Decades of conflict and struggle in the Middle East are being downplayed by the media's eagerness to seek condemnation of Hamas by political leaders and commentators, writes Tom Tanuki.
NO CONFLICT represents such a deep divide between international solidarity and international power as the plight of Palestinians under threat from Israel's might.
For decades upon decades, those in power – a hand-holding of the West's most powerful governments and a pliant establishment media apparatus – have participated to manufacture popular consent for brutal Palestinian displacement, imprisonment and, finally, what now looks like unfolding genocide if allowed to go on unchecked.
Those of us who wish to express solidarity with Palestine, on the other hand, are often ignored. How many rallies and boycotts have there been, the world over, not just now but over the years? And how many Western governments, Left and Right, have wilfully ignored their call to do something for Palestine?
But if we aren't ignored, we're taken to task with many of the same repressive measures, refined over decades, that are used to silence Palestinians themselves when they argue for their freedom.
One of these measures is a sophist trick — and while there's loss of life happening as we speak, it feels frivolous to pore over this tactic. But it takes pride of place in silencing dissent against Israeli aggression in public, so it is worth discussing.
It's the tactic of being tasked with the job of perpetual condemnation.
“Do you condemn Hamas? Do you? Yes or no, do you?”
Hamas' bloody sneak attack on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people, ostensibly kicked off the chain of violence we’re watching from afar. That’s how the story is told in most media outlets, in any event. It helps to ignore the decades of colonial expansion and loss of Palestinian life that set the stage for this violence, as many outlets and politicians are invested in doing in the name of “balance”. As Israel began to retaliate with brutal military force, so calls to condemn Hamas erupted around the world.
Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot had just lost seven members of his family to a retaliatory Israeli bombardment. He went on BBC Newsnight; he was right away asked to condemn Hamas. He answered that he opposed all attacks on civilians. The interviewer’s next question required another condemnation of Hamas from him. (One of his family members who died worked for the Palestinian Authority, who oppose Hamas. Still, he had to condemn them.)
It’s worth noting that all of Zomlot’s subsequent media interviews follow the same pattern; his Sky News spot is listed on YouTube entitled, ‘Palestinian ambassador to the UK refuses to condemn attacks’.
Former UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn was chased down the street by a shrill Channel 4 reporter demanding he condemn Hamas. He said he criticised all of the violence. It wasn't enough. “Yes or no: do you condemn [Hamas]?” cried the reporter.
Corbyn’s crime was that he didn’t repeat the specific, requisite phrasing of the interviewer needed to pass muster. You have to repeat the sentence as it is given to you, to swear allegiance. You may even have to do this several times in the same interview if you dare to mention Israeli state violence again. This is how you strike balance.
The implication from the harassment of Corbyn was that he, by not answering precisely as instructed, secretly delights in the blood of innocent Israelis, cheering Hamas on from behind a cowardly veneer of diplomatic language. It takes true courage to condemn in exactly the words supplied by a reporter.
Insisting that someone condemn something is a game of political theatre. If I decry the unfolding violence of a powerful imperial force but I am constantly interrupted by being given a little job to do – namely to also name-check earlier incidents in the lead-up to the violence I’m decrying – I feel baited by an act of debate sophistry.
This is particularly so when the demand is to recite a particular phrasing. I am naturally inclined to resist this interrogatory game. But by not participating, my words are construed or recast as condoning violence and I risk being plastered around the internet as an enabler of terrorism.
Former Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nour Odeh said to a Sky News anchor, when asked to condemn Hamas’ terror attack:
We seem to be obsessed with asking the same questions, with talking about the same things, with demanding that some line be drawn between good guys and bad guys.
My opinion, naturally, would be that I can’t tolerate to see any civilian put in a situation of danger. And unfortunately, this is commonplace in a country that has been under occupation and brutal oppression for over half a century.
The politics of condemnation, as Sahar Ghumkhor once called them, were so quick to appear in this matter for good reason. Leaders, politicians and media spokespeople have been trained over the 20 years of the War on Terror to instinctively direct this kind of questions to Arabs and Muslims.
Writing in 2017 for Al Jazeera about the endless calls for Muslims to condemn this, that and the other, Ghumkhor observed:
‘The politics of condemnation is an iteration of respectability politics that is activated without fail after every violent and morally objectionable event involving Muslims, forcing them to answer for what Joseph Massad describes as the “atrocity exhibition”.’
Decades of reflexive Islamophobia are snapping back into shape like a released rubber band. This answers why Hamas' inciting attack is the source of endless demands to condemn it, to this day, while the mounting retaliatory atrocities of Israel require no such display. Arabs must perform again.
As Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef said to Piers Morgan, in a gripping interview dripping with sarcasm:
“Do you want me to condemn Hamas? I will condemn anything you want, I’ll condemn Hamas, hummus, Hassan.”
We are a week or two into what is shaping up to be a genocide if it remains unchecked by the world. And, yet, the world is full of U.S. Presidents and Australian Senators who are still condeming Hamas for 7 October and Palestinians in interview – sometimes being interviewed while under direct bombardment themselves – who are required to do the same. Corridors full of ambulances and children fleeing conflict have been bombed by Israel. The deaths of Palestinians skyrocket daily into the thousands. But first, still, we must all condemn Hamas before we speak. For balance.
Naomi Klein, in her excellent Doppelganger, reflects on how in the internet age we are all reinvented as brands — PR heads of our own agencies in charge of promoting our brand via a network of social media platforms. The call to condemn once might have been only asked of heads of state, public figureheads and other such important people to answer. Now, all of us plebs must also condemn Hamas at the insistence of every other pleb.
Random people DM me to urge me to “condemn Hamas” as though I am Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Twitter accounts excoriate other Twitter accounts for not having condemned bad things soon enough, as though every account is a little head of state.
In Sydney, one livestreamer – who is not a journalist in any credible sense, but insists he is because he owns a camera – stalked Palestinians around a solidarity rally, demanding condemnation. But when someone asked him to condemn Israel's brutality, his weasel response was, “But I'm Australian,” and that he couldn’t possibly cast judgement. An amazing double-standard, and one that only weasels, idiots and non-Arabs get to adopt at this time.
Antisemites crashed a Palestinian solidarity rally in Sydney, with video shared of them yelling “fuck the Jews” and vile chants about gassing Jews. They ought to have been roughly ejected from the rally, although they looked intimidating enough to have made that difficult to do easily. This led to loud calls for organisers of that event to condemn those antisemites. And indeed, it was fair to seek out clarity that pro-Palestinian rallies were not safe homes for antisemites.
They needn't have asked, as it turned out. Fahad Ali, an organiser of that rally, quickly took to Twitter to plainly tell those antisemites that they weren't welcome, that he had wanted them gone and that police had refused to help him to do so at the time.
Fahad had no problem making a bold statement – not a theatrical “condemnation”, but rather a self-started rejection of antisemitism – because his intent around his organising is clear. He does not intend to vilify Jewish people. He wants Palestine to be free. He wants Palestinians to be safe. The rally was a public space for Australians to collectively express solidarity on that matter, in order to put pressure on powerful Australian politicians who are too busy “condemning Hamas” to do something to help Palestinians.
Jewish people eager to express solidarity attend many of these events around the world, as they did that very same Sydney rally. They oftentimes lead activist efforts toward Palestinian liberation. Antisemitism clearly only interrupts the goals of this movement. Fahad made that clear.
The sophist politics of condemnation act as the polar opposite of this kind of clear intent. They are meant to shame people, recast them as apologists for Muslim murder and imply that they are content with loss of life as long as it is Jewish. They are a manipulative game, meant to discredit and silence.
What is unfolding will become an outright genocide against Palestinians if it is allowed to go on. Our leaders and our media collude on this because they have learnt that to manufacture consent for the occupation of Palestinian lands by political Zionist ideologues is best for their interests. We must make the cost of their collusion higher than the benefits it affords them.
Ask your politicians why they continue to defend genocide on social media. Decry what is happening. Convince your friends. This is a good time to explore the revitalised BDS campaign. Attend rallies. Donate. Be loud. Do not be tricked by calls to condemn. Be involved before they murder thousands, or more, of the precious Palestinian children left on the planet.
Tom Tanuki is a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist. Tom does weekly videos on YouTube commenting on the Australian political fringe. You can follow Tom on Twitter @tom_tanuki.
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