Guest post: Statement of the Peoples’ Interplanetary Mobilization for Peace, Love, Empowerment, and Sensitive Language (PIMPLESL)
Guest post by Jonathan Gallant
Older campers may recall 9/11/2001, when al-Qaeda activists kidnapped civilian airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center, in a dramatic protest against American neocolonialism and world trade. Our British comrades immediately formed the Stop The War Coalition, to demand that the US declare a unilateral ceasefire with al-Qaeda. We at PIMPLESL also insisted that the US refrain from any action other than quiet diplomacy, appeals to the UN, yoga, and aromatherapy. We explained that if the US had a problem with the incineration of its airline passengers and office workers, that problem should be addressed at the root level by providing better dental care. We also pointed out that it was hurtful to refer to the young activists who flew planes into the World Trade Center as “terrorists”.
Unhappily, the US ignored all our demands. It continued to use the term “terrorist”, and it employed military violence, going so far as to kill Mohammed Atef, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, Anwar al-Awlaki, Khalid Habib, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and numerous other al-Qaeda militants.
The time has come for PIMPLESL to return to the struggle. We now demand that the US issue an official apology for its failure to declare a ceasefire on 9/12/2001. We further demand that the US refrain from any military action against the Houthi activists on the shores of the Red Sea , who are currently kidnapping merchant ships and firing drones and missiles at the ships as a protest against world trade. The US and the UK must institute a unilateral ceasefire for the Houthis’ benefit.
While our Houthi comrades demonstrate by preventing the movement of ships at sea, our PIMPLESL demonstrations will prevent movement of cars on land by blocking bridges, streets, and Interstate Highways. When workers cannot get to work, or cannot get home from work, they will then take the first step toward revolution by paying attention to us. This tactic follows directly from the tenets of our philosophy of Marxism-Leninism-Exhibitionism. Our mottos are: no highway except our way, and from the river to the HOV lane, shut it all down. We call our campaign the global interstateifada.
Dave Spart (Private Eye) could learn from PIMPLESL.
Marvellous! Thank you, Jonathan.
Okay, yeah, this was funny and well-written, but I do think it exhibits part of the problem with the Gaza situation, too–namely, that there doesn’t seem to be any good options for American policy. The U.S. has two options:
1: Continue giving military aid to Israel. Bibi’s made it clear that so long as that’s going on, he’s not going to change policy one iota, so let’s keep bombing hospitals. Might be reprehensibly justifiable in a Kissinger sort of way, if it actually led to the quelling of anti-Israeli terrorism, but history’s shown that every two militants killed creates another militant, while every non-militant caught in the crossfire creates three more in the long run.
2: Cut off aid to Israel. This ends one of two ways–either Israel is overrun by hostiles willing to use the “Leiningen Versus the Ants” tactics, and we get a new slaughter of Jews, OR it is about to go there, and then Bibi decides to demonstrate that all the intelligence analysts saying that Israel has the Bomb were, in fact, correct. Faced with existential crisis, I can absolutely see Netanyahu deciding to turn the whole place into a giant funeral pyre, especially if he figures he can get a couple warheads at least to Tehran, and maybe even Mecca.
Neo-fascist vs. terrorist is a lousy situation. When both sides are genuinely committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, it’s hard to see a way forward.
Carrying on with Freemage’s direction of thinking, the only reasonable-ish course of action I can see for our various nations is to withdraw support for either side, which mostly means withdrawing support from Israel since only middle-eastern nations actively support Palestinians. At the very least then we can say we did not take part in war crimes.
And in case it needs mentioning, this does not preclude giving humanitarian aid to those caught in the crossfire.
Immolating the real estate making up the state of Israel/Palestine in a nuclear fireball would forever remove fighting over “the holy land” from the equation of world affairs, so there’s a silver lining there.
Getting the idiots to stop blocking the arteries of commerce would be nice…
What an absolute load of American Exceptionalism Codswallop!
Actions being taken in the Red Sea are not a “protest against world trade”. That you, and BKiS in a later comment, frame it like this is an indication that you put commerce and economics above people’s lives. They are targetted actions in support of the Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle against Israeli genocide, a campaign that began in 1947 and looks like reaching its final stages as Bibi The Butcher does all he can to ensure the destruction of the few remaining Palestinian settlements.
The Houthis are demanding the free movement of humanitarian aid into Gaza. They are attempting to stop further shipments of arms to Israel. Why would anyone be opposed to that? Zionism?
I note that news reports always state “Iranian backed Houthis” but never “American backed IDF”.
The US/UK airstrikes on Yemen have killed an unknown number of people, most likely innocent civilians caught up in affairs they cannot control. Remind me again how many people the Houthis have killed in the Red Sea. Precision weapons are designed to land precisely on a target, but they cannot determine the innocence or guilt of the target. We know how often these weapons kill the innocent.
Both the 9/11 attacks on the US and the 10/7 attacks on Israel were evil. But anyone who thinks that these arose out of nowhere, who wasn’t watching the pressure cooker build steam, just hasn’t been paying attention.
Al Qaeda did not attack because “they hate American values”, but because far too many people in the Arab world had seen what American values meant in their lives. That Arab lives weren’t valued. That America could stomp on democracy (Egypt, Iran) and destroy people’s hopes and dreams when their governments refused to be bullied by America. And wasn’t America so gung ho about proving them right, destroying Iraq and expending billions of dollars, millions of lives, and 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban? And still, you walk around with stunned looks on your faces pleading “Why do they hate us so?”
Hamas did not attack because they “hate Jews”, but because they hate the way they have been treated by Israel, forced from their land, and their homes, and confined to a tiny sliver of what was their ancestral lands. They are not representative of all Palestinians, but all Palestinians are the victims of Israel’s policies.
If you subscribe to the “Hamas broke the ceasefire” lie, then again, you haven’t been paying attention. There was no ceasefire in the West Bank where Jews from Europe, with no connection to the Middle East, are arriving weekly and demanding Lebensraum. When Palestinians resist the interlopers and refuse to hand over their homes, they are murdered by other settlers, aided and abetted by the IDF.
And don’t come back it me with the bullshit that this is Jewish land, based on Bible stories none of us believe. Don’t tell me Israel has a right to exist, something that is never said about any other nation, anywhere, anytime. Instead, stop and ask yourself how you have bought into this bullshit and sat by while Israel continues its policy of ethnic cleansing, why you cheer on the monsters, and why you have no empathy for the ordinary men, women and children of Palestine.
One bit I left out,
If it is international trade that concerns you, the US Navy routinely stops, detains, and searches merchant ships around the world. No complaints.
The US Coast Guard is often seen in the South China Sea. That’s a mighty long way from home unless Taiwan is considered coastal US. No complaints.
I guess its OK when your side does it.
One, I absolutely do put commerce and economics above the lives of people I do not know because humans are straight up unimportant and replaceable; there’s eight billion of us. You don’t matter, I don’t matter, and neither the Israelis, the Houthis, or the Palestinians matter one fig when it comes to the proper working of our global civilization. Two, I *am* a monster but that’s no call to impugn anyone else’s motives; if Hamas had gone into Bibi’s bedroom and cut his head off I’d not have been overly incensed.
In my youth I’d’ve been cheering on Hamas, but at the outset I was mildly pro-Israeli because I’ve got a better understanding of things than a teenager. Now of course they’ve lost the moral high ground which anyone with half a brain would know was going to happen sooner or later; honestly a bit surprised the ethnonationalists didn’t immediately ramp up the ethnic cleansing. After all, the only reasonable way to complete the strategic objective of making Hamas a non-entity going forward is to depopulate Gaza (can’t recall if forced displacement is distinct and separate from just genociding people, but assuming it is I’m putting it under the umbrella of “depopulation”). Despite what the apologists say, there’s a sufficient contingent amongst the Israeli population that really, *really* loves Hebrew Bible and thinks they’re somehow more that a distant relation to those murderous Iron Age goat herders.
On the other hand, Hamas *does* hate the Jews and if their positions were reversed I’m pretty sure they’d be pulling the same shit the right-wing religious shits running Israel are doing now because they are also right-wing religious shits (important to note that right-wing religious shit is the dominant demographic in both groups). The Palestinians while definitely Jew/Israeli haters also have pretty good reasons to do so given their historical situation going back to the 19th century. Likewise Al Qaeda, they do hate our way of life but also have many good reasons to hate the American-led Western coalition. There’s a lot of Asshole Victims in this world and few if any good people.
As for the state of Israel existing? I wish it didn’t; as I’ve said here before it’s a theocratic ethnostate and such things are an absolute abomination to a republican atheist eugenicist like myself. The best solution would be for the Israeli and Palestinian (likewise Bedouin Arabs, miscellaneous minorities) to start interbreeding and not carving out special privileges based for specific religious and ethnic groups. Then you’d get some Israeli suck-ups saying “Oh my stars, but then how could we still have a Jewish state? Gathering lots of Jews together in a an area that can be readily destroyed with modern fusion weapons is the only way to protect ourselves from another Holocaust!”. Then come stupid questions like “Why is everyone being so mean and picking on the state of Israel like no other,, isn’t it because Jews are special?” Well sir, the state of Israel really is like nothing that came before so yes things are different.
So where are we now? Shit’s going down in the Middle East that look sufficiently similar to the build up to the Great War, Sudan is back to the bad old days (no one’s talking about this except to say that no one’s talking about this), Azerbaijan just displaced a shit ton of Armenians, the Serbs are eyeing Kosovo again, Winnie the Pooh is drooling over Taiwan, Argentina is contemplating having a second go at the Falklands, Ukraine is ongoing, and everyone in the loose movement of top tier authoritarian shitbags are eyeing the US election to see if they can just go hog wild.
I suppose there’s also a mound of domestic worries I could rant about here as well and could again describe how I am monstrous, but I think that’s a long enough rant. Thing is though, *I* am the monster, not the other individuals here. Understand my position without thinking you know why other people hold their views.
The terms of the ceasefire so far as I am aware had nothing to do with the West Bank. The cease fire was with Gaza.
So, who is lying here?
Also a lie. Two seconds on Wikipedia illustrates that the assertion of a nation’s right to exist is not unique to Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_exist.
Asserting Israel’s right to exist, is because that is the central bone of contention in this conflict. The same claim would be and is made in other conflicts over whether a nation has a right to exist.
“Lebensraum.”
Really? Really?
The Rev. Brindley: “Don’t tell me Israel has a right to exist, something that is never said about any other nation, anywhere, anytime.”
We at PIMPLESL, like the Rev. Brindley, deny that Israel has any right to exist. After all, it was authorized only by resolutions of the League of Nations and the United Nations. The true legitimacy in the region stems from the conquest of Jerusalem by the Arab army of Caliph Umar in 636-38. Of course, this conquest did not create a state of “Palestine” but rather incorporated the region into the first Caliphate. It follows that no other states of the Middle East or North Africa have a right to exist either, but should be incorporated into an Islamic Caliphate.
The only questions that remain are the following. (1) How will we make sure that additions after 638 (such as Spain, Portugal, Corsica, Sicily, parts of Provence, Georgia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan) are also included in the new Caliphate? (2) Should the new Caliphate also include the territories of the Ottoman Caliphate, such as Greece, Bulgaria, the Balkans, most of Hungary, etc.? (3) Should the new Caliphate be the same as ISIS, or is some other group better entitled to take charge of all regions that were once under Islamic rule?
And who represented the Palestinians on those occasions? How did Palestine vote on those resolutions? The carve up post WW2 was the handiwork of Zionists, the UK, USA, USSR, and France.
Gaza is not a nation, it is a tiny remnant of Palestinian land. The same for The West Bank. They are enclaves. Carved out by the genocidal Israelis to push Palestinians into ever-decreasing spaces.
And, it is precisely because Gaza is not a nation that Israel can be hauled before the ICJ for war crimes and Hamas can not.
Was there anything in the ceasefire agreement about halting the influx of settlers on the West Bank? What is your source on it if there was? Because I do not see any coverage of the ceasefire claiming anything like that.
Why do you keep saying things that are just not true? The ICJ doesn’t limit prosecutions to heads of state – a lot of the people who are dragged before it are leaders of rebel groups. Timbuktu is not a state, yet Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz was brought before the ICJ for war crimes.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/23/icc-prosecutors-mali-rebel-enthusiastic-war-crimes-perpetrator
Whether you consider Gaza a nation or not does not have any bearing on whether a case against Hamas could be brought before the ICJ.