Guernica Cancels an Inconvenient Essay (UPDATED)

An "uncompromising" journal cancels an essay for failing to say the right things.

Guernica, a non-profit journal publishing work at the intersection of art and politics, published a powerful essay by a literary interpreter working in Israel and her experience in the wake of October 7 and the resulting war between Israel and Hamas. The essay, "From the Edges of a Broken World," by Joanna Chen, provides a first-hand account of how life has changed for the author. It is deeply personal, and perhaps challenging in that it does not hew to a "side" in the current conflict--and perhaps that was the problem. Not hewing to the proper side's perspective, the essay was too challenging for some portion of Guernica's readership.

Although Guernica proclaims that it is "a home for singular voices, incisive ideas, and critical questions," this essay apparently crossed the line. The article has been removed from the journal's website. In its place reads the message: "Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow."

[Update: It appears the article was de-published after multiple members of Guernica's all-volunteer staff resigned over the decision to publish the essay. For explanations of why some editorial and other staff felt they had to resign, see here, here, here, and here.]

Fortunately, there is an archived version of the piece available here. Give it a read and then ponder how this piece could be so objectionable that it needed to be de-published--not merely criticized or challenged, but actually removed.

A current fundraising appeal on the Guernica website declares: "At Guernica, we've spent the last 15 years producing uncompromising journalism." After de-publishing the essay, that appeal may need to be taken down too.

Comments

[Noscitur a sociis]

For once, they might have actually used “fulsome” correctly.

[santamonica811]

Do you mean correctly in the sense of a very full and ample explanation (eg, a fulsome crop of tomatoes)? Or did you mean in the sense of excessive flattery (eg, all hagiographies are fulsome, by definition, as they are excessively flattering)?

[Ridgeway]

Either one is wrong. Fulsome is not a fancy synonym for full or fuller, just like enormity is not the noun form of enormous or gigantic.

[Jokibif0]

"A more fulsome explanation will follow". I have no doubt of that, with the proper meaning of the word "fulsome".

[santamonica811]

Having followed the link, I admit to being astonished that this article was taken down. Often, when people claim that an article (or whatever) is balanced or non-partisan, what they really mean is that (a) It's incredibly unbalanced, but (b) it advocates for the side I believe in, so to me that means it's "fair."

But here, my sense is that the article did not come close to taking a side, or come close to praising or condemning either side . . . the point of this article was not to justify or criticize anyone in regards to the terrorism or to Israel's response. I'm interested in knowing what the specific substantive complaints were. (I am imagining--with no actual evidence--that people on one or both sides felt that, "You didn't condemn X for X's actions, and that is tantamount to supporting X." is an article that is offensive.)

I didn't personally find the article itself particularly moving or brilliant. But worthy of being censored after-the-fact??? Not even close.

[Jonathan Affleck]

Zionists and supporters of the baby killer nation are desperate to maintain Zionist cultural hegemony even though an honest critical appraisal of Zionist history and of the actions of the baby killer nation inevitably leads to the realization of the congruence of the Zionist mentality with the Nazi mentality.

Zionism is a depraved ideology of genocide, and every assertion of Zionism is a lie.

Here is a small example of the mendacity of the US supporters of the baby killer nation.

Hamas committed no war crimes by the standards of US law.

According to US law, the taking of hostages for the purpose of prisoner exchange in a situation of war is legal if the hostage taking is committed in the context of and in association with an armed conflict not of an international character. The struggle between Palestinian natives and racist Zionist invaders, interlopers, thieves, and genocide perpetrators is not of international character. See 18 U.S. Code § 2441 - War crimes.

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

You're a Jew-hating neo-Nazi.

[Sarcastr0]

Don't feed the troll.

[Riva]

On this point, if nothing else, we agree. I would add don't feed the Jew-hating neo-Nazi troll.

[Jonathan Affleck]

When a propagandist for the baby killer nation has no response to the facts or to the truth, he resorts to an attack ad hominem.

A group subjected to genocide at the hands of a first set of genocide-perpetrators (e.g., Nazis) can later themselves form a second set of genocide-perpetrators (e.g., post-Judaism Zionists) just as evil as the first set of genocide-perpetrators.

Supporters of the baby killer nation believe that descendants of Rabbinic Jewish communities are so superior to gentiles that these descendants could not develop an ideology as depraved as Nazi ideology is.

[Dr. Ed 2]

THE "BABY KILLER NATION" IS TREATING PALESTINIAN CHILDREN IN ITS PEDIATRIC HOSPITALS FOR FREE.....

Did you notice the part about how she drives Palestinian children to said Israeli pediatric hospitals for "life saving care"? Well a Peds ICU stay is not cheap, and *someone* is paying for it -- and the Palestinian parents clearly don't have the money themselves.

Regardless of how much Israel does or doesn't have socialized medicine, quality Peds ICU care is not going to be cheap and regardless of however it winds up getting billed, the Israelis are paying for it. Paying for the medical care of Palestinian babies, in the midst of a war with Palestinians wanting to kill them.

The Nazis did not do this....

[Jonathan Affleck]

The Nazi nation created Theresienstadt for the purposes of PR. For the sake of PR, the baby killer nation permits the treatment of a few Palestinian children while it slaughters approximately 20,000 women and children.

[Theendoftheleft]

That's just dumb. Can't you do better?

Or are you too busy raping children, as your Prophet did (PBUH)?

[Theendoftheleft]

Which baby killer nation? The Ummah? Yes, the facts are clear that sharia is, and has always been, an imperialist apartheid order. It is fundamentally incompatible with human rights and Western democracy. Even today, how many dead in Sudan? In Syria? In Kurdistan? In South Morocco? In Mali? How many slaves across the Ummah?

(It's astounding how the Western media omits reporting on Turkey's repeated bombing and mass murdering of the Kurds, America's ally, in Eastern Syria.)

Unquestionably, Mohammad (PBUH) would also be subject to US laws concerning war crimes and child sex abuse were he alive and in America today.

What about your hero, Erdogan, who is running again for office now. He leads the racist imperialist, genocidal colonizing Turks. He perpetuates the illegal occupation of Cyprus. He funds jihad. What about the overall, long-standing subordination of, and denial of self-determination to, the indigenous Kurds by the genocidal colonizer Turks? Should decolonization not require that the Turks give back the land they stole, called Turkey today, and pay reparations to Southeastern Europeans and Arabs they colonized for centuries? Should they not also apologise for being Muslims?

You also don’t know how the ad hominem fallacy works. It doesn’t concern insults or good grounds for doubting someone’s epistemic bona fides.

[Jonathan Affleck]

The majority of international scholars of genocide studies (including an Israeli scholar Raz Siegel) and the majority of genocide lawyers agree that the baby killer national perpetrates a textbook genocide.

Joan Donoghue, who was President of the ICJ during the Gaza hearing, was previously a senior career attorney of the Department of State; Acting Legal Adviser, January to June 2009 (advice to Secretary Clinton and President Obama on all aspects of international law). Yet, she concluded that SA's accusation was plausible that alleged the baby killer nation is committing genocide.

A depraved racist genocidal Zionist screeches a vacuous charge of Nazism or of antisemitism in order to forestall any rational discussion of the criminality of the baby killer nation.

[Theendoftheleft]

Sources for the respective majorities? A jihadi cannot convince without sources.

Taqiyah and mislabeling will obviously not suffice---especially if stated by jihadist member of a depraved imperialist apartheid cult that regularly sanctions, and has always sanctioned, genocide, slavery, apartheid, and child sex abuse.

Will the jihadi also support a free, indendent country of Kurdistan on the land wrongfully claimed by Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran?

[Bill Poser]

Even if your interpretation of US law is correct, there is no such exception in international law. In any case, your interpretation of US law is questionable since it appears to apply only to the taking of prisoners of war, not of non-combatant hostages.

Furthermore, hostage-taking is not the only crime which Hamas has committed. Hamas routinely attacks non-combatants, which is a crime. Hamas uses human shields, which is a crime. Hamas is explicitly intent on genocide, which is a crime.

In contrast, there is not the slightest evidence that Israel deliberately targets non-combatants. "baby killer" may be a nice slogan , but it doesn't reflect the facts.

[Jonathan Affleck]

The international convention, which defines hostage taking to be a war crime, does not apply if the conflict is not of international character. The US interpretation is not an exception.

Please read the statute.

The genocide, which Zionist invaders started on Dec 1947, will not have ended until Palestinians return to their homes, villages, property, and country.

Genocide is an international capital crime without a statute of limitations. The mere existence of the baby killer nation vitiates the international anti-genocide legal regime and undermines international law.

The baby killer national must be abolished, and every Zionist on the planet must be removed to a detention camp to await trial for the international capital crime of genocide.

Only a liar denies that the baby killer deliberately targets non-combatants like international journalists.

The Zionist logic of mass murder genocide against Palestinians of Gaza is the same logic that Nazis used to justify mass murder genocide against Jews.

The Zionist logic of mass murder genocide against Palestinians of Gaza is the same logic that Nazis used to justify mass murder genocide against Jews.

The Nazis always told us they were fighting Jewish Bolshevism. The Holocaust started after Operation Barbarossa (invasion of the Soviet Union) began.

To the Nazis, all the civilian deaths were collateral damage of the war against Jewish Bolshevik terrorism, and every Jew including a baby was a Judeo-Bolshevik terrorist. The judges of the Nuremberg Tribunals (metaphorically) laughed at this nonsense. The propaganda of Zionists and of supporters of the State of Israel is equally if not more ridiculous and just as evil.

The Nazis always told us they were fighting Jewish Bolshevism. The Holocaust started after Operation Barbarossa (invasion of the Soviet Union) began.

To the Nazis, all the civilian deaths were collateral damage of the war against Jewish Bolshevik terrorism, and every Jew including a baby was a Judeo-Bolshevik terrorist. The judges of the Nuremberg Tribunals (metaphorically) laughed at this nonsense. The propaganda of Zionists and of supporters of the State of Israel is equally if not more ridiculous and just as evil.

[Theendoftheleft]

‘…must be removed to a detention camp to await trial for the international capital crime of genocide’.

So, a cleansing and a genocide? Collective punishment?

A jihadi will at least TRY to be consistent and not say idiotic things.

As another example, the Nazis wanted to kill all jews in the world; the Zios, by contrast, have no such aspirations for the Palestinians. HOWEVER, the jihadis DO have that aspiration for Jews. Should all adherents to the imperialist apartheid cult be rounded up and put into detention centers for promoting their imperialist apartheid genocidal faith?

[Jonathan Affleck]

Genocide perpetrators establish no rights to a country by stalling justice.

If a conglomeration of genocide perpetrators could establish rights to a country by stalling, international anti-genocide law would be negated because genocide is an international capital crime without a statute of limitations and because genocide perpetrators could get away with genocide simply by stalling.

The Zionist colonial settlers of the baby killer nation do not constitute a protected group under the Genocide Convention because Zionist colonial settlers have since Dec 1947 been active participants in an ongoing genocide.

[Theendoftheleft]

So, Turkey has no right to be a country? Agreed! It’s also a reason for a complete ban on Muslim immigrants to the West.

Protected group or not says nothing about the legality of cleansing or mass detention. You’re just retarded. Your being retarded helps to explain why you could be dumb enough to be a jihadi in this day and age.

You never answered my question: would the Prophet rightfully be charged with child sex abuse in any Western country?

[Dr. Ed 2]

"According to US law, the taking of hostages for the purpose of prisoner exchange in a situation of war is legal if the hostage taking is committed in the context of and in association with an armed conflict not of an international character."

What you are saying is that it is "legal" to go kidnap the children of FBI agents so that there can be a "prisoner exchange" for the jailed Jan 6th folk. You woudn't happen to have a legal citation for this, would you? I'm rather certain that the kidnapping statutes (ETC!) protect the children of FBI agents as well....

And to my many critics -- that ISN'T what the quoted passage means?

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Hamas committed no war crimes by the standards of US law."

Please cite the statutes legalizing the raping of hippies and the beheading of babies.

OK, lets go to the UCMJ -- There is Article 120 (Rape and sexual assault generally), and Article 118 (Murder). Probably a bunch more for something like this, but IANAMA either....

Perhaps someone with some JAG experience might want to elaborate -- schmucks like Jonathan need to be answered...

[Jonathan Affleck]

Nazi Germanization is no less a crime and no less genocide when Zionism renames Germanization to Judaization.

Because Palestinians are darker non-Europeans, the white states gave the Zionist colonial settlers a pass to commit genocide with impunity approximately one year after the international community banned genocide on Dec 11, 1946. The mere existence of the Zionist state negates the international anti-genocide legal regime and undermines international law because no one can take international law seriously if international law is not enforced uniformly and equally.

Since its founding 75 years ago, the Zionist state has been a suppurating festering cancerous tumor in international law and on the surface of the planet.[3a]

In resolution 260 A (III) of December 9, 1948, the UNGA approved the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and proposed the Convention for signature and ratification or accession by means of General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of December 9, 1948. The Convention entered into force January 1951, in accordance with its article XIII.
Apartheid and persecution of Palestinians under Zionist domination are byproducts of the ongoing genocide. In addition, apartheid and persecution are directed to “deliberately inflicting on the [Palestinian] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”[4] The Zionist colonial settlers hoped that Palestinians would be pressured into leaving their stolen homeland. Instead, when Netanyahu started his latest term in Dec 2022, the native Palestinian population under Zionist domination had become larger than the Zionist colonial settler population, and the Palestinian population was much younger than the Zionist colonial settler population is.

The Zionist colonial settlers have become crazed and frantic. Since Dec 2022, the attacks of Zionist colonial settlers on Palestinians, on Palestinian property, and on Palestinian communities have been steeply increasing. Zionist colonial settlers have kidnapped and imprisoned thousands of Palestinians. Zionist colonial settlers have been terrorizing Palestinian children and schools. Zionist colonial settlers have besieged Palestinian religious sites. Zionist colonial settlers have stepped up efforts of Judaization of Jerusalem and of Hebron.

Hamas is a native resistance movement within stolen Palestine and hardly differs from a native resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe. Just as the Nazis called the native resistance terrorist, the Zionists and their supporters call Hamas terrorist even though Hamas like the French or Polish resistance to the Nazis is heroic. On Oct 7, 2023, Hamas reacted to the unspeakable barbarism of the Zionist regime.

The kibbutzim of the Gaza Envelope are military bases

1. that are intended to make irreversible the ongoing genocide, which started in Dec 1947 and

2. that have been been camouflaged with civilians that have the role of human shields.

A native resistance movement like Hamas is fully justified in attacking such military bases. The civilian residents of such military bases are not protected noncombatants.

Hamas broke out of Gaza to seize Zionist colonial settlers so that they could be traded for kidnapped Palestinians and for a cessation of attacks on Palestinian religious sites.[5] The US federal code defines such hostage taking for exchange to be a legitimate non-criminal act during a war that is not of international character. See 18 U.S. Code § 2441 – War crimes.

When Zionist forces understood the actions of Hamas fighters, the Zionist military perpetrated unspeakably heinous and random slaughter in accord with the Hannibal Directive.

Zionist military seems to have caused practically all civilian casualties and deaths during Oct 7. The Zionist government concocted the accusations against Hamas of baby-beheading, mass slaughter, and rape for the purpose of genocide incitement.

The incompetent but depraved, murderous, and genocidal Golani Brigade collapsed.

In response, the Zionist regime has revenged itself on the Palestinian population by destroying Gaza just as Nazi forces destroyed Warsaw.

Even though genocide is not a legal or legitimate response to any act, the Zionist regime has achieved the grand slam of crimes of genocide:

• mass murder genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIa),

• physical and psychological maiming genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIb),

• hostile conditions genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIc),

• birth prevention genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IId), and

• child-kidnapping genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIe, mostly in the West Bank).

Notes

3a. For 12 years the Nazis indoctrinated Germans and propagandized other Europeans with the falsehood that asserts European Jews are non-European and belong in Palestine. This lie is a fundamental principle of Zionism. Thus Germans especially but other whites continued to carry out Nazi genocidal policies even though the Nazi government had been eradicated. The effects of Nazi indoctrination and propaganda seems finally beginning to wear off despite the efforts of hyperwealthy Zionists to maintain a Zionist cultural hegemony throughout the world.

4. UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 78, p. 277.

5. Hamas, Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Published: Jan 21, 2024 [accessed 23 January 2024].

[Rossami]

re: "need to be answered"

No, they don't. Stop feeding the troll.

[VinniUSMC]

Nazi Jon cares for only one thing, killing Jews. Nazi Jon will say anything to advance that cause. Fuck you Nazi Jon.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

I don't really find your politics objectionable (though they are pretty strident and I don't imagine anyone would, at the end of the day,, be convinced of anything they don't already believe). But your manner of arguing is very "sovereign citizen".

In your posts, everything has a magic name that it must be called; laws are invoked because of some superficial dictionary definitions of the words they contain even when those definitions are basically at odds with how any legal thinks or any context works; lots of weird bolding and formatting issues.

If you didn't know this I hope this is useful information to you. If someone told me I sounded like a weird crazy loon, I'd probably want to dispel that notion -- again irrespective of the underlying position I was advocating.

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

A Jew-hating (far-)Leftist website took down an article because it portrayed Jews as victims after the largest massacre of Israeli Jews since the Holocaust. More news at 11...

[Jonathan Affleck]

Biden showed his service to Zionist cultural hegemony by inciting genocide during the SOTU speech when he called al-Aqsa Flood the worst attack on the “Jewish people” since the Holocaust

1. because he implicitly equates the heavily armed openly bloodthirsty colonial settlers of the Zionist state with victims of the Holocaust and

2. because he also equates Hamas with the Nazi military.

The 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal hanged Julius Streicher for Biden’s type of genocide incitement.

A Zionist is not a Jew. A Zionist is post Judaism because the Zionist movement murdered Judaism by transforming Judaism into a program of genocide.

Zionism is a depraved degenerate religion whose key elements of faith consist of:

1. the fairy tale of a Roman Expulsion that never happened and

2. the propaganda claim that asserts the Zionist genocide, which starts in Dec 1947, is a return from a Roman Expulsion that never happened.

The creed of the Zionist religion consists of the following:

1. racial supremacism and chauvinism;

2. an obsession with a distorted and dishonest narrative of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews;

3. worship of the baby-killer nation; and

4. commitment to the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, to the genocide of Palestinians, and to the theft of Palestine from Palestinians.

[Jerry B.]

Nazi troll. Muted.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A million MREs cost $10,412,500.
(It's $124.95 for a box of 12)

Just sayin....

[Theendoftheleft]

Read the Hamas charter. Like its Islamic Brotherhood father, it calls for the implementation of racist imperialist apartheid, in addition to genocide. Why? Because it is PROPERLY Islamic. Hamas is a racist totalitarian organisation, which is why civilised countries label it a terrorist group.

There was indeed a Roman expulsion. It just obviously didn't take the entire population. Many of the Christian Palestinians are descendants of the people who remained.

The theft of Palestine for jihad (imperialist conquest and colonisation) in the 7th century is well documented. So too are the ethnic and religious expulsions of Christians and Jews in the century or so before the First Crusade.

The fairy tale of Muslim Palestinian indigeneity is also easily shattered. We know the names of the Arabian tribes that conquered. (We know who general Khalid was, for the Khalidi clan.) We know the Kurdish names and immigration to Palestine in 11th century, and hence the people named El-Kurdi. The head of Hamas' military wing is 'Mohammed Deif', whose real name is Al-Masri. It is no surprise that there are many people named Al-Masri in Gaza, since the Egyptians resettled Arabs there from Egypt in the early 19th century. So too the Ottomans resettled Bosnians, Circassians, and others there during that century after the loss of Ottoman territory in Europe. Yemen is of course upset about the war in Gaza because many Palestinians originally come from there.

Will you apologise to the whole world for being a Muslim and for the evil wrought upon the world by the teachings of Mohammad?

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

Just read the update. Unsurprisingly, I was correct.

[Sarcastr0]

Doesn't look good; we'll see what the follow-up says.

[JohnTheRevelator]

Why bother? Hothouse hipster rag performatively pulls article for insufficiently stroking the victim group du jour. Film at 11.

[Kazinski]

Ummm, did you read the essay?

Impossible to justify taking it down for any reason.

[mydisplayname]

Similarly, there has been negative reaction to the Bishop of Rome calling for negotiation by Ukrainians (see https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pope-says-ukraine-should-have-courage-white-flag-negotiations-2024-03-09/ ). Perhaps the statues of Robert E. Lee were too hastily removed: on at least two occasions (obviously, to anyone who has studied maps, at Appomattox and earlier, less obviously, in Pennsylvania) Lee favored the moral preservation of enemy life over victory in the instant battle. Perhaps instead the notion of morality as embedded in the original American experience is obsolete... but it does seem that Locke's warning was applicable in the CSA of our past, in the present CIS (Russia and, depending on interpretation, Ukraine), and in the present wrongfully occupied Palestinian lands: "Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. [...] besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, IF THEY DO NOT TEND TO ESTABLISH DOMINATION OVER OTHERS, or civil impunity to the Church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated."

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

There are no "wrongfully" "occupied" "Palestinian lands". There's only Israel (proper) and the "disputed" territories that really ought to be part of Israel, since Israel is the sole legitimate claimant as per international law and customary international law.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

Legally this is a perfectly fine position, but it’s also the basis of the leftist claim that Israel is “an apartheid state”.

There are two basic ways you can think about Israel/Palestine:

(1) The whole of the land is Israeli, but the residents of the areas called the occupied territories lack meaningful access to democratic and citizenship rights other Israelis (including for the most part Israeli Arabs) have access to, are subject to an alternate justice system, and have restrictions on their internal mobility on a group basis — analogous to Black South Africans under Apartheid. This is basically the “one state solution”.

or (2) The land referred to as the occupied territories is either currently not part of any state or part of a quasi-state called Palestine that lacks effective sovereignty and while Israel has no duty to extend any positive rights (in the sense of Rousseau) to Palestinians they have a duty to avoid interfering with Palestinians negative rights (in the sense of Locke). This is basically the “two state solution”.

Of course you can be free to defend Israel’s conduct under either position on the basis of security concerns, and there are any number of ways in which the apartheid comparison is incomplete (e.g. treating the Israeli claim to ethnic nationhood as comparable to the Boer claim to ethnic nationhood, using language like “indigenous” in a context where it’s inappropriate, ignoring the context of the wars of aggression against Israel that led to the current status quo, etc etc.)

But it’s fairly rare that you see someone who appears to be broadly taking the position that Israel is correct to cede the basic framework of the apartheid analogy and I am just wondering if you perceived that in your own argument.

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

I did not perceive any such thing in my own argument, and for the record, there's no apartheid:
- Israel unilaterally gave the Gaza Strip (bad decision, proven to be absurdly wrong) to the Palestinian Arabs back in 2005. Israel (basically Sharon) literally deported Israeli Jewish citizens in order to placate their enemies, in exchange for a peace that never materialized. Since the other side broke that agreement, it is null and void.
- In Israel (proper) every citizen have the same rights, in fact I'd like to add that Arab citizens (as well as the Haredim) are exempt from military service. Even if there's any discrimination, it's on the individual level, and needless to say, it's a mutual thing.
- The territories are currently divided unto 3 areas: A, B and C. In area A, the corrupt PA rules supreme. They also govern area B, with Israeli security measures. Area C is under full IDF control. While one could argue that those Arabs can't go into Jewish town, the reverse is also true: Israeli citizens (so not just Jews) can't go to Area A either. The entire circumstance is the result of Arab aggression against Israel, plus post-Oslo the entire current setup was accepted by the PLO/Fatah/PA leadership (in as much as they're legitimate, or represent a non-real nation).

Additionally, I'd add the absurdity of expecting Palestinian Arabs to have more rights than any other Arab in existence, which is to say that the world tries to blame Israel for things that every single Arab state does against it's own people (especially against any minorities that are actually oppressed, persecuted and occasionally killed by the majority or said states).

Lastly, what's Israel's ideal pick? To speak in Leftist terms, if Israel MUST pick between apartheid, ethnic cleansing (really, just a population transfer), and genocide, then they should clearly pick the middle option. I mean... the world can't really expect to libel Israel with a false apartheid charge when even the facade of that libel can easily be resolved by removing the hostile population that provides basis for that libel. As for why it would be a population transfer? Israel back in 1948 said to have "cleansed" some 700k Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile, the Arab World literally cleansed their entire Jewish Diaspora, some 950k Mizrahi Jews. While Israel took in those refugees at great costs and difficulties (Israel was poor, disorganized, bruised at the time), the Arabs (for obvious political reasons) refused to absorb those refugees. Now that I mention it: refugees should be given refuge, and then resettled. The Palestinian Arabs are the ONLY group of people in existence who have special rights (again, for obvious reasons) which prevents them from being resettled and absorbed by their own countries (some 58 Muslim-majority countries, the 99.6% of the entire Middle East), and most absurdly, they are the only ones who can inherit refugee status.

So the solution is really very obvious: justice. Refugees and their descendants should be permanently resettled, primarily amongst their own (Arab, Muslim states). Israel should be able to exercise her rights vis a vis the former mandate territories. In other words, there should be no Palestinian Arabs left in the Gaza Strip (in progress) and in the territories of Yehuda and Shomron. (Last note: the latter was also ethnically cleansed by Jordan in 1949, and was then forcefully repopulated by Arabs after an illegal annexation. Most of those Arabs were Jordanian citizens, though recently Jordan stripped them off of their Jordanian citizenship, contrary to both Jordanian and international law... yet most people never heard about this either. The world should stop expecting Israel to follow not just the letter of the law, but also their made-up theories on warfare and occupation and instead start prosecuting the real criminals.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

The issue with Lee is that he ordered a surrender -- had he not done that not only would it have become a guerrilla war that stretched into the 1870s, but what became the Klan would have initially been part of it, and fully armed.

The war was increasingly unpopular in the North (NYC Draft Riots, etc) and the South might have wound up winning the way that the North Vietnamese did -- the US simply going home. The CSA would be a country like Canada, and it would still have slavery today.

QED, Robert E Lee helped end slavery.

[Voize]

for failing to say the right things

It seems premature to level such criticism, unless you have access to facts the rest of us don't. Maybe it was the content being insufficiently something or excessively something else. Or maybe it was a copyright issue, or they found it was fiction submitted as nonfiction, there's lots of room for speculation.

[dwb68]

Link goes nowhere so you need to find it on the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240305095742/https://www.guernicamag.com/from-the-edges-of-a-broken-world/

[santamonica811]

Hmm...link worked perfectly for me (at around 3 pm, PST on March 10th).

[Kleppe]

The article failed to meet the journal's and its readership's political objectives, so it was removed. Bet on it.

[mulched]

Check the common "I withdraw my labor" phrasing in the resignation notes in the updates. It's a bunch of communists if the name of the pub isn't already a giveaway.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

This, but unironically? Some outlets are designed to air a wider set of views, other outlets a more narrow set of views. There's nothing wrong with having a space that's for attracting a broad audience with many viewpoints and there's nothing wrong with having a space that's for speaking to a small closed audience with relatively homogeneous viewpoints. It's true that as Jonathan mocks in the post, outlets claiming to be "brave" in what they publish normally aren't, but that's partially because bravery is very ill-defined in the context.

[ReaderY]

I would suggest copying the article quickly to preserve it before it is removed from the archive, if it hasn’t been already.

The reason seems obvious. Do you really think that in a Deep South magazine dependent on a conservative Southern readership of a century ago, if some clueless staffer accidentally published an article by an NAACP member describing the member’s experiences being a peripheral witness to a lynching, do you really think such a magazine’s commitment to “uncompromising journalism,” would really mean it would stand by the article after the complaints poured in? If the article didn’t explicitly support the NAACP or condemn the lynching or the Klan, do you really think that would convince anyone that the article was merely neutrally” talking about “subjective experiences”? Surely nobody would take such a claim seriously. Certainly the lynchers and their supporters, who would complain like hell, wouldn’t.

[SimonP]

People who have difficulty understanding this sequence of events may pause a moment and reflect on the journal's name, which I think sufficiently indicates the essence of the problem its staffers have with the piece. Imagine a Spanish citizen living in Franco's Spain, writing from the perspective of one protected by the Nationalist regime about their efforts to provide medical care to the victims on both sides of the Civil War. Imagine that person writing as though Franco's brutality was merely a given, while the Republicans' own violent acts were criminal; imagine that person writing about the Civil War as though it's a natural disaster, beyond the comprehension and power of any mere individual.

It will be hard for readers and contributors to the VC to really appreciate this perspective. Many of the commenters have difficulty bringing themselves to admit that the children being killed in Gaza are truly innocent, and those who are able to acknowledge the genocidal character of Israel's response to October 7 are still bound to norms of discourse that attempt to straddle "both sides" of the debate.

I think that the people resigning from Guernica would reject that kind of conventional discourse. I think they read the essay as trying to soften the image of Israel by focusing on the struggles of an Israeli to empathize with the Palestinians, against the backdrop of an enormous and brutal military campaign aimed squarely at the Palestinians she's trying to help. It is like a Polish citizen handing bread through the links of the fence at Auschwitz and writing an essay about trying to empathize with the Jews, without really saying anything about the German occupation or how their aid became necessary in the first place. It takes the brutality for granted, and tries to absolve one of its beneficiaries from moral responsibility for it.

[ReaderY]

Do you think the invasion of Germany in WWII, in which millions of German civilians were killed, including many innocent babies, was an act of genocide?

And if you think it was justified, do you think Kurt Vannegurt’s Slaughterhouse-Five should not have been published?

[Jonathan Affleck]

The Zionist goal of genocide is documented from the invention of Zionism in 1881.

Zionist leader Vladimir Dubnow, wrote in October 1882: “The ultimate goal … is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years… The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.”[1]

In January 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, Weizmann “The Zionist objective was gradually to make Palestine as Jewish as England was English.”[2] This goal is predicated on destruction of Palestinian group (genocide by today's legal definition).

Notes

1. This claim is arrant nonsense. Rabbinic Judaism is a Babylonian religion that has little connection to Palestine. After the maniac Bar Kochba and depraved Tannaim like Rabbi Akiva completely discredited Judaism by persecuting the Judean peasantry during the moronic rebellion against Rome, the Judean peasantry rapidly abandoned Biblical Judaism and converted to Christianity. Later the descendants of the peasantry converted substantially to Islam and became modern Palestinians. The Roman Expulsion can be considered a metaphor for the transformation of Judaism from the religion of Judea into a religion that only descendants of non-Judean converts practice. Vicious bloodthirsty racial supremacist Zionist colonial settler invaders, interlopers, thieves, and impostors have been committing genocide against the true descendants of Greco-Roman Judeans on the basis of a fairy tale. Even if the Roman Expulsion were not a fairy tale, the Expulsion would not be a cognizable defense to an accusation of genocide.
2. Wikipedia, Chaim Weizmann

[Theendoftheleft]

'This goal is predicated on destruction of Palestinian group (genocide by today’s legal definition)'.

But there wasn't a Palestinian group. Rashid Khalidi's contentious book argues that Palestinian identity only began to really form in 1880. It's contentious because most scholars date it to much later.

Regardless you think he's lying?

Since reconquista needn't involve genociding anyone, and CANNOT constitute genociding a non-existent, or as-of-yet-non-existent group, your claim is obviously false.

Don't you get tired of lying all the time?

Including about the Jewish religious origins.

And why don't you ever answer questions about sharia being apartheid, the Prophet being a child sex abuser, and you being a jihadi?

[Jonathan Affleck]

Theendoftheleft admits that the colonial settlers of the baby killer nation planned genocide since 1881 and have perpetrated genocide since Dec 1947.

Palestinians don’t have to meet Zionist standards of nationhood or of identify to be protected from genocide.

The Genocide Convention defines genocide in Art. II, which makes no mention of identity and protects Palestinians from genocide even if they were to consider themselves nationally Arabic. The Genocide Convention mentions nothing about religious origins.

[Rabbinic Judaism is a Mesopotamian religion and is alien in Palestine. Biblical Judaism ceased to exist when Bar Kochba and his depraved followers among the Tannaim discredited Biblical Judaism by persecuting the peasantry. Most Greco-Roman Judeans supported the crushing of the Bar Kochba Rebellion by the Romans. Subsequently, the descendants of Greco-Roman Judeans converted entirely to Christianity. Their descendants converted substantially to Islam and became modern Palestinians. The colonial settlers of the baby killer nation are invaders, interlopers, thieves, impostors, and genocide-perpetrators that deserve eternal hatred from the human race.]

Lemkin points out in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe that denial of the existence of a group in an area is a technique of genocide.

Art. II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

At present no one is more loathsome, detestable, and despicable than either a supporter of the baby killer nation or a colonial settler of the baby killer nation.

[Theendoftheleft]

The jihadi’s spin on what I wrote cannot help it; what was said shows how it could neither have been genocide in the 1880s, nor CONCEIVED of as a plan for genocide. Nor can one guy's writing establish that that was the Zios, or Israeli's, real agenda thereafter or forever after. Indeed, it clearly wasn't.

Further, your lack of understanding of how the Genocide Convention’s elements are APPLIED is belied in your comments. If any of those elements were taken at face value and/or in isolation, then any action that led to death of more than one person in a group would qualify. (It would also mean that EVERY Muslim country on this planet today is guilty of genocide.)

You can also keep re-posting your claim about the Jew religion all you want, because all the empirical evidence demonstrates that it’s false. Your jihad against the truth cannot help overcome the evidence.

Similarly, your claims that the Palestinians are all descended from the original indigenous population is FALSIFIED by the the genetic evidence and by UNWRA’s own report from 1972 that less than 1/4 of the refugees in the camps outside of Israel were actually descended from Palestinian refugees who’d come there in 1948. This is an empirical matter, and the evidence is NOT on your side, no matter how many times you wish to assert your jihadi lie. So too regarding your claims about the Jews’ origins: the genetic evidence is clear.

You can hate science all you want, but that will not make it wrong.

‘At present no one is more loathsome, detestable, and despicable than either a supporter of the baby killer nation or a colonial settler of the baby killer nation’.

Once again, are you referring to the Ummah generally? To the Turks specifically? To the Sudanese? To the Iranians? To the Syrians? To the Shia interlopers in Lebanon?To the Pakistanis?

Once more, WHY do you not answer the questions about whether the Prophet was a pedophile and about sharia being an imperialist apartheid order? Is it because you don’t care about the truth and only care about jihad? Do you enjoy raping children, as your Prophet did?

Do you live in America? Are you a jihadi parasite on a white settler colony on Indian land? Are you there because it’s MUCH better than the garbage can you come from, whose culture is garbage and inferior? Are you going to apologise for your garbage identity?

Keep re-posting the same crap here every time, though, Jihadi. It’s helpful for all the readers here to see that you’re both a moron and a liar.

Durka durka jihad!

[SimonP]

Do you think the invasion of Germany in WWII, in which millions of German civilians were killed, including many innocent babies, was an act of genocide?

Another in a long line of defenses amounting to, "What Israel is doing may constitute a war crime, but it's not a genocide." I am not going to engage in that tiresome exchange again. The label hardly matters; the monstrosity of what Israel is doing is what matters.

And if you think it was justified, do you think Kurt Vannegurt’s Slaughterhouse-Five should not have been published?

You've mistaken my comment as being an argument for withdrawing the essay. I do not, in fact, agree with that decision.

In any case, I wonder if you've even bothered to read Slaughterhouse-Five, if you think it's relevant to the point I was making. You clearly aren't familiar with its author.

[Theendoftheleft]

The label matters for the purposes of legal culpability or exoneration.

From a European perspective, it's also very bizarre that you would talk about monstrous behaviour given your country's recent and ongoing wars---including the one in Ukraine---and given that the Israeli action is clearly modeled on what the US did in Mosul. Moral outrage only works if you have a leg to stand on. If you think it's about how your tax dollars are spent, then where is the outrage against your military industrial complex altogether, let alone the money spent on foreign dictatorships and proxy wars?

If you think such practices to be monstrous, moreover, why do you import perpetrators of far worse actions AS IMMIGRANTS from Syria, Sudan, Turkey, Iran, and elsewhere?

Further, do you really think you're going to be able to normalize an imperialist apartheid cult in America simply by accusing critics or opponents of being 'phobic' of the faith, where that phobia is said to be based upon ignorance?

[SimonP]

Comrade, many of the voices criticizing Israel for its actions in Gaza are no less critical of American complicity in those actions, to say nothing of America’s imperialistic campaigns in various countries over the decades. They are consistent, even if American policy, which is the product not only of moral imperatives but of pragmatic calculations made against domestic politics and a history of not always good decisions, is not.

[Theendoftheleft]

In actuality, ALL those voices are far less critical, and they are certainly not in the streets regularly to protest, to attack places of business, to go after academics and students on campuses, etc. Your claim is laughable.

Where, for example, is the BDS of the American military industrial complex? Where are the domestic protests, let alone boycotts, of the weapons manufacturers? The tech companies? Where are the calls to decolonize America?

You also didn’t answer my question about the attempt to normalize the imperialist apartheid cult and efforts to thwart and isolate criticisms of it (let alone establish its complete incongruence with Western values) by calling it a phobia.

[SimonP]

Where, for example, is the BDS of the American military industrial complex? Where are the domestic protests, let alone boycotts, of the weapons manufacturers?

You seem to be badly confused. You are conflating opposition to Israel's war in Gaza with the BDS movement, which has historically been focused on Israel's occupation of the occupied territories, and you seem to be insinuating that BDS is in some sense intended to "punish" perpetrators of evils, such that you expect BDS supporters to somehow boycott the nations in which they themselves live.

There is, in fact, a very strong current in American politics where people try to divest from arms manufacturers and reduce government spending on the military. Again, many of the same people who oppose the war in Gaza. What further you expect from them is unclear; suffice it to say that I'm not expecting any kind of good-faith observation from you.

You also didn’t answer my question about the attempt to normalize the imperialist apartheid cult and efforts to thwart and isolate criticisms of it (let alone establish its complete incongruence with Western values) by calling it a phobia.

Comrade, I do not answer to your beck and call, and if you can't be bothered to frame your question clearly - and without doublespeak and equivocation - then I'm not going to trouble myself with parsing your particular argle-bargle. Choke on red dick, Comrade.

[Theendoftheleft]

Doublespeak and equivocations??? Did you read your own post? 'They are consistent, even if American policy, which is the product not only of moral imperatives but of pragmatic calculations made against domestic politics and a history of not always good decisions, is not'.

There was nothing of the sort from me---including in regards to my asking you about the attempted normalisation of Islam. (Your cowardice cannot be hidden behind false claims.)

You also note that certain investors are divesting from certain companies and industries. The large swathe of your leftists, however, are not regularly protesting the weapons manufacturers, calling for boycotts of them, or seeking that international partners to impose sanctions upon them. Even your premier universities' investment portfolios largely don't do so.

What do you think will happen to your claims of 'occupations' when America loses hegemonic status and the entire international system it foisted upon the world is dismantled?

I'm no red, but it's easy to see why you regularly gag on green dick.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Many of the commenters have difficulty bringing themselves to admit that the children being killed in Gaza are truly innocent,"

I think that's an absurd misrepresentation, actually. Obviously the children being killed in Gaza are truly innocent, as innocent as the children who died in Germany of the bombing that helped end the Final Solution.

"Fact A drives me to conclusion B. Therefore, anyone who does not arrive at conclusion B must deny fact A." may be psychologically fulfilling, it may occasionally be effective rhetoric, but it falls short as a logical proposition.

[SimonP]

I think that’s an absurd misrepresentation, actually.

It's not. Janitor Ed has denied that Gazan children are "innocent," and I surmise that there are several others who may not deny it, but would not be eager to say so. (Hence: "difficulty bringing themselves to admit...")

Your protestation in your own defense is duly noted but, as always, not to be trusted as honest.

As for your latter point, I have no idea what it is about my comment that is raising that kind of inference.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Janitor Ed has denied that Gazan children are “innocent,”"

Not that I recall.

[Voize]

Here, four days ago.

[Brett Bellmore]

Ah, I see.

Well, it's certainly true that people of an age we'd call "children" can be perfectly guilty combatants, but that denial does seem a little too categorical.

[Kazinski]

This is actually quite fantastic, at least for Johanna Chen’s career.

Nobody ever would have paid much notice to her piece in Guernica, but now she will get 10x the notice and audience.

Just another instance of white privilege, they’d never give a Palestinian writer a career boost like that.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's not my cup of tea, but I find it hard to believe anybody would find it offensive.

Well, not really, that's quite believable. I find it hard to believe anybody sane would find it offensive. That's closer to the mark.

I thought this justification for the resignations pretty much nailed it: "This is normalization - Treating something deeply abnormal (occupation, apartheid, genocide) as a sad, even if complex, reality; immutable parameters within which we negotiate one another's humanity."

How dare treat something I think is simple as complex! How dare you not go all in on agreeing with me!

Well, as others have observed, Guernica doesn't exist at the intersection of art and politics. It exists in a tiny, tiny, tightly bounded subset of that intersection. (Yes, I have actually paged through it on rare occasions. Vegan rhino cutlets come to mind.) The resignees probably did feel betrayed by the decision to publish something that even mentioned one of their causes without staking an over the top stance of agreement with them. You can't humanize the enemy!

[David Nieporent]

Based on what I've read, many of the staffers at the magazine had previously wanted it to issue statements denouncing Israel. But the leadership of the magazine (sensibly!?!) said, "No, we're a literary magazine; we speak through what we publish."

And then they published this, which fails to recite "genocide apartheid settler-colonial white supremacist" over and over again like a mantra. So the staffers are having a tantrum.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Guernica sounds no better than the Volokh Conspiracy.

The “often libertarian” blog whose movement conservative tantrums produce viewpoint-driven censorship.

[Theendoftheleft]

Has the VC ever retracted a published post?

How do they produce censorship here? After all, you've been trolling this site for years (regardless of whether you're an outsider or just one of the mods adopting a persona)?

[mulched]

Many many years ago, before the blog was even hosted at reason, the host after warning him prohibited RALK from name-calling in a particular obscene way.

RALK is still butt-hurt and holds a grudge - one among many - about it even after all this time and despite still being allowed to spew here, though I have not seen the content of any of his posts for some time thanks to mute.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A particularly obscene way?

Such as "sl_ck-j_wed?"

Or "c_p succ_r?"

Or "p_ussy?"

Which of those is most obscene, clinger? In the context of a blog that habitually publishes racial slurs and graphic calls for the killing of liberals?

You should stop while behind, loser.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I do not know whether a published post has been retracted.

I know comments have been stricken, a number of words have been removed and expressly placed off-limits (when used to criticize conservatives, at least -- in other contexts Prof. Volokh seems to permit them to be used here), and at least one commenter has been banned (for making fun of and criticizing conservatives). Prof. Volokh not only has acknowledged this repeated censorship publicly but stated that he might do it again.

[ReaderY]

I find myself curious how much Ben G’vir and Smotrich are paying Jonathan Affleck.

I hope he’s asking for a lot for these posts, because they are surely worth a great deal to them.

He should get a raise. He deserves it.

[David Nieporent]

Martillo has been an online troll for roughly 30 years, alternating between being fanatically anti-Muslim and fanatically antisemitic. His ethnicity and family background change numerous times over those years.

[SRG2]

I guess that some people find humanising Jews too offensive to tolerate,

[Jonathan Affleck]

A Zionist is not a Jew. A Zionist is post Judaism because Zionism murdered Judaism by transforming Judaism into a program of genocide.

Specialists in genocide law put a lot of effort into humanizing Zionists and putting them into the same human category to which Nazis belong. Many of these specialists in genocide law are Jewish even if at this point little of Rabbinic Judaism remains except Zionist Zombie Judaism because Rabbinic Judaism is no longer a living religion.

[Jonathan Affleck]

The staff of Guernica seems to have objected to the effort of both-side-ism in a post that fails to mention the casual and pervasive sadism of the society of the baby killer nation.

Many Israeli colonial settlers have woken up to the depravity of the baby killer nation. I saw the following comment on a social medium platform. (The social medium platform will probably remove the comment after a hate-speech determination.)

הסדיזם של הרייך הציוני הוא מה שמבדיל אותו מהרייך השלישי.

The sadism of the Zionist Reich is what distinguishes it from the Third Reich.

A Hebrew author responded, “I am against the comparison between the Zionist Reich and the 3rd one as it ain’t fair on the Nazis or the Germans.”

The sadistic nature of the mass murder genocide of the Gaza Holocaust is its most prominent identifying feature and differs the Nazi Holocaust against Jews.

The online videos of the baby killer nation show beyond a shadow of a doubt the sadism of the baby killer nation. The colonial settlers of the baby killer nation enjoy torturing, humiliating, and murdering Palestinians. Sadism is the defining feature of a sociopathic society of the baby killer nation.

Some Nazis were sadistic, but the allegation of pervasive Nazi sadism comes from Hollywood and not from historical analysis. Most people of Nazi society had not been indoctrinated long enough.

The Nazi genocide came from the leadership. In the case of the baby killer nation, the colonial settlers have been indoctrinated for 3 generations with the depravity and sadism of Zionism. The mass murder genocide and sadism of the baby killer nation is now intrinsic to the baby killer nation, which must be abolished as a cannibal nation would have to be abolished..

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

It's a beautifully written piece. Perhaps the actions of the Guernica staff will expose it to a wider readership. A tip of the hat to Ms. Chen.

[tekcoyote]

Anyone know whether this schmuck is related to the actors?