Weekly Grounding #22

News, links, writing

Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader mission. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.

Without further ado, here’s this week’s Weekly Grounding:

• “Palestinians Speak the Language of Violence Israel Taught Them”

  • I would be remiss not to begin this Weekly Grounding with some commentary on the escalating violence in Israel and Gaza. This piece by

    Chris Hedges
    , who spent seven years covering the conflict, clearly captures the reality of the situation: “How can you trap 2.3 million people in Gaza, half of whom are unemployed, in one of the most densely populated spots on the planet for 16 years, reduce the lives of its residents, half of whom are children, to a subsistence level, deprive them of basic medical supplies, food, water and electricity, use attack aircraft, artillery, mechanized units, missiles, naval guns and infantry units to randomly slaughter unarmed civilians and not expect a violent response?” He then draws on the words of Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighter, Alina Margolis-Edelman, who “understood that the lesson of the Holocaust and the ghetto uprising was not that Jews are morally superior or eternal victims. History, Edelman said, belongs to everyone. The oppressed, including the Palestinians, had a right to fight for equality, dignity and liberty. ‘To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors,’ Edelman said.”

• “Israel’s Occupation: 50 Years of Dispossession”

  • Lest Hedges’ depiction of Gaza appear controversial, this report by Amnesty International should clear up any doubts: “Israel’s military rule disrupts every aspect of daily life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It continues to affect whether, when and how Palestinians can travel to work or school, go abroad, visit their relatives, earn a living, attend a protest, access their farmland, or even access electricity or a clean water supply. It means daily humiliation, fear and oppression. People’s entire lives are effectively held hostage by Israel.” The fact that many “dissident” voices (especially on the “New Right”—examples here, here, and here) fail to even recognize—let alone seriously discuss—the brutal oppression that Palestinians have been subjected to at the hands of Israel for decades is disturbing, to say the least. This does not justify Hamas members’ own brutalities against Israeli civilians. However, given that Israel repeatedly targets “unarmed protesters, children and disabled persons…,health workers, and journalists performing their duties, knowing who they are,” does Hamas’ response come as any surprise? I realize that my commentary here will likely lose me some subscribers, but I believe it is important to squarely face reality, especially at times when it is most difficult to do so.

• “How Israel Has Tightened Its Grip on the West Bank”

  • One must give credit where credit is due, and this reporting in The Financial Times documents the settler violence in the occupied West Bank that precipitated Hamas’ assault: “This blitz of pro-settler activity in government has been accompanied by a surge in violence by settlers themselves against Palestinians and their property. According to the UN, there were 441 attacks by settlers in the first five and a half months of the year…Residents are still reeling. Mahmoud Hajaz, a 73-year-old retiree, says that his wife and grandson had been trapped in his house for 30 to 40 minutes after settlers set it on fire, before being rescued. His son, who had been in the town centre shopping, returned to see the house in flames and briefly thought that his mother had been burnt alive. ‘He started screaming, ‘Where’s my mum? Mum, mum, where are you?’ Hajaz recalls, standing beside the partially gutted building, as workmen tried to clean the scorched interior.”

• “Special Emergency Podcast on Gaza, October 8th 2023”

  • This lengthy podcast on the historical and present situation in Gaza at

    Norman Finkelstein's Official Substack
    is worth a listen for anyone striving to understand the broader context of the conflict. I found Finkelstein’s following analysis to be particularly significant: “It is not accurate any longer to speak of Israel as an occupying power. Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, they have all been incorporated as part of Israel. What is happening now is not a war in the sense of a conflict between two states. What’s happening now is an internal conflict in Israel—it’s internal. And it can best be regarded, in my opinion—you have to figure out the right language and no language is ever perfect—but it should be regarded either as a slave rebellion reminiscent of the slave rebellions in my own country, the United States, or it should be regarded as Israel [having] established a Gulag archipelago. For those of you who know that reference—the slave labor camps that were established under the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. Israel has established a Gulag archipelago, but within its own country. It's not a war—as is now being said—between Israel and a foreign state. At minimum, at minimum, Israel remains an occupying power, but in my opinion…it’s in fact no longer an occupying power, it’s dealing with a civil revolt from a slave population.”

• “Welcome to the Age of Tehnofeudalism”

  • Moving to a somewhat different topic, Unherd interviews Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis about his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. It’s a fascinating discussion about his thesis that we are now living in a post-capitalist mode of production, which he calls “technofeudalism.” Wherever you fall on this “mode of production” debate, or if you’ve never engaged with it before, this conversation provides ample food for thought. The debate on nationalist vs. internationalist responses to “technofeudalism” toward the end of the video is particularly interesting.

• “Migrant Crisis Tests New Yorkers Who Thought They Supported Immigration”

  • Open borders are a key subject of debate in the Varoufakis interview, and this reporting at The New York Times provides an interesting complement: “New York has long proclaimed its openness to new arrivals, enshrined in the welcoming words on the Statue of Liberty. But the influx of more than 110,000 migrants in a little more than a year, and the strain on the city’s already stretched resources, has called that openness into question. What happens when the tired, huddled masses are suddenly not a poetic conceit but a continuous tide of very needy newcomers, living in temporary shelters or school buildings in residential neighborhoods?” The article continues to discuss State Senator John Liu, “whose Senate district includes a large immigrant population.” Liu stated that “many of the complaints about migrants were not coming from areas that have been traditionally anti-immigrant. Instead, he said, protests followed the shelters, so ‘even in parts of the city that tend to be very pro immigrant, many of those residents are up in arms.’”

• “Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears”

  • I usually try to end Weekly Groundings on a positive note, but it was hard to do that this week. This extended report in Newsweek documents the rise of rhetoric about “domestic terrorism” from the Biden administration and intelligence community, and I thought it was too important not to share. The report strikes a foreboding tone: “Experts agree that as the 2024 election approaches, there will be greater pressure to prevent law-breaking, one that necessitates infiltration of political circles and other controversial government activity.” Efforts to find these “domestic terrorists” lurking in every nook and cranny of the country are eerily similar to Israeli rhetoric on Palestine. One IDF fighter recently described his view of Gaza to The Financial Times: “Anything you touch could be a bomb, anyone you see could be a terrorist [my emphasis].” As the Newsweek report points out, there is a direct connection between the War on Terror abroad and the new war on “domestic terrorism” under the Biden administration. This is due to America’s “two decades of experience fighting international terror…That skewed the bias toward seeing groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, as well as militia movements around the country, as the problem...because that was what the counterterrorism apparatus was used to focusing on, groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.”

What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.