media
It Looks Like Apartheid Because It Is Apartheid
B’Tselem executive director Hagai El-Ad on Democracy Now and in The Washington Post:
It’s not proportional. It’s not temporary. It’s not legal. It’s not equal. And it’s not complicated: Believe your eyes. Follow your conscience. The reason that it looks like apartheid is simply because it is apartheid.
The bittersweet feeling of the West finally realizing we are dealing with, and financially backing, a settler-colonialist apartheid regime but at a tremendous cost of more and more Palestinian lives (and yes, a much smaller number of Israeli lives) makes me ache.
Galician-Palestinian Solidarity Rallies
This year will be the year that the world finally wakes up to the absolute reality of Israeli apartheid.
But it is not a given. Governments still continue to fund Israel. Yesterday, in full view of the asymmetric warfare that kills massively more Palestinians, The Biden administration approved a $735 million deal for precision-guided weapons.
With all the documentary evidence of this apartheid; live videos, firsthand testimonies, Instagram stories, etc., ostensibly “liberal” media outlets like La Sexta and the New York Times knowingly distort the situation.
My tolerance for bullshit is very low these days. Israel and IDF social media accounts make memes and use rocket emojis, trying to convince us that what we’re seeing isn’t really what we’re seeing. Or the Arabic account incorrectly citing Qur’anic verses. Or it’s too complicated. Or this is another incident in the tit-for-tat Middle East conflict and “they’ve been fighting for thousands of years”. Or it’s a religious conflict. If you find any of these excuses resonant with you, perhaps you can start by listening to a Citations Needed podcast episode debunking the 5 most common Anti-Palestinian talking points.
Without a seat in parliament or congress, without financial or political capital, there’s very little I can do. Except use my voice, however small or insignificant.
The Galician Committee of International Solidarity Mar de Lumes, along with many other organizations such as BDS Galiza and Asociación Galaico Árabe Jenin, put out a manifesto for the integrity of Palestine:
Palestinian occupation began formally in 1947 and is to the day a capital crime. A crime against the people perpetuated with military force which constantly ignores international condemnation. The occupation of Palestine is also a crime against humanity. It has direct culprits that don’t even try to hide the weight of their bloodshed. This is why it demands a clear and staunch position, a frontal condemnation.
This evening, we will fill the streets and plazas of over two dozen Galician towns and cities to demonstrate our solidarity with the people of Palestine to say “No More! Basta Ya!” To show our neighbors and our governments what is happening to civilians in Gaza, in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, and in the diaspora. One day, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Nanín Unió California y Madrid
La Región journalist Paula Palomanes wrote about my partner and yours truly last week:
Lingüísta y profesora de inglés reconvertida a emprendedora y artesana -ha creado una firma que se llama Macramano- pero, sobre todo, trotamundos ambos, el viaje de Jimmy y Patricia para llegar a Nanín, un pequeño pueblo de Allariz, hace más de año y medio, no se hizo en un día: desde California y Madrid, ambos se conocieron dando clase en Mauritania, en 2014.
You can watch the clip on YouTube from our veranda or create an account on La Región to read the whole article (it’s free plus you’ll find all the news from Ourense).
A Republic Without the Public
Rob Wijnberg from the Correspondent admonishing the news media to stop treating the United States as if it’s a democracy should be required reading:
It would be a major misconception to assume that the downfall of US democracy started in November 2016, when Trump was elected. In fact, it’s the other way around: the first openly kleptocratic president moving into the White House marked the consummation of its decay, not its initial conception. Born from theft, built on slavery, held together by self-deception, the United States has grown to become the richest poor country in the history of humankind. It is a country that has violence in its DNA, inequality embedded in its genes, and a completely mythical self-image as its national identity. It’s a country with the world’s highest GDP, where 40 million people live below the poverty line. The only industrialised nation on the planet without universal healthcare, any real social welfare system or decent retirement provisions. The only free nation where 1 in 40 adults are behind bars and which has more guns in circulation than people living within its borders. The only western economy where the richest three inhabitants hold more wealth than the poorest half of the entire population.
There’s so much here but one of our great faults as a nation is the utterly unearned exceptionalism.
- Iran is a dangerous theocracy ruled by ayatollahs, but one Supreme Court justice’s passing is the difference between democracy and fascism.
- West African states are corrupt and driven by cults of personality, but when the the president and congress do it, it’s somehow both abnormal but par for the course because, politics.
And on and on.
We aren’t honest to ourselves about our country. Which is why I think journalism like Slate’s If It Happened There series is important, because it highlights how complicit our media is, intentionally or otherwise, in our myth-making.