#vigilante settler violence

[mauricedharris]

How you can help stop vigilante settler rampages (or at least try to do something)

Headline and photo from Times of Israel on June 21, 2023 A couple days ago I visited the websites of my House Rep and both Senators and sent them versions of the following message. Please feel free to copy and paste (or modify) as you wish. The content speaks for itself. Dear Senator _________, I am writing to express my strong support for the comments of US Ambassador Nides, in which he…

[determinate-negation]

Vigilante violence is at an all-time high in the occupied West Bank. Emboldened by the war in the Gaza Strip and backed by the military, Israeli settlers aiming to annex more and more of the Palestinian territory have launched hundreds of attacks, displacing people from at least 17 communities over the past month, while soldiers and settlers have killed nearly 200.

And at least three New York nonprofit organizations are calling on donors to help outfit those settlers with combat gear, in a fundraising blitz funneling millions of tax-deductible dollars to the West Bank aggression.

By chipping in to a “thermal drone matching campaign,” donors can help the Long Island–based One Israel Fund buy remote-controlled aerial vehicles for settler militias. With a contribution to the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim’s “security projects,” they can equip settlers with accessories for their guns and tools to keep an eye on “Arab thugs” in occupied east Jerusalem. Donating to the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund’s “Israel Is Under Attack” campaign helps expand one of Israel’s most extensive local surveillance networks. If New Yorkers contribute by the end of the year, they can write it off on their 2023 tax returns.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed around 1,200 Israelis, the New York–based nonprofits have raised millions for tactical equipment for settlers across the West Bank. The organizations—right-wing groups dedicated to Jewish rule over the Holy Land—work directly with the Israeli military and with the settlements, which are illegal under international law.

“The ties between New York state and war crimes being carried out by Israeli settlers are egregious,” said Jay Saper, a New York–based organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace. “It’s long overdue for the state to take action.”

[sufrimientilia]

hmm, do you have any ideas for western/cowboy style whumps? recently saw The Good The Bad And The Ugly and the desert scene and the hangings are... quite inspiring.

eee my first ask!!

i'm sure you've seen this lovely post by @wollemi-whump. i stared at it for inspo

cowboy whump 2: electric boogaloo

the slow impact of boots on dirt, metallic jingling of spurs with each step. those same spurs kicking hard into whumpee’s side or digging into their throat

the hard thudding of nearly a dozen horses thundering closer and closer, a whole posse coming in for the attack or stampeding a runner

treated like another one of the cattle. lassoed and dragged along on foot, forced to run and hike for miles, made to drink from the same containers as the horses or denied water until they collapse

getting jerked around by a lariat kept tight around their neck or wrists, cutting and digging deep

lawman of the town overworked, over-stressed, always threatened by outlaws

lawman of the town corrupt by power and willing to toss anyone in jail for stepping out of line

small town mentality in Old Western format. just one doctor, just one minister, just one sheriff. maybe one of them is a creep/evil

everyone knows everyone and getting expelled into the wild frontier by mob mentality can happen

duels fueled by honor, aggression, booze. or getting pressured into facing the fastest draw in the West with a whole mob watching

duels where the winner still catches a bullet

duels in the town square that descend into chaos when the friends of either opponent get involved

frontier justice: lynching, vigilantism, gunfighting

frontier crime: horse theft, cattle raiding, bank robberies

very public hangings, shootings, or punishments (i.e. getting dragged by a horse)

saloon fights

the hard metal clang of a spit bucket bouncing right off of whumpee’s head

getting spat at with the sheer force of lightning

violence and alcohol. drunken aggression, broken bottles used as deadly weapons, forced to sit and drink under gunpoint before being challenged to a duel

droughts and limited resources. chapped lips and desperate sips out of a leather canteen, food too hard to come by. it's no wonder people become outlaws

dehydrated and asking for water only to gulp whiskey out of a canteen

lone survivor of a gang or posse that got wiped out

bounty hunters and getting hunted. posters with crude sketches of their face, wanted dead or alive, a hefty reward leaving them with no one to trust

forced to work on the railroad, pounding away at metal for hours and hours under the blistering sun

tied up and left on railroad tracks

tied up and shoved into a railroad cart and shipped east

native tribes being a true force of danger, almost like bogeymen among the townsfolk. faster on horseback, deadlier with arrows, experts of the land

getting targeted and hunted for being indigenous, forced to run and hide as resources are taken or destroyed by settlers

left for dead out in the desert and waking up in the care of a native tribe

stung by a scorpion

bit by a snake

boiling hot desert days, dark cold desert nights

shot off their horse by an arrow or bullet and landing hard on the ground while the horse keeps going

injured or sick while riding horseback. bleeding all over the saddle, barely able to hold on, slumping forward and eventually falling off

injured or sick while traveling across the frontier. huddled by the fireplace at every makeshift campsite, carefully draped over the horse or riding in the arms of caretaker

deteriorating away in a stagecoach with the constant clip-clop of horses rocking them back and forth

[mariacallous]

On July 29, a day before rioting by anti-immigrant protesters broke out in Britain in the wake of a deadly stabbing attack, dozens of Israeli right-wingers stormed two army facilities to protest the arrest of soldiers for allegedly abusing a Palestinian prisoner. What the two incidents had in common was the role of social media in organizing and fanning the flames of far-right violence and an underlying foundation of populist distrust of government. But they differed in one very important way: In Israel, the protesters were openly backed by some government officials and lawmakers; indeed, at least two Knesset lawmakers and a junior cabinet minister were among the rioters. The events in Israel thus were more analogous to those in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

The ordeal in Israel began when military police came to arrest nine reserve-duty soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility, where Hamas prisoners are held. Dozens of civilian activists answered calls broadcast on social media to protest and were soon storming the base. Later that day, the rioters moved on to Beit Lid in central Israel, the base where the military court was to hear the charges against the arrested soldiers, and briefly forced their way in.

Rather than expressing concern about a vigilante attack on a military facility, far-right leaders condemned the army. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, alongside Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, demanded that the military prosecutor “take her hands off the reservists.” The police—which are under Ben-Gvir’s authority—took nearly two weeks before beginning an investigation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken no action against members of his government who took part in the riots.

The Sde Teiman incident was an unusual case of far-right violence inside Israel proper. The West Bank has long been a wild west, with extremist settlers not only directing their attacks against Palestinians but against the army, too, when they feel it is interfering with their interests. That the lawlessness and violence have now spilled over the border into Israel, aided and abetted by some in the government, should come as no surprise: The far-right elements in Netanyahu’s government value chaos not only as a vehicle for promoting annexation of the West Bank but as a means of undermining institutions at home to better secure their grip on power.

How did these extremists come to wield so much power so quickly? The far right in Israel doesn’t have anything close to popular backing for its agenda: In the 2022 election, it captured just 10.8 percent of the vote (considerably less than the 37.1 percent for France’s National Rally and its allies and 23.5 percent for Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, to name two recent European elections). But it has managed to exploit an unusual situation in Israel: a combination of Netanyahu’s political vulnerability and Hamas’s devastating success on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel has been under almost continuous right-wing rule for the past half-century, but the government formed by Netanyahu at the end of 2022 was right-wing in a very different way. The Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties, together with much of Netanyahu’s once center-right Likud party, not only take a traditional right-wing hard line on national security issues, but they also distrust the institutions of government and the people who work in them—what, in the United States, Trump supporters call the “deep state.” Everyone from the attorney general and army generals to officials in the Finance Ministry are seen as ideological enemies, perhaps even traitors. Thus, it’s no surprise that when the army, which is ordinarily regarded in Israel as sacrosanct, finds itself in conflict with extremist settlers in the West Bank or rioters at Sde Teiman, the far right sides with the latter.

This worldview is not very different from the anarchical, archly anti-establishment, and paranoid strain of Trumpism. In the Israeli context, however, the religious element is paramount; indeed, it is rare to find people on the extreme right who are not religiously observant. Thus, the far right’s program seeks not only to undermine the country’s liberal and democratic foundation and replace it with a more authoritarian government but to turn Israel into a religious state. Many even hold that the war and violence now besetting Israel will bring the Messiah and redemption. They want to encourage it.

The early months of the Netanyahu government saw the far right try to undermine the state from the inside. The judicial overhaul, which sought to subordinate the judicial system to politicians, was the centerpiece of that campaign. But it was not the only one. Ben-Gvir wrested personal control over the police, turning it into an instrument for protecting the right and repressing anti-government protests. Taking control of civilian affairs in the West Bank, Smotrich unilaterally advanced a policy of de facto annexation, illegal land grabs, and settlement-building.

As far-right leaders have grown more assured of their grip on power, their followers have come to feel freer to take their agenda to the street. There is no evidence that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are personally directing this violence and vigilantism, but they are encouraging it. Ben-Gvir ensures that the police avoid confronting and investigating far-right violence. He has eased the rules for handing out gun licenses, enabling more than 100,000 to be issued since Oct. 7, in many cases with little or no vetting.

It is unlikely that there is any grand strategy to spread the violence from the West Bank into Israel, but the occupied territories have served as a testing ground. Under the current government, extremist settlers have felt a new sense of empowerment and immunity in the knowledge that many of those in power back them while the rest remain silent. The result is that far-right violence has soared.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that in the first 10 months of the war, settlers were responsible for some 1,250 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, of which around 120 led to death or injury. Most of those incidents have been relatively small, but from time to time they involve dozens of rioters or more. The most recent mass rampage occurred on Aug. 15, when some 100 masked settlers stormed the Palestinian village of Jit, shooting, torching vehicles and homes, and throwing stones. One Palestinian was killed. An army investigation revealed that troops arriving at the scene initially failed to stop the rioters, who appear to have included off-duty reserve soldiers, in uniform and carrying army-issued weapons.

There’s no indication that this violence is condoned by a majority of Israelis or even a majority of religiously observant Jews, who make up less than a quarter of Israelis. But none of this matters because the far right has gained control over large swaths of the government. Spurned by the center right, Netanyahu saw the far right as the only way he could return to power in the 2022 election and engineered a merger between Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit to ensure that they amassed as many votes as possible. Today, they have the power to make or break the government and have established their authority over the police, the state budget, and West Bank policy. Determined to stay in power at all costs, Netanyahu turns a blind eye to their provocations and their repeated affronts to his authority.

Since Oct. 7, the far right has also set its sights on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as another establishment bulwark of secular values. Traumatized by its failures during the Hamas assault of Oct. 7 and preoccupied by fighting the war, the IDF was slow to respond to the surging violence in the West Bank and the penetration of far-right values into its ranks, especially among reservists.

The defense establishment has finally woken up. “Nationalist crime has reared its head under the cover of war and has led to revenge and sowed calamity and fear in Palestinian residents who do not pose any threat,” Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs warned in a parting address to troops in July before stepping down as army chief for the West Bank. In a letter to ministers in August, Ronen Bar, the director of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, warned about “vengeful attacks that are sparking another front in the multi-front war we are in; putting more players into the cycle of terror; a slippery slope to the feeling of a lack of governance.” The United States and some other Western powers have also sought to contain the violence by imposing sanctions against known perpetrators.

But the pushback is unlikely to have any profound effect on a government that sees the defense establishment and Israel’s allies as enemies. In any case, the IDF’s hands are largely tied since it’s subordinate to the civilian politicians who are creating the problem to begin with. Inside Israel, the army has no authority to act, and the police now appear firmly in Ben-Gvir’s hands.

Where will it lead? Having gotten away with it once at Sde Teiman and Beit Lid, violent right-wingers will no doubt try to strike again inside Israel. Polls show that Israelis increasingly distrust institutions, and social media can be effective at bringing out crowds. Whether they can scale up the anarchy by enlisting hundreds or thousands of people to join them remains to be seen. The far right has yet to create a mass organization capable of mounting a sustained campaign of chaos. But with its iron grip on power, it might not need one.

[mapsontheweb]

The mass migration that shaped the American West

It's estimated that 300,000 people migrated to California between 1849 and 1855 from every part of the world, rapidly setting the economic foundation for the new state. For Indigenous people, terror ensued as armed militias and vigilante miners seized land and resources, murdering those who stood in their way. Exclusionary laws and violence against foreigners, particularly against Chinese migrants, were also widespread as settlers competed for wealth. 

Map by Katie Armstrong.

via RosemaryWardley

[bfpnola]

We, academics, clergy, and other public figures from Israel/Palestine and abroad, call attention to the direct link between Israel’s recent attack on the judiciary and its illegal occupation of millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Palestinian people lack almost all basic rights, including the right to vote and protest. They face constant violence: this year alone, Israeli forces have killed over 190 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and demolished over 590 structures. Settler vigilantes burn, loot, and kill with impunity.

Without equal rights for all, whether in one state, two states, or in some other political framework, there is always a danger of dictatorship. There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid, as Israeli legal experts have described it. Indeed, the ultimate purpose of the judicial overhaul is to tighten restrictions on Gaza, deprive Palestinians of equal rights both beyond the Green Line and within it, annex more land, and ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population. The problems did not start with the current radical government: Jewish supremacism has been growing for years and was enshrined in law by the 2018 Nation State Law.

American Jews have long been at the forefront of social justice causes, from racial equality to abortion rights, but have paid insufficient attention to the elephant in the room: Israel’s long-standing occupation that, we repeat, has yielded a regime of apartheid. As Israel has grown more right-wing and come under the spell of the current government’s messianic, homophobic, and misogynistic agenda, young American Jews have grown more and more alienated from it. Meanwhile, American Jewish billionaire funders help support the Israeli far right.

The Israeli government, Goldberg stated, fights against human rights, democracy and equality and propagates the opposite: “authoritarianism, discrimination, racism and apartheid”.

“Accusing Israel of apartheid is not anti-Semitic. It describes reality,” he said.

Goldberg’s standpoint was not an outlier, he urged Klein to understand. Rather, it represented a growing chorus of voices, including leading Israeli academics propagating the term apartheid to describe the treatment of Palestinians by the current regime. In fact, if Klein were right, Goldberg wrote, then some of the best-known Holocaust and anti-Semitism researchers from Israel, the United States, Europe and worldwide would be anti-Semites.

He referenced a petition co-initiated by Omer Bartov, the Israeli-born historian and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, titled The Elephant in the Room, which states: “There can be no democracy for Jews in Israel while Palestinians live under an apartheid regime”. The petition has been signed by more than 2,000 academics, clergy, and other public figures at the time of writing and is emblazoned with an illustration that includes a large elephant with the words “Israeli occupation” alongside a speech bubble that reads “Let’s just ignore it”, and surrounded by dozens of people freely waving placards for various social justice movements. “Palestinian people lack almost all basic rights, including the right to vote and protest,” the petition reads, “Settler vigilantes burn, loot, and kill with impunity.”

...

It is a position shared by Bartov, who recently told the Washington Post: “You can call me a self-hating Jew, call me an antisemite … People use those terms to cover up the reality, either to deceive themselves or to deceive others. You have to look at what’s happening on the ground.”

[myemuisemo]

As "John Ferrier Talks with the Prophet" in Letters from Watson, I'm sucked down the rabbit hole of Mormon Escapee Narratives.

There were several that were wildly popular in the years between the LDS settlement of Utah and the time when Doyle was writing. The one I can find an online copy of is Fanny Stenhouse's memoir, which appears to have had a couple versions under variant titles. The one I've paged through is Tell It All: The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism (1879, with foreword by Harriet Beecher Stowe). There's also an 1872 version titled Exposé of Polygamy in Utah: A Lady’s Life among the Mormons.

Fanny Stenhouse's existence is documented, and she went on the lecture circuit in the 1870s as an opponent to polygamy.

Her story matches Doyle's description of conspiracy theories, secret organizations, and atrocities in Salt Lake City so closely that it's likely he got his ideas from Stenhouse or similar materials. Newspaper coverage of happenings in remote Utah would, whether in London or Edinburgh, have been scanty and sensationalist -- although there is one historic event that might have excited interest, and its absence from the story muddles the timeline.

In spring 1857, President Buchanan sent the U.S. Army to the Utah Territory. The LDS residents feared renewed persecution, turned plowshares into swords, and fought a guerilla war of annoyance against the army. In September 1857, a group of Mormon militia slaughtered an entire wagon train of settlers bound for California (the Mountain Meadows Massacre). The wikipedia entry linked is worth a read, as it captures the "what really happened? who lied about what? was this an LDS policy or a group that acted recklessly on its own?" questions that swirl around efforts to make sense of the history of this era.

The "Utah War" wasn't the first incident of violence between LDS and "gentiles." Back in 1838 in Missouri, harassment and violence toward LDS settlers was met with the formation of the Danites (aha! Doyle mentions them!), a vigilante secret society that retaliated violently. The 1838 Mormon War is an appalling read on so many levels.

Whether the Danites were still operating in the 1850s in Utah is a question that historians today dispute. Their reputation in the 1830s was that they were determined to remove dissent within their own people, so the idea that forces within the LDS community would silence a man for disagreeing has some historical basis.

What's seriously missing in Doyle's account is that in 1858, Brigham Young's plan for thwarting U.S. troops was to evacuate Salt Lake City -- so thousands of LDS faithful boarded up their homes, gathered their goods, and marched off into the mountains. (There was talk of burning the city, but that apparently didn't happen.) Obviously, people came back, but that's a big thing for John Ferrier to have lived through without remarking upon. A year of widespread want from culling herds and missing portions of the planting season, combined with military occupation, seems like a big deal.

If we assume none of that had happened yet, then it's early 1857 and only 10 years since Ferrier and Lucy were rescued -- making his twelfth year of wealth in the future, the discovery of silver in Nevada also in the future, and Lucy just fifteen. The latter is still plausible for her being pressured to marry, alas. I think the timeline's just a bit muddled, though -- even with today's online resources, researching 30-year-old events in a far-away place can get messy.

Ferrier's unwelcome visitor is none other than Brigham Young, charismatic leader of the LDS community, and governor of the Utah Territory from 1850 to 1858. He was also a Freemason (remember the Masonic ring, weeks ago?).

Polygamy doesn't come up! What?!? We're in a generic sort of romance plot, where the innocent flower is to be given to a less noble and honest man than her preferred suitor. We know that the Drebber son is going to turn out to be a terrible man, but there's nothing especially indicative of it in Brigham Young's proposal. Since there's no mention of young Drebber or young Stangerson having pre-existing wives, it's likely Lucy is being offered the position of the legally married first wife.

Ferrier's plan is to flee. Since Doyle's readers are in the future, they may have a tingle of fear related to the doctrine of "blood atonement" (which was discussed in Stenhouse's book as well as in newspaper accounts) and the 1866 murder of Dr. Robinson.

[reuna]

Article from 2021

“The police won’t do anything to us, they will back us up and turn a blind eye,” says one Israeli in a voice message to other far-right Jewish activists.

“The rules are all off. Everything is on fire,” says one person.

“Those guys from Yitzhar, they already arrived, six buses arrived,” someone says in another voice note.

Yitzhar is a settlement built on hundreds of acres of land stolen from Urif and other Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank.

It is home to some of the most violent settlers, who frequently attack Palestinians as well as their livestock, orchards and property.

“Six buses is 380 people, 380 people, everyone with weapons, bro. Everyone with masks,” he adds.

“Every one of them, bro, dying to kill Arabs, bro. They want to kill Arabs.”

The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, said that “law enforcement authorities are well-aware of these groups” and “appear to be shielding the Israeli Jewish vigilante and settler groups.”

The High-Follow Up Committee, made up of elected representatives, party leaders and community leaders, is the de facto representative body of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Approval by authorities

There is additional evidence that Israeli authorities were well aware of and even supported the premeditated mob violence.

[canadianabroadvery]

" ... Palestinian people lack almost all basic rights, including the right to vote and protest. They face constant violence: this year alone, Israeli forces have killed over 190 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and demolished over 590 structures. Settler vigilantes burn, loot, and kill with impunity. ..."

[aronarchy]

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/nsambu-za-suekama-to-the-people-of-the-streets

Whiteness is a standing garrison in the US. When the slave patrols (police) cannot perform their historical duty of maintaining the settler property system, the average “citizen,” must take up arms or get the police to do it for them. Karen may lie and say a Black boy whistled at her to get him dragged out his house and killed by her white male compatriots (RIP Emmet Till); or Chad and his brethren may set a Black town on fire and demand that all the women therein, cis and trans, give their bodies over (RIP Frances Thompson).

Or, they will simply stand idly by as someone else takes up the racial-sexual violence that comes of that responsibility. They’ll complain about “sex starved incels” or about “gun control” and tell all these flavorful stories about “mental health crises” among white vigilantes or insult their intelligence as “Southerners” meanwhile doing nothing about the machinations of racial capitalism and Imperial Patriarchy because it benefits them as much as it benefits those who commit the atrocities.

And it’s entertaining too! To create all these podcasts and Netflix shows and documentaries that give you a window into the mind of white vigilante violence, school shooters, serial killers/abusers, cult leaders. To make the population feel like there’s a random and inexplicable germ of depravity that they must together study through a shared vocabulary about narcissism, multiple personalities, sociopathy, psychopathy, is the perfect way to get them feeling like they are on the side of the cops in catching these “criminals” even as the main proponents of these violences avoid jail time, get help from the cops, or get minimal jail time.

But that’s because what is really at work is the opportunity for Grand Patriarchy to use this fear mongering and say “hey, those feminists and drag queens are here to endanger your kids. They’ve got Jewish led communists and a horde of Haitian immigrants helping them.” Violence then begets violence. And when it does, some factions in the Official manifestations of Patriarchy can say, “we’ve got to catch these terrorists,” but really just invest more into the State. Another atrocity happens. The media benefits. Patriarchy is still in place. Statecraft sharpens. Those who see themselves as part of the “social contract” anchored on reproduction of a “proper” citizenry feel more invested in maintaining the “order” of the system.

.

[ejesgistnews]

Youths in Agenebode, Etsako East Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria, have torched a local police station and killed suspected Fulani kidnappers, after accusing them of murdering a young man from the community. The violent incident, which took place over the weekend, underscores growing tensions between local communities and Fulani settlers in parts of Nigeria, where insecurity and kidnappings for ransom have become rampant. The unrest began after the recent abduction of a community youth. Despite his family paying a ransom, the kidnappers allegedly killed the young man. According to local reports, the phone of the murdered youth, still in use by the assailants, was traced to a Fulani settlement in the area. The enraged youths reportedly captured the suspected kidnappers and handed them over to the police. However, dissatisfaction grew when no immediate action was taken by the authorities. Community members gathered at the police station, demanding the suspects be handed back to them, accusing the officers of inaction. Escalating Tensions Tensions reached a boiling point when, during a confrontation at the station, another youth was shot dead by the police. In response, the mob set the police station on fire, forcing officers to flee. The community youths then retrieved the Fulani suspects from custody, and several were killed by the angry crowd. A key suspect, under pressure, led the mob to a shallow grave where the body of the kidnapped youth was found. Other mutilated bodies were also discovered at the scene. The suspect confessed to being involved in a series of killings, deepening outrage among the locals. Insecurity and Vigilantism This incident highlights the growing frustrations in Nigerian communities, where a perceived lack of police action has led to rising cases of vigilante justice. In parts of the country, particularly in rural areas, many citizens have lost faith in the ability of the security forces to protect them from banditry, kidnapping, and other violent crimes. Local leaders in Agenebode have called for calm in the aftermath of the violence, but the situation remains tense. Nigerian security agencies have not yet issued a formal statement on the matter, but sources indicate that additional police reinforcements have been dispatched to the area to restore order. The rising conflict between indigenous communities and Fulani settlers, often accused of involvement in kidnappings and other criminal activities, has further strained inter-ethnic relations in Nigeria. This latest episode in Edo State may further exacerbate these tensions unless decisive action is taken to address the underlying security concerns.

[dankusner]

“A Taint on the Wind” by Frederic Remington (1906)

Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, TX

This is the story of Texas’ antebellum frontier, from the Red River to El Paso, a raw and primitive country, punctuated by chaos, lawlessness, and violence.

During this time, the federal government and the State of Texas often worked at cross purposes, their confused and contradictory policies leaving settlers on their own to deal with vigilantes, lynchings, raiding Native Americans, and Anglo American outlaws.

However, this is also the tale of the Butterfield Overland Mail, which carried passengers and mail west from St. Louis to San Francisco through Texas.

While it operated, the transcontinental mail line intersected and influenced much of Texas’s frontier history.

Presenter: Dr. Glen Sample Ely is the award-winning author of The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail, 1858-1861 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)

and 

Where the West Begins: Debating Texas Identity (Texas Tech University Press, 2011).

His work has won the Award of Excellence in Preserving History from the Texas Historical Commission as well as Gold and Silver Wilder Awards from the Texas Association of Museums.

Date: Thursday, Sept. 5, 6 p.m. Central

Platform: Zoom (Registrants will receive the link in their registration confirmation email and a follow up email to attend closer to the event date. Please watch your spam/junk folders!)

[berlinauslander]

Ilan Pape on the only democracy in the middle east:

The main Israeli response, diplomatic and academic, to the latter accusation is that all these measures are temporary —they will change if the Palestinians, wherever they are, behave "better." But if one researches, not to mention lives in, the occupied territories, one will understand how ridiculous these arguments are. Israeli policy makers, as we have seen, are determined to keep the occupation alive for as long as the Jewish state remains intact. It is part of what the Israeli political system regards as the status quo, which is always better than any change. Israel will control most of Palestine and, since it will always include a substantial Palestinian population, this can only be done by non-democratic means.

In addition, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Israeli state claims that the occupation is an enlightened one. The myth here is that Israel came with good intentions to conduct a benevolent occupation but was forced to take a tougher attitude because of the Palestinian violence. In 1967 the government treated the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as natural part of "Eretz Israel," the land of Israel, and this attitude has continued ever since. When you look at the debate between the right-and left-wing parties in Israel on this issue, their disagreements have been about how to achieve this goal, not about its validity. What every colonization project primarily needs is land — in the occupied territories this was achieved only through the massive expropriation of land, deporting people from where they had lived for generations, and confining them in enclaves with difficult habitats. When you fly over the West Bank, you can see clearly the cartographic results of this policy: belts of settlements that divide the land and carve the Palestinian communities into small, isolated, and disconnected communities. The Judaization belts separate villages from villages, villages from towns, and sometime bisect a single village. This is what scholars call a geography of disaster, not least since these policies turned out to be an ecological disaster as well: drying up water sources and ruining some of the most beautiful parts of the Palestinian landscape. Moreover, the settlements became hotbeds in which Jewish extremism grew uncontrollably — the principal victims of which were the Palestinians. Thus, the settlement at Efrat has ruined the world heritage site of the Wallajah valley near Bethlehem, and the village of Jafneh near Ramallah, which was famous for its fresh water canals, lost its identity as a tourist attraction. These are just two small examples out of hundreds of similar cases.

Another form of collective punishment that has recently returned to the Israeli repertoire is that of blocking up houses. Imagine that all the doors and windows in your house are blocked by cement, mortar, and stones, so you can't get back in or retrieve anything you failed to take out in time. I have looked hard in my history books to find another example, but found no evidence of such a callous measure being practiced elsewhere.

Finally, under the "enlightened occupation," settlers have been allowed to form vigilante gangs to harass people and destroy their property. These gangs have changed their approach over the years During the 1980s, they used actual terror-from wounding Palestinian leaders (one of them lost his legs in such an attack), to contemplating blowing up the mosques on Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. In this century, they have engaged in the daily harassment of Palestinians: uprooting their trees, destroying their yields, and shooting randomly at their homes and vehi-cles. Since 2000, there have been at least 100 such attacks reported per month in some areas such as Hebron, where the 500 settlers, with the silent collaboration of the Israeli army, harassed the locals living nearby in an even more brutal way. From the very beginning of the occupation then, the Palestinians were given two options: accept the reality of permanent incarceration in a mega-prison for a very long time, or risk the might of the strongest army in the Middle East. When the Palestinians did resist — as they did in 1987, 2000, 2006, 2012, 2014, and 2016-they were targeted as soldiers and units of a conventional army. Thus, villages and towns were bombed as if they were military bases and the unarmed civilian population was shot at as if it was an army on the battlefield. Today we know too much about life under occupation, before and after Oslo, to take seriously the claim that non-resistance will ensure less oppression. The arrests without trial, as experienced by so many over the years; the demolition of thousands of houses; the killing and wounding of the innocent; the drainage of water wells— these are all testimony to one of the harshest contemporary regimes of our times. Amnesty International annually documents in a very comprehensive way the nature of the occupation.

[jhavelikes]

My grandparents dealt with antisemitism for their entire lives. Weaponizing "antisemitism" to insulate a monstrous anti-democratic government and fascist vigilante settler violence from measured criticism and application of basic international law cheapens the concept.

(2) Alec Karakatsanis on X: "THREAD. Something must be said about today’s irresponsible New York Times article about antisemitism. I can’t believe it was published." / X

[qudachuk]

Religious nationalists emboldened now their representatives are major players in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new administrationFive bullet holes now scar the walls and window of Hummus Restaurant, a modest fast food outlet near the settlement of Eli on the Israeli-built highway...

[ausetkmt]

White Men's Law: The Roots of Systemic Racism

A searing--and sobering--account of the legal and extra-legal means by which systemic white racism has kept Black Americans 'in their place' from slavery to police and vigilante killings of Black men and women, from 1619 to the present.

From the arrival of the first English settlers in America until now-a span of four centuries-a minority of white men have created, managed, and perpetuated their control of every major institution, public and private, in American society. And no group in America has suffered more from the harms

imposed by white men's laws than African Americans, with punishment by law often replaced by extra-legal means. Over the centuries, thousands of victims have been murdered by lynching, white mobs, and appalling massacres.

In White Men's Law, the eminent scholar Peter Irons makes a powerful and persuasive case that African Americans have always been held back by systemic racism in all major institutions that can hold power over them. Based on a wide range of sources, from the painful words of former slaves to test

scores that reveal how our education system has failed Black children, this searing and sobering account of legal and extra-legal violence against African Americans peels away the fictions and myths expressed by white racists. The centerpiece of Irons' account is a 1935 lynching in Fort Lauderdale,

Florida. The episode produced a photograph of a blonde white girl of about seven looking at the hanging, bullet-riddled body of Rubin Stacy, who was accused of assaulting a white woman.

After analyzing this gruesome murder and the visual evidence left behind, Irons poses a foundational question: What historical forces preceded and followed this lynching to spark resistance to Jim Crow segregation, especially in schools that had crippled Black children with inferior education? The answers are rooted in the systemic racism-especially in the institutions of law and education--that African Americans, and growing numbers of white allies, are demanding be dismantled in tangible ways.

A thought-provoking look at systemic racism and the legal systems that built it, White Men's Law is an essential contribution to this painful but necessary debate.

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his best known is The Philadelphia Negro, based on his fieldwork during a research fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. In that book, Du Bois documented the many problems of the city’s Black residents, among them crime, poverty, poor education, and family disruption. What distinguished this book was the direct link Du Bois drew between these disabilities and their roots in slavery, portraying what we now label “systemic racism.” That was not a popular stance among critics who attributed these social problems to “bad choices” by Blacks who failed to take advantage of free public ed-ucation, a position we now call “blaming the victim.” Du Bois challenged this dominant view with statistics and analysis showing that “bad choices” by individual Blacks stemmed from “bad conditions” in all the institutions—especially schools and colleges—in which Blacks held very few positions of power and influence. In that respect, Du Bois was one of the earliest scholars whose path breaking studies and trenchant analysis served as models for later generations of scholars and social critics who explore the history and consequences of systemic racism, as this book—by a longtime admirer of DuBois and his work—attempts to do.