Offensive vs. Defensive Nationalism

This conflict shows a harmful confusion, among the Russians and their supporters, between the state as a nation in the ethnic sense and the state as an administrative entity.

A state that wants to base its legitimacy on cultural unity must be small; it is otherwise doomed to meet the hostility of others. A Francophone Swiss citizen, although culturally linked to his or her language, does not aspire to belong to France, and France does not try to invade French-speaking Switzerland under this pretext. Further, national identities can change quickly: Francophone Belgians have a different identity from French people. France itself went through an operation of internal colonialism to destroy Provençal, Languedoc, Picard, Savoyard, Breton, and other cultures and eradicate their languages under a centralized identity. Nationality is never defined and never fixed; administration is.

Cultural unity can make sense, but only in the form of something reduced such as a city-state –I would even go so far as to say that a state only works well in this way. In this case, nationalism is defensive — Catalan, Basque or Christian Lebanese — but in the case of a large state like Russia, nationalism becomes offensive. Notice that under the Pax Romana or the Pax Ottomana, there were no large states, but city-states gathered in an empire whose role was distant. But there is loose empire and rigid nation-state like empire, the latter being represented by Russia .

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Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20231222185134/https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/1221128897/masha-gessen-essay-israel-gaza-germany-hannah-arendt-prize

Prominent Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen received a prestigious award for political thought over the weekend, in a ceremony that almost didn't happen due to backlash over their recent writings on Israel-Gaza.

Israel's air-and-ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 20,000 people in the 10 weeks since the Hamas-led attack on Israel killed some 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage.

Gessen, who is Jewish and whose family lost loved ones in the Holocaust, has been criticized for a New Yorker essay published earlier this month in which they likened the Gaza Strip to the WWII-era ghettos that Nazis developed to segregate and control Jewish people in occupied Europe.

Gessen argues in the essay that treating the Holocaust as a "singular event," unlike anything that has occurred before or after in history, not only is incorrect but makes it impossible to learn lessons from the Holocaust that are needed to prevent future genocides.

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World leaders, international rights groups and United Nations officials have criticised the United States for vetoing a UN resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and failing to halt the war that has killed more than 17,400 Palestinians and about 1,100 people in Israel since October 7.

A UN resolution on the pause in hostilities failed to pass on Friday at the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed the proposal and Britain abstained.

The remaining 13 of the 15 current members of the UNSC voted in favour of the resolution put forward by the United Arab Emirates and co-sponsored by 100 other countries.

Here are some of the reactions:

Palestine

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the US’s veto made it “complicit” in war crimes in Gaza. “The president has described the American position as aggressive and immoral, a flagrant violation of all humanitarian principles and values, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people in the Gaza Strip,” a statement from his office said.

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the veto was “a disgrace and another blank cheque given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace”.

Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour told the UNSC that the result of the vote was “disastrous”. “If you are against the destruction and displacement of the Palestinian people you must stand against this war. And if you support it then you are enabling this destruction and displacement regardless of your intentions … Millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance. Every single one of them is sacred, worth saving.”

Hamas strongly condemned the US veto, saying it considers Washington’s move “unethical and inhumane”. “The US obstruction of the issuance of a ceasefire resolution is a direct participation with the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.

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Kernow

Last weekend, Ally was kicked out of a family Shabbat dinner. Ally is 21 years old and from New York.

"My dad is a staunch Zionist. He said, 'You better not f*ing have gone to that protest.' "

Ally has gone to many protests.

"He was like, 'I don't want to have you in my house right now. You are not welcome at this dinner table,' " Ally said.

Ally, who requested anonymity due to ongoing harassment, has family in Israel. Some are currently in the Israel Defense Forces.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began, there have been protests demanding a cease-fire. Many Jewish Americans have joined in. Some say they've been met with hostility from within their own communities. Ally is a student at Columbia University, and is part of Jewish Voice For Peace, which is vocally demanding a cease-fire in Gaza.

What Ally wants, beyond a cease-fire, is to address the human rights violations Palestinians have endured over the years.

"My position as a Jew is that it [has] always been our responsibility, according to our religion, to stand up for all those who are targeted, all those who are oppressed, all those who are facing violence. Because as a people, we've been persecuted for so long."

Rabbi Ari-Lev Fornari, also with Jewish Voice for Peace, says lately, he's been hearing about a lot of arguments like the one at Ally's Shabbat dinner table.

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In the early morning hours of Saturday, October 7, the Palestinian resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip launched an unprecedented surprise multi-prong attack on Israel, including firing a barrage of rockets toward Israeli territory while simultaneously carrying out a ground offensive into nearby Israeli towns which breached the Israeli Gaza barrier and overwhelmed surrounding Israeli military posts.

As of 12:30 local time, it was reported that thousands of rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel and that Israeli air forces had targeted multiple areas across the Gaza Strip with airstrikes. Medical authorities in Gaza report that over 190 Palestinians had been killed and over 1,600 were injured so far. Israeli emergency services report at least 100 Israeli casualties, and dozens of other unconfirmed reports indicate the casualties to be much higher. According to Al Jazeera, 57 Israelis, including military personnel, have allegedly been captured and taken into Gaza.