Tag: Benjamin “Articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute” Netanyahu

#6 Godspeed You! Black Emperor: “NO TITLE AS OF 21 DECEMBER 2024 45,206 DEAD”

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Or ‘”NO​ ​TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28​,​340 DEAD“‘ if you want the original title. I was just trying to update it a bit to help them out.

When GY!BE finally settled on that title in February (“NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?“), the Israeli authorities had been causing massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza for around four months. Perhaps, knowing that the record would be released in October, GY!BE assumed that the massacre would have surely been brought to a halt by international operations by that point. Perhaps GY!BE named the album that way to ensure a moment in time, a gross period of humanity, was forever notified in the most matter of fact way possible. At their most cynical, the band might have thought that by the time of the album’s October release – close to to the one year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel that set off the bloodshed in response – the international community were doing their best to sweep this tiny little genocidal snafu from everybody’s memories and attempting to rebuild Netanyahu’s image as a cuddly friend to imperialism and the West. They might not have dared to think that the slaughter was still continuing.

Jannat Naji Abd Al-Rahman Abu-Hammad

#19 elbow: AUDIO VERTIGO

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

We live in a troubling age

Falling leaves in an unearthly autumn light
Become the frame
And chip my curse away
Above the waves, you can still see where we drown
No looking down
Oblivion’s oblivion

Her to the Earth

So, let’s quickly get everyone up to speed. Don’t worry, we’re only going to go as far back as the Six Day War in 1967, but – who knows – perhaps we’ll talk about earlier events with similar players later in this list. In 1967 though, when we begin our tale, the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser had been handed information by the Soviet Union that Israel (hi there!) were gathering troops in preparation to invade Syria. Nasser phoned up the Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and was like “Hey, that’s our mate, can you not?” and Eshkol was like “We’re not even, bro!” so Nasser was like “Yeah right mate, I’m just going to expel all these United Nations Emergency Forces that are here to ensure our 1949 Armistice Agreements” and then Eshkol was like “Na-uuuuuuhhhh!!” but then Nasser was just like “Er, yeah-uh! And also, you can’t use our Strait of Tiran anymore” so that made Eshkol go all red and like scream “Dude! That’s where we get all our stuff from! And that would totally be an act of war!”. Then Nasser did it anyway, because YOLO. Israel bombed the fucking shit out of Egypt, taking the entire Senai Peninsula, plus Gaza as a little souvenir trinket, but I imagine that’s the last we’ll be hearing about that tiny strip of land. Israel warned King Hussein of Jordan not to enter the war, but they also bombed the shit out of Jordan’s airbases on the first day of the war. So Jordan gave troops to support Egypt and Israel bombed the shit out of Jordan, capturing the West Bank and ensuring Jerusalem was in Israel for the first time. The combined Arab country losses were around 15’000, Israel less than a thousand. Israel also killed 15 UN peacekeepers – coz Israel gonna Israel! – and 34 American soldiers, because they’re the only country allowed to do that apparently.

Oh, and around 413’000 Palestinians were of course expelled or killed in this process, but that’s barely worth mentioning. For Israel it was just Monday.

Ilham Ahmed Hammad Khattab