- cross-posted to:
- tankie@lemmy.ml
- palestine@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- tankie@lemmy.ml
- palestine@lemmygrad.ml
I took this comment and made a post with it
https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2851590
I took this comment and made a post with it
https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2851590
I disagree. The only people who will think like this are liberals, and who gives a fuck what they think? Libs gonna lib, as they always have. Left-wingers (some of them, at least - I assume there were some who thought differently) have always been critical of colonialism and imperialism - Marx wrote scathingly about atrocities committed by the British against the Chinese and Engles had some thoughts about the English occupation of Ireland, for example. If it seems as though no-one cared about the Aboriginal Australians or the First Nations people, it was very likely because not as much was known about them; there were only so many socialist thinkers at the time, and they were probably more preoccupied by potential revolutions going on closer to home.
However, the surviving indigenous peoples of America and Australia certainly won't forget what happened to them, or what is still happening to them. The palestinians have the support not just of white European and American leftists like myself, but broadly of the Muslim diaspora community on those continents and the people of the Islamic nations surrounding Palestine. I know I certainly won't forget what Israel has done, nor will I ever think it was justified. And what happens when Uncle Sam finds it inconvenient or impossible to stand up for Israel anymore? I don't know for sure, but it will probably involve a lot more killing.
Who cares what liberals think? Certainly every world leader cares what liberals think, because capitalism is the current world economic system and liberalism is therefore the default hegemonic ideology of most of the world. Netanyahu doesn't give a shit if you personally don't forgive him. He knows that history has demonstrated that other states have been forgiven for larger crimes once enough time has past. He knows that other states will have a material interest in normalizing relations in the conditions that he believes will exist in the future, and so most people will forget any historical crimes that interfere with that day to day normalizing of relations when the dust settles.
That's the real difference of political opinion going on in the Israeli state: the most reactionary elements of Israeli settler society want to get the extermination out of the way quickly so that normalization can begin. They believe that the longer that the extermination remains incomplete, the more likely it is that it can be interrupted by resistance or intervention. The moderate Israeli settlers would prefer to conduct the extermination slowly. They believe a steady gradual expansion of settlements and reduction of the Palestinian population will eventually bring about the same end goal, but with a lower risk of creating a single incident big enough to justify external interference. The progressive Israeli settlers would prefer to handle Palestinian removal with something akin to the American Indian reservation system, where Palestinians can be walled off in isolated ghettos to be kept alive in a token sense and forgotten about.
In all cases, Zionists are unified in their political objective, and they'll continue pursuing it by whichever strategy they believe is most effective until they either succeed completely at removing the population, or are forced to stop by Palestinian armed resistance and international intervention. Israel won't stop while they still have infinite resources and imperial protection. The US won't stop pursing its material interest in the region out of boredom or coincidence. The US will only stop if some combination of international factors change so that further investment in the project would stop being economically viable.
Alright, but we still remember all the shit that happened to the indigenous people at the hands of European settlers, and more importantly, so do the indigenous peoples of the world. That's not going away, even if the liberal consensus is that it's all in the past and we should forget about it. This is all part of a historical process, and history doesn't end once the liberals say it does. It's all cause and effect. What I don't like about this post is that it's just handwringing about the state if things, thereby implying that these struggles are, in fact, in the past. If this is all going to be forgotten, then why do we bother talking about it? We should be documenting and discussing precisely so that it doesn't get forgotten.
Nothing I wrote here was intended as prescriptive advice for communists. I described how past settler colonialism informed present settler colonialism, because there's every reason to believe that similar conditions will produce similar results. I'm not claiming it's good, telling you how how you should feel about it, or telling you what you should do about it.
As historical materialists, we bother remembering and talking about the past to better inform strategies for changing the present. If we can't draw the right lessons from history, or apply those lessons in a way that changes things for the better, then remembering or talking for it's own sake is useless. Liberal settlers are more than happy to "keep the idea alive" and "remember" their victims so long as no action prevents them from making more victims to "acknowledge" in the future.