Menu
Posted on August 15, 2025 | 49 Comments
The year moves through its seasons, and so does the farm over longer cycles. In recent days, I’ve been stepping off the veranda and plucking greengages, figs and apples from the surrounding trees for my breakfasts. I have my petty gripes, but I’ve got to admit that my life is about as close to Eden as any mortal sinner could reasonably expect.
Meanwhile, in a part of the world closer to the setting of that biblical paradise, other people are going through something more like hell. My last post about my trip to the Glastonbury Festival left hanging some questions about the larger big-P politics on display there, and indeed a lot of these turned on the situation in Gaza and the wider politics of that region. Time to talk about Palestine, Israel, Syria and Iran, then? Well, some readers have indicated an interest in me sharing my views on all that, whereas I think others will find them uninteresting and unimportant. I’m probably in the latter camp myself. But to oblige the first group and round out my account of the festival I’m going to write something here about my opinions on Gaza and related matters, while trying to stay attentive to their unimportance. In fact, possibly the most interesting and important aspect of this post is my analysis of how uninteresting and unimportant it is.
To start with the festival itself, something of a media storm arose in the leadup to it around the unpleasantly-named Irish rap group Kneecap, largely because of their outspoken remarks about Palestine. The Prime Minister had said it was inappropriate for them to be performing at the festival, so naturally I tried to get along to see them. But his words apparently had a similarly galvanizing effect on many others. By the time I got there, the stage was closed due to overcrowding. So, for better or worse, Kneecap will likely remain on the lengthy list of bands I have never seen, and never will.
In the event, the controversies around Kneecap were upstaged by the act preceding them, Bob Vylan, and that band’s chanting of ‘Death to the IDF’ which was inadvertently livestreamed by the BBC. The somewhat confected media outrage around that incident was mercifully brief, and the news cycle quickly moved on – not least because of the many actual deaths inflicted by the IDF in the following days.
In the aftermath of Bob Vylan’s intervention, the Chief Rabbi reportedly described it as “vile Jew-hate”. This – and here we come to possibly the most important of my unimportant opinions – involves conflating hatred of what the Israeli government’s armed forces are doing with hatred of Jews, which I consider a dubious and politically dangerous tactic along the lines discussed a while ago in a different context by the late, great David Graeber.
But this whole political field is full of dubious conflations and bad faith insistence on moral absolutes and condemnations. No ifs and buts, do you unequivocally condemn Hamas and the October 7 attacks? Well, I do condemn them, but if we’re going to talk about Hamas and October 7, we also need to talk about Likud, May 15, June 5 and so on. Politics is intrinsically a matter of ifs and buts.
There’s plenty of moral absolutism on the pro-Israel and pro-Zionism sides, but it occurs on the pro-Palestinian side as well. A trivial example, maybe: it’s become commonplace on social media to see posts along the lines that everybody needs to be talking about Gaza’s plight, and if anyone who has any type of platform at all, regardless of their micro-niche, isn’t doing so then you should unfollow them.
I suppose getting unfollowed is almost the worst thing that can happen to anybody in the rich and peaceful countries, but anyway let me say this about Gaza’s plight: what the Israeli government is perpetrating there is horrific, indefensible and genocidal. I can’t even imagine the pain, fear, trauma and loss so many of its inhabitants must be going through.
I think it’s worth saying such things as a simple act of bearing witness to human suffering, which perhaps is the most charitable way to interpret social media injunctions to talk about Gaza. I’ll skate over the unfollowing point: too much social media discourse involves very online people living in their own versions of Eden spending their time scoring points off similarly positioned folks in respect of their solidarity with people who are suffering somewhere else. Possibly, the idea is that if all of us ordinary citizens make enough noise about Gaza we’ll help to end the carnage. If so, I believe it’s better to seek connection and build alliances with people rather than threatening ostracism.
But I don’t think the noise we make about Gaza will end the carnage. Not the noise we in Europe or North America make about it, anyway – which is one of the reasons why I believe my opinions about it are unimportant.
In the face of such arguments, people often invoke the example of the suffragettes or the civil rights movement as counterevidence – we can make a difference. Those movements, however, helped confirm and increase the power of the centralised state, whereas speaking up for Palestine challenges the power of a particularly uncompromising version of it, in the form of Israeli ethno-nationalism.
It’s interesting in this respect that a lot of pretty darned right-wing ideologues not previously noted for their concern about antisemitism have lately been invoking it in defence of Israel’s policies. I suspect that the triumph of Israeli ethnonationalism in Palestine might be quite galvanizing for ethnonationalist projects elsewhere. But ethnonationalism – the idea that only a particular subset of people with some putative culture-historical connection to a country is entitled to full territorial citizenship rights – merely occupies the more radical end of a spectrum encompassing the whole modern political field of centralized, bureaucratic states claiming their exclusive jurisdictions. I – we – have little power to upend this modern system of states through mere protest, particularly through protests aimed at the bureaucratic state itself. There’s a thread linking the extreme case of Palestine-Israel to the more humdrum workings of everyday centralized power.
The talk I gave at the Green Gathering about my forthcoming book was preceded by one about Gaza, in front of a packed house. During the audience discussion in that talk somebody stood up and announced to loud cheers that he’d been imprisoned for his climate change activism. He then stated that climate change was a bigger issue than Gaza which, paraphrasing Roger Hallam, he said was just another f*****y in history. At that point I decided to head around the back to the stage and prepare myself for my talk. But I got the sense this latter remark didn’t go down quite so well with the audience than the preceding one.
I wouldn’t have made those remarks myself, partly because I’m not nearly brave enough, but also because comparisons like that are too bald. Nevertheless, as the audience thinned between the preceding talk and mine, I did find myself wondering why Gaza is such a draw for the left in a way that just doesn’t happen when the topic is making livelihoods from the land and creating local politics beyond the machinations of centralised states and ethno-states. My personal deficiencies as a speaker aside, I think the answer is clear: Gaza is a satisfying morality tale involving downtrodden goodies and neocolonial baddies. The carnage of other recent wars – Congo, Syria and Tigray spring to mind – has excited much less interest in the West’s lefts, perhaps because they lack this moral resonance. In any case, redress leaves untouched the deeper frailties of our world – its food systems, its energy systems, its trading systems, and its system of states.
So while I have no problem with people coming out and loudly protesting extremist ethnonationalism in Israel, the support for it by Western countries, the repression of free speech in the banning of the Palestine Action group and so on, in the absence of a politics geared to overcoming nation-statism and centralized corporate power in general, in the absence of a politics geared to reconstructing local agroecologies, of learning to be indigenous in a wholly different way to modern ethnonationalisms, I do think something is missing in much contemporary radical politics.
One of the points I made in my own talk, to those who stayed to listen, is that we live in a world of increasingly militarised walls and borders. It’s easy for those of us who live on the lucky side of those borders, with our fig and plum trees and our rights to life and liberty, to imagine that we’ll always be the lucky ones. I don’t make that assumption. As the meta-crisis unfolds, there’s no telling where the life zones and where the death zones will be, long-term. I try to chart that political terrain in my forthcoming book.
One aspect of this political terrain is the need to stop thinking that if the eyes of the world are trained on what’s happening in a particular place this will help to prevent bad outcomes. Gaza is surely evidence for that. So too Syria, as detailed in this brilliant but saddening reportage from Loubna Mrie. Increasingly, I think it will be useful to frame thinking around crises, whether political or biophysical (ultimately, it’s the same), with this working assumption: nobody is coming to help. Indeed, there are some who argue that the friendless Palestinians are being used to beta-test wider statist assaults on global citizenries. It could be true – what do I know?
As to the wider geopolitics of the region … well, what do I know, again? – but I think the US/Israeli attack on Iran may have longer term significance. It will help shore up the local legitimacy of the Iranian regime and, along with Gaza, help to bridge differences between the regimes in various Islamic countries. A more unified Islamic bloc may not constitute a huge power interest in global politics, petro-power aside, but it will be symptomatic of the waning US role. Capricious figures like Donald Trump may score a few foreign policy successes that would elude more conventional politicians, but ultimately global power politics is not about the art of the deal or ‘axis of evil’ style ostracism, which merely propels countries toward greater militarisation and violence. If there is an axis of evil, I fear that in the end it may revolve around the White House. Capricious US politics plus irremediably waning US geopolitical power plus a withering nuclear arsenal equals potential worldwide trouble.
But let me end on a more positive note. In Britain in the 1980s it was hard to express support for a united Ireland without being accused of defending terrorism, whereas there was some modicum of support here for the Palestinian cause. When I went as a student to the USA in 1988, I found it quite liberating that the idea of a united Ireland was a debatable topic there, even if the average US citizen I met seemed a bit hazy on some of the historical complexities (“So, why is the British army occupying Ireland?”) On the other hand, Palestinian freedom in the USA back then seemed off the table (Edward Said was ‘the professor of terror’). Today, the situation in Ireland is quite transformed, though alas the Palestinian cause in the UK seems to be going the way of the US – to the extent that an Irish rap group is more notorious for its stance on Palestine than for calling itself Kneecap. My Frome neighbour Jo Berry now does global peace work alongside one of the killers of her father. People can change, and so can apparently intractable politics.
I find it hard to see the same happening anytime soon in Palestine, and even harder to see how globally people will find their way home from centralized states and ethno-states to local land-based livelihoods. But you never know. If those things come to pass, I suspect it will come about slowly, and more from people doing quiet local work, healing their rifts with one another and with the natural world around them, rather than making too much of a show about their opinions on Gaza, on feeding the world, and on other events on the global stage. Which I guess is why I feel it’s worth continuing to bang on in my writing about aspects of agrarian localism in the hope that it will contribute somehow to that slower work. Hence, it’s unlikely I’ll write much more about Gaza, other than in occasional remembrance. If I get unfollowed for my silence on Gaza, or alternatively for my words about it, well … so be it.
Finally, just to note that this will probably be my last blog post for a month or so. Maybe sooner if things go smoothly. I’ve got some hopefully interesting posts coming up, including some thoughts from the panel I did at the Green Gathering with Simon Fairlie and Clive Lewis MP. But first I need to catch up with other stuff. I hope to see you here again soon – thanks for wading through my opinions and reading this far.
W.G. Hoskins The Making of the English Landscape
Kalle Lasn Manifesto for World Revolution
Samuel Miller McDonald Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea
If you like my writing, please help me keep the blog going by donating!
Subscribe via RSS
I haven’t heard anything for a few years now on the work of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library (https://viviensansour.com/Palestine-Heirloom) — I don’t know if the project is still going, or if more overtly political events have interfered. But it does seem to be part of the work that needs to be done.
Meanwhile, today (… yesterday, now) we ate our first watermelon of the summer; it was delicious. Plums are having a fantastic year here; apples and pears not so 6. The back garden grape is fruiting for the first time, I’m bringing home eight kilos of tomatoes every week, the peppers and aubergines have started properly and some of the earlier winter squash are actually ripe already. So I have been up late preserving, and given my shoulder a repetitive use injury by making passata.
The genocide in Gaza is forcing people to actually pay attention to – and do something about – something they should have been doing for the last 50+ years. As an American citizen who has studied American culture from the ground up since 1968 using the established cultural anthropological method of participant/observation, I have earned the right to be highly critical, which I do on a daily basis. My conclusion is that the greatest threat to world peace is the US System. Noam Chomsky, who has been critical of the US since the 1950s, has called the US and Israel, “the two greatest terrorist organizations in the world.” And of course, he means the US and Israeli governments at the federal level. US and Israeli citizens at the individual level bear some blame for contributing to the System in their countries, but Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon and other corporate and governmental leaders have boatloads more blame than I do or some inhabitant of Tel Aviv does. But the contribution of each one of us to the System is where we can do something positive or negative. Back in the 1960s, us antiwar activists were derided for blaming “the System.” But we were correct then and I am correct now for getting to the heart of the problem, which is the System. Nate Hagens famously calls it the Superorganism and says “no one is in charge.” That is intellectual impotence and I call him on it regularly in the comments on his podcasts – as well as others who hold this view on their own social media platforms. There are high-profile people doing a lot of work every day to keep the evil System going. Our individual blame is based on how much we contribute to the System. If you want a hard-and-fast metric, you can use the amount of money you earn each year. That is your share of the blame. My share of the blame is around 17,000 US dollars (USD) this year. I wish it were lower, but I have obligations, both to myself to stay alive and also to provide a safe place in the future for my partner’s grandchildren. We fled to France several years ago to save ourselves, but building a safe refuge has also been a goal for a long time.
The interesting twist on this System critique is that growing food using clean methods is a positive contribution to the System which one can do every day and which sits outside the metrics of the System. The key in this focus is not the actual yield, but building up the soil. I think of myself as a “soil farmer” first and a landrace researcher second. The yields per square meter or per square foot or standardized to yield per acre are tertiary. Can I develop a beet which is adaptable enough to suffer the canicules (heat waves in French) in summer but still hold all winter in the ground? Can I adapt methods to grow potatoes that don’t require me to bend over very much? How best should I spend the little money I have to increase nutrient levels and resilience in my soil? How many hand tools should I be storing for the future?
The key to the future is a small farm future. It is beneficial to sit around and talk about all the evil being propagated in the world by the oligarchs and economic overlords, but we cannot do anything to make it better unless we can ingest clean food. Then we have to do the Work. As the Grateful Dead put it so eloquently:
I don’t know, but I’ve been told
If the horse won’t pull, you got to carry the load.
I don’t know whose back’s that strong
Maybe find out before too long.
— New Speedway Boogie on the Workingman’s Dead album (1970)
I was inspired by this back in 1970 and I still have a strong back.
@Walter Haugen
With regard to soil fertility and “soil farming” as you put it,…….
What’s your opinion on “no dig”?
Is it something you’ve tried and if so, what were/are your thoughts on it?
No dig is certainly an option. I use various forms with mixed results. Charles Dowding has good results but plants in 3-4 inches of compost. (Most gardeners and farmers count themselves fortunate if they can spread half an inch on their fields.) The problem with no-dig is the first soil prep and the HUGE energy footprint of commercial compost. Tilling in your cover crops and green manures is an exponentially smaller use of fossil fuel energy. My experiments are based on laying straw mulch over potatoes like Ruth Stout. This worked well in Washington except for a massive slug problem but in France the heat waves and low soil fertility of several thousand years of tiilage are a problem. No-dig is certainly an alternative but it is capital and energy intensive.
In fairness Charles Dowding does produce a lot of his own compost.
He also keeps on top of his weeding; my own experiments of low-till/low-dig suggest that it is not quite as weedproof as some people think!
I haven’t mulched with commercial compost since around 2021 when I found a neighbour who has a bike delivery service delivering roasted coffee to a local chain and picking up the spent grounds. We already get woodchips from local tree surgeons delivered to the allotment site; now I can have a van load of coffee grounds basically whenever I want. On the one hand, all those woodchips and coffee grounds are absolutely energy intensive. On the other hand, they are waste streams that are being produced anyway whether or not I compost them. Yes, turning the compost heaps is a lot of work, but… in all.hinestynIntend to turn them once or twice and then us them as hotbeds for my cucurbits. This works quite well for me (outdoor watermelons in the UK! The London heat island effect is probably cancelled out by the allotment being in a frost pocket….), and produces quite prodigious amounts of rough compost. Currently I am using it to fill raised beds as my plot does flood quite badly intermittently (the whole site is hydrologically inadvisable).
I do buy a bag of commercial compost in spring when I am potting on my home-started peppers, aubergines and tomatoes. I keep meaning to use my own, but I always seem to run out of time to sieve it, and carrying loose bags of dirt back and forth on the bicycle is a pain even with a cargo bike. I think if I lived closer, I would probably end up using my own.
I think slugs and voles would get a lot of the potato crop if I tried a straw mulch method here. In a more arid climate and with some cats or terriers to help out with rodent issues it might work well, though. In any case straw is not cheap for me to get in London.
There isn’t really One Weird Trick for horticulture that will work in every context, and a lot of the time the ways to find out what does work in your context are to watch what others are doing, talk to them about their past experiments, or just try stuff yourself.
Well living in the US and talking to people here , the majority would like Trump to withdraw from NATO remove US military from Europe and let them sort out their own problems , no one thinks that US troops should bleed again for Europe’s problems . Europe has hidden behind the US coat tales long enough like a tiny yapping dog hiding behind its master .
As for Iran no Arab country has complained about the us bombing of its nuke facilities , none of them want a nuclear armed Iran .
Palestine problems will never end , they were slaughtered by the ottoman Turks , they sided with Germany during the 2nd world war and have been denied residency in all Arab nations , Egypt has 2 divisions keeping their Gaza border closed , aid is not entering Gaza from Egypt because the government will not allow it , they have no friends in the Arab / Moslem world , the red cross is there the red crescent is not .
Thanks Chris for a thoughtful essay on a very divisive topic.
I quite agree that my opinion about Palestine is utterly unimportant. Except to me. I think a lot about the ‘Good Germans’ during the nazi years. Well, here we are.
The level of unembarrassed evil is higher than ever in my lifetime. At least before, the evildoers had the (whatever?) to hide their actions & motivations a little.
And it doesn’t matter who started it all. Evil is still evil.
I can see no reason for me to talk with someone who requires me to condemn Hamas (too) before we can have a conversation. As you say, my opinion means less than zero to the people who have the real power to affect the situation.
I also don’t feel the need to try and convince anybody of anything, even if I did have those skills of persuasion, which I don’t.
I don’t expect that I’d change anyone’s mind, more like I would be just letting them know that reasonable, informed people might have reasons to disagree.
But somehow the Palestine/Genocide argument doesn’t seem to allow that kind of conversation.
And since I’m so thoroughly goyisch, and not only a citizen of the US, but also genetically indistinguishable from those nasty imperialist Brits (the ones with actual power) who maybe didn’t start this disaster, but certainly have done all in their power to make it worse, I feel like my main responsibility is to keep my mouth shut as much as I’m able.
As for being complicit myself, well, being a citizen of the US, which international massacres am I not complicit in? At least insofar as whatever the hell the American system is doing, my life here is (materially) comfortable enough.
“If there is an axis of evil, I fear that in the end it may revolve around the White House.”
Exactly. And what is salient about the evil in Palestine, as compared to many of the other evils out there, is that, yes there are complications and extenuating circumstances, but even when all those are accounted for, the evil in Palestine is still so stark and obvious. And there are a handful of powerful individuals here in the US who could stop it today if they really wanted to.
“…it will come about slowly, and more from people doing quiet local work…”
Yes, true enough. Still somehow I feel it’s important to lay down a marker saying that I see what is happening, I’m powerless to stop it, and those who could stop it but persist in evil must not be doing it in my name.
Wouldn’t it be good to mention that in a regular war civilians are generally speaking evacuated into the nearest border country and that for some reason this time this is not allowed? Because Hamas is misusing civilians as human shields (which is a war crime) to detract from their terroristic activity? Israel is simply responding to the lack of release of the hostages and in that regard is not to blame in my opinion…
Nah. On the continuum of atrocities, Israel has the advantage in numbers.
I really don’t think it’s Hamas keeping food aid out of Gaza, or shooting at civilians who are trying to access food. Collective punishment of a civilian population for the actions of a few is a war crime. “Human shield” has a specific definition (under international law) which I think doesn’t really match your use of the term here.
All hostages should be released. The holding of hostages doesn’t justify what’s happening in Gaza now. Both of these things can be true at once.
Well, collateral damage is sadly unavoidable in such a densely populated area of land, which is why I said that all civilians should have been evacuated from the start of the war, which has always been the case historically in literally every single war. Providing aid via parachutes and completely broken roads is both dangerous and a hopeless cause. So I’m afraid I can’t agree with you.
Seb said “…which has always been the case historically in literally every single war”
I don’t think that is true. France was not evacuated in WWII. Vietnam was not evacuated during the war. Iraq. Afghanistan. Sudan. Where did that happen ?
Here is an AP article for you about Israel’s use of human shields.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-army-human-shields-80f358dd2c87a1123f26ffada159701c
Perhaps you have seen videos on YouTube of Palestinians strapped to the front of Israeli vehicles so that Hamas doesn’t fire on them. Here is a link to some of these videos.
https://www.google.com/search?q=videos+on+youtube+of+palestinians+strapped+to+IDF+vehicles&rlz=1CAUAVB_enFR1129&oq=videos+on+youtube+of+palestinians+strapped+to+IDF+vehicles&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTEzMzE4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
It is good to look at all sides of a subject, instead of just curated content that confirms your own biases.
Note: If the links don’t come through, one can always use search terms like “Israel’s use of human shields” or “videos on YouTube of Palestinians strapped to IDF vehicles.”
“collateral damage”!!!!
What a sinister, dehumanising phrase, created by the US military to gaslight people.
Enough said.
Thanks for the comments. The nature of this post is such that I probably shouldn’t wade too much further into debating the rights and wrongs of Palestine/Israel. Still, as with many conflicts, people generally put a lot of weighting on who started/escalated it. Here, I think Eric is right to say ‘evil is still evil’. Therefore in relation to Seb’s remarks, if for the sake of argument we were to agree that Hamas is using civilians as human shields I think evil enters those remarks in the words “Israel is simply responding … and is not to blame”.
Regarding evacuation to the nearest border country, in the case of Gaza those countries would be Egypt and Israel. Perhaps some historical analysis of why evacuation is not allowed into these two countries and of where Gazans might like to be evacuated to might illuminate the issues?
Regarding the wider politics of the region, I don’t have anything to add to what I already said about it or see any reason to alter it. But maybe it’s worth looking at it through an alternative lens to the usual ‘West’/‘Middle East’ ones. There are more Muslims in South and Southeast Asia than anywhere else – looking at how the war in Gaza is being viewed in those countries could be illuminating.
I find Walter’s and Eric’s remarks on the ways that we individually contribute to the system interesting. They’re relevant to some posts I hope to publish soon, so I’ll postpone my discussion of that for now.
I appreciate this prescription from Dr. Smaje, in three parts:
“a politics geared to overcoming nation-statism and centralized corporate power in general…”
“a politics geared to reconstructing local agroecologies…”
“learning to be indigenous in a wholly different way to modern ethnonationalisms.”
“Here, I think Eric is right to say ‘evil is still evil ”
Yep. The western world sees evil by its own standards , others have different standards , killing yourself and taking others with you be they enemy (_sent to hell ) or civilian bystanders of your own faith (mayrter’s )is seen as a direct line to heaven by some fanatics .
At least now, US and Israeli policy is out in the open.
There has never been an intention by either country in creating a “Two State Solution”. If there was the US could have forced it into being a long time ago.
“Death by a thousand cuts” was always the policy.
It’s all out annexation, expulsion and ethnic cleansing now (or death.) Israel is going for broke whilst the window of opportunity is still open.
The collective “West” has lost all moral authority. (Not that it really had any in the first place)
John writes
““collateral damage”!!!!
What a sinister, dehumanising phrase, created by the US military to gaslight people.”
Quite so. I’m glad someone else picked up on this. I’ve been trying to avoid further argument here in view of its pointlessness as per above, but that phrase has been bugging me too.
Morality aside, if the IDF had killed 60,000+ people merely as an unintended byproduct of their efforts to free c200 hostages it would suggest extreme incompetence. But that is clearly not the objective.
I’m sure we can agree that suicide bombing, a weapon of the weak, is an evil act. Hopefully we can agree that the killing of tens of thousands of civilians by powerful militaries, in this case the IDF, is also an evil act.
I think John may be right that the genocide in Gaza will be a turning point in the loss of the ‘West’s’ remaining moral authority, which could be significant in longer term global politics. This is partly why I suggested it’s a good idea to look at what people are saying about Gaza in other parts of the world.
Imho the West’s” moral authority ” only rests in the west because the west had the biggest stick to beat every one else with , wars in the west were fought to decide who would wield that stick , it ended up as the UK until it bled to death fighting Germany ( twice ) for said stick , the USA took over for a while now its either Russia or China that will world the stick , I doubt it will be Russia their population is not big enough leaving China the possible winner .
There will be a new diaspora of Israelis in the future when the west can no longer help ,( Russia makes more shells in three months than the whole of NATO in a year ) probably to south America somewhere as they are not as antisemitic as north America
I guess we Europeans have always deluded ourselves that we are the good guys.
The people of Europe have exported genocide, famine, land grabs, slavery, colonization, death and destruction on a scale never before seen in all of human history.
Gaza/Palestine/Israel is just the latest iteration of Europeans settling in someone else’s land.
It should be of no surprise considering the history of the last 500 years.
Maybe the shock for us, is the realisation that we are still doing it.
All those people that have been on the end of European colonialism are probably not surprised by events in Gaza in the slightest.
You might be interested in some of Francis Weller’s work on trauma culture Vs initiation culture.
Thanks Kathryn.
I’ll check it out.
Thank you Chris, I’m grateful to read a thoughtful discussion of the Gaza genocide, one of three meeting the legal definition in the world right now, and to the fellow readers for their thoughts – it gives me hope.
The Australian permaculture family collective, Artist As Family, have got a new film out about their life ways ‘the new peasants’ and are fundraising for a farm in the West Bank
;https://artistasfamily.is/2025/08/07/resistance-agriculture-in-palestine-with-yara-dowani/
A humbling and insightful, inspiring view into the everyday life of a Palestinian.
I was taught the Irish history, from Cromwell all the way through to the Troubles at GCSE, as well as the founding of America and the genocide of the Native Americans. I thought everyone knew!
Oh yeah, she coins the term ‘resistance agriculture ‘.
Off topic but I saw this article and thought of you, Chris, even if the scale discussed is still an order of magnitude bigger than seems sensible or viable to me in terms of a small farm future.
https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/opinion/opinion-big-wont-be-beautiful-in-the-tough-years-ahead
Interesting to note, too, that this is someone doing arable farming who also has some kind of sheep enterprise going on — so already a more mixed farm (sorry, “diversified business”) than might otherwise be the case.
Currently drowning in tomatoes, plums, pears and apples, have decided to leave most of my runner beans for drying as we just aren’t keeping up with them for eating fresh, and we’re definitely behind on eating spuds, too. I am delighted that my carrots this year have zero carrot fly and am hoping to repeat the trick next year (netting rather than landrace breeding I’m afraid but I’ll take my wins where I can). The allotment grapes are even sweet this year, which is unusual, and the back garden ones are fruiting for the first time. I have ordered a small fruit press in the interests of being able to do something with them. And while I do love having preserved tomatoes of my own to eat all winter, I am considering scaling back on them next year in the interests of having more time…. shifting the balance to more carrots and parsnips (both of which I have in insufficient quantity to see is through the winter) would reduce my workload some. So would more winter squashes, but I already usually grow too many of those to fit in our kitchen.
On the other hand, in a year without such a ridiculously abundant plum harvest and with wetter and cooler weather generally, I might want more tomato plants. I suspect I will see how I feel come springtime, and I suspect I will sow too much as usual.
My plot neighbour has what I am pretty sure is huitlacoche (corn smut). I didn’t know we got this in the UK! I am mildly disappointed not to have any myself as I’ve long wanted to try it, but all my corn has is worms. Still, the parakeets and magpies seem not to have found my corn yet, while everyone else is resorting to stockings, plastic drinks bottles and whatever else they can find to put over individual ears to keep them safe from plunder. I think it’s mostly that I sowed mine close enough together that the birds find it less comfortable to get in there; this does result in smaller ears but looking at the bird damage on other people’s crops I suspect the total yield is about the same.
I’ve just harvested my first quinoa, with a bit of uncertainty about whether it’s too early. There is more waiting if I’ve messed up. I haven’t managed to grow it successfully before, usually losing it at the transplant stage, but this year I watched where the fat hen was coming up and planted it out into those spots. If nothing else the woody stems are pretty good biomass.
Can someone just explain why Hamas does not release all hostages at once and end this bloody and stupid war once and for all?! Thank you
Apologies I missed this comment in the moderation queue. Don’t think I’m going to go too far down the route of debating the situation in Gaza (and also increasingly the West Bank, and the wider regional conflict). Happy if others would like to. But in brief, some would build an explanation on the argument that the situation didn’t start in October 2023, and that it’s not so much a war as a genocidal moment in a long-term settler colonial project.
If Hamas were to release the remaining hostages, it is quite likely the Israeli land grab and wholesale slaughter of women and children would continue.
Perhaps, because if the hostages are released without a lastings resolution/agreement/two state solution, there won’t be an “end [to] this bloody and stupid war”. (Which has been rumbling on since 1948.)
Israel won’t stop with the release of the hostages. Annexation of Gaza and The West Bank is the goal now.
It says in the Hamas charter that Israel must be completely destroyed which would unfortunately seem to make a lasting two state solution completely impossible.
@Janet
Indeed.
There won’t be a Two State Solution.
Israel also does not want to see the creation of a Palestinian State.
So……..what happens next?
Concentrate on a small farm future.
Ban all guns, weapons and armies on the spot.
@Janet
“Concentrate on a small farm future.
Ban all guns, weapons and armies on the spot.”
Meanwhile……….in the real world
…………..
Hi Janet, can you post a link to the Hamas charter?
In English translation?
I’m curious what else it says.
Thanks.
It could depend on who does the translation. According to this thesis by a graduate student of Translation and Interpreting, “expelling the Jews from Palestine” and “destroying Israel” are examples of the “addition of information” to the English translations.
“The analysis demonstrated that Hamas Charter, when translated, was subject to different interpretations to achieve particular political or ideological goals and align with interests and concerns of the wider target community. Striking instances of politically and ideologically influenced interpretations were mostly evident in cases of intertextual references and addition of information, e.g. expelling the Jews from Palestine and destroying Israel. Explicitation was used to add information in the form of footnotes and endnotes. Meaning shifts also recurred in the English translations of Hamas Charter. A most striking instance was ITIC’s translation of Al-shahādah (lit. ‘the unseen’) into ‘martyrdom [shahadah]’…”
“The analysis showed that addition, rather than omission, of information was a distinctive pattern of the English translations of Hamas Charter. Added information involved politically and ideologically induced interpretations and perceptions of the charter and its producers.”
https://dspace.alquds.edu/bitstream/20.500.12213/1203/1/MT_2017_21511615_8040.pdf
Yaseen Nour al-Din Mohammed Al-Sayyed, “Translating Political Ideology: The Case of the English Translations of the Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).” PhD diss., AL-Quds University, 2017.
Janet – You are using the “firing salvos” rhetorical technique. This is not to say it is a bad technique. Indeed, I myself use it often. But it is just a technique – asking loaded questions and declaring statements that do not require a position. Plato – using Socrates as his mouthpiece – was a leading proponent of this technique. But then in the Socratic dialogues, Socrates went on to explicate his position, something your are not doing. There are many problems with a two-state solution and it certainly is no magic bullet. I would ask that you defend and expand upon your position.
What is missing in a focus on a two-state solution is the structural aspect. A two-state solution was first proposed by the British Peel Commission in 1937 and a partition plan was adopted by the UN in 1947. As the Wikipedia entry points out, this led to the 1948 war. Israel has gone back and forth on a two-state solution and currently does not favor it. Since the Israelis are murdering many, many times more Palestinians than Hamas are murdering Israelis, what the Israelis do is more devastating than what Hamas does. Trying to shift the blame onto Hamas is just another trick. One may criticize this kind of logic as just being a “quant,” but it IS a position.
Hierarchically positioned above the structural aspect of technique is the strategy aspect. Israel appears to have no clear strategy. As many commentators are wont to say, Israel has no end game, except some vague concept of a Greater Israel that grabs as much land as it can. One could say that the Israeli government’s strategy is to either kill off all the Palestinians or move them into Sinai and Jordan. Indeed, that was Plan C of the famous memorandum of late October 2023, as published in 972 Magazine. BUT that is still not certain, based on the floundering about of Netanyahu and the internal strife within his war cabinet. A stronger conclusion is that Netanyahu is just “winging it,” in order to stay out of jail as long as possible.
A two-state solution can also be branded as a “vision statement,” which appeals to the corporate and NGO mindset. This is arguably higher up the hierarchy (or food chain if you prefer that metaphor) than technique or strategy. But this is also a fail, as it presupposes a secondary status for the Palestinians than if they had their own sovereign state. Indeed, that has been the criticism by the Palestinians. Why the PLO accepted it in 1982 is unknown to me, unless there were technical and strategic aspects that gave them some breathing space. Now, neither Hamas nor the majority of Palestinians want a two-state solution. They want their land back – as much as they can get. This is a basic approach, which is understandable to everyone. Israel too has a basic approach. “We are not going to give you back the land we stole. In fact, we want it all. If you won’t leave, we will kill you all.”
A basic approach of defending territory cuts through all the nonsense of “charters” and “two-state solutions” and “manifest destiny” and “chosen people” and “ancient rights” and all the rest of the drivel promulgated by evil governments and their mainstream media handmaidens. It is logically incoherent that the same people who support Ukraine in their fight to keep their territory against a land-grabbing Russia do NOT support the Palestinians in their fight to keep their territory against a land-grabbing Israel.
By the way, the death rate of the current Israeli actions in Palestine does not come close to the death rate of the US in Vietnam. From 1962 to 1975 (Kennedy’s advisors to the fall of Saigon), there were about 2 million civilian deaths. This includes civilians killed by the US, South Vietnamese and North Vietnames forces. That is 12,820 civilians killed per month. The US is responsible for ALL of them, because the US had been involved in Vietnam since 1954 when the French were kicked out. Without US involvement in a partitioned Vietnam, Vietnam would have been a single country long before Kennedy started sending troops. The Palestinian death toll is over 67,000 in 23 months of war so “only” 2,913 civilians were killed per month. The US genocide in Vietnam was exponentially worse than the current Israeli genocide in Palestine.
The value of quantitative analysis is that it buttresses the structural approach.
Walter wrote, “By the way, the death rate of the current Israeli actions in Palestine does not come close to the death rate of the US in Vietnam… 12,820 civilians killed per month… The Palestinian death toll is over 67,000 in 23 months of war so “only” 2,913 civilians were killed per month. The US genocide in Vietnam was exponentially worse…”
A death rate, or mortality rate, is supposedly scaled to the size of the population [Wikipedia], which I’m not seeing in Walter’s numbers. Dividing those averaged monthly civilian deaths by the reported population size (35 million for Vietnam in 1963, and around 2 million for Gaza currently) results in the civilian death rate for Gaza being more than three times the rate for Vietnam.
Civilian deaths per month per 1,000 people
(rough approximation)
Vietnam: 0.4
Gaza: 1.5
Nope. I don’t buy it. Frankly, I am surprised that you would try to spin an absolute number into a relative number. Every civilian death from a war is a tragedy. The absolute numbers provide the scale of the conflict, NOT a percentage of population or deaths per GDP or death in relation to the oil resources gained (like in Iraq) or any other relative measure. As an example, Hitler and his willing executioners (both in the military and the civilian population) killed 6 million Jews and a smaller number of fringe groups. It does not matter how many Jews were in Germany or around the world. It was a genocide. Indeed, no one who calls it a genocide or The Holocaust even mentions the population of Jews at the time. Likewise, it does not matter that the number of Palestinians killed by the Israelis are drawn from a population of 7.5 million or so. It is a tragedy if even one civilian gets killed. The scale of the atrocities goes up by the number killed.
The magnitude of the death rate is what matters. Trying to spin it into a relative number based on the underlying population is a trip down the rabbit hole of, “Some deaths are worth more than others.” They aren’t. When Princess Diana died, there was a worldwide binge of sadness and the media made a lot of money. But no one seemed to care about the person killed on the streets of Portland, Oregon by a stray bullet that same night.
How about I use death count instead of death rate? It is still the same argument. The US killed more people per month than the Israelis are doing. And I am not trying to minimize the Israeli genocide. Far from it.
Walter claimed “The US genocide in Vietnam was exponentially worse than the current Israeli genocide in Palestine”, which he based on the death count (without any reference to the proportion of the population killed), and then wrote, “Trying to spin it into a relative number based on the underlying population is a trip down the rabbit hole of, “Some deaths are worth more than others.”
It’s not about some deaths being worth more than others. It’s about acknowledging that “genocide” by definition relates to a specific group of people (whether it’s a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group), and the proportion of the group which is killed has an impact of its own, in addition to the death count.
For example, the genocidal killing of 1,000 people from an ethnic group having 1 million total population is not necessarily equivalent to the genocidal killing of 1,000 people from an ethnic group which only had a population of 1,000 people. Even if the same number of people were killed, the genocide’s impact on the affected group and its culture can be widely different.
So I’d say that the death count and death rate are both part of the big picture, but I was mainly pointing out earlier what the result would be for the actual death rates (as conventionally defined), since Walter referred to the term “death rate”.
@Walter Haugen
You say…..
“One could say that the Israeli government’s strategy is to either kill off all the Palestinians or move them into Sinai and Jordan. Indeed, that was Plan C of the famous memorandum of late October 2023, as published in 972 Magazine. BUT that is still not certain, based on the floundering about of Netanyahu and the internal strife within his war cabinet. A stronger conclusion is that Netanyahu is just “winging it,” in order to stay out of jail as long as possible.”
It feels to me that Israel is going for broke.
Displacing/grabbing as much as it can whilst there is a favourable regime in the White House. (Mid terms not long off)
Bomb all the infrastructure in Gaza and then not allow any aid or reconstruction. Make it uninhabitable.
They can ride out global alarm/condemnation as long as they still have the support of the USA.
Europe won’t step in. Too worried about the US leaving NATO to have a moral stance on Gaza or contradicting US policy.
No Arab nations are going to do anything. Look what happened to the Arab countries that did openly challenge Israel. Syria, Libya, Iraq.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon know what fate awaits them if they step out of line.
That leaves Iran. (Not an Arab nation) Israel has already had one go at regime change. (Quickly shut down by the US when it was clear that the Iran wasn’t going to fall)
But it’s a different proposition to all the above. China needs Iranian oil, so will not be wanting regime change any time soon. Potential escalation flashpoint.
Your assessment is astute. If you want more background, I recommend the Judging Freedom channel on YouTube. There are high profile people talking about this 5 days a week.
@Walter Haugen.
Yes, I have gone down that particular rabbit hole:)
I tend to go onto Dialogue Works. It’s all the same people saying the same stuff. I guess I just prefer the format more.
I also have a look at The Duran from time to time.
I’m aware that they all have their agendas and I’m being “played” up to a point.
But then again, so do the MSM channels.
I still check into the BBC to see what’s being said, even though I know it is very biased in it’s reporting.
I think you’ve got to look at things from multiple angles to build up a clearer picture of what’s going on.
PS.
I also like this channel.
(An interesting take on events in Ukraine)
https://youtu.be/ml0kH_zwf1I?si=i2GUsQxvVwIMRrYg
Events in Venezuela are also looking “spicy”!
China buys 68% of Venezuela’s oil.
US only 23%.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.
Taking control of those reserves, through a coup would be a double whammy for the US.
Enhancing it’s energy security whilst weakening China’s.
Will China sit back and let it happen?
Steve L and John Adams make several fair points. Kudos to them. But let’s bump the narrative up to the next level. Genocide has become an accepted term for what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. This is a big step compared to the flak meted out to the first demonstrators who dared to call Joe Biden “Genocide Joe” early on in 2024. Notice how no one is calling Donald Trump “Genocidal Donald.” Why is this so? I suggest to you that the reason is that it is an accepted narrative that the US government – i.e. the institutions of the federal government – are engaging in genocide by increasing military and financial aid to Israel in their campaign of genocide in Palestine. In other words, the US federal government is a genocidal institution, composed of genocidal policies and engaging in genocidal actions. (We pointed out the genocidal nature of the US government in the 1960s, by the way.) The narrative has changed and the little people on the ground have changed it. It would be redundant to call Trump “Genocidal Donald.” Of course he is engaging in genocide! It is part of his job as President! Genocide Joe’s blame was based on his famous quote while he was still a Senator; “We should give Israel whatever aid we can because it is a good deal. They protect our interests in the Middle East.” When he became President, he followed through and committed the US to ALL of Israel’s efforts to grab more land and kill off or drive out all the Palestinians. Astute academics like John Mearsheimer take the position that Israel is controlling US foreign policy in the Mideast through the lobbying efforts of AIPAC. That narrative is called, “The tail wagging the dog.” (People may remember the 1997 Barry Levinson movie titled Wag the Dog, with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. This was a nuts and bolts Hollywood version of how this can be done.)
The salient point here is that the narrative has changed. And how did it change? Through astute analysis by the little people AND the commitment to follow through. Does a narrative change compare in any way, shape or form to actual bombs and bullets and bombing the shit out of innocent people? Yes it does, because the narrative is the driver of actions. If YOU hadn’t been shaped by a series of false narratives all your life, you would not support the stupid and evil actions of your government, whether it is the US, UK, France, Germany, etc. You certainly would not support genocide in Palestine. The people actually doing the bombing and building the weapons buy into this false narrative. One should note that some members of the IDF are starting to question the false narrative and refusing to serve. This kind of thing happened in the Vietnam War and helped defeat the Draft and changed the whole structure of the US military. Calling out the genocide in Israel supports the granular reaction inside the IDF and inside other institutions in Israel.
@Walter Haugen.
Without trying to sound too pessimistic, I agree with what you say but…………
It doesn’t really matter what us little people say or think or the narrative.
No-one will be prosecuted for their crimes. Either Israeli or their accomplices in the US/Europe.
(As no-one was prosecuted for the Vietnam war.)
Gaza and The West Bank will be annexed by Israel.
The Palestinians will be exiled.
No-one is going to stop it.
Arab states are too weak.
Europe doesn’t want to anger the US with NATO membership in doubt.
It’s not in China’s interest unless Iran is threatened. Taiwan is more of a priority.
Russia is busy elsewhere.
The UN? ICJ? ICC? I think not.
The US political system has been “infiltrated” by AIPAC and the wider “Zionist Lobby”. The genocide won’t be stopped from The White House. (They are supplying all the bombs)
The narrative may have changed and public opinion is shifting but it isn’t going to stop the outcome 🙁
The UK government will continue to arrest it’s pensioner/citizens for terrorism, for supporting Palestine Action. Regardless of how ridiculous their position becomes.
And all for the benefit of a foreign power.
Imagine the responce if there were an organisation called “The American Friends of Russia” that uses the funding of politicians in America to influence US foreign policy. The outcry of foreign State influence on internal US political affairs would be all over the media. Which incidentally is what the C.I.A do all the time.
As I’ve said before. What we see in Gaza isn’t anything new. Europeans have been doing this for 500 years with impunity. It’s just that we see it on our TVs now.
It’s why the rise of China is so fascinating. It’s been on the recieving end of European colonialism and is now in a position of strength.
Whilst the US is threatening the developing world with tariffs and ultimately violence, China is offering trade and cooperation.
BRICS is only going to grow.
US (Israeli) middle east policy will hit the buffers when it comes up against Iran/China.
Or the shit will really hit the fan!
Europe and The USA beware. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
I’m not sure it was anti war activists that ended the Vietnam War. More like, it was the bodybag count that changed minds. But then again, I wasn’t there. So who knows?
Yes, us “little people” can change the narrative AND sometimes policy. Historians now agree the Antiwar Movement forced Nixon and Congress to end the military draft. Historians also agree that the Antiwar Movement HELPED end the Vietnam War. Full faith and credit goes to the people of Vietnam and their military and civilian leaders. General Giap and Ho Chi Minh are the two leading figures, but there were many more. I was careful to say we ended the Draft but I did not say “we” ended the War. But we did help. I am quite proud that I was one of millions of Americans working to end the War and the Draft. In the summer of 1975 I got the Draft Resistance symbol – the omega – tattooed on my left shoulder. Every time I see it in the mirror it reminds me that, even though the Vietnam War has ended, there is still plenty to resist.
What I work on constantly is to change the narrative. Thus my regular comments on several websites as well as face-to-face interaction. I used to do a blog on Local Harvest fifteen years ago, but I didn’t like the pressure to keep blogging. Now I avail myself of the opportunities on other peoples’ blogs if I feel inspired AND if I think I can crack a few brains open. Chris doesn’t seem to mind. If he does pipe up I will stop. I used to spread the word on the Resilience site but they canceled me, even though my comments were cogent and well-informed.
To my mind, there are multiple ways to involve yourself in your local community, as well as the larger macroscopic sphere now available via the internet and social media. The thesis of my latest book is to use paradigms to figure out what to do to better both yourself and your community. And of course this requires action. My action plan for some time now has been to: 1) do research on landraces, 2) grow food and give it away to encourage alternate exchange systems, and 3) reduce my energy/carbon footprint dramatically.
It is okay to be pessimistic. Pessimism is just an iteration of realism.
I should probably add that one has to do the right thing – even if there is no payoff.
@Walter Haugen.
Total respect for your protesting the Vietnam war and the draft.
Must have been a difficult task with the US MSM against you all.
I guess the difference with Gaza is that US citizens don’t have any skin in the game. No G.Is coming home dead or loved ones being drafted.
US policy won’t be effected by activism at home and it is only US policy that will end the war. (If you can call it a war)
And just to add.
Israeli bombing of Qatar (with US backing) is a clear indication of what Israel (and the US) thinks of a negotiated settlement.