Like "terrorist" and "antisemitic," “condemnation” has become a weaponised word with a special semantics.
“Terrorist” is a magic spelll. In three syllables, a target is stripped of all rights, from the Geneva Conventions to basic human rights. It grants the user a one-way dynamic, like a gun. Bin Laden was a terrorist. Saddam was a terrorist. The IRA was a terrorist organisation, like Al Qaeda, ISIS and ISIL. Now it is Hamas." The Madness of Intelligence.
Hence the persecution of Jeremy Corbyn, who 20 years ago had a meeting with Palestinian representatives, including from Hamas, in order to understand their point of view. He continues to suffer accusastions of being a "terrorist sympathiser" and “antisemite.”
I have great sympathy for Corbyn. I was one of the many who saw in him a great hope for the UK, and was deeply disappointed by his smearing by the Israel Lobby. He is neither a terrorist sympathiser nor an antisemite. Neither am I.
I share Norman Finkelstein's allergy to misinformation and spin, and admire his compulsion for truth. At the same time, I foresee a collapse of language itself, being so heavily undermined by misinformation and weaponisation.
I have objected to portrayals of the Palestine/Israel conflict as symmetrical. A quick glance at the reduction of Palestinian territory should suffice, from the Balfour’s 46%, immediately reduced to 22% by Israeli terror campaigns and annexation, to today’s pathetic ringed ghettoes. Or a quick glance at the numbers of casualties. Or the armaments of the two sides. Or the “unequivocal support” for one side versus the cancelation of the other.
A Jewish friend with family in Israel put to me yesterday: we are all victim/persecutor/rescuer. I replied that it was difficult not to see the wounded children in Al Shifa hospital as victims of Israeli persecution, even if the Israelis were persecuted by Hamas on 7 October. Others have commented that the cycle of victim/persecuter/rescuer is endlessly and deliberately perpetuated, as a means of global control. George Orwell’s 1984 warns of a tripartite world, where allegiances flip in an endless war. Yet think tanks abound that lobby for that world.
I have objected to the refusal in spiritual circles to call for a ceasefire on Facebook, and the tendency to wrap the call in non-partisan “Peace in the Middle East” or “Peace in the Holy Land.” I can see their point. I’m not sure I agree with it.
Perhaps the words “Israel” and “Palestine” are weaponised. If so, it is a matter of time before “USA” “UK” and “EU” follow, and indeed the whole notion of the nation state. Enter the tripartite world?
Behind non-partisan spirituality, esoteric arguments abound—often with reference to the Law of Karma, which may be understood as the Law of Consequence, or Newton's Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
While it may be incomprehensible to us (or them), it is karmic consequence that Israeli civilians were murdered in the dance floor at Supernova, or Palestinian children died in ambulances en route to the hospital. It is karmic consequence that the IDF soldier who brutalised a Palestinian family in their own home found himself in that position in the first place and suffers lifelong PTSD afterwards. It is karmic consequence that millions of Jews died in Germany, just as it is karmic consequence that millions of Germans mass murdered them and engendered further karmic consequence in the process.
Ditto for current events.
I have heard arguments that the 6 million Palestinians are the current incarnation of the 6 million Nazis who exterminated the 6 million Jews. It is karmic consequence aka divine justice. Therefore let it be.
What about the Israeli student beaten up at Columbia University? Or the Apple Store staffer smeared as a “terrorist” by a Jewish man in California? Or the pile-on of Israeli vigilantes on Instagram? Or the children under the rubble in Gaza, or shivering with shock as the IDF assaults Al Shifa hospital? Or the ravers murdered at the Supernova festival on October 7? Let it be? Should bystanders simply stand by?
Authorities on karma, such as Robert Svoboda’s aghori guru Vimalananda, point to a trap in this thinking. It can be used to avoid responsibility. "I didn't do it. It was my karma.” or “Well, that’s their karma." The caste system in India is misused to perpetuate the plight of Dalits, generation after generation. It’s their karma to be homeless toilet cleaners. Let it be.
Even while there is truth to this, it misses the fundamental point of the Law of Karma. Each of us has a responsibility to reduce suffering and prevent evil, to prevent further karmic consequence. This is surely the aim of spirituality.
We each have a choice, even in the midst of the severest compulsion—like vengeance for the murder of a child—to transmute karma by absorbing the chain of action and reaction. Such heroics are seen mostly in the movies. I cite the example of the American muslim father who forgives his son’s murderer in my essay, Demonic Circuits.
Our collective failure to do transmute karma exposes us to collective manipulation. For a persecutor, see The Predator from the Depths of the Cosmos. Dissent is cancelled. Lies are repeated. Weaponised words incite reactions. The catastrophe unfolding in the Middle East must be seen in this context.
Finkelstein cites the American slave revolt led by Nat Turner, wherein black slaves ran amok and committed acts of violence against their white oppressors, to allude to a "calculus" used by Hamas on 7 October. Finkelstein refrains from describing this calculus explicitly but I imagine it goes something like this: Hamas knew full well what Israel's response would be to Oct 7. It also knew what world reaction would be to that response. The world would pay attention to the plight of the Palestinians, behold the horrors Israel would produce, and isolate Israel as a "terrorist state."
Requiring great loss of life, such a calculus can be seen as vile and inhumane. We can speculate that, following the same calculus, Israel allowed Oct 7 to happen. The world would see the bestiality of Hamas, sympathise with the endlessly oppressed Jews and and for once green light Israel’s disproportionate response. With reference to the adaptive strategies discussed previously, we are now in the maelstrom between two calculi.
But it remains the case that Israel and the West have the power to end the endless game. Far greater power than the Arab world, Iran, Russia or even China. The Saudis could turn the oil pumps off. Iran could disarm Hezbollah. Russia or China could broker talks. Such scenarios are complex, and beholden to the agendas of those parties and their fear of offending a bellicose USA.
America could stop the billions per annum it donates to Israel. As former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter has suggested, it could step in and oversee Israeli use of American-made weaponry. It could probably disable Israel’s drones and F16s remotely. The sight of a baby shivering with shock in a bombed and bloodied hospital should be the stop signal par excellence.
But stopping the bombing, even of hospitals, would lead to more violence, crow Western stooges like Keir Starmer, UK “Leader of the Opposition.” It is hard to spot where Starmer has Opposed the current UK right-wing regime. Certainly not in its unequivocal support for the bombing of children in hospitals. Israel has worked hard to justify its utter heartlessness by the production of 3D graphics and faked phone calls that “prove” Hamas live beneath Al Shifa hospital.
Having been bombed into the hospital, Gazan patients, if they can, must suffer being bombed out of it. The rest of us must suffer the insufferable Starmer’s fake hand-wringing over having to go along with the tragic but necessary mass murder of wounded children.
Despite massive Israeli propaganda, I do not believe that Hamas wish to eradicate all Jews, according to an ideology they share with Hitler. If people were honest with themselves, I believe they would see Palestinian forbearance of immense suffering as a heroic example to humanity. I believe five minutes at Al Shifa hospital would convince full-blown wetiko toads like Ed Balls or Margaret Hodges of the error of their ways, if not their mental illlness.
Do I condemn Hamas? Condemnation—to send to hell—is not a human power. If resistance to decades of oppression and injustice has been poisoned or hijacked by cynical forces, it is more than ever the case that Hamas must be listened to and understood. Political prisoners, especially those held without charge for years, especially children, must be released. Hostages taken on Oct 7 must be released. According to Israeli sources, Hamas has refused this. According to independent sources, Israeli has refused this.
Again. The shivering babies at Al Shifa must be the signal to stop. It is of grave concern to humanity that so far it has not been heeded.
Nor do I believe that all Jews want the eradication of Hamas or Palestine, or an ethnically-cleansed state erected in their name. It is of grave concern that many do, and a relief that a growing number realise that the Biblical metaphor of the promised land has been hijacked by Zionists and others who care zero for Judaic or any other tradition and eye an Orwellian Middle East. There, the cycle of victim/persecutor/rescuer can be indefinitely sustained by those whose choose profit over the redemption of the human race.
We can only—or cannot—speculate about the karmic consequence for those who play God. We must consider the karmic consequence of standing by.
Well written, important statements and in these times, in these days, brave. I have long been interested in exceptionalism and will probably write a piece about it. We need to look to the areas of light between the cracks, those who worked for peace and who lost this chance should be vindicated not with violence but peace. But the US needs to stop providing arms, Israel needs to stop inviting the US in and pushing Palestinians out. And Gaza reminds me that there is no interventionist God and that we the bystanders have the responsibility to write and shout in protest against this obliteration of people and their homes. The right of return is the only way forward, the right to exist. And for that Israel and the US must desist. Only then will transformation be possible. Hamas and the IDF will lose their power in peace.