Since it's been a while since we had an Israel/Palestine thread...

[dilbert1]

Israel’s hands aren’t tied, and it clearly is not acting in a merely defensive manner. It is perpetrating carte blanch a genocidal ethnic cleansing.

With 10/7, Hamas has made the situation worse (by their own admission). They offer no real prospects to the civilian population of Palestine, even if in the immediate context the latter find themselves at their mercy.

Can’t those things both be true?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Israel’s hands aren’t tied, and it clearly is not acting in a merely defensive manner. It is perpetrating carte blanch a genocidal ethnic cleansing.

With 10/7, Hamas has made the situation worse (by their own admission). They offer no real prospects to the civilian population of Palestine, even if in the immediate context the latter find themselves at their mercy.

Can’t those things both be true?

Name us one film where it's baddies against baddies - it just doesn't happen!

 

[mixed_biscuits]

There has to be some pushback still to the claim that Israel is engaged in indiscriminate slaughter; here is a well-known historian on the unusual circumspection shown by the Israeli forces in pursuing their stated aims:

 

[version]

Name us one film where it's baddies against baddies - it just doesn't happen!

Cross of Iron?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Answer the question

If the driver of the truck could slow down or steer out of the way but instead deliberately hits the dog - if, in fact, the driver has set out to hit as many dogs as possible and has a large number of cartoon dog outlines spray-painted on the side of his truck, and routinely brags on social media about how many dogs he's killed - then I'd say it's him.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Cross of Iron?

Cats & Dogs?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

If the driver of the truck could slow down or steer out of the way but instead deliberately hits the dog - if, in fact, the driver has set out to hit as many dogs as possible and has a large number of cartoon dog outlines spray-painted on the side of his truck, and routinely brags on social media about how many dogs he's killed - then I'd say it's him.

But you wouldn't lift Jimpy out of the way because you feel this absolves you of any responsibility...utterly bizarre.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@Mr. Tea

 

[Mr. Tea]

View attachment 17937View attachment 17938

@Mr. Tea

It's almost as if Hamas isn't the democratically elected government of a country that enjoys full diplomatic relations with the USA and most other countries in the world.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

It's almost as if Hamas isn't the democratically elected government of a country that enjoys full diplomatic relations with the USA and most other countries in the world.

So, you agree with the Israeli view: that Hamas is an implacable, uncommunicative and irrational foe impervious to reason or entreaty.

 

[Mr. Tea]

So, you agree with the Israeli view: that Hamas is an implacable, uncommunicative and irrational foe impervious to reason or entreaty.

In which case, why place any moral imperative on them to do anything at all? Terrorists gonna terrorise, right?

While you continually talk about the Israeli state as if it were literally incapable of stopping itself from committing genocide.

 

[thirdform]

Obviously all of that is taking umbrage with the purview of a very specific subset of people and leaves a lot out of the picture. But it's a loud group whose eagerness to hog all the moral high ground seems more pathologically motivated than politically so

You and biscuits (despite being on opposite sides of the democratic spectacle) for that matter, can simply not engage with most leftists, who are just liberals in their most conscious form. Yet something compells both of you, a deriving of surplus enjoyment. I think this is something you should be more concerned about, as it ultimately leads to the nausea of existentialism, something @sus to his credit, was right to condemn.

Naturally, the Northerners had no other course but to introduce methods of repression. On August 6, 1861, the President confirmed a resolution of Congress as to “the confiscation of property used for insurrectionary purposes.” The people, in the shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North, and persons suspected of secessionism, i.e., of sympathizing with the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In some northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of newspapers which supported the revolting slave-owners and smashed their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary publishers were smeared with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore little resemblance to the “end-in-itself ;” so that the categorical imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a considerable blow. But this is not all. “The government, on its part,” the historian tells us, “adopted repressive measures of various kinds against publications holding views opposed to its own: and in a short time the hitherto free American press was reduced to a condition scarcely superior to that prevailing in the autocratic European States.” The same fate overtook the freedom of speech. “In this way,” Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher continues, “the American people at this time denied itself the greater part of its freedom. It should be observed,” he moralizes, “that the majority of the people was to such an extent occupied with the war, and to such a degree imbued with the readiness for any kind of sacrifice to attain its end, that it not only did not regret its vaninshed liberties, but scarcely even noticed their disappearance.” [Fletcher’s History of the American War, pages 162.164.]
Infinitely more ruthlessly did the bloodthirsty slave-owners of the South employ their uncontrollable hordes. “Wherever there was a majority in favor of slavery,” writes the Count of Paris, “public opinion behaved despotically to the minority. All who expressed pity for the national banner... were forced to be silent. But soon this itself became insufficient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent were forced to express their loyalty to the new order of things ... Those who did not agree to this were given up as a sacrifice to the hatred and violence of the mass of the people ... In each centre of growing civilization (South-Western states) vigilance committees were formed, composed of all those who had been distinguished by their extreme views in the electoral struggle ... A tavern was the usual place of their sessions, and a noisy orgy was mingled with a contemptible parody of public forms of justice. A few madmen sitting around a desk on which gin and whisky flowed judged their present and absent fellow-citizens. The accused, even before having been questioned, could see the rope being prepared. He who did not appear at the court learned his sentence when falling under the bullets of the executioner concealed in the forest ...” This picture is extremely reminiscent of the scenes which day by day took place in the camps of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the other heroes of Anglo-Franco-American “democracy.”
We shall see later how the question of terrorism stood in regard to the Paris Commune of 1871. In any case, the attempts of Kautsky to contrast the Commune with us are false at their very root, and only bring the author to a juggling with words of the most petty character.

Leon Trotsky: Terrorism and Communism (Chapter 4)

Leon Trotsky: Terrorism and Communism (4. Terrorism)

www.marxists.org

 

[thirdform]

I think I'm pretty much done with dissensus, but just bc I posted about it already, the Palestinian Red Crescent released a more extensive of Hind's call with the ambulance dispatcher

I could say 1000 things about the endless stream of IDF Tiktoks gleefully celebrating prisoner abuse and wanton destruction or the Kahanists' messianic revanchism and Ben-Gvir trying to ignite apocalyptic war in the West Bank or the intense racism permeating Israeli society and the fact that even Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are now basically under military rule as they were from 48-66, but honestly what's the point? Debating 5 people with abysmal politics who also have zero idea what the fuck they're talking about? Anyway, as I said this little girl's voice trying to desperately to be brave and hold it together - a hell of lot better than a lot of adults would in the same spot - surrounding by her dead relatives, alone with an Israeli tank, will stick with me as long as I live.

The inherent contradiction at the heart of Israeli history, politics, culture, is the claim and desire to be a democracy while denying Palestinians equal democratic rights, whether in their own state or in Israel - except those they couldn't kick out in 48, who Israelis begrudgingly hold up as proof it's not an ethnostate, as if they magically erase the ~5.5 mn stateless people in the territories. Every sickness Yeshayahu Leibowitz predicted in 1968 - a nation of secret police, a debased army of occupation, democratic backsliding - has come true in Israel, and it is all inevitable until that contradiction is resolved. Every bizarre schizophrenic split in Israeli society - a diverse multiethnic democracy shot thru with intense visceral racism - is a product of that contradiction. That contradiction which is impossible to resolve until Palestinians have equal democratic rights.

Recognize that Palestinian rights are equal to yours, not contingent on yours. Release Marwan Barghouti, the only Palestinian leader with the organic credibility to make a deal and make it stick. Negotiate in good faith. Make the hard choices, on both sides, to get past the past and make peace, just like they had to do in South Africa and Northern. Or let the messianic right and your bloodlust drag you into an apocalyptic forever war. Israel has been trying to kill its way out for 75 years. Accelerating that failed strategy is a madness. I have very little hope tbh, bc Oct 7 has driven all but a tiny minority of Israelis crazy with vengeful bloodlust (which didn't take much driving for a lot of people tbh) but a little hope is always better than none.

it's been real yall. never forget that solidarity is the cornerstone of a better world. free palestine.

take care. I don't blame you.

 

[dilbert1]

@thirdform All my friends are leftists. I, despite my patient efforts of late, am thoroughly a leftist. My critical comments are all born of engaging with leftists and trying think about it. Actually, when I'm not speaking to a leftist, this is usually in an exceptional or transitory situation. I'm not sure what "surplus enjoyment" compels me to... do what, exactly? It's the air I choose to breathe.

 

[dilbert1]

I opened your Trotsky text in a new tab almost instantly. Is that bona fide enough for you?

 

[thirdform]

Chris Cutrone, from his recent essay “Israel, Palestine and the Left”

[…]

What both “Ceasefire now!” and “Defund Israel!” have in common, whatever their merits and defects, is that they are demands on the capitalist state, and moreover on its political parties — specifically, demanding these things of one Party in particular, the Democrats.



…

Why was a two-state solution not achieved in the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s?

It’s actually very simple:
The Palestinian “political leadership” has refused to officially accept the existence of Israel as a state.

After many wars, uprisings, terrorism, etc., the Palestinians lost and the Israelis won.

The stronger were victorious and the weaker were defeated. Case closed. History’s pronouncement is undeniable — and irreversible.

The Israelis expected a peace treaty of surrender by the Palestinians, which the Palestinians have refused. So Israel has continued its war against an enemy that has refused to surrender.

But the Palestinians have been defeated. This is not going to change. Ever.

Indeed, the recent Hamas attack was an act of desperation in a condition of defeat. This doesn’t justify or condone it — indeed it convicts it of futility and wanton, pointless destructiveness. Hamas has admitted as much, as they say they expected an Israeli overreaction and the destruction of Gaza and the Palestinians there, which they thought at best would create a wider regional war and at worst would make the Palestinian question impossible to ignore by the international community. Hamas spent everything it had in one final bid for political relevance. So it’s all in the end a public-relations stunt.

…

Hamas is a capitalist group. What does this mean? It accepts capitalism and is not in any way a challenge to it. It is a particularly Right-wing form of capitalism. It is a criminal gang. They are indeed terrorists. Terrorism is by its very nature capitalist and not socialist politics. Capitalist crime. — Crime is capitalist, not socialist. It is the capitalism of the weak, not socialism. And the weak shall not inherit the Earth. They never have.

Hamas are the Kapos in the concentration camp, recruited from ordinary criminals to rule over the rest, and hoping to slip away and survive through the mayhem. They were literally chosen by Israel to rule the Gaza Strip. The game of “military transactions” (Hegel) played between Israel and Hamas, no matter how violent and gruesome, is merely negotiating the terms of capitalism, through extremely sensationalist marketing propaganda — in images as well as deeds. And the bargaining-chips that are played consist of ordinary people’s lives — as victims and not agents, objects and not subjects of bloody capitalist politics. As the workers always are.

Hamas has aimed and aims to divide the civilian population along religious or ethnic lines. This means dividing the working class. They wagered — and lost — the lives of Palestinians in ways capitalist politicians always do. Hamas’s leadership are literally billionaires whose individual personal wealth rivals that of Donald Trump. But what have they built? Their wealth is skimmed off the misery of others — as with all gangsters. They will retire comfortably, while their fighters are slaughtered.

Today’s “Left” are a parody side-show of capitalist gangsterism, cheerleading the slaughter.

What is required in Palestine or Israel is the working-class political unity of Jewish and Arab and Muslim and Christian and other (for instance, “foreign/guest”) workers in the struggle for socialism. This is entirely contrary to either Arab nationalism — such as that of the PFLP — or Islamism — as with Hamas. It is also contrary to Zionism. It is against the nation-state — the nationalist basis for politics.

So long as capitalism persists and is not overcome in socialism, globally, there will be social and geographical divisions that invite political divisions to which the working class and other people will become inevitably subject. There will be war, inter-national state and/or civil, “legitimate” or otherwise. Always capitalist war.

But original historical Marxism said, “No war but class war!” — refusing the terms of capitalist warfare. — I know that this is regarded as “ultra-Leftism” and “Marxist purism” and “dogmatism,” but still. I prefer to maintain my self-respect as a dogmatic Marxist than pose in the mirror as a wannabe gangsta, mouthing the words to someone else’s rap. “Intifada until victory!” will be a very long time. Forever. Never.

But we can still refuse to endorse and support the capitalist politics that actively seeks to exploit and enforce such divisions and warfare: Hamas and other dominant Palestinian political forces as well as Zionism are clear examples of such destructive politics, whose devastating and anti-social results we are seeing now as well as for the past century.

The Platypus Affiliated Society – Israel-Palestine and the “Left”

platypus1917.org

that essay is a confused mess, making many good points, but then succumbing to an anarchist degeneration, which is evident with the platypus society who can only exert pressure on liberals.

What both “Ceasefire now!” and “Defund Israel!” have in common, whatever their merits and defects, is that they are demands on the capitalist state, and moreover on its political parties — specifically, demanding these things of one Party in particular, the Democrats.

This is true enough.

Why was a two-state solution not achieved in the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s?

Even Netanyahu speaks of a two state solution, the two state solution is the present reality. for someone who claims to be a Marxist, this is foolish schoolboy ignorance of the highest order, a complete capitulation to the most basic of nominalism.

The stronger were victorious and the weaker were defeated. Case closed. History’s pronouncement is undeniable — and irreversible.

Stalin instituted the great purge. case closed. It doesn't matter that he brought the Russian state back to capitalist functions.

Terrorism is by its very nature capitalist and not socialist politics. Capitalist crime. — Crime is capitalist, not socialist. It is the capitalism of the weak, not socialism. And the weak shall not inherit the Earth. They never have.

You contradict Engels here, mr Coupon!

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

On Authority

 

[thirdform]

cont...

What is required in Palestine or Israel is the working-class political unity of Jewish and Arab and Muslim and Christian and other (for instance, “foreign/guest”) workers in the struggle for socialism. This is entirely contrary to either Arab nationalism — such as that of the PFLP — or Islamism — as with Hamas. It is also contrary to Zionism. It is against the nation-state — the nationalist basis for politics.

The Coupon clipper is correct here, but then disparages the form of organisation (the communist party) which can consolidate unity, in service of a crude anarchist liberal solidarity.

When referring to the modern proletarian class, we must conceive of this process not in relationship to a trade category but to the class as a whole. It can then be realised how a more precise consciousness of the identity of interests gradually makes its appearance; this consciousness, however, results from such a complexity of experiences and ideas, that it can be found only in limited groups composed of elements selected from every category. Indeed only an advanced minority can have the clear vision of a collective action which is directed towards general ends that concern the whole class and which has at its core the project of changing the whole social regime. Those groups, those minorities, are nothing other than the party. When its formation (which of course never proceeds without arrests, crises and internal conflicts) has reached a certain stage, then we may say that we have a class in action. Although the party includes only a part of the class, only it can give the class its unity of action and movement, for it amalgamates those elements, beyond the limits of categories and localities, which are sensitive to the class and represent it. This casts a light on the meaning of this basic fact: the party is only a part of the class. He who considers a static and abstract image of society, and sees the class as a zone with a small nucleus, the party, within it, might easily be led to the following conclusion: since the whole section of the class remaining outside the party is almost always the majority, it might have a greater weight and a greater right. However if it is only remembered that the individuals in that great remaining mass have neither class consciousness nor class will yet and live for their own selfish ends, or for their trade, their village, their nation, then it will be realised that in order to secure the action of the class as a whole in the historical movement, it is necessary to have an organ which inspires, unites and heads it – in short which officers it; it will then be realised that the party actually is the nucleus without which there would be no reason to consider the whole remaining mass as a mobilisation of forces. The class presupposes the party, because to exist and to act in history it must possess a critical doctrine of history and an aim to attain in it.

Party and Class by Amadeo Bordiga 1921

The erroneous position of those who want to see the application of arithmetic democracy within the working class, or within certain class organisations, can thus be traced back to a false appreciation of Marxist determinism.
We have already shown that it is incorrect to believe that in each historical period each of the opposing classes has corresponding groups which profess theories opposed to the other classes. Instead the correct thesis is that in each historical epoch the doctrinal system based on the interests of the ruling class tends to be professed by the oppressed class, much to the advantage of the former. He who is a slave in the body is also a slave in the mind. The old bourgeois lie is precisely to pretend that we must begin with the liberation of the intellect (a method which leads to nothing and costs nothing for the privileged class), while instead we must start with the physical liberation of the body.
It is also erroneous to establish the following progression of determinisms with respect to the famous problem of consciousness: influence of economic factors, class consciousness, class action. The progression instead is the reverse: influence of economic factors, class action, class consciousness. Consciousness comes at the end and, in general, after the decisive victory. Economic necessity unites and focuses the pressure and energy of all those who are oppressed and suffocated by the forms of a given productive system. The oppressed react, they fight, they hurl themselves against these forms. In the course of this clash and this battle they increasingly develop an understanding of the general conditions of the struggle as well as its laws and principles, and a clear comprehension of the program of the class struggle develops.

The key to our conception lies precisely in the fact that we do not consider the seat of consciousness to be the narrow area of the individual person and that we well know that, generally speaking, the elements of the mass who are pushed into struggle cannot possess in their minds the general theoretical outlook. To require such a condition would be purely illusory and counter-revolutionary. Neither does this task of elaborating the theoretical consciousness fall to a band or group of superior individuals whose mission is to help humanity. It falls instead to an organism, to a mechanism differentiated within the mass, utilising the individual elements as cells that compose the tissue and elevating them to a function made possible only by this complex of relationships. This organism, this system, this complex of elements each with its own function, (analogous to the animal organism with its extremely complicated systems of tissues, networks, vessels, etc.) is the class organism, the party, which in a certain way defines the class faced with itself and gives the class the capacity to make its own history.

This whole process is reflected in the most diverse ways with respect to the different individuals who statistically belong to the class. To be more specific, we are not surprised to find side by side in a given situation the revolutionary and conscious worker, the worker who is still a total victim of the conservative political influences and who perhaps even marches in the ranks of the enemy, the worker who follows the opportunist currents of the movement, etc.
And we would have no conclusions to automatically draw from a vote among the working class that would indicate the following of each of these various positions - assuming that such a vote was actually possible.

 

[dilbert1]

that essay is a confused mess, making many good points

Not unlike this thread, or forum, as a whole

 

[thirdform]

cont...

The distinctive characteristic of the party follows from its organic nature. One does not join the party because one has a particular position in the economic or social structure. No one is automatically a party militant because he is a proletarian, a voter, a citizen, etc.
Jurisprudents would say that one joins the party by free individual initiative. We Marxists say otherwise: one joins the party always due to factors born out of relationships of social environment, but these factors can be linked in a more general way to the characteristics of the class party, to its presence in all parts of the world, to the fact that it is made up of workers of all trades and enterprises and, in principle, even of those who are not workers, and to the continuity of its work through the successive stages of propaganda, organisation, physical combat, seizure of power, and the construction of a new order.
Out of all the proletarian organisations, it is consequently the political party which least suffers from those structural and functional limits which enable the anti-proletarian influences – the germs which cause the disease of opportunism – to force their way in. We have said many times, though, that this danger also exists for the party. The conclusion that we draw is not that it can be warded off by subordinating the party to the other organisations of that class which the party represents – a subordination which is often demanded under false pretexts, other times simply out of naivety with the reason that a greater number of workers belong to other class organisations.

Bordiga: Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle

www.marxists.org

but still. I prefer to maintain my self-respect as a dogmatic Marxist than pose in the mirror as a wannabe gangsta,

That is good, but you are insufficiently dialectical here, in that you think it is a question of self-respect, when it is about concretely grounding what dogma precisely is, to which you cannot do so, as you are happy to make concessions to eclecticism when it suits the liberal spectacle you find yourself in.

«Dogma arose in a determinate time and society as the first embryo of science, and not of an abstract science but of a science that was instrumental to praxis: both to hand down the traditions of praxis (of experience, of even primitive social activity), and as the basis of practical norms, of an ethical code. The dogmatic form arose out of the interests of classes who wanted to preserve a social structure and its control. Religion is not for us and does not appear as a response to the need to understand the world, but to the much earlier and absorbing need to control society.
«In essence for a Marxist, dogmas, historically, were guides for action. The phrase that Marxism is not dogma but a guide for action is therefore nonsense, when said by a Marxist.

The notion of dogma, as truth revealed by a supernatural entity ordinary mortals cannot claim to understand but only respect and repeat, is a notion that is socially and historically dead and buried. In this sense, Marxism is the utmost negation of all dogmatism. However, precisely to prevent confusion with the alleged anti‑dogmatism of the bourgeoisie, Marxism has always declared that truth in class-divided society is class truth. Hence, opposed to the truth of the ruling class, the revolutionary class has only to assert its own truth. It is precisely such an assertion that, by denying the opposite truth, appears dogmatic to all those who are in search of “absolute truth”. What they do not understand is that the truth of the ruling class is also a truth and can only be denied by the opposing truth, the revolutionary truth. Especially in non‑revolutionary times, to prevent the latter from being completely obscured by the easily recognizable and adoptable truth of the dominant class, it becomes necessary, if required, to assert it dogmatically. This is the “dogmatism” and “sectarianism” of both us and Lenin: the certainty that every truth of the bourgeoisie is opposed by a proletarian truth even when the latter is difficult to discern with those instruments of analysis which can only be rendered available by the bourgeoisie itself. Our opponents have always said that this means denying “reality”, but we have always let them rant, and proceeded forward.

Yes, we are dogmatists, 1984

www.international-communist-party.org

We do not deny political violence, neither do we put a premium on every working class person consciously understanding the struggle they are in. Class consciousness proceeds class action, after all.

But we can still refuse to endorse and support the capitalist politics that actively seeks to exploit and enforce such divisions and warfare: Hamas and other dominant Palestinian political forces as well as Zionism are clear examples of such destructive politics, whose devastating and anti-social results we are seeing now as well as for the past century.

Correct, except when Lenin demanded we turn the imperialist war into a civil war, he did not demand the proletariat to put down their guns, but to precisely turn them on their bosses. Mr Coupon Clipper does not seem to want the Israeli proletariat to do that, just adopt his moral high ground against the left, a nebulous grouping full of poisonous interclassist fungi, chiefly students and trade union bureaucrats, and reformists, not of revolutionaries, despite the sometimes diverse and extremist poses made by such people.

 

[thirdform]

@thirdform All my friends are leftists. I, despite my patient efforts of late, am thoroughly a leftist. My critical comments are all born of engaging with leftists and trying think about it. Actually, when I'm not speaking to a leftist, this is usually in an exceptional or transitory situation. I'm not sure what "surplus enjoyment" compels me to... do what, exactly? It's the air I choose to breathe.

exactly, there is the problem.

Get more friends outside of the left.

The left is history. it is a conserving force. It has exhausted any progressive potential it had. Being anti-leftist is just as idiotic as being anti-technology. Their opinions and their ideological gestures do not matter a jot. They will be swept up by the tide, just as Israel will.

It's no coincidence that many people who sided with Ukraine over Russia have now nailed their mast to Israel. Because they were always on the side of EU, and Scholz.

Hamas will not win this war. let's get that out of the way. neither are they a government, and even calling them a governing authority is a stretch.

They can be accepted as a gang, so long as we concede that the biggest gang is the whitehouse. If that qualification is made, that the biggest gang of them all is the state, then it is perfectly legitimate to call Hamas a gang. Otherwise it is erroneous to say that there is a left capitalism and a right capitalism. There are diverse bourgeois ideological currents, but they must all comply with the same social forces of impersonal domination.

The analysis that hamas wanted to spark a regional war is wrong. If anything the US is attempting to moderate Israel precisely so that it does not invade Egypt, which would jeopardise the US's carefully curated diplomatic relations in the region. Even more so now that Turkey, a NATO member, has been mending its ties with El-sisi. Washington would not like to lose even more dominance (much less at the hands of the actions of its own ally.)

On the contrary, hamas wanted to ensure that Israel did not normalise ties with Saudi, but this is moot now that Israel has been galvanised to pursue the IMEC.