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subcutaneous

subcutaneous@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years, 3 months ago

Deepening political imaginations.

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Currently Reading (View all 21)

Erik Skare: History of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (2022, Cambridge University Press) No rating

The ideological formation process of PIJ was … not to invent the wheel anew, but instead to extend the worldview of the Palestinian Islamic currents through the incorporation of armed struggle, and, in extenso, to function as an antidote to the secular-nationalist current, which throughout the 1970s exercised a complete monopoly on the Palestinian armed resistance.

History of Palestinian Islamic Jihad by  (Page 36)

Erik Skare: History of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (2022, Cambridge University Press) No rating

As the majority of PIJ’s founding fathers were [originally] affiliated with the secular-nationalist currents, they were swayed by the belief in religion’s transformative potential in the 1960s and 1970s. More importantly, when doing so, they preserved their secular, activist political ethos and logic, although it was now framed through religious symbolism. The establishment of PIJ thus did not entail the formation of a characteristically new ideology, but rather the rearticulation of already-existing ones. There are consequently direct lines from the Palestinian secular-nationalist currents of the late 1960s to contemporary PIJ. Because this was an ethos distinctively different from that of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood [from which Hamas emerged] in the 1980s, the latter was unable to absorb these activists into its ranks. PIJ and Hamas thus derive their practices from two different political traditions with consequences for the movements’ contemporary practices. In effect, PIJ and Hamas developed into two specific and divergent Palestinian currents in the debate on how, and how much of, Palestine is to be liberated.

This argument has two consequences. The first is that PIJ has a justification for existence alongside Hamas beyond its alleged militarism, its alleged lack of pragmatism, and its alleged unequivocal Palestinian identity. If we accept this being the case, then the second consequence is that we may question to what degree the dividing line in the Palestinian resistance – historically as well as contemporarily – is one between secular nationalism and Islamism.

History of Palestinian Islamic Jihad by  (Page 8)

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Yitzhak Laor: The myths of liberal Zionism (2009, Verso) No rating

One of Israel’s most controversial writers demystifies the “peace camp” liberals

Yitzhak Laor is one …

When Israeli soccer commentators notice a fistfight breaking out on the field or among fans in the stands, they are always quick to exclaim: “Where are we? In Africa? Is this how we want to become part of Europe?” In another variation, Ehud Barak constantly describes Israel as a “villa in the jungle.” Over and over we are told that Israeli violence is necessary, including the killing of innocent civilians, because, after all, “we are not in Europe,” as if Europe did not inflict on the world the most horrible violence of modern times, both on the non-Western parts of the globe and on our own relatives, not to speak of the others, in their midst, just over half a century ago. The injunction is incessant: We must be worthy of being part of Europe, of being part of the West. In international math tests, the greatest shame for Israelis is that, in recent years, Iran has scored higher than we have, as if the Iranians are not supposed to excel in math, while we are destined to.

The myths of liberal Zionism by 

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner: An Army Like No Other (2020, Verso Books) No rating

The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by …

Content warning colonial execution

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner: An Army Like No Other (2020, Verso Books) No rating

The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by …

Content warning mass killing

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James Yaki Sayles: Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth (Paperback, 2010, Kersplebedeb, Kersplebedeb Publishing) No rating

Like the revs that he most considered his teachers—Malcolm X and George Jackson—James Yaki Sayles …

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James Yaki Sayles: Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth (Paperback, 2010, Kersplebedeb, Kersplebedeb Publishing) No rating

Like the revs that he most considered his teachers—Malcolm X and George Jackson—James Yaki Sayles …

We must understand: It becomes a criminal act when cadres and activists continue to think and act as though they are protected by the U.S. constitution, state and local statutes, and the myths and lies fed the settlers and colonies of the empire about "amerik­kkan democracy," and other nonsense. So-called bourgeois legal­ity and morality died when the Portuguese landed on the African continent, and when Columbus landed in the "Indies." The most "innocent"/"public" or "reformist" activity, is actual, or potential, revolutionary activity, and real revolution is illegal in amerikkka, and too serious to be kept in a glasshouse.

Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth by 

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner: An Army Like No Other (2020, Verso Books) No rating

The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by …

Controlling a civilian population under occupation differs from waging battles against state armies. Enormous investment was required to build up the new system of control—scores of settlements and army camps were built over the decades all across the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories], as well as in Sinai and the Golan Heights, which was illegally annexed in 1981, without any noticeable reaction from the international community. The new settlers were, like the old ones in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, mobilized armed civilians securing the occupied territories, marking with their bodies and their luxury homes the new, expanded zone of the Zionist project.

IDF camps in the OPT, therefore, had multiple aims. It made the terrain known to army recruits and controlled the captive population through brutal measures, such as the Military Government and Emergency Regulations, inherited from the British Mandate of 1935 and the 1945 Emergency Regulations. Such illicit legislation was used for defending illegal settlements, redrawing the map by confiscation of private and public land.

The army soon built a system combining features adapted from similar trouble spots, such as Vietnam and Algeria. A wide network of informers, agents, and agent-provocateurs was set up to collect information. New vast prisons were built to hold more than 10,000 prisoners, and at the height of this conflict, more than double that number. Many prisoners were (and are) held without charge or due process as administrative detainees, whose detention may be extended indefinitely, without a right of appeal or even knowing the charges. A sophisticated network of interconnected, computerized checkpoints, roadblocks, electronic surveillance mechanisms, fences, and other means of limiting freedom/s of the population was built, making sure every single Palestinian was continuously tracked.

This system totally failed to warn the IDF of the most original of resistance efforts. This failure came to light during the first intifada that erupted in December 1987 in Gaza and quickly engulfed the whole of the OPT. Tanks, nuclear submarines, long-range missiles, nuclear devices, and F-16 fighters were of limited value in this conflict with civilians—mainly boys and young men and women, demonstrating and stone-throwing against the strongest army in the Middle East. Israel had no inkling that an uprising would emerge; it was genuinely spontaneous.

An Army Like No Other by 

Atticus Bagby-Williams, Nsambu Za Suekama: Black Anarchism and the Black Radical Tradition (Paperback, Daraja Press) No rating

Thi swork shows how Black anarchism has emerged from roots in Pan-Africanism, the Black radical …

[David] Roediger describes how the [post-civil war u.s.] anarchist movement, epitomized by [Lucy] Parsons, failed to respond to the Black freedom struggle. Similar to individualist anarchists, the anarchists of this period, according to Roediger, made overtures for the rights of Black people while remaining in a class reductionist perspective overall. Lucy Parsons attributed the racial violence of the period to class interests in a typical class reductionist and Marxist sense. According to [Steve] Shone, “Lucy often characterized racial problems through a Marxist lens, stressing class rather than race as an explanation for ethnic conflicts and exploitation” (Shone, 2010:70). Shone cites various scholars, including Robin D.G. Kelley, who describes her as operating within the confines of white socialist thought. Roediger also touches on her relationship to race; he recounts how Lucy said that “outrages” were heaped upon on the “negro,” not because he was Black, but rather because “[...]he is poor. It is because he is dependent.” Lucy Parsons chose actively not to identify as Black but rather as Mexican and other backgrounds.

Roediger also describes how Albert Parsons's analysis of race failed in part due to his frequent comparison between chattel slavery and wage slavery (2016:205-206). According to Roediger, Albert agreed with Jefferson Davis that wage slavery was a more effective way to exploit Black workers. Though it is clear that the Parsons were both committed to projects that were anti-racist, the anti-racism they espoused came second to their class politics. There was no acknowledgment of the Black struggle as important as or relevant within – let alone primary to – the organized labor struggle.

Black Anarchism and the Black Radical Tradition by , (Moving Beyond Capitalism --Now!) (Page 13)

Atticus Bagby-Williams, Nsambu Za Suekama: Black Anarchism and the Black Radical Tradition (Paperback, Daraja Press) No rating

Thi swork shows how Black anarchism has emerged from roots in Pan-Africanism, the Black radical …