Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?

What a loaded question. And one that completely shows the questioner's racist nature. What about Palestine? Does Palestine have "a right to exist"? If only every single idiot who has asked about Israel's right to exist was forced to answer the same question about Palestine, maybe we'd have fewer genocide inciting monsters in the public discourse.

Francesca Albanese has a great answer to this question - Israel exists. It just does. There's no question of "right to exist" - it simply does exist. And this answer takes the wind out of the sails of the question.

The question having a good answer is a good reason to move on - but that's not how I roll. I'm instead going to go into what's being asked. The question isn't about Israel per se - but rather the foundational principle of Zionism - do Jewish people have a right to a national homeland?  Some people say no - ethno-states are inherently unfair and undemocratic. Their very nature posits a two tier system with second class citizens - it is a recipe for apartheid. And most people agree that apartheid is bad.

It's a purity test - true states must grant equal rights to all of its citizens. This is a noble goal and I would love to support it. But I personally don't think the world we live in is unflawed enough to enshrine this rule.

Here is my disagreement - the history of the Jewish peoples is one of persecution and displacement and literal fucking genocide. For a lot of history, Jews have been deprived membership in any state and this is not only unfair, but also creates the circumstances for gross human rights violations - including one of the greatest crimes in all of human history. I do believe there is a need for a Jewish national homeland because of the long history of Jews being denied their right to self-determination. I believe that antisemitism still exists and it is pervasive and deadly dangerous, and that there is a movement that is actively trying to return all Jews to a position of statelessness and to deny them the right to self-determination.

But something I have now come to accept is that this does not mean that "Israel has a right to exist". This is how I reconcile my belief for a need for a Jewish national homeland while still considering myself an anti-Zionist. There should be a Jewish state - but not Israel, at least not the Israel we have now.

Statehood is defined by acceptance and recognition by other states. It is a political question - of course it is! The idea of statehood not being a political question is crazy and flies in the face of what a state is - a political entity.

As a result, recognition of states depends on its reputation. And that depends on the nature of the state. For example (at the risk of triggering Godwin's Law) - there are very few people who have issues with the existence of Germany as a state. There are a lot of people who would have issues with the existence of Nazi Germany as a state.

Does Israel have a right to exist?  Depends on what you mean by "Israel"? Does a messianic terrorist apartheid state committed to genocide in the name of Greater Israel have a right to exist? Does a rogue state with pure and intense contempt for international law and a deep sense of grievance and belligerence towards all of its neighbours and an inability to extend basic human dignity to starving children - does such a state have a "right to exist"? No, it does not. No state with ambitions to subjugate or exterminate another people has a right to exist. That's my purity test - do you intend to do genocide? If yes, then I am opposed to you. And in a just world - the international community would hold the same position. And this is absolutely compatible with a belief in a Jewish homeland. Jews do have a right to a nation-state, but not to a nation-state that is actively engaged in genocide.

How Could He Be Any Worse?

It's been a minute.  Nowhere near as long as the long hiatus - but certainly not a short break. I guess the urge to scream about the atrocities has died down after seeing how utterly ineffectual it is. Anyways, let's get to it.

About a year ago, when the discussion was about how everyone had to support the racist fucking monsters funding a literal fucking genocide - I asked how Trump could be worse on Gaza. Biden had literally given Netanyahu everything that Bibi wanted. Despite the performative wringing of hands and threats of withholding arms, here's the sum total of what the Biden Administration actually did to curb the killing:

• They delayed one shipment of weapons - which did not actually impede the flow of weapons from the US to Israel.
• They imposed sanctions on a handful of Israeli settler terrorists that had been attacking the West Bank - and then immediately paused any impact of those sanctions "for humanitarian reasons".
• They identified one single IDF unit that was not eligible to receive US military aid due to their propensity to commit gross human rights violations - and then, based on literally nothing - said that the unit had reformed enough to reverse the original decision.
• They did not veto one Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza - which they then immediately discredited by calling it "non-binding".

Three actual actions, which were all immediately undermined so much as to render them completely ineffective. Effectively, Biden's Administration did absolutely nothing to slow down the genocide. Absolutely nothing.

So with Biden 100% fully supporting anything that Israel chose to do - and only reserving the right to act upset about it - the question was "how could Trump be any worse?"

Well, it's been long enough that we can check. We can look at how things are going and see if it is worse. Let's start with the kill count.  Under Joe, 47 thousand Palestinians in Gaza were confirmed killed by Israel. This took 472 days - so a murder rate of just under 100 per day, slightly over if you subtract the one week long ceasefire. And under Trump? Today's kill count is 61,600 or 14,600 higher. And he's had control for 202 days - but there was a 6 week long ceasefire in there, so 160 days of killing. That works out to 91 Gazans killed per day - certainly within the range of uncertainty for these numbers. So essentially - the IDF daily murder rate is pretty much the same as it was under Joe. AND Trump did manage to secure five more weeks of ceasefire than Biden did. IOW - the original assessment, that what the US president wants is irrelevant to how much the IDF slaughters Arabs - basically proven at this point. The IDF's natural murder rate is about a hundred Gazans per day. And this was normalized under a Democratic president.

That said - Trump has brought his own flavour of suffering to the Gaza Strip - the mass starvation is clearly worse with him in charge. Not to say that Biden did not allow and provide dioplomatic cover for the intentional affliction of starvation on a people. Biden absolutely did do this. Recall that the ICC warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant specifically for starving the people of Gaza were for actions between October 8, 2023 and May 20, 2024. But the situation is much worse under Trump. Now this is also due to the fact that this is how starvation works - that the longer you go on a severely calorie deficient diet, the closer you get to dying. That people don't starve to death overnight - and it takes time to starve an entire population. Or possibly it is due to the continued descent of Israel into genocidal mania - that a year ago, they might have been more opposed to intentionally starving children to death.

Still, regardless of the reasons - the use of mass starvation has been much worse under Trump - and as Truman noted, the buck has to stop somewhere. Under Biden, there was an intentional mass starvation campaign very early on targeting Northern Gaza - which was only lifted months into it by the delivery of way too little aid into the targeted area. That of course resulted in the Flour Massacre which set off a full month of the IDF mass killing aid seekers. So horrific and inhumane that I thought this was the worst they could do - but I underestimated the cruelty of the human spirit. Under Trump, Southern Gaza was subjected to starvation after the ceasefire. Two months of starvation with zero aid being allowed in, only to be lifted by the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - a group that has been mowing down aid seekers since the end of May. It's been longer that they've been using aid distribution as bait for killing fields and way more people have starved to death in Gaza this year than previously. And the starvation continues. And the murder of around a hundred Palestinians continues on its daily pace. Because this is the New Normal. Genocide is happening but we are unable or unwilling to do sweet fuck all about it. So it's now just been accepted as part of what happens daily. The sun rises, the IDF kills a hundred people, 2 million people have starvation forced upon them. The usual daily routine.

Only - there is one more normalized aspect of all of this. And that is that it is constantly getting worse. Israel keeps brainstorming new atrocities to try out - to shock our conscience so badly that we normalize this new thing. The reports of children being used for target practice or of the IDF forcing Gazans to act as human shields before murdering them - did not prompt any real action to curb their crimes, so they reach for the next depraved thing they can add to the arsenal of atrocities. A new push to conquer Gaza City is starting now - a year and a half after they claimed full control over the area. This is going to bring fresh new horrors for us to be shocked at, before accepting as just part of the new normal.

Silver Linings

You gotta find them wherever you can. A few months ago, I suggested that one possible silver lining in the absolute shitshow that's going on is that Trump's annexation threats are going to have an impact on the inevitable Canadian election. It's been over a year since it looked like we were headed for a Conservative landslide victory, going into cartoonishly large margins by the end of 2024.  Following Chrystia Freeland's resignation from cabinet, polling had vote intention for the Liberals at 20% versus the Conservatives at 45%. More than double. It was going to be a spanking.

And then Trump started making "Governor Trudeau" jokes and comments about Canada becoming the 51st state. On top of that, he started the stupidest trade war ever.

Fun fact - the one thing that unites Canadians more than anything else is our smug self-satisfied sense of superiority that we get from not being American. "At least we're not the USA" is the one thought that is shared by more Canadians than any other. It is essentially the core of Canadian identity - our non-American-ness.

And so we had a rally round the flag effect. And the deeply unpopular Justin Trudeau announced his resignation. And the new guy - still does not have a seat in Parliament - took over. And now the Liberals are leading the Conservatives by 6.

I had initially thought that the bump the Liberals would get from Trump's antics would have moved us from strong Conservative majority to Conservative minority government - but that ship has sailed and we're now verging towards a Liberal majority. Without an election campaign or really much of anythign being said by any candidates. Just solely on us freaking out about US imperialism.

So, sorry that Trump is fucking you Yanks six ways from Sunday - and much of the rest of the world is also getting screwed over pretty royally. And even us Canucks are getting shafted by the big stinky orange turd. But at least you're saving us from our own Trumpian dipshit asshole becoming head of government.

Worst Case Ontario

So we had an early provincial election called by Doug Ford yesterday - and well, nothing much changed. At least from the perspective of the seat count and balance of power. Doug still has a strong majority (gaining one seat to go from 79 to 80 - out of 124) and the NDP is still the official opposition (dropping from 28 seats to 27 seats). There were a handful of Independents, although only one was elected as such (Bobbi Ann Brady from Haldiman-Norfolk). The rest were NDP and PC MPPs who were expelled from their own parties, all of whom either retired or were defeated - so the Liberals picked up 5 seats to take them to 14. The Greens kept their 2.

Despite the Liberals large increase in seat count and popular vote share (29.95% up from 23.91% in 2022), this wasn't great for the Liberals. They had a leadership race and chose ultra conservative Bonnie Crombie (former mayor of Mississauga) over more progressive Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (who is decent despite being a Nate). And Bonnie Crombie failed to win her own seat. Losing to a conservative candidate who had contested only one other election previously where she came in third for a local city council seat.

Both our opposition parties are as weak and feckless as all centre-left parties have become in this age of growing fascism. We're in a space where a large chunk of the electorate has been abandoned - as conservative parties lurch further rightwards and the opportunistic shitbag opposition trip over each other chasing them. Voter turnout was 45.4%, only squeaking in above the 44.06% last time - which are the two lowest turnouts we've ever had. So this is most likely going to result in both Crombie and Stiles keeping their positions as leaders. 

So the depressing part of it all isn't that the Conservatives won again, but that the opposition seems to be quite happy with this state of affairs.

Phase Two - All of the Hostages

Hamas has put in their opening bid for Phase Two of the ceasefire - they will release all of the remaining hostages in one go in exchange for Israel complying with their requirements of Phase Two also being done in one go. This is the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody and the complete withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza. Essentially, a permanent end to the "war". Just something to keep in mind when the entirety of media insists that it is Hamas that's holding up the peace process or when genocide defenders say that Hamas could end the war simply be freeing all of the hostages. Hamas is saying "we will free all of the hostages to end the war" - a position I might note that they offered in October 2023. 

This in spite of the last news of the ceasefire being that Phase One was fragile and precarious. Well, Hamas did release the hostages they were scheduled to as per the deal. Supposedly because Israel had allowed some of the pre-fab homes into the territory. Since that update I've learned that Hamas did have a point about Israel not complying with the terms of the deal with respect to the surge of aid that was supposed to be getting into Gaza.  Apparently during Phase One, Israel must allow at least 60,000 temporary homes and 200,000 tents into Gaza - the actual amount that had entered by the point Hamas threatened to withhold hostages? Zero of the 60,000 temporary homes and 20,000 of the 200,000 tents. I don't know if that has actually improved - there are still a lot of new reports that Israel is blocking this aid.

There is one interesting takeaway from this offer that likely won't be noticed. It's about Hamas' capabilities and their continued coherence as a group - despite the assassinations of their leaders. The specifics of this current ceasefire deal were in place as early as May 2024 - and one of the reasons given as to why Hamas needed the two six week periods to return the hostages was because they did not have adequate control of all of the hostages in order to return them. This makes sense - the hostages were taken by not just Hamas, but various other resistance groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas would need to coordinate with allied but not controlled groups in order to agree. Furthermore - one of the characteristics of these groups is that they are decentralized. Basically, numerous cells of agents acting with very little direct control. It's likely that Hamas did not know exactly how many hostages they had in custody for a significant fraction of the war - with various agents holed up all across the enclave.

But now they are saying they will return all of the remaining hostages - meaning they have control over the people holding the hostages, possibly for the first time since October 7th. IOW, they've not only refilled their ranks with new recruits, but they've established communication and control with everyone that was holding hostages. Something they did not have back in May. This is bad for the Israelis. It means that they've not only strengthened Hamas in terms of their influence and support - but also, the killing of the old leaders has resulted in a more efficient and effective control system over the resistance fighters.

The Fetus Must Have Been Hamas

Our corporate media is getting sloppy. ABC News has posted this wire service story from AP. I mean I guess they thought that if AP was covering it, it would be pre-sanitized of anything critical of the IDF. That's actually a decent assumption given the deference AP has shown to Israel and their obviously false statements. But somehow this story slipped through.

The Red Crescent said that the International Committee of the Red Cross had secured approval from the Israeli military to allow medics inside the camp. But the paramedics were detained twice, for a half-hour each time, as they made their way toward the battered car, it said.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on why soldiers had blocked ambulances.

It wasn't until after 8:00 a.m. that medics finally reached the young couple, and were detained a third time while rushing the husband out of the camp to the hospital, the Red Crescent said.

Yazan Shula was unconscious and in critical condition, and, as of Tuesday, remains on life support at a hospital. Shalabi was found dead. Her fetus also did not survive the shooting.

It doesn't seem to be getting much pick-up from other mainstream outlets. MSNBC had a piece yesterday, where they could gloss over things with a "details of the deaths were not immediately clear". Maybe they'll be able to disappear this story - there are hundreds if not thousands of similar stories that have gone quietly. But just the simple act of questioning why these victims just bled out instead of just assuming that the IDF was morally justified in the killing of an 8 month pregnant woman is a pretty bug shift in the tone of coverage.

The Ceasefire is at Risk

Ceasefire deal is in danger of collapse. Hamas is delaying hostage release because it claims that Israel has been in violation of the ceasefire terms by impeding aid delivery and killing people in Northern Gaza. There was an incident a few days ago where the IDF said they "fired warning shots" and killed three people. There's also video from Ceasefire Day One of a teenaged boy being killed by a sniper and a second Palestinian is shot and injured trying to recover the body. That's not the only incident - there are reports of multiple Gazans being killed by the IDF during this ceasefire.

I've been trying to find information about the truck volumes.  There's this story from the first week of the ceasefire, which says 4,200 trucks entered in six days - and that's including a drastic drop in volume on the sixth day down to 339 trucks. On average this is 700 trucks per day, above the minimum of 600 required under the deal - although it's not clear to me if an average is acceptable or if it has to be at least 600 every day. 

I also found this update saying it's "over 10,000" on February 6th. Meaning 5,800 trucks entered between January 25 and Feb. 6 - or over the span of 12 days - which is below 500 averaged over that time frame. And finally, there are stories like this one claiming "over 12,600 trucks" as of Feb. 9. This last one seems dodgy to me,  Feb. 9 marked 21 days of ceasefire - so if we assume the deal is for the average number of trucks, 12,600 is literally the bare minimum requirements. 

We do have a statement from Euro-Med Monitor that the amount of aid being allowed is insufficient and falling short of the agreed upon volumes.

Is it possible that the actual bare minimum number of trucks (using the assumption that it is 600 trucks averaged out over time) have been delivered and Hamas is lying about impeded aid? Yes. I do believe the possibility that Hamas is lying. Is it also possible that truck volume surged in the first five days of ceasefire while everyone's attention was being drawn and has since tailed off to below the required minimums? Also yes - this is definitely a distinct possibility.

Still, the fact remains that Israel is still shooting Gazan civilians to death under the "ceasefire" and judging by how the "ceasefire" in Lebanon has been going, it's entirely reasonable to believe that they are not abiding by the terms - and also that the "guarantors" are letting them get away with it.

The situation though - still vastly improved over what it was like at any point in 2024. But those improvements might not be durable at all. And now we are facing the challenge of trying to keep the fragile peace intact all while Trump continues to insist on ethnic cleansing and mainstream media keeps sanewashing the proposal.