Alonso Gurmendi Profile picture
Fellow in Human Rights & Politics @LSESociology | writes @opiniojuris & @TheInterceptBr | Editor @j_ufil | Streams @Twitch | Esp/Eng/Port | Views personal
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Dec 21, 2024 5 tweets 4 min read
Thread of Islamophobic and still un-community-noted tweets calling the AfD-supporting, Greater-Israel-advocate atheist attacker an “Islamist” and/or blaming all Muslims for his crimes.🧵

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Dec 13, 2024 19 tweets 6 min read
This thread is making the rounds, so let's test it. Why is it problematic to craft a standard so narrow that it concludes there was no genocide in Croatia/Gaza? Well, let's apply it to something we know was a genocide and see where we land. Let's imagine it's Germany in mid 1941 I don't think I need to convince you that The Holocaust was a genocide. It obviously was. It is the paradigmatic genocide. But where we may find some disagreement is *when* - when did the Holocaust become a genocide?
Nov 27, 2024 6 tweets 2 min read
Many are asking me what is a “Platt Amendment”, so here it goes.
After the 1898 Spanish-American War, the US ended up occupying Cuba. They did not want to annex it, because cheap Cuban sugar was bad for Colorado’s sugar beets industry, so the Senate came up with a compromise 🧵 The US would not annex Cuba and end its occupation on condition that the new independent Cuban republic amended its constitution to specifically state the following:

“That the government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty (…)”.
Nov 25, 2024 7 tweets 2 min read
This is an incredibly racist worldview. It essentialises Muslims into a single category (“the dominators”) against the overwhelming evidence that Israel’s own security actually depends on Muslim allies like Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf states It also discriminates against Muslim Israelis who are looked down as receiving the favour of rights in a non-Muslim state. Democracy is based on the idea that human rights protect minorities from the dictatorship of the majority, not on the mercy of the democratic dictators
Nov 21, 2024 31 tweets 7 min read
Tracking state reactions to the ICC Arrest Warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant, & Deif 🧵 Methodology notes:
Except for key actors (Israel, Palestine, US) I will only track MFA, HoS and HoG statements.
Simple retweets of the ICC press release are not counted
Nov 20, 2024 12 tweets 4 min read
Hen likes to portray himself as the friendly face of genocide denial, which is why him joining the talking point du jour, about the CIA estimating population growth in Gaza as proof there is no genocide, is rather out of character. It is a really bad & violent argument 🧵 Hen doesn’t specifically say it, but the claim is there between the lines: “if population grew, there can’t be a genocide under way”. This is of course patently false from the definition of genocide alone. Population decrease is simply not part of it Image
Nov 12, 2024 19 tweets 5 min read
In celebration of @FranceskAlbs recent standing ovations at both LSE and SOAS, let me highlight the main contributions her Reports have made to the way we understand the genocide of the Palestnian people in Gaza 🧵 .@FranceskAlbs' first and perhaps most important contribution is to put the issue of settler-colonialism front and centre of the discussion of genocide. In essence, genocide is not an accident, but a feature of colonialism; and it is not a rare find in colonial societies Image
Nov 1, 2024 6 tweets 1 min read
Many accounts have began to erase Palestinian history these past few days. One common take is the equation of Arabization with modern settler colonialism, as if Palestinians were the result of waves of population transfer from the Hejaz, replacing local communities. This is not only wrong, it is also dehumanising 🧵 Pre-modern conquests (like the Arab conquests) often (but not always) involved a change in elites and the establishment of some form of tributary system. In the Levant, this change of elites led the local population to “Arabize” over the centuries.
Oct 11, 2024 11 tweets 3 min read
Listening to people tell me “this is not what happened” reminds me of how I too grew up with a sanitised version of my country’s history, where the Spanish conquest of the Inca led to the creation of a post-racial Peruvian identity, where colonialism and racism play no role 🧵 Powerful cultural forces reinforce this idea. In this narrative, Peruvian indigenous people are the “minorities” that failed to acculturate into our post-racial, Western(ised) society and are thus misguidedly “opposed to progress”

scielo.org.pe/pdf/anthro/v27…
Oct 6, 2024 5 tweets 1 min read
Israel’s post Oct 7 policy has led to:
- 80k displaced Israelis
- Tel Aviv bombarded
- Hezbollah hitting Haifa
- Diplomatic isolation
- Pariah status among Gen-Z
- ICJ/ICC cases
- Downgraded credit ratings
- GDP growth stalled
Unrestrained war has shown it’s obvious uselessness Anyone who tells you all of this was “part of the plan” or “to be expected” is lying to you. Israel expected to recover what its strategic security doctrine calls “strategic deterrence” - the belief that “teaching the enemy a lesson” is a security imperative.
Oct 2, 2024 20 tweets 4 min read
I’m rly tired of the “what else where they supposed to do” brigade. The main reason why they are comfortable with Israel’s response is because it is happening “over there” where it is acceptable to bomb human beings into oblivion. Nobody would suggest doing this in London or NY🧵 It was patently obvious from the beginning that a broad and intense military response was, even under the most expansive definitions of self-defence, difficult to justify; not just because Israel is unlawfully occupying Gaza but bc of the urban nature of the conflict
Sep 18, 2024 10 tweets 3 min read
Tracking State reactions to recent attacks on Lebanese pagers 🧵 Lebanon 🇱🇧
“serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards”
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
Sep 17, 2024 6 tweets 1 min read
Re Israel's pager attack (I'm assuming it was Israel?), there’s two separate sets of applicable rules: the Jus in Bello (JIB) asks “was this a war crime?” and the Jus ad Bellum (JAB) asks “was this a violation of Lebanese sovereignty?”

Some initial thoughts 🧵: In theory, and provided certain conditions are met, it’s possible that an attack like this one could be legal under JIB.

Now, these are strict conditions. We don't know if Israel followed them and given past practice, we shouldn't assume it did
Sep 2, 2024 4 tweets 1 min read
So, when you read the actual decision, it is clear that what is at stake here is a concerted campaign to doxx a police officer and his family members to a group of people who recently tried to violently take over government institutions and where the risk of harm is significant Thanks to Musk sharing this decision online unaltered, for instance, I know now this police officer’s wife profession, I know the maiden name she uses to protect herself from attacks and I know which account I need to go visit to find her picture
Sep 1, 2024 15 tweets 4 min read
Adam Kirsch expands the logic of his argument re settler clolonialism in this interview for @TimesofIsrael.
It reveals many more fundamental misunderstandings about the concept, so I thought I’d offer some clarity 🧵

timesofisrael.com/a-literary-cri… Let’s start with his definition of colonialism, which once again unjustifiably constrains it to “societies founded by European colonization”. Describing the origin of anticolonial theory as a type of self-reflexivity by the colonial societies themselves is itself colonial Image
Aug 23, 2024 14 tweets 5 min read
I agree, we do not do enough to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan. So, let's see what is it we do thus far, so that we can understand what "too little" means, shall we? 🧵 The Taliban have been subjected to sanctions for their treatment of Afghan women since 1999, through UNSC Resolution 1267. Image
Aug 20, 2024 7 tweets 3 min read
Stares in...
- Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
- Pablo González Casanova's Sociología de la Explotación (1969)
- Edward Said's Zionism from the Perspective of its Victims (1979)
- Aníbal Quijano's Colonialidad y Racionalidad/Modernidad (1991)

AND SO MANY OTHERS Image Um... no. The whole point of the emergence of coloniality as a concept was that it is a set of relations, not a specific political process. You don't need "European settlers claiming res nullius" to establish a colonial relation. That just happens to be common in history. Image
Jul 23, 2024 22 tweets 4 min read
Judge Sebutinde’s Dissent has resurrected old claims that Israel is entitled to all of Palestinian Territory under the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. While this has encouraged many anti-Palestinian-rights actors, the argument remains as unconvincing as ever 🧵 Uti Possidetis is a doctrine that originates in the early 1800s during the independentist processes in Latin America, whose leaders used this Roman law concept to claim that colonial internal borders would continue after independence as the int’l borders of the new Latin states
Jul 20, 2024 39 tweets 9 min read
Tracking state reactions to the ICJ's Advisory Opinion on Israel's Policies and Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory 🧵 Qatar 🇶🇦
Jul 19, 2024 32 tweets 9 min read
From reading the Separate Opinions, it seems that except for Judge Sebutinde, the Court did not have many profound disagreements. This is important considering prior experience with the Court (remember Comma-Gate). Here, things seemed pretty straght-forward. Some thoughts 🧵 Abraham (🇫🇷), Tomka (🇸🇰) and Aurescu (🇷🇴) disagreed with the majority that the occupation could become illegal as a whole. They rather believed that Israel was doing illegal things in the context of an otherwise normal occupation Image
Jul 19, 2024 11 tweets 2 min read
"yeah yeah but it doesn't matter anyway"
Sure, this Opinion will not stop Israel in Gaza. But there's some things you should consider before dismissing this historic Opinion... 🧵 This case was never meant to be a reaction to Gaza. It began in Jan. 2023 as part of a broader effort to use the law in defence of Palestinian rights. It is meant to help increase the tools at the disposal of Palestinians. In this regard, it has been extremely successful