1 Hiroshima, 6th August 1945
2 Holocaust, 1941-1945
3 Fergusson’s article
Gaza and Ukraine
Gaza
Ukraine
What Palestinians think
Opinions in and about Israel and Palestine (2023-2024)
A Palestinian state
Fergusson’s world view: the West and its foes
4 Sophisticated discourse
5 Conceptual framework
One-sided action in a sequence of actions … in a sequence of rounds … in a system
6 Links to my writings
1 Hiroshima, 6th August 1945
One action by one man killed 78,000 people instantly*. Of course this single action was surrounded by complexity but in this single episode we have an extreme case of power expressed in a one-sided negative action. One side has the power to cause harm to the other side without the other side having the power to reciprocate.
*[Definitions and estimates vary.]
What happened at Hiroshima, BBC 1:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002gtq0/what-happened-at-series-1-what-happened-at-hiroshima.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki.
The Times, 6 August 2025:
“Second sun.
The 80th anniversary of the attack on Hiroshima is a reminder of human folly.
… Nuclear weapons are not really weapons. They are monstrosities created by a species that has shown itself incapable of matching technological prowess with wisdom. Despite its obscenity, the bomb retains a seductive attraction for nations aspiring great power status.
Even now, Vladimir Putin … nuclear weapons promising mutually assured destruction. Even Mr Putin must realise that victory in nuclear war is, like Tolstoy, fiction.”
Editorial, 23.
A second atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Some who had survived Hiroshima also experienced Nagasaki:
“How I survived the two atomic bombs. Ayana Hirashima was at school in Hiroshima when the first weapon fell 80 years ago today. She then fled to Nagasaki, where she found a radioactive wasteland.” 24-25.
2 Holocaust, 1941-1945
Around six million Jews were killed. Genocide. Again an extreme case of power expressed in a one-sided negative action – in this case a system of actions.
[The next section relates to an article by Fergusson discussing Gaza and Ukraine. He notes “the fundamental difference between the IDF and Hitler’s murderous legions” – in relation to Bartov’s “searing work”, The Eastern Front, 1941-1945. German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare.]
What happened at Auschwitz, BBC 1:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust.
3 Fergusson’s article
Gaza and Ukraine
And now we come to the present day. Gaza and Ukraine. Both, I would argue, are also extreme cases of power expressed in a one-sided negative action …
… but are they cases of genocide? This is the question addressed by Niall Fergusson in his Weekend Essay in The Times. His conclusion is in his title:
“A genocide is under way – but it’s not in Gaza.”
(August 2 2025: 32-33).
Gaza
In his article Fergusson identifies a number of people who do argue that what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide (see List A below). However Fergusson regards the claim as fallacious. He agrees the war is brutal and that “one can criticise the way Israel has waged this war” … “but one cannot call this nasty war genocide”.
Fergusson then considers how genocide has been defined, starting with Lemkin’s pioneering work and its account in Samantha Power’s A Problem from Hell (2002). He considers the UN Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Article II refers to an intention involving one or more of five acts. Fergusson says: “One may claim that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are doing at least three of these things. But is it IDF’s intention to destroy, in whole or in part the Palestinians as a people?”
In answer to this question Fergusson cites Professor John Spencer who has been embedded with the IDF and has interviewed the Israeli prime minister and other members of the government. Spencer concludes “nothing I have seen or studied resembles genocide or genocidal intent.” Fergusson also notes Bartov’s comment that “Israel has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history has delivered to an enemy population during wartime” – although Bartov does also state that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people”.
List A Those who think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (noted by Fergusson)
Iran and its proxies
left-wing politicians
right-wing populists
liberal media
Amnesty International (2024)
Francesca Albanese (UN, West Bank and Gaza)
South African government
“some reputable writers”: Shmuel Lederman, Melanie O’Brien, Martin Shaw, A Dirk Moses, Raz Segal, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman, Omer Bartov.
Display 1 Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide
Genocide is “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious as such”:
.(a) Killing members of the group;
.(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
.(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
.(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
.(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Ukraine
Fergusson then turns his attention to Ukraine. He says that Putin has explicitly stated the genocide intention and Russia has deployed all five methods of genocide. The intention is expressed in Putin’s On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians (2021).
https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/tt382m/pdf
In particular Fergusson refers to Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine, noting “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”:
19,456 (maybe 35,000) Ukrainian children have been taken into Russia …
… 43 children’s camps, at least 32 of which are explicitly ‘re-education facilities’.
… adoption … conscription
Also “The Russian government does intend to kill civilians.”
June: 232 killed and 1,343 injured, a total of 1,575;
First half of this year: 6,754 killed or injured;
Since February 2022: 13,580 killed including 716 children.
“Russia’s bot army floods Ukraine with fake news.
Russia doesn’t just yearn for physical territorial claim; it wants cultural and linguistic homogeneity within all ex-Soviet states and beyond.”
The Times, August 6 2025: 25.
What Palestinians think
Fergusson presents an account of what Palestinians think, based on the report of a study by The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in May 2025. He notes their view of:
the Palestinian Authority: satisfaction less than for Hamas
Fatah: satisfaction less than for Hamas
Hamas: satisfaction down from 64% to 43%
disarming Hamas: 64% opposed
disbelief of Oct 7 atrocities: nine out of ten
The PCPSR report summary:
“Favorability of the October 7 attack, the belief that Hamas will win the war, and support for Hamas continue to decline, but the overwhelming majority is opposed to Hamas disarmament and does not believe that release of the hostages will bring an end to the war. Nonetheless, about half of Gazans support the anti-Hamas demonstrations and almost half want to leave the Gaza Strip if they could. Support for the two-state solution remains unchanged but support for armed struggle drops.”
link to
https://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2095%20press%20release%206May2025%20ENGLISH.pdf
Opinions in and about Israel and Palestine (2023-2024)
See chapters 5, 6 and 7 of my draft online book (2024):
5 World opinion (14 pages)
6 National opinion (25 pages)
7 National voting (10 pages)
A Palestinian state
[When I was an infant there was a Palestinian state … and as a small boy my stamp album had Palestinian stamps … but it existed only in the form of the British mandate.]
https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/World-War-I-and-after
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine
Fergusson uses the findings about current Palestinian opinion as part of his argument against current ideas about a Palestinian state:
“Palestinian state is just a fantasy … nothing remotely like a Palestinian state exists today. Nor is one likely to exist at any point in the foreseeable future.”
The issue is currently front-page news in The Times:
July 25: France vows to recognise the state of Palestine
July 27: The battle to recognise Palestine [The Observer]
July 28: Starmer to press Trump on Gaza
July 30: Israel blasts Starmer over recognition of Palestine
July 31: Palestine vow breaks law, claim top lawyers
August 1: Trump envoy heads for Gaza to see ‘dire situation’ first hand
August 4: Backlash after Hamas praises Starmer move
August 5: Britain is giving prize for terrorism, say Israelis
The “top lawyers” point inter alia to the Montevideo Convention of 1933 which laid out four key criteria for statehood in international law. A letter from Baroness Deech argues that Palestine does not meet these criteria (July 31, 26). Four days later a letter from Baroness Kennedy argued that it did (August 4, 24).
Deech notes a lack of certainty about borders, people being referred to as refugees and hence not being in their own state, not one government but two, and being incapable of making binding treaties or of joining forces. In reply Kennedy notes that 140 states have recognised Palestine and that in 2011 William Hague said that Palestine “largely fulfils the criteria for UN membership, including statehood”. The population is that of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. The territory is the Occupied Palestinian Territories*. The government is the Palestine Liberation Organisation and its executive the Palestinian Authority. Palestine has observer status at the UN and maintains relations with other states. Three letters disagreed with Kennedy (August 5, 20), noting the different parties in the West Bank and Gaza, noting the presence of Hamas and the opposition of Israel. More favourable is Lord Soley who sees it as laying the grounds for negotiation.
.*:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-on-the-occupied-palestinian-territories ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine ;
Display 2 Montevideo Convention of 1933
Four key criteria for statehood in international law
A state must possess a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Fergusson’s world view: the West and its foes
Fergusson frames his discussion in terms of a world conflict between Western democracies W and their tyrannical authoritarian foes F … between US, UK, Europe, Ukraine and Israel on the one hand and the axis of Russia, Hamas, Iran and China on the other.
Within the West, W, are two groups, one group W+ energetically pursuing the interest and “victory” of the West and seeking to defeat our foes; and the other group, W-, who “care more about [their] own moral superiority”, “[their] own home comforts”, focusing more on the faults of the West than the faults of its foes, “expending energy on luxury beliefs” and thus help F “to bring about the defeat of the West”, not noticing how F – “through the social channels they know so well how to manipulate” - help them (W-) “to be the useful idiot you are.” These are the final seven words of Fergusson’s essay.
The destruction of Israel and Ukraine “would significantly worsen the West’s strategic position and strengthen that of the axis …” … our support is “equivocal” and “hypocritical” … “sanctimonious” and “erroneous”.
With respect to the relationships between the West and its foes, and between Western hawks and Western doves, Fergusson strongly expresses the ‘self positive, other negative’ or ‘loving the self but not the other’ pattern of opinion.
4 Sophisticated discourse
Fergusson’s reasoning displays much welcome sophistication but there are one or two places (see above) where my taste would be for a discourse which is more respectful of those with different opinions.
Quite separately and on a quite different substantive topic Daniel Finkelstein writes: “… I am writing … because of something I absolutely have made my mind about. Indeed, something I feel fiercely about. I am writing about [this topic] as a protest at the way we conduct politics. Without nuance, or patience, or a sense of proportion.”
“… The heated discourse … highlights how a lack of patience is corroding modern politics.”
The Times, August 6 2025: 19.
5 Conceptual framework
The situations which we have been discussing have each had a rich specific detailed complexity but still I find it helpful to think of the situations as sharing the same abstract feature of a one-sided negative action. This notion can be related to a previous report where I discussed positive and negative relationship patterns (1). One of the patterns was reciprocated antipathy (or self positive, other negative … or loving the self but not the other).
.(1) see the third section in Loving the self, but not the other … USA election and religion
What this earlier discussion did not consider and which has now been considered in this report is the distribution of power in the relationship. The focus here has been on situations where power is very unevenly distributed. The following section considers how a one-sided action fits in to the broader pattern of events.
One-sided action in a sequence of actions … in a sequence of rounds … in a system
Relationships involve interaction and one-sided actions are embedded in a system of actions, possibly a sequence of actions.
Notable one-sided actions can occur in the middle of the sequence. One example is the case of the German and Italian bombing of Guernica in the middle of the Spanish Civil War.
“Which painter captured Spain’s soul? … Picasso’s Guernica or …”
The Times, August 6 2025, 27.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica
Of particular interest are the actions which start the sequence and the actions which bring the sequence to an end.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs had brought the war with Japan to an end – whereas US involvement in the war had started with Japan’s one-sided attack on Pearl Harbour.
The current IDF action in Gaza seems something like an end phase although the end is still unclear and debated (see below). It had started with the one-sided Hamas attack of October 7 2023.
“Netanyahu clashed with military chiefs over plan to occupy Gaza.”
The Times, 6 August 2025, 26.
“RAF still flying spy missions on Gaza … to help Israel find hostages as Palestinians are starved and killed, government sources have confirmed.”
The Times, 6 August 2025, 11.
Moreover a sequence of actions can be just one round in a sequence of rounds. The current round in Gaza might end in the occupation of (all of) Gaza, but there have been previous rounds with one of the previous rounds also ending with the occupation of Gaza, an occupation which ended in 2005.
Similarly the current war in Ukraine initiated by the Russian invasion of 2022 was preceded by a previous round, the invasion of 2014.
What brings about the start of the next round is open to debate. Whereas some argue that the threat of NATO expansion prompted the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, others such as former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko argue that NATO’s failure to bring Ukraine into NATO emboldened Putin to invade.
“Ukraine’s former PM: The West betrayed us.
Zelensky rival [says] the path to war was set when leaders failed to back NATO bid.”
The Times, 5 August 2025, 22.
6 My writings
The Ukraine situation is complex as is the Israel-Palestine situation.
Ukraine ... and World Society 2023.
Israel and Palestine: self and other, positive and negative; 2023.
Like Fergusson I acknowledge that the international system is a factor, what Fergusson refers to as the West, I like to refer to as the European empire system.
The European empire system … Iran … parallel histories (2025)
However rather than a binary divide I see a distribution of countries in social space.
Nations and world: variation and self.
Within countries the distribution of public opinion has a certain abstract structure.
Trump: the Abstract Structure of Public Opinion, USA 2020
Rather than emphasising the negativity of conflict I think it would be better to emphasise positive systems.
My writings this year include:
USA power: self and other; positive and negative.
Trump talks to Putin … (1) Ukraine: from my archives
Trump week 6: UN; Macron, Stammer and Zelensky; Germany.
West moving east; and east moving west … memories and histories.
VE Day: today in the UK, tomorrow in Russia … Rus, Britannia, Third Reich.
Reform and Britannia … Poland … Love All Always or Prefer Those Like Ourselves?.
St Valentine’s Day: loving others … living with others
Mothers Day … the reciprocation of love.
And in 2024:
Loving the self, but not the other … USA election and religion
THE END