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Macklemore’s Understanding of Palestinian History Beats Hillary Clinton’s
Her recent placing of all the blame on the Palestinians is typical of inside-the-Beltway Goy Zionism, and is profoundly ahistorical.
May 11, 2024
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered herself of some ahistorical and distorted remarks about Palestine on Morning Joe, maintaining that the young people protesting the Gaza atrocities do not know history.
Ms. Clinton’s self-serving description of the 2000 Camp David process has been debunked by many historians. In fact, her husband Bill Clinton promised in the Oslo Accords in 1993 that Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank by 1997. He then allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage that process and allowed the Israelis to double the number of squatters they sent in to the Palestinian West Bank to steal property and terrorize people. When Netanyahu went out and Ehud Barak came in, Clinton sponsored negotiations, but Barak was maddeningly vague about what he would offer and never produced a text that Yasser Arafat could sign. It is not clear why Arafat needed to sign anything more; he already signed the Oslo treaty, which should have resulted in an Israeli withdrawal that never came. Soon thereafter Barak lost to Ariel Sharon, who was as determined to sabotage any land for peace deal as Netanyahu had been, and he wrecked the whole process.
Her placing of all the blame on the Palestinians is typical of inside-the-Beltway Goy Zionism, and is profoundly ahistorical. The young people can’t be fooled by these glib words. They see what they see.
I have also never understood the trope that Israel made generous offers to the Palestinians (it never did) but that the Palestinians rejected them, and therefore the Palestinians should be deprived of all their basic rights forever. What is this, an Original Sin doctrine? If the negotiations of 2000 fell through, why couldn’t they have been picked back up in 2001? It is because the Israelis wouldn’t pick them back up, and went on to steal vast swathes of private Palestinian property and to brutalize the occupied population.
That is, in understanding these events, values as well as historical understanding are important, and I fear the Clintons have never had much of either.
In contrast, Irish American rapper Macklemore (Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, b. 1983) dropped his single, “Hind’s Hall,” on May 10. He is donating the proceeds to United Nations relief work in Gaza.
It may be the most powerful anti-war statement in music since Bob Dylan’s protest songs in the early 1960s against the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And the song displays a firm knowledge of what exactly has been done in history to the Palestinians.
The reference is to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, which students occupied briefly and renamed “Hind’s Hall.”
Hind Rajab was a Palestinian little girl who got into her uncle’s car in northern Gaza on January 29, along with her aunt and four cousins, to head south, which the Israeli military said was a “safe zone” (that was a lie). Under the shockingly inhumane Israeli rules of engagement, unlike anything in any civilized democracy, the car was fair game just because it was in motion out in the open. Israeli pilots and tank and artillery commanders appear to make no effort at all to avoid killing civilians, explaining why they have murdered over 40,000 people from the air (over 34,000 confirmed and thousands more under the rubble). The car was hit, and everyone was killed but the five-year-old Hind. Her cousin had tried calling the Red Crescent rescuers, but then she died of her wounds. Hind called them back herself, in an incredible feat for a wounded child surrounded by the corpses of her loved ones. She was asked by the operator, what about your relatives. “They’re dead,” Hind replied.
The call went like this:
HIND RAJAB: [translated] Come take me. You will come and take me?
RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Do you want me to come and take you?
HIND RAJAB: [translated] I’m so scared. Please come. Please call someone to come and take me.
The Red Crescent Society, the Middle Eastern branch of the Red Cross, got permission from the Israeli military to send two rescuers. They appear, however, to have been hit by an Israeli tank shell not far from Hind’s position. She spent the last four hours of her life bleeding out.
There are no Hamas operatives in this story. It is a tale not just of reckless disregard for civilian life but of the deliberate targeting by the Israeli army of civilians. The Red Crescent ambulance was clearly marked, and the society had gotten Israeli permission to rescue Hind, but they were murdered anyway. This is not an error. It is systematic sadism.
So the student protesters at Columbia University named Hamilton Hall after Hind (rhymes with “wind”), who did not live to celebrate her sixth birthday. She joined some 15,000 dead Palestinian children casually wiped off the face of the Earth by Israeli war criminals. The student protesters were themselves assaulted by police and arrested.
Macklemore’s lyrics celebrate the bravery and determination of the campus demonstrators:
The people, they won’t leave
What is threatenin’ about divesting and wantin’ peace?
The problem isn’t the protests, it’s what they’re protesting
It goes against what our country is funding
(Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free
(Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free
The first stanza implicitly contrasts the threats issued by campus administrators and municipal authorities with the peaceful demands of the students. It also highlights the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, which proclaims itself a supporter of liberty, in keeping Palestinians stateless and unfree.
The second stanza slams the role of the police in protecting property rather than persons, on behalf of a system of white supremacy. Macklemore here implicitly draws a parallel between the Black Lives Matter movement and these protests for Palestinian rights:
Actors in badges protecting property
And a system that was designed by white supremacy (Brrt)
But the people are in the streets
He goes on to slam Meta (Facebook and Instagram) for having been “paid off” to suppress news about Palestine. (I actually don’t think Meta was paid off to do this, it is just something management wanted to do.) He then criticizes the politicians who take money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which serves Israeli interests in shaping the U.S. government.
The so-called “land of the free,” he complains, is beset by fear-peddling. The new generation, however, is not taking it. Nothing, not banning TikTok and not using algorithms to hide the atrocities, can now make the youths unsee what they saw.
But it’s too late, we’ve seen the truth, we bear witness
Seen the rubble, the buildings, the mothers and the children
He insists on the frame of white supremacy for the denial to Palestinians of the right to resist being occupied and subjected to ethnic cleansing. That right is granted only depending on “dollars” and “the color of your pigment,” he says.
He blasts the claim that it is antisemitic to be anti-Zionist, saying
I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and ridin’ in
Solidarity and screamin’ “Free Palestine” with them
Organizin’, unlearnin’ , and finally cuttin’ ties with
A state that’s gotta rely on an apartheid system
To uphold an occupyin’ violent
He agrees with many Palestinians that the Israeli project of ethnic cleansing—that began with the Nakba or catastrophic expulsion of over half of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948—has never really ended.
History been repeating for the last seventy-five
The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied (Woo)
He wonders if it is really more of a challenge to law and order for students to set up tents on a campus lawn than for Israel to commit genocide, a set of war crimes in which the president of the United States is deeply entangled:
Where does genocide land in your definition, huh? (Hey; hey)
Destroyin’ every college in Gaza and every mosque
Pushin’ everyone into Rafah and droppin’ bombs
The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all
And fuck no, I’m not votin’ for you in the fall (Woo)
Undecided
He also calls out his colleagues in the music industry:
Yet the music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence (Hey, woo)
He acknowledges that if he was on a label he might well be dropped, but he says he would be fine with that.
What you willin’ to risk? What you willin’ to give?
What if you were in Gaza? What if those were your kids?
If the West was pretendin’ that you didn’t exist
You’d want the world to stand up and the students finally did, let’s get it (Woo)
Macklemore’s historical understanding runs rings around that of Ms. Clinton.
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Netanyahu's Bold Boast: 'Proud' to Thwart Palestinian State Creation
'Netanyahu not just admitting to monumental deception but gloating about it'
Dec 17, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was "proud" of preventing the creation of a Palestinian state during a press conference in Tel Aviv Saturday night.
Speaking alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, Netanyahu claimed that he had halted the progression of the Oslo peace process, which began in 1993, calling the Oslo Accords "a fateful mistake" and said the results of the “little Palestinian state in Gaza” brought about by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 demonstrated the danger of allowing Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank.
The Oslo Accords were an agreement signed by Israel and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) that saw the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza as part of a process that was meant to lead to a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Netanyahu's comments come after several Israeli officials said that there would be no two-state solution following the end of Israel's indiscriminate war on Gaza, which has destroyed much of the occupied territory and killed at least 18,800 Palestinians, primarily women and children, in Israeli attacks since October 7, according to the territory's health ministry.
Israel's right-wing ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, answered "absolutely no" when asked during an interview on Sky News last Wednesday about whether a two-state solution would arise following the end of the Gaza War. "Israel knows today, and the world should know now that the reason the Oslo Accords failed is because the Palestinians never wanted to have a state next to Israel," Hotovely said.
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'A Hate Crime': Oslo Pride Parade Canceled After Deadly Shooting at Gay Bar
A 42-year-old gunman has been charged with terrorism following what Norway's prime minister called a "terrible and deeply shocking attack on innocent people."
Jun 25, 2022
A 42-year-old gunman was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder, and terrorist acts on Saturday after he killed two people and injured 21 during an overnight shooting rampage in and around an Oslo gay bar--just hours before the city was supposed to hold its annual Pride parade.
"My first thought was that Pride was the target, so that's frightening."
"There is reason to think that this may be a hate crime," Norwegian police said. "We are investigating whether... Pride was a target in itself or whether there are other motives."
In the wake of what Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called a "terrible and deeply shocking attack on innocent people," Oslo's annual Pride celebration was canceled based on police advice.
"We will soon be proud and visible again, but today, we will share our Pride celebrations from home," Inger Kristin Haugsevje, leader of Oslo Pride, and Inge Alexander Gjestvang, leader of the Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity, said in a statement.
As Reutersreported, "The attack took place in the early hours of Saturday, with victims shot inside and outside the London Pub, a longstanding hub of Oslo's LGBTQ scene, as well as in the surrounding streets and at one other bar in the center of the Norwegian capital."
Bili Blum-Jansen, who was inside the London Pub at the time, sought refuge in the basement, hiding there alongside 80 to 100 other people.
"Many called their partners and family, it felt almost as if they were saying goodbye," he told Norway's TV2. "Others helped calm down those who were extremely terrified."
"I had a bit of panic and thought that if the shooter or shooters were to arrive, we'd all be dead," he added. "There was no way out."
Marcus Nybakken, who had left the London Pub shortly before gunfire erupted and returned later to help, recounted the horrific shooting and its aftermath.
"Many people were crying and screaming, the injured were screaming, people were distressed and scared--very, very scared," Nybakken said. "My first thought was that Pride was the target, so that's frightening."
Although the city's Pride parade was canceled as a result of the attack, Reuters reported that "several thousand people began what appeared to be a spontaneous march in central Oslo, waving rainbow flags and chanting in English: 'We're here, we're queer, we won't disappear.'"
The suspect was detained minutes after the shooting began, according to police who said they believe he acted alone. Two weapons, one of them a fully automatic gun, were retrieved from the crime scene, they added.
National security authorities raised Norway's terrorism threat assessment to its highest level following the attack.
Norway's law enforcement officials, who are not usually armed, will carry guns until further notice, national police chief Benedicte Bjoernland announced.
Norway has lower crime rates than many of its high-income peers. However, this is not the first hate-motivated mass shooting in the Scandinavian nation of 5.4 million. The deadliest occurred in 2011, when far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people.
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