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!
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.
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.
"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.
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
"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.
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
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?
I disagree. Hamas represents a path imperfect national liberation. That’s worthy of our support as they have the clearest path over any other group
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.
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.
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.
Show
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!
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.
