The Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution is now too out-of-reach

Mr Ibish has written the below excerpts in the article “Why the U.S. and Saudis Want a Two-State Solution, and Israel Doesn’t” (The Atlantic):

Amid the war in Gaza, a major crisis has been brewing, largely behind the scenes, between the United States and Israel over the need for a Palestinian state. The two governments’ positions have long diverged—except during the administration of Donald Trump ... Now that divergence has a harder, sharper edge than ever: Washington’s strategic goals in the region require a Palestinian state in the long run and Israeli acknowledgment of that aim in the short run; the Israeli government is having none of it.

Much expectation attends a purportedly comprehensive peace proposal that the U.S. and its most important Arab partners have reportedly been working on, soon to be unveiled and then implemented as the Gaza war winds down. The centerpiece of the plan would be a firm commitment to, and timeline for, the creation of a Palestinian state—a process that President Joe Biden has already mapped out in remarks ...

This contradiction between U.S. and Israeli policies raises troubling quandaries. The Biden administration appears to be working to confront Israelis with the stark choice they face: security through an agreement with Palestinians and normalization with Saudi Arabia (and other Arab and Muslim countries), or inviting further conflict by clinging to occupied Palestinian lands at a heavy cost of antagonized regional relations and declining American sympathies.

Recently, our Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron has commented that the UK is waiting “to formally recognise a Palestinian state” (BBC News).

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I don’t think this is going to work at all. Here are my thoughts:

Firstly, the “now is the time” for a two-state solution bombast is genuinely deranged. How can anyone think that now is the time for that sort of clamouring? In response to a violent attack targeting Israeli civilians, the clever idea is to now pressurise Israel into giving them concessions – thereby proving that slaughtering Jewish civilians is a viable means towards their political ends. I quite want to ask President Biden, why didn’t America give some of its US territory to the Taliban following 9/11?

Secondly, when the two-state solution fails (like every other “peace” deal); it will not be US civilians which Hamas 2.0 will be pouring into to murder.

Thirdly, the flaw in this argument is that there is no meaningful security with (1) Hamas as the terrorist governing authority; and (2) the Palestinian population remaining as radicalised and militant as they are. 

Israel has road-tested the concept of Palestinian sovereignty back in 2005 in Gaza. They effectively pulled Israeli citizens and soldiers out – and gave the keys to the Palestinian Authority. Now, Israel is being prompted to try the exact same thing! The problem here goes way back to the Ottoman Empire in the perception that the land was inherently Islamic and/or Arabic. The repeated Arab rejections of a two-state solution goes way back to 1937. Israel’s first war broke out because the Arab states rejected the UN’s two-state solution. At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered 100% of Gaza; and 73% of the present West Bank. Not good enough for Arafat in 2000, and not good enough for Abbas in 2008 — despite Palestinians being offered almost all of their demands.

In my view, I think it’s deceptively easy to insist on eradicating Hamas. The real thorny problem is the underlying perception among the everyday Palestinian citizens that fighting – and committing acts of terrorism – is the pathway to any kind of peace. As George Deek argued, in order to have a two-state solution, it necessarily requires a serious recognition – by the Arab Palestinians – on accepting the legitimacy of others. Most especially the Jewish state – because it stands strikingly at odds in terms of nationality, religion, and culture.

After all, Egypt, Jordan and other states have signed the Abraham Accords which is a fundamental recognition of this logic. Saudi Arabia will eventually come to terms with this reality. And when the Palestinians realise that they have gained absolutely nothing through intifadas and extremism (apart from misery), then they will consider the alternative approach.

Then, Israel, the Palaestinians, and the whole world, will salute the two-state solution.

Photo: “The Great Indoors”

Taken inspiration from roentare. Photo from my phone :)

Descending Angel Tube Station.

Is Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop Art overrated?

I am not sure I really ‘get’ Lichtenstein – and I don’t think I care for Pop Art either.

If anyone reading this loves his art, please share with me in the comments. Pics below are from the Tate Modern.

To me, Pop Art sounds interesting in theory. But, reflecting the tapestry of the culture around us morphs into visual memes which become part of the cliche. The “Pop Art” movement of the late 1950s placed a heavy emphasis on “found art” and “found objects”. They sought to frame everyday objects and imagery into new settings to imbue them with a renewed significance and power. For me, I am not sure I would call this legitimate “art” … but I can appreciate its historical resonance. 

Reason 1 – No creativity, little artistic merit

Lichtenstein notices a frame within a comic and amplifies it with striking vividness and scale to make the art imposing. His work sits in the Tate Modern as “high-art”. For me, it doesn’t work at all. It’s not a Monet or a Van Gogh. In fact, I hardly see any artistic merit at all. He merely took an image out of a comic book, and painted it on a canvas. Even on a technical level, it is not that impressive either. It is devoid of any creativity. It’s simplified, easy and unimaginative.

This heavy focus on “ready made” art is rooted in Duchamp; and can be seen in Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg etc. However, I think there is a serious difference. Duchamp’s urinal wasn’t made to be “on display” and looked on as “art”. He made it “art” by putting on display and writing a fake name as a label. It was, in that respect, transformative.

However, Lichtenstein took other peoples’ genuine comic art, edited it, put it on a panel and then made it expansive. It didn’t change the idea of it. Somehow, art galleries then considered it “high-art” which contemporary art critics were not inclined to do with the original comics.

Reason 2 – “But don't forget the conceptual”

Lichtenstein became famous because the regnant philosophy on art, in his time, was the pop art scene. Lichtenstein’s work is popular and catchy because it is so familiar. It’s like a corporate logo. The rest of his earlier oeuvre is mediocre at best.

I often wonder if academics and critics simply read into, embellish, convolute and hype-up art simply because it is on the wall of a museum. In other words, the institutions of art feed themselves their art. People look at a piece in a gallery. It psychically shouts back: “THIS IS IMPORTANT”, and then people feel nervous, anxious and force a narrative that doesn’t correspond to reality. I think a lot of peoples’ instinctive reaction to Roy Lichtenstein should be “rubbish” or “mediocre”.

This brings me to another problem I have. People like Lichtenstein for his paintings – but mostly because of “what he is saying”. In the broader scheme, all art is conceptual. But, to my mind, the best ones are those who don’t treat their art merely as a message. Ideas are great; but, looking in – especially from  the outside – if the ideas seem decent or agreeable; then the general sensation is that you’re not allowed to say that the art is not that great. And why not? Because it’s conceptual. There is no real way for conceptual art pieces to be judged.

This is compounded by another problem.The viewer must get into the head of the artist. The viewer has to divine what kind of idea he/she was trying to convey; and, after all that, we must come to our own conclusions. It is all ultimately subjective.

Reason 3 – Pop Art is condescending to the masses

It is said that Lichtenstein’s work is critiquing Western/US consumerism, and our industrial economic system.

But, to me, it feels like a haughty contempt for the everyday masses who go shopping, buy their mass-produced products and newspapers, take notice of marketing, and live unrefined lives. Perhaps more for Warhol than Lichtenstein? But the work often feel like sanitised pop images suitable for the consumption of elevated wealthy classes.

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Whaam!

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Lichtenstein’s Reflections Series

Below are five works from Lichtenstein’s Reflections print series. Each is supposed to feature one of his earlier paintings which is partly obscured under bands of colour. 

Lichtenstein said: 

"It portrays a painting under glass. It is framed and the glass is preventing you from seeing the painting. Of course, the reflections are just an excuse to make an abstract work, with the cartoon image being supposedly partly hidden by the reflections."

According to the Tate, it is supposed to a wry comment on his own rehashing and reusing of his own work!  That says it all, I think!

Ask yourself, where is the art?

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Reflections on Minerva

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Reflections on Girl

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Reflections on The Scream

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Reflections on Conversation 

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Reflections on Crash

House of Commons debacle around the so-called Gaza ceasefire vote

There has been chaos and outrage in Parliament this week.

• A motion that was tabled by a minority party, the SNP, in Parliament to back an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza.
• The Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, decided to go against official advice and selected a Labour amendment to a motion reserved for the SNP.
• Our constitution is convention-driven. The Convention states that the Government's amendment is adopted; as opposed to the opposition's. Instead, the rules were changed. He explained that he wanted to give MPs “the widest possible range of options”. 
• Tory MPs felt the Speaker had been bullied and cajoled into helping the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, who was facing another huge revolt by many of his MPs. The Labour party has a longstanding problem with antisemitism. Nick Watt, BBC Newsnight political editor, wrote that there had been some blackmail to undermine Parliament's conventions to get Labour out of a hole:

"Senior Labour figures tell me @CommonsSpeaker was left in no doubt that Labour would bring him down after the General Election unless he called Labour’s Gaza amendment. The message was: you will need our votes to be re-elected as Speaker after election, with strong indications this would not be forthcoming if he failed to call the Labour amendment.

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My thoughts:

1. Israel will rightly ignore all of this grandstanding. Can you imagine some other country’s politicians dictating to us when, and on what terms, we are allowed to defend ourselves!
2. This ceasefire vote has nothing to do with Gaza. The SNP wanted to create trouble within the House of Commons. It has everything to do with rising levels of antisemitism. Hoyle cited Labour MPs fear that they would be physically attacked by Hamas and Islamist supporters in England if they weren’t visibly voting against Israel! So, Starmer applied emotional pressure on Hoyle and the Speaker suddenly upturned convention and rules to pander to the mobs.

Update: Amended as per comments.

Comparing Israel with the Nazis, Holocaust and genocide is outrageous

Brazil’s President Lula has likened Israel’s war in Gaza to the Holocaust:

“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments. In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” Lula told reporters during the 37th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said it would summon the Brazilian ambassador for a reprimand over the remarks, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “disgraceful and grave”.

Outrageous. 

Lula is just an idiot – a complete ignoramus. 

But, in other contexts, I would argue that this jibe would be a nasty antisemitic slur. It seeks to align the Jewish state – as the successors of the Holocaust’s victims – into the perpetrators of a second Holocaust. This is not only ahistorical and ignorant – it is also very disrespectful to Israeli’s legacy and Jews. In fact, I think it is venomously antisemitic. It amounts to accusing the Jews & Israelis of serving as Hitler’s willing executioners!

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Part 1 – Why is the comparison wrong?

Because what matters is both the scale and especially the intent, and reserving the term ‘genocide’ for genuine genocidal acts. 

The Nazis killed around 65% of European Jewry, and about 40% of all Jews in the world. During a two-day period at Babi Yar, approximately the same number of Jews – compared to the number of Gazans killed over 4 months in a given combat zone – were corralled, stripped naked, laid down in rows along a 500ft ravine, and shot in the neck. Survivors were buried alive. The Nazis deliberately sought to kill as many civilians as possible such that they built dedicated murder camps to make it more efficient and effective. 

With respect to Israel and the IDF – and any comparisons to Nazis, Holocaust or genocide etc. – the critical and obvious difference is that the Hamas attack (Oct 7) was trying to intentionally kill civilians. Israel is retaliating against this barbaric enemy, who uses human shields. They are not even remotely the same. There is an obvious and gigantic consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. Israel is surrounded by religious fanatics who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards Israelis. The charter of Hamas makes genocide – against the Jews – explicit.

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Part 2 – A brief note in defence of Israel

People will look at this conflict and say: “my gosh … the IDF are hitting civilian targets …”.

Hamas have been using human shields with the object of mixing legitimate targets with civilian ones – as they always have. But, the Geneva conventions have always forbidden deploying military (defensive or aggressive) installations under civilian areas. It is against the historic rules of war for any government to build bunkers under any civilian areas – with the calculated understanding that any attempts to target their military forces will engender huge civilian casualties. They even used a hospital (the Al-Shifa hospital) as their base of command. That is sick.

What is Israel to do under the circumstances? 

Some 134 Israeli citizens – who were kidnapped as hostages and dragged back, like a Viking raid – remain captive by these maniacs. Hamas could have released them, if they were concerned about the Gaza death-toll. But they obviously are not concerned. In fact, the civilian deaths are the desired military object of Hamas. Hamas makes it necessary for Israel to kill Gaza non-combatants to destroy their enemy. In so doing, they can – through international pressure – seek to compel Israel to ‘negotiate’ (presumably) on Hamas’s own terms. After all, Hamas are holding they key bargaining chips, namely the hostages. 

The calculus is that if the human cost becomes so high, international pressure will be increased on Israel. So, the only way Hamas can “win” is if Israel becomes isolated diplomatically and internationally from materials and weapons purchases, and aid. But, if Israel were to accede to that, it would establish a precedent that if you want to change Israeli policy, then go and invade their country: behead, murder and rape their civilians, uploading these videos online, and kidnap as many innocent people as possible. 

The IDF cannot put boots on ground in any area of civilian population. This would be urban warfare. The key personnel with any serious power in all organisations in Gaza have been vetted by Hamas. They do what Hamas orders - including stealing food & diverting medical aid to prioritise Hamas operatives over the civilian population. In many ways, it reminds me of Stalin. He was able to use the vast populations of Russia to act as fodder against the Nazis. And, of course, Hamas doesn’t wear military insignia and uniforms – as required under the Geneva conventions. They blend in with the civilian population to make it impossible to tell who is Hamas. 

Hamas cannot take on the might of the IDF in any open battlefield. They have to rely on the moral calculus of people around the world getting outraged at the death-toll. War involves the breakdown of values. But we shouldn’t lose perspective here. Israel is a liberal democracy. They engage in warfare according to the rules of war. Israel could completely obliterate the Gaza strip at any moment, if they want – but they clearly don’t want to do that. But, if Hamas could; we all know they would (as is literally carved in their Hamas charter).

And, more importantly, release the Israeli hostages.

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Update: this came in the post recently:

The irony of a war between a people with the means to commit genocide but not the desire; versus people with the desire to commit genocide but not the means.

Antisemitism on the rise (and its relationship with anti-Zionism)

Part 1 – I think anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitism

Firstly, once people assert anti-Zionism is unacceptable etc.; then they invariably hold Israel to ridiculous & absurd standards - well beyond any other country. And certainly not to a commensurable standard as the Palestinian side. 

Secondly, the concept of an ethnic nation would suggest that they are entitled to self-determination as an independent nation state. For Jews, that nation state is Israel – not (only) on the grounds of a genuine historical provenance, but on the grounds of international law via UN resolution. 

When someone says “I’m anti-Zionist ... not an antisemite”, they are accepting and tolerant of the Jew if he’s consigned to his role as the “wandering jew”. Otherwise, they are not entitled to a collective nationhood, the preservation of their history and archaeological sites. There would be no government on Earth ever prioritising Jewish safety. The anti-Zionist wants the Jew to resigned as a perpetual stranger in a country, nothing more. 

Today, 11 pro-Palestine (or, more probably, pro-Hamas) protesters were arrested as thousands marched to Israeli embassy in London. The idiot below was photographed in the march. 

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Part 2 – Antisemitism is on the rise in England

Partly the fascists islamists - “poor Hamas ...!” and the left-wing identity politics groups who see Jews as white and privileged (despite being a minority that has historically been the target of discrimination).

In a recent article in The Telegraph:

Anti-Semitism hit an all-time high last year in an “explosion of hatred” against the Jewish community following the Hamas terror attacks on Israel, official figures show.

The Community Security Trust (CST) said the surge in anti-Jewish attacks, threats and abuse amounted to a “celebration” of Hamas’s October 7 massacre by anti-Semites whose own hatred was fuelled by the brutality of the attacks.

Its annual report said that there were 4,103 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK last year, nearly double the previous record in 2021, covering all types of “hate” against Jewish people.

Mark Gardner, the CST chief executive, said: “British Jews are strong and resilient, but the explosion in hatred against our community is an absolute disgrace.”

Another article recently by Danny Cohen showing the nasty sides of antisemitism:

Post-exam relaxation at Northampton Square

Finished an exam earlier this week. Afterwards went for hot chocolate and some relaxing around Northampton Square in central London. 

Amazing photo shot!

Northampton Square bandstand, with squirrels around.

Strolling around and chilling out.

I loved this door.

Subterranean flowers.

King Charles talking about cancer

Very recently, King Charles announced that he was diagnosed with cancer:

The type of cancer has not been revealed - it is not prostate cancer, but was discovered during his recent treatment for an enlarged prostate.

The King began "regular treatments" on Monday and will postpone public duties during it, the Palace said.

The Monarch, 75, "remains wholly positive about his treatment and looks forward to returning to full public duty as soon as possible," it added.

No further details are being shared on the stage of cancer or a prognosis.

I think this is big news.

For many years, the policy of the Crown has been not to mention any condition that a member of the Royal Family was suffering from. This revelation – alongside the Duchess of York's skin cancer – seems to have increased discussion and/or awareness of health issues:

• "Visits to the NHS webpage on melanoma skin cancer saw an increase in visits of 741% following the recent announcement from the Duchess of York."
• "Macmillan Cancer Support, of which the King is patron, saw a dramatic spike in visits to its information and support pages on Monday, after his cancer diagnosis was revealed."

I think we are v. scared of hearing the c word. We automatically think of chemo and dying, but after reading and learning more about cancer in the past few days, and how survivable it is (e.g. prostate and testicular cancers can be as high as 99%); I think we can 'relax' perhaps a bit more over this subject.

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche – Amazing.

My last blog post concerned romantic painters in the National Gallery – but this particular painting is extraordinary. 

'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey' painted by Paul Delaroche in 1833 which depicts the Queen who reigned for a mere 9 days. 

I think French painter Delaroche was able to depict this moment so beautifully with all its tragedy and sorrow. And, leavened with a noble strength and resolve in the face of such a downfall. She was coerced into accepting the Crown; and must have only been 16 years when she was executed. The fragile vulnerability of Lady Jane Grey (needing support and help) is matched by her elegance and beauty. Also, what a striking counter-position: to be executed among the enveloping darkness of a cold damned crypt, and with hay grass on the floor. The executioner asked for her forgiveness before beheading her:

The executioner asked her forgiveness, which she granted him, pleading: "I pray you dispatch me quickly." Referring to her head, she asked, "Will you take it off before I lay me down?", and the axeman answered, "No, madam."

Lady Jane was deposed by supporters of the Catholic Queen Mary. Lady Jane was executed because she represented a potential claimant to the English Crown against Queen Mary as long as she lived. Queen Mary had intended to pardon her but, following an attempted revolt and rebellion over the Spanish marriage, she probably felt Lady Jane was too dangerous. King Henry VIII dictated that the throne of England would pass Edward VI, and only then Queen Mary should inherit the throne. Instead of the Crown passing directly onto Mary (as per Henry VIII), Edward VI tried to control the passing of the Crown onto Lady Jane (his protestant cousin).

She was beheaded at the Tower of London.