Under what conditions is the desirable and undesirable?
Is a Free Palestine an Islamic State?
Can Palestine have Islamist-Jihadist governance and simultaneously be called free?
Is a Palestinian supra-state (including Israel) a desirable outcome?
Under what conditions would it be desirable and undesirable?
Is an Israeli suprastate (Including west bank, gaza) a desirable outcome?
Under what conditions would it be desirable and undesirable?
Which would have a more positive impact on the development of neighbouring states, peace and security in the region?
Is a two-state solution desirable?
Under what conditions would it be desirable and undesirable?
Genocide:
What distinguishes Genocide from Urban warfare?
What distinguishes genocide from ‘total war’ in the form waged against Germany in the second world war?
How does Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza compare with:
The allied campaign on Germany?
The coalition war on ISIS occupied Mosul?
Assad’s brutal campaign against urban opposition in Syria?
Were the above genocides?
Why or why not?
Recent evidence suggests that the numbers of dead issued by Hamas’ health ministry account for all fighters as civilians. When combined with the numbers of fighters Israel claims to have killed there is something approximating that 1:2 ration of dead between fighters and civilians. In the history of urban warfare and armed conflict this is considered to be an incredibly high ratio. The campaign against ISIS in Mosul killed 1:2.5
None of these numbers are objectively collected and cannot be considered to be accurate.
Does the desire of some in the Israeli government to permanently displace Palestinian Arabs from Gaza shift the significance of war into genocide?
Can these statements be taken to be the intention of Israeli society and government to displace, or replace the Palestinians of Gaza?
How do we weigh these extreme statements relative to say statements by President Trump representing the intentions of the U.S
Is this analogous to the genocidal statements of Hamas leadership being representative of Palestinians? To what degree?
How does the Israeli conduct in the war support and not support the claim of genocide?
Is war distinguished from genocide by intention or outcome?
The Nazi obsession with killing every jew in every state in the world has come to define genocide.
Israel does not have an obsession or mission to kill every Palestinian Arab at the level of its conduct or intention.
Is part of the difficulty with the claim of genocide a conflation between differing meanings of Genocide. While Israel bears no resemblance to Nazi’s global anti-jewish genocide, statements from the Israeli-right can be taken as intent to displace an ‘undesirable’ minority population from state territory. This can be another form of genocide or ‘ethnic cleansing’.
Is there a cynical and intentional conflation of these two kinds of genocide underway?
Do the sentiments of the Israeli right PM and Security minister shift the significance of Israel’s war? Is it fair to take them as representative?
Does the Israeli government have intent to displace palestinian Arabs?
Yes, it seems very likely that elements of this government do. You can watch Netanyahu as a young man in 1978 expressing a stance that hasn’t changed much in 46 years. He doesn’t believe that Palestinian Arabs are a people who deserve a state and that they should be citizens of Israel or a neighbouring state.
Some in the government are talking about returning previously removed settlers to Gaza to create security for Israel through settlement.
Would this be a resettlement of the territories Israel gave to Gaza in 2006 or an expansion?
Will opposition to the government resurge as the war shifts?
Prior to Oct 7th there was an enormous opposition to the Netanyahu government that was tearing the country apart. His government whilst supported is not liked.
If this government is replaced after the war, what would a center or left Israeli posture look like on this issue?
At this time I don’t believe it’s appropriate the call Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. However, I recognise clear sightedly why the statements of the Israeli right ministers in the context of this war necessitate a great deal of attention and opposition.
I appreciate the anger that is felt and may be directed toward me for saying so. If I can be convinced that this term is appropriate I am prepared to change my stance.
How should Israel have responded to the Oct 7th invasion?
How differently could this war have been conducted?
How can a state live with a neighbour who calls for it’s annihilation?
What would a careful and just conduct of this war look like like?
What would a vengeful war aiming at maximal destruction look like?
Where does Israel’s war sit between these poles?
Hamas
Do we really see and understand Hamas?
Israel’s supporters seem have a clear sense of the repugnance of Hamas, the way it governs eg. killing and torturing opposition, the way it treats jews, the way it has educated children about the ‘jewish enemy’, it’s intent toward’s Israeli society.
However, Hamas also seems to disappear. Hamas becomes invisible in this conflict. We never seem to see Hamas. We get the impression there are nothing but civilians in Gaza.
Does we or the Islamic world ever see Hamas in this conflict, is the camera always turned in the other direction?
Is Hamas strategy working if we see Israeli military and dead civilians but never Hamas?
Why did Hamas steal international aid to build a network of tunnels the size of the London underground under Gaza?
Is a ‘human shield’ strategy is implicity when a terror group consistently places its launch sites and operation sites alongside civilians?
Are Palestinian deaths more in the interest of Hamas or the Israeli military?
Why Is Israel giving precision warning leaflets, drone announcements and text messages to locations of it’s attacks when it clearly advantages the enemy?
Why did Israel sacrifice the element of surprise by postponing it’s war after Oct 7th for weeks?
Why does it continually give up surprise by announcing where will be ‘safe zones’ and not, and where it will attack next?
If a terror organisation and government builds a tunnel network entirely under urban housing, hospitals and schools are they using a ‘human shield strategy?’
If it is a ‘human shield strategy’ than how much culpability do they bear for loss of life in the conflict? Absolutely zero? A little? A lot?
Does Hamas value Palestinian lives more or less than the Israeli soldiers?
Why doesn’t Hamas let the civilian population shelter in their deep tunnels?
Anti-War
The reality of war has never been more globally accessible than in the previous decade. Across the Western world, for the past 7 months there have been rising calls to end the war. These echo, calls to restraint and ceasefires almost always expressed by the West toward’s Israel in conflict with it’s neighbours for decades.
Does ending this conflict, end the war?
When is war just?
Is it always better to stop a war. Are there instances when it is better to continue a war than to end it prematurely?
To what extent are our historical analogies relevant to the situation?
Oct 7th
Under what conditions would you praise and shout for the the capture and parade of young women hostages?
What is the genesis of the ecstasy expressed by many of the young gazans and hamas jihadists participating in massacres?
What aspects of Oct 7th are general to oppressed peoples and which are specific to jihadist cultures that emphasise and praise martyrdom?
Are their historically oppressed groups and individuals who don’t resort to violence or ethnic cleansing?
What does the model of Solzeynitsin writing from the Russian gulag offer?
What does the model of Christ teach about our capacity to walk in justice in the face of every possible injustice, humiliation and oppression?
Is there a trauma pattern playing out in which we can only selectively process one side’s traumas. If this were the case, could the strong reaction against Israel after Oct 7th express this lack of processing?
To what extent have we really gazed into and processed Oct 7th and it’s meaning for the human condition?
Terrorism or War?
The moral development of man, has been to significant degree judged by his conduct in war. The decisions he makes in war define him.
The Nazi regime’s war machine was a terror machine which systematically exterminated jewish villages in every territory it captures.
The Japanese unleashed barbaric hatred upon the chinese at Nanjing massacring every man woman and child.
These horrors always surface in war but the defining distinction has been whether a society holds them as an expression of their values and state policy or as an abberation and fall from an ideal.
The mi lai massacre by American in the Vietnam war was horrific murder of villagers. However, it was viewed by all of American society as an abberation. It was not praised as a great success against the evil vietnamese.
In moral armies soldiers who commit atrocities are reprimanded, lessons are learned.
In cultures of terror and states engaging in terror, those who commit atrocities are celebrated and those who commit atrocities do not bear guilt. They have not failed their values but acted in congruence with them. They will be celebrated and lauded for their actions.
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Real Violence: Israel, Palestine, Justice & Justification.
This was a great step into creating a heart & mind centred approach with Aspasia Karageorge, Tyler Hollett, Kyle Lawrence, Tom Lyons, Cam Duffy & Tim Adalin. The dialogue was a Culture Lab for the Voicecraft network
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Thank you and Godspeed.