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by Jim Aitken
It is a ghastly thing to admit but we have become almost inured to the cruelty and barbarism meted out to the Palestinians of Gaza in particular, but also to the Palestinian population of the West Bank. There is an unrelenting horror show going on there and we can only imagine the pain and suffering that has been endured. Watching the news simply confirms a sense of helplessness many of us feel with our own government complicit in the scale of suffering, along with the complicity of most other governments including Arab ones.
Yet there is nothing really new in any of this. Such acts of callous cruelty have their own history deeply embedded in our imperial past. What links the slaughters of the past with what we see today is technological prowess and supremacy; is the use of fossil fuels.
Andreas Malm is a Swedish writer and an Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University. Naomi Klein has called him ‘one of the most original thinkers on the subject of climate change.’ Some of the titles of his most famous books give a good insight into his thinking – Fossil Capital: The rise of steam power and the roots of global warming (2016), How to blow up a Pipeline (2020), White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism (2021).
In ‘The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth’ (2024) Malm has given us a self-evident title that looks back at previous slaughters while making the now obvious link between warfare being waged by recourse to fossil fuel and the damage done to the planet. He reminds us that the US now ‘pumps more oil and gas than any country has ever done in history.’ Under Biden’s watch the US handed out 1,453 new licenses which was one fifth more than during Trump’s first term as President. This has accounted for more than half the global total of the 2020s so far. And, as we know, Trump, now back as President again, intends to ‘Drill, baby, drill’. In a crude way Trump is certainly more honest than Biden ever was on this issue.
The destruction of Palestine
Malm tells us that, ’Destruction is the constitutive experience of Palestinian life because the essence of the Zionist project is the destruction of Palestine.’ Though this may already be familiar to many, Malm then begins to suggest that the destruction of Palestine ‘is playing out against the backdrop of a different but related process of destruction: namely that of the planet’s climate system.’ The Amazon rainforest, he goes on to say, has been standing for 65 million years and in the last few decades global warming and deforestation is pushing this great lung of the world to a tipping point where it may no longer exist. This, he says, would be a different kind of Nakba.
And Malm then tells us that one month prior to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Storm Daniel hit the Libyan town of Derna. Such was the deluge that in one night 11,300 people lost their lives. This received scant reception in the western media. However, rescue teams from Gaza, well used to reclaiming life from rubble, went to Derna to aid the recovery process where a dozen of their number also died. While fossil fuel companies extract their goods ‘and put them up for combustion’ death is as inevitable as the obscene profits that are generated. Climate science, according to Malm, is fully aware that fossil fuels kill people randomly, indiscriminately ‘with a heavy concentration on poor people in the Global South.’ This comment accounts for the lack of media reaction to Derna and also accounts for western complicity in the genocide – and ecocide – of Gaza.
Malm’s narrative now takes us back to 1840 and to the time when Britannia ruled the waves. Britain was the first fossil fuel economy, and the one that spread its appeal across the globe. And it was steam power that came into being through the burning of our plentiful supplies of coal. This was also the early advent in the build-up in greenhouse gases. Britain, Malm says, turned ‘fossil capital … into fossil empire.’
The year 1840 was pivotal for world history, for the Middle East and for our climate system. It was the first time the British Empire ‘deployed steamboats in a major war.’ This technological development meant that ships no longer had to sail under the vagaries of the wind or ocean currents. Admiral Charles Napier said at the time, ‘Steam has gained such a complete conquest over the elements, it appears to me that we are now in possession of all that was required to make maritime war perfect.’
Britain had gone to war against Muhammad Ali, the pasha of Egypt. Though the pasha was nominally serving under the Ottoman Empire, his forces spread out and conquered the Hijaz and the Levant forming an Arab proto-empire. This put him on a collision course with London because at that time the Ottomans were useful in keeping a check on any Russian advance moving south and threatening the jewel in Britain’s crown that was India. A classic case of inter-imperialist rivalries.
Just as during the Wall Street Crash of 1929 when, in part, the overproduction of the car created economic turmoil, the cotton industry since the 1830s had produced ‘mountains of excess cotton thread and fabric coming out of the factories.’ It became imperative for Britain to find new markets. The Ottomans consented to an extremely good free trade agreement known as the Balta Liman Treaty.
Muhammad Ali, however, had built his own cotton factories along Egypt’s river Nile. It had become the largest industry of its kind outside Europe and the US. Ali sought no free trade deal whatsoever and placed tariffs and other protective measures around his own cotton industry so that its markets stretched as far as India. Palmerston called the pasha, ‘nothing but an arrogant barbarian.’ And in true imperialist spirit, Palmerston ordered the Royal Navy to assemble its steamboats under the command of Napier, and to sail to Beirut.
Napier’s favourite vessel was the Gorgon which was propelled by a 350 horsepower steam engine ‘with room for 380 tons of coal, 1,600 soldiers and six guns.’ Napier called it, ‘the first true fighting steamship.’ It would go on to destroy Beirut with the loss of over 1,000 lives. The pasha’s troops would now be chased along the coast. An exultant Palmerston then ordered an attack on the Palestinian town of Akka (also known as Acre) where he believed the decisive battle would take place. This town with its crusader walls had once held out against Napolean for six months in 1799 and for a similar timespan against the pasha in 1831 who then repaired the walls that Napier would confront.
Akka was duly ‘pulverised.’ The ability the steamers had to quickly change their positions was crucial. This victory meant though that ‘every living creature within an area of 60,000 square yards ceased to exist.’ The victory, Malm tells us, was one ‘for Britain in general and steam in particular.’ Napier now headed to Alexandria and told Ali that he would ‘lay Alexandria in ashes’ if he did not accept his terms. Palestine, currently held by British troops destroying the food supplies of Egyptian troops, was bargained for by the pasha. He would accept the extension of the Balta Liman Treaty and therefore he also accepted that Britain had destroyed ‘the Arab proto-empire by means of steam.’
And, of course, Britain would go on to project this power across the globe. Egypt’s cotton industry crumbled virtually overnight. The Nile was a slow-flowing river with no water power and there was no coal either. Egyptian manufacturing ‘ran overwhelmingly on animate power – oxen or mules or even human muscles impelling machines.’ After 1840 Egypt would sink into economic decline as would the rest of the Arab world, meaning that the region as a whole would lie in ‘subordination to the advanced capitalist countries of the West.’ Egypt would become an important market for British exports ‘and an even more important source of raw cotton.’ Egypt would later gain coal and steam but it was ‘coal and steam imported from Britain, used for the production and transportation of raw materials.’
This episode is rarely mentioned nowadays. The town that held out against Napoleon for six months fell to the British in three days, and this was of great fascination to the early Victorians. Malm then tells us that it was just after this victory for British ‘free trade’ that an interest in sending Jews to Palestine began to take shape. This was 57 years before the first Zionist Congress and 107 years before the Balfour Declaration.
Christian Zionism
Christian Zionism had started to develop in Britain in the 1830s. We should remind ourselves what this actually is first of all because the United States is currently frothing at the mouth with this belief. It is the view that Jews must be restored to Palestine and they will convert to Christianity, thus precipitating the second coming of Christ and usher in the Last Judgement. It is clearly an anti-Semitic viewpoint that is never spoken about or ever challenged politically, or even theologically.
The Earl of Shaftesbury was one of the main proponents of this belief and he was also related to Palmerston through marriage. Yet, this religious angle was never the main reason for the desired return of Jews to Palestine. Palmerston saw the return of Jews to Palestine as being the implanting of ‘a great number of wealthy capitalists.’ Moreover, Malm tells us more succinctly,’ giving Palestine to them would help unfetter capitalist development and prevent the rise of new recalcitrant challengers in the region.’ And these ‘recalcitrant challengers’ would be the Ottomans, the Pasha or whoever else may rise from the region.
It also seems that it was Shaftesbury who came up with the idea that Palestine was uninhabited. The same was said about South Africa and Australia, of course. These initial musings by imperialist rulers were clearly ahead of their time. Malm suggests,’ Zionism first existed at the level of superstructure, on the base of the fossil empire.’ It is also interesting to note that Aden was first occupied and annexed by Britain for use as a coaling depot for steamboats. And for the last year it has been heavily bombed by the US and Britain.
It is important to point out that Jews themselves were reluctant to make any move to Palestine at this stage. One Jewish scholar said,’ British Jewry was opposed to anything that might seem to impugn its status as wholly English.’ This was true of many European nations but, as we all know, this changed as a result of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
When the British Empire did acquire Palestine, it was achieved however, not by coal but by oil. It was Britain who facilitated the removal of Palestinians so that 100,000 Jews who had arrived could live there and this was all achieved through the use of oil. As Malm has it, ’Oil- based infrastructure tilted Palestine in the direction of the settlements on the coastal plains and further toward their patrons on the other side of the ocean.’ Britain exits the scene as the state of Israel is established but the US takes over this role – particularly after 1967, and sees in Israel ‘its value as a key strategic asset in the Middle East and a model regional policeman.’ The US oil companies all agree that their control of the oil deposits in the region would be ‘reinforced by having Israel as an ally in the region.’ If the 1840 campaign was about cotton, over a hundred and twenty seven years later it is about petroleum.
Malm now informs us of Israel’s role ‘in the ongoing fossil fuel frenzy.’ Exxon Mobil has been busy extracting oil in the Levant basin. Ironically, this has been along the coast from Beirut via Akka to Gaza. Two of the major gas fields discovered here are called Karish and Leviathan and they are claimed by Lebanon since they sit off her coast. In 2015 Germany sent Israel four warships to better defend Israeli interests. And in 2022 as the war in Ukraine created a crisis in the gas market, Israel became a key fossil fuel exporter to Germany and other EU states with gas and crude oil from the Karish and Leviathan fields.
When the October 7th attack by Hamas took place there was deep unease over the Tamar field just off the northern coast of Gaza. Chevron had to temporarily stop production. When the northern part of Gaza was reduced to rubble, Chevron started back production operations once again. It is also of interest to know that Israel is a major player in the expansion of oil and gas in the North Sea. The Israeli energy company Ithaca Energy not only operates off Akka but in the Shetland Islands. And Malm tells us ‘it owns one of the most destructive carbon bombs planted in the British sector of the North Sea, the Cambo field, and one fifth of another, the Rosebank field.’
Genocide in Palestine, helped by AI
The Israeli response to Tufan al-Aqsa, the October 7th attack on Israel, has been genocidal, or as Malm has it, ’technogenocidal.’ While all the Israeli military vehicles used in Gaza run on petroleum, the arms flown to Israel from the US have also been powered by petroleum. It is estimated that more than 5% of carbon emissions worldwide come from military flights across the world whereas civil aviation accounts for 3% of global emissions.
The genocide we have been witnessing ‘is unfolding at a time when the state of Israel is more deeply integrated in the primitive accumulation of fossil capital than ever.’ For Malm it is abundantly obvious that ‘the destruction of Palestine and the destruction of earth play out in broad daylight.’ Yet, it is incredible to think that a technologically inferior player could do what it did on October 7th.
This is not to condone it but just to state that it happened against one of the world’s most technologically advanced nations. According to Malm:
The US could not accept that the resistance flashed through its primary base in the Middle East as if it were a spider’s web; it could not afford to see its own military machinery so humiliated. Israel and the US shared the imperative of restored deterrence.
As we know this dominance has been genocidally restored. The mass killing and destruction was achieved not just by fossil fuels but with AI. The somewhat blasphemously named system The Gospel processed enormous amounts of data about the civilian population and infrastructure to generate what Malm calls ‘a mass assassination factory’ with its ‘emphasis on quantity and not on quality.’
Other AI systems called Where’s Daddy? and Lavender produced killing lists with any number of civilian lives attached. For Malm this suggests that that the occupation ‘decided to kill without inhibition and delegated oversight to the killing machine itself.’
For Netanyahu, of course, he is fighting for civilisation against barbarism – just as the US and other western nations see it as well. The events since October 7th until now confirm a killing machine in action ‘combining the muscle of petroleum with the mind of algorithms.’ This is today’s world and the refinement of killing systems has been going on since before 1840. It was Frantz Fanon in his book ‘The Wretched of the Earth (1961)’ who sums up fairly well what Israel’s – and America’s – show of genocidal brutality is actually about – ‘The colonist is an exhibitionist. His safety concerns lead him to remind the colonised out loud: ‘Here I am master.’ And those safety concerns are as much about oil and gas as they are people.
