In both cases the answer is no, dipshit, they hate you because of the horrific things to do to them.

Caitlin Johnstone

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 

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Israelis who say “the Arabs hate us because of our religion” are as self-evidently moronic as the Americans who said “they hate us for our freedom”. In both cases the answer is no, dipshit, they hate you because of the horrific things to do to them.

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Western leaders who say they’ll recognize a Palestinian state while feebly calling on Both Sides to reach a ceasefire deal are just cuter, more photogenic versions of Netanyahu. They’re making empty noises to appear as though they’re doing something while refusing to actually lift a finger to stop the genocide.

They know Israel’s not going to make a permanent ceasefire deal because Netanyahu has explicitly stated that the slaughter won’t end until the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is complete. That’s why Tel Aviv is just ignoring the fact that Hamas agreed to a ceasefire a week and a half ago; there is absolutely nothing Hamas could agree to which would stop Israel from doing everything it needs to do to steal a Palestinian territory from the Palestinians who live there. The assault on Gaza has never been about removing Hamas; it has always been about removing the Palestinians.

Western leaders are pretending not to know this and promoting the false notion that Israel is basically acting in good faith in these negotiations, and that the only obstacle is Israel and Hamas being unable to successfully agree to terms. Participating in this mass deception while refusing to take any concrete actions to end the genocide is participating in the genocide. They’re not dropping the bombs or firing the bullets, but they’re helping to make sure they keep raining death and destruction on Palestinians.

They are Netanyahu with a nice guy smile. They are good cop Netanyahu.

 

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After the Australian government announced its ASIO-sourced conclusion that Iran had directed multiple antisemitic attacks in Australia in order to “undermine social cohesion and sow discord,” I published a list of questions regarding the matter which included the following:

“7. What foreign intelligence agencies were involved in helping ASIO gather the information it used to make its assessment about the Iranian involvement in these incidents?”

Shortly thereafter, Sky News Australia ran a report titled “Sources reveal Israeli intelligence assisted ASIO investigation into Iran in major tip-off”.

So I guess we can consider that question answered.

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One of the reasons socialists don’t focus on conspiracy analysis and the deep state as much as the right is because it’s not our only argument. It’s not that conspiracies and parapolitical power structures don’t exist, they absolutely do, but because we’re not ideologically compelled to make excuses for the unavoidable abuses of capitalism we don’t need to act like any specific cabal of machiavellian elites is the source and summit of all our problems.

The rightist suffers from the delusion that capitalism would be working perfectly fine if a few nefarious individuals weren’t scheming behind the scenes ruining the capitalism for everyone. The leftist recognizes that corruption, corporatism, inequality and domination are the inevitable products of a profit-driven system under which the capitalist class are able to exploit the working class who have nothing to sell but their labor. We therefore often find it less important to focus on the specifics of the way those abuses are playing out, because we understand that even if you eliminated all the current oligarchs and their secret plans and the strings they pull to manipulate the official government, if you didn’t also replace our entire system with something radically different they’d be replaced by new oligarchic manipulators in short order.

For those who understand the inherently exploitative, ecocidal, unjust and violent nature of capitalism, the strongest arguments against status quo power structures are not invisible conspiracies happening in secret, but the monstrous abuses that are happening right out in the open. The genocide in Gaza. Our dying biosphere. The fact that people struggle to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table while others fly private jets to private islands paid for by the exploitation of thousands of impoverished workers. The fact that the most powerful country on earth doesn’t have a real healthcare system. The fact that an empire-like alliance of western governments and their proxies keeps expanding its warmongering, militarism and nuclear brinkmanship around the world with the goal of complete planetary domination.

It is an indisputable fact that rich and powerful individuals conspire with each other to the detriment of ordinary people, and at times it can be useful to highlight who those individuals are and the things that they are doing. But the leftist sees people opening their eyes to these abuses as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. When the rightist spotlights those abuses it’s to say “Look what these individuals are doing! If we just removed these individuals from power everything would be working fine!” When the leftist does so, it’s to say “See these are the kinds of people who rise to the top under a system where human behavior is driven by the pursuit of profit, and profit is most readily obtained through exploitation, injustice and ecocide. These kinds of people will always rule over us until we have replaced that system with a different one.”

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