תגית: Expressen

Are Israelis Supposed to Just Pack Their Bags and Leave?

In an article in SvD this week, Göran Rosenberg shared his concerns about the Jewish world. Many, myself included, share some of his worries — for example, concern over Israel’s extremist settler movement and the situation in Gaza. But several of his claims are dangerous and misleading.

Published in Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/yEBLgr/david-stavrou-goran-rosenbergs-satt-att-tala-om-israel-ar-farligt

"The Israel project is morally dead," writes Rosenberg. The project, not the country. That’s an extremely important nuance. If Israel is a project, then it can either succeed or fail, in which case, like any other failed project, it loses its right to exist. But Israel is not a project; it is a country. A country with a political right and left, babies and pensioners, gangsters and hipsters, programmers and midwives, people sitting in traffic jams and people demonstrating against the government. That is the entire point of Zionism — Jews have the right to be like any other people and have an unconditional right to self-determination. Israel should not be the only country in the world whose existence is conditional, and the right to self-determination of its people can't be dependent on their ability to meet Rosenberg’s moral standards.

What are Israelis supposed to do now that "the project has failed"? Pack their bags and leave? Vanish into thin air? Go up in smoke? That’s exactly the propaganda Hamas spreads through Western protest movements — if Israeli Jews are so morally bankrupt, then it’s not about regime change or electing a new government, as it is with Russians or Iranians. Instead, the Jews must disappear. Or die.

It's no coincidence that Israel's worst enemies — those who want to wipe it off the face of the earth — refuse to acknowledge it as a state among states. The Iranian regime calls Israel 'the Zionist regime' or 'the occupying regime of Jerusalem'. Hamas speaks of 'the Zionist entity' or 'the occupation', and the Houthis in Yemen refer to 'the Zionist enemy'. Always an abstract creature — an entity, a project — never a state. Even Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were allowed to be states. But not Israel.

Rosenberg writes that Israel’s “genocide in Gaza” is now putting Jews in other countries into an “existential crisis” and that voices like his are being silenced. Besides the fact that he regularly writes in one of Sweden's main daily newspapers and is far from being silenced, there's a much more important falsehood in his claim. In fact, in a broader context, the opposite of what he writes is true — Israel, with all its sins, is the answer, not the problem (and the problem can be explained in one word – Auschwitz). Historically, there have been Jewish non-Zionist movements, but the reason most of them disappeared has nothing to do with silencing voices. It has to do with the fact that Zionism understood antisemitism better and offered a concrete answer based on international law. The other solutions vanished in the Holocaust. What alternative does Rosenberg propose? Another socialist utopia? Or should we return to the pogroms on European streets?

Then there’s the conflict with the Palestinians. Rosenberg is right that Israel has oppressed the Palestinians for decades and made every conceivable mistake. But the Palestinians have too. They are not the eternal victims Rosenberg sees them as, and their violence is not a natural "expression against oppression". The violence started long before Israel was founded — before the occupation, before the oppression — and much of it is imported. Just as Israel receives American support, the Palestinians received support from the Nazis in the 1940s, from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently from dictators and jihadists in Qatar, Iran, and Yemen — countries that have no territorial conflict with Israel, but still support fascist, chauvinistic, and corrupt Palestinian movements.

We can all enjoy philosophical discussions about the Jewish intellectual world, but the bigger problem right now is those who persistently blame Jews and Israelis for all the world’s problems. Some even build nuclear weapons to "wipe out the Zionist entity". It’s true that polarization within the Jewish world and anti-democratic tendencies in Israel are serious, but most Jews are more concerned about genocide-prone regimes that are after Jewish blood. Even if Rosenberg finds it uncomfortable or unpleasant, Israelis still have the right to face these challenges and build themselves a future.

The Amnesty Article

Since my article about Amnesty and Swedish schools was written and published in Swedish and since the debate with Amnesty Sweden's Secretery Genral in Svenska Dagbladet was also in Swedish, I finally got round to translating the original texts into English so that non-Swedish speakers can see what the all the fuss was about…

When a Jewish woman from Umeå was featured on DN's first page after she decided to leave town, at least one writer, Göran Rosenberg, was critical. The article explained that the woman was leaving because of decades of antisemitic harassment. Still, Rosenberg wasn't impressed. "Today, DN publishes on its entire front page that a woman in Umeå (of Israeli origin) intends to leave the city because of her experiences of antisemitism ", he wrote and added that DN failed to explain the background: "consequently, we are not told that the same woman was very active in supporting Israel in the Gaza war". A couple of days later he explained in Expressen that antisemitism is being used as a political weapon. The woman from Umeå, it seems, had it coming. After all, she's not a "Swedish Jew", rather she's "a woman in Umeå (of Israeli origin)". Rosenberg's message is clear: while Antisemitism against regular Jews like himself, is despicable, Zionists and Israelis just "experience" antisemitism which is actually just good old criticism of Israel, or as Swedes elegantly call it – Israelkritik.

I thought of this when I talked to an organization called "Zikaron" last week. This small but extremely important organization offers lectures on the fates of Holocaust survivors to Swedish schools. The lectures are carried out by young people, grandchildren or great grandchildren of survivors who are taking over the historic burden of remembrance. Naturally, this has nothing to do with Israel. The Holocaust took place before there was an Israel and the victims were not "settler colonialist" or responsible for the "blockade of Gaza". And yet, it turns out that sometimes even the Holocaust is too problematic for some schools. When I talked to one of Zikaron's organizers, she told me that after the massacre of October 7th last year there were about ten schools that cancelled their lectures due to reasons like "wrong timing" or "sensitive timing" and since then, there has been less demand for their lectures. Could this also be "Israelkritik" or is it just that Swedish schools are too scared of upsetting the sensitive souls who find Holocaust education provocative. Or perhaps they don’t want to get in trouble with activist bullies who didn't get the memo saying that it's ok to talk about dead Jews from the 40s and the problem is only with the other kind of Jews, the ones with guns from the Middle-East. Whatever it is, anyone who's worried about Swedish schools being cowards can rest assured. They found their courage elsewhere.

While Holocaust education may be too sensitive, foreign policy political activism seems to be no problem at all. Otherwise, how could 39 Swedish schools be "partner schools (samarbetsskolor)" of Amnesty, a political organization which is as far from mainstream as it gets. These schools use Amnesty's "Schools for Human Rights" model (skola för mänskliga rättigheter) for teacher's education, planning "theme days" (temadagar) and providing material and lectures. They even take part in global campaigns. This model may be great for highlighting human rights and democracy, but there's a serious problem when it comes to the conflict in the Middle-East, since Amnesty is anything but impartial.

In recent years Amnesty International positioned itself clearly as opposed to everything Israeli. It has disproportionately targeted Israel for years, it has supported boycott campaigns and some of its campaigners and partners have supported or even been linked to terror organization and Islamist movements (to name some: Yasmin Hussein, Saleh Hijazi and Moazzam Begg). It almost entirely ignores attacks against Israel and atrocities committed against its civilians, it bases its information about Gaza casualties on Hamas' propaganda and it makes claims which are obviously false like "Israel's military operations in Gaza continue to kill people on a scale that has never been seen before".

But it's not only talk. Amnesty Sweden actively campaigned against policies of the Swedish government, like the decision to pause funding for UNRWA (based on information that some of its employees took part in the October 7th massacre) and the decision to stop funding Swedish Ibn Rushd study circle (after accusations that the organization has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and spreads antisemitism). In fact, whoever wants an idea of what Amnesty really supports can take a look at the kind of people it awards its prizes to. Elin Forghani, a Vänsterpartiet activist from Östersund just won Amnesty's new "Noismaker" prize after publicly claiming that: "Israel is a colonial project and an outpost of the West in the Middle East and always has been". And just to make clear what should be done with the colonizers she wrote: "we can make Israel and their sponsors sweat, tremble and fall. Liberation is in sight".

Naturally, in a democracy political activism is more than legitimate. However, it's also clear that Amnesty is in no way neutral or objective. It's a political player in global geo-politics, but it's still marching into Swedish schools, presenting itself as a non-biased public informer and bearer of a universal truth. Although political parties and organizations are allowed in Swedish schools and naturally Democracy and human rights should be part of their education, this isn't a case of mainstream education. Amnesty is getting a special "partner" status as a long-term official partner while other political actors are just guests, implying that Amnesty represents facts while the others represent opinions.

It's unclear why Swedish schools should be discussing the war in Gaza in the first place, but if they must, the material should be written and supervised carefully by serious state actors. This isn’t the place to start outsourcing. I spoke to a few parents and students in a Stockholm high school. They told me about their complaints to the school management regarding Amnesty's Gaza war education material and about lessons using material from Globalis, an organization run by "Svenska FN-förbundet" an organization which claims to "work for a better and stronger UN ". The UN in the title shouldn't be confused with impartiality. When I spoke to one student, he told me that since the lessons about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict started "it feels like I have to go to school to defend Israel twice a week. It's not that the teacher lies but it's so one-sided. For example, there were two lessons about the Palestinian Nakba and only half a slide about the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and Iran and even that, according to the teacher, could be understood as a result of "Mossad activity". When the students were given texts on the subject, they were given guiding questions like: "what support is there for the claim that Israel is an apartheid state?". Student I spoke to talked about feeling very uncomfortable and worried about their classmates. "I feel I have to give the other side", one of them said, "because the other students in the class don't know the whole picture".

In an incident in another school, UN day was celebrated in the schoolyard by waving flags of different countries. According to one of the teachers, when some angry spectators who were passing by threatened to enter the school and remove the Israeli flag, the reaction wasn’t standing up to the threatening bullies and informing the police. Instead, the flag was removed and the person waving it was asked not to wave it again.

It seems that our schools are becoming a ridiculous case of Dr. Jackyle and Mr. Hyde. On one hand, they're wannabe rebels, dealing with the world's most complicated conflicts by employing radical political activists, while on the other hand, they're so afraid of controversy and conflict that they can't even wave a flag of a UN member country or talk about the Holocaust.

It's true, only a few schools cancelled Holocaust lectures and only some are Amnesty partners. But it's also true that only some pro-Palestinian demonstrators support violence (which is what shouting "Intifada!" means), only part of vänsterpartiet supports the PFLP and only a handful burned an Israeli flag outside a synagogue. Not to mention that just several thousand attended a Hamas conference in Malmö, and only a few hundred contribute to Islamist, antisemitic movements, and only one Imam praised Hezbollah's leader and only one or two artist spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, and only a small minority screamed at Holocaust survivors entering a memorial ceremony. How many minorities will it take to get the message? and when will our schools become part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

Amnesty Sweden's comment (originally in Swedish):

Our schoolwork is based on international conventions and Swedish school's governing documents.

On December 10th, 1948, the newly formed UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For the first time, the world had an agreement that viewed all people as free and equal, regardless of gender, skin color, religion or other beliefs or characteristics.

In 2011, knowledge of human rights was incorporated into the Swedish curriculum. Since 2012, Amnesty has been supporting upper secondary schools with teaching materials, lectures, and a model for working with human rights, based on both international conventions and Sweden's school governing documents.

David Stavrou, guest columnist for Svenska Dagbladet, criticizes Amnesty for supporting upper secondary schools in their work on human rights education, by making directly false accusations about Amnesty as an organization and our work. But these claims are easy to refute: No, Amnesty does not support the call for a boycott of Israel. Yes, Amnesty has condemned attacks on civilian Israelis and called for those responsible for these war crimes to be held accountable. No, our teaching materials and lectures are not about Israel and Palestine.

David Stavrou claims that we are a biased organization and that our criticism of Israel is disproportionate. This is a direct false statement that is often made by representatives of the Israeli government. Amnesty is an impartial, politically independent organization. We do not accept government funds because we want to be free to investigate human rights violations without being dependent on anyone. Our demands and criticisms are based on international law and respect for human rights. And we assess all states by the same standards.

Even though our lectures in high schools this fall did not address the war in Gaza, high school students have asked many questions about the situation in Gaza. Human rights, contrary to what David Stavrou suggests, apply both in times of peace and in conflicts. Amnesty's focus in all conflicts is the protection of civilians and their human rights.

Amnesty is not alone in criticizing Israel's indiscriminate attacks on civilians, the forced displacement of Palestinian civilians, and the denial of humanitarian aid into Gaza, three clear examples of violations of the laws of war. Knowledge of human rights is necessary. We are happy to contribute to helping upper secondary schools fulfill the curriculum, providing students with more knowledge and the conditions to protect their own rights and work to ensure that others' rights are respected, both now and in the future.

Anna Johansson, Secretary General, Amnesty International Sweden.

David Stavrou's reply:

It’s great that Amnesty Sweden takes texts which are published in Svenska Dagbladet seriously. However, it’s a bit surprising because, during the process of writing the article, I contacted their press service to ask questions that had arisen after conversations with students at their partner schools. No one responded. To avoid mistakes, I wrote again, but I was ignored once more. On the other hand, Amnesty’s response suggests it might not matter – it’s filled with answers to questions no one asked and avoids addressing the questions that were actually raised.

No one suggested that schools shouldn’t teach human rights and democracy. No one asked whether human rights are important during wartime. Even if one appreciates the Secretary General of Amnesty’s inspiring words, that wasn’t at all what the article was about. Everyone knows human rights are important. The question is whether her organization is qualified to be the one teaching our children about them.

One question that goes unanswered, however, in the one addressing Amnesty’s partners abroad that have had connections to terrorist organizations and Islamist movements. Perhaps it’s because she is aware of the collaboration with Moazzam Begg, for example. Begg, a former Guantanamo detainee, was invited to Sweden by Amnesty despite having supported the Taliban. This isn’t something I’m claiming – it’s what a senior official within Amnesty in London, Gita Sahgal, said. She argued that collaboration with "Britain’s most famous Taliban supporter" and links to groups promoting Islamic right-wing ideas damage Amnesty’s integrity and pose a threat to human rights. Amnesty’s reaction – she was dismissed.

Then there’s the claim that Amnesty doesn’t support a boycott of Israel. If that’s the case, why did Amnesty’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa write the following: "We urge the international community to cease all forms of support – whether direct or indirect, through actions or omissions – for Israel’s apartheid system"? (Direct quote from Amnesty’s website).

As for Amnesty having condemned attacks on Israeli civilians, it is true that they’ve done so on certain occasions. After October 7th, it would have been absurd if they hadn’t. But anyone familiar with Amnesty’s publications knows that the Secretary General’s statement is misleading. During September and October, Amnesty International published 14 texts on their website criticizing Israel. That’s as many as the texts about Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq – combined. Iran received seven texts during the same period, Sudan and South Sudan six in total, and Belarus only four. During these two months, 7,517 rockets were fired at Israel. Amnesty published nothing about these attacks, which kill and injure and have forced over 140,000 Israeli citizens to live as internally displaced persons for more than a year.

"We assess all states by the same standards," writes Amnesty’s Secretary General. That’s hard to believe when reading about their "regional activist seminars" in Stockholm and Malmö in November. The program begins with "Palestine then and now" and continues with "a deeper understanding of the Palestine issue through a Palestinian perspective." Then there’s a lecture on the Palestine groups in Malmö, followed by "panel discussion: Academics for Palestine." Later in the day, there’s "panel discussion: on Palestine, struggle, and conflict." It seems like the Rohingyas, Uighurs, the Belarusian opposition, and Tigrayans from Ethiopia will have to wait for the next seminar because the next workshop is "What can I do? A guide to action for Palestinian liberation." This is organized by, drumroll, BDS Sweden. Yes, BDS – Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (remember the Secretary General’s statement: "But these claims are easy to refute: No, Amnesty does not support the call for a boycott of Israel." Does she think we can’t read?).

None of the speakers at the seminar are pro-Israel; instead, it’s full of well-known pro-Palestinian activists. And that’s entirely okay. The Svenska Dagbladet article wasn’t about whether Amnesty is right or wrong or about their right to be pro-Palestinian. It was about impartiality. I wonder if any of the young people who participated in the activist seminar are students from one of Amnesty’s 39 partner schools. I suggest that Sweden’s school principals take what the Secretary General wrote seriously. When she writes that she’s glad to "give students more knowledge," it becomes clear that their schools are her recruitment ground.

!Say it: Yes, I condemn Hamas

The discourse within the Swedish and European left is important even if you're not part of it and the insane embrace of Hamas by so-called left-wing radicals, climate change fighters, human rights activists and western intellectuals and academics must be challenged.

Originally published in Swedish in Parabol: https://www.parabol.press/andreas-malm-har-fel-om-hamas/

Imagine this powerful image: in a country which is slowly being taken over by right-wing nationalists, it's becoming harder to speak truth to power and to speak up for the underdog and the repressed. But then, from the trenches of the opposition, rises a fearless figure. He knows he'll be arrested and tortured if he's caught crying out, and so he does what intellectuals from resistance movements allways do under tyrannical regimes. He uses sarcasm, he sharpens his pencil and cleverly plays with words to produce a text which is radical and subversive, but at the same time meticulously designed not to be flagged down by the authorities. That way the avant-garde academic doesn’t get in trouble with the all-powerful secret service henchmen who are hunting down traitors.

Sweden 2024. While a war is going on in Gaza and in Israel, the whole political elite is powerfully supporting Israel. It's blue and white from left to right and it's not allowed to speak up for the Palestinians. And then, a single voice of a brave dissident rings out. He wrote a text. It's called "I Condemn Hamas" and it's brilliantly designed by a rhetorical trick – the title is mainstream and boring, everyone condemns Hamas. The content seems to be the same, but under the surface lies the explosive message – it's the exact opposite of condemning Hamas, it's actually supporting it (Malm, Anders, Jag Fördömer Hamas, Parabol, 01/11-23). At last the opposition has a voice – Andreas Malm has weighed in. It's a powerful text and a powerful image. The only problem is that none of it is true.

Malm's claim is clear – everyone's condemning Hamas, mainstream media, politicians and public discourse in general. He, on the other hand, thinks this is false. Hamas may have killed civilians, kidnapped children and burned down residential buildings on October 7th, but according to him this isn't unique. It's all been done before by Israel. Malm doesn't claim this directly. He does it by sarcasm. The same kind of sarcasm is pointed at the Swedish discourse. "In Sweden there are strikingly few who have condemned Hamas in the past few days. Those who have done it have only done it once, so that we now wonder if it was really meant honestly", he writes creating an illusion which is the exact opposite of the truth. In fact, Sweden is one of the countries in which the Hamas did surprisingly well. At least for an organization which is internationally recognized as a terror organization.

Hamas supporters have spoken openly in conferences and seminars in Sweden, money has been raised for Hamas freely in Sweden; just in the last few months there have been dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrations with speeches supporting Hamas or at least not condemning them including demonstrations celebrating the events of October 7th on the day they happened. Unlike other countries, these demonstrations are not only legal, they're supported by some of the political elite and many in the media, in the cultural world and in civil society. Malm's style implies that Swedish publicists have to condemn Hamas or they'll be cancelled. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Malm himself is a writer who has supported Hamas publicly in several newspapers, magazines and publications. As far as I know, he's yet to be arrested, censored or fired. In Sweden it’s allowed to burn the Koran, join parties which support North-Korea and have Neo-Nazi marches on Yom-Kippur. No one's preventing anyone from supporting Hamas. Indeed, I recently met Hamas supporters in Sergels Torg. They were members of two perfectly legal Swedish movements, RKU, the revolutionary communist youth movement and NMR, the friendly neighborhood neo-Nazis. Who knows, perhaps Andreas Malm himself was there supporting them both.

However, the Swedish context is only the beginning of Malm's mistake. The claim that the massacre on October 7th was more of the same, that it was Palestinians retaliating with the same kind of violence Israel uses, is worth studying. "What happened on Black Saturday, October 7th was something new in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict", Malm writes using his smug self-satisfied irony, "it redraws the political and moral map of the Middle East for good. Gunmen stormed into communities and shot children to death with rifles. They did not care at all about the age of the victims. Hundreds of civilians were killed – people with no connection to any military activity, murdered simply because of their identity. Entire families disappeared". If this wasn't so true, it would be real cutting-edge political satire. But Malm's satire, is in fact the sad truth. Nothing like October 7th ever happened before in this conflict. Israelis and Palestinians never killed so many people in one attack or in one day. Not in Kafar Qasim (1956), not in Deir Yassin and Tantura (1948), not in Hebron (1996) and not in the bombings of Gaza in previous years. There were never so many acts of torture and violence against civilians, never so many people kidnaped and never such brutality. And yes, October 7th did redraw the political and moral map of the Middle-East for good. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Israel made many mistakes in the last few decades; like any other army it has committed war crimes during conflict, some of its civilians, especially in the West-Bank are violent extremists and its occupation of the West-Bank continues to be a hindrance to peace in the Middle-East. But October 7th was unique. It's not only about the brutality or the number of victims. The really scary number is the number of the people who committed the crimes. Unlike 9/11 which was executed by a small Jihadist vanguard of 19 Al-Quade operatives, and unlike Utøya which was the work of one (Andreas Malm cracks a little clever joke making the comparison), October 7th was carried out by about 3,000 people. Many of were sipplied with written instructions about how to murder, torture and kidnap civilians, some were also provided with drugs and with body cameras. This wasn’t a spontaneous, heat of the moment action. It was a planned strategy. On October 7th the world saw a society capable of drafting 3,000 people who were 100 percent committed to murder.

Andreas Malm perhaps hasn't heard the story told by David Tahar, father of Adir Tahar, an Israeli soldier who was killed on October 7th. Tahar told Israeli Chanel 14 that before the funeral he insisted on seeing his son's body even though army officials advised against it. The reason was that apparently after he was killed Hamas fighters decapitated Adir and took his head back home to Gaza. A few weeks later, after receiving intelligence from captured terrorists, an Israeli military unit retrieved the head. It was hidden in a bag with some tennis balls and a few documents inside an ice-cream shop freezer in Gaza. Apparently the head was up for sale. The price was 10,000 US Dollars. I know there are many who don't believe Israeli media and think that Zionists fathers are so perverted that they can make up this kind of story for propaganda purposes. So here's another one. This time from the New York Times.

Sapir, a 24-year-old accountant who attended the rave party near Kibbutz Reim on October 7th gave a testimony which was reliable enough for the NYT which told the story of what she saw from her hiding place (Gettleman, Schwartz and Sella, "Screams Without Words": How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7", The New York Times, 28/12-23). Sapir says she saw "a young woman, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her. Every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back. Sapir said she watched another woman "shredded into pieces". While one terrorist raped her another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast. "One continues to rape her", she said, "the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road". She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

These are just two testimonies from October 7th. There are thousands more. One could always claim, as Malm does in earlier texts, that all this violence should be seen in context. But this kind of violence has no context. If it was really about freedom, or fighting the occupation there would be no need for mass rape, kidnapping babies and removing body parts. The atrocities, the rockets, the tunnels and the complete subordination of Gazans to Hamas militants are all far darker and more sinister than Malm's theories. It's not the price paid for Israel's colonialism. If for no other reason, because this isn't colonialism. Israel isn't Algeria.

According to Malm, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians isn't a war between two indigenous peoples which have a legitimate claim to the same territory and therefore are engaged in a violent conflict. Instead, there is one legitimate native nation and for over a century it has been fighting an occupation by invaders who came from other countries as colonizers. The invaders are supported by imperialist powers and they are now committing genocide. This kind of aggression according to Malm must be, should be and always has been resisted with violence. In fact, Malm's latest text is one of many in Parabol making the same claim.

These texts rarely even mention the events of October 7th which I would suggest is a sign of total moral bankruptcy. But that's me and I may be biased. The problem here is different, it's about intellectual honesty. The description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a story of a colonial power murdering the natives is incredibly shallow and misleading. It's perfectly ok to oppose Israel's policies (as I do myself most of the time), it's perfectly ok to name-drop Edward Said and Franz Fanon, make comparisons to Apartheid South-Africa and quote Israeli officials making outrageous genocidal statements which can then be quoted at the ICJ in the Hague. But people who have studied the region, as I guess Malm has, know very well that Jews, not only Palestinians are natives to it. And no, I'm not referring to Jesus and Abraham. Biblical stories cannot be a base for international geo-politics. I'm referring to facts completely ignored by the whole post-colonial discourse.

Take Gaza, for example, in the place where Rimal, the political center of Gaza City used to stand, a synagogue was built in the year 508 AD. We know that the figure in the center of the ancient mosaic which was found there is King David. How do we know this? Because his name is written there. In Hebrew. Gaza has a long bloody history – Romans, Christian Crusaders, Arab armies, the Egyptians, Napolean's army, the Ottomans and the British Mandate all controlled Gaza. During this history, Jews lived in Gaza, they didn't arrive in ships in the 1940s. They were there during the time of the Romans, 2,000 years ago, they were there in the Middle-Ages and during the time of Islamic rule, then again in the 14th and 15th century and under the rule of the Ottoman empire. Some were still there even after WW 2.

As in many other areas in the region, for thousands of years, Jews thrived and declined in Gaza, they were expelled and fled, they killed and were killed, built and destroyed, returned, immigrated and emigrated. Arabs in the region have a similar, though somewhat shorter, story (I'm referring to them as Arabs, because the name Palestinians wasn't used in the way that we use it today until after WW2). The story of the region being a land inhabited by indigenous Palestinians who were attacked by American, European and Russian Jews arriving from abroad after the Holocaust and kicking out the natives is a fairytale. Concepts like colonialism and indigenous peoples aren't abstract. Unfashionable as it may seem, these things have actual meanings beyond TikTok clips made by demonstrators wearing fashionable red, white and green scarfs. They can be discussed in terms of archeological findings, origin and descent, historical continuity of settlements, language and culture, collective ancestral ties to a territory and to natural resources, self-identification, experiences of subjugation and discrimination and so on. It may be frustrating, but when it comes to Israel, to the West-Bank and to Gaza, both Jews and Palestinians are natives. They're all a combination of immigrants and people who are decedents of families who haven't left for generations. And they've all suffered from violence, massacres, displacement and trauma.

And there's another similarity between the Jewish national movement (aka Zionism) and the Palestinian one. They both have a genocidal wing. These are the people on both sides who don't accept the idea of territorial compromise in order to achieve peace. The people who are willing to go as far as killing or expelling the other group in its entirety. They're usually religious fanatics, they're extremely violent, they totally oppose democracy and human rights, they're willing to kill and die for the cause and they've always been around. On the Jewish side, they began to become a serious threat after Israel's 1967 victory with the rise of the settler movement in the occupied West-Bank. These days they're becoming stronger, they're getting closer to government circles, but they're still far from being anywhere near a majority in Israeli society.

On the Palestinian side, things seem to be worse. If on the Zionist side there was a right-wing revisionist leader, Zeev Jabotinsky, who had a connection with Mussolini in the 30s, the leader of the Arab nationalists in Palestine at the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent WW2 in Berlin and in Rome, he collaborated with the Nazis and the Fascists, he personally met Hitler, Himmler and Mussolini and was a supporter of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem". Al-Husseini was just the beginning. The Palestinian National movement has always had an active and extremely popular genocidal side to it. It's not because of Israel, because it started many years before Israel even existed. And it's not unimportant because what we saw on October 7th was a direct result of the same kind of ideology.

That's what's really amazing about Andreas Malm's text. Hamas is the genocidal wing of the Palestinian national movement and its ideological roots go all the way back to Nazi Germany. Although it was seen as a traditional grassroot, social and religious movement when it was founded in the 80s, it's now a modern, extreme right-wing movement combining Jihadism, high-tech disinformation campaigns, a financial empire of global investments, leaders who live a life of luxury outside the region, modern weapon systems and powerful alliances with the world's most tyrannical regimes. Anyone imagining the Hamas as a young David standing up to the Israeli Goliath is living in a naïve lullaby.

But Andreas Malm isn't naïve. He knows very well that the geo-political realities show that Hamas and indeed the Palestinian national movement is far more complicated than just a victim of western colonialism. He knows about the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 which means there was no occupation of Gaza for almost two decades. He knows that the blockade on Gaza is just as much an Egyptian policy as it is an Israeli one and that many Arab countries want Israel to destroy Hamas. He knows that the Hamas charter is an antisemitic and fundamentalist text. He knows that Hamas has crushed the secular Palestinian national movement in Gaza and that it sees the Palestinian Fatah movement as an enemy which is almost as bad as Israel. He knows about Hamas' brutal war against the Palestinian Authority and he knows about the unprecedented Hamas military buildup and take-over of civil society in Gaza.

The reason that I know that Malm knows all this is because of other texts that he wrote. Reading them one learns a lot about his way of seeing the world, though I must admit, it's sometimes a confusing task. Although he seems well versed in Middle-Eastern politics, when it comes to moral statements and political conclusions, his considerations are so complicated, it's hard to keep track. Although Israel is always wrong (that's the constant) when it comes to Palestinians, Arab states and Islamic super powers, the target is painted around the dart after it's been thrown.

In a text he wrote a few years ago (Malm, Andreas, "Därför Hamas", Expressen, 15/01-09) he claims one can have two thoughts at the same time, like the Palestinian left which allies itself tactically with Hamas but at the same time supports the opposition in Iran while the opposition in Iran is fighting the Iranian regime at the same time the Iranian regime is funding Hamas. It's ok if you need to read the last sentence again.

Malm's reasoning is not that unique. He supports Hamas and its fight against what he called the "corrupt Fatah politicians" and Mahmoud Abbas, who's an Israeli and American "marionet". If this sounds familiar it's because this is exactly the same logic used by Israeli PM Netanyahu who for years has been undermining the Fatah controlled Palestinian Authority by allowing Hamas to stay in power in Gaza so that he wouldn't have to take real steps towards a two-state solution. Surprisingly enough, Malm and Netanyahu are on the same side. They'll both do anything to avoid compromise and consolidation.

In another text from 2009 Malm referred to Hamas as a liberation movement which is "forced to resort to every possible form of resistance" (Malm, Andreas, "Vi bör följa Iran och stödja Hamas i kampen mot Israels folkmordspolitik", Newsmill, 04/01-09). In the same text he quoted Nir Rosen, who claimed that "Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication" (Rosen, Nir, "Gaza: the logic of colonial power", The Guardian, 29/12-08). Malm is entitled to write these kind of statements even if they encourage violence and are fascist in nature. I only hope that most Swedes, including those who support the Palestinians, can see beyond this tragic war mongering, since it's clear to anyone what this means politically. Hamas will continue murdering Israelis; Israel will have to retaliate and will do so forcefully – and more Palestinians will be killed. If there's anything that hasn't changed in the last few decades it's this dynamic.

Hamas is not the only problem. In another text Malm openly supported Hezbollah (Malm, Andreas, "Därför Ska Vi Stödja Hezbollah", 11/08-2006), an Islamic movement funded, trained and inspired by the Iranian Ayatollahs and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was involved in suicide attacks, political assassinations, bombing of civilians and hijackings in Lebanon and other countries. I don't know how Malm manages to pull off being a left wing radical and supporting two of the most conservative, fascist, chauvinist, fundamentalist, hierarchical, anti-democratic, homophobic and xenophobic movements in the history of the known universe, but I know that explanations along the lines of "I can't be expected to condemn actions taken by the weak and oppressed” can't work anymore after the massacre of October 7th which was a tectonic, world-changing event. Not condemning it, or in Malm's case, condemning it sarcastically, means supporting it.

This period isn't easy for the global political left. Just like in the 1950s when left-wing activists, politicians and intellectuals had to decide whether to stay faithful to the Stalinist flagship even after it was exposed as a sadistic killing machine of gulags and mock trials, today's left must decide if its alliance with the dictators, Jihadists and militants from Gaza, Teheran, Beirut and Doha is more important than its ideals. Those who have the courage to choose their ideals and abandon their old murderous  allies will not have Andreas Malm's problem. They will be able to proudly say "yes, I condemn Hamas".