Seumas Milne
Seumas Milne is a columnist and Associate Editor on the Guardian and the paper’s former Comment Editor. He was previously the Guardian’s Labour Editor and a staff journalist on the Economist. He is the author of The Enemy Within and co-author of Beyond the Casino Economy.Blog
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Seumas Milne: 'It's Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves'
An extract from 'It's Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves' by Seumas Milne for the Guardian on Tuesday 20 November.
The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel's onslaught on Gaza, you'd think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power. Israel had every "right to defend itself",Barack Obama declared. "No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders."He was echoed by Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, who declared that the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas bore "principal responsibility" for Israel's bombardment of the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, most western media have echoed Israel's claim that its assault is in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks; the BBC speaks wearisomely of a conflict of "ancient hatreds".
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Explaining the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Today is Nakba Day - the annual day of commemmoration of the Palestinian catastrophe, the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians.
A selection of Verso's books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, from explanations to considered outcomes.
These are Verso's key books to explain the situation – what others should we include?
The Conflict Explained
The Case for Sanctions Against Israel edited by Audrea Lim
Leading international voices consider all sides of the conflict including boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. With contributions from Angela Davis, John Berger, Naomi Klein, Omar Barghouti, Dalit Baum and Rebecca Vilkomerson.
The Punishment of Gaza by Gideon Levy
The powerful narrative of Israel's invasion and control over Gaza - examining the abandonment of diplomacy in favour of raw military power, turning Gaza into an enormous open-air prison.
“Gideon Levy’s passionate and revealing account is an eloquent, even desperate, call to bring this shocking tragedy to an end, as can easily be done.”
– Noam Chomsky
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"It's time to win more than arguments" - The Revenge of History reviewed in the Guardian, Al Jazeera and the HuffPost
The heat of debate within Seumas Milne's The Revenge of History is stirring up further discussion in its reviews. Featured in Al Jazeera, the HuffPost and in the Guardian - reviewed by Verso's Owen Hatherley - Milne's collection of Guardian columns from 1997 to 2012 is a timely work of vengeful revisionism.
David Wearing, writing for Al Jazeera, marks out the trajectory of Milne's argument: that the neo-conservative "empire" in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall realistically only lasted for seven years. While the neo-liberals went head first into a future they believed to be theirs, the voices of the Left continued to speak of the potential for disaster, but when times are good, the voices of dissent are silenced even more than usual due to sheer unpopularity. The same is the case for Milne's prediction of greater resistance in Iraq post-Saddam Hussein. The Revenge of History proves that the "Cassandras have been vindicated, but this is worthless by itself, of benefit only to our own egos".
Wearing sees the necessity of Milne's work being specifically a collection of columns: the advice we didn't take was there all along and now that we're actually paying attention, what are we going to do?
