It all began with a tweet.
In October 2023, weeks after Israel began bombing Gaza, the writer Omar El Akkad shared a video showing a destroyed city street in Gaza.
El Akkad wrote, “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” The tweet went viral.
El Akkad, who was born in Egypt and grew up in Qatar and Canada, now lives in Lake Oswego. His previous novels, American War and What Strange Paradise, received significant critical acclaim. The New York Times called America War, “a disturbing parable about the ruinous consequences of war on ordinary civilians,” and BBC named it one of the 100 most influential novels of all time. What Strange Paradise won the 2021 Giller Prize, an Oregon Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize.
Now, what began within the constraints of 280 characters has become a blazing and feral work of nonfiction. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is El Akkad is at his most exacting. The book is the story of El Akkad’s immigration to the West, his lessons in hypocrisy working as a staff reporter for a paper in Canada and reporting on some of the biggest conflicts of the past two decades, and an evisceration of the entire concept of empire.
In advance of the book’s publication on February 25 and an appearance by El Akkad at Seattle Public Library – Central Library, we spoke with the author about his new work, the performative aspect of caring, and the pressure to forget.
I put off reading your book for as long as possible because I was scared of how distressing I might find it, but when I ended up reading it, it did not feel distressing. It actually felt relieving. To have the hypocrisy called out so clearly. Was there relief in writing this book, and getting to talk directly about this thing everyone is pretending isn’t happening?
I don’t know that I’ve felt anything like relief in the last year and a half. I’ve seen too many images of children slaughtered, entire families wiped out, the worst things human beings can do to one another, done over and over again. What I feel, overwhelmingly, I think, is shame. I’m the one who killed those kids. My tax dollars paid for it. How did it come to be that I and so many people I share this society with have become so well-versed in looking away from horror?
You have said that your first novel, American War, was an allegory for Israel and Palestine, but the reception discussed it solely as a book about America and American politics. Is that misconception part of what motivated you to write this book?
I’ve come to terms with that chasm between the American War I wrote and the American War most people on this side of the planet read. Ironically, I’m now braced for the likelihood that an opposite chasm will come to define this book: It’s going to be received as a book primarily about Palestine, but Palestinians can tell their own stories (and have been telling their own stories, even if so many in the West refuse to listen). In my mind, this book is very much about here, about the empire.
What is the experience of writing a book that is so timely about a moment that will soon be erased from public memory?
I don’t know if I’ve written an important book, or even a good one, but what drove me through the writing process was the expectation (as has certainly been the case in previous atrocities, most recently the horror of the war on terror years) that soon we will be told that this was all very long ago, and we need to just move on.
The next few years, I think, will be defined by a kind of mass exhaustion—not only with respect to the slaughter of Palestinians, but what is about to happen and in some cases has been happening to migrants, trans folks, anyone the prevailing systems of power were never intended to serve. If only as a kind of psychological self-defense, we will all be tempted to just forget any of this ever happened. It’s understandable, and yet we need to do everything in our power to fight against it.
The ceasefire of January 2025 seems to be the perfect performative opportunity for US politicians. Is this really the heart of what you mean by One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This? That this is all just performative?
I think the underlying commonality between capitalism and colonialism is an endless appetite for taking. The most tangible things are taken first: the land, the resources, the lives of those who oppose the taking of the land, and the resources. But there are other kinds of taking that come later, and one of the very last is the taking of narrative. Empires are very good at the performance of shame and contrition once all the horror is over, but this too is a kind of theft. It’s the taking of someone’s very real grief and saying, well after it’s too late to do anything meaningful about it, that this grief is mine now, too. It’s land acknowledgments after the land is taken, memoirs from Gulf War veterans about how sad it made them to kill all those Brown people. We’ve seen it all before, and long after the bones of thousands of dead Palestinians are pulled out from under the rubble, we’ll see it again.
In the last chapter, you seem to be pulled toward two conclusions—that we may come to acknowledge what we did in Gaza and even come to regret it, or we may just forget about it. But isn’t there a third option: that this is who we actually are? That the polite liberal stance just collapses under the weight of this hypocrisy and that Trumpism isn’t the peak of some reaction to it, but merely the beginning of a new era of Imperial America? As I write this, we just nominated a Secretary of Defense who once chanted “Kill all Muslims.” Maybe this is America without the hypocrisy.
I think you might be right. But I should say, as much as the last 15 months have caused me to lose any shred of respect for or faith in the vast majority of the West’s political, academic, cultural, and corporate institutions, I’ve also been deeply inspired by what so many individuals have done in the face of this nightmare. I’ve watched college kids put their whole futures on the line for justice; I’ve watched people chain themselves to the gates of weapons manufacturers, shipworkers’ unions refuse to load missiles onto the boats.
So yes, maybe this is exactly what we are, or maybe it’s just what we’ve allowed ourselves to become, and if that’s the case, maybe we can allow ourselves to become something better than this.
Omar El Akkad will discuss his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This with Ijeoma Oluo at Seattle Public Library – Central Library, Thursday, February 27.
This story was originally published by our sister paper, Portland Mercury.
“… soon
we will be told
that this was all very
long ago, and we need to just move on.”
who
Here
resembles
that Remark?
our
pro-Empire
builders, manifesting
our Destiny on the Lives
of ‘lesser’ human beings for
profits — think ‘Prosperity Jesus’
who wants the
Same Things
as You
want.
it’s
all very
Convenient.
oh, well:
let’s move on.
we’ve got Bombs
to drop on more
Civilians.
whoopee.
THANK YOU
@the Stranger.
Looks like the Stranger, the author, and the Stranger’s sympathetic commenters have not at all resisted their urge to forget 10/7 — and, ever since, Hamas’ ongoing efforts at killing civilians in both Israel and Gaza.
In Orwell’s novel, everyone had always been against everything the Party now opposes. Winston Smith had fear of Room 101 to keep him rewriting history. What’s the Stranger’s excuse?
Israeli atrocities
did Not begin
on Oct 8th
but one’d
Never know it
if wormmy was
running the Show
our ‘dear’ Wormtongue
re-writing History
since Day One
call him
mr AIPAC
you’ll Not
be Wrong.
and all this
just to keep
one mf outta
fucking Prison
was
it Worth
it wormmy?
@4: “Israeli atrocities
did Not begin
on Oct 8th”
Hamas’ atrocities did not end on Oct. 8th. Yet you bitterly complain whenever anyone mentions this. (Why, it’s almost like someday, you’re going to say it was all in the past, and we should just move on…)
“but one’d
Never know it…”
Of course, you reflexively accuse others of using your own dishonest tactics. (You give no examples, though.)
Turns out the author is wrong. No matter what atrocities are inflicted on the Palestinians tensorna for one will never have been against it.
@6: The author pulls one set of events completely out of context. Kristof’ complains when I supply that context. Who’s forgetting what here?
Does the author object to children kidnapped, held hostage, and dying in captivity? No, so by your logic, he’s just fine with all of that.
@6
Bingo.
not
at least
whilst bibi’s
STILL walking
Fawking FREE.
wormy
can con-
textualize
ANYTHING:
just give
him enough
fucking Pixels.
all a’ that
Brainpower
in Service to
the Dark Tower.
sad!
see also:
Joe Sacco’s bril-
liant graphic novel
“Footnotes in Gaza”
see also: his “Palestine.”
you
should
Too, wormmy.
@9, @10: I find it entirely unsurprising your metaphor for understanding modern reality comes from an adolescent fantasy story, written eighty years ago by an ivory tower academic. Ditto your use of comic books as legitimate sources of information.
Meanwhile, the adult world grinds ever onward, full of uncertainties, complications, and complexities — none of which sully your simplistic worldview.
@4 “and all this
just to keep
one mf outta
fucking Prison”
This may be part of Netanyahu’s motives but colonizing greater Palestine always was the goal of hardline Zionists who never agreed with the 2 states solution
“Ditto
your use
of comic books as
legitimate sources of information.”
ah
wormmy
you make
Big Joke! that
they have Pics doth
Not make them ‘Comic.’
read ’em
and Weep.
(oops! I forgot
to whom I
was spea-
king).
See:
fucking
Palestine.
@12 — bingo.
bibi rode their
wave of Aquisition
to a life Outside of Prison.
@12: The Palestinian Jews accepted the UN’s proposed two-state solution. The Palestinian Arabs rejected it by force. (How’s that working out for them?)
I’ll concede your point, though: the most extreme hard-core Zionists hold opinions every bit as offensive as those the Palestinians’ leaders have long considered ordinary.
@13: Can you even recall the last time you read something you didn’t agree with, written by someone other than a Slog commenter — who you called names for having written it?
@15
hey
wormmy
Wormtongue
wasn’t My idea
it was a Suggestion,
by JRR, Himself,
who recom-
mended
it to
Me
&
we
Both
agree:
the shoe
Fits & You
must Wear it.
I can do this
All Day.
@16: I never wrote, nor implied, you’d ever had an idea. (See? I can do this all day, too!)
I wasn’t referring to the piece of intellectual property you’ve stolen for your name-calling. (I certainly couldn’t possibly care less about your delusional justification for your stealing from a dead man.) I was referring to your use of “Dark Tower” @9. It was your way of back-handedly admitting that anything more nuanced than straight-up Good vs. Evil must simply fail to register with you.
@17
ah
Yes
nuance
nuancing
bibi’s way to
Genocide by any
other name’s gotta be
a balm to your ‘conscience.’
you should Go
to Omar El Akkad’s talk
Today! at Seattle Public Library –
Central Library, Thursday, February 27.
you could likely
Teach Him a
thing or
Two
wormmy.
@15 oh the people who flooded into the region from other countries and started a terror campaign against the existing government accepted a proposal to grant them half of the territory, and the people who had already been living there didn’t? Astonishing.
Here
Let’s do This
the wormmy way
to call an illustrated novella
showing the Reality of Gaza
a fucking ‘Comic Book’
shows off your ai sock-
ing bott’s same sense
of right-wing ‘humor.’
Why do
You Gotta take
Your frustrations
Out on Gazans’ Lives
Are they just
cartoon characters
to your Types & Ilks?
show us some
Humanity for
gawd’s sake
here @tS
can you
not?
@15 The UN never said that Israel could ethnically cleansed almost 1 million Palestinians and destroy 100’s of Palestinian villages in 1948. Looks like Palestinians who said no knew all along what the Zionists were up to.
Hardliner expansionists have had a prominent role in Israeli politics since the beginning (cue the ethnic cleansing of 1948, annexation of the Golan heights, continuous occupation of West Bank and Gaza for ~50 years, etc )
@19: As already explained elsewhere, the Ottoman Empire had restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine for the last half-century of Ottoman rule. That’s why the number of Jews in what had once been Israel was so small. After the First World War, there were many large movements of populations across many territories, due to the war causing the fall of empires which had once non-consensually ruled those territories (the Ottoman Empire ruling Palestine was but one example).
It’s pretty funny: when placed in historical context, your argument from population figures actually becomes an argument for external imperial rule imposed over the voiceless inhabitants of Palestine, and for that empire imposing anti-Jewish policies upon Jerusalem. It’s not about local self-determination at all, but rather the opposite.
@20: “to call an illustrated novella
showing the Reality of Gaza
a fucking ‘Comic Book’”
By definition, a “novella” is a work of fiction. Interesting, how you cite works of fiction as valid sources of information about ‘Reality’. Why not just cite facts?
(Oh, wait…)
@21: You’re just never going to admit six Arab countries illegally sent their armies into Palestine in 1948, eh? (How’d that unprovoked armed invasion work out, again?) And when Syria controlled the Golan Heights, they used it for attacks upon Israel. Turns out that when you use a territory as a springboard for attacking a neighbor, the targets of your attacks might just take that territory away from you. (You just hate it when the intended victims of armed aggression fight back, don’t you?)
@22 the surrounding Arab countries attacked primarily because of the Deir Yassin massacre, which was basically the equal opposite of 10/7. I don’t know if you’re ignorant or just hopelessly biased but everything you’re mad at Hamas for was previously done by the Irgun, which eventually became Likud, and it’s fundamentally inconsistent to argue the IDF’s recent actions in Gaza are entirely justified but the Arab countries’ conduct in 1948 was “unprovoked” and “illegal.” Israel was born out of the exact same type of terrorism you’re permanently incensed about now and its current leaders are the direct ideological descendants of the Jewish version of Hamas. You are a base hypocrite.
“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural, we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”
David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel
how
DARE
you throw
Israel’s OWN
WORDS Back at
the Wormtongue, ab?
gird up for another
300-500 Word Salad/Just-
ification for Genocide/War Crimes
from our resident AIPAC Representative
due back here
at c. 7am EST.
poor
wormwmy
said he could
“do this All Day!”
I hope he hasn’t
fallen into the
terlet again
🛴🔨,
wouldja
Mind checkin’
in on your Master?
we’re gettin’ a little
Worried here
@23: “…Deir Yassin massacre, which was basically the equal opposite of 10/7.”
That statement is so far from reality, it can’t even qualify as wrong.
In November 1947, the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 181 (“Res’ 181”) endorsed the Partition Plan for Palestine. It was to have an Arab State, a Jewish State, and Jerusalem as an international city. The Palestinian Jews accepted Res’ 181; the Palestinian Arabs rejected it. Their already-simmering conflict boiled over into full-out war, and an ugly war of terror it was, with each side massacring the other side’s civilians in vicious cycles of retaliation. (Officially, the first massacre of the war was committed by the Arab side, but even this came in retaliation for an earlier Jewish massacre of Arabs, prior to Res’ 181.)
The Dier Yassin massacre (9 April 1948) came over a month before the end of Mandatory Palestine (14 May). Per the atrociously cruel pattern of the war, it was followed three days later by a retaliatory Arab massacre of Jewish medical personnel. Over a month later, armies of Arab states invaded as the Mandate ended.
‘…the Arab countries’ conduct in 1948 was “unprovoked” and “illegal.”‘
It was. In accordance with the dismal rules of that conflict, the Dier Yassin massacre had already been avenged by a retaliatory slaughter, and the Mandate had expired. The UN’s proposed Jewish State was now the sovereign State of Israel, and the invasion was without legal justification. The countries which invaded Israel had no citizens there to protect, and the excuse of shared ethnicity had been exposed as a legal fraud in the Sudetenland, a decade earlier.
My reasons for mentioning this illegal invasion were (a) ‘bob never does, and (b) much of the dislocation caused by the war can be attributed to it. No one here has challenged that latter point.
@25: You seem pretty sure ‘bob has quoted Ben-Gurion’s words correctly. Yet, as you yourself have now told us on multiple occasions, he’s gotten your own words completely wrong. If ‘bob decides to provide a citation, we can discuss; otherwise, I’ll consider him exactly as much an authority on Ben-Gurion’s words as he is on yours.
@27 a lot of words just to say “I don’t know what I’m talking about”
@28 fucking
Bingo. the Worm-
tongue can argue
Anything 6 different
ways, weave his tall tales
& pretend He believes them
“Yet,
as you
yourself
have now
told us on mul-
tiple occasions, he’s got-
ten your own words completely wrong.”
on ‘multiple occasions’?
yes. if by ‘multiple’
you mean
fucking
Twice
but you were
never on for Ex-
aggeration, were
ya wormmy? much
like the djt, full of hyper-
bole braggadocio & mendacity
glad
to See
you’ve ex-
tricated your-
sell from your
terlet. we were
all That worried
to quote
Sam.
Long Live
LOTR!
@28: If you want to support your claim, “…the Deir Yassin massacre … was basically the equal opposite of 10/7,” then go right ahead and do so. Otherwise, assertions made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
@27, @26:
“on ‘multiple occasions’?
yes. if by ‘multiple’
you mean
fucking
Twice”
Yes, that’s one meaning of “multiple.” Good work! Gold star! ‘bob did indeed pack so many false statements into one comment, you needed multiple comments to debunk them.
Now, about your other ‘word problems’:
‘said he could
“do this All Day!”‘
Yes, my operative word was “can,” not “must,” “will,” or “shall.” If I have time for this method of amusement, I might avail myself of it. Otherwise, I guess you’ll just go on (and on, and on, and on…) without me. (At least we know where your head will be when I’m not here, i.e. the place you’ve already mentioned multiple times.)
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
Nope, we’ll still be for it! Arab armies and Arab militias have been trying to erase Israel by force of arms time and again since 1948. They’ve gotten their asses kicked each time, and justly so! 😄
You’d think Omer al-Akkad, as an Egyptian, would recognize that the Arabs do have another path available, one that his own country has chosen to follow for decades: a peace treaty with Israel, a permanent end to terrorism and self-defeating jihad.
It’s up to the Arabs themselves how many times they want to get rocked before they finally admit that Israel isn’t going anywhere … and justly so, given the Jews’ unbroken, unceded 3,000-year history on the land, far exceeding the recent emergence of such modern-day identities as “Palestinian” and “Jordanian!” 😄
@30
hmmm.
so why don’t
they call duplexes
‘multiplexes’ wormmy?
does that mean we ‘can’ call
your duplicitousness ‘multiplicitousness’?
or just plain ole ‘multiduplicitousnesses’?
like I said
you ‘can’ argue
the excreta outta worms
the castings out of ole wormmy
but Never the mendacities outta the Wormtongue.
so
Glad
to see
you ‘avoided’
the sewers once again
and made your way back to sully
The Ben-Gurion quote is out of historian Benny Morris’s 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. A simple search will show this is correct. Tensorna knows it, which is the reason why he went silent for a day without asking for a citation
Dishonest Tensorna doesn’t want to engage about the citation because it is prima facie evidence that Zionists always knew they were engaged in settler colonialism that involved a forceful land grab. I have already cited 2 other prominent historical Zionists saying similar things (Jabotinsky and Moshe Dayan) and our resident APAiC propagandists pretty much fell silent at that time too
Tensor has been caught multiple times in outright lies so of course he is using an error I made (multiple search engines didn’t deliver accurate results for a The Stranger archive search) to dismiss inconvenient truths.
Historian Benny Morris cites Goldmann, Nahum (1978). The Jewish Paradox: “Why should arabs make peace ,,”
https://archive.org/details/jewishparadox0000gold/page/99/mode/1up?q=%22Why+should+the+Arabs+make+peace%3F%22
Nahum Goldmann (Hebrew: נחום גולדמן; July 10, 1895 – August 29, 1982) was a leading Zionist. He was a founder of the World Jewish Congress and its president from 1951 to 1978 and was also president of the World Zionist Organization from 1956 to 1968.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahum_Goldmann
@31 The best science shows that Palestinians descend from people who have occupied Palestine since the Bronze age: recent studies since 2017[24][25] have found that Palestinians, and other Levantine people, are primarily descended from ancient Levantines present in what is today Israel and Palestine, dating back at least 3700 years.[26]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians
@33-35: A fabricated quote with a long pedigree is still a fabricated quote, lol.
Here, though, is a real quote from Ben-Gurion:
“This is our native land; it is not as birds of passage that we return to it. … Come what may, we will not surrender our right to free Aliyah, to rebuild our shattered Homeland, to claim statehood. If we are attacked, we will fight back. But we will do everything in our power to maintain peace, and establish a Cupertino gainful to both. It is now, here and now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry and the destined Jewish State and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals.”
Beautiful words. So sad that the Arabs didn’t go for it. Well, some Arabs have, and maybe the rest will someday follow. 😃 Peace will come when the Arabs are ready. 😉
@36: lol, the ancient ancestors of the Palestinians didn’t think of themselves as Palestinians. They thought of themselves as members of other nations. They wouldn’t have known what a “Palestinian” even was. By contrast, the ancient ancestors of the Jews were always simply Jews. The continuous Jewish history in Israel vastly predates that of the Palestinians, it’s over 3,000 years on the Jewish side versus something like 100 years on the Palestinian side.
Palestine is a young nation, deal with it. 😃 It doesn’t mean the Palestinian nation has no rights, it does. Young nations are also nations, lol. But the idea that this young nation’s new claim eclipses the ancient and unbroken claim of the Jews is pure anti-semitism. If it was any other group but Jews, you’d see it too. 😉
@37 Thumpus blowhard on the internet called the quote fabricated, so we should all believe him of course. He also calls a liar Nahum Goldmann who was a leading Zionist, the founder of the World Jewish Congress and its president from 1951 to 1978 and was also president of the World Zionist Organization from 1956 to 1968.[1]
How convenient ….
@38 Denying the right to self determination to the occupiers of Palestine (what it was called is irrelevant) for 3700 years is the very definition of racism
@39: lol, you might want to re-read that Ben-Gurion quote I gave you—the actual quote, documented in the historic record, not the quote his political opponent Nahum Goldmann put in his mouth after he was dead. You seem to have missed the part of the actual quote where Ben-Gurion explicitly calls for Arab sovereignty on equal terms with the sovereignty of the Jews. 😄
The Zionists aren’t the bad guys here, buddy, it’s the antizionists who are. 😉 I understand you don’t like to see yourself that way, but you’ve gone down a very dark hole when it comes to Jewish and Israeli issues. Take my hand, I’ll pull you back out. 😘
@40 Your citation is vague enough to mean anything.
As if the recollection of one of the founders of the most powerful Zionist organizations wasn’t historic record.
the descendants of the Bronze age population of Palestine have the right to self determination. Denying it is racism.
@33: “…which is the reason why he went silent for a day without asking for a citation…”
I didn’t ask for a citation because it was your job to provide one with the quote. You still haven’t done this, for the simple reason thumpus gave @40: there’s no solid evidence Ben-Gurion ever wrote or said it.
As even wikipedia could easily have told you, the source of that quote is not anything Ben-Gurion himself ever wrote or was recorded saying, but merely a claim by Nahum Goldmann, years after Ben-Gurion’s death, that Ben-Gurion had said it to him in private. “Goldmann reported that Ben Gurion had told him in private in 1956…” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion#cite_note-76) Your attempts to bluster your way past this lack of evidence, @33, @34, @35, and @39, don’t in any way change this. They do, however, tell us how far you’re willing to go to support a claim you wish to believe, even when you have no solid evidence for the truth of it.
As that same wikipedia article shows, Goldmann’s purported quote actually sits at odds with other statements Ben-Gurion made on the topic, e.g. “We must start working in Jaffa. Jaffa must employ Arab workers. And there is a question of their wages. I believe that they should receive the same wage as a Jewish worker. An Arab has also the right to be elected president of the state, should he be elected by all.”
“…(multiple search engines didn’t deliver accurate results for a The Stranger archive search)…”
Yeah, you already told us, the dog ate your Google. (There’s a search box at the top of this very page, so perhaps you could have used that to find stuff at the Stranger?) And your quarrel is with Kristo’, not me. Here’s your comment wherein you made your false claims; in the two comments which immediately follow it, Kristo’ schools you on the facts. If you have a problem with that, then please take it to him. (https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/01/29/79896661/slog-am-trump-is-flooding-the-zone-sue-rahr-has-her-last-day-as-police-chief-bob-kettle-melts-down/comments/60)
@41: “the descendants of the Bronze age population of Palestine have the right to self determination. Denying it is racism.”
The Jews themselves are the descendants of the “Bronze Age population of Palestine.” 😁 You’re quite correct that denying them the right to self-determination would be racism. That’s why antizionism is racism! 😂
QED, and by your own standard no less! I love it! 🤣
Zionism has always made space for Arab self-determination. (Again, read Ben-Gurion, I implore you, lol!) After all, there are already so many, many Arab states, I suppose one more Arab state won’t hurt! 😄 Sadly, it is the Arabs themselves who have chosen war, again and again and again, including most recently October 7. Palestinian statehood would be light-years ahead if they could ever just bring themselves to put down the rockets and suicide vests! Oh well, they’ll get there someday, the easy way or the hard way! 😄
from:
Ralph Nader Radio Hour
Why The Palestinians
Will Never Give Up
Ralph welcomes acclaimed investigative report, Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News to give us his report on the state of the ceasefire in Gaza, why both sides tend to undercount the deaths and casualties, the nature of the October 7th assault, and the threat of a wider war with Iran.
Plus, Ralph responds to a DOGE supporter,
who on social media called him a hypocrite.
Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
He was one of the founding editors of The Intercept and he is co-founder (with Ryan Grim) of Drop Site News, a non-aligned, investigative news organization dedicated to exposing the crimes of the powerful — particularly in overt and secret conflicts where the U.S. government is playing a key role.
fucking Oodles:
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/why-the-palestinians-will-never-give
forgive our
AIPAC reps
if they must
Shoot these
Messengers
[figuratively]
otherwise, they
don’t get any
Dinner.
kinda like
Gazans who’ve
been given Almost
Enough calories to sus-
tain Life – and That was pre-
bibi’s horrific & Ongoing Genocide.
post- this so-called
‘War’ on Palestinians,
they’re damn Lucky to
Get ANY food or water or
medical care; Education, et al
you know, the fucking Essentials?
@44: As I won’t give Nader clicks, could you please tell us exactly what the Palestinians won’t “give up”? If they won’t “give up” their goal of their own independent state, that’s great and I support their goal, but if they also won’t “give up” their dream of getting it by wiping Israel off of the map, then I’ll just have to hope they enjoy another 75 continuous years of total failure.
Do tell.
“This story was originally published by our sister paper, Portland Mercury.”
So I headed over to the Portland Mercury, and guess what I found? A user account under the name “Kristofarian” who has posted more than a thousand inane, misformatted rants in the comments! 😆
Dude, don’t tell me you haunt the comments sections of TWO DIFFERENT alternative newspapers, ha ha ha! One of them is from a town you don’t even live in! 😂🤣😂🤣
@42 “I didn’t ask for a citation”
by opposition to the numerous times when you asked me for a citation. You aren’t fooling anybody because everyone knows that you’d ask for a citation if you thought you could prove me wrong. Since you can’t do that you decided to deny the quote. Classic weasel move.
“there’s no solid evidence Ben-Gurion ever wrote or said it.”
Says you and the other resident internet blowhard who have no competence in the matter versus hard core Zionist Goldman and esteemed historian Benny Morris
” Goldmann’s purported quote actually sits at odds with other statements Ben-Gurion made on the topic”
No it doesn’t. Noting that Israeli stole Palestinian land is not at odd with saying that Arab workers should be paid fairly. Your unsubstantiated assertions are not evidence of anything.
@43 “Zionism has always made space for Arab self-determination”
That is certainly not true. The repeated instances of ethnic cleansing and annexations show exactly the opposite.
The Palestinian Jews (~5% of population in ~1900) who lived without interruption in Palestine have a right to self-determination similar to that of Palestinian Arabs but 20th century immigrants to Israel (almost all Israelis) don’t.
@47: “The Palestinian Jews (~5% of population in ~1900) who lived without interruption in Palestine have a right to self-determination similar to that of Palestinian Arabs but 20th century immigrants to Israel (almost all Israelis) don’t.”
Wrong. Not just wrong but racist. 😅 The right to self-determination accrues at the level of the nation, not the level of the individual. The 3,000-year continuous presence of the Jews of Israel, however great or few their number over the centuries, represent the unbroken, unceded claim of the entire Jewish nation. A Jew is a Jew, regardless of which continent he or she is born. As a Jew, he or she partakes in the Jewish national claim to Israel, regardless of skin color or country of origin.
This is indigeneity 101. I’m surprised a self-identified progressive has to be lectured on this stuff. If it was any other group than Jews, it would be obvious to you. 😘
@48 Laughable. People who only have a historical and intellectual connection to a land through very distant ancestors (more than 40 generations distant) do not have greater right to that land than the people who have actually lived there continuously for more than 60 generations. I dare to say that it is capitalism 101 beside one of basic fairness. I suspect you are somewhat familiar with it.
Two more Ben-Gurion quotes. The first one substantiates the Goldmann citation above
“But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. Militarily, it is we who are on the defensive who have the upper hand … but in the political sphere they are superior. The land, the villages, the mountains, the roads are in their hands. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside. They defend bases which are theirs, which is easier than conquering new bases… let us not think that the terror is a result of Hitler’s or Mussolini’s propaganda — this helps but the source of opposition is there among the Arabs.”
Address at the Mapai Political Committee (7 June 1938) as quoted in Flapan, Simha, Zionism and the Palestinians.
The 2nd quote shows that Zionists always wanted to colonize greater Palestine:
“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan [now the West bank]: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”
Speech in 1937, accepting a British proposal for partition of Palestine which created a potential Jewish majority state, as quoted in New Outlook (April 1977)