Patrycja Wieczorkiewicz: erstwhile we agreed on an interview at the end of June, the scandal after Glastonbury festival became loud. The BBC tv that broadcast it, with excessive caution decided not to show Kneecap's performance, Irish rappers known for Israel's harsh criticism. alternatively he was shown playing on a smaller phase British punk duo Bob Vylan. It shortly turned out that it was not the best thought from the point of view of the medium, to which anti-Israeli sentiments in society are not in taste, due to the fact that the slogan "IDF death" sounded from the stage, which the crowd was eagerly chanting behind the musicians. "Death, death to the IDF" – until it's unusual that no 1 has always come across this neat rhyme before. I told you I'd ask you this: would you chant?
Paweł Mościcki: I'm going to bow to a clear answer, due to the fact that there's a trap in this question, but it's worth stopping by. It seems to me that specified symbolic events are always surrounded by a layer of false problems that are to draw us distant from the essence of things. The problem is not Bob Vylan or the crowd that chants something, but what this situation has shown. She showed the level of de-sticking of many institutions – in this case especially the media – from social sentiments. The audience at Glastonbury knew precisely what was going on. No 1 had to explain it to her or convince her. It shows that Proizraelska website lost ground underfoot.
In his latest book Gaza. The thing about the culture of extermination You put many strong and controversial as Western mainstream standards also, supporting the Palestinian case. What results from your reticence to the word “IDF deaths”?
I do not go to specified concerts, so I find it hard to get into the situation, but I do not think that chanting "death to the IDF" is peculiarly scandalous. This can be understood as a call for the abolition of a criminal organization. The Israeli Army has been repressive for decades, and for almost 2 years genocide has been committed in the territory it occupies. He does it systematically and absolutely. Demanding the removal of garbage squadrons should not be very controversial. I'd be more curious in justice than revenge. But can we number on her today?
I asked due to the fact that it seems to me that it is hard for a more up-to-date example of the phenomenon you mention in the book – there are highly different standards of what can be said without being exposed to scandal and severe individual and professional consequences, or even to criminal responsibility, in relation to Israeli and anti-Israeli aggression. The justification of the crimes committed by IDF as "self-defense" and "higher necessity" for almost 2 years has been the default position in the public debate. But the very want to die for those who commit these crimes is unacceptable. Bob Vylan's band is now being accused of anti-Semitism and supporting terrorism, his concerts in subsequent countries are being cancelled and the United States revoked the musicians' visas.
He's inactive trying to make us feel that saying things like this is inappropriate, he's crossing boundaries. It's just the management of perception. And all due to the fact that this political operation – occupation, apartheid, genocide – is already completely compromised. The sooner we get this over with, the better. We live in the attention economy. Our attention is simply a commodity. It's better to sacrifice it for something more important.
Media from events specified as the Glastonbury performance is doing the number 1 subject in the debate on Palestine and Israel. It utilized to work – they spoke with 1 voice, coincident with the communicative of the Israeli army, government and lobby, seldom gathering with opposition. They've got to be more sophisticated today. That is why “flare” is regularly created, i.e. substitute themes, so that we can look wherever they want, not at what is truly happening. In this narrative, Bob Vylan is simply a terrorist, but Abu Mohammad al Julani is not.
Let us explain who Abu Mohammad al-Julani is – but not a terrorist. Not anymore.
He is the founder of the Syrian Al-Qaeda branch, which was on the FBI's most wanted list a fewer months ago. $10 million was offered for his help.Currently, as President, he has real power in northwestern Syria. He performs in a suit, gives interviews to American journalists and presents himself as a “pragmatic leader”, a guardian of the local order, ready to talk to the West. In the area controlled by his organization – Tahrir al-Sham – authoritative visits, handshakes, photos, signing agreements with global organizations are held. So we know that it is not acts of panic that decide who is simply a terrorist and who is not.
The event at Glastonbury – a festival that attracts very different people, alternatively "normists", including families with children, alternatively than any extremist leftist youth – surely revealed a change in social sentiment and a dissonance between them and the communicative of Western corporate media. But is it besides possible to see the sparks of hope for the Palestinians?
It depends on what time horizon we're talking about. In the short term, I would not see any hope in it – or anywhere else. Who would halt this slaughter and how? But I see a change of consciousness. but she'll have her price. We are facing powerful repression It's already started. This is simply a reaction to the change in social sentiments that gives emergence to fear among decision-makers. erstwhile society begins to wake up, it must be silenced, even by force.
In the US, detention and deportation are at stake for engaging in pro-Palestinian protests. Palestinian-Algerian activist Mahmoud Khalil spent 104 days at the detention center, and no charges have been filed. ICE agents came into his home “without any mode”, citing the INA (Immigration and Nationality Act) clause, allowing to deport legal residents in cases of “serious negative consequences for abroad policy”. Do you anticipate specified situations in Europe?
It may not be identical, but in Europe, state repressions for propalastine activities are clearly occurring. Take the Palistine Action group. It's an organization that hasn't physically harmed anyone. If anything is destroying, it's military equipment, and yet in Britain it's considered a terrorist organization. For just expressing solidarity with her, she is facing 14 years in prison. A 83-year-old pastor has late been arrested for participating in a protest against this government decision and holding a poster with the slogan “I argue genocide. I support Palestine Action". A full of 27 people were detained there.
In Australia, work is underway on draconian laws – officially against anti-Semitism, but with the tightening of penalties besides widens the definition of anti-Semitism, so they come out of this bill censoring Israeli criticism. This is all a reaction to changing social discourse. If this discourse had not changed, it would have been adequate to shed "flars" as before. But present it doesn't work anymore.
One of the members of the Kneecap group was charged in the UK with supporting terrorism after he pulled out the Hezbollah flag during the concert. On the 1 hand, this seems understandable – Hezbollah is no uncertainty a terrorist organization. On the another hand, the scale of the crimes he committed pales against Israeli crimes.
I utilized to make an episode of the Hezbollah podcast and spend quite a few time trying to recalculate the assassinations and casualties attributed to him. I was genuinely shocked at how tiny a number is compared to the image of this organization that was built in the Western media. I am not saying that Hezbollah are angels, but the scale of the force we talk of is nothing to real data – even if we leave out that the organization has never admitted to any of the attacks attributed to it, and there is no evidence that it was actually behind them, but we are talking about hundreds of victims over respective decades.
On the another hand, there has been a systematic slaughter of the full nation for 20 months, with the support of large global players. Anyone who doesn't see the funnyness of scaring Hezbollah present risks being ridiculous.
Meanwhile, the Israeli flag can be waved anywhere in public, risking citizen intervention at most. Do you think Israel besides commits terrorism? any even talk of a "terrorist state".
The word “terrorism” is highly vivid and utilized according to political needs. I find it much more interesting to talk about the phenomenon of panic itself. due to the fact that panic can be applied by both states and non-state actors. It can have different goals and different effects. The word “terrorism” itself present serves to justify state, imperialist violence. At the same time, we bear the burden of critical reasoning about state terror, which frequently hides under innocent slogans specified as "humanitarian intervention", "prejudice" or "stabilization".
For me, this is simply a fundamental problem. due to the fact that if we are guided by global law – alternatively than a policy of interest – then we should not care who applies violence, but what nature it has. erstwhile individual speaks of “terrorism” as exceeding a standard, but himself supports state panic – armed assaults or occupations – it is not truly about rights or values, it is about political interest.
I would add that even if we do not consider Israel's actions in Gaza and in the West Bank to be terrorist, there will be no shortage of those that are truly hard to defend from this charge.
Like what?
Let's just say famous attack with exploding pagers. If we presume that something is simply a terrorist act, the intention to change any political order is to ask: how do we specify this order? If we recognise that it is simply a broader position quo, specified as the geopolitical arrangement in the region, then Israel appears to be its guardian alternatively than its opponent. But if we look at, for example, Lebanon's interior political order – with its organization structure, balance of power, social representation – the situation is different. This Israel attack has dramatically disrupted the Lebanese political scene, importantly weakening Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is not only an armed arm, it is besides a political organization with a large social background, especially in any regions of the country. It is an organization profoundly embedded in Lebanese social and political reality.
Can we talk about the embodiment of terrorism? In general consciousness, it can only be spoken of erstwhile the perpetrators are Arabs, Muslims.
It's not an embodiment, it's a politicization. We have rather quite a few mediate East organizations that, although formally qualified as terrorists, are supported by the West. In Syria, for example, an full generation of "moderate rebels" was created, many of which had direct links with Al-Qaeda. British PR companies produced professional propaganda materials, depicting these groups as lovers of democracy to make an easy-to-use figure for the Western public.
This is not a racial criterion, it is simply a question of objectives. If the objectives of these groups coincide with the interests of countries specified as the US, Saudi Arabia or Qatar – then they are presented as bringing together militants for independency or democracy. If they are contradictory – as violent butchers, regardless of the real state of affairs. And it is frequently the opposite: those we call "terrorists" are in fact freedom fighters, and those who fight them are the participants of illegal wars, mercenaries.
In the book you defend the slogan “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”. For chanting him in a public place or for posting him on a banner in Germany, he is facing criminal liability, let alone sleeping by the police, which is standard on pro-Palestinian demonstrations in that country. Next Friday I am going to a Kneecap performance in Katowice and I anticipate shouts about “Palestinian free from river to sea” – I should not be reluctant to join the chanting crowd?
This slogan refers to the thought of 1 common state throughout the historical territory of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. In this sense, all inhabitants of this area – regardless of their cultural or spiritual background – would have equal rights and live together in a single democratic country. That password is simply a imagination of peace. What's controversial about that?
The implementation of this slogan would imply the liquidation of the State of Israel.
It would presume the liquidation of the apartheid-based state. The same thing happened to apartheid in South Africa, did it mean mass white murders? The fact is that there is already a single state in these areas “from river to sea”. His name is Israel. For decades, it has had effective control over the full territory – both the internationally recognized territory of the judaic state and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.In practice, we have 1 state, with 1 external border, 1 military, 1 abroad policy – and a deep division of citizens according to cultural and spiritual criteria. This has been clearly recorded, among others, in the program paper of Likudu, the ruling organization of Israel, where it is said that the judaic state was built throughout the historical territory of Palestine.
The fact that Israel does not recognise and does not intend to recognise Palestinian statehood is apparent and not controversial for most Western mainstream media. At the same time, we are reminded on all occasion that "from river to sea" in the explanation of Hamas and another movements of Palestinian opposition is linked to the failure to recognise Israel's right to exist. Netanjahu justifies the current plan to expel all Palestinians from Gaza and shut them down in a tiny ghetto due to the fact that they do not want, as he claims, their own country in the vicinity of Israel, and the liquidation of the latter. Unless you admit that these are not entirely unfounded concerns.
The earlier Hamas papers and any OWP declarations contained mirror reflections of the same logic: this is our country and there is no area for settlers. Those were unconvinced slogans. I realize their historical and emotional origins. “You are colonizers, occupiers, and you are to vanish from here due to the fact that this is our country.” However, I believe that politics must be based on well understood pragmatism. And that means: any solution that is real and that is going to end force is worth considering. Even if it does not equalize all the wrongs and reconstruct absolute justice – due to the fact that politics never does. The only problem is that so far specified a "pragmatic" solution was considered to be a imagination of 2 separate states, but in practice it was blown up long ago, even by illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
You compose in the book on “corporate media”, utilizing this word as an alternate to “mainstream media”, or “main stream”. What happened on Glastonbury and how the BBC and another Western media companies reacted seems a perfect illustration for this distinction.
In the face of the genocide in Gaza, we see more and more clearly that those who make amusement do not represent society but the interests of large capital. The word mainstream media brings with it any assumptions that they themselves want to impose on the recipients. In this regard, the media propose that they set a direction and constitute a mention point. MeanwhileIf individual truly wants to know about the planet today, I think they should look for this point of mention everywhere, just not there.
Long ago, Chomsky and Herman in a fundamental book Manufacturing Consent [Consent mill – ed.] described what corporate media are and how they work. They are not utilized to inform or educate society. They produce emotions and opinions to be in line with the interests of owners, advertisers and dominant capital structures. It's not a question of the bad will of this or any another editor, it's a mechanics of action. Business model.
Corporate media live with advertising, and advertisers are frequently arms companies, large Tech, large Pharma, large insurance companies, private wellness care networks. Or straight the oligarchs, like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. They are besides frequently co-financed by state or quasi-state institutions – sometimes less, sometimes more transparent. The ownership structure itself prevents them from going beyond a certain framework.
How does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and consistently Zionist line of Western corporate media deal with this?
I compose in a book about how the media filter news about Israel and Palestine. It's embarrassing, yet well documented. The example of the BBC is the most widely described, but the same applies to the boards of Google, Meta, and virtually any major paper or media title. The interests of capital are mixed everywhere with the open and secret structures of the American and Israeli states. This is visible not only at the level of content produced in this media, but besides at the ownership structure, networks of interdependencies and interests, and even employment policies.
Many commentators who have until late defended Israel hard, Today, he admits that "things have gone besides far". Shooting hungry people waiting in queues for symbolic humanitarian aid proved undefensible even for Piers Morgan. This leading British apologist of Israeli actions after 7 October a fewer months ago apologized for his erstwhile "restraint" in criticizing them. How do you interpret that?
It may be a substance of "little faith", but I find it hard to presume that in Piers Morgan's case the change of speech is due to genuine enlightenment. This appears to be a rational correction of the message, falling within the wider temper management mechanism.
Today we are dealing with specified a large deal of dramatic reports from Gaza and gruesome images that corporate media must have developed a specific, politically functional kind of empathy. It is expressed through controlled, cost-effective concessions to pro-Palestinian narrative. It can already be said that “Netanyahu is simply a criminal” and that “things have gone besides far” and even say, like Morgan, that Israeli politicians usage genocidal language. All of this happens for a very circumstantial intent – it is intended to open a safety valve for social emotions that have been suppressed for a long time. The point is that public agitation can express itself, but within the limits which are safe for the position quo. It's a harm reduction, classics. Damage control. That's enough. At this point, we are united again – in concern for victims and in outrage at circumstantial politicians who symbolize "abuse".
Before the meeting, I sent you a link to a text late published in “Gazeta Wyborcza”. The author describes a study that is expected to command mass organized rapes during the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023. How he reacted to this online publication, it seems to show that in Poland we are besides dealing with a powerful division between corporate media and society – there is no dry thread left on the article. Most of the comments accused the author of replicating propaganda, which fewer people would buy.
The fact is – and this is besides the position that I have included in the book – that no 1 present is able to authoritatively state that there were no acts of sexual force that day. It should be assumed – due to the scale of the attack and its character – that they occurred. The study you mention, drawn up by Israeli researchers, is based on the evidence of respective anonymous witnesses and 1 female who claims to have experienced attempted rape and sexual harassment by Hamas members. However, there is no evidence of the mass or organized nature of akin acts.
The author of the text in “Election” further cites the UN report, which in itself is strange, due to the fact that its content contradicts the content presented to her too. It uses a very distinctive formula: “there are reasons to believe that...” which means presumption alternatively than any certainty. The study further clearly states that there are no secured materials that could be considered evidence in an investigative sense, or at least no specified evidence has been provided. The UN admits that it did not gain access to supposedly existing papers to confirm that mass and organized rapes occurred on October 7, 2023, and points out that likewise Israeli reports have been manufactured many times in the past.
On the another hand, we have very detailed reports from humanitarian organisations and the UN on systematic rapes in Israeli prisons. Among the many evidences are 2 publically available films showing the collective rapes made by soldiers: 1 on a man, the another on a woman. You can see them on the Internet, but I don't urge them. 1 of the perpetrators of the erstwhile decided to uncover his identity – he met with full support of the Israeli public and walked the media like a celebrity.
IDF soldiers are totally shameless in this – let's take photos that they published online in the first months of the genocide in Gaza, depicting them laughing, in the underwear of Palestinian women who were driven out of their homes. They even threw them on Tinder.
The Israeli prosecution, who for over a year sought evidence of rape on 7 October, contacted, among others, organizations fighting force against women, but did not scope a single case. However, talking about surviving victims of the attack – it can be assumed that any people were sexually abused and then murdered. However, he wonders why Israel, with its immense propaganda apparatus in the West, did not bombard us with images of this massacre. In gruesome stories – yes, we besides saw respective recordings of Palestinian militants shooting at people, I dug into pictures of bloody sheets, a baby cot, single pictures of dead bodies. The remainder was shown in closed shows for the chosen. What do you think that means?
That they don't have anything we haven't seen yet, anything they can show us. From the beginning, they fed us stories about “children in ovens” or “40 newborns who had their heads cut off”, these revelations were repeated by journalists and politicians, including Joe Biden himself, but no evidence was presented.
Closed shows is theatre. The selected journalists, politicians and lobbyists are invited to show them carefully selected material and make the impression that much more has happened on 7 October than in reality, but this is "too drastic" for a wider audience. If Israel had nothing to hide, we would have been flooded with these images for 24 hours. But it has – as if applicable Hannibal Doctrines, that is, firing on its own citizens by the Israeli army.
You're robbing yourself. I'll give you 1 last chance at the ritual condemnation of Hamas.
I am not curious in a moralist performance condemning an organization fighting for the independency of its country in the face of an extermination hanging over the full population of Gaza. If Hamas fighters have committed war crimes, they should answer for them. But who, I'm sorry, is expected to account for them? IDF human-killers? genocidal sponsors, including sanctions from ICC and UN officials? How about the Western public, who for decades has turned a blind eye to Palestinian repression by Israel, thousands of illegal arrests, killings and harassment? possibly the media, which for decades have been a propaganda tube of illegal occupation, and for 2 years have been faithfully serving Gaza’s oppressors? No, let's keep the proportions, even if they're on their head in the dominant discourse.
At the same time, the global Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrest of Benjamin Netanjah and erstwhile Israeli defence minister Joawa Galanta, and, as is frequently forgotten, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, the Hamas chief. However, the second is long dead, as are respective another leaders of the organization. Galant and Netanyahu walk slowly, and support for the Prime Minister in Israel itself does not weaken. The United States defends it with its own breast and deep pockets, and any European countries – like Germany and Poland – have explicitly declared that they do not intend to respect the ICC's decisions. How do you view our government's reaction to events in Gaza?
I read your text on the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the decisions of the Polish authorities to warrant immunity to the pursued Israeli politicians during their visit to Auschwitz. I agree. It was the most empty and grim »We remember« in the past of remembering." We are dealing with classical political schizophrenicism: on the 1 hand, Poland has hosted the Palestinian embassy, since 1988 it has recognised Palestinian statehood, on the another hand – Deputy abroad Minister Teofil Bartoszewski publically claims that "there is no specified thing as Palestine". I won't call it by name, due to the fact that unlike this man, I will effort to keep any diplomacy. But those words won't get besides old.
After 4 years, the Polish government set up an ambassador in Israel, thus maintaining its uncritical attitude towards its policy. Moreover, we are faced with fresh purchases of military equipment from Israel, which already puts us in a number of co-responsible states for the economical support of the country making the genocide.
In these decisions 1 can see first of all the independency and shortsightedness of Polish abroad policy. Our decisions are and will depend on the policy of the United States, against which Poland has for years Takes a Leading Stand. If you have built the position of a semicolony yourself, then it is hard to complain that we deficiency sovereignty. What is more disturbing to me is what happens to the prestige of institutions specified as the Auschwitz Museum.
What do you mean?
This institution – and akin to any Holocaust investigation centres – should be absolutely immune to current political pressures. These are not offices that can be exchanged on the occasion of the rotation of governments. These are pillars of memory of global importance. Their compromise costs more than any polling record.
Meanwhile, we observe silence. Or even worse, taking sides with today's torturers. It will have long-term consequences, due to the fact that if we want to rebuild moral standards in global space someday, we must have something to do with it. And if even the institutions that were expected to be the guarantor of ethical continuity compromise themselves, what does that leave us?
So while the reaction of the Polish government was predictable, what happens to memory institutions is much more apocalyptic.
You compose that 1 of the elements of pro-Israeli propaganda, played mainly by corporate media, is the production of guilty. In this logic it is left that becomes the goal: accused of supporting terrorism, radicalism, anti-Semitism. I quote: "This allows liberals to cut off from extremes and take a safe, liable place for a reasonable measure." What are the origins of this conflict among “progressors”?
Scaring left-wingness is 1 of the ideological pillars of the existing order. This strategy – political, media, economical – was built on denial of leftist ideals. Since 1989 the left has been in retreat. As long as there was a powerful russian Union, Western capital had to go to any concessions – in order not to wake up with strong Communist parties in power that would advance into a deep redistribution of assets. Today, the left is specified a wobbly home without foundations, which tries to compete with skyscraper settlements. It may be in these settlements as popular as possible, but only until it hits the foundations on which the skyscrapers are standing, or capitalist and imperialist exploitation, the politics of dominance. If he does, he becomes a boy to beat immediately. That's why I think the thought of a leftist who would have something in mainstream to negotiate, to play, to legitimize – is aborted. Mainstream in its core is anti-left.
How did the Palestinian case actually grow so powerfully with a left-wing identity?
Propalaestynism is the legacy of the anti-capitalist leftist from the 1990s, so I think it's mostly historical. There was then a real alliance between the revolutionary left and the Palestine Liberation Organization – secular, left, having a completely different imagination of the state than Hamas. This continuity has been interrupted, but Palestine inactive remains a field where the left can manifest its opposition to the strategy – and at a comparatively low cost, due to the fact that there is not much to lose here. It's besides moral intuition and perfect accade. Anticolonialism, anti-imperialism and opposition to the armed enforcement of capital interests are the core of left-wing thinking. due to the fact that in fact, what happens in Palestine and in the mediate East is not just a spiritual or cultural conflict. It's a war on resources. Transport routes, economical control. This region focuses a large part of the most crucial routes and riches.
The opposition to Israel's actions may result, therefore, not only from solidarity with a nation fighting for self-determination, but besides from disagreement with global capitalist interests that are hostile to the left-wing imagination of the world, as they propose a model that is brutal, exclusive and based on violence.
At the same time, it should be noted that with this propalastynism of the left, there are different times today, besides in Poland. specified a organization Together, as I know, acts in a comparatively systematic manner in the defence of the Palestinians. But already Nowa Lewica is very restrained on this issue, and there were besides voices in this camp consistent with the pro-Israeli communicative – rather a reminder of Anna Maria Żukowska's speeches after October 7, 2023.
At the beginning of the book, you point out that you are not going to join the discussion about whether genocide is occurring in Gaza, considering it as barren, and this subject is closed. However, I must ask what you anticipate from the global Court of Justice, which at the request of South Africa to establish, can events in the Gaza Strip be classified as the most serious of crimes against humanity – and do you retaliate if the ICC finds that Israel does not commit genocide?
I won't talk back, due to the fact that the ICC won't say it. Which, of course, does not mean that anyone will be able to justice reasonably for their crimes. We don't live in a planet where politicians on the top shelf are liable for anything before a court, with fewer exceptions. It's a beautiful vision, but rather unrealistic.
International institutions are subject to political force and are so not oracles. The fact that, under the current government of force in the United Nations, they say what they say proves how apparent and hard to hide is the crimes committed in Gaza by Israel. But I uncertainty that will translate into real and enforced sentences. Therefore, the only reserve of specified justice will be human memory, and here – thanks to many experts from genocide research, historians of the Holocaust, researchers, essayists, activists, lawyers and average people who have not yet lost their consciences – the conclusions are clear.
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Paweł Mościcki – philosopher, essayist and translator, works at the Institute of Literary investigation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where he heads the laboratory of Anthropology of Modernity. Book author: Theatre politics. An essay on engaging art (2008), Godard. Passengers (2010), The thought of potential. The anticipation of doctrine according to Giorgio Agamben (2013), We already have a past. Guy Debord and past as a battlefield (2015), Photo-constellations. Around Mark Piasecki (2016), Congested tradition snapshots (2017), Chaplin. Predicting the Present (2017), Football lessons (2019), Asylum (2022), Higher up-to-date. Studies on Dante's Modernity (2022), The continuity of misery. Bernhard, Handke (2023), Gaza. The thing about the culture of extermination (2025). He is the author of the visual atlas devoted to migration (refugeeatlas.com), the blog pawelmościcki.net and host of the podcast Another World.
