Always tweak the wording
Students pushing the envelope just a tad.
Hanin Barghouti, the women’s officer at Sussex University’s student union, gave a speech in Brighton endorsing the attacks by Hamas, calling them “a victory”.
Ellie Gomersall, the president of the National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland, apologised after reposting messages justifying Hamas’s actions in Israel. She wrote: “I shared content last night that I deeply regret sharing. In doing so I promoted hate and division. I shouldn’t have. I have deleted it.”
Carefully missing the point as usual. The issue isn’t hate and division so much as it is mass murder. Translating that to abstract hate n division is just self-soothing, not to say self-flattery.
And when I say I promoted “division,” I mean of toddlers’ heads from their bodies.
I probably would’ve signed off to a similar statement around the time I was fifteen, but that was coterminous with the War on Terror and the Iraq debacle and my politics were pretty damn simple at that age. Add to that the Southern evangelicals’ creepy fetishization of the state of Israel and you get stuff like that.
Nowadays I’m much more sympathetic to the Israelis than I once had been and have no use for Hamas. Whenever I *do* feel like that I don’t pretend my bloodthirstiness is in any way virtuous.
The Palestinians have had to put up with their homeland being part the Ottoman Empire, then a British occupation, and since 1948 it has been divided into Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Both sides in this Arab-Israeli conflict have, intentionally or otherwise, killed children. But Israel is the current occupying power, and have overwhelmingly superior armament, up to and including nuclear weapons.
The conflict beween England and Ireland is currently in a quiet phase, but has been going on since the 12th Century;:around 800 years. On that basis, it is reasonable to assume that the Palestinian-Isaeli war will still be raging in 800 years’ time.
As one casual Jewish aquaintance remarked to me: “We, after all, are God’s Chosen People.”
Enough said. It’s hard to top an attitude like that.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/12/israel-hamas-war-gaza-civilian-deaths
May I recommend further reading for those interested?
One man’s tale from the front lines and his journey from hate to peace.
Former commando, Navy Chief and head of Shin Bet, he has seen a lot, and thought a lot.
https://www.scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/friendly-fire-9781922310521
@Rev David Brindley, I wondered what Mr. Ayalon would have to say today, and he says this:
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231013-former-israeli-security-chief-the-military-can-defend-us-it-cannot-secure-us
Mr. Ayalon believes it is possible – and necessary to move towards a “two-state solution,” but that can only happen after the destruction of Hamas.
A minor quibble, maybe…
No: scrub that, it’s actually fairly major. She didn’t justify HAMAS’ actions. She defended them; she perhaps attempted to justify them. But to say that she justified them indicates that she succeeded in showing that they were warranted, and that people who deny that are mistaken.
I really wish that people would keep the distinction between defending something, or explaining it, and justifying it, clear. It matters.
Good point. It is an important difference. I have a feeling that “justify” has in practice two meanings, one of which is “attempted to justify.” It’s a kind of pejorative, even. “Defended” doesn’t have quite the same bite.
“Ellie Gomersall, the president of the National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland, apologised after reposting messages justifying Hamas’s actions in Israel.”
“Ellie Gomersall, the president of the National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland, apologised after reposting messages defending Hamas’s actions in Israel.”
The second is more precise but it loses a little of the opprobrium. No doubt that’s why people blur the distinction.
Papito, that is no surprise to me.
But have you read the book? Read how, as head of Shin Bet, he regularly met with PLO leaders, up to and including Arafat, how they worked towards eliminating terror attacks, and how “Bibi” was dismissive of PLO concerns and failed to honour the Oslo accord, and thus, Hamas morphed from a benevolent charitable organisation to a political and military one?
Cause and effect.
Hamas needs to be eliminated as a power base, but just as with ISIS, the Viet Cong, and the French Resistance, you cannot understand it in isolation from history.
@Ophelia:
Spending more time than is advisable among lawyers, I think that they tend to use “justify” in the same way that humans use “attempt to justify”, and possibly that’s seeped out into the real world. But it’s still aggravating.