Could Gaza Today Mark a Global Turning Point?
Israeli Assault Has Contradictory Consequences
“The World Won’t Be the Same After the Israel-Hamas War,” says Harvard international relations scholar Stephen M. Walt, citing geopolitical effects including shifting U.S. policymakers’ attention away the war in Ukraine and competition with China.
The ongoing Israeli assault now targeting hospitals in Gaza will predictably fuel new cycles of hate and violence. But it has also led to a new wave of global social justice activism evoking the global anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s and 1990s. No one can confidently predict how these contradictory tendencies will play out in the coming months and years.
But it is worth noting that the violent conflict has not yet spread beyond the immediate battlefield. And the demonstrations have been marked not by violent clashes but by prominent participation of Jewish, Palestinian, and protesters of other origins, in the United States as well as around the world.
In this AfricaFocus, I don´t want to add many new words of my own. Instead I have featured two sets of videos, one set from Democracy Now featuring Amy Goodman´s interviews last week with 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and lifelong peace activist Marione Ingram, who has been protesting the war in Gaza outside the White House every day.
The second set is a repeat of several videos I shared earlier by Johnny Clegg. Unfortunately my headline didn´t explain who he is, so many fewer people than usual opened the email. So here is a second chance for you to watch these music videos if you didn´t the first time.
At the end of this AfricaFocus, I have also added links to several sources I have found particularly useful, including several PDFs and a spreadsheet of a wider range of recent articles. The most important and helpful for understanding the context of the current conflict is by Helena Cobban, a journalist and an author of a number of respected books on the Middle East and related issues. She has reported on Hamas since 1987. In mid-October, she wrote an analytical background article that is fundamental for avoiding the standard media stereotypes and providing background on the history.
The fundamental point is that the Hamas of 2006 is not the Hamas of today, and that its current military leadership in Gaza is not representative of the majority of its supporters either historically or today. Her article is much too long to include here. But I have included a few significant excerpts at the end of this AfricaFocus, along with a link to the PDF.
87-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Condemns Israeli Assault & Calls for Peace
For more on her life as a peace activist, after moving to the United States at the age of 17, watch this additional half-hour interview by Amy Goodman.
Demonstration in Washington, DC on November 4
Washington Post: from a near-by building
From ground level: photos and a short video
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"Everything is going to work out in the end, and if it doesn't work out, it ain't the end!"
South African musician Johnny Clegg, died in 2019 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 66. He is best known outside South Africa for his song "Asimbonanga" calling for the release of Nelson Mandela. Fortunately his music is still widely available on YouTube.
For those of us who were involved in Southern African freedom struggles, which won worldwide support, these messages are a more eloquent version of the slogan A Luta Continua (The Struggle Continues) which echoed beyond Mozambique to the Southern African region and beyond.
In the first video below, he began with the message quoted above. In the second video, his performance in Germany was unexpectedly (to him) joined by Mandela himself. The final video is a tribute to him before his death by fellow South African musicians.
For more selections, see this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3ZXDstm9OyN4wt2MfcBzOnYqWF7mpmSQ
Additional Background Sources - PDFs
Cobban-The Only Way Forward - Boston Review.pdf
“Among most Western media today, the idea that Hamas may have political goals seems quite absent. Over the decades since its founding in late 1987, Hamas has nearly always been portrayed as intrinsically violent and deeply anti-Semitic. They are held to be unalterably opposed to the existence of Israel. And they are described as having a vice-like hold on a captive Gazan people,reigning over them through fear and intimidation. It is not too hard to understand why this is: most of these portrayals are written by people who have never met, interviewed, or interacted with Hamas leaders.
But I have. I first interviewed some Hamas leaders in Gaza and the West Bank back in 1989 during the height of the First Intifada. … And from 2004 through 2011 I interviewed Hamas leaders several times, both inside the occupied Palestinian areas and in Damascus, where the organization’s leadership was headquartered until around 2012 when the support it gave to Syria’s opposition led the government to expel them.
Here is my current assessment of their capabilities and positions.
First, Hamas as an organization is much broader and more deeply rooted in Palestinian society than most Western portrayals of it would admit. It has broad, longstanding alliances throughout Gaza (obviously) and the West Bank, as well as with the sizable Palestinian communities in Jordan and the Arab Gulf countries. It has started to rebuild its once-robust grassroots organizations in the large Palestinian communities in Syria and Lebanon.And it has significant ties with the governments of Iran, Qatar, and Turkey and intermittent ties with other regional governments, like those of Jordan or Egypt.”
…
"When […] elections were held in January 2006, Hamas won them handily, taking 74 of the council’s 132 seats. The victory stunned the traditional Fatah leaders of the PA and their backers in Washington and Tel Aviv. In a reporting trip to the region soon thereafter, I found that Hamas’s success reflected a combination of skills: a history of having provided helpful community services to different grassroots constituencies; a reputation for generally “clean hands” (unlike Fatah); effective organizing through women’s networks, with several Hamas women leaders getting elected to the parliament; and good electoral discipline, not running more candidates than there were seats in multi-seat constituencies, as Fatah and its allies did in several places.
The elections gave the PLO and its U.S. and Israeli allies a great opportunity to work to find a way to draw Hamas into the political process. Hamas was willing, too, initially making inroads to form a “government of national unity” with Fatah. But the reaction from Israel and Washington was harsh. They threatened to kill any of the newly elected legislators who would agree to join such a government—which I know because I was the conduit for conveying one such threat."
Pueyo - The Three State Solution
Poast - It Will Take More Than Two States to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
For additional sources, see this frequently updated spreadsheet of selected recent articles. Articles highlighted in yellow are ones that I found most interesting.
For additional shorter notes, not sent out by email, but available on the web, visit https://africafocus.substack.com/notes.