Publications - this and that

My book The Rape of Palestine: A Mandate Chronology, also available for €108 as 2 Vols hardcopy or €5.98 as an ebook at Tredition: https://shop.tredition.com/search/dGhlIHJhcGUgb2YgcGFsZXN0aW5l

From about 1918 through 15 May 1948 the UK ran the colony Palestine disguised as a 'Mandate' from the League of Nations. For 30 years the indigenous Palestinians demanded their simple independence, while two other, vastly more powerful groups denied their demanded self-determination: the UK Government and international Zionists. In 490 separate, chronologically-ordered entries the book deals with the dialogue, such as it was, between the British and the indigenous Palestinians: manifestos, White Papers, resolutions, debates. In addition to this story of the robbery of Palestine from its rightful owners, it has a large bibliography and an index of 42 Mandate themes.

The Rape of Palestine A Mandate Chronolo

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Corrections of The Rape of Palestine.pdf

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Was does Hamas say it wants?

German version of my article analysing and comparing Hamas's 2 statements of principles from 1988 and 2017. It appeared in English on 30 November 2023 in the Palestine Chronicle: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-terrorist-organization-this-is-what-hamas-charters-say/

Was sagt die Hamas.pdf

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(Scroll down a bit for my articles on ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS.)

Below my articles advocating for all the rights of all the Palestinians, starting with the most recent.

What is the narrative: Decoupling Palestine from Zionism

The case for all the rights of all the Palestinians - the case for self-determination and liberation - can be fully described and argued for without even mentioning Zionism, Judaism, Jews, or the European 'Jewish problem'. Whoever the colonial occupier was or is, the fight is, and has been since the beginning of the British Mandate, for simple Palestinian independence. We need a Palestine-centered narrative from first principles. The Palestine Chronicle kindly published this article on 24 December 2023: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/what-is-the-narrative-decoupling-palestine-from-zionism/

From the River to the Sea: Really?

We activists in Palestine solidarity are encouraged to argue in our home countries (e.g. Switzerland, England, Turkey) for all the rights of all Palestinians, and at demonstrations to shout the slogan 'From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free'. We do this gladly. But the vision of Palestine free and independent from the River to the Sea, is fulfilled by only one political solution under discussion today: One Democratic State. The 4 demands of BDS, moreover, imply One Democratic State, although its leaders take no stand for or against the two-state or the one-democratic-state solution. I believe a Call for ODS, issued by Palestinians only - just as the 2005 Call for BDS was issued by Palestinians only - would through its authenticity find resonance in all countries outside Palestine. As a poster at a Palestinian demonstration in front of the White House recently said: 'Every Israeli city was once Sheikh Jarrah'. From the Palestine Chronicle 11 August 2021.

From the River to the Sea.pdf

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US versus BDS

The U.S.A., allegedly a champion of freedom of expression, is slowly outlawing fundamental criticism of Zionism and the Israeli state - often in the form of outlawing or penalising support for BDS. From the Palestine Chronicle 30 July 2019.

US versus BDS.pdf

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What does Israel 'occupy'?

From the Palestine Chronicle of 17 December 2018. The terms 'occupy' and 'occupation' are used sloppily by most commentators on Palestine. For the same reasons that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are uncontestedly 'occupied' - takeover by military force, rule against the will of the indigenous people - the rest of historic Palestine can be correctly described only as 'occupied'. - as Uri Davis pointed out over 40 years ago. Even some people who correctly maintain that all of Palestine is 'colonised' still use the phrase 'OPT', implying that 'Israel proper' is not 'occupying' its territory within the 'Green Line' - whereby Palestinians routinely talk of 'the 1948-occupied territories' and 'the 1967-occupied territories'. We should follow their use of language! Again, the brilliant Palestinian protest banner: 'Every Israeli city was once Sheikh Jarrah'.

What does Israel occupy.pdf

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Corbyn and Palestine: Hold Your Applause

Jeremy Corbyn failed to fight back successfully against the Zionist lobby's attacks on him because when it came to Palestine he had no coherent ideology. He 'supported Palestinian rights' but also supported the two-state solution, positions which are utterly contradictory. Not good enough. The only Western politician intellectually in position to succeed is US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who supports One Democratic State. From the Palestine Chronicle 4 October 2018.

Corbyn and Palestine Hold Your Applause.

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Which One Democratic State?

Appearing in Mondoweiss.net on 4 August 2018, three friends and I raised the differences between One Democratic State and bi-nationalism, which we regard as inconsistent with Palestine as a state of its (individual) citizens. It responded to an article by Jeff Halper, speaking for the newly-founded One Democratic State Campaign, in the same online journal on 3 May 2018, an article which also received criticism in those pages by Ofra Yeshua-Lyth and Naji El Khatib on 25 June 2018.

Which One Democratic State.pdf

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Palestine's legitimate citizenry

This appeared in summer 2018 in the academic journal Global Jurist. It argues that all Palestinians wherever they live have the right to citizenship in whatever state or states rule in historic Palestine. They were Mandate Palestine citizens but stripped of their Palestinian citizenship by Israel in 1948-1952. They meet the criterion of SERIOUS AFFECTEDNESS: the laws of Israel affect them so significantly that they have a right to participate in determining those laws. They have the right of return, and return implies return-as-citizens.

Alcott [Global Jurist] Palestine's Legit

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Self-determination: What is the legitimate self?

The Zionist lobby in England prevented the conference planned at the University of Southampton on Israel's legitimacy (www.israelpalestinelaw.com) in spring 2015 and again in spring 2016. The conference was then held at University College Cork and the Cork City Hall in Ireland 31 March - 2 April 2017. My paper for the conference argued that for Israel to be a legitimate state, it must enfranchise the whole of the legitimate citizenry belonging to whatever state rules between the river and the sea. All Palestinians, wherever they live, belong to this legitimate citizenry, so their re-enfranchisement is a necessary condition for Israel's legitimacy. The paper appeared in the international-law journal Global Jurist (2018) as 'Palestine's Legitimate Citizenry', DOI: 10.1515/gj-2018-0002

Alcott [Global Jurist] Palestine's Legit

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UK PSC Conference: As Gazans have said, Return is the key

This report in the Palestine Chronicle of 2 June 2018 covers the all-day conference on Right of Return organised by the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign as the result of a motion passed at its previous Annual General Meeting. One speaker stood out: Hazem Jamjoum. Without commitment to implement the Palestinians' non-abrogable individual right to return to their homes - including of course the descendants of those who were thrown out or otherwise fled and have not been allowed by Israel and the U.S. to return - no progress towards Palestinian liberation or peace can ever be made.

UK PSC Conference As Gazans Have Said Re

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One Democratic State: What's Happening?

Published in the Palestine Chronicle on 5 April 2018, I try here to capture the current state of the loose movement advocating One Democratic State in all of historic Palestine, a vision which includes the realisation of the Palestinians' Right of Return to their homes in Palestine and the restoration of Palestinians' legal titles to land taken from them starting in 1948. All Palestinians, wherever they live, and all present residents of historic Palestine would be the new, re-unified country's citizens.

ODS overview for Palestine Chronicle.pdf

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The Antisemitism Fallacy: Let's Focus on Palestinians

This article appeared in the Palestine Chronicle on 25 August 2017. It refutes the desperate argument brought by Zionists today that rejecting the state of Israel is antisemitic. That the colonial Jewish state in Palestine is Jewish is incidental; the reason that state should not exist, should be replaced by a normal democracy including all Palestinians within its citizenry, is that it is IN PALESTINE, at the expense of and against the will of the indigenous Palestinians. On this topic and all others we should set our own positive agenda, starting with the rights of Palestinians and refusing to let Zionists and the mainstream discourse set the terms. One can argue for the end of the state of Israel without evening mentioning Jews or Judaism; it is a consequence, a mere by-product, of the realisation of all the rights of all the Palestinians and is in no way motivated by antagonism towards Jews, which is the proper definition of antisemitism.

An Anti-Semitism Fallacy.pdf

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Shifting the Narrative: The 2017 Cork Conference

The radical idea of holding an academic conference challenging Israel's legitimacy - or rather upholding the exclusive legitimacy of a Palestinian state in Palestine - gestated for 6 years during which the British Zionist lobby banned its occurrence on British soil, and finally happened due to the courage of Palestine-solidarity activists and academics at the University of Cork in Ireland. In sum, the conference papers amounted to a shift in the narrative from the superficial to the fundamental. From the Palestine Chronicle of 9 April 2017.

Shifting the Narrative The Cork Conferen

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Long dossier: Expel Israel

45 short paragraphs arguing for the expulsion of Israel from the UN, plus some footnotes and relevant documents. A motion at the Annual General Meeting of the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) on 23 January 2016 requiring the PSC to lobby the UK Government to put forth a Security Council motion to expel Israel based on the UN Charter Article 6 was defeated 76-116. One can now sign a 38 degrees petition calling for Israel's expulsion from the UN.

Long dossier.pdf

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Ari Shavit's My Promised Land

This is my review in the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, edited by the historian Nur Masalha, of a book that comes as a relief because, following the notorious Benny Morris, it admits Zionism's crimes of massacres, ethnic cleansing, land theft and decades-long deception. This spares us arguing over the historical facts; we can move on to ethical and political judgment of Zionism's deeds. Shavit likes it, in the manner of 'It was either us or them.' His bottom line is preserving in Palestine, a part of the world that had nothing to do with persecution of Jews, not Jews themselves or any old Jewishness, but his own preferred brand of secular, Western European Jewishness. History will pass judgment on this immoral justification of brutal colonialism and ethnic cleansing preached by Shavit and his fans in the West like Peter Beinart, David Remnick and Jonathan Freedland.

Shavit review.pdf

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Fifty shades of soft Zionism

This was in Middle East Eye on 16 June 2015. It reports on a progressive 2-day event in London sponsored by Independent Jewish Voices on the Zionism-Palestinian conflict where however with one exception the speakers remained with Zionism, arguing for two states, or 'bi-nationalism' or equal rights between the river and the sea but without the refugees. The event was a snapshot of current cutting-edge thinking by people who have still not gone the last mile for ALL rights for ALL Palestinians. http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/shadings-zionism-1684507084

Fifty shades of soft Zionism.pdf

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Jonathan Freedland not suitable as Guardian editor

Freedland was mentioned in late 2014 in the press as a possible successor to Alan Rusbridger as chief editor of the Guardian. Believing his Zionist (racist) beliefs and writings unfit for the relatively decent and liberal Guardian, I analysed dozens of his past columns on the Zionism-Palestine conflict. I found a Palestinian-free zone, based on Freedland's emotional and familial ties to Israel. From Counterpunch 13 February 2015 http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/13/why-jonathan-freedland-isnt-fit-to-be-the-new-editor-in-chief-of-the-guardian/
Update March 2015: Katherine Viner has been named new chief editor but my criticism still holds, the more so as Freedland remains 'Executive Editor, Opinion, overseeing Comment is free, editorials and long reads'. He has mercifully let off a bit on the Israel/Jewishness topic and now focuses on Corbyn-bashing, Corbyn being a much softer Zionist than he and thus to be fought tooth and nail.

FREEDLAND IS NOT SUITABLE.pdf

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Disavow Gilad Atzmon or bury the hatchet?

Vexed by a split amongst supporters of One Democratic State in Palestine, I looked into the main dispute, that over the writings of Gilad Atzmon. This piece was in Counterpunch 1 February 2013. While criticising Atzmon on 5 points, it finds him innocent of the charges of 'anti-semitism', holocaust denial and usurpation of Palestinian voices. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/01/the-case-of-gilad-atzmon/

Regarding Atzmon, Bury the Hatchet.pdf

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From here on down my ecological-economics articles starting with the oldest one.

'John Rae and Thorstein Veblen', Journal of Economic Issues 38 (3) (2004), pp 765 - 786.

In 1834 John Rae wrote about what can be called 'display consumption' - otherwise known as conspicuous, status, prestige or competitive consumption. Such consumption raises overall levels of consumption, increasing negative environmental impact. It logically knows no limits, and very likely has evolutionary roots. In almost identical terms Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) developed the analysis a bit further. I later discovered that even before Rae, Jean-Baptiste Say in his Treatise (1803) had presented the much the same analysis.

1 2004 Rae & Veblen JEI.pdf

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'Jevons' Paradox', Ecological Economics 54 (1) (2005), pp 9 - 21.

In his 1865 book The Coal Question William Stanley Jevons gave a strong demonstration, both theoretical and empirical, that when technological change allows an input into economic production such as coal to produce more output in terms of goods and services, the macroeconomic result that more, not less, of the input gets demanded and consumed. Today this is known not only as Jevons' Paradox but as the rebound effect. If technological-efficiency rebound is at or even close to 100%, heightened resource-input efficiency will increase product (affluence) but not be effective in conserving the resource. Thus the efficiency strategy for lowering depletion and pollution rates is environmentally neutral or even counterproductive. Necessarily effective policies like caps on the resource are the only alternative.

2 2005 Jev Par EE 54 1 9-21.pdf

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'Historical overview of the Jevons Paradox in the literature'

This is a chapter in the 2008 book 'Jevons' Paradox: The Myth of Resource Efficiency', published by Earthscan and co-edited with Mario Giampietro, Kozo Mayumi and John Polimeni. Jevons in 1865 said his paradox - that increased efficiency in the use of coal led to more, not less, coal consumption - was easy to resolve. Why? Because he was steeped in the writings of William Petty, Richard Cantillon, Adam Smith, Lord Lauderdale, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Robert Malthus, James Mill, John Rae and John Stuart Mill, that's why. They explained why greater input productivity, through the price mechanism, increased demand so much that demand for the input outraced the sum of all the individual, temporary savings made in each use or application of the more-efficiently-used imput, be it labour, coal, or land.

3 2008 Earthscan Chapter.pdf

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'The sufficiency strategy: Would rich-world frugality lower environmental impact?' Ecological Economics 64 (4) (2008), pp 770-786.

It is said that if so-called 'over-consumers' would cut their consumption they would be personally better off and at the same time lower overall depletion and pollution in the world economy. However, very similar to the efficiency rebound there is a sufficiency rebound: Lowered demand by the voluntarily frugal lowers prices, enabling 'marginal consumers' to take up the slack. Effective overall demand for material inputs to production does not decline, rendering this sustainability strategy ineffective. It is not even certain that intra-generational justice is served, because the slack in demand can be taken up by other relatively rich people. The argument for personal benefits is moreover inconclusive. The sufficiency rebound is another phenomenon pointing to the sole effectiveness of caps on depletion and pollution.

4 2008 Suff Str EE 64 4 770-786.pdf

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'Energy rebound and economic growth: A review of the main issues and research needs', Energy 34 (2009), pp 370-376.

Written with Dr Reinhard Madlener, this article attempts to clarify the concepts in the confused rebound discussion: direct rebound, indirect rebound, engineering savings, backfire, the costs of technological efficiency increase, the analogy with labour-efficiency increases, where lies the burden of proof, etc. That technological efficiency increases are a driver of economic growth is undisputed. But how much resource depletion and pollution is entailed by a unit of 'economic growth'?

5 2009 Energy 34 370-376.pdf

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'Impact caps: Why population, affluence and technology strategies should be abandoned', Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010), pp 552-560.

Written for the first international degrowth conference in Paris, I take the formula I = PAT seriously. It says that the degree of environmental impact (depletion and pollution of all kinds of natural resources) is a product of the number of people, the amount of goods and services each on average consumes, and the amount of depletion and pollution that goes into producing the average unit of goods and services. It turns out that a change in any right-side factor changes the other right-side factors, meaning that any lowering of Population or Affluence or any raising of Technological efficiency causes the other two to rise, most likely leaving Impact unchanged or even higher ('backfire'). So one should write I = f(P, A, T). To lower Impact, one must do simply that: place caps (maxima) on resource consumption and pollution.

6 2010 Caps JCP 18 552-560.pdf

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Challenges to material prosperity and quality of life involving de-coupling resource use and economic growth (in German)

Written for the German Bundestag's Enquete-Komission in 2011, Reinhard Madlener and I reviewed energy-efficiency rebound research and found that economy-wide empirical estimates of rebound vary by an order of magnitude. Energy-efficiency policies are highly uncertain to reduce resource use because rebound is very high. Caps on energy extraction, on the other hand, while they work by definition in reducing environmental impact, have negative consequences for material prosperity, economic growth and, depending on how you look at it, quality of life.

Enquete-Gutachten online.pdf

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'Mill's Scissors: Structural change and the natural-resource inputs into labour', Journal of Cleaner Production 21 (2012), pp 83-92.

Heartfelt thanks to the editors of the Journal of Cleaner Production for publishing this iconoclastic piece - my favourite of my articles. We are told by green strategists that we can earn and spend the same amount of money, but on goods and services with lower 'environmental intensity', and thereby consume less of the environment. But this ignores that when we buy labour - as opposed to energy or materials - we are in effect buying the materials and resources that the recipient of the wages, salaries, dividends and rents then buys. Nature does not have a bank account - all payments go to people - so attempts to fit natural resources into economic Input-Output Analysis must fail. There is furthermore no empirical evidence that the structural change which has indeed taken place away from 'goods' and towards 'services' has led to reduced natural-resource consumption. We must face up to the fact that to reduce our ecological footprints we must earn and spend less.

7 2012 Mill's Scis JCP 21 83-92.pdf

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'Population matters in ecological economics', Ecological Economics 80 (2012), pp 109-120.

Yikes, an article claiming that human population size is globally at an unsustainably high level and arguing that the individual right, or freedom, to procreate must be balanced by the responsibility we have towards (1) our own offspring, (2) other animals, and (3) all future human beings. A version of this will soon be a chapter in the Routledge anthology 'Sustainability: Key Issues'. For ecological economics, and for the grassroots environmental movement, this issue has been taboo for over 20 years. On a planet with limited space, resources and beauty, however, we face a trade-off between higher human numbers and less poverty, greater animal welfare, species preservation and future-generation human well-being. Efficiency can do only so much.

8 2012 Pop Mats EE 80 109-120.pdf

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'Should degrowth embrace the job guarantee?' Journal of Cleaner Production 38 (2013), pp 56-60.

If there is one argument that trumps arguments for economic degrowth it is that economic shrinkage causes unemployment. There is a straightforward remedy for this, should it occur in spite of free-market forces 'clearing' the labour market at lower wages: the state as employer of last resort. Whoever wants work and can do a job decently, by some definition, should be guaranteed a job. Unemployment has severe psychological and social downsides. Other proposed remedies are indirect and uncertain: government anti-cyclical hiring schemes, deficit spending, or reducing working time per person. There are several real-life job-guarantee programs that seem to work.

9 2013 Job Guar JCP 38 56-60.pdf

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'Macro-economic rebound estimation using Granger causality tests', under review.

After an input is rendered more productive by means of new equipment, what changes in total 'rebound' consumption of that input are attributable to the increased productivity of the equipment? So far, so unclear? For example, we know that if overnight all lightbulbs use less electricity per produced lumen, there is some change in overall consumption of electricity. How do we find out the change in this input's consumption caused by the use of the new lightbulbs compared with the old ones? This task is tough or impossible using micro-economic means; 35 years of such research has left us with estimates of total energy-efficiency rebound varying by an order of magnitude. A near consensus has luckily emerged that it is much higher than 50%, and that therefore 'efficiency is not enough'. An approach as yet used too sparingly regresses Total Primary Energy Supply per unit of world GDP on Total Primary Energy Consumption - using world data.

Alcott & Marangi 2014.pdf

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Comments on Pirgmaier vs Daly, 2019

Starting in the mid-1960s Herman Daly and others such as Kenneth Boulding laid the foundations for ecological economics and steady-state economics, the distinguishing feature of both being the normative principle that the throughput of the economy - the natural resources put into it together with the degraded natural things, for instance C02, produced by it and deposited once again in nature - should be sustainble over the longest run. At sustainable levels of depletion and pollution throughput is prevented from growing by means of natural resource caps or quotas, i.e. by legal limitations to the biophysical scale of the human economy. Criticism has come not only from mainstream growth economics but from some people who style their ideas as even more ecological, radical or somehow deeper than steady-state economics. One example is an article in early 2017 in the journal Ecological Economics, Vol. 133, pages 52-61 by Elke Pirgmaier, a doctoral student at Leeds University. I wrote this critique of her critique of Daly and steady-state economics because it contains several fundamental misunderstandings and misrepresentations which are, unfortunately, widely shared in the degrowth community to which I consider myself a card-carrying member.

Comments on Pirgmaier vs Daly.pdf

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29 OCTOBER 2023 Gaza Battle

The press where I live - Zürich, Switzerland - has failed both professionally and morally since 7 October 2023. The NZZ, the Tages-Anzeiger, the Weltwoche, 20 Minuten are all HASBARA organs whose coverage is one-sided and is based on the unstated premise that a Jewish-Israeli life is worth (much) more than a Palestinian-Arab life. Disgusting. They apply a double standard in judging the actions of Hamas and the actions of the colonial-apartheid state in effect ruling Gaza, namely Israel. Unfortunately the two rather 'left' papers - Republik and the WochenZeitung - are only marginally better. As Daniel Binswanger, editor of Republik, titled his main article: 'We are all Israelis.' This is repulsive.

Example 1: Tages-Anzeiger published a list of 17 books (10 non-fiction, 7 'Belletristik') to help people understand the background to Gaza 2023. Guess how many Palestinian authors there were? One and a half, both not non-fiction: 1) Ghassan Kanafani's 83-page novella of 1969, Return to Haifa. That author was murdered by Mossad in 1972. 2) Samir El Youssef, who collaborated with Etgar Keret for a book of short stories. And these 'culture' editors call themselves journalists. Ridiculous.

Example 2: Big articles when Yocheved Lifschitz, the 85-year-old Israeli hostage released by Hamas, talked to the press. The things she said about 'going through hell' and the tunnels' being 'like a spiderweb' were duly recorded, but not her clear statement that she was in all respects treated very well by her captors. And no mention of how she turned and thanked and shook the hand of a Hamas soldier behind her before being led away by her daughter. Any sacrifice of journalistic and human integrity for the sake of HASBARA.

Example 3: The NZZ's Oliver Camenzind 'reported' on the demonstration/march in Zürich on Sat. 28 October. I was there. I saw and heard nothing remotely anti-semitic. The article claimed anti-semitic stuff was chanted, with no proof. That claim dominated the article, which means: even if there were two people who said something anti-semitic, or carried such a banner, focussing on that is a distortion. And of course the definition of 'anti-semitism' used is the absurd, morally dastardly one of equating anti-Israel with anti-Jew.

For me NZZ, Tagi, Weltwoche, WoZ and Republik are Zionist rags most likely unreliable on other topics. On this topic, they are both immoral and uninformed.

28 OCTOBER 2023 Gaza Battle

I stand unequivocally on the side of the Palestinian people in their fight against the colonial, apartheid state of Israel. Congratulations to this group who in its 'Statement of Solidarity with Palestine' on 13 October wrote, "The Feminist Library stands unequivocally with the Palestinian people in their long-enduring resistance to settler colonialism, apartheid, and occupation." Yes, with no ifs and buts.