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Meanwhile in Germany: I thought the article from "center left" newspaper taz about how evil Iran finances Palestinian terrorists was the worst I'd see during my morning doomscrolling, until I saw the Berliner Zeitung editorial about how to end the conflict whose blurb states "the author is a spokesman of Israeli forces".
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Aug 10, 2022 09:44
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Rushputin posted:Meanwhile in Germany: I thought the article from "center left" newspaper taz about how evil Iran finances Palestinian terrorists was the worst I'd see during my morning doomscrolling Hasn't Iran openly said they give money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad? I mean, it's not like they hide it. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Aug 10, 2022 |
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Aug 10, 2022 11:30
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Epicurius posted:Hasn't Iran openly said they give money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad? I mean, it's not like they hide it.
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Aug 10, 2022 12:29
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By popular demand posted:I feel much the same and if my financial and mental condition would have allowed it I'd move. France. I don't speak French but other than that it seemed the most suitable, so I'll just take the plunge and hope I can figure it out. I hear they're rude enough that I won't have much of a culture shock.
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Aug 10, 2022 15:31
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Epicurius posted:Hasn't Iran openly said they give money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad? I mean, it's not like they hide it. Why should they hide it? It's noble
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Aug 10, 2022 16:12
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paul_soccer12 posted:Why should they hide it? It's noble Please elaborate on what do you mean with “noble”.
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Aug 10, 2022 16:14
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Please elaborate on what do you mean with “noble”. Supporting the enemies of Israel is good and morally correct What did you think I meant
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Aug 10, 2022 16:33
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paul_soccer12 posted:Supporting the enemies of Israel is good and morally correct I was genuinely unsure what you mean, and thus the question.
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Aug 10, 2022 16:36
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paul_soccer12 posted:Supporting the enemies of Israel is good and morally correct Really, even Iran? Is it purely an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing?
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Aug 10, 2022 16:47
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The US and Israel are bad, therefore Russia, China, Iran, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are good. Sure, it's what a fox news addict believes leftists believe, but why not just go ahead and earnestly posit that.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:14
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Xander77 posted:The US and Israel are bad, therefore Russia, China, Iran, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are good. Sure, it's what a fox news addict believes leftists believe, but why not just go ahead and earnestly posit that. What do I care what a fox News addict believes
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Aug 10, 2022 17:23
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I think Israel should be allowed to defend itself from terrorism. Not sure what paul is getting at here.Xander77 posted:The US and Israel are bad, therefore Russia, China, Iran, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are good. Sure, it's what a fox news addict believes leftists believe, but why not just go ahead and earnestly posit that. I'm not an avid fox news watcher but are they fans of China, Iran, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad now?
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Aug 10, 2022 17:25
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I think it's good to support Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:26
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mobby_6kl posted:Really, even Iran? Is it purely an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing? it's complicated to argue against this, mostly because the statement 'theocratic petrostates sponsoring terrorism in the middle east should be opposed' puts you on a list of threats to American foreign policy, drone strike/dismemberment in an embassy optional
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Aug 10, 2022 17:45
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Isn't this dispute just the result of intentionally shedding nuance? This started as "supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad is good", and somewhere along the line someone equated that to "Hamas and Islamic Jihad are good" as if the two statements are equivalent, and now the conversation's all mixed up. It's possible for two opposing groups to both be bad. And it's even possible for one side to be doing good and important things despite being bad. It's even possible for it to be a good thing to finance a bad group. Just because a group is opposed to Israel doesn't necessarily mean that it's automatically good and moral. It's quite possible that they may be good and moral (both Hamas and Islamic Jihad involve themselves in providing social services and support in Gaza, for example), but it's not automatically the case. However, it can still be a good thing to fund Palestinian resistance regardless of whether the groups are good or bad, if only because Israel's capacity to do harm is far greater than Hamas or Islamic Jihad's is.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:47
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Epicurius posted:Hasn't Iran openly said they give money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad? I mean, it's not like they hide it. Oh sure, I was more annoyed at them trotting out some tired old argument or another like clockwork, but that's what they always do when Israel blows things up. What I did not expect was a newspaper just putting out straight up propaganda directly from an official of the occupying army, framed as an op-ed. I'm honestly not sure I've seen something this blatant before, at least outside of the more openly conservative papers or populist outrage press.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:56
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:it's complicated to argue against this, mostly because the statement 'theocratic petrostates sponsoring terrorism in the middle east should be opposed' puts you on a list of threats to American foreign policy, drone strike/dismemberment in an embassy optional I don't think we should be supporting them just because they're enemies of Israel. There are better ways of putting pressure on Israel (e.g. South Africa) there's just no political will to do it yet. E: though it's not like saying "I stand with Iran" is going to accomplish anything either mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Aug 10, 2022 |
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Aug 10, 2022 18:12
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mobby_6kl posted:Would this statement, without context, put you on Iran's shitlist as well? Armed resistance to armed aggression and oppression is justified
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Aug 10, 2022 18:20
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https://twitter.com/meemsaf/status/1557692955632308224?s=20&t=tHGlhvPk7LuEagutgcnG2A
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Aug 11, 2022 13:02
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Rushputin posted:https://twitter.com/meemsaf/status/1557692955632308224?s=20&t=tHGlhvPk7LuEagutgcnG2A Is zionism the third rail it is for American Jews in other countries? I realize that most Jews in the world live in the US or Israel but, I'm unfamiliar with how that discussion plays out elsewhere.
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Aug 11, 2022 13:17
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Germany has some, uh, historical reasons they are really, really concerned about not coming off as anti-Semitic on any level, and that translates into supporting some fairly awful people who simply happen to be Jewish.
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Aug 11, 2022 14:06
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Europe in general isn't particularly friendly with Israel; politicians offer the occasional liberal platitude, but that is mostly to appease the US as I understand it. My cohort of urban academic Europeans absolutely loathe Israel and there have been protests when they get particularly war criminal, like when they declare a war operation or when Shireen Abu Akleh was assassinated. Not sure how other demographics feel, but I get the impression people are more indifferent than anything. The Jewish-European folks I've spoken to are also of my nerd cohort, and they also try to avoid venturing strong opinions, because they recognize that Israel is awful and untenable, but they also have friends and family living there, and there's not really anything as individuals they can do to reconcile those things. It's a third rail in Germany specifically because they have stringent laws against anti-Semitism that can easily be taken advantage of by bad faith actors.
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Aug 11, 2022 14:09
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Basically all major Jewish organisations and publications in Germany are zionist, I follow some antifascists and orgs like the German chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace on Twitter, but they're a small minority. Every major news outlet is rabidly pro-Israel at worst or extremely selective in its reporting at best - a really aggravating example was the release of the ai apartheid report, which, from what I could tell, was exclusively filtered through dismissive op-eds in basically every major publication, all of which more or less boiled down to "don't bother looking into it". You may have heard about Alex Springer because of their takeover of Politico recently. Their employees apparently have to basically sign an "I will be pro-Israel" clause and they're basically our very own Murdoch-type media moguls. The nominally more progressive or center-left papers like the ones I mentioned at the top of the page aren't really any better, they may occasionally let a reasonable person write a guest article, but then feel the need to balance it out with op-eds by the worst conservative assholes, and they tend to do the usual stenography for the IDF in their reporting and phrasing. In some cases, like the one above, literally! The best/most consistent paper anyone would recognize as far as Israel goes is probably Junge Welt, which has its own issues with other topics and seems a bit too... traditionalist in its socialism? I dunno, I don't know them well enough, but I do know that they had defectors that founded Jungle World, the Antideutsche bizzaro version of the paper. Like all AntiDs and their ilk, they're bonkers clown "leftists" who are anti-anti-imperialist (???) and loooooove Israel. Even beyond those freaks, the political left in Germany tends to be cowardly, naive or just plain sociopathic about the issue. So combine all this with a culture of misdirected collective guilt and the usual undercurrent of racism (man, people really jump at the chance of projecting all their Muslim stereotypes on an officially sanctioned enemy) and you get the idea. Personally, I blame the press more than anything. Leaving the opinion section to the ghouls is one thing, but there is so much about what is going on that is simply not being reported at all, so much reprinting the first officially Israeli statement with zero follow-ups, that most people I talk to have just comically superficial ideas about what's going on.
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Aug 11, 2022 14:18
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:It's a third rail in Germany specifically because they have stringent laws against anti-Semitism that can easily be taken advantage of by bad faith actors. The police pre-emptively banned a Nakba march in Berlin after Abu Akleh's assassination citing "anti-semitic incidents" in previous years, most of which were probably something like shouting "from the river to the sea" which, as we all know, calls for the extermination of all Jews. I believe the government officially hosted an event by a right-wing Israeli group that proudly displayed a Greater Israel flag that same week, though! Also the Bundestag almost unanimously passed an anti-BDS resolution a couple years ago that is so unconstitutional that it has been successfully challenged in local courts wherever people tried. So... Yeah. It's kind of an uphill battle.
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Aug 11, 2022 14:28
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There are very few Jewish people in my country so I can't say because I have not met any of them. Otherwise support of Israel is seen as the province of lunatic Christians and everyone else either hates it or doesn't care.
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Aug 11, 2022 16:39
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Main Paineframe posted:However, it can still be a good thing to fund Palestinian resistance regardless of whether the groups are good or bad, if only because Israel's capacity to do harm is far greater than Hamas or Islamic Jihad's is. This poo poo thinking is called Realpolitik and is how the Middle East got trapped in the poo poo scenario it is in today. Britian and America didn't want the Ottoman empire taking over, so they supported violent fundamentalist tribesmen who went on to found the nation of Saudi Arabia, which treats women, homosexuals, atheists, and other "blasphemers" much the same way Israel is treating Palestinians, except with more bloodshed. But America and Britian didn't actually like Fundamentalists, they just knew that the Ottomen would've done far worse if they didn't stop them. America also didn't want Iran gaining too much influence over the Middle East, so they supported their own "leftist" party in the form of the Ba'athists of Iraq against Iran, unsurprisingly that weird guy who ran Iraq went on to use the chemical weapons America gave him on his own citizens. And then America killed him because they don't like other people playing with their toys. His name was Saddam Hussein. But America never thought Saddam was good. They just knew that the Iram was capable of causing more harm to the middle east, with their children strapped to dynamite, than people who also strapped children to dynamite did. But he probably wouldn't have been blessed with the power of chemical weaponry in the first place, if it wasn't for the fact that just a few decades before, Iran had this weird guy named Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had the daring idea to nationalize his countries rich supply of Oil. America and Britian didn't want that. So they gave weapons to The Shah and some local Islamic Fundamentalists who forced him to live the rest of his life in prison. But America and Britian didn't think that The Shah was good, or even fundamentalists, they just knew that an old man doing something that would objectively benefit his countries lives would cause more harm to his country than a dictator who would imprison people just for disagreeing with him. Iran's leftists weren't happy about this, so they sided with fundamentalists who overthrew the government, who then used the power vacuum to declare themselves the rulers, and turned it into a country where sexism ran rampant, education was poor, and the supreme leader could impose death penalties (with very weak foundations within Islam itself) on people living outside of the country just for writing books he didn't like. But the leftists didn't knew this would happen before hand, they just "knew" that fundamentalists wouldn't cause as much pain as the Shah. Just like how Great Britian gave pardons to Italian fascists to prevent Communists from gaining major power in Italy after WW2, leading to the Years Of Lead, which saw neofascists and anarchists killing people in the streets. Just like how America giving pardons to Japanese war criminals lead to racism and unfettered capitalism remaining popular in Japan to the point of declining birth rates. Just like how stalin "befriending" hitler lead to the later betraying the other. Just like how Churchill and Mcarthur allying with him lead to Britian and America's idiotic decisions during the Cold War. Just like Russian leftists siding with the Bolsheviks lead to the violent Third Russian Revolution, which saw many killed and the rise of the idology of Tankism. Just like how Leon Trotsky siding with stalin lead to him getting stabbed in the head with a pickaxe. Just like how Jewish people who thought they could avoid getting killed by the nazis by yelling at and beating slaves, ended up being known as Kapo, and were just as likely to be gased for looking at a superior wrong as the ones they betrayed. No. Supporting Hamas and the other idiotic groups who give Palestinians and Arabs a bad name is an vile idea, even if we have "good intentions" behind it. It'll just lead to the same exact discussions we're having here, a few couple decades from now, but with Palestinians swapped out for "Homosexuals" or "Jews" or "Feminists" or whatever. Ironically, the fact that people seem to think that supporting Hamas is the ONLY option for opposing Israel's violent genocide is proof of the Government's propaganda working. Why can't we support the dozens of leftists, activists, and actual loving Palestinians, who very much DO NOT like the Genocide going on, without supporting an violent miltary group like Hamas? Like, I doubt any of the homosexuals who live in Gaza are treated very well by either party. What makes you think supporting the ones who want to kill them for their sexuality rather than their nationality is what they'd prefer? Yet, we pretend to act like Hamas' solution won't just be putting out a fire with flame throwers, but also, that it is the only option. Almost like the Israeli government wants us to believe that the only people who oppose them are insane militant brown people. We know they're wrong, yet we constantly fail to support the people that'd prove them such. It's banal. Support the Ctizens, not the Authority. Otherwise we'd be causing the stupid circle of bullshit to continue. No more.
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Aug 13, 2022 18:32
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TheNamedSavior posted:This poo poo thinking is called Realpolitik and is how the Middle East got trapped in the poo poo scenario it is in today. Maybe don't use such a "you idiots need a history lesson" tone if you're going to be this loving stupid and ahistorical with your both sidesing bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election
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Aug 14, 2022 16:02
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TheNamedSavior posted:Britian and America didn't want the Ottoman empire taking over, so they supported violent fundamentalist tribesmen who went on to found the nation of Saudi Arabia. Like how can you type this out with complete confidence What exactly do you think happened to the Ottomans after World War One. We're they in a position to "take over" the lands they already controlled before the war? You dont know what you're talking about wrt any of the largely unrelated dozen subjects you brought up, from the Years Of Lead to Baathism or the USA's role in all of it I'm going to trust the people in Gaza to decide for themselves what popular resistance should take the form of instead of being a patronizing dipshit like you
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Aug 14, 2022 16:12
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TheNamedSavior posted:This poo poo thinking is called Realpolitik and is how the Middle East got trapped in the poo poo scenario it is in today. "Britian and America didn't want the Ottoman empire taking over" is an incorrect statement. And "they just knew that the Ottomen would've done far worse" is also an incorrect statement, to the point where I wonder if you even know why the British were at odds with the Ottomans at all. The Ottoman Empire already controlled the region, and since Britain was at war with the Ottomans, they backed nationalist rebels with the understanding that they would oust the Ottomans and create independent Arab states in the region. And by the way, the war had nothing to do with Ottoman attitudes to human rights; the two empires were fighting because the Ottomans had allied with Germany in a little conflict called World War I. After the war, those nationalist rebels found that much of the territory had already been divided up between Britain and France, and when they refused to cooperate further, Britain backed the House of Saud (which was much more compliant to British will) in conquering those troublesome nationalists. It's ultimately a story of Great Power meddling, pitting local ethnic groups against each other to prime the region for their own imperial ambitions. It doesn't really compare to what's going on in Palestine at all! In a similarly baffling statement, you state that the democratically-elected Mosaddegh's effort to nationalize the oil concessions that had been assigned to the British in the colonial era "would cause more harm to his country" than the Shah's dictatorship would. You're going to need to explain that one a bit further, because the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was essentially a leftover from the colonial times when the British had exercised great influence in Persia. Yes, Persia - the oil concessions were signed twenty years before the British sponsored the coup that put the Pahlavi dynasty in power and renamed the country from Persia to Iran. And since the later British coup that ousted Reza Khan was just a few years before the oil nationalization effort, the populace well remembered the legacy of British colonialism, and clawing back a larger portion of the profits from their own oil resources was very popular. As for why Hamas is the only option for supporting Palestinian resistance, that's obvious: because they're the major faction that has successfully been able to resist Israeli rule and even win concessions from Israel. Regardless of how much of a role Hamas actually had in causing the Gaza withdrawal, there's no question that Fatah's tactics of peaceful negotiation haven't made any noticeable progress since the Oslo Accords nearly three decades ago. And even then, Israel has ignored most of the concessions they were required to make under Oslo. So the primary long-term impact of the accords has been to transform Fatah into a bunch of collaborationists, whose increasingly authoritarian rule is enabled via Israeli support. Now, of course, I sure would love it if there were a more socially progressive faction in the Palestinian resistance. However, the limited variety among the Palestinian resistance is largely the fault of Israel and its supporters (who openly meddle with Palestinian politics to support friendly groups against unfriendly groups) and Fatah (who gladly cooperate with Israel in return for Israeli support). Fatah suppression has driven all the resistance factions that opposed their collaborationism into the arms of groups like Hamas. And summing Hamas up as "insane militant brown people" is pretty loving lovely!
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Aug 14, 2022 17:57
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Even if all those examples were historically accurate, a few cherrypicked instances of realpolitik having bad outcomes doesn't prove it's always bad. Unless you also oppose the Anglo-Soviet agreement in World War 2 and want to argue that the UK and the USSR should have remained enemies even if it meant letting Hitler win the war.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:33
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Main Paineframe posted:As for why Hamas is the only option for supporting Palestinian resistance, that's obvious: because they're the major faction that has successfully been able to resist Israeli rule and even win concessions from Israel. quote:Fatah's tactics of peaceful negotiation ... ... Look, you can't go off about someone deeply misunderstanding a random scattering of historical examples and then pull out nonsense like that.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:15
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What's important is that we resist the idology of Tankism (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 14, 2022 20:34
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My point was that the Ottomen and Mosaddegh WERE NOT worse than the British's intent for the region. In fact, the awful Ottomen probably would've still been preferable to the British (they loving legalized Homosexuality almost a century before the opium loving british empire did) in the former, and Mosaddegh would've brought Iran to a far better state than the Shah and the Supreme Leaders did. Perhaps my sarcasm was too subtle. Funny how we're using Wikipedia as a source, too. Because according to the same site, Hamas is also homophobic, sexist, racist, and has openly shown support for the dictatorship of the idiotic Erdogan, who is inflicting policies on his citizens not too dissimilar to what Israel is doing to Palestinians. I'm curious, what do you think will happen to Homosexuals living in Gaza if/when Hamas somehow manages to gain independence from Israel? What about Women's Rights? How high will the hate crime rate raise towards Jewish people? How easy do you think it'll be to access Something Awful in Palestine if Hamas was allowed to legislate laws regarding internet censorship? VitalSigns posted:Even if all those examples were historically accurate, a few cherrypicked instances of realpolitik having bad outcomes doesn't prove it's always bad. Of course not, that was in service of stopping hitler from letting the holocaust expand to additional nations, saving billions of innocent lives. Whereas Leftists supporting Hamas want to do so in the service of saving Palestine from getting genocided by the Zionists. Where then only the Homosexuals and Jewish Palenstinians will get genocided. Weird how none of the arguments here relay on helping leftists in ISRAEL find a solution to this issue, either. The Palenstinians voting for Hamas (willfully ignoring the voter and media suppression that has been going on there for decades) is proof that they're the best option because it's "what they want", but we all know that if someone were to pull that argument for why Israel's current government was good, it would rightfully be blasted. Somehow, the idea that supporting or popularizing anti-imperial views among the citizens of Israel, could potentially lead to the people responsible for this madness losing power and proper reconciliation coming between the two nations, is considered too far fetched. And the idea that somehow Hamas "peacefully" getting Israel's government to just stop being racist genocidal assholes, while they do literally EVERYTHING that Zionists love to stereotype Arabs as, is considered the better option. The impression I'm getting here is that the objectively more pro-human rights option, supporting the weak leftist movements in Israel and Palestinian, is too hard, so therefore we should support an violent fundamentalist movement, even if it ends up putting Gay people in gas chambers. Be honest, you guys don't care about human rights. You only care about allegiance. You just wanna see Hamas win because you hate Zionists and think any loss for them is a victory for us. Cause I care about not loving continuing the circle of hate. I'm telling you, if somehow Hamas actually got what they wanted, and the Zionists stopped magically murdering Palenstinians, all it would take is one well publicized hate crime that the Single Party Rule Of Hamas fails to prosecute. And Israel has a reason to start shooting missiles at them again.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:37
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TheNamedSavior posted:Just like how stalin "befriending" hitler lead to the later betraying the other. Just like how Churchill and Mcarthur allying with him lead to Britian and America's idiotic decisions during the Cold War. Just like Russian leftists siding with the Bolsheviks lead to the violent Third Russian Revolution, which saw many killed and the rise of the idology of Tankism. Just like how Leon Trotsky siding with stalin lead to him getting stabbed in the head with a pickaxe. truly D&D's cream of the crop intelligentsia (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 14, 2022 20:39
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TheNamedSavior posted:I'm curious, what do you think will happen to Homosexuals living in Gaza if/when Hamas somehow manages to gain independence from Israel? What about Women's Rights? How high will the hate crime rate raise towards Jewish people? How easy do you think it'll be to access Something Awful in Palestine if Hamas was allowed to legislate laws regarding internet censorship? Hamas already controls gaza you loving idiot TheNamedSavior posted:The Palenstinians voting for Hamas (willfully ignoring the voter and media suppression that has been going on there for decades) The last election held in Gaza was recognized by the UN and international community in general as being completely free and fair (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) paul_soccer12 fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 20:48
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Well, I'm sure the Gay People living there are having a GREAT time. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) TheNamedSavior fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 20:51
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paul_soccer12 posted:The last election held in Gaza was recognized by the UN and international community in general as being completely free and fair Let's imagine for half a second the Bolsheviks actually win the Constitutional Assembly election in 1917. They then go on to arrest, deport, and execute members of other parties, as usual. Does that mean that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is now (or 16 years later) a freely elected democratic government most RSFSR citizens want in power, in 1933?
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Aug 14, 2022 21:03
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An important factor here is that the other party tried to coup them immediately after Hamas won the election (they did such a bad job of it that the only thing people remember is PA officials getting thrown off buildings). Elections would be nice, cant imagine how it would be handled without all the candidates getting bombed; the initial election had the benefit of US support and an assumption that the PA was going to win.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:26
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It's a salient point that alliances of convenience with people with largely separate aims and repugnant methods are risky and unreliable. I don't think terrorism is going to do Palestine any favors, but it doesn't seem like much else is going to help them either, so I can't say I really blame them for impotently lashing out. It doesn't really seem like the political establishment of Israel (or whatever fragments of it are dominant at the time in that mess) are very dissatisfied with the current state of things, and they hold like 80% of the cards.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:54
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Xander77 posted:Right. Fatah didn't get any concessions from Israel in terms of funds, cooperation, official recognition, self-rule. Ringing endorsement for armed resistance, whic- It's true for the last decade and a half. Since Mahmoud Abbas came to power, Fatah has considerably tamped down on the militancy (reflecting Abbas' long-held preference for peaceful negotiation), with the result that many of their more militant factions and offshoots are now effectively working with Hamas instead, especially in Gaza. In any case, the concessions you describe have mostly been for Fatah itself, not for the Palestinian people as a whole. More than half of the West Bank (Area C) is under full Israeli civil and military control, and the settlements have expanded so much that settlers now outnumber Palestinians in that half of the West Bank. Even the few parts of the West Bank that are nominally under complete Palestinian control are subject to frequent incursions by Israeli security forces, and the population there has no recourse against the Certainly, it's true that conditions in Gaza are much worse. But that's due to straight-up collective punishment from Israel, actively going out of their way to make life in Gaza a living hell in hopes that Hamas' public support will finally drop low enough for Fatah to win elections (which have been "indefinitely postponed" by Fatah ever since Hamas won them). TheNamedSavior posted:My point was that the Ottomen and Mosaddegh WERE NOT worse than the British's intent for the region. In fact, the awful Ottomen probably would've still been preferable to the British (they loving legalized Homosexuality almost a century before the opium loving british empire did) in the former, and Mosaddegh would've brought Iran to a far better state than the Shah and the Supreme Leaders did. Perhaps my sarcasm was too subtle. Israel is engaged in colonialism, apartheid, collective punishment, and outright ethnic cleansing. So when we ask who poses the greatest threat to Palestinian human rights and the Palestinian people, the answer is clear: Israel. It's in extremely poor taste to refer to Zionist stereotypes of Arabs as if they have any place in reality, given that the Zionists are the ones most interested in seizing Palestinian land and expelling (or worse) the inhabitants. If you look at an ongoing genocide and your first instinct is to talk about how the victims are playing right into the perpetrators' stereotypes of them, then it's hard to see that as anything besides victim-blaming and justifying. The fact of the matter is that the Zionists, in the long run, intend to expel or kill most or all of the Palestinians in the West Bank. Straight or gay, male or female, it'll be equal-opportunity ethnic cleansing. Faced with that slowly-developing future, the first priority in supporting Palestinians shouldn't be the likelihood that they'll approve of Something Awful Dot Com, but rather their ability to impede and resist ethnic cleansing. And "impede and resist" in an anti-colonial sense comes from two directions: the ability to restrain Zionist ambitions by increasing the cost of occupation beyond Israel's willingness to bear, and the ability to spread awareness of the crimes Israel is willing to commit by driving them to increase the violence beyond the slow crab-bucket boil that's essential to keep the abuses of apartheid ignorable. The fact that both of these goals tend to come with considerable human cost to the colonized populace is an unfortunate reality of colonialism and apartheid, in which the occupier has near-total control of the area, an overwhelming military advantage, and a racist willingness (or even eagerness) to use that military advantage against even unarmed civilians. Even Ghandi's famously non-violent resistance activities faced brutal and bloody suppression from the British authorities. The power disparity between Israel and Palestine is so huge that no faction can be truly effective at those two goals. But it's hard to argue that modern Abbas-led Fatah has been anywhere near as effective at that as modern Hamas. Hamas claimed credit for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and while it's not clear how much of a part they really played, it's undeniable that Gaza under Hamas is by far the most self-governing region of Palestinian territory. Sure, they don't have control of the borders or the airspace, but neither does the West Bank - it's just that Fatah has better relations with the occupier who controls their borders. But even the deepest parts of Area A of the West Bank can be invaded by Israeli arrest squads at any time, while it's rare for Israeli troops to go any deeper into Gaza than a quick border raid. And while the West Bank is better off than Gaza in terms of standard of living, the daily violence across the West Bank is too low-level to attract the notice of global news, even though so many Palestinians are having their livelihoods or even their lives wrecked. Putting aside the potential future likelihood of cross-border hate crimes in a hypothetical future independent Hamas-ruled Palestine - something which is so far removed from the present state of affairs that it doesn't really make any sense to theorize about now - there's the simple fact that hate crimes don't start wars. Not even well-publicized ones! When a Mexican immigrant kills a US citizen, or when a US Border Patrol officer shoots a Mexican child, that doesn't start a shooting war between the US and Mexico. Not even a single missile is fired! If a hate crime sparks a war, then the attacker already wanted a war and was simply looking for an excuse. If Israel is all lined up and ready to invade Gaza and just waiting for the slightest excuse, then it's not Hamas' fault when that war happens. Sure, a violent military strike from the official military crossing the border is definitely a valid casus belli...but Hamas is hardly the only side to launch cross-border attacks. Not only does Israel routinely send both troops and airstrikes across the border, but they tend to be the ones to violate any ceasefire with Hamas first. As for the left? Gaza is an open-air prison which has little economy to speak of, is routinely bombed by Israeli forces, and is repeatedly forced into crippling shortages of life-critical goods. The government of Gaza is in dire need of supplies and support of all kinds in order to mitigate the day-to-day depredations inflicted upon the populace by Israel. Saying that aid should instead be directed to Israeli factions so weak that that they can barely even hold onto a presence in the Knesset doesn't really make sense. Aside from the question of whether countries like Iran could or should support Israeli political movements, and aside from the question of whether the Israeli left would be able to accomplish anything even with this aid, the fact is that Hamas is the dominant political faction in the parts of Palestine that suffer the most from Israeli crimes against humanity. The aid would be by far the most helpful in Gaza, and there isn't really any alternative to having Hamas administer the aid. Israel's allies have already tried variants on "we'll let Gaza aid in but only if the Fatah-led PA gets to administer it", and it's never really worked out.
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Aug 15, 2022 01:56
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