Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • International donors complicit in Hamas’ presence in Gaza

    For a more clear-eyed view on Hamas – away from Jeremy Bowen and the BBC – here's Seth Frantzman:

    Hamas has exploited United Nations facilities, non-governmental organisations and civilian institutions in Gaza for decades. It is part of the DNA of Hamas to use every civilian site in Gaza for its own purposes. It built hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath civilian areas in Gaza, for instance. After Hamas launched its October 7 massacre, it sought to hide in Gaza by using civilian institutions, such as schools, universities and hospitals….

    Hamas wants headlines such as “Israeli airstrike on school” or “Israel raids hospital” because Hamas knows that the information appears to be on its side in a conflict that is as much about information warfare as it is about Hamas gunmen hiding out. When Hamas moves its gunmen – dressed as civilians – into a school where people are sheltering, it knows that it is hard for the local civilian authorities to get Hamas to leave. Throughout the war in Gaza, the United Nations and various NGOs that operate in Gaza have proved unwilling to report on the Hamas presence in their institutions or on their aid convoys.

    The international community prefers a code of silence when it comes to Hamas in Gaza. Instead of condemning it for entering schools or reporting and monitoring on this phenomenon, most NGOs and the UN prefer either not to mention Hamas or to condemn, in general, “armed groups” for operating in civilian institutions in Gaza. This terminology is deliberate. Not naming Hamas means that organisations don’t have to work to separate their local staff from Hamas. Not naming Hamas means they don’t have to have guidelines as part of their work not to include members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad in their roster of local employees, volunteers or the gunmen who “protect” aid convoys.

    It’s important to understand here how deeply Hamas has infiltrated all facets of life in Gaza. It infiltrates media and also healthcare workers. It exploits schools, universities, shelters and hospitals. For Hamas, all these NGOs and UN organisations are targets to be exploited, and each large civilian building is a potential hideout. Hamas conducts itself both as a terrorist group and a kind of mafia in this respect. The armed men that it sends to hijack aid convoys, for example, pretend to be there for “protection”. This is the kind of protection that the mafia also offers in other settings. It’s how cartels operate. Separating the civilians from the mafia-cartel aspect of Hamas is key to uprooting Hamas.

    Gaza’s misfortune is to have an international community that has worked in Gaza for decades and been unwilling to confront Hamas. The NGOs and other groups that work there want to get their aid to local people. They see working with Hamas as a lesser evil than the aid not being delivered. They aren’t willing to condemn Hamas or monitor their aid convoys for the presence of gunmen, because it’s easier to look the other way and just let a system that is in place continue. As long as they can say aid came across the border, they can say it was delivered, even if it never reaches the people in Gaza and even if Hamas and armed gangs take the aid and sell it, fuelling the Hamas war machine. To separate Hamas from local people in Gaza, donor countries should mandate that any NGO or UN organisation working in Gaza must monitor and report on Hamas and other groups’ presence in institutions that receive funding. It’s not enough to call on “armed groups” not to enter schools. Monitoring Hamas, as the ruling power, is needed.

    This can be done. Schools can set up CCTV cameras and they can provide transparent lists of who enters and exits the school. Convoys can track where aid goes and make sure it is not stolen. UN institutions are strong enough to have a special rapporteur tasked specifically with reporting on Hamas’s presence. Hospitals can monitor each floor and each room in their facility.

    They won't do it, though. Organisations like UNRWA have been instititionally captured. More than that, their continued existence and their continued funding – by the UN and by western donor countries – depends on the status quo in Gaza continuing. If by some miracle the Israel-Palestine conflict was resolved, those 30,000 or so UNRWA employees in Gaza would be out of a job.

    Separating Hamas from civilians in Gaza and ending the exploitation and use of civilians as human shields is key to defeating Hamas. This starts at the level of donor countries who back the UN and NGO efforts in Gaza. They can mandate reporting on Hamas presence. After October 7 it is imperative that a paradigm shift takes place in how the international community relates to Gaza. The international community can also work toward a day without Hamas, and a day when Gazan children can attend school without Hamas men illegally occupying their classrooms.

    And without UNRWA-employed teachers indoctrinating Gaza children with a hatred of Jews. That'd be a start.

  • Believing Hamas

    No surprise here. From the JC:

    The BBC’s veteran international editor Jeremy Bowen claimed terror organisation Hamas is a “good” source of information on Gaza casualty figures during a closed-doors “masterclass” on reporting war impartially, the JC can reveal.

    During the session for BBC reporters and editors Bowen also took issue with using the term “terrorist” to describe Hamas….

    He also dismissed the recent Asserson Report, which found the corporation had violated its own editorial guidelines on Israel more than 1,500 times since October 7, as a “smear” and wrongly claimed it found that the BBC was “antisemitic”.

    That claim that was contradicted by David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial policy and standards, who was running the class alongside Bowen and said the report had in fact concluded that “we are biased against Israel in our coverage”….

    During an “Editorial Policy Masterclass” on “reporting war impartially” last Friday, Bowen said: “While Hamas run the authority there, the fact is that most international organisations believe the figures are pretty accurate and, in previous wars, the figures have been pretty accurate.

    “The record is good. They don’t appear to be fabricating them,” the BBC stalwart told his colleagues during the lunchtime session.

    However, an analysis by an expert statistician published earlier this year argued that the civilian death toll reported by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry since the start of the war was “statistically impossible”.

  • Train man

    Jack Delano, March 1943. "Waynoka, Oklahoma. An Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe operator and telegrapher throwing one of the interlocking switches.":

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]

    Looking like a young Jeff Bridges.

  • Not so racist after all

    A often-quoted study suggested that Black babies have a better chance of survival when sttended by Black doctors. The inference, of course: White doctors are racist. Yes indeed, racism is everywhere and all-pervasive. 

    Someone has looked at the data again, however:

    According to a famous study, Black newborns have higher survival rates when they’re attended by Black doctors than White doctors. A re-analysis of the data, however, shows that the effect disappears when you account for the fact that Black doctors more often see normal weight Black newborns, whereas White doctors more often see low birth weight Black newborns – newborns that have much poorer odds of survival.

    File alongside the downfall of anti-racist grifter Robin DiAngelo.

  • The war is already on

    Some context in the case of the exploding Hezbollah pagers:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Perhaps now the continuous indiscriminate bombardment of northern Israel by Hezbollah will get a little more attention.

  • Reagan on immigration

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Via Simon Schama: "definitely have never posted anything of Reagan but this is moving and true ( or was) and a rebuke of not just Trump's vile demonisation of immigrants as " animals" but any Republican without the backbone to repudiate him with contempt"

  • Expressing fear of womanhood

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full text:

    Journalist Hadley Freeman, who has written about her past anorexia, says she spoke to clinicians, including some at the Tavistock gender clinic, who told her–

    "Yes, [trans/non-binary] is the new way for girls to express fear of womanhood and it's being socially validated and the parents are going along with it, which is a big difference from anorexia."

    Like anorexia, some gender distress is thought to be socially transmitted online and through peer groups. #ROGDAwarenessDay

    But unlike anorexia, trans gets the validation it demands and has society-wide effects on free speech and the integrity of institutions.

    Freeman talks about the problem in progressive institutions–say, The Guardian newspaper (her former workplace), academia or centre-left political parties–where articulate, middle-class parents have a teenage girl who identifies as a boy.

    "There's a lot of parents at those organisations who have what they call a 'trans kid' and therefore no one at the organisation is allowed to critique child gender stuff," Freeman says.

    "Again this is different from anorexia. It's not like if there'd been a whole load of journalists at The Guardian in the 90s who had anorexic teenage girls, then the paper would have to run loads of articles praising anorexia."

  • In the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway roundhouse

    Jack Delano, March 1943. "Shopton, near Fort Madison, Iowa. Locomotives in the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway roundhouse. Note train control mechanism on truck wheel of the engine."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]

  • Islamism and Islam

    Islamism is generally used now to refer to the political side of Islam, and serves as a useful word, for those who don't want to appear offensive, to talk about aspects of Islam without seeming to assume that all Muslims share the same supremacist agenda. So, really, in what way does Islamism differ from Islam itself? Well, according to Obaid Omer at Quillette, in no way at all.

    I first heard the word “Islamism” in a video of a 2010 debate between Maajid Nawaz, Zeba Khan, Douglas Murray, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Nawaz explained that he used the term “Islamism” to denote an ideology that advocates establishing Islamic supremacy and “Islamist” to describe anyone who wants to further that aim. This terminology allowed him, he argued, to distinguish between moderate and fundamentalist Muslims. But it is telling that we do not make this distinction with regard to any other religion. In his choice of lexicon, Nawaz was applying a double standard. He wanted to avoid tarring all Muslims with the same brush, but this could have been done by using qualifiers such as “fundamentalist,” “extremist,” or “radical.”…

    If Nawaz thought that using “Islamism” instead of “Islam” to differentiate between peaceful, moderate, and fundamentalist versions of Islam would enable people to avoid being accused of Islamophobia, he was wrong. To those eager to discredit valid criticisms of Islam as racist—or who genuinely believe that such criticisms are motivated by bigotry—the change of terminology is likely to seem like merely a sleight of hand. Indeed, in 2010, CAIR stated that “Islamist is largely used to describe any Muslim individual or movement at odds with the agenda of those using the pejorative term.” Likewise, comedian Frankie Boyle recently tweeted: “If I see the word Islamist, I just assume I’m about to read the incoherent ramblings of a crazed racist.”

    [Ah, Frankie Boyle. As Graham Linehan has it, "F***ing pet comedian of the sacred class. A tame pet." Controversial and "close-to-the-bone" only on progressively acceptable topics.]

    My own family and their close friends are moderate Muslims by any measure. Yet they certainly believe in Islamic supremacy. As I grew up, they often told me that Islam would eventually spread across the whole world, and everyone would become Muslim. They didn’t say that they would help to make this happen themselves, nor did they try to convince my siblings and me to proselytise, let alone to take part in violent jihad. They just took it for granted that Islam would come to dominate the globe. If you call that belief “Islamism,” which you see as an extreme version of Islam, you will have little hope of understanding how Muslims like my family see the world….

    Islam is a totalitarian religion; it aspires to control every aspect of Muslims’ lives. There are rules about which foot you should use to walk into your home and to enter every room. There are rules about how to drink water. Many of these rules come from the Hadiths and show how to emulate Muhammad. Given that Islam controls life down to this level of minutia, it is mistaken to believe that the mandates from the Quran that Islam should be supreme are somehow not Islam itself but something else called “Islamism.” To describe the more pernicious aspects of Islam as “Islamism” is not to treat Islam as seriously as we should.

    The term “Islamist” deflects from the fact that violent extremists have goals that are Islamic. The problem here is not a subset of Islamic thought, but the fundamentals of Islam itself….

    “Islamism” is a weasel word. It allows apologists to downplay the effects of Islamic teaching and practice. Theocratic governments like those in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan are not “Islamist.” They are Islamic. They pass laws and institute policies that conform to Islamic teaching.

    Islamic doctrine separates the world into the House of Islam, Dar al Islam, and the House of War, Dar al Harb. ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamic terrorist groups are fighting to expand the reach of Dar al Islam, as mandated by the Quran. We should fight them on the basis of their actions and understand that what motivates those actions is a literal reading of Islamic scripture—not muddy the waters by conflating Islam with Islamism.

    I don't know if Obaid Omer would still count himself as Muslim – at Quillette he's simply described as "an advocate for free speech and Enlightenment values" (this article is some three weeks old now – I missed it at the time) – but it's interesting how those like Omer here and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, brought up as Muslim, are noticeably clearer about the supremacist and totalitarian aspects of Islam than those looking in from the outside.

  • The dangers of an “Islamophobia” ban

    The Labour threat to make "Islamophobia" illegal is a major threat to free speech, introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Other religions – notably the Sikhs – have expreessed their concerns. So why is the nominally secular Labour Party so keen? Could it be that, with the decline of the white working class as a reliable source of Labour votes, a new constituency is needed? Ayaan Hirsi Ali, interviewed by Brendan O'Neill at Spiked:

    I see Keir Starmer as a front for the radical left. He needs the Muslim vote, and the Muslim vote can be relatively easily gained because Islamists can skillfully organise their communities to vote. But the question that Keir Starmer, and other leftist parties across Europe, should ask themselves is this: ‘What are they demanding in return?’ Because the Islamists do have many demands in return. First and foremost, they want censorship. They want ‘Islamophobia’ to be made illegal. And the way they define Islamophobia is any form of criticism of the political agenda of Islam.

    If you talk about the radical views being preached in the mosques or the schools, that’s Islamophobia. If you question the fact that some imams are telling their congregations not to assimilate and to distance themselves from ‘the infidels’, that’s Islamophobia. If you talk about the recent examples of sexual abuse against women and girls, some perpetrated by Muslim immigrants, that’s Islamophobia. If you highlight that there is a kind of soft Sharia law in Britain – which is well established in many Muslim communities when it comes to marriages, divorces and inheritances – that’s Islamophobia. The same goes if you want to talk about the fact that there are Muslim women in Muslim households being beaten, curfewed, removed from school, forced to marry and then raped. If you want to expose any of this, you’re committing Islamophobia. And so, all of a sudden, you can’t fight sexual violence against women perpetrated by men.

    That is what banning Islamophobia is going to ban, if you allow it. It will ban discussing these issues in the name of human rights and equality. If you question this and ask, ‘Do we really want this parallel society?’, you’ll be called Islamophobic.

    These days, the Islamists are less and less secretive about their agenda. This can be seen recently in the blatant anti-Semitism in some Muslim communities. But if you bring this stuff up, and try to get politicians to discuss it, you’re again accused of Islamophobia. This is the question that we have to ask governments, particularly the leftist governments that are trying to outlaw Islamophobia. It is criticism of Islam that’s going to be banned. Journalists and newspapers will no longer be able to exercise their free-press rights to investigate crimes that are being committed.

    Part of this is, no doubt, seen by many in the Labour Party as a logical extension of the old anti-racism policies that have been such a key and largely successful part of leftist politics in the past few decades. But by using the term "Islamophobia" instead of the clearer "anti-muslim prejudice" they're handing the Islamists just what they want: a blasphemy law, and a proscription on any criticism of the Islamist agenda.