Bilal Barakat 🍉 / is on Nostr

Mathematician/computer scientist/statistician turned social scientist with a focus on international educational development and demography. Critical realist epistemology: facts are constructed, but not out of nothing.

Stale-ish (pulling off the grey melange, and in better cardio shape than at 20) pale-ish (Euro-Arab, “gelernter Österreicher”) male | late-dx ND

Interested in almost everything. Serial monotropist (not always in a good way).

I do not suffer fools. This is not a challenge.

Last Notes

2024-06-13 15:17:11

So obviously I knew that Revisionist Zionists felt inspired by fascism and tried to ally with European fascists, but I hadn't realised until now that at least some of them explicitly ‧identified as‧ fascists!
As Rick Perlstein wrote in February, sharing his insights from Eran Kaplan's 2005 study “The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy”:
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one of Zionism’s original political traditions—the faction that ended up winning, [its] foundations were literally fascist.
I use the word “fascist” in the literal sense. Do not flinch from it. The founders of Revisionist Zionism certainly didn’t. Respect them enough to take them at their word.
In 1928, a prominent Revisionist named Abba Ahimeir published a series of articles entitled “From the Diary of a Fascist.” They refer to the founder of their movement, Ze’ev Jabotinsky (his adopted first name is Hebrew for “wolf”), as “il duce.” In 1935, his comrade Hen Merhavia wrote that Revisionists were doing what Mussolini did: “establish a nucleus of an exemplary life of morality and purity. Like us, the Italian fascists look back to their historical heritage. We seek to return to the kingdom of the House of David; they want to return to the glory of the Roman Empire.” They even opened a maritime academy in Italy, under Mussolini’s sponsorship, for the navy they hoped to build in their new Israeli state. “[T]he views and the political and social inclinations of the Revisionists,” an Italian magazine reported, “are absolutely in accordance with the fascist doctrine … as our students they will bring the Italian and fascist culture to Palestine.”
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https://prospect.org/world/2024-02-21-neglected-history-state-of-israel/

2024-06-13 15:06:27

Some highlights from a (paywalled) interview in The New Yorker with Matt Duss, “the executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, and the former chief foreign-policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders.”
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I’ve lost track of what word salad the Biden Administration has been using about this lately: a tangible commitment to an eventual path, to a conceivable, maybe Palestinian state sometime in the future. It’s completely qualified and attenuated and totally uninspiring—because, yes, they understand there is no way that this Israeli government, or even an alternative Israeli government led by Netanyahu’s opposition, is really serious about making any of these commitments or taking any of these steps.
I would add—this is something that I think needs to be understood more—that there has been an offer on the table, not just from Saudi Arabia but from the entire Arab League, going back to 2002, for full peace and normalization with Israel if Israel follows U.N. Security Council Resolutions, follows international law, withdraws from the occupied territory, and enables the creation of a Palestinian state.
...
I think a different Democratic Administration could have taken this issue more seriously before October 7th. … there have been alarms sounded about Gaza for many, many years by international N.G.O.s; certainly by Palestinians, constantly; by Israeli security officials; by members of Congress, including my former boss. The idea that we could just kind of kick the Palestinians into the corner and manage the problem without any real consequences—that was revealed as a fantasy on October 7th.
…
At some point though, and fairly quickly, it became clear that what was going to be carried out in Gaza was not just self-defense. It became clear very quickly that this was a war of revenge.
...
I watch [the national-security spokesman] John Kirby’s briefings and it’s mind-boggling. I mean, who is he speaking for? It’s just these denials of what we can all see with our own eyes. And to continue to claim that they haven’t really seen evidence that Israel is committing war crimes. It’s such obvious bullshit.
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https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-bidens-israel-policy-cynical-or-naive?_sp=cce6cfbb-a9c2-44b6-a132-3fa414041429.1718283066923
@npub1zxn…0kqm @npub1qj0…wryw

2024-06-13 13:28:21

I just learned that The Jerusalem Post newspaper was literally called The Palestine Post until 1950... The “Palestine never existed" crowd really are a clown show.
https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/pls?
@npub1zxn…0kqm

2024-06-04 15:35:55

Taking apart Israel's inane WWII analogy:
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/353134/israel-gaza-rafah-argument
@npub1zxn…0kqm

2024-06-01 17:48:30

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There is literally not a single serious person whose expertise lies in disputing numbers in general who doesn’t accept that this is almost certainly a huge undercount.

2024-05-14 13:26:45

An excellent older (2015) piece by David Graeber full of insight.
On the logic of the settlements:
»First, the settlements. They were originally the project of a relatively isolated, if well funded, collection of religious zealots. Now everything seems to be organized around them. The government pours in endless resources. Why? The answer seems to be that since at least the ‘90s, rightwing politicians in Israel have figured out that the settlements are a kind of political magic. The more money gets funneled into them, the more the Jewish electorate turns to the Right. The reason is simple. Israel is expensive. Housing inside the 1948 boundaries is exorbitantly expensive. If you are a young person without means, you increasingly has two options: to live with one’s parents until well into your 30s, or find a place in an illegal settlement, where apartments cost perhaps a third of what they would in Haifa or Tel Aviv—and that’s not to mention the superior roads, schools, utilities, and social services. At this point the vast majority of settlers live on the West Bank for economic, not ideological, reasons. (This is especially true around Jerusalem.) But consider who these people are. In the past, young people in difficult circumstances, students, well-educated young parents, have been the traditional constituency of the Left. Put these same people in a settlement, and they will, inexorably, even without realizing it, begin to think like fascists. Settlements are, in their own way, giant engines for the production of right-wing consciousness. It is very difficult for someone placed in hostile territory, given training in automatic weapons and warned to be constantly on one’s guard against a local population seething over the fact that your next-door neighbors have been killing their sheep and destroying their olive trees, not to gradually see ethno-nationalism as common sense. As a result, with every election, the old Left electorate further dissipates, and a host of religious, fascist, or semi-fascist parties win a larger and larger stake of the vote. For politicians, who can barely think past the next election, the lure is inescapable.«
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/hostile-intelligence-reflections-from-a-visit-to-the-west-bank/
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2024-05-08 17:48:08

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There’s a matching scene in Hotel Rwanda.

2024-05-07 13:04:49

Israel has denied the UN access to the #Rafah crossing and has halted aid flows.
UPDATE:
The UNRWA planning director on the implications:
https://aje.io/5cerl2?update=2885055