WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria, Nov. 23: Opening - Two peoples, no state (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 What is happening in Israel-Palestine is nothing inconceivable, although

we are shocked almost to the point of aphasia. Horror has never
abandoned us, particularly in our modern age. "It was an Avar village
that the Bulgarians had burned, according to the laws of public law.
Here old men riddled with bullets watched their wives die with their
throats cut, clutching their children to their bleeding breasts; there
disemboweled girls, after having satisfied the natural needs of some
hero, breathed their last; others, half burned, screamed begging to
finish them. Brains were scattered on the ground, next to severed arms
and legs." It is a passage from Candide or Voltaire's optimism, in which
the Enlightenment philosopher with sharp irony confronts us with the
monstrosities of the many wars that bloodied Europe for a good part of
the eighteenth century.

As then, even today it is the States, in the name of presumed rights of
nationality, identity and ethnicity, that foment wars, plan them and
direct them. Those States that attribute to themselves the "legitimate"
monopoly of violence, even the most brutal, and use it at will. And "for
a refinement of malice" they also invent the etiquette of war, the
fateful international law, invoked several times even in these terrible
days, which is a fiction, an arrogant way to still consider themselves
human (humanity, what a beautiful word!) .

Seen from this perspective, of a world that continually displays
violence, the limits of which are never satiated, today's conflict
between Palestinians and Israelis, or rather between the Israeli
government, with its super-equipped army and Hamas (and every other
fringe that claims the right to be able to dispense life and death to
enemies and friends) is nothing other than yet another abomination of
war that spreads its mephitic coils around the world.

Of course, in the aftermath of October 7th, of the frightening carnage
carried out by Hamas, we all felt dismay, but faced with the dismay of
those who discussed that extra non-human element that would have
animated the Palestinian militiamen and that would have marked a limit
that had been crossed, to Verga personally came to mind when in the
novella Libertà he writes: "[...]one had put his boot on his cheek and
smashed it; despite the boy still asking for thanks with his
hands.[...]The woodcutter, out of pity, gave him a great blow with the
ax with both hands[...]Another shouted: -Bah! He would have been a
notary, too!". And this was the anger of the farmers against those who
exploited them and mocked them. Let's just try to imagine what well of
anger, anger and hatred the Palestinians can draw from. In 2022, 45
children were killed by the Israeli army in the occupied territories and
in 2023, up until the terrible massacre now being experienced in Gaza,
there were 44 (Save the children data from 18 September 2023). Not to
mention the thousands of deaths in the last 15 years alone and the
persistent apartheid regime they are forced into by Israeli legislation.

In today's intricate and troubled Israeli-Palestinian question, the
historical dynamics appear even disarmingly linear. It is enough to take
even a superficial look at some geographical map of the area which
reproduces the evolution of the division of territories between Israelis
and Palestinians to realize how there has been a continuous
appropriation of territories by Israel and a progressive confinement of
the Palestinians within ghettos and refugee camps. A trend that
continues even now amidst bombs and massacres, in fact Israeli settlers
are occupying some villages abandoned by the Palestinians due to the
bombings. Without this historical perspective, any discourse that
appeals exclusively to mutual wrongs, to mutual violence, can do nothing
but fuel more violence and other wrongs, in a chain without solution,
for the satisfaction and convenience of states and governments. Because
if we have reached this point there are precise responsibilities of all
the governments that have always followed one another in Israel; of all
the imperialist powers (from the United States, to Russia, to Europe, to
China) that traffic in the pain of the world; of anyone, Palestinian or
the Arab world, conceives only state and contrasting logics. So it is
not just the fault of Netanyahu, today the perfect scapegoat who thus
shields both Western governments and Israeli democracy from
responsibility and at the same time is authorized to become an
instrument of revenge.

So today, October 31, the bombings on Gaza continue incessantly, the
ground invasion that should wipe out Hamas forever has begun and the
death count is updated hour by hour, more than eight thousand, of which
more than three thousand children. The war opened by the Israeli
government in response to the Hamas attack can find its justifications
and support. First of all, the defense of the Jewish people, which has
its deep roots in the historical events that saw it as the favorite
victim until the Holocaust. But today this defense is colored with
revenge, revenge which as such will not have any mercy, not even for
defenseless civilians. Another banner with which the Israeli government
cloaks itself is that of the defense of democratic and Western values
from the attacks of a pre-modern, chauvinist and authoritarian culture,
represented by Hamas. It is a scheme that has worked on various
occasions, most recently for the war in Ukraine, which, if it satisfies
Western propaganda, leaves behind only rubble and instability. But no
concern seems to be affecting Western governments, although in the face
of the massacre being perpetrated in Gaza they have been forced to make
specious distinctions, such as that of the Italian Foreign Minister, who
declared that the Israeli reaction must be a "proportionate reaction". .
Who knows if he believes that the eight thousand deaths already recorded
among Palestinians are proportionate to the fourteen hundred caused by
the Hamas attack! In fact, heads of government and states are moving on
a dangerous edge that any small incident can precipitate into a larger
and irreversible conflict. But anyway, for them it is more important to
maintain positions and hegemonies than to save human lives.

This being the case, no solution can come from institutional politics,
from diplomacy - the uselessness of the UN in this crisis should be
embarrassing for states - or from terrorist strategy. Indeed, there is a
prospect of a hardening of positions and more, and who knows how much
more brutal, violence. The only hope could be for the Palestinian and
Israeli populations to speak up and, overcoming barriers and mistrust,
be able to find ways of coexistence, the possibility of meeting, the
ability to dialogue, in a path that may be slow but capable of getting
them out of the tunnel of hatred. and oppression. Utopia? No, just the
possibility of giving continuity and substance to the numerous
experiences which, yesterday as today, are capable of breaking down
every barrier and promoting coexistence. While the hostility of
governments and institutions and the hardening of nationalities and
identities have prevented fruitful and peace-bringing processes from
taking place. So no two peoples and two states, just a single common
space of cohabitation.

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