Little Seed of Goodness; or Not.

Even as the toxic cocktail of dread and false hope in the world overruns the rim of the glass, I find it increasingly difficult to find the time for full analysis, dealing as I must with the demands (worthy, positive and welcome as they are) of teaching, and the recklessness of an international bank (clearly unworthy), one with whom I have dealt with for over fifty years but that for some inane reason - that it finds totally unnecessary to share with me - has decided to block access to my own funds.

Gaza, and the overwhelming stench of settler entitlement sucks the world of hope, but hope is all we have left, hope that recognition of Palastinian statehood by more states can be something more than a symbolic figleaf for connivance with the oppressor and the amoral satiety of profit from weapons sales and other military assistance. Even as we might draw dregs of comfort from such symbolism it is with the heavy appreciation not just of the enormous problems entailed in actually drawing up and legalizing a Palestinian state on a territory now occupied by 800,000 settlers, but of the enormous problems that attach to any two-state solution involving entities of such immensely different histories and resources and ethical systems and relations with the Hegemon, a discrepancy that pits a nonsensical claim to land based on the voice of one party’s God, and an empirical claim based on how things actually were in the time before the Zionists came.

Is this tragedy one in which, when we look at the persona of Donald Trump,or those who surround him, we can detect the slightest grain of authentic morality and predisposition for Good? Of course not. Modern Zionism was first a British and is now an American-cherished invention, an American protectorate, an existential American act of choice. No good people, not even people who have a remote claim to be good people, talk glibly about seizing the land of another people, a people long ago dispossessed by an avowedly apartheid state, people whose homes are destroyed by bombs and bulldozers, who are shot at while they queue for totally inadequate provisons and whose delivery Israel squeezes to the barest minimum, a people being subject to systematic starvation and whose plight is acknowledged by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, amongst others, expelling these people from their land with no known destination, and certainly no destination that makes any kind of sense, so that the land (and its oil-rich coast waters) can be divided up between the Empire and its settler colony, and converted into desirable seafront real estate.

Is there any comfort in the thought that a state’s interest, not morality, is the only thing that needs be at play? Of course not. Nobody thought that was a sensible argument in the case of Germany culpability for the Holocaust and nobody should entertain such entitlement rubbish for the likes of Trump and his billionaire class. Further, very few states actually enjoy sovereignty vis-a-vis the Empire that enables them to exercise a morality whose judgment runs counter to the Empire’s interests.

Do we hope that the UN may come up with some form of compulsion that will impact Israel sufficiently that it will give up Project Genocide,or stay its hand in attempting to slay Iran while Russia and China are still trying to figure out what exactly it is that they should or could be doing with and for Iran.

So Gaza is the result, first and foremost of America, American perception of state interest, and Donald, since Donald, and any of his recent predecessors, could have put a stop to this narrative - and still could, but of course don’t. If he dawdles in succumbing to Europe’s ever incresasing desperation (threats to close the Baltic to Russisan ships, threats to sanction Russia’s “shadow” fleet, staging “Russian” drone and MiG “invasions” of Poland, Romania, Estonia, etc.) - even as Germany has pulverized its own industry, the Macron government is collapsing because it favors military expenditure over the people’s welfare, and Starmer grovels to Trump over tariffs, is this because there is a charming little seed of goodness in the heart of Empire?

Of course not. We have known for years that America is losing too much wealth in Ukraine and running low on weapons, Patriots and other air defense, at a time when it has decided that it needs to prioritize its thirst for aggression against competitor Numero Uno, China, over competitor Numero Dos, perhaps hoping the latter, Russia, will abandon China and the BRICS. That is almost certainly an infantile fantasy for as long as we may hope that Putin and his successors will sustain the same purity of nationalist motive that has helped them survive the past three to four years against NATO provocations.

But Russians too are extreme capitalists and one should not depend on such hope even while one hopes. Will that same purity of motive pull Russia with China into offering the necessary level of support and determination for Iran against US and Israeli attacks (in the light of the recent US gift to Israel of $6 billion) and further provoked by the ignition of utterly fraudulent “snapback” UN sanctions that Iran, Russia and China have each said they will ignore. Or is the US-Israel hybrid planning a nuclear strike before Iran finally decides to move in that direction. Even before the war in Ukraine is over?

Something perhaps that one would not want to leave to hope.