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Projection at Cal Berkeley

Projected last night at the Free Palestine Encampment at Cal, Berkeley. Colonial capitalism drives the war machine that bulldozes people from Gaza, to the Congo, to the Philippines. It’s important for solarpunks to show up in solidarity with native peoples against imperialism. Sustainability depends on the knowledge and stewardship of native populations. And, most importantly, Zionist punks fuck off! -

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  • Though the projection is about solarpunk, a side note about the situation in Gaza...

    ...recently, the UN demining agency (I've forgotten their acronym) published an estimate of war damage in Gaza. They assessed that there was "more rubble in Gaza than Ukraine". Since that seemed unbelievable, I consulted various sources, among them a review by the Lund University Center for Middle-Eastern Studies named Monitoring Israel's Destruction of Gaza from Space.

    What I found out:

    • the UN measures war damage in kilograms of rubble per square meter
    • Gaza is tiny and densely populated
    • thus despite a hundred times less (approximation) munitions getting fired than in Ukraine, Gaza has massive damage to infrastructure
    • the rubble density is currently 300 kg / m2
    • the most damaged settlement is Gaza City (75% of buildings damaged or destroyed)
    • the least damaged settlement is Rafah (31% of buildings)
    • on average, 57% of houses are damaged or destroyed
    • war was waged in an un-evacuated city: this typically produces high civilian losses
    • the current estimate is 30 000, so Israel's response has caused 30 x more losses than the initial attack by Hamas
    • night time satellite photos suggest that electricity is missing in most of the strip
    • crop monitoring photos indicate that agriculture has mostly stopped (and irrigation is likely broken)

    For me, journalistic photos from Gaza most remind of what happened in Grozny, the capital of Chechnia during the First Chechen War (disproportionate amounts of Russian firepower reduced it to a trash heap).

    Since both sides are responsible for war crimes (Hamas at first and now Israel) and the military response has overshot any goal associated with justice, I support any action that makes the conflict stop. Hamas started this war, but Israel has gone far beyond sanity while responding. Later on, I think the leaders of both sides ought be brought before the International Criminal Court and answer charges of war crimes (which could take decades).

    How to ensure another war won't happen... much harder without structural change in both societies. Considering the way Israel currently functions and how the Palestinian Authority functioned in Gaza (Hamas militants took it over, things seem better on the West Bank), there's a high chance that someone from either side could ignite a new conflict in future.

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