Israel, Gaza, Fanon (fully understood), etc:
“The ethno-tribalist fantasies of the decolonial left, with their Fanon recitations and posters of paragliders, are indeed perverse. As the Palestinian writer Karim Kattan wrote in a moving essay for Le Monde, it seems to have become impossible for some of Palestine’s self-styled friends to ‘say: massacres like those that took place at the Tribe of Nova festival are an outrageous horror, and Israel is a ferocious colonial power.’ In an age of defeat and demobilisation, in which the most extreme voices have been amplified by social media, a cult of force appears to have overtaken parts of the left, and short-circuited any empathy for Israeli civilians. . . . .
Does Netanyahu imagine, then, that he can force Palestinians to give up their weapons, or their demands for statehood, by bombing them into submission? That has been tried, over and again; the invariable result has been a new and even more embittered generation of Palestinian militants. Israel is not a paper tiger, as Hamas’s leaders concluded after 7 October, still exulting from the experience of killing Israeli soldiers asleep in their beds. But it is increasingly incapable of changing course, because its political class lacks the imagination and creativity – not to mention the sense of justice, of other people’s dignity – required to pursue a lasting agreement.”
Paul Staniland 