Syrians cancel Christmas festivities in solidarity with Gaza

Damascus (AFP) – Christmas cheer has deserted the streets of Syria's cities, where the main churches have limited celebrations to prayers in solidarity with Palestinians suffering war in Gaza.

Issued on: 24/12/2023

The Syrian capital has a lone Christmas market this year, as churches cancel most festivities in solidarity with Gaza

 © LOUAI BESHARA / AFP

"In Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, people are suffering," the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, Mor Dionysius Antoine Shahda, told AFP.

The northern Syrian city's central district of Azizia is usually home to a bustling festive market and a huge Christmas tree, while its streets are adorned with lights and trinkets.

But this year, the main square is almost empty and there are no Christmas decorations in sight.

"In Syria we cancelled all official celebrations and receptions in our churches in solidarity with the victims of the bombing on Gaza" by Israeli forces, Shahda said.

The Syriac Catholic Church was not alone, with the leaders of three of Syria's major churches -- the Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Melkite Greek Catholic patriarchs -- announcing they were cancelling Christmas festivities and limiting celebrations to religious ceremonies.

"Given the current circumstances, especially in Gaza, the patriarchs apologise for not receiving Christmas and New Year greetings," the trio said in a joint statement, adding they were limiting ceremonies to "prayers".

The health ministry in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory says more than 20,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its massive air and ground offensive, in response to a deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7.

Syrians themselves have suffered years of war and economic woes, with recurrent fuel and electricity shortages 

© LOUAI BESHARA / AFP

Most of the dead in Gaza are women and children, officials say.

The Hamas attack killed about 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Many Gazans have been displaced by the violence and forced into crowded shelters or tents, often struggling to find food, fuel, water and medical care.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said the ongoing Israeli military campaign left no safe place anywhere across the narrow territory.
'No opportunity for joy'

Before Syria's civil war erupted in 2011, it was home to more than 1.2 million Christians, though huge numbers have fled since.

The conflict had dampened Christmas celebrations, but festivities picked up in recent years as the main front lines froze and government forces retook control of large swathes of the country.

Still, gloom now prevails in the streets of the capital Damascus.

Syria's Christmas festivities picked up in recent years as fighting subsided in most of the country 

© LOUAI BESHARA / AFP

Festivities are limited to a lone market, while the Greek Orthodox Mariamite Cathedral in Damascus has put up modest decorations and a small tree in its courtyard.

Damascus resident Rachel Haddad, 66, said she had been glued to her phone for more than two months, reading news of the devastation in Gaza, and did not have the heart to put up a Christmas tree.

"This year was very sad. It began with the earthquake and ended with the Gaza war," Haddad said, referring to the February 6 tremor that ripped through southern Turkey and Syria, killing at least 55,000 people.

"There was no opportunity for joy," she said, also blaming Syria's economic woes.

The country's economy has been battered by war, with recurrent fuel shortages and long, daily power cuts a fact of life.

"If there is no electricity, how will you see the decorations and lights anyway?" Haddad asked.

© 2023 AFP

Ukrainians to mark Orthodox Christmas on December 25 in snub to Russia

Many Ukrainians will on Monday celebrate Christmas Day on December 25 for the first time, after the government changed the date from the Orthodox Church observance of January 7 in a snub to Russia. Ukraine passed a law in July moving the celebration to December 25, the day when most of the Christian world marks Christmas.


Issued on: 24/12/2023 

Christmas trees and decorations outside Saint Sophia's Cathedral this year in Kyiv 

© Anatolii STEPANOV / AFP
By:NEWS WIRES


The law signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that Ukrainians wanted to "live their own life with their own traditions and holidays".

It allows them to "abandon the Russian heritage of imposing Christmas celebrations on January 7", it added.

Christianity is the largest religion in Ukraine, with the Russian Orthodox Church dominating religious life until recently.

Like the Russian Church, most eastern Christian churches use the Julian calendar, dating back to Roman times, rather than the Gregorian calendar used in everyday life.

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The date change is part of hastened moves since the invasion to remove traces of the Russian and Soviet empires, such as renaming streets and removing monuments.

A Christmas tree made from spent shell casings outside a Kyiv cafe 

© Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a newly created independent church that held its first service in 2019, has also changed its Christmas date to December 25.

It formally broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church over Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The political rift has seen priests and even entire parishes swap from one church to another, with the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine growing fast and taking over several Russia-linked church buildings in moves supported by the government.

The historically Russia-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church, meanwhile, is keeping the January 7 Christmas date. This church claims to have cut ties with Russia because of the war but many Ukrainians view this with scepticism.

The country's third Orthodox denomination, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, will also hold Christmas services on December 25.

Ukraine had been under Moscow's spiritual leadership since the 17th century at the latest.

Under the Soviet Union and its profession of atheism, Christmas traditions such as trees and gifts were shifted to New Year's Eve, which became the main holiday and still is for many families.

Ukrainian Christmas traditions include a dinner on Christmas Eve with 12 meatless dishes including a sweet grain pudding called kutya, and people decorate homes with elaborate sheaves of wheat called didukhy.

In some areas, children go from house to house singing carols called kolyadky and performing nativity scenes.

(AFP)

Santa Claus and the Contradictions of Bourgeois Ideology

by Carlos L. Garrido / December 20th, 2023

A comrade recently pointed my attention to a comedy skit by Foil Arms and Hog called “Santa is Captured by the Russians,” where for two minutes Mr. Claus is interrogated by the Soviet police. Below are some excerpts from the conversation:

Santa:  I think there has been some sort of a mistake. You see I have a very busy night tonight.

Soviet Police 1: He was found attempting to hide in a chimney.

Soviet Police 2: Chimney? What were you doing in Russian airspace?

Santa: I’ve already told you…

(Santa gets slapped): Ho, ho, ho… That was naughty.

Soviet Police: We found a list of names.

Santa: Ah my list.

Soviet Police: These are American spies?

Santa: No, no…

Soviet Police: There was also a second list.

Santa: Oh you don’t want to be on that list.

Soviet Police: You plan to kill these people.

Santa: No, no, they just get a bad present… It used to be a bag of coal… but the whole climate change thing…

Soviet Police: We intercepted a communication from one of his assets.

“Dear Santa, I have been a good girl. I would like a Silvanian Family Cosy Cottage Starter Home.”

Soviet Police: This is clearly code.

Santa: No it’s not code.

Soviet Police: Then who is Santa?

Santa: That’s me.

Soviet Police: You said your name was Father Christmas.

Santa: Yes, I’m known by very many names.

Soviet Police: So you are spy?… How do you know my children’s names?… What are you doing in Russia?

Santa: Presents, I deliver presents.

Soviet Police: Presents? For who?

Santa: Well, to all the children in the world.

Soviet Police: All the children in the world? In return for what?

Santa: Well, nothing.

Soviet Police: Nothing? So…You are communist?

Santa: Da (Yes)… Why do you think I wear red comrade?

Soviet Police: Signals to officer outside “Comrade, two vodka, one cookies and milk.”

This captures wonderfully the gap between reality and the values and narratives enunciated by the liberal capitalist world. Father Christmas is said to be this selfless gift-bringer, someone who enjoys seeing the smile on kids’ faces as they receive – assuming they weren’t naughty – their new toys. Santa Claus gives, in the traditional narrative, to all kids, irrespective of class (but especially the poor), race, nationality, and sex. He gives these gifts, most importantly, for free. He does not give in exchange for money. His purpose, telos, is not profit. He gives gifts to meet the playful needs of children. His goal is social good, not capital accumulation. He gives so that kids can play, so that they may fulfill what it means to be a kid. He does not give so that parents’ pockets are hollowed, and his North Pole bank account inflated.

Santa Claus’s logic is completely antithetical to the capitalist system. A system premised on producing for the sake of capital accumulation and not social and common good is in contradiction with Father Christmas’s telos. Both the real St. Nicholas (270 – 342 AD) and the Santa Claus we consume in popular culture gift-give without any attempt at obtaining recognition. Unlike the charities in the capitalist West, Santa’s giving does not afford him major tax deductions, and neither does it boost his ‘humanitarian philanthropist profile’ through large, broadcasted events. Saint Nicholas’s giving was not some big spectacle, quite the opposite. He climbs in through the chimney when everyone is sleeping to leave gifts and go. He stands on the side of the poor and does his part in attempting to bring about social justice.

While this is the dominant narrative we operate with, the reality of our commodified Christmas, and of Santa Claus as the personified agent of such commodification, is directly opposed to the narrative itself. As Valerie Panne notes, modern capitalist Christmas has turned Santa Claus into a “decorative marketing tool…for hysterical shopping.” Santa’s commodified image – first used by Coca-Cola in the 1930s – has become instrumental in helping the capitalists realize profit. He has become an instrument used to, as Marx notes in volumes two and three of Capital, “cut the turn over time of capital… The shorter the period of turnover, the smaller this idle portion of capital as compared with the whole, and the larger, therefore, the appropriated surplus-value, provided other conditions remain the same.”

Here we see a clear gap in the enunciated values and the reality of capitalist society. At the ideological level, that is, at the level of how we collectively think about the story and figure of Santa Claus, we find heartwarming values of empathy, selfless giving, and community. However, this ideological level is rooted in the reality of a Santa Claus used to promote conspicuous consumption (as Thorstein Veblen notes), the commodification of family time, traditions, and relations, and the accumulation of capital in the hands of the few.

The ideological reflection of the real world provides an upside-down, topsy-turvy image of itself. This is the essence of bourgeois ideology qua false consciousness. It is a social order that necessitates the general acceptance of an inverted understanding of itself. We come to erroneously understand the “capitalist” Santa through the narratives of the “communist” Santa. Reality is turned on its head. But this is not, as Vanessa Wills notes, a problem of “epistemic hygiene”. The root of the ‘error’ is not in our minds, that is, in our reflection of the objective phenomena at hand. As I’ve argued previously, “it is much deeper than this; the inversion or ‘mistake’ is in the world itself… This world reflects itself through an upside-down appearance, and it must necessarily do so to continuously reproduce itself.” As Marx and Engels noted long ago,

If in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

To understand the gap between how Santa Claus (or Christmas) is understood and how it actually functions in modern capitalist society it is insufficient to see the problem simply as one of subjective ‘misunderstandings’ held by individuals, classes, or whole peoples. One must investigate the political economy which grounds, that is, which reflects that erroneous image of itself. The gap between the actual “capitalist” Santa and the ideological “communist” Santa is objective, it is required by the existing material relations of social production and reproduction. Capitalist ideology must disguise the cut-throat values of bourgeois individualism with the universalist values of Santa’s socialistic humanism.

But this is nothing new. Santa Claus is just another particular instant of a universal bourgeois phenomenon. The capitalist class has never been able to fully realize, to make actual, the values it enunciates with its appearance in the arena of universal history as a dominant force. Its universal appeals to liberty, equality, fraternity, etc. have always been limited within the confines of their class. As Marx had already noted in 1843, “the practical application of the right of liberty is the right of private property;” “the necessary condition for whose existence,” he and Engels write in 1848, “is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.” The phrasing of ‘all men’ used to formulate rights under capitalism is always with the understanding, as Marx notes, of “man as a bourgeois,” it is “the rights of the egotistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community.” Its values, and their reflection in their judicature, always present their narrow class interests embellished by abstract language used to appeal to the masses and obtain their consenting approval for a form of social life which they’re in an objectively antagonistic relation with.

The ideologues of the bourgeoisie always provide the masses with a “bad check,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say. But eventually, as King notes, the masses will come in to cash that check somehow. They’ll notice that within the confines of the existing order, the prosperity that checked promised is unrealizable. Capitalism has never, and will never, fulfill the universal values it pronounces as it breaks out of the bonds of feudal absolutism. Only socialism can.

The values embedded in the narrative surrounding Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or whatever else you want to call him, will never be actual within capitalist society. Only socialism can universalize the form of selfless relationality we have come to associate with Santa.

Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). Read other articles by Carlos.

https://dissidentvoice.org/

SANTA IS AN ANAGRAM FOR

 

Boycott of Leather Suppliers over Fears for Uncontacted Indigenous People in Paraguay

by Survival International / December 21st, 2023

Guireja, an Ayoreo woman, on the day she was first contacted in 2004. Her relatives are still hiding in the forest. © GAT/Survival

Pasubio, one of Europe’s leading leather manufacturers, has today announced that it will refuse to buy leather from suppliers whose activities directly or indirectly threaten the forests inhabited by the uncontacted Ayoreo people in Paraguay.

Pasubio’s decision follows intensive dialogue with the Italian office of Indigenous rights organization Survival International, which filed a formal complaint against the company under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, assisted by the lawyers Veronica Dini and Luca Saltalamacchia.

These Ayoreo are the last uncontacted Indigenous people in South America outside the Amazon, and the ranches occupying and illegally deforesting their ancestral land threaten their very existence.

In its announcement, Pasubio said: “[Our company] is today announcing its commitment to defend the ancestral territory of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indigenous people…

“Thanks to the awareness-raising role played over the years by Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the NGO Earthsight, the Pasubio Group has learnt about the threat to the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people of Paraguay’s Gran Chaco region, especially the uncontacted Ayoreo groups living in the forest.

“The Pasubio Group is therefore announcing its decision to exclude from its suppliers any leather linked to the deforestation of the [Ayoreo territory]; starting today, the Pasubio Group will halt all commercial relationship with any Paraguayan supplier unable to provide appropriate guarantees regarding the absence of any relationship, direct or indirect, with the cattle ranches located within the [Ayoreo territory].”

The Ayoreo territory is today an island of forest surrounded by a sea of deforestation, as the land around it (and some inside it) has been cleared for cattle ranching. Since the start of this year countless fires set by ranchers have consumed a significant part of the Ayoreo’s forest.

An unknown number of Ayoreo live uncontacted in the forest. Many more have been forced out of the forest, and now live in settled communities.

Caroline Pearce, Director of Survival International, said today: “We’re delighted that Pasubio has committed to boycott leather from suppliers that threaten the lives and lands of the Ayoreo in Paraguay, and we look forward to other companies doing the same. We will, of course, be watching closely to ensure that the commitment is implemented in full.

“The powerful figures behind Paraguay’s leather industry need to know that the world won’t stand for the illegal destruction of the forest and its people in the name of profit. Their industry’s name is being brought into disrepute: we hope this news will serve to speed up the appallingly slow process of recognizing the Ayoreo’s land rights, which has already gone on for  thirty years. The authorities in Paraguay should finally respect national and international law; expel all the cattle ranchers from inside the Ayoreo’s territory, and return the land to them.”

Note: 

Italy is the world’s biggest buyer of Paraguayan leather, and Pasubio is the main Italian importer (2022 data). Pasubio leather is primarily used in the automotive industry. BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Porsche and many others buy it to make interiors, seats and steering wheels.

Survival International, founded in 1969 after an article by Norman Lewis in the UK's Sunday Times highlighted the massacres, land thefts and genocide taking place in Brazilian Amazonia, is the only international organization supporting tribal peoples worldwide. Contact Survival International at: info@survival-international.org. Read other articles by Survival International, or visit Survival International's website.

https://dissidentvoice.org/

JULIAN CALENDAR

Day X Marks the Calendar: Julian Assange’s “Final” Appeal

by Binoy Kampmark / December 22nd, 2023

Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter.  For those who have followed her remarks, her speeches, and her activism, it was sharply clear what this meant.  “It may be the final chance for the UK to stop Julian’s extradition.  Gather outside the court at 8.30am on both days. It’s now or never.”

Between February 20 and 21 next year, the High Court will hear what WikiLeaks claims may be “the final chance for Julian Assange to prevent his extradition to the United States.”  (This is qualified by the prospect of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.)  Were that to take place, the organisation’s founder faces 18 charges, 17 of which are stealthily cobbled from the aged and oppressive US Espionage Act of 1917.  Estimates of any subsequent sentence vary, the worst being 175 years.

The WikiLeaks founder remains jailed at His Majesty’s pleasure at Belmarsh prison, only reserved for the most hardened of criminals.  It’s a true statement of both British and US justice that Assange has yet to face trial, incarcerated, without bail, for four-and-a-half years.  That trial, were it to ever be allowed to take place, would employ a scandalous legal theory that will spell doom to all those who dive and dabble in the world of publishing national security information.

Fundamentally, and irrefutably, the case against Assange remains political in its muscularity, with a gangster’s legality papered over it.  As Stella herself makes clear, “With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2018, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials are involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited.”

In mid-2022, Assange’s legal team attempted a two-pronged attempt to overturn the decision of Home Office Secretary Priti Patel to approve Assange’s extradition while also broadening the appeal against grounds made in the original January 4, 2021 reasons of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

The former, among other matters, took issue with the acceptance by the Home Office that the extradition was not for a political offence and therefore prohibited by Article 4 of the UK-US Extradition Treaty.  The defence team stressed the importance of due process, enshrined in British law since the Magna Carta of 2015, and also took issue with Patel’s acceptance of “special arrangements” with the US government regarding the introduction of charges for the facts alleged which might carry the death penalty, criminal contempt proceedings, and such specialty arrangements that might protect Assange “against being dealt with for conduct outside the extradition request”.  History shows that such “special arrangements” can be easily, and arbitrarily abrogated.

On June 30, 2022 came the appeal against Baraitser’s original reasons.  While Baraitser blocked the extradition to the US, she only did so on grounds of oppression occasioned by mental health grounds and the risk posed to Assange were he to find himself in the US prison system.  The US government got around this impediment by making breezy promises to the effect that Assange would not be subject to oppressive, suicide-inducing conditions, or face the death penalty.  A feeble, meaningless undertaking was also made suggesting that he might serve the balance of his term in Australia – subject to approval, naturally.

What this left Assange’s legal team was a decision otherwise hostile to publishing, free speech and the activities that had been undertaken by WikiLeaks.  The appeal accordingly sought to address this, claiming, among other things, that Baraitser had erred in assuming that the extradition was not “unjust and oppressive by reason of the lapse of time”; that it would not be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (inhuman and degrading treatment)”; that it did not breach Article 10 of ECHR, namely the right to freedom of expression; and that it did not breach Article 7 of the ECHR (novel and unforeseeable extension of the law).

Other glaring defects in Baraitser’s judgment are also worth noting, namely her failure to acknowledge the misrepresentation of facts advanced by the US government and the “ulterior political motives” streaking the prosecution.  The onerous and much thicker second superseding indictment was also thrown at Assange at short notice before the extradition hearing of September 2020, suggesting that those grounds be excised “for reasons of procedural fairness.”

An agonising wait of some twelve months followed, only to yield an outrageously brief decision on June 6 from High Court justice Jonathan Swift (satirists, reach for your pens and laptops). Swift, much favoured by the Defence and Home Secretaries when a practising barrister, told Counsel Magazine in a 2018 interview that his “favourite clients were the security and intelligence agencies”.  Why? “They take preparation and evidence-gathering seriously: a real commitment to getting things right.”  Good grief.

In such a cosmically unattached world, Swift only took three pages to reject the appeal’s arguments in a fit of premature adjudication.  “An appeal under the Extradition Act 2003,” he wrote with icy finality, “is not an opportunity for general rehearsal of all matters canvassed at an extradition hearing.”  The appeal’s length – some 100 pages – was “extraordinary” and came “to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made and rejected by the District Judge.”

Thankfully, Swift’s finality proved stillborn.  Some doubts existed whether the High Court appellate bench would even grant the hearing.  They did, though requesting that Assange’s defence team trim the appeal to 20 pages.

How much of this is procedural theatre and circus judge antics remains to be seen.  Anglo-American justice has done wonders in soiling itself in its treatment of Britain’s most notable political prisoner.  Keeping Assange in the UK in hideous conditions of confinement without bail serves the goals of Washington, albeit vicariously.  For Assange, time is the enemy, and each legal brief, appeal and hearing simply weighs the ledger further against his ailing existence.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

https://dissidentvoice.org/

 CANADA

No to Antisemitism, No to Weaponizing it to Support Israel’s Crimes 

by Yves Engler / December 22nd, 2023

MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt are more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.

— Dimitri Lascaris, 2018

The above tweet was criticized by all the major federal party leaders even though few could argue with it today. After the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) denounced the post as antisemitic, the prime minister, Conservative leader and a cascade of others followed suit.

In a betrayal worth reflecting on, many leftists and self-proclaimed solidarity activists echoed the anti-Palestinian lobby’s criticism. Rather than focusing on Canada’s complicity in apartheid, they prioritized Jewish sensitivities. In so doing they reinforced a political climate that’s enabled the killing of over 20,000 Palestinian while agonizing about a generally privileged Canadian Jewish community.

While it was obvious at the time, today no serious person could argue that Levitt and Housefather weren’t “more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.”  Levitt left the party two years later to campaign full-time in favor of apartheid as CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Among a slew of examples, Levitt recently suggested Trudeau was antisemitic for expressing opposition to the killing of babies. He tweeted that the PM’s comments “fan the flames of Jew-hatred” and told CBC they “further fuel antisemitism and lashing out at Jews in Canada.”

After Canada recently voted with the vast majority of the world for a ceasefire at the United Nations, Housefather repeatedly condemned his own government to the media. A month ago, the Montréal MP also criticized Trudeau for his statement opposing the killing of babies. At the time CBC’s At Issue panel reported that Liberal MPs (presumably Housefather) had privately threatened to quit the party if Trudeau called for a ceasefire. He subsequently went on a solidarity trip to Israel. Alex Boykowich aptly dubbed Housefather “objectively Netanyahu’s man in the Canadian government/parliament.”

Levitt and Housefather care far more about Israel than Trudeau or the Liberal party. As I detailed, there was already a bevy of evidence at the time of Lascaris’ statement that Housefather and Levitt were obsessed with Israel and prioritized defending its crimes over their own party. But the immediate background to the 2018 tweet uproar made the condemnation completely outrageous.

After a demonstration opposing B’nai B’rith’s smears against the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Lascaris called on Housefather and Levitt, CIJA, and others who had defended B’nai B’rith on the eve of the protest, to publicly repudiate two of that group’s supporters who called for a number of Muslim and brown politicians to be killed in a video detailing their participation in a counter protest to the rally against B’nai B’rith. Lascaris tweeted about the two B’nai B’rith supporters who “called for the death penalty to be imposed on Justin Trudeau & Liberal MPs Iqra Khalid, Omar Alghabra & Maryam Monsef” and asked Levitt and Housefather “to denounce” the threats “but shamefully, they’ve said nothing.” Then Lascaris tweeted: “ MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt are more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.”

In response CIJA tweeted: “Yesterday, CJPME [Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East] Chair Dimitri Lascaris accused Jewish MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt of being disloyal to Canada. This is the literal definition of antisemitism under the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition. Will CJPME publicly retract & apologize for this antisemitic smear?” Soon thereafter a slew of MPs, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, Justin Trudeau, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and others jumped to Housefather and Levitt’s defense or directly smeared Lascaris.

Despite all this being immediately detailed, a number of leftist voices followed the Israel lobby, focusing on “tropes” rather than Canada’s role in enabling an apartheid state waging unrelenting violence in (according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Israel has attempted more – over 2,700 – international assassination missions then any country since World War II).

In a post-mortem on Lascaris’ narrow defeat in the 2020 Green Party leadership race The Breach founder Dru Oja Jay wrote “it should also be said that in 2018, Lascaris questioned the loyalty of two extremist pro-Israel Jewish MPs in a tweet. Questioning the loyalty of Jewish politicians is an anti-semitic trope with a long history. While he has condemned anti-semitism broadly and while there’s no doubt that charges of anti-semitism are used to silence advocates for Palestinian human rights (which Lascaris is), his refusal to back away from his remarks gave that line of attack levels of legitimacy that they would have otherwise lacked.”

The next year another Breach editor, Martin Lukacs, reiterated the point in an email claiming my defence of Lascaris was antisemitic. He wrote, “your defence of Dimitri Lascaris’ obtuse and offensive dual loyalty charge a few years ago against Canadian Liberal politicians followed a similar dynamic. In your writing, you seemed to either be ignorant of this classic trope of anti-Semitism, or you simply choose to ignore the connotations of what he wrote about.” (In response to the remarkable onslaught I immediately published “Canadian Zionists’ Unprecedented Smear Campaign against Dimitri Lascaris” and followed up with “CIJA, B’nai B’rith smear Palestine activist instead of racists, antisemite”. These articles emboldened Independent Jewish Voices and Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig to defend Lascaris and paved the way for the public letter backing Lascaris headlined “Prime minister owes human rights activist an apology”, which was signed by Noam Chomksy, Roger Waters, Chris Hedges and others.)

I rehash this history because many leftists, even those who call themselves anti-Zionist, have directly contributed to Canada’s deeply anti-Palestinian political climate. By prioritizing Jewish sensitivities about ‘tropes’, they’ve emboldened the Housefathers and Levitts of the world and further tilted the political terrain against those opposing Canada’s vast complicity in Israel’s horrors.

It also demonstrates how anti-Palestinian lobby groups set the agenda. If CIJA hadn’t created a brouhaha over Lascaris’ post, few would have seen the tweet, let alone complained about it years later. On principle leftists should be allergic to allowing an apartheid lobby that seeks to destroy left-wing movements set the tone on anything Palestine related.

Canadian political culture fixates on the sensitivities of Jews here rather than how Canada enables Israeli barbarism. Part of this reflects the dominance of nationalism. What happens here – or to Canadians abroad – is prioritized by the political and media establishment. You see this with the recent discussion of the uptick in hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs or Jews. While all acts of bigotry should be condemned, nothing that has transpired in Canada over the past 10 weeks remotely compares to the horrors in Gaza.

There’s also a specifically Jewish element to the fixation. With outsized influence in Hollywood and other domains, Jewish cultural influence is significant. Additionally, the Nazi Holocaust is a definitive historical reference point, which has intertwined anti-Jewishness with the ultimate evil.

It’s true that in Canada Jews are significantly over-represented as victims of hate crimes and there is a history of legalistic antisemitism, including McGill’s quotas on Jewish students between the 1920s-40s, “none is too many” WWII immigration policies and prejudicial land covenants targeting Jews and others into the 1950s. But there’s nothing in Canadian history approaching the antisemitism of Eastern Europe, let alone Nazi Germany. Additionally, today Jews are over-represented in positions of wealth and influence in Canada.

None of this is to say antisemitism does not exist. It does and when people express hatred for Jews simply being Jews we should condemn it. But being Jewish should not protect someone from criticism for supporting crimes against humanity such as apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide. Being Jewish should not protect someone for their anti-Palestinian racism. The self-proclaimed “Jewish state” can and should be criticized for its actions. If that offends some Jewish Canadians that is their problem.

Hypersensitivity regarding antisemitism is unwarranted when it is being so aggressively mobilized to enable horrors against Palestinians. Conscientious individuals must question how they uphold a political climate that enables Canadian complicity in the slaughter in Gaza.

Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

UK

Palestinians’ Superior Right to Self-defence is Ignored, as Usual

UK’s Cameron/Sunak claptrap turns international law on its head

by Stuart Littlewood / December 20th, 2023

The UK’s leaders are tying themselves in knots in their desperate attempt to defend the indefensible.

In a debate on Israel and Palestine in Parliament last week, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs Leo Docherty got up and said:

There is no scenario in which Hamas can be allowed to control Gaza again. That is why we are not calling for a general ceasefire, which would allow Hamas to regroup and entrench their position. I am pleased to say that the government’s position is shared by the Opposition Front Bench. Instead, we are focused on urging respect for international law…

What a fatuous statement. If the UK government had any concern for international law Israel would not have been allowed to breach it continuous and with impunity for the last 75 years and the horrendous slaughter we’ve all been watching would never have happened.

As a foreign office minister, Docherty should be aware that Hamas is the legitimate government in Gaza, having won the last election fair and square. Israel, the US and UK might not like the result but that’s beside the point. What Docherty and his colleagues are contemplating is coercive regime change, which is hardly in line with international law or Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Meanwhile, David Cameron, hurriedly parachuted in from outside Parliament as our new Foreign Secretary and breaching all democratic niceties, was telling everyone that there can be no resolution to the conflict in the Middle East if Hamas is still “armed to the teeth” and capable of attacking Israel. And he defended the UK’s decision to abstain on the UN vote for a Gaza ceasefire on the grounds that the UN was calling for an immediate armistice plus a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and “those two things don’t go together… If you have an immediate ceasefire but Hamas [is] still armed to the teeth, launching rockets into Israel, wanting to repeat 7 October, you’ll never have a two-state solution.

“Long-term security I think requires there to be a state for Palestine as well,” he said, sounding wonderfully generous, adding that he did not agree with “disappointing” comments made by Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on Wednesday 13 December that Tel Aviv would not back a two-state solution.

Had he been paying attention Cameron would know that the apartheid regime, from its very inception in 1948, has refused to contemplate the existence of a Palestinian state. That would thwart Israel’s ambition to establish sovereignty over the entire territory “from the river to the sea”, which is the express aim of Hotovely’s (and Netanyahu’s) vile party, Likud.

Britain, on the other hand, promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continues to sidestep the issue while forever prattling on about a two-state solution.

Cameron is also saying that Israel “must take stronger action to stop settler violence and hold the perpetrators accountable”. But his lordship should be telling Israel to do much more than that. To comply with international law Israel must remove its settlers and its thuggish military from the West Bank altogether, remembering that the West Bank includes East Jerusalem (and the Old City) and Gaza.

What needs eliminating is the threat posed by Israel

As I write, Cameron is changing tack slightly and now calling for a “sustainable” ceasefire because it has dawned on him that “too many civilians have been killed” by Israel. A joint article in the Sunday Times by him and German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock comes amid growing pressure on Israel over its methods in the war on Gaza. It states: “We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward. It ignores why Israel is forced to defend itself: Hamas barbarically attacked Israel and still fires rockets to kill Israeli citizens every day.”

The usual misinformation. They ignore why the Palestinians are compelled to defend themselves, i.e. the brutal and murderous decades-long illegal occupation by Israel using military force.

“Hamas must lay down its arms,” say Cameron and Baerbock. And in a tepid warning to Israel, the two foreign ministers say: “Israel has the right to defend itself but, in doing so, it must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel will not win this war if its operations destroy the prospect of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. They have a right to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas.”

But do they really? Where in international law does it say that an illegal occupier (such as Israel) can claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it illegally occupies?

Under UN Resolution 37/43, however, the Palestinians, as victims of illegal military occupation, have an unquestionable right to eliminate the threat posed by Israel in their struggle for “liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.

Resolution 37/43 also condemns “the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East, which constitute an obstacle to the achievement of self-determination and independence by the Palestinian people and a threat to peace and stability in the region”.

The Palestinians’ right to armed struggle in self-defence is also confirmed in UN Resolution 3246, which calls for all States to recognise the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation and to offer them moral, material and other forms of assistance in their struggle to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

Resolution 3246 reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle, and demands full respect for the basic human rights of all individuals detained or imprisoned as a result of their struggle for self-determination and independence, and strict respect for article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under which no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

There’s no sign that Cameron and the rest of the UK government understand any of this.

And what right does the UK have to prevent Palestinians choosing their own government? None. The correct way to “eliminate the threat posed by Hamas” is to require Israel to end its occupation.

International law trampled to suit Israeli plans for domination

It is ludicrous to keep repeating that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has made that abundantly clear. Western governments and Western Christendom seem paralysed. The presumption must be that Biden and Cameron (both self-proclaimed Zionists, as were most of their predecessors) are overly sympathetic towards Israel and happy to trample international law to ensure the success of the apartheid regime’s criminal enterprise.

Many in the UK question why our parliamentarians are so concerned about the 1,200 Israeli dead following Hamas’s breakout attack and the 200-odd hostages when they couldn’t care less about the 10,651 Palestinians (including 656 women and 2,270 children) slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years before 7 October. Or the 7,200 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails, including 88 women and 250 children. Over 1,200 are held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial and denied due process.

An authority on international law, Dr Ralph Wilde, has produced a legal opinion on the Israeli occupation which might be helpful in putting an end to Cameron’s & co’s claptrap.

He points out that:

• There’s no valid basis in international law for the occupation and it is an unlawful use of force, an aggression, and a violation on the part of Israel against the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. And aggression is a crime on an individual level for senior Israeli leaders. “As a result, the occupation is existentially illegal and must end immediately.”
• What’s more, an end to the occupation cannot be delayed by Israel’s failure to agree to the adoption of a peace agreement or by the unreadiness of the Palestinian people, by ‘facts on the ground’, or by waiting for the approval of the UN, the Quartet, the White House, the British Foreign Office or anybody else. Every day the occupation continues is a breach of international law.
• Palestinian people are treated in international law as a collective entity with rights, notably the right of self-determination and the right to freely choose whether or not to enter into international agreements. Palestine is what’s called a Self-determination Unit. The territory it covers is everything that is ‘not Israel’, legally, and includes Al-Quds/Jerusalem in its entirety, the rest of the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
• Israel’s recognition and UN membership did not include sovereignty over any part of Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Palestinians also enjoy the right of external self-determination (i.e. freedom from external domination) which has been universally accepted and affirmed by states and UN institutions including the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the International Court of Justice.
• And Palestine is a state in the international law sense because (a) there’s a presumption in favour of statehood for people with a right of external self-determination; and (b) a large majority (138) of the world’s states collectively recognized Palestinian statehood when the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’. This had the effect of establishing statehood.
• External self-determination is a right to be free of any external domination, including occupation or other forms of non-sovereign territorial control which prevent the full exercise of that right. Such domination must end so that this right can be exercised.
• The right operates and exists simply and exclusively by virtue of the Palestinian people being entitled to it. It is not something that depends on anyone else agreeing to it, such as Israel, the Quartet, the UN, other states, etc. It is a right; so there is no need for Palestinians to negotiate or compromise with Israelis as the price for ending their occupation.
• Israel’s exercising control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, preventing the Palestinian people from full and effective self-governance, has for decades been a fundamental impediment to the realization of the right of self-determination which the Palestinian people are entitled to enjoy under international law. And there was no actual or imminent armed attack that justified the occupation as a means of self-defence prior to 7 October.
• Furthermore, there is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.
• Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force, over those areas of the West Bank.

Advice to Messrs Sunak, Cameron and Docherty is surely to first get on the right side of international law – and human decency – and recognise Palestinian statehood without any more foot-dragging. Furthermore, to join with other states and tell Israel, firmly, that all cooperation, collaboration and favoured nation privileges are cancelled until the apartheid regime ends its illegal occupation, removes its squatters, lifts its siege, ceases interference with free movement and fulfils its obligations under the UN Charter and resolutions. And completes a probationary period demonstrating good behaviour before being welcomed back into the community of nations.

Otherwise, what is international law worth? Our political leaders must realise that the British public don’t want a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wholesale destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and is as hateful, racist and disrespectful of human rights and norms as Israel has been for as long as most of us can remember.

Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can be read on the internet by visiting radiofreepalestine.org.uk. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Jesus, Gaza, and the Murder of Useless People

by Edward Curtin / December 20th, 2023

Jesus was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem.  He grew up in Nazareth and was executed as a criminal in Jerusalem. It is because of him that we celebrate Christmas.  But it is in spite of him that what we celebrate is the opposite of what he stood for.

The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods.  There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes.  No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase.  No credit card bills that come due in the new year.  No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.

Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life.  That hope was improbable but possible with faith.

These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories.  They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected.  They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.”  They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age.  They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.

Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .

To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washinton, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.

Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.

A few days ago my wife and I were caring for our son’s two dogs.  Down the hill as night came on, the town set off fireworks – those bombs bursting in air (Oh how lovely is war!) – to celebrate and encourage people to buy holiday gifts, what can only fairly be described as acquisitive consumer madness that many realize yet have accepted as an essential part of the Christmas message.  As the fireworks exploded loudly, the dogs started to quake uncontrollably and we had to hold them tight to comfort them.

Yes, they are animals, but sentient animals with deep feelings; and yes, they are not children in Gaza quivering in fear as the Israelis bomb them night and day in savage attacks.  But as we held those frightened dogs, feeling their hearts beat fast as they gasped for breath, the visceral sense of what those Palestinians must be feeling, as they hold their trembling children who are butchered as useless objects, overwhelmed me.  As they are “thinned out,” as Netanyahu is reported to have said, I felt sick at heart to be living safely in a country that finances and supports such slaughter.  A country in which buying and selling is the real religion, people have become commodities, and Christmas has become the celebration of such grotesqueries.

I keep thinking of the difference between human beings and things; life and death; money and power; acquisitiveness and poverty; and, as Norman O. Brown puts it in Life Against Death, “an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption.”

In his classic study, Brown makes clear that it is erroneous to think that the secular and the sacred are exclusive opposites, as if the secular has replaced the “irrational” beliefs of religion with clean science and logical thinking; has banished irrational superstitions with abstract, objective, quantitative, and impersonal thinking.  On the contrary, he argues that the whole modern secular money complex – the spirit of capitalism – is rooted in the psychology of guilt and the secular sacred.  He writes:

The psychological realities here are best grasped in terms of theology, and were already grasped by Luther. Modern secularism, and its companion Protestantism, do not usher in an era in which human consciousness is liberated from supernatural manifestations; the essence of the Protestant (or capitalist) era is that the power over this world has passed from God to God’s negation, God’s ape, the Devil. And already Luther had seen in money the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic. The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God’s ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.

Things, just like money, beyond a certain minimum necessary for a simple life of use, do not, as everyone knows, bring happiness.  This is because they are dead – excrement – the Devil’s favorite toy.

Take all those useless and superfluous objects people exchange during the holiday season.  The disposable gifts that are purchased to ease the guilt of giving and receiving.  Or such “objects” as an autograph of a famous person, an art work such as Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn that sold at auction last year for $195 million, Babe Ruth’s bat, Princess Diana’s evening dress ($1,148 million at auction), antlers over a fireplace and trophies of all sorts – the examples are manifold – they serve to confer on their owners a sacred prestige (etymology = deception, illusion) that is pure magic.  Like vast piles of money, they are talismanic protectors against death.  Their magical properties are irrational and rarely acknowledged, for to do so would reveal the absurdity of their acquisition and the pathetic nihilistic core of their owners.  They are outward signs of inward barrenness, yet for those who possess these useless objects they are magic ordure.

The more expensive the objects the more social power they mystically confer, since the message is that the owner can always give it up for a pot of gold but doesn’t have to since they are sitting on a lot more gold, which is really a pot of shit.  In other words, wealth, its possession and the avid desire for it, signifies power over people and that power includes using them in many ways, including their labor, and killing them if one chooses, quickly or slowly, overtly or deviously, directly or indirectly, for some people are useless objects, inferior people.

Such power is central to politics and warfare, as a quick glance at the wealth of war-promoting politicians will reveal.

It is central to the widespread thinking today that the world is filled with useless people who must be disposed of one way or the other.

It is a fundamental tenet of the World Economic Forum, the Gates-Rockefeller et al. crowd, and the racist eugenics promoters today and yesterday.

It is behind the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) biological weapons gain-of-function research, the Covid-19 propaganda, and the CIA’s and Defense Department’s distribution of the mRNA countermeasures (“vaccines”).

It is central to the hideously obscene profits of the medical military-industrial complex and the world-wide arms industry.

It is central to the genocide taking place in Gaza.  For the Israeli rulers, the problem is that the Palestinians exist, so they must be exterminated.

It’s still the same old story told differently down through the ages.

Hitler enacted it against the Jews.

Once long ago, it was a Palestinian Jewish boy born in a manger destined to make trouble for the rulers of the empire who had to be eliminated one way or another.  Today that child of God is any Palestinian child, destined, we are told by the rulers of Israel, to grow into a terrorist animal.

Christmas is about a birth, the birth of a boy who would become a man who sided with the outcasts, the poor, the forsaken, the gentle, and the peacemakers.  His birth and life was a rebuke to the powerful and the rich who lord it over the innocent, the killers, those who profit at the expense of others, who amass wealth and useless possessions to parade their power, a show of power which, unknown to their self-obsessed minds, is a sign of their spiritual nullity.

I have nothing against Santa.  I once sat on his lap and he seemed nice to my four year-old mind.  He was fat and jolly.  He told me I would get what I wanted for Christmas.  But he forgot to tell me what Christmas was really about.

That is what I want.  To remember.

Edward Curtin writes and his work appears widely. He is the author of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies. Read other articles by Edward, or visit Edward's website.

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