Not me personally; and, of course, all ethnicities are equal. A week or so ago, as I was casually doing something else, I saw being interviewed a gentleman who I understand was a Gazan intellectual.

When asked about antisemitism, on the presumption that many Gazan people are somehow ‘antisemitic’ (and that somehow that alleged attitude is how so many people of Gaza got to be slaughtered with minimal western sympathy), the gentleman paused (in a kind of déjà vu frustration at the question), and then said “I am a Semite”.

Our use of the word ‘Semite’ (and its derivative words) is reminiscent of the widespread usage – between around 1875 to 1945 – of the word ‘Aryan’. Both words have been used as racial tropes. The correct word to describe people who are ‘anti-Jew’ is Judeophobia.

In my estimation, people who favour the term ‘antisemitism’ over ‘Judeophobia’ are too lazy to resist time-worn tropes. Through that laziness they become perpetrators of casual racism. Language matters.

Something else. I have only just come to hear about Israel’s Dahiya doctrine, of terrorising populations through the practice of domicide. James Bayes on Inside Story (Al Jazeera, 1 May 2026) quoted Daniel Reisner, lawyer for the IDF in 2009, saying: “If you do something for long enough the world will accept it, international law progresses through violations.” Such pursuits of domicide are the same dehousing and famine doctrines as those prompted by Churchill’s bestie Friedrich Lindemann during World War Two. Repetitive justification of collective terror does not make wrong behaviour right. Cases of domicide are motivated by racism and supremacism.

————-

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

A national pro-Palestinian advocacy group has accused the New Zealand government of providing political cover and rewarding the Israeli genocide by deploying a “liaison officer” to the US-brokered peace plan for the besieged enclave.

“It’s a knee-jerk reaction for New Zealand to send in the troops to the Middle East to back Israel and the US,” said Maher Nazzal, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

“A liaison officer deployment is political cover to assist and reward Israel for its
genocide in Gaza. The US makes bombs and bullets for Israel to fire.

“It’s a shameful betrayal of Palestine and the Palestinian steadfastness in the face of unbelievable depravity and cruelty,” Nazzal said in a statement.

He said it was ominous that the liaison officer would be based inside a US military office in Israel.

“Instead, we should be working with the United Nations in the region. Trump plans to perpetuate the Israeli occupation under a figleaf of it being multinational. That is what we are supporting.”

“This is more of the same complicity with the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza,” he said.

‘Joined at hip’
Nazzal said that for two years Foreign Minister Winston Peters had joined New Zealand “at the hip” to a country whose Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] was wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

“There have been no sanctions on Israel, but we frequently impose new sanctions on Russia and Iran,” he said.

“The NZDF was there in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government sent the army up to the Red Sea to fight with the Americans early last year to keep Israeli sea lanes open.”

Nazzal said the government should focus on aid, ensuring Palestinians’ rights and representation, and fact-finding.

“There should be a cross-party Parliamentary fact-finding mission assembled urgently, which could get into Gaza safely before Israel ramps up its murderous assault again.”he said.

“MPs should see for themselves, instead of signing off on a soldier whose job it is to ‘implement’ the Trump plan.”

Jordan rejects US plan
The King of Jordan had recently rejected the US proposal to join in patrolling Gaza to implement Trump’s vision.

“Palestinians have no say in the Trump plan. Trump decides who is going to
implement it. He’s picked Tony Blair,” Nazzal said.

“When he was British Prime Minister, Blair, and US President Bush, invaded Iraq to destroy the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. More than a million Iraqis died.

“In Gaza, more than 20,000 children have now been murdered by Israel in
indiscriminate killing across Gaza.”

“The New Zealand people stand with Palestine – the government stands with Israel.”

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that Palestinians in Gaza say they are losing hope in the ceasefire after Israel’s deadliest violation yet killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children, on Wednesday.

Israel’s military carried out another deadly attack in northern Gaza last night, killing two people, despite claiming to resume the fragile ceasefire, which had already been teetering from a wave of deadly bombardment it waged the night before.

US President Donald Trump said the ceasefire was “still strong” while mediator Qatar expressed frustration but said the mediators were looking forward to the next phase of the truce.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A temporary ceasefire and release of some Palestinians in a prisoner exchange is not a “peace agreement” and it is far from what is needed — ending colonisation; freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags (also tortured, nearly 100 have died under torture in the last two years); return of the millions of refugees; and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

That is why this global uprising (intifada) will not stop until freedom, justice, and equality are attained.

Here are brief answers I gave to questions about the agreement for Gaza:

1. How has life in the West Bank changed for you and your community during the past two years of conflict?
The West Bank has been illegally occupied since 1967 (ICJ ruling) but it was not merely an occupation but intensive colonisation and ethnic cleansing. The attacks on our people accelerated in the last two years with over 60,000 made homeless in the West Bank and denial of freedom of movement (including hundreds of new gates installed in these two years separating the remaining concentration camps/ghettos of the West Bank ).

2. What is your assessment of the new peace deal that brought an end to the fighting in Gaza?
It is not a peace deal. It is an agreement to pause the genocide which will not work because the belligerent occupier — “Israel” — has not respected a single agreement it signed since its founding. Even the agreement to join the United Nations was conditional on respecting the UN Charter and UN resolutions issued before and after 1949.

This continued to even breaking the signed ceasefire agreement of last year. I have 0 percent confidence that this latest agreement would be respected even on the simple aspect of “pausing” the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on since 1948.

3. In your view, why did war drag on for two years despite multiple ceasefire attempts?
Simply put because colonisation can only be done with violence. And the war on our people has gone on not for two years but for 77 years without ending (sustained by Western government support). Israel as a colonisation entity is the active face of colonisation. The USA for example broke similar agreements for “pauses” in colonisation with natives in North America and broke every single one of them.

Israeli military occupation on the environment.        Video: Greenpeace

4. What kind of humanitarian and environmental toll has the conflict taken on Palestinian society?
It is now well documented from UN agencies, human rights groups (like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, even the Israeli group B’Tselem). In brief it is genocide, ecocide, scholasticide, medicide,
and veriticide. (More at: ongaza.org )

5. Why do you think it took the IDF so long to rescue all the hostages?
The terrorist organisation that deceptively calls itself “IDF” (Israeli Defence Forces) was not interested in rescuing their captives (not “hostages”) and they only got people back via exchange of prisoners (not rescue).

The IGF (Israeli Genocide Forces) actually killed many of their own soldiers and civilians
on 7 October 2023 by activating the Hannibal directive to prevent their capture. The resistance was aiming to capture colonisers (living on stolen Palestinian lands) to exchange for some of the more than 11,000 political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails. (Again see ongaza.org )

6. How significant was international involvement — particularly from the US — in reaching the final agreement?
This is the first genocide in human history that is not executed by one government. It is executed by a number of governments directly supporting and aiding (participating). This includes the USA, UK, France, Egypt, Germany, Australia etc. Many of these countries have governments dominated or highly influenced by the Zionist agenda.

Under the influence of a growing popular protest against the genocide around the world, some of those countries are trying to wiggle out from pressure in an effort to save
“Israel” from growing global isolation. Trump was blackmailed via videos/files collected by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghiseline Maxwell (Mossad agents). He is simply a narcissistic collaborator with genocide!

7. What concrete steps do you think are necessary now to turn this peace deal into a sustainable, lasting solution?
Again not a “peace deal”. What needs to be done is apply boycotts, divestments, sanctions (BDS) on this rogue state that violates the international conventions (Geneva Convention, Conventions against Apartheid and Genocide). BDS was used against apartheid South Africa and needs to be applied here also. (For more: bdsmovement.net )

8. How do you see the Palestine Museum of Natural History contributing to rebuilding and healing efforts in the aftermath of war?
Our institute (PIBS, palestinenature.org) which includes museums, a botanic garden, and many other sections is focused on “sustainable human and natural communities” Our motto is respect: for ourselves (empowerment), for others (regardless of religious or other background), and for nature.

Conflict, colonisations, oppression are obviously areas we challenge and work on in JOINT struggle with all people of various background.

9. Looking ahead, what gives you optimism—or concern—about the future relationship between Palestinians and Israelis?
What gives me optimism first and foremost is the heroic resilience and resistance (together making sumud) of our Palestinian people everywhere and the millions of other people mobilising for human rights and for justice (including the right of refugees to return and also environmental justice).

What gives me concern is the depth of depravity that greedy individuals in power go to destroying our planet and our people and profiting from colonisation and genocide.

About 8.5 million Palestinians are refugees and displaced people thanks to Zionism and Western collusion with it. A collusion intent on transforming Palestine from multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multireligious, and multilingual society to a racist Jewish state (monolithic).

Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Bedouin in cyberspace; a villager at home; professor, founder and (volunteer) director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, Occupied Palestine.

Notes:
World Court Findings on Israeli Apartheid a Wake-Up Call: International Court of Justice Makes Clear Call for Reparations

The 7 October 2023 reminded us of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

7 October 1944! Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize as before was not given to the any of the hundreds of deserving nominees but given instead to rightwing pro-genocide María Corina Machado. She dedicated her prize to Donald Trump and had previously aligned with the worst rightwing parties throughout Latin America as well as the genocidal regime of Netanyahu (and even asked them for help to topple her own elected government).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s foreign minister Winston Peters announced at the United Nations General Assembly that this New Zealand coalition Government will not recognise Palestine as a state – at this time.

Here, it is important to cite New Zealand’s foreign minister in relevant detail.

Winston Peters said at the United Nations General Assembly:

“We think a future generation when Israeli and Palestinian political leadership is an asset, not a liability, and where other situational variables have shifted the current calculus away from conflict and towards peace would be more conducive for recognising Palestinian statehood.

“There in lies our dilemma over any decision to recognise Palestinian Palestinian statehood now because statehood recognition is an instrument for peace as an instrument for peace also does not play because there are no fully legitimate and viable state of Palestine to recognise.

“Palestine does not fully meet the accepted criteria for a state as it does not fully control its own territory or population.

“There is also no obvious link between more of the international community recognised in the state of Palestine and the aimed objective of protecting the two-state solution.

“Indeed, what we have observed since partners pronouncements reveals that recognising Palestine now will likely prove counterproductive.

“That is, Hamas resisting negotiation in the belief that it is winning the global propaganda war while pushing Israel towards even more entrench military positions.

“Recognition at this time we also think is open to political manipulation by both Hamas and Israel. Hamas will seek to portray our recognition of Palestine as a victory as they have already done in response to partner announcements.

“Israel will claim the recognition toward rewards Hamas and that it removes pressure on them to release hostages and agree to a ceasefire,” Winston Peters said. (Ref. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/new-zealand-national-statement-un-general-assembly-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%98leadership-global-affairs-united )

In essence, I argue, that Peters’ speech kicks the problem down the road. He shifts the responsibility for developing a solution to the Gaza atrocities conditionally on to a future generation of leaders. And it fails to acknowledge that at the current rate of mass killings of Palestinian people, there will be no one left to create nor nurture a future generation of Palestinian leadership.

But the statement nuances a shift in New Zealand’s position geopolitically and within the rules-based-order community of nations. The statement will confuse many observers of global politics, not the least among New Zealanders and peoples who sought asylum in New Zealand far from the paces of their birth.

Let’s consider why.

International Law.

The speech will trigger a cringe for millions of New Zealand citizens and permanent residents at realising how this right-leaning nationalistic three-party coalition government has abandoned and failed to reflect their strongly held positions for human rights principles.

It is human rights principles that have long anchored New Zealand as a strong and unshakable advocate for an international rules based order, for international humanitarian rights, for recourse to international law and justice, and signatories to the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice.

It was this cumulative support for human rights and justice that compelled New Zealanders to reject the militant wing of Hamas for its atrocities against civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023.

But advocacy for human rights and justice is not a political expression. It isn’t tribal. It isn’t biased in favour of one peoples and not another. Advocacy for human rights and justice is universal and in this sense it is blind to the class or statehood where hate and atrocity originates from.

This is the same universal principle that the International Court of Justice applied when it found there was a prima facie case of genocide being committed by the state of Israel.

It is this same universal principle that the International Criminal Court applied when calling for the arrest of the state of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu to be tried for crimes.

Peters’ speech to the United Nations General Assembly ignored these bodies and only waved a cursory glance at the ongoing murder of innocent children and peoples in Gaza, an apparent systematic act of mass murder, committed against people simply because they are of Palestinian birth. Peters’ speech failed these victims and rejected, by way of omission, their right to justice.

In a sense, this New Zealand coalition government has reflexively returned New Zealand back to that glitch-period where this nation fell estranged from the international common-good, in breach of the Gleneagles Agreement, and refused to cease engagement with Apartheid South Africa by allowing sporting contact with that murderous regime in 1981.

New Zealanders rejected that government in 1984, and today’s abandonment of New Zealand’s long held positions for rights and justice will certainly be a factor in the 2026 general elections.

Multilateralism is founded on rules and laws. Where rogue states abandon the principles that are universally agreed to by the majority, those nation states fail to advocate for the multilateral institutions that they rely on for social, judicial, and economic progress.

Peters, as the envoy for this current New Zealand coalition government cannot have it both ways. He cannot claim to be a voice for multilateralism and justice when he has delivered a decision that stands as contrary to the 81 percent of the United Nations general assembly nations who have announced and demand recognition for the State of Palestine.

Gaza and the occupied territories of the West Bank have recognised borders. Within those borders reside a peoples that reflect a common culture and a right to self-determination. They have a representative political structure that can engage itself in bilateral and multilateral forum and bodies. It cannot be ignored that it is being prevented from functioning as a state due to the atrocities that have been inflicted upon it by its occupiers.

It is the occupation that must be addressed, and the United Nations General Assembly, by way of a large majority, recognises this fact – ashamedly the New Zealand coalition government and Peters do not.

CANZ bloc and Like Minded Countries

In addition to New Zealand has long contributed to what is called the CANZ bloc at the United Nations.

The CANZ bloc is a group of nations consisting of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It has held together due to these nations sharing common values as ‘like minded countries’.

New Zealanders have long heard their representatives citing allegiance with ‘like minded countries’.

This too has been abandoned by New Zealand at a most important time for multilateralism, a time when supposed ‘like minded countries’ need to band together and present a solid powerful bloc on issues such as Palestine.

This is why Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited New Zealand on the weekend of August 9-10, 2025. Albanese sought the position of New Zealand’s current Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on whether New Zealand would recognise Palestine as a state in keeping with ‘like minded countries’ Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and France. Luxon couldn’t give him an answer. And New Zealanders were left wondering why.

On this issue, New Zealand will have sent a signal to other nations that it cannot be relied on anymore as a true advocate of peace and justice while it fails to life up to its long-held reputation as an honest broker on the world stage standing up for peace, justice and multilateral progress.

This is a day of shame that has dawned in New Zealand. And millions in this multicultural Pacific nation will feel ashamed that their political representatives have failed not only them, but victims of atrocities all over the world.

Failed Opportunity to Advocate for UN Reform

Peters’ speech before the United Nations General Assembly, while acknowledging the UN needed reform, failed dismally to present a reformist plan that New Zealand would advocate for. It was a glaring omission from a once seasoned politician that made his bones on matters of principle and law.

Peters speech also failed to identify the mechanisms and protocols that exist within the United Nations at this current time; principles like the R2P or responsibility to protect protocols that were advanced after UN observers were prevented from protecting victims of Rwanda genocide decades ago.

The United Nations (UN) Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a global political commitment adopted in 2005 by world leaders to prevent and respond to mass atrocity crimes – namely genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. It holds that state sovereignty entails a responsibility to protect populations within their borders; when a state manifestly fails to do so, the international community has a responsibility to act collectively and decisively, in accordance with the UN Charter. 

All Peters and New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials needed to do is indulge themselves for a moment to reflect on this R2P protocol as published by the United Nations office on genocide prevention and the responsibility to protect. (Ref. https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/responsibility-protect/about )

Put simply, within the UN charter there is the framework and mechanism for Peters, as a representative or a once principled nation, to cite and demand be applied to resolving the humanitarian crisis and murder taking place today in Gaza, and indeed in other parts of the world.

And it is this, that illustrates greatest the areas where reform of the United Nations is required and is at a critical juncture.

The United Nations was formed as a body to advocate and restore peace. For decades now, it has shifted its emphasis onto becoming a distributor of assistance and development. This is noble and it is vital in a complex world such as we live in. But it has become moribund where it comes to ensuring a mechanism or framework structured body where nations can cumulatively restore peace and prosperity to nations, peoples, and states that are victims of tyranny.

This is the kernel of need where reformist ideals are developed and implemented. And this was largely ignored by Peters and his coalition government colleagues.

As such, New Zealand faces headwinds. It may now be regarded by our once closest multilateral partners as an unreliable and immoral unjust state that waxes and wanes, dancing on the head of a pin on distorted legalese that offers more smoke and mirrors than principled solutions.

New Zealanders and Palestinian victims deserved to witness the very opposite of what was served up to them today. They deserved to witness a representative and true advocate for – particularly in the case of the Palestinian diaspora here in New Zealand and their dead and dying relatives back in the occupied territories and Gaza – rights to recourse as individuals and as survivors to universally applied justice.

But this current New Zealand government refused them. And as such it has sided with those nations that are a part of the problem manifest in Gaza, rather than being part of the solution.

Doing nothing is complicit.

For more on this issue, see; New Zealand PM Luxon Labelled as Weak and Cowardly After Delaying Decision on Palestine.

*******

The New Zealand Cabinet will today consider whether to formally recognise Palestine as a state – and Palestinian rights advocacy group Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) urges the Government to listen to the views of a vast majority of New Zealanders.

The PSNA anticipates Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, will get instructions from Cabinet on Monday to increase pressure on Israel.

The United Nations General Assembly High Level Leaders Debate starts in New York next Tuesday.

PSNA Co-Chair, John Minto says the government has to have listened to the voice of the people who marched for sanctions against Israel, in Auckland (on Saturday September 13).

“With only limited time to organize, and disruption caused by having to change from the route over the Harbour Bridge at the last moment, 25,000 turned out to object to the government’s passive, and effectively pro-Israel, policies,” John Minto said.

“It’s a turn-out that’s been building, now rapidly, in our protests around the country over the past two years.

“New Zealanders are nearly two to one in favour of sanctions against Israel. Support for accountabilities will have increased significantly since then as Israel’s depravity and cruelty has shown no bounds.”

Minto says foreign minister Peters will be attending potentially one of the most important debates in United Nations history next week.

“The General Assembly has already begun, and on Friday, New Zealand voted along with 141 other countries, for a state of Palestine to be created through Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” John Minto said. “There were only ten votes against, predictably the US and Israel, but a concerning five Pasifika states voted against Palestine as well.”

According to Minto Israel has already made it clear that it has no intention to permit a Palestinian state to emerge, “nor compromise its apartheid system, by allowing equal democratic rights to Palestinians who live under its control and inside its present borders.”

Minto said in announcing its position on Palestine, the government will be sensitive to its reputation in Arab countries.

“Israel has just bombed Qatar, to kill off the prospect of a Hamas agreement on hostage releases.  Qatar is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is led by Saudi Arabia.

“Peters’ cabinet colleague, Todd McClay is in Saudi Arabia this week to talk trade.  McClay will not be wanting to explain to the Saudis, face to face, why Peters was in New York at the same time telling the world about Israel’s so called right to defend itself.”

Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom and other nations have already demanded a ceasefire to hostilities in Palestine’s occupied territories and for Israel to cease the apparent genocide being committed in Gaza.

Minto said: “So far, the UN emphasis has been on two-state outcomes, and how to get rid of Hamas. But the world debate is moving strongly to sanctions.

“Now is the time to move past idle rhetoric, and deliver sanctions, which are the only persuasion Israel will concede to,” John Minto said.

It’s time that the nations of the world (or at least the influential western nations) accept the reality that all the lands that constituted 1920-1948 Mandatory Palestine should be formally recognised as a single nation-state; ideally called Palestine Israel or Israel-Palestine, but more realistically called Israel.

In other words, the never-viable notion of a two-nation-state division of ‘Israel’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eretz_Israel) should be dropped as a viable solution in favour of the promotion of a liberal bicultural (or multicultural) nation-state. The role model for change could be South Africa.

Jewish and Non-Jewish intellectuals (such as Hans Kohn, Shlomo Sand and Yanis Varoufakis) – on the political left – have been arguing for this ‘one-state-solution’ for over 100 years. It’s just that their voices have always been deamplified by those on the political centre and the political right. (On the centre, we think of people like Joe Biden, Keir Starmer, and their predecessors. On the right, we may consider former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a leader in the 1940s of the openly fascist Lehi, yet a moderate by today’s Israeli political standards.)

Shlomo Sand outlines the history of the arguments for a single ‘binational’ state in his 2024 book Israel-Palestine: Federation or Apartheid? His vision, which is not quite what I favour, emphasises binationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/binationalism), and looks towards these successful liberal examples of bi- or multi- nationalism: Canada, Belgium, Switzerland.

The better framing of this approach, I believe, is biculturalism; though even that is not problem-free, because it is an exclusive concept. What I think would work best for Palestine Israel is also the same as what would work best for Aotearoa New Zealand: multiculturalism with a bicultural (treaty) emphasis. (Ireland could have become something similar, as in Irish rugby; but it went down a failed two-state path, and experienced two substantial civil wars last century.) The ideal is for Palestine Israel to become a liberal democracy in which all people born within its borders become citizens with equal citizenship rights; a nation state which commits to both the domestic and international norms of liberal democracy.

(In a bicultural nation-state, the principal divider is religion; normally people’s religious loyalties are discrete, meaning that being, say, a Muslim or Jew or Christian is mutually exclusive. The word ‘national’ is increasingly used in the 21st century as it was in the 19th century; to refer to a ‘people’ or a ‘race’ rather than to relate to a territory defined by its borders and its sovereign institutions. Ethnicity – the better word is ‘ancestry – is not a discrete concept such as ‘religion’; individual people have multiple ancestries, and should not be required to identify as one over another.)

How can this be achieved?

First, we should note that the status quo in Eretz Israel is at least as unacceptable as Apartheid South Africa was to our world of mostly ‘internationally-civilised’ nation-states. (An internationally civilised state is one that accepts agreed norms in the ways that it relates to other nation states, meaning that it does not indulge in offensive hard-power geopolitics – such as ‘gunboat diplomacy’; and it practises cultural equality. Terrorism is understood as criminality. Such a state does not have to be a ‘democracy’ in the Westminster or American sense; but it should meet open liberal standards in the ways it treats its resident denizens – non-citizens – and it should subscribe to international treaties on matters such as climate sustainability and nuclear energy and election authenticity.)

Second, this desired outcome will not come about by force. The community of liberal nations should simply recognise Eretz Israel as a nation state, based ideally on the prior borders of Mandatory Palestine.

While there should be no demands, such a new nation-state would be risking discriminatory sanctions if it abuses liberal norms; in particular if it implements laws (including civil-marriage laws) that discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, or ancestry. Again, the obvious model is Apartheid South Africa, and the ways that South Africa was excluded from international sport so long as it implemented laws which discriminated on the basis of ethnicity. (Palestinians and many Israelis have Levantine ethnicity. Many Israelis have European, African or Asian co-ethnicity; that non-indigeneity should never be held against them. Nor should the indigeneity of the Palestinians.)

In recognising Eretz Israel as Israel-Palestine (or even just under the name ‘Israel’), a Levantine nation state, Israel’s nuclear status should be addressed and normalised. (Likewise, India and Pakistan should be pressured to join the ‘nuclear club’. One of the most problematic regional asymmetries at present is the advanced nuclear-status of Israel versus the embryonic nuclear status of Iran; Israel at present hides behind its non-membership of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to make it seem that Iran is a bigger nuclear threat to the world than Israel is.)

Recognition of Eretz Israel as a sovereign nation state, under any name, should come with overt expectations of democracy, amnesty, truth, reconciliation, and press freedom. There should be no formal or informal mechanism of ‘settling scores’, no matter how reprehensible anyone’s past or present behaviour has been. Truth trumps vengeance cloaked as ‘accountability’.

Lebanon was an initially successful, but now largely failed, version of a similar attempt at creating a tolerant multicultural nation state in the Levant. Lebanon’s main problem was its belligerent southern neighbour. Israel-Palestine would not have Israel as a neighbour.

Abandon the naïve two-state solution.

There is no way a Palestinian nation-state can be viable. At the very best it could become like a mini-Pakistan or mini-Bangladesh; and even that would take decades. (And the last Israeli prime minister to formalise a two-state future – Yitzhak Rabin – was assassinated in 1995, having achieved a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.) The two-state-solution agenda seems to be more about deescalating sufficiently for the Palestine issue to disappear from its media prominence; and not at all about ending a forever war which began in 1948.

The present forever war – now in its hottest phase – followed a brutal war for Israeli-Jewish independence and non-Jewish expulsion waged by fascist and non-fascist ‘non-state actors’ from 1939 to 1948 against the British ‘protectors’. That, in turn, followed a prior Palestinian insurrection against the British and the settlers from 1936-1939 (though overshadowed in the international media by the Spanish Civil War), which in its turn followed the 1929 Palestine riots. That’s 96 years of escalating forever violence.

In Summary

Recognise a new expanded state, with or without a new name, but with certain (unenforceable, but well-publicised) expectations. This expectation should be a multi-cultural Levantine sovereign state, embracing adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths (as well as people of other religions, or no religion, as citizens; people born in Israel or Palestine, and documented immigrants): Levantine Jews, Levantine Muslims, Levantine Christians, plus others. All Israelis. And all Palestinians.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: And the Oscar goes to ‘No Other Land’.

AMY GOODMAN: The Palestinian-Israeli film No Other Land won for best documentary. The film follows the struggles of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta to stay on their land amidst violent attacks by Israeli settlers aimed at expelling them. The film was made by a team of Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers, including the Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. 

Both filmmakers — Palestinian activist and journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham — spoke at the ceremony. Adra became the first Palestinian filmmaker to win an Oscar.

BASEL ADRA: Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honor for the four of us and everybody who supported us for this documentary.

About two months ago, I became a father. And my hope to my daughter, that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing — always — always fearing settlers’ violence, home demolitions and forceful displacements that my community, Masafer Yatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.

‘No Other Land’ reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: We made this — we made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger.

We see each other — the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end; the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed.

When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control.

There is a different path: a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here: The foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.

And, you know, why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined, that my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way.

It’s not too late for life, for the living. There is no other way. Thank you.

Israeli and Palestinian documentary ‘No Other Land’ wins Oscar. Video: Democracy Now!

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

To understand antisemitism, we need a meaning for ‘semitism’, and another -ism to contextualise semitism.

Literally, semitism means the promotion of the Semitic people, whoever they might be. The most appropriate comparator for ‘semitism’ is ‘hamitism’, relating to the ‘hamites’ or ‘Hamitic people’; analogous to the ‘Semitic people’. These are archaic terms, befitting the nineteenth century pseudo-sciences of eugenics, physiognomy and phrenology; semitism is a bible-derived concept of a preferred race, and of racism.

Our particular interest in 2024 is in two subsets: a racial subset of the Semitic people known as the ‘Jewish People’, or the Jewish ethnos or ‘nation’ (ie where a nation is a ‘people’ rather than a sovereign territory; and a racial subset of the Hamitic people, known today as ‘Palestinians’. Semite is named after Noah’s son ‘Shem’; hamite is named after Hoah’s son ‘Ham’. The biblical ‘curse of Ham’ was invoked in particular with regard to Ham’s youngest son Canaan, the putative father of the Canaanites, especially including today’s Palestinians.

While the Palestinian Arabs have been deemed by some Christians and Jews to belong to a cursed ethnicity, the mythistorical Jewish ethic line – descended from Shem – came to be known as a (or ‘the’) chosen people. Hence semitism (or philosemitism) is the presumption of the exceptionalism of the Jewish ethnicity. Antisemitism, then, can be regarded as a dislike or disapproval of the Jewish ‘race’. (For a few though, antisemitism seems to mean a denial of this presumption of exception.) Likewise, antihamitism, while it could be understood as a denial of the curse, is probably best understood as an analogue of antisemitism; as a dislike of or disapproval of the Palestinian ‘race’. In their most extreme forms, antisemitism and antihamitism are both presumptions in favour of the expulsion or genocide of an ethnic people. Both forms of discriminatory hatred need to be equally condemned.

While there is no scientific evidence that there was ever such a thing as a Jewish race or a Palestinian race, there are Jewish ethnicities (plural). Many people who have taken DNA tests will have some of their ancestry defined as Sephardic Jewish or Ashkenazi Jewish; but never simply ‘Jewish’. (Nobody will have Christian or Muslim as an ‘ethnicity’.) These Jewish ethnicities show in these tests because of widespread historical exclusions, within Jewish communities, of non-Jews as marriage partners; thus these initially religious communities may be classified as ancestral endogamies and, on that basis, as ethnicities. We should not be distracted; Judaism is the foremost (ie progenitor) of the monotheistic religions. Jewishness is a meme, not a gene. A ‘secular Jew’ – or a ‘secular Muslim’ – is an oxymoron; a non-religious adherent to a religion.

Endogamy cultures can be problematic, not so much because of inbreeding within a limited gene pool, but mainly because of the antipathies caused by self-segregation. In some places there has been widespread and mutual self-segregation; the West Russian ‘Pale of (Jewish) Settlement‘ which lasted formally for over a century (until World War 1; and informally for much longer) was one such territory in which endogamy bred hatred and hatred bred endogamy. Reciprocal apartheid. Further, the lands of that former Pale were particularly coveted in the 1930s by the German National Socialists for the realisation of their Lebensraum policy.

Antisemitism as a panoply of Christian Judeophobias

Orthodox Antisemitism

In the years between 300 BCE and 300 CE, the Eastern Mediterranean was politically and then culturally, a ‘Hellenic’ (ie Greek) empire; a cultural empire which gained two unofficial capital cities, Byzantium and Alexandria. That empire was Romanised from the first century BCE; ie subject to the political (but not cultural) hegemony of Rome.

Judaism, as the vanguard for monotheism – a novel religio-cultural phenomenon – became a successful proselytising religion, especially within the Hellenic cultural sphere. In say 200 CE, by far the majority of Jews in the world were converts. Judaism’s spiritual home city was Jerusalem, the principal city of Judah/Judea. There were also many Jewish converts in the territories to the north and east of Jerusalem; and there were still rabbinical Jews in Babylon (in modern Iraq), which is where early Jewish intellectuals decamped to after the fall of the First Temple in the sixth century BCE.

With the rise of Christianity in the Eastern Mediterranean in the fourth century CE, this new aggressive monotheism largely displaced Judaism in the Roman empire; many Eastern Mediterranean Jews either converted to Christianity, or emigrated. Many of the emigrants travelled west; with many migrating Jews converting many of the ‘pagans’ (especially Berbers) of the Western Mediterranean to monotheism. These people, initially mostly in the African ‘Maghreb’, became the Sephardic Jews.

Just as in the Christian Reformation in the sixteenth century, the new aggressive faith used the rhetoric of cultural-racism against Judaism, the hitherto established faith. Thus Orthodox archbishops such as John Chrysostom of Constantinople waged a vicious rhetorical war against the Jews. (Refer Simon Schama, Story of the Jews, episode 2.) Central themes of this rhetoric were the alleged complicity of the Jewish priesthood in the execution of Jesus Christ (by Christians deifying Jesus, his crucifiers therefore became guilty of deicide); and a greater tolerance for the practice of moneylending, in particular the usurious practice of ‘making money from money’.

In turn, those loyal to Judaism saw the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity as a ‘slippery slope’ away from monotheism; ie, away from the First Commandment of Moses.

Schisms

Christianity may be understood as the first of the great schisms. Islam later became the second schism from the Jewish branch, and Roman Catholicism the second schism of the Christian branch. After that, Protestantism became the great schism from the Catholic branch, during the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

Just as Calvinism became the most anti-Catholic form of Protestant Christianity around the year 1550, 1,200 years earlier the emerging Greek Christian Orthodoxy (based in Byzantium renamed Constantinople, now Istanbul) became the most virulently anti-Jewish form of Christianity. In contrast, the Islamic schism from Judaism did not promote a hatred of the parent religion. Islam was never antisemitic in the way that Orthodox Christianity was.

The Islamic – or Koranic – variant of ‘Abrahamic’ monotheism rapidly proselytised in North Africa and Southwest Asia; this process – both cultural and military – was known as ‘Jihad’. While Islam proved popular, in part because of its tax advantages in Islamised territories, it was tolerant towards monotheistic non-converts; Jews with Muslim overlords generally prospered. (Muslims became known as Ishmaelites, in reference to Ishmael, the eldest son of Abraham, the mythical father of the Islamised – largely ‘Hamitic’ – races.) Christianity was the least tolerant of the three monotheist branches of biblical Judaism.

The Russian Jews

In the second half of the first millennium, all three monotheisms were seeking converts among bordering polytheist populations. Judaism continued to make progress in two main areas, in addition to the Western Mediterranean. These were Yemen (and subsequently Ethiopia), and Khazaria.

Khazaria (the Khazar Khaganate; see map) was a mixed European and Turkic territory to the north of the Caucasus Mountains, in modern-day southwestern Russia; mountains which include Europe’s highest, Mt Elbrus.) It is this region that gave to people of European ethnicity the label ‘Caucasian‘.)

The Khazar Khaganate dates from 650 CE, and lasted in some form until the early 13th century.

In the eighth century, the Khazarian people – especially the ruling class, realising that it was not a matter of whether to convert to monotheism but to choose which faith to adopt – had three to choose from. Realising that they would have less socio-political autonomy if they adopted either of the two religions on their doorstep, they chose Judaism. As converted Jews, they were deemed subsequently to be descended from Ashkenaz, a son of Noah’s other son Japheth. The Khazarites became  the Ashkenazi Jews (albeit not a popular view within the twentyfirst-century Israeli secular priesthood; refer Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People). In the year 1000 CE, for example, this was the most populous Jewish community in the world.

Around the year 1220, the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish polities in those steppe-lands were erased by the Mongol invaders. The predominantly Jewish population of Khazaria fled into the emerging Russian territories; Slavic lands whose people were then consolidating their faith as Orthodox Christians. (Religious ‘water’ and ‘oil’ didn’t really mix; there would be minimal assimilation between these two populations.)

In later centuries, these Ashkenazi Jews almost certainly mixed with other Jewish groups who had moved east, especially from the Central Europe. (In The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses, Eran Elhaik, using DNA analysis, establishes the ethnic predominance of the Khazarites within those Jewish communities of the Pale.)

Catholic Antisemitism

The schism between the (Greek) Orthodox and (Roman) Catholic churches was a slow-moving affair, which covered most of the second half of the first millennium CE. By and large, Catholicism acquired the same antisemitism, though developed a greater degree of pragmatism towards Judaism.

Orthodox Christianity and Islam emerged as much bigger geopolitical threats than Judaism to Catholic western Europe. Judaism receded to the periphery of monotheistic West Eurasia (to use the sensible name adopted by James Belich in his 2022 book The World the Plague Made, noting that North and Northeast Africa also belonged to this geopolity).

The basics of the European geopolitical fracture that still stands today were established during the reign of the Frankish emperor, Charlemagne. By the early ninth century, Catholicism prevailed across the entirety of Western and Central Europe. (There were still ‘pagan’ pockets – eg, in Scandinavia; otherwise, the border established by Charlemagne is that of today’s European Union. We note that the Catholic parts of the former Yugoslavia are in the European Union, and the Orthodox and Muslim parts of that former union are not. We also may note that Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus are exceptions; they are more Orthodox than Catholic. And we note that the post-Catholic Protestantisation of northern Europe occurred many centuries after Charlemagne.)

Simon Schama (in his Story) notes that Judaism came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066; this suggests that the Frankish kingdoms (which became France) had been a significant recipient of the racially diverse Jewish refugees from the Eastern Mediterranean. And it suggests that the (still relatively small) Rhineland (western German) population of Jews in Medieval Europe also arrived via that French route.

In the centuries either side of 1000 CE, the fusion of Jewish, Muslim and Christian cultures seems to have created a synergy, creating a cultural high tide of tolerance and intellectual osmosis. An interesting consequence may have been the emergence of modern banking. Pure banking developed in a Mediterranean world in which money-lending (usuary; charging interest) was prohibited by Christian and Muslims, though was pragmatically tolerated when the money-lenders were Jews. (Early banking was a side-hustle of rich Italian and Spanish merchants, who made written promises – promissory notes – and ‘cleared’ them among each other. They invested the money in their possession – their mercantile profits – to finance ventures; as financier shareholders of each venture, they would take a share of the profits or losses.)

It was Christian Kings and Princes who did much of the borrowing from Jewish moneylenders; these entitled overlords had a propensity to turn to antisemitism when they become insolvent. The Catholic world became especially prickly towards its cultural rivals, including Judaism, in the later decades of the 12th century.

Antisemitism in western Europe seems to have emerged around the same time that Catholic Crusader groups had conquered much of the ‘Holy Lands’ (the Levant; modern Syria/Lebanon and Israel/Palestine) from both Muslim and Orthodox overlords. Tolerance and pragmatism towards Jews largely fell apart in Spain, England and France in the twelfth century, leading to expulsions of Jews from those countries; and the boosting of the Rhineland population of Jews. Shama mentions the problem of antisemitism emerging in England during the reign of the Crusader King (Richard ‘Lionheart’; 1189-1199); indeed, Richard’s mother Eleanor had been responsible for expelling Jews from her ancestral territory of Aquitaine. Jews were expelled from Spain in stages from the 12th to the 14th centuries; and from England during the 13th century.

This is about the same time (early twelfth century) as when the Khazarite Jews had to flee (northwest into West Russia) from the Golden Horde established by the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan.

Neither Shlomo Sand nor Simon Shama mentioned the terrible atrocities committed upon Jews – especially in western Germany and Switzerland – during the first and biggest round of the Black Death (1348 to 1352; the ‘Plague’). But it’s true. Many Jews were scapegoated and grotesquely murdered; accused of having poisoned the wells in many central European towns.

Christian Poland, which was less affected by the Black Death than Western Europe, gained a reputation for relative tolerance towards Jews. So, it is likely that Eastern and Western Europeans converged in the territories we today call Poland, creating a relatively cosmopolitan population of Jews; Jews who practiced their faith while also mixing more easily with their Catholic (and later Protestant) neighbours; that is, more easily than the larger populations of Jews further east were able to integrate with their Orthodox neighbours.

Protestant Antisemitism (including Christian Zionist Antisemitism)

While the Bible (Old Testament) became more important for Jewish populations in recent centuries, the newer Talmud was a substantially more important text in the practice of Judaism in the medieval period.

It was the Protestant Christians during and after the Reformation who first took to the Bible – both Testaments – as literal statements of history and prophecy. Jews suddenly played an affirmative role as the spiritual and biological ancestors of Christians; of particular importance, they played an important role in Christian prophecy (including apocalyptic prophecy), especially in the momentum to re-establish an ethnoreligious state called ‘Israel’.

Further, Protestantism – especially the more Evangelical forms (eg Calvinism) – was attractive to the expanding Plague-recovery mercantile communities of Northwest Europe. Under the auspices of the reformed Church, the sanctions against usury – sanctions against making money from money – were increasingly downplayed. Christians could do business with Jews again; soon enough though, these two mercantile-religious communities became rivals. While Jews were no longer proselytisers, the mercantile Protestants (especially the Dutch) were eager expansionists, expanding their new capitalist domains throughout the much of the world; although only encroaching on the coastal communities of the Islamic World of the Indian Ocean rim, and of the ‘Far East’.

Protestant antisemitism was born out of capitalist rivalry; and out of the new Christian racial tropes, which facilitated the acceptance of intensely racist forms of slavery. In the nineteenth century – in the era of emerging ethno-nationalism within Europe, and emerging racial supremacism – the Jewish ‘nation’ became a rivalrous irritant to increasingly nationalist Christianity. Further, as Shlomo Sand observed, in Eastern Europe, a more dangerous form of ethno-nationalism emerged; one which built on the original Orthodox tradition of antisemitism. This eastern rivalry had morphed from being mainly religious to mainly ethnic; especially Slavs versus Jews.

To the west of Europe, in the now geopolitically dominant United Kingdom, Christian Zionism became a thing. While (Protestant) Christian Zionism had its roots in the Puritan era of Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s and 1650s, by the 1830s the upper crust of even Anglican society wanted Jews to be ‘over there’ rather than ‘over here’. Although the United Kingdom elected a Jewish Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli – in the 1860s, this only reinforced latent antisemitism amongst his dour political rivals. (Queen Victoria found Disraeli to be more personable than his political opponents.)

Anyway, through that century, there was increasing (mainly Christian) talk in the United Kingdom and Western Europe about re-establishing a Jewish homeland, though not necessarily in Jewish biblical home-lands in the Eastern Mediterranean. The possibility of an expansion of Jewish settlement in Palestine emerged, however, as the then overlords of the Levant – the Turkish Ottomans – appeared to be presiding over of a dying empire. The European ‘great powers’ were lining up to divide the ‘Middle East’ – an annoyingly Britocentric term – between them.

This possibility didn’t stop the British ruling-class antisemites from concocting (just after 1900) a plan to establish a Jewish ‘homeland’ in Uganda. While Uganda is a pleasant and fertile territory in Africa, this resettlement proposal tells much about the irredeemable racism of West Europeans towards the presumed ‘inferior’ races; especially but not only Africans. And it shows zero sensitivity to Jewish sensibilities regarding their biblical homeland.

Meanwhile the antisemitic pogroms in Eastern Europe – mainly in the then Russian Empire – continued as Slavic nationalisms were gaining pace. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to their destinations of choice: United States and United Kingdom.

For European Jews, the interwar crisis began in 1924 when the United States closed down their immigration from Europe; and the United Kingdom pretty much did the same thing. The United States’ near-prohibition of Jewish immigration lasted until the mid-1950s. It was only after 1924 that large numbers of Eastern European Jews looked to emigrate to (British Mandatory) Palestine; that’s where British and American immigration policy deflected them to.

Then, in the 1930s, the German National Socialists (Nazis) started both scapegoating their Jewish residents (effectively blaming them for the Great Depression, on account of apparent Jewish overrepresentation in the finance industry) and coveting their lands in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the newly independent Baltic States, and especially Soviet Russia.

The new Jewish residents in British Palestine recreated the segregated lifestyles they had known in Russia, creating much animosity between them and their new Palestinian neighbours. Pretty much by definition, these settlers were Zionists, because they were recreating the biblical promised land of Zion, even though they would rather have gone to the United States. The indigenous Palestinian population resented the new settlers; not because of their ethnicity, but because of their insensitivity and exclusiveness; an insensitivity comparable with many prior experiences of other indigenous peoples in the face of settler-colonisation.

Many immigrants from the west Russian territories were Socialist Zionists; indeed, it was that leftish faction which largely ruled modern Israel from its formalisation in 1948 until the mid-1970s. Other interwar settlers included the fascist Zionists of the Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang. Still others – including the Irgun, which became Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party – were on the less-extreme political right. All of these settler-Zionist factions formed resistance militias that became anti-British (ie anti- the new post-Ottoman overlord of the southern Levant) and (after the 1929 uprising) anti-Palestinian. (Just as Hamas is a resistance militia today.) The anti-Palestinian aspect of this settler militancy became, over time, increasingly racist; it became antihamitic, a racial prejudice as problematic as antisemitism.

Around 1940, the Lehi fascists tried to do a deal with Adolf Hitler. Both the Nazis and the Lehi wanted the European Jews to leave Europe. The Lehi wanted a mass transfer of that population to their new Zion in the Levant. Great Britain, in particular, was in the way. From the British point-of-view, the time to create an exclusively Jewish homeland had passed; the logistics of a mass resettlement programme during World War Two were impossible, and racism had passed its peak in the United Kingdom.

For Hitler, those logistics of a mass transfer to Jews to Palestine were always going to be problematic; exponentially more so once Germany was at war with Britain. Instead, Hitler reconsidered the British antisemitic plan to transfer the European Jews to Africa. After May 1940 there was a pro-Nazi puppet government installed in Southern France – the Vichy regime – which had control over France’s imperial territories. Hitler formulated a plan to settle the Eastern European Jews to Madagascar! While never practical, Winston Churchill certainly made such a transfer quite impossible. The United Kingdom invaded and conquered the Vichy French territory of Madagascar in 1942. (Who said the British military was overstretched in 1942? In that year, Winston Churchill argued that Australian troops should stay in Europe. John Curtin, the new Australian Prime Minister, wanted those soldiers to return home to defend Australia.)

Hitler’s options for the Jews substantially narrowed. His antisemitism and desire for lebensraum had left him committed to the removal of this population, but with no destination to remove them to, and few resources to do the removing. The rest became tragic history – from 1942 to 1945 – of the worst possible kind.

Still – even after the Holocaust – the pro-Israel antisemitic United States denied immigration entry to Jews, except that is for a few handpicked ones. Most holocaust survivors of World War Two were left with only one option; to migrate to British Palestine or (after 1948) to Israel. The Lehi (who fought the British during WW2), the Irgun, and the socialistic Haganah all served as ‘freedom fighters’ from 1946 to 1948. This was a successful militant insurgency. The British departed as soon as the United Nations was formed; they couldn’t wait to leave. The United Kingdom supported the creation of an ethnocratic sovereign state as the eventual solution to its longstanding antisemitic project of resettlement, indeed hoping that large numbers of British-resident Jews would join the refugee Jews in the new state of Israel.

Israel had been a longstanding antisemitic project, with the object of both cleansing Europe of Jews and creating a Europe-ish sovereign state in the ‘Middle East’, a state that would help to project a European-style foreign policy in a region which was set to undergo full decolonisation.

Conclusion

Israel today has arisen as a consequence of two millenniums of antisemitism in its various Christian forms. Israel is a nation-state, which – if it wishes not to be a pariah state – must abide by the same rules as any other nation state. It is not exceptional – the rules do not allow for exceptionalism – and the rules do not allow for the new nation to promote an alternative form of racism that’s as bad as antisemitism.

Jews are an ethnically diverse people with a shared cultural heritage; Judaism is a culture rather than a nation. A significant number – though not a majority – of the Jewish people live in the nation-state of Israel, a nation state that’s 76 years-old and counting. It’s a nation which presently pursues a relatively soft form of antihamitic Apartheid within its internationally accepted boundaries, and a much harsher form of antihamitism within its occupied territories. There is a clear analogy between the occupied territories of Palestine today and the occupied (and client) territories of Europe’s belligerent powers in the 1940s.

All nation states’ governments are equally able to be criticised; by those countries’ citizens, by residents and by non-residents. Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism; it’s criticism of the way that nation-state projects itself across the wider world, and about how it racially and culturally discriminates (sometimes with extreme violence) against people or peoples over which the Israeli authorities have a duty of care.

Past victims of racism have more reason than most to avoid being present perpetrators of racism.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

I recently read the Auckland Library copy of the 1986 book Prophecy and politics: militant evangelists on the road to nuclear war, by Grace Halsell (1923-2000). Before she died, she also published (in 1999) Forcing God’s Hand: Why Millions Pray for a Quick Rapture—and Destruction of Planet Earth. A revised 2003 edition included a “transcript of CBS 60 Minutes episode broadcast October 6, 2002 “Zion’s Christian soldiers; how conservative Christians see Israel’s role in bringing on the Second Coming of Christ” (Wikipedia). (Much more recently, in 2024, Al Jazeera ran this program: Praying for Armageddon episode one and episode two.)

Raised in Lubbock, Texas – thirteen years older than Buddy Holly – her youth was immersed in Christian Evangelical dogma. Evangelicals – from John Calvin in 1539, onwards – turned their Christianity from a faith that principally worshipped God to a faith that principally worshipped The Bible. Not only did the Bible become (holy) History, it also became (holy) Prophecy. (I have in my possession a very flash 1890s’ Bible; it dates everything, including the world’s “beginning” in the year 4004 BC.)

A picture may be worth a thousand words; a map even more so. The map here was one in wide circulation in American Evangelical circles mid-twentieth-century. It reflects the view that Israel was a necessary part of the ‘End Times’ prophecy, and that the Anti-Christ was Soviet Russia, invading Israel through Syria, aiming for a showdown centred on the Megiddo Vally, the place which gave our language the word ‘Armageddon’.

The study of End Times is called eschatology. Since the time of Calvin, a simmering obsession with End Times, has fluctuated (between warm and hot). An important epoch for End Time belief was the 1830s; note the Scottish writing/preaching of the likes of Thomas Chalmers (who Port Chalmers was named after) and Edward Irving. (I have in-law ancestry to members of Irving’s congregation.) Another time of deep concern was the early 1980s, with the reheated Cold War, and with the Reverend Jerry Falwell – David Lange’s Oxford Union foe in 1986 – playing a prominent part in Halsell’s story.

We note that these prophecies – contained in the Books of Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation – have a renewed audience today, and that the rest of us – who are neither Evangelicals nor Christian Zionists – should be concerned. Unlike in the 1830s, the world does have weapons which can create a global firestorm, and there is a state of Israel which is behaving like a rogue state.

We also note that, following the Beirut massacres of 1982 – conducted and provoked by the “Butcher of Beirut” (Ariel Sharon), and which led to the founding of Hezbollah – Iran has become (to these Evangelicals) the joint Antichrist, along with Russia revitalised in that role; the so-called Antichrist may be easily understood as the present Russian-Iranian axis, which is today bombing – as an axis – bits of Syria. (The Iran government, unlike the Russian government, is not formally involved. But these are the joint propper-uppers of the longstanding Assad regime in Syria.)

We might also note that, again to some of these people, United States president-elect Donald Trump represents the second-coming of Christ (note the picture that comes with Praying for Armageddon.) Further, he has appointed Mike Huckerbee to the role of American Ambassador to Israel; Huckerbee is a “Third Temple” Christian Evangelist who wishes to raze Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, an event that would most-likely precipitate all-out war.

The key point is that, from a Christian Evangelical viewpoint, its all coming together nicely. The Evangelicals (dispensationalists) expect to be saved by The Rapture. Israel will fight the Antichrist on their behalf, and prevail through a pyrrhic victory. The surviving Israelites will then submit to the now-warrior Christ, and the Evangelicals will be restored to Earth.

Fantasy! Yet so many too powerful people believe it; and a nuclear Armageddon is possible today, even if The Rapture isn’t. Those who do not understand the risks should take note. Grace Halsell tried to warn us, but her warnings are not exactly common knowledge.

Further, there are some people who are definitely not Christian Evangelicals who sometimes sound as if they might be. Take this concluding sentence from Chris Trotter, an authentic (and scarce) New Zealand left-wing intellectual: “We can only hope that Donald Trump, soon to inherit America’s sabre – and its scabbard – is learning how to rattle it like mad” (Sabre-Rattling, 30 November 2024).

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

A View from Afar – In this episode of A View From Afar political scientist Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning analyse how the state of Israel has gone rogue, attacking United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. At this juncture it is clear this is an intentional attack.

Over the past week Israel Defense Force troops have repeatedly attacked UN peacekeepers who were authorised and deployed to the region by the United Nations Security Council.

Also last week; the Government of Israel issued a statement notifying the United Nations Secretary General that he was now banned from Israel and was persona non grata. Within a day of that statement, IDF troops had fired on UN peacekeeping positions in Southern Lebanon.

Since then, the IDF has continued operations that threaten the UN’s presence. And Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now issued a directive to the UN peacekeeping force to withdraw from the area north of its borders in Southern Lebanon.

Also, despite the United States Biden Administration cautioning Israel on its attacks on UN personnel, overnight New Zealand time, the United States has deployed 100 US troops on the ground in Israel to operate missile defence systems.

Paul and Selwyn consider:

• Why Israel has begun to attack United Nations peacekeepers in the region?
• Why has the United States deepened its involvement in Israel’s so-called defence?
• What of Hezbollah, Hamas; are their attacks on Israel a defence or an attacking offensive?
• What of Iran, what is its position and will it engage in a full-scale war with Israel and what are the consequences should it do so?

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Esteemed Israeli intellectual Shlomo Sand published The Invention of the Jewish People in 2008 with a new edition in 2020. He sees the popular concept of peoples – popular in the late 19th century (when we were obsessed with ‘race’) and again in the last decade or so when we have renewed that obsession with race (calling it ‘ethnicity’) – as quite problematic. Cultures and languages are real of course; but we prefer to imagine ‘peoples’ in terms of shared ancestry. Thus, the Jewish People are commonly seen as the biblical descendants of Isaac, son of Abraham; with special reference to the classical Kingdom of David (Judea and classical Israel) that existed in the Levant about 3000 years ago.

There is a real problem, in that the Jewish People are commonly considered to be both an ethnicity and a religious faith. We don’t conflate these two identity markers with respect to other ‘peoples’. Simon Schama – a renowned New York based Jewish historian – introduces his television series The Story of the Jews by showing clearly that Judaism is a faith only, and not an ethnicity. Shlomo Sand notes, in his introduction to the 2020 edition, that most of the Jewish population in the year Zero CE (when Jesus Christ was a young child) were comparatively recent converts, and that the people who have lived continuously in the Levant – eg the Palestinians – will have more biblical Israeli ancestry than have the modern Jewish population.

I would like to infuse this discussion with some simple ancestral numeracy.

3,000 years ago represents about 120 generations, taking us back to our 118-times-great-grandparents. If we go back that many generations, then all people alive and dead today have precisely 1,329,227,995,784,915,872,903,807,060,280,344,576 places in our family tree for that generation; approximately a billion octillion places.

The global population in 1,000 BCE is believed to be about 50 million. That means, on average, each living person in that year features 2.66 octillion (let’s say 3 octillion) times on each of our family trees. Now of course some ancient people will feature more than others. Each Palestinian today probably features each ancient Israeli about 150 octillion times in their family tree (assuming an ancient Israeli population of less than one million). Whereas, based on Shlomo Sand’s research, each person who identifies as a Jew probably has each ancient Israeli only 15 octillion times in their 118-times-gg-parent family tree slots. Modern Palestinians are almost certainly about ten times more infused with the blood of the sons and daughters of Isaac than are the present soldiers of the Israel Defence Force (and of the ‘freedom fighters’ of Haganah and Irgun who preceded today’s IDF).

So, what are these people fighting each other over? Land. Liberal-democracy is based on the sanctity of private property, including land. Many people identifying as Israelis are living on land dubiously acquired from people identifying as Palestinian; with the descendants of the previous occupants of those lands living (and dying) today in ‘refugee camps’ in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and Lebanon.

Why cannot these Levantine people just settle with each other, create a post-apartheid liberal secular state in which all races and religions are constitutionally equal, and compensate the descendants of the dispossessed for the loss of their land? And not further dispossess Palestinians of their land.

The time for ‘peoples’ pushing narratives about ‘other peoples’ being ‘human animals’ is truly well past; there never was a time that such narratives were appropriate. Almost more shameful is the way that too many influential people in the ‘liberal democratic west’ buy into these grotesque Israeli narratives, and don’t register concern at the suppression of narratives counter to the ‘Israel-says’ version of the news.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

In this episode of A View from Afar political scientist and former Pentagon Analyst, Paul G. Buchanan and journalist Selwyn Manning discuss: The Murky World of Israel’s Booby-Trapped Pagers and Walkie-Talkies.

Paul and Selwyn reveal Israel’s long-form planning that led to it sabotaging hand-held communication devices that Hezbollah used to communicate with.

This episode’s questions include:

• Who was behind the manufacturing of the booby-trapped devices?
• How long has Israel been planning last week’s attack – an attack that saw thousands injured and many killed in Lebanon after Israel remotely pulled the virtual-pin and exploded the devices indiscriminantly?
• And why now? Presumably the devices were also programmed to be tracked. So why did Israel decide to abandon tracking Hezbollah and to attack?
• Was it to cause chaos among its enemies in a preemptive move immediately prior to its widespread bombing and targeting of communities in Lebanon?
• And what of international law? Has Israel gone so far beyond the Rubicon with Gaza that it senses international law no longer applies to Israel?
• And, finally, has the United Nations abandoned its right to protect principles, its peacemaking and peacekeeping responsibilities in favour of aid, development and an overly bureaucratic institution?

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

In this episode of A View from Afar political scientist and former Pentagon Analyst, Paul G. Buchanan and journalist Selwyn Manning will discuss: The Murky World of Israel’s Booby-Trapped Pagers and Walkie-Talkies.

Today, Paul and Selwyn will reveal Israel’s long-form planning that led to it sabotaging hand-held communication devices that Hezbollah used to communicate with.

This episode’s questions will include:

• Who was behind the manufacturing of the booby-trapped devices?
• How long has Israel been planning last week’s attack – an attack that saw thousands injured and many killed in Lebanon after Israel remotely pulled the virtual-pin and exploded the devices indiscriminantly?
• And why now? Presumably the devices were also programmed to be tracked. So why did Israel decide to abandon tracking Hezbollah and to attack?
• Was it to cause chaos among its enemies in a preemptive move immediately prior to its widespread bombing and targeting of communities in Lebanon?
• And what of international law? Has Israel gone so far beyond the Rubicon with Gaza that it senses international law no longer applies to Israel?
• And, finally, has the United Nations abandoned its right to protect principles, its peacemaking and peacekeeping responsibilities in favour of aid, development and an overly bureaucratic institution?

Live Audience: Remember, if you are joining us live via the social media platforms, feel free to comment as we can include your comments and questions in this programme.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

Building upon recent episodes of A View from Afar, Political Scientist Paul G Buchanan and journalist Selwyn Manning discuss The Politics of Desperation. This episode flows on from our discussions about long transitions and the moment of friction.

As the old status quo begins to crumble (under the weight of fraction), political leaders and elites invested in it get increasingly desperate, leading to more dangerous decisions, more acute moments, and, increased chances of mistake, miscalculation and unanticipated backlash.

The Politics of Desperation accentuates an ongoing downward spiral. And, the Politics of Desperation takes form in differing degrees. For some, the risk of losing is merely a dent in the leader’s ego, reputation, and an awakening that voters have moved on from their style of politics.

But for others, a loss will prove to be devastating, for example; should Donald Trump lose his bid to regain the United States presidency, he will face sentencing as a felon and perhaps even face jail time. For Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, a future loss or a collapse of his right-wing coalition would likely see him facing domestic charges and possibly charges laid by the International Criminal Court for his role in the disproportionate use of military might in Israel’s war on Gaza.

So, Paul and Selwyn discuss the examples of the Politics of Desperation from around the world and assess the risks as the world rests on the cusp of an unknown future.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

And at a macro level, Paul and Selwyn assess how ‘Post-Colonial Blowback’ is a power giving rise to the Global South and its worldwide influence in global geopolitics.

INTERACTION:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.