The Uses of Unreality: Gaza + The idea of a Jewish Homeland and the objection of Britain's only Jewish minister

Ceasefires, committees, and boards proliferate around Gaza. The gap between material conditions and the political fantasy surrounding them continues to widen.

We are in a period in which we are asked to doubt what we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and feel in our hearts.

We witness a murder carried out by a state official, and are told by senior ministers that it was an act of self-defence against a man - an emergency nurse- lying flat on the floor. We saw this in Minnesota.

The Portuguese political scientist Bruno Maçães shared this photograph of Gaza with the caption: ‘Have we, in human history, ever seen anything like this?’ Have we?

This is a time lifted straight from the canon of political dystopias. A time of euphemisms pushed to the edge of absurdity, to the point where we seriously begin to question our own sanity. We have been seeing this in Gaza.

We are told there is a ceasefire, and yet we continue to hear otherwise.

For the past two and a half years we have been systematically gaslighted by Israeli officials and IDF spokespersons. We were instructed not to trust figures or narratives coming from Gazan authorities. We were to…