Israel/Palestine/Gaza

I was chatting to a friend of mine the other week, a journalist who used to work for a Palestinian news agency. He was telling me how many younger people in Palestine would favour a confederal peace settlement. By this he means the creation of a joint Arab/Jewish state where all citizens were afforded the same rights and opportunities. He also said that such a settlement would be impossible. Such is the entrenchment and hatred on the extremes of both sides.

One begins to get a sense of the racist and supremacist ideology of some Zionists by reading, the dire vitriol of, for example Ralph Peters. A quick glance at various Hamas manifestos throughout history and you will find terrifying anti-semitic language and calls for the destruction of Israel. Even a cursory understanding of history lends credibility to the motives of such extremism however.

History is a role-call of tragedy. The persecution of Jews throughout Christian history, a process which found ultimate expression in the atrocities of the holocaust, makes the desires for a Jewish homeland completely understandable. The diaspora had failed spectacularly to protect its people. This also makes sense of the suspicion with which the the non-Jewish world is held by some Israeli factions. Really, despite periods of tolerance, there have been episodes of extreme violence and persecution against the Jews for generations.

History however should not be used as a blank cheque book. Persecution at the hands of Europeans in decades and centuries past does not excuse the Israeli actions of now. This is a very real and very modern persecution that is being inflicted on the Palestinians as their lands are blockaded and occupied and their people, soldiers and civilians alike, are left destitute and murdered. It seems geo-political convenience will not permit the application of International Law. Israel continues to hold illegal nuclear weapons and occupy land while the international community (europe, US, and arab nations) wrings its hands in muted complicity, making only overtures to the notion of a peace process. This reality does not at all justify acts of violence against the larger Israeli populace, but it explains it.

Most vile of all has been the Israeli government using attacks against their population as an excuse to press home their ideological and geographical advantage in the region over the last week. The silence from the international community, in part down to leaders unwilling to interrupt their Christmas break I imagine, has been a disgrace. A new administration is on the way in over in Washington, and they are unlikely to be as pliable as the Bush hawks. In light of this the Israeli government has presumably moved to decapitate the Hamas leadership and attain as many bargaining chips as possible when dealing with new Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama.

Hamas are a beast from the sludge and desperation under the colonial boot. Seen from the Palestinian side that beast is most like a Phoneix. This Phoneix, as it appears to some, offers hope, and that is the currency all political organisations wish to posses. It is hope that wins elections, and why Hamas are a democratically elected party of government.

This current Israeli incursion deserves to be condemned from every humane and educated quarter as it moves, without regard for civilian life, to cement its supremacy in Gaza.

Notes on Welsh Nationalism and Happy New Year

Over Christmas I went to my brother's house for lunch. It was a family affair with a grand buffet, the normal kind of Christmas family party that I hated from my mid-teens until my 20s then started to enjoy again a few years back.

Over a sausage roll (staple Christmas fare) he asked me- "you still writing for those nationalists then?" This use of the word nationalist pricked my ears, as it is a most often used by those attacking Plaid. Nationalism does not enjoy a universal positive image in the UK. The legacy and memory of two world wars ensures that the word is viewed with a suspicion. The trick of those who would attack plaid is to try and make an unmentioned link between nationalism and fascism. But as anyone who has viewed Plaid's policies can tell you there is hardly a right wing bone in the body politic. In fact Plaid's policies, like those of Nationalist governments and parties the world over (SNP, Sinn Fein, Fianna Fail, Catalanists), veer from centrist liberalism to socialist (while never, obviously, becoming national socialist) As a party I think it is fair to say Plaid are well to the left of the current Labour party, and to the right of, for example, the SWP. The left/right divide is of course a crude and increasingly inadequate model for understanding the political spectrum.

There are of course innumerable nationalist parties out there that harbour vile right wing elements. The Northern League in Italy (Italian regionalism in general has a distinctively right wing flavour) would be a prime example of this. The Republican party of the US is another. It goes to prove that words and concepts are tricky. Meanings are not fixed. And nationalism is a schizophrenic entity. For every Bismark there is a Michael Collins.

Crudely speaking nationalism has its roots in two distinct historical tendencies. One being libertarian republicanism, which first found expression in the US and French revolutions, and the writings like those ofTom Paine. The other kind of nationalism has its roots in fascism and national socialism. The kind preferred by Franco, Musolini, and Hitler, that champions the myth of rebirth and the myth of the nation. It is laced with social conservatism and racism. However, nearly all political movements have swallowed and embraced nationalism to some extent. We are all of us nationalists really.

Unless you believe in the immediate dissolution of the EU, the UN, the removal of all national borders and all nation states by means of revolution, you yourself are a nationalist in one form or other. But I guess we don't think of it like that most the time. We rarely interrogate our identities, they seem implicit rather than fluid. Identity however is not fixed, especially not national identity.

So when asked if I am a nationalist I say yes. While not without problematics it seems no crime to me, and I am proud to state, that the Welsh people deserve sovereignty. We all of us regardless of nation deserve democratic institutions answerable the the people. Power should be disseminated to the masses. The greatest happiness for the greatness number of people is only attainable once the greatest number of people have the power to attain autonomy and mastery over their socio-political destiny. This is where socialism comes in. I am pipe dreaming and waxing lyrical of course, but there is a proud tradition of this in Wales and beyond. "I am not the only one of my kind".

Either way, word up, here is one hope for the new year.

That the sovereignty and rights of the people of Palestine are respected in equal measure as Israel's right to exist. Another pipe dream of course, but never-the-less an historical imperative.

Happy new year to you all and thanks for reading x