#7: palestine, israel, podcasts and hope

17.10.23 - Vienna

quick trigger warning: war, frustration, anger, bleakness - even though I do have hope. Please don't read this if today doesn't feel right for it, take care of you.

My last post was about trying to have more fun, and I’ve found that injecting little bits of impulsive energy into an otherwise unchanged routine has been working for me. Yay. 

This read won't reflect much of that fun - though please do be comforted by the fact that I really do love podcasts, a lot.

The day after I published that last post, every news outlet in the world started reporting that Hamas militants had surprised the Israeli state, waged battle with their military, and killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. In response, Israel has been as ruthlessly brutal as anyone even somewhat familiar with their reign over Palestine could expect. Israel has a proven record of being just as murderous - and capable of perpetrating atrocities - as Hamas, a group which has been designated the “terrorist” status by the U.S. and E.U..

I’ve been trying to have fun without shielding myself from news about these atrocities. Knowing what’s happening feels like a responsibility, and I can’t quite explain why. This situation is novel only in its horrific brutality, but nobody with an inkling of understanding of the seven decades long colonisation of Palestine by Israel - with the support of Western imperialists - can claim to be surprised. 

Every day’s news has been shocking, and terrible, and ugly, and any number of other endlessly listed synonyms, but it’s also entirely consistent with what we’ve known for decades. It is both unimaginable and entirely imaginable, because the violence is too terrible to conceptualise and too horrifically predictable not to materialise in a region which has developed alongside the wrathful need for American Empire to protect its interests by fomenting instability in the Middle East through a willing partner, the state of Israel.

This is not the quiet part being said out loud, this is the out loud part being said out loud. Empire does not feel the need to be subtle about preserving itself and promoting its interests.

Israel has been invented - and it has gone on to perpetrate a regime of genocidal apartheid upon the people who already lived there.

After the Second World War, the world’s remaining Jewish population was obviously in dire need of protection and preservation, because the Nazis almost annihilated an entire people, and an entire culture.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in this history or this region, but it seems to me that it sure was convenient for Western imperialists to be able to return Jewish people to an “ancestral homeland”, while also creating and empowering an ally smack bang in the centre of a region with a whole lot of gloopy car juice underneath it. Destabilising that region, disrupting unity in that region, and creating a powerful ally in that region, has done a lot to protect American hegemony.

In the novel I read last week, American War, a major plot point was that resources were being provided to the secessionist southern states by the Bouazizi Empire. This ensured that the second American civil war would be long and brutal - guaranteeing that America would be too busy tearing itself apart to once again grow into being a global power.

This imagined world inverted the current dynamic; western money going towards ensuring that the Middle East remains divided.

And now, despite the fact that the very foundations of Israel were imperialist and colonialist, Israeli Jews have been there for so long that it does seem totally unreasonable, and unfair, and anti-semitic, when people call for the territory’s total reinstatement as Palestinian. Because where would Jewish people in the area go? And could their safety be guaranteed?

Given that Israel has been as violent, coercive and oppressive as it has towards Palestinians, and that certain Palestinians have retaliated so violently for decades on end, Israeli people don’t have all that much reason to have faith they would be safe.

My favourite comedian and podcaster, and one of the people I’ve never met, and may never meet, but who’s voice and on-air persona are as distinct and special to me as those of anyone I’ve ever personally known, is Marc Maron.

I’ve listened to and watched every comedy special I could find, along with hundreds of his podcast interviews. I can confidently say that over the past four years, I haven’t gone more than three days without hearing Maron’s voice - and my life has been all the better for it.

I’ve listened to many of his podcasts several times over, and one I’ve returned to over recent years was an interview conducted over zoom, during one of the COVID lockdowns, with actor, director and writer, Seth Rogen.

The following is part of that episode’s intro.

If you haven’t guessed (in which case, gohead n unclench them cheeks) Marc and Seth are Jewish. As they explain, this identity is cultural, but neither of them are religious. Still, that Jewish identity is staunch, and neither of them shy away from proudly advertising it as fact.

Maron has often alluded to the fact that he feels it is important to highlight his culture specifically because anti-semitism continues to be rife in this world, and even if he does not abide by the religion’s every tenet or tradition - and sometimes even finds himself talking about Hasidic Jews somewhat derisively - he is clear that he is proud to be a Jew. This episode illustrates that this beautiful and righteous sentiment is shared by Seth.

I love this episode (#1143) for a lot of reasons. They have some great back and forth, some witty banter, and generally, I just like how they talk. I’m interested in what they talk about.

Seth Rogen has a very enjoyable screen presence, and is a great writer. He’s made movies I’ve been watching since before I knew anything about who he was, or even very much about what Judaism is. Pineapple Express will never not make me giggle.

At school, only one of my classmates, who was only there for a few years, was Jewish, and I learned a little bit abut Judaism from him. He once stood in front of our class and explained what “shalom” meant. Pretty cool. Otherwise, though, I had very limited contact with Jewish people. That hasn’t been by design, on my part, but it’s still true.

I’ve visited holocaust memorials, museums, and a concentration camp, and those have all been important, and impactful, but not nearly as much as just - this sounds stupid because it is, a little - listening to one particularly funny, talented, and interesting person talk for thousands of hours.

One might argue that what I’m describing is tokenism. Thinking that listening to this person talk, and then using his cultural background as an exemplifier of something greater than himself, to learn a wider lesson about ethnicity, but that isn’t what I’m doing.

At least not actively. I listen to Marc Maron talk and find comfort, and relatability, because he talks about being a little fucked up, and has always seemingly thought of himself as a little fucked up, and buddy, same.

Therein lies the appeal, and the judaism thing is not even secondary, its just there, and I’m glad it is but I don’t focus on it, because it doesn’t feel like it matters very much to me. I respect that it matters to other people, and appreciate when they can respect that I try to see it from their point of view without necessarily aiming to change my own.

All that said, Marc Maron’s conversations with other Jewish people have given me a lot of insight into upbringings I didn’t have. This episode in particular comes to mind whenever Palestine and Israel are featured prominently in headlines, as they often are.

Before playing this clip, keep in mind that Marc and Seth were talking in 2020. They were not able to speak with more sensitivity, based on the atrocities or war crimes which have been reported since last weekend, because these specific ones had not yet occurred.

What they are laughing about, while talking candidly, is very serious. Their mirth may seem out of place, but when we don’t feel like the weight of actual, ongoing conflict is bearing down on us, we should be able to see that the situation in Israel is absurd.

They are not laughing at Jewish people in Israel, but at the nonsensical nature of seeking to protect a thing by putting all of it in a single, volatile place.

“They forget to include the fact, to every young Jewish person that ‘Oh, by the way, there were people there.’”

This clip feels important to me, because these people grew up as Jewish people in America, and Canada, respectively. Their relationship with Israel, then, was very different to my own. They grew up being taught to imagine Israel in a very different way, and have since come away with their own, more nuanced perspectives.

“There were people there.”

Now, no matter what you might think about this situation, that’s a pretty important detail.

It is the very same awkward detail sitting at the foundation of the U.S. of A. - but that young nation just got further down the line in its pursuit of eradication. America can’t very well turn around and say that the annihilation of a people is a fucking horrific way of founding a country.

'Hey, you, pot! What colour wouldya say that there kettle is?'

Since I’m in the swing of talking about podcasts, I would definitely recommend this one: This American Life: A Mess to Be Reckoned With.

This episode tells the story of one of far too many Native American people who continue to go missing in the U.S. - an end result which can be traced back to hundreds of years of genocidal neglect and mistreatment perpetrated by the United States. Again, because there are so few of these people left, and because the country within which their communities are continuing to try to exist still benefits from a lack of widespread understanding of their strife, I don’t know nearly enough about them.

If you listen to it, you may find yourself feeling taken aback by just how matter of factly the potential violent death of a relative is spoken about. It feels clear that addiction, violence, and dying young, are a tragic, but almost normalised part of life.

And one more: The fight to give Indigenous Australians a voice. This podcast was recorded before Australians voted to reject the proposal being discussed in that episode.

I listened to both of these podcasts last week, and am recommending them now because they are two of so many examples of the ways in which representatives of an almost eradicated, colonised people are having to try to forge their way through this world, while living as minorities in lands which were, prior to the violent unravelling of imperial tendrils, theirs.

The fact that horrible things happen when people are colonised, and that some of those colonised people might resort to violence in order to overthrow their colonists, just shouldn’t surprise anyone. History rhymes, and often repeats itself. And we’ve seen this all before.

Israel’s occupation is colonialism - an imperial offshoot. This is what it is, and this is what it does. Nobody who deserves to fucking wins. That’s about the only thing that power grappling guarantees, but people sure do suffer as a result of it.

Another podcaster I love goes by the name of Blindboy, and when the opportunity arises, he speaks candidly about colonialism and imperialism. His podcasts aren’t usually intended to be political, he’s just a storyteller who does interesting research and draws fascinating connections.

I was listening to an episode last week, and triggered by a different context, Blindboy started talking about imperialism.

Later in the episode (Are you really John Wayne?) the smoothly accented narrator goes on to discuss a bus journey, when he kindly requested that the woman in front of him refrain from reclining in her seat - which would have increased her comfort at the expense of his discomfort.

Once they got off the bus, she confronted him, but he stayed calm. They got to talking. Eventually, when he told her that he’d clocked her irritation on the bus, and added that he was sorry she was angry, but that he felt glad to have established a boundary which he thought was fair, she seemed diffused, and even understanding.

They kept talking, and he asked her if she had recognised that only one other person on the bus had reclined their seat - causing the person behind them to have a very uncomfortable journey. That comfortably reclined person happened to be American, as was the woman to whom Blindboy was speaking.

Talking out of his arse (by his own admission) he spoke to this woman and drew an interesting connection between American Imperialism, a regime fuelled by a sense of entitlement over the space occupied by others, and her anger, a rage connected to space being kept from an entitled grabber’s grubby mitts.

Somehow, probably because nobody could listen to such a smooth voice and be angry, even when being accused of being an imperialist with a bloated sense of entitlement, this interaction ends with a hug. Blindboy walked away ebullient, having made an honest connection with a person who had approached with intent to pass fury along.

It’s a very good episode, and this description only scratches the surface of why I feel that way.

More relevant to the thoughts I’ve been having this week, though, is the following. It may well sound callous, out of context. And it probably is. But that callousness hasn’t kept it from embedding itself into my thoughts.

Callousness doesn’t stop things from resonating with me, I've found.

I would like to believe, at least, that if conflict were to come to me, even if I didn’t see it coming, I’d be able to understand that even unwillingly, my way of life does lend itself to complicity. That wouldn't make it easier to accept violence or pain, but its a thought I find necessary, and humbling, which motivates me to want a better world.

I don’t condone any violence whatsoever. I’m sure, and you can confirm this by listening to Blindboy yourself, that he doesn’t either. But it is so frustratingly naive of western media sources to pretend not to understand violence, and to act totally and utterly shocked in the face of violence, as they did in the first few days of Hamas’ attacks.

Now that Israel has regrouped from a ‘9/11’ moment, the retaliation begins. This retaliation - against Palestinians, not just Hamas - will be delivered with considerably more force at the state’s disposal than either, those narratives are starting to shift. The pendulum is swinging back.

I’m annoyed at the swinging pendulum. I’m annoyed at the information sources I rely on getting so caught up in the momentum, time and again, as though the outcomes they will soon report are some sort of shock, despite the fact that they’ve happened before, and that they’ve brought with them every indication that they’ll happen again.

But that frustration is misdirected. That’s shooting the messenger. These sources just do what they do, and what they’ve done, again and again, because the underlying market logic of taking sides, switching sides, ultimately abiding by the status quo and refraining from dreaming about, and talking about solutions, rather than treatments, because its what they do.

So if anyone should be told not to be surprised, its me. Well, aint that a biche.

We live in an age of capitalist extraction, devastation, destruction, nations, empires and war. 

We have yet to shed our stupidest impulse: a desire to wield disproportionate power over others. Whether that desire is rooted in fear of being controlled if we do not control, or just a sociopathic belief in our own inherent superiority, as things currently stand, it is everything.

War is tragic, horrific, and senseless. It creates no victors, only killers, bodies, and a tenuous “peace” populated by traumatised individuals who will do whatever it takes - including slower, more deliberate acts of violence - to avoid slipping back into all out war. No matter what happens in its aftermath, war only ever sows more pain, and more resentment.

When I was a kid, I was singing the refrain (‘ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, SAY IT AGAIN Y’ALL’) to War, What is it good for? whilst trundling around the house.

My folks ran a pretty quiet household, and sensitive kids tend to get all hushed up in the face of contemplating the utilitarian justifications for war. So I learned, perhaps too early in my life, from the response of an aforementioned folk, that not everyone considers this to be true, strictly speaking.

I was almost certainly too young to understand the full breadth of the response, but know that it was not at all in alignment with Edwin Star’s conclusion. Something to do with the righteousness, or at least usefulness, of wars being fought to prevent genocide, or to prevent the rise of evil fascists, or to pre-empt further violence.

I’ve heard many similar arguments since, and to me they just don’t make sense from the get.

They all assume that there has been violence first, that war was already the choice that was made. And once that is done, the war either comes to you, or you go to it.

Fine, I understand that, even if I don’t want to accept it.

The thing is, though violence does exist, I really don’t think it has to last forever. Only our belief that it does will keep it in place.

If someone else has already made the decision to choose violence, the problem is upstream. Whatever caused them to make that choice, to think that choice was right, is what needs to be confronted. Fighting the battle, downstream, just ensures that the momentum will keep running red.

To avoiding having to face the consequences of that decision, maybe don’t tell little kids that war is ever justifiable.

Don’t tell little kids that they are, or can ever become, better or worse than anyone else. Maybe don’t show or tell little kids that some people, because they were born in this country and not that, on this continent and not that, are entitled to more, to less, to better, to worse. Maybe organise the society into which, and within which you’re bringing those kids up in such a way that it reflects peace and justice for all - not conflict.

Lasting peace lies in an acknowledgment of equal power, and mutually recognised right to exist in safety, free from coercion, oppression or control.

Power acquired through war forces the oppressed, the embattled, the beaten - and even the victor - to keep up the fight for it. Contending with power like that, on its terms, pushes the end further and further out of sight.

But there are other ways we can exist. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Links to the podcasts mentioned in this post:

- WTF with Marc Maron: Episode 1143: Seth Rogen

- The Blindboy Podcast: Are You Really John Wayne?

- This American Life: A Mess To Be Reckoned With

- Today in Focus: The fight to give Indigenous Australians a voice

blog the seventh signing off