If I don’t clickbait the title people don’t click.
With the recent events happening in Gaza, I decided to first tackle this line of argument in my essay Zionism is antisemitism, and Palestine.
People were quick to say “yes Israel is bad, but Hamas…” (kidnapped 200 people, killed 1000, take your pick).
When you’re saying this, you’re actually saying that one israeli is worth 7 Palestinians. Read that again if you need to; it’s an ethnosupremacist position.
What is the logical conclusion of this argument? What is it supposed to achieve except convey empty platitudes and declaring to the world that you just don’t care enough to have any valuable input?
It’s fine not to care. I’m not your dad, I’m not going to try and change you.
But don’t declare it publicly. Don’t proudly say “well actually both sides are bad”. You don’t look smarter or wiser than anyone else who is taking a clear stance. You’re not taking the “middle ground”. Everyone who has taken sides and is trying to be productive about this (and not just the Gaza genocide, but really any situation where you can apply “both sides”) really doesn’t have time for this holier-than-thou bullshit.
Gaza “kidnapped” 200 settlers and that’s a war crime apparently. It’s not really, but whatever. Let’s say it is. Israel has killed 7000+ Palestinians in retaliation, now likely more than 10k as they cut off communications in Gaza last night.
Both sidesers: what’s your solution to this. If you say anything other than “I should not get involved” then you don’t actually believe both sides are bad and you are picking a side. It’s time you realize where you stand.
Two things can be bad at the same time. For example, Isreal stealing land from Palestinians is bad, and Israel doing a genocide on Palestinians is also bad. Those 2 things are bad at the same time!
Well that’s technically correct
“I think both things are bad!”
“Do you spend a roughly equal amount of time complaining about both of them?”
“Well… no…”
I find that, more often that not, the people who say those words will later proceed to disproportionally condemn only one of those things and bother themselves little with the other. “Both China and the US can be bad”, they say, and then proceed to spend infinitely more energy and time condemning the former and barely acknowledging the latter. Empty words, nothing more.
“Both sides bad” is how liberals adapt to the cognitive dissonance of personally disliking the idea of killings while living in a society that requires ongoing killings to function. If they really didn’t care, it’s way easier be a full-throated Zionist in the empire. It’s popular, it costs you nothing, and you don’t even have to think about it. To acknowledge that the empire requires every death to maintain the imperial standard of living is to completely alienate yourself from the rest of imperial society. Well adjusted people that don’t already hate their lives generally aren’t in a huge hurry to completely alienate themselves from everyone they know in real life over an issue that only exists on TV for them. Their humanity is in conflict with their class interest, and the adaptation is to focus their attention on the killings that don’t put them directly at odds with their imperial peers: You’re allowed to cry for the civilians as long as you condemn Hamas. You can criticize Netanyahu as long as you support “Israel’s right to defend itself”. You can dislike war, police shootings, mass incarceration, and poverty, so long as you pay your taxes and keep voting for people who will keep doing those things.
GOOD post
I do agree with the liberals that it’s bad when Hamas kills civilians in their fight against Israeli apartheid, which is why I believe Israel must be destroyed and replaced with a non-apartheid Palestinian state where Jews and Arabs can live together, so civilians stop dying.
The hostage thing is a great example of how liberals start from a conclusion and then find evidence to fit that conclusion: Hamas is bad not only because they killed people but also because they took old women and children hostage, the monsters. Meaning that, even if Hamas had not killed anyone, only taken hostages, they would still side with Israel. I have zero doubts that if Hamas had only kidnapped IDF soldiers libs would still be demanding unequivocal condemnations and talking about Israel’s right to defend itself.
Not to mention tiny little detail of Isntreal holding millions of hostages in Gaza.
Isntreal
haha, it’s obvious in hindsight, but I haven’t seen that before.
“Two things can be true at the same time” has the exact same energy and scent as “neither Washington nor Beijing”-- and I know for a fact no one who’s ever said “neither Washington nor Beijing” meant the former part of the line.
Libs downvoting without responding… come on, at least tell us why?
Even libs on reddit had more of a spine than lemmy libs when it came to trying to debate my essay when I posted it. At least they commented.
Spoiler: they didn’t even make a dent.
I saw that post. At least we did get a response here after I made this parent comment
Because OP is scarecrowing a large group of people.
Killing one innocent Israeli is wrong. Killing one innocent Palestinian is wrong. Killing 7 Palestinians for every 1 Israeli is also wrong. Yet OP claims that if you agree with any one of these then you cannot agree with all of the others.
Maybe some people think like the scarecrow OP is criticising - there’s certainly been a fair few Israelis on TV frothing at the mouth and dehumanising Palestinians - but in reality they are a noisy minority, albeit one that those in power are encouraging to garner their support.
Thanks for writing out your thinking on this explicitly, and for inviting discussion in that way.
Public support in Israel for Israeli military operations is typically very high (70% or more, often even above 80%). The only sense in which those supporting massively disproportionate violence and indiscriminate killing of civilians are a minority is in terms of rhetorical style— not the substance of supporting the actual operations that kill people.
Moreover, many of the Israelis on TV ‘frothing at the mouth’ are current or former government officials. To characterize them as a ‘tiny minority’ is extremely misleading about their role in effecting this violence.
Public support in Israel for Israeli military operations is typically over 80%, and often over 90%.
I’d question the nature of that support. I’m sure nearly every Israeli wants the military to step up their game in protecting them, however support for the recent bombings and ground assaults is significantly lower.
Moreover, many of the Israelis on TV ‘frothing at the mouth’ are current or former government officials. To characterize them as a ‘tiny minority’ is extremely misleading about their role in effecting this violence.
Absolutely, I rewrote that last statement a couple of times trying to find a good middle ground, but there are many in Israeli leadership roles behaving that way. It’s hard to say whether they genuinely feel that way themselves or if they’re just encouraging it for their own benefit - Netanyahu is probably the latter, in my opinion, but there have definitely been a few on TV that have clearly drunk the kool aid.
I still think that, over the entire population of Israel, people who think that way are in the minority. Most people in any nation just want peace and prosperity for themselves, rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
I’d question the nature of that support. I’m sure nearly every Israeli wants the military to step up their game in protecting them, however support for the recent bombings and ground assaults is significantly lower.
Well, a large supermajority of Israelis support continuing the current campaign, which is inarguably characterized by indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza, ‘until Hamas is completely eliminated’. This is a clear statement of support not just for the bombing which has so far taken place, but a claim that it must continue (indefinitely— until reaching a goal that is arguably impossible).
I’m sure nearly every Israeli wants the military to step up their game
Are you familiar with the concept of strategic depth? Given Israel’s limited size and accessible terrain, its geography profoundly lacks this feature. This means Israel’s defensive capabilities have a virtual ceiling, and the ability to make strategic retreats against an invasion is very limited.
For this reason, Israel has a long history of preferring offensive action over defensive action. And indeed, a large plurality of those polled by IVP, as reported on in the article cited above, have come out and said that Israel’s biggest mistake leading up to October 7 was failing to carry out more offensive operations in Gaza prior to the attack.
Calls for Israel to ‘step up its military game’ are intimately tied to offensive action in Israel, and the pretense that they could conceivably relate only to defensive measures for ‘protection’ or ‘safety’ is unsustainable under any historical scrutiny.
there are many in Israeli leadership roles behaving that way. It’s hard to say whether they genuinely feel that way themselves or if they’re just encouraging it for their own benefit - Netanyahu is probably the latter, in my opinion
Why such interest in the rhetoric when there is a growing pile of civilian corpses behind it? Who cares what is in Netanyahu’s heart when the evident fact is that his finger is pulling the trigger?
Most people in any nation just want peace and prosperity for themselves, rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
The demand for peace without justice is a demand to normalize violence. Are you familiar with the concept of ‘normalization’ in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, or in the BDS movement? If you aren’t, regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I urge you to take the time to review and at least consider this recent lecture on the concept. Peace is indeed vital for all human beings, but how peace is demanded is equally vital.
rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
And yet Israel, a country in which conscription is mandatory for both sexes, military training typically begins at age 14, a large supermajority of the population serves in the military, and whose military and intelligence agencies are rooted in paramilitaries that antedate the formal state by decades, has been engaged continuously in exactly such a project of forceful expulsion for more than a hundred years, without pause.
If this history is unfamiliar to you, or Palestinian displacement has been presented to you primarily as very recent or unintentional, you may find some deeper engagement with the topic enlightening, if challenging (and you may not agree with all the analysis you read, of course).
There are a large number of books, including books by Jewish Israeli scholars, currently available for free on this topic.
If you’re interested in diving deeper, outside the context of this argument, please let me know. If you have preferences for audiobooks, videos, or other formats, I can help you find something that works for you.
I’m also willing to do a ‘reading exchange’ with you if you’re open to that— I’ll read one related book of your choosing if, after you give me a sense of what texts most interest you, you agree to read one book I recommend, and we can discuss both books together.
I understand that the latter is a big time commitment, so no big deal if you can’t do it.
Well, a large supermajority of Israelis support continuing the current campaign
I think the source of this is Israeli government polling figures, which are even less trustworthy right now.
Why such interest in the rhetoric when there is a growing pile of civilian corpses behind it? Who cares what is in Netanyahu’s heart when the evident fact is that his finger is pulling the trigger?
It’s worthwhile to understand the motive behind pulling the trigger. I don’t think Netanyahu is striking Gaza out of vengeance for 7 October, I think he wanted something like that to happen to give him the excuse to unleash war. We can still only speculate on his true motives, but I believe understanding them is key to stopping it and preventing it in future.
You have made many good points, though, in particular framing things closer to how those living in the region see them, and I thank you for the extra reading/listening material. Suffice it to say, it is a deeply rooted issue with a complicated history, it’s hard to cover every facet of it all. I appreciate the offer for sharing more things to read, but for now I’ll stick with the links you and @Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml provided (still haven’t got all the way through that Hamas statement, but I’m hanging on to the tab).
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I still think that, over the entire population of Israel, people who think that way are in the minority. Most people in any nation just want peace and prosperity for themselves, rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
A bit optimistic. Do you think they would dismantle their own state over a desire for peace? This existence of the Israeli state is violence, it’s the opposite of peace. If people support that violence, they do not support peace. And if they are settling on Palestinian land, that is an act of war. The arbitrary desires of random people are superfluous.
Various cowardly historians have tirelessly tried to frame other genocides in a similar way, always seeking to excuse the atrocities because the historical figures involved, and the population at large didn’t always express intense desire to commit genocide. But it is superfluous, it’s a red herring, because they routinely hired people with a history of atrocity and reaped the benifits as if they expected them.
Noisy minority?
In a society where the following is normalised:
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Calling regular bombing of civilian population in Gaza “mowing the lawn”
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Organising large communal picnics atop a hill to watch the “fireworks” of aforementioned bombings for enjoyment
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Crowds loudly cheering and celebrating fire breaking out in Palestine mosque
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Calling restricting food inflow to Gaza to sustenance level “putting Arabs on diet”
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that noisy minority still occupies the land, destroys buildings indicriminately, slaughters everyone left and right, checks every item in the genocide and war crime longlist.
This kind of functional role of ‘bad settlers’ is well-documented in settler-colonialism, and there are even instances of leaders and government officials in the United States case admitting the necessity of ‘unofficial’ settler violence, from paramilitaries to illegal settlements and more.
Can any comrades with more recent contact with this material than I’ve had help me out with a citation on this, ideally ‘from the horse’s mouth’?
Yes this is largely correct after the US was born. It was fairly routine for the US to make a treaty and then for squatters to invade, putting pressure to make another treaty that would cede the land squatters occupy.
Militias were also very important and we’re often funded by state and federal backing. Various settler nightmares of slave revolt and Native resistance could move the frontier rabble to violence quickly. Native groups with season rounds would arrive at a seasonal ground to harvest food and find settlers were squatting. The militia would respond to “native invasion” with violence and the US could play dumb or incompetent.
There were occasions were it would not workout for settlers tho. They would be executed, or otherwise punished, by a Tribe for squatting. Some treaties allowed for this and the US could not legally retaliate. But this isn’t always the way it worked.
In fact, situations like this even lead to civil war among some nations, including the Creek Civil War which happens around the time of the war of 1812 and the death of Tecumseh.
Some factions of Native aristocracy adopted accommodationist approaches toward the US, utilizing chattle enslavement of African captives. Tecumseh came around to many tribes seeking to build a confederation to halt US expansion. Some of his relatives among the Creeks were sympathetic but others viewed the US as a necessary ally. Tecumseh was disappointed and promised to stamp the ground when he arrived back home in Shawnee territory and thus predicted the New Madrid faultline earthquake of 1811 which further radicalized many Creeks called the red stick Creeks. They decided to attack white settlement and killed several settlers, but some were caught and executed by the aristocratic council which sparked a Civil War. Andrew Jackson intervened in the war and won for the US, securing the treaty of fort Jackson which ceded large portions of so called Georgia and Alabama, despite the apparent loyalty of Creek aristocrats.
So the pressure of squatting settlers and their militias worked in numerous ways.
Thanks very much for fleshing out my half-thought and also for complicating the picture a bit. :)
I’m reading though Gerald Horne’s book on US settler colonialism soon, so hopefully that will help me internalize some of these details!
It doesn’t matter what “you” (someone who thinks both Hamas and Israel are wrong) think you’re arguing, as you are arguing something beyond what you think you are.
Killing one innocent Israeli is wrong. Killing one innocent Palestinian is wrong. Killing 7 Palestinians for every 1 Israeli is also wrong
These claims cannot be aligned like that together. “Everything is wrong” is the coward’s way out. The first two claims are still saying Killing 7 Palestinians for 1 israeli is acceptable. The resistance was wrong to kill or capture settlers. Israel was wrong to bomb Gaza. Still, objectively, 7000 Palestinians have died (maybe even 10k now) and only 900 Israelis died.
What is your solution then if you believe all three of those claims?
Source for death count if someone wants live figures: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker
Your core idea that when a conflict results in a 7-1 death ratio, the side with the least casualties is automatically wrong and the other automatically right, is childish.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. You made a brand new sentence.
Straight away you jump to a scarecrow argument again. You do not have the authority to say what I’m thinking, and you’re explicitly wrong with your claims of what that is.
Just because I’m saying everything is wrong does not mean I’m saying it’s all equally wrong. They’re all different measures of wrong.
What is your solution then if you believe all three of those claims?
This is a bullshit way to argue, as you’re trying to put all the onus of finding a solution to a problem that no one has solved in over 100 years onto me - as if you have any kind of viable solution. You’re just moaning, you haven’t offered a single productive insight here. Nonetheless, I like trying to solve problems.
The solution might be to take all their toys away, separate the two peoples and put them in time out for a few generations. However, that doesn’t allow war mongers to make war and profits. This is, in my opinion, the root cause of ongoing conflict - people stirring up other people to fight, so that they can be sold weapons.
I explicitly said at several points that “you” meant someone who thinks both Hamas and Israel are wrong. I didn’t say that’s what you believed.
If you were doing the devil’s advocate, then ask yourself why it was important for there to be one.
no one has solved in over 100 years onto me - as if you have any kind of viable solution
This is inaccurate. This “problem” explicitly started in 1948 when Palestine was partitioned. Why did this happen? I think the Haavara Agreement between Zionist Jews and Nazi Germany in 1933 had a decent amount to do with it.
You do know what we propose though, and it’s a one-state solution. I personally don’t go as far as to say Jewish people shouldn’t be able to live there, but this Zionism thing where Jewish people have the sole right to live there and nobody else has to go.
As I understand it the Zionist movement and initial wave of Jews started around 1880, however back then it was more like normal legitimate immigration. (Edit: Actually, it seems Jewish migration can be traced back as far as ~1500). Then, after WW1 the Ottoman empire was disbanded, Britain established a path for Jewish people to more easily gain citizenship and also divided the country up in 1917. 1933 and 1947 were further steps in that direction. The war in 1948 led to what we have now.
I agree with a one state solution. However, I feel like the only way to make that happen is to literally remove almost everyone from the region and have an external government established that represents all sides neutrally. This would essentially require disbanding the Israeli government, which is all but impossible - there is no existing pathway to do it under international law. Basically, the region should be managed like Jerusalem is supposed to be managed, by a neutral entity that represents each religion and group of people that has a stake in the area.
the only way to make that happen
Well, there’s always the wartime way. It’s pretty well established a government can be toppled by violence. The U.S. are experts in doing this.
In practice, Palestine succeeding in a military takeover of Israel is the most realistic good outcome.
In practice, Palestine succeeding in a military takeover of Israel is the most realistic good outcome.
In some sense, yes, but only if you ignore the fact that Palestinian armed forces explicitly want to kill all Israelis in their path. This was the goal in 1948, it was the goal 50 years ago in 1973 in the last Yom Kippur war, and it’s the same goal today. I don’t see that as better or worse than what we have now, it’s still one side set on killing everyone they oppose to achieve their goal. It wouldn’t be a true one-state solution, but genocide in the other direction.
For balance, I would say that Israeli forces also want to kill all Palestinians. The difference is they don’t openly say it - they’re more deceptive, which is a different kind of wrong. That, and assassinating impartial journalists or sinking allied ships, makes the Israeli side very guilty in their own right.
The good solution should be no genocide in either direction. Any solution that involves genocide is inherently wrong.
How about the other way around? ie, Israel reaching their end goal of pushing out all resisting Palestinians?
The main historic takeaway for me is that through the fall of the Ottoman empire and the period under the British mandate, everyone knew a vacuum would be created in '48, with substantial Arab and Jewish populations ready to seize it.
The UN tried the ‘clean’ solution of two states.
But both the nationalist Arabs as zionist Jews were ready to grab the entire territory for themselves, bullying the other side out or killing them if that was necessary.
If the zionists had lost that initial war, or any of the subsequent ones, we’d have seen the same but with the surpressor and oppressed reversed…
Zionists have no legitimate claim on Palestine. That was the reason for the wars. They were an occupier from day 1.
Zionists are funny, they have to twist reality every which way to get a flimsy, just barely coherent argument out.
“What would have happened to Zionists in Palestine if Israel had lost the war??” idk those who lived there before 1945 would have stayed and those that emigrated would have gone back home? Doesn’t seem as complicated as you make it seem.
The difference between those two factions vying for land is the the Arabs already lived there, while the Zionists were trying to conquer it after leaving Europe.
Thank you for responding. I hope you don’t mind if we explain ourselves further.
Was it wrong for the slaves to fight back against their oppressors in the Haitian Revolution?
Is it wrong for the Palestinians to defend themselves against this onslaught, just as Jews commemorate their own self-defense every year on Purim?
Esther 3:13:
the letters were sent by couriers to each of the royal provinces with the order to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews
Esther 8:11:
the king permitted the Jews in each and every city the right to assemble and defend themselves, to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the forces of any people or province hostile to them
There has to be a clear distinction between defending against oppression and indiscriminately attacking. Israel claims it is defending itself while it bombs Gaza - this is a ridiculous claim, they are clearly in an attacking posture, launching attacks into foreign territory while indiscriminately hitting civilians. Similarly, it is not right to claim that Hamas’ attack on 7 Oct was them defending themselves or fighting back against their oppressors as they mowed down civilians in the villages they lived in.
Nobody is saying Hamas (it was the whole resistance in Gaza but whatever I’m used to people reducing Gaza to Hamas) was “defending themselves”. “They have the right to defend themselves” is only ever said for “Israel”, because they don’t actually have the right to “defend themselves”. They’re allowed to defend against operations or individual attacks yes, but not retaliate or escalate these operations. Shooting back at the resistance attacking barracks = allowed, bombing Gaza or invading Gaza or taking resistance families hostage to stop the attack = not allowed.
Meanwhile Palestinians are allowed to liberate their country (or fight back against the oppressors as you said) including with violence.
This is recognized by UN Occupation Law.
Furthermore you claim Hamas “mowed down” civilians in the villages they lived in. But according to Occupation Law, the occupier (Israel) is not allowed to bring their population into the territory they occupy (Palestine). But they did. And so they place them in harm’s way.
Again this is recognized by Occupation Law. Attacking civilians in Germany when you’re the resistance in France = not allowed. Killing an accountant in Lyon working for the Nazis because he’s sending people to the camps = allowed.
All “civilians” in occupied Palestine are settlers, they are there illegally. Moreover, they all serve in the IOF at age 18, which makes them soldiers.
There is precedent for this, this is the whole basis of Occupation Law.
Not only that but Israel admitted that only 900 died on their side and 80% were military. Not only that, but survivors of Oct. 7 said that the IOF started shooting at them.
Please bring serious arguments. My central thesis remains strong.
Your argument falls apart because, while you’re using UN law to justify your position, the UN does not recognise the entire region of Palestine as occupied Palestinian territory.
I mean we can argue this from a position of personal morals if you prefer.
I don’t think settler lives matter. They knew what they were getting into and their “passport” gives them visa-free access to dozens of other countries in the world.
Let’s start from here.
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What about the lives of the children of settlers? People who were born into the situation and have no real say against it? Even if they speak out and vote against it, their voice is often drowned out. There have been several generations of Israelis now, they shouldn’t all be put to death over the actions of people before them.
I think taking the position that “xxx lives don’t matter” is deplorable, regardless of the target. The only morally right position is to weigh up the harm that a specific person may cause, if they will continue to cause excessive harm and have no possibility of rehabilitation then death may be objectively appropriate. Killing someone who is trying to kill someone else is appropriate, killing civilians and journalists is not.
Haha what a cop-out after your initial legal essay
You’re just parotting Arab nationalists claiming the entire territory belongs to the Arabs/muslims
Settlers are not civilians. They’re actively taking part in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by occupying stolen land. They do this willingly. And shame on them for involving their children in this.
Shame on them for having children? Shame on them for being born into a country that their parents/grandparents/great grandparents settled into?
Israelis have literally made the same argument in defence of killing Palestinian children. If one side is right in its argument, then so must the other - but they can’t both be right, so both statements can only be wrong.
I think they meant shame on them for knowingly living there with children when they know they would have to go into mandatory IDF service there
That and just bringing children into what is essentially an active conflict zone.
That’s a reasonable position. The IDF is something of a kool aid factory.
How many people are living in North-, Central- and South America? Do you know any (children) there? Do you believe they should all be killed? Where should they move to?
Hamas’ attack on 7 Oct was them defending themselves or fighting back against their oppressors as they mowed down civilians in the villages they lived in.
Hamas and eyewitnesses say they were careful to avoid civilians, and what do you mean “in the villages they lived in”?
Hamas and eyewitnesses say they were careful to avoid civilians
Source? There’s been plenty of evidence to the contrary, including videos directly from the attackers. Hell, they shot up a music festival.
what do you mean “in the villages they lived in”?
I mean to navigate around the traps you’re so keen to land me in.
Hamas: https://twitter.com/Aldanmarki/status/1712738101108384185
Eyewitness: https://t.me/mangopress/15970
I mean to navigate around the traps you’re so keen to land me in.
I’m just asking you to defend your claim…
That’s good to see. I’m still not convinced that the entire force that invaded were so restrained, and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I think any claim that they were all devout Muslims who wouldn’t hurt women and children is just as flawed as the claim that they were all inhuman monsters.
Your eyewitness video itself confirms that people lived there. I was careful not to call it “their” village, but as far as I’m aware the Kibbutzes were newly created settlements on previously uninhabitable land, in contrast to the West Bank where Israelis took over Palestinian homes after making them refugees.
Being bullied by zionists into condemning Hamas is weak shit tbh.
Actual zionist supporters live very ineffective political lives, and the most expression they have is online.
This is something I repeat often, because it needs repeating forever. You don’t see any pro-Israel protests anywhere. At most they try to frame 100 people as 10000. Meanwhile London Bridge was completely full of people yesterday. Literally packed to the brim of people protesting for Palestine.
Our governments are completely disconnected from the common folks, they support Israel but nobody else does. That’s the reason they make it so difficult to be pro-Palestine (declaring protests illegal, threatening vocal supporters into silence…), they don’t want you to realize just how popular the Palestinian cause actually is.
I hope it ends up waking up progressives who protested for Palestine and realize that we don’t live in democracies, and our governments take decisions between themselves without any regard for popular opinion.
When I first read the post title I thought it was gonna be about Hegelian Dialectics, very good post tho, especially the point about the “kidnappings” and hostage situation
Hegelian Dialectics
When you make a decent argument but then ignore it entirely so you can come to a bad conclusion: literally Hegel
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Thank you.
Whataboutism
Thank you for the essay. I learned (or perhaps unlearned) a lot from it, and have more than enough links for further reading.
However…
I hope that you will eventually find Hamas’ line on the issue of state secularity, because “Hamas not secular!!!” honestly has been my biggest, like, liberal brainworm wrt the Palestinian liberation conflict, and the essay didn’t manage to fully excise it from my noggin.
So my take on the war basically has been, “Support the PFLP and other explicitly secular leftist/anti-Zionist groups in the region; support the flight of Israeli refugees and their welcoming back to their true homelands around the world; support aid for Palestine, food, medical supplies, psychological support, so forth; support sabotage of Israeli infrastructure and economy; support strikes/resignations and sabotage at foreign weapons and munitions factories supplying Israel; agitate against Zionism; support Jewish and Palestinian communities around the world; etc.” — so basically, every way to support the Palestinian cause except direct support for Hamas (which I guess is really just, like, indirect support for Hamas, anyways…)
I have seen comparisons between Palestine now and China under its occupation. Essentially the type of stuff that Lenin wrote about in A Caricature of Marxism & Imperialist Economism, which I recently listened to S4A’s audiobook of. That the struggle for national liberation must be fought first before a socialist revolution can take place, and so all groups fighting for national liberation must be supported, including those which are not socialist or secular — that this lays fertile ground for socialist revolution later on. This is how things played out in China: the CPC and KMT fought alongside each other against Japan, and then the CPC fought against the KMT and pushed it to Taiwan.
This feels like a lot to gamble on, though — essentially that after the liberation conflict, there will be another conflict where the folks who we uncritically support will very definitely and certainly win — although… a free Palestine, even under a (“)reactionary(”) leadership, is still going to be better and more humane than the settler-colonial regime, so… What point am I even trying to make here?
…Honestly, I don’t know.
Some final notes:
- Some non-leftists seem to be under the impression that non-Jewish Palestinians want to expel Jews from Palestine, and I do not understand this. Aside from the fact that Palestinians are just not bloodthirsty savages, and that Palestine has always had Jews, and all that… Once the colonial system has been torn down, its last vestige would just be millions of highly skilled and educated immigrants, which is pretty useful to have after a liberation war, right?
- The current war, I’ve heard, has allowed for more “parallel governance” or however you call it to emerge in the region. That as infrastructure is destroyed and the Israeli government focuses on the war effort, that common people are replacing government services with their own popular ones. I don’t know much about this but it was mentioned in connection with anarchism.
I’m also curious about the history of Labor Zionism and of religious and ethnic minorities in the region, in particular Circassians. Can you point me to any good resources about these topics?
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I should be able to find the Hamas charter and then comb through it eventually.
Some things to consider is that there are Christians in Gaza and they “even” have churches.
I think most people, some in good faith and some in bad faith, think that being non-secular means being intolerant. But secularism only means there is no promoted religion, there’s the separation of church and state. Hamas has been clear that they they want a multireligious state of Palestine where Jews and Christians will be welcomed.
Indonesia is not secular for example and while as a tourist you should follow the laws (as in all countries), it’s also a huge tourist spot where millions of Europeans and Americans go every year without any issues.
On Reddit, the bad faith Zionists (when I posted my essay) said that Hamas does not want a multiplural republic because they are not secular. But the two are not opposites, and in fact in history Islam was the most progressive of the three Abrahamic religions when it came to accepting the other two.
When has Hamas said they want to welcome Jewish populations? I thought their charter was pretty vocal about not accepting Judaism: Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. “May the cowards never sleep.”
If Hamas is tolerant of Judaism, why are there no Jewish families in Gaza? Honest question, I’m not an expert on the situation, just trying to make sense of the facts.
I didn’t read your link, but in either case that is the old charter, when Hamas was a fledgling group without popular backing or input from the masses.
Latest charter was released in 2017.
- Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
- Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.
You’ve opened my third eye.
Glad to hear.
In either case, I think the correct position as a communist is to follow what the comrades in Palestine say. If the PFLP/DFLP/PFLP-GC support what the Qassam Brigades are doing, then I will repeat their position as long as they keep it. To liberal westerners, I will never condemn Hamas or the communist parties in Palestine.
Yes, absolutely.
If Hamas is tolerant of Judaism, why are there no Jewish families in Gaza? Honest question, I’m not an expert on the situation, just trying to make sense of the facts.
maybe because gaza is an open air prison that no one would move to willingly?
Honest question, I’m not an expert on the situation, just trying to make sense of the facts.
Please. You and I both know that’s a lie. Don’t take me for an idiot in your first interaction with me.
You don’t deserve a response, but maybe this will educate other people.
I thought their charter was pretty vocal about not accepting Judaism
Maybe get up to date lmao. Bro is citing something from 1988 as if the world hasn’t changed. Look at their 2017 charter instead.
why are there no Jewish families in Gaza?
Gaza was started as a refugee camp for Palestinians after the Nakba in 1948. Eventually they built a city there to try and get some semblance of normal life back. You’re not gonna bait me into saying there were Zionists living in Gaza until 2005 when Hamas drove the IOF out lmao. Too young, too naive.
Please. You and I both know that’s a lie.
Do I sound like an expert? I’m genuinely trying to understand. I haven’t kept up on the most recent charter, that was useful information, thank you.
Gaza was started as a refugee camp for Palestinians after the Nakba in 1948…
Haven’t people been living in Gaza for centuries? Maybe it was called something else before. Did the Jewish families leave in 1948?
Haven’t people been living in Gaza for centuries? Maybe it was called something else before. Did the Jewish families leave in 1948?
I didn’t agree with their initial hostility to you, but this sentence genuinely sounds like sealioning.
You may educate yourself about Palestine. In 1948 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, and Jewish families already living in Palestine were forced to either go with them if they supported their Arab compatriots, or stay and live in the stolen lands. Migration of mostly white mostly affluent people was fostered to “israel” by the west to cement this injustice.
Gaza and West Bank are similar to reservations in NA, although much more violent (in the sense of the state’s violence). No one would willingly subject themselves to living there unless they had some connection to the land (Palestinians) and hoped to return to a vibrant and free Palestine.
I mean your attempt at concern trolling is pretty blatant. You don’t know much but you know Zionist propaganda, how does that happen!
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I listened to the Trueanon episode with Norman Finkelstein and I think he articulated things pretty well. Basically what else were they suppose to do? If they’d broken out of the fence and then threw down their guns and stood waving protest signs there they’d have been massacred and Israel would have claimed they were armed.
If they’d broken out then all ran away, Israel would have launched a massive effort to hunt them down and kill them and it would have been pointless, no liberals would have done anything, it would have been ignored (he brought up how some Palestinians escaped a maximum security prison, got back to Gaza and there was celebration, until within 48 hours the Israelis had murdered all 3 of them).
They tried the whole peaceful approach in the great march of return, they were gunned down, snipers murdered kids, they shot out people’s knee-caps condemning them to joblessness, a life of no prospects and suicide. So what else were they supposed to do? And the only answer that makes sense from liberals who support this is to quietly sit there and die so the liberals can later feel badly about it.
So there’s only one bad side. And it’s the side that hasn’t taken peace or giving the Palestinians a state seriously. It’s the side where western governments ignore horrendous atrocities against children for years, decades, openly documented with video and photo evidence, they don’t pressure Israel to do anything in all that time other than maybe hide it better. It’s the side that ignores settler terrorism.
Gaza “kidnapped” 200 settlers and that’s a war crime apparently. It’s not really, but whatever. Let’s say it is. Israel has killed 7000+ Palestinians in retaliation, now likely more than 10k as they cut off communications in Gaza last night.
Speaking of which, dont they risk killing those very hostages they are using as an excuse by doing that? By airstriking Hamas bases they might kill the hostages, and they know that, I assume. I don’t see how anyone knowing about the IOF strikes can’t see that all the posturing about the hostages and civilians is nothing but excuses.
~60 POWs have already died so yes, their directive now is to kill them.
