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The Insect Court posted:What's going on here is what goes on in pretty much every I/P thread. For example, in the last big I/P thread I kind of clocked out when the discussion moved onto how young Jewish settlers in the West Bank could be before it was no longer morally permissible to kill them. To be fair there were a range of opinion, but there was a very vocal contingent who took the position that even the infants could be slaughtered by Palestinian freedom fighters and they'd still all have it coming. Now, could a hypothetical disinterested party possibly attempt make the case that such a position might in fact not be motivated wholly by high-minded objections to Israeli government policy? Without endorsing that analysis I would humbly submit that it should not be instantly met with shrieking about Zionist persecution and should at least be considered. You may disagree with this or even find it abhorrent, but people hate settlers because of what settlers do(ethnically cleansing Palestinian land), not because of their religion. These same people you accuse of anti-semitism would also support killing Manifest Destiny-era settlers robbing Native Americans of their land or European colonists in Africa or elsewhere who expelled the indigenous people from their ancestral lands. If you consciously make the choice to become part of a project of ethnic cleansing and the wholesale destruction of the Palestinian people and nation, the scorn and hatred you receive is not due to your race or religion; it's due to your choices and your lack of human decency.
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Nov 19, 2014 12:20
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Kim Jong Il posted:How is it appropriate to only represent one side in the OP? Because there is only one legitimate side, just like with South African apartheid?
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Nov 19, 2014 14:41
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Friendly Tumour posted:I'm just fascinated by this conflict in terms of the moral quandaries it poses. What quandaries does Israel/Palestine pose that apartheid-era South Africa, colonial Algeria or the genocide of the Native Americans doesn't? The fact that (some) victims of racist oppression will resist violently, including attacks on civilians, rather than live under a status quo in which they are treated as subhuman? Israel/Palestine is a black-and-white oppressor v. oppressed paradigm. It's really not that fascinating; just infuriating. Friendly Tumour posted:And yet, the oppressors, the British, couldn't hold back against the tide of history or were unwilling or incapable of committing the level of brutality that holding on to the Indian Empire would have required. Israelis have a much higher tolerance for bloodshed than the Brits did. During the First Intifada, when Palestinian society rose up in an act of concentrated civil disobedience, Israel reacted by expelling foreign observers and humanitarian-aid workers, rounding up tens of thousands of activists and electrifying their genitals and plucking out their toenails for crimes such as handing out flyers or attending illegal protests(all protests are illegal for Palestinians in the OT because they are granted no human rights) or merely being named as a subversive by the last torture victim and putting down protests with live ammunition. The government's actions were supported by the Israeli public by wide margins.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:45
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CommieGIR posted:The only way you will cut US support to Israel is if we kick out the Zionist GOP'ers in the Legislative branch. The Democrats are just as Zionist as the Republicans. Hell, getting even Bernie Sanders to be critical of Israel (much less get him to acknowledge it being an apartheid state) was a hell of a challenge.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:07
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team overhead smash posted:If you're saying Palestinian militants can share the blame for attacking civilians with Israel due to their occupation, would you also say Israel can share the blame for the occupation with Palestinian militants due to their attacks on civilians? You cannot have apartheid without having violent resistance, including terrorism any more than you can have friction without heat. That's as true in Israel as it was in South Africa. As long as Israel maintains its apartheid regime, robs its Palestinian subjects of their dignity, hope and human rights and continues to abduct and torture people for engaging in democratic resistance(like attending protests), it will continue to suffer terrorist attacks. When you realize this, it becomes clear that Israel and Israel alone has responsibility for what happens and for the bloodshed that its racist and inhuman policies inevitably create. Israel long ago chose apartheid and occupation over peace. It and it alone bears the responsibility for that choice. quote:would you also say Israel can share the blame for the occupation with Palestinian militants due to their attacks on civilians? No. That's because you don't seem to understand causality. Israel is not oppressing the Palestinians because the Palestinians are resisting; Palestinians resist because they're being oppressed. Israel would continue to oppress and victimize Palestinians even if they laid down their weapons. Look at the West Bank: before the recent rise in tensions, it had been almost completely pacified for almost a decade. The Palestinian Authority collaborated with Israel without question; if they wanted to torture a Palestinian in Zone A or B, the PA would grab the Palestinian and hand them over to the Israelis. What did such pacifism and collaboration get the West Bank Palestinians? More illegal settlements, more settler-led pogroms, more home demolitions, more apartheid roads and a promise from Netanyahu that there will never be an independent Palestine as long as he has something to say about it. In other words, there would be no terrorism if Israel ended apartheid and made peace, be it a one-state solution or a two-state one. If the Palestinians stopped engaging in terrorism, there would still be apartheid and Palestinian children would still grow up without any hope of being treated like a human being. That's why it's dishonest and simplistic to try to cast blame on both sides. I mourn for the civilians who've died, be they Jewish, Druze or Arab, but I know where to place the blame.
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Nov 20, 2014 11:57
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Kim Jong Il posted:The other significant difference is that while Likud is myopic about long term security, Hamas deliberately provoked a ground invasion over the summer by firing rockets. No, they didn't. Israel did. It fired rockets into Gaza, in direct violation of the ceasefire, killing a Palestinian child. This was before the kidnappings. When those occurred, Israel used it as a pretext, once again in direct violation of the ceasefire(and the Oslo Accords, but whatever), to round up hundreds of Palestinians who had nothing to do with the kidnapping and imprison/torture them without due process. Just like with Operation Cast Lead, Hamas was holding up its end of the ceasefire before Israel decided to mow the lawn. Israel had been itching for a fight ever since the announcement of the Unity Government and it got one. Hamas began firing rockets when it was clear that Israel was on the warpath, after Israel had already repeatedly violated the ceasefire. But don't let any facts get in the way of blaming the Palestinians for being slaughtered.
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Nov 20, 2014 13:23
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Pauline Kael posted:My response was less about your lust for jew blood and more about D&D being a place with a narrow range of acceptable opinion. Sorry for interrupting your fair and balanced review of I/P. Yes, we really need a wider variety of opinions on whether or not apartheid is acceptable. Other things we need more diversity of opinions on: women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, whether the Holocaust is real or fake.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:10
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Baudolino posted:I am no fan of Israel but i am against the BDS campaign. Every country ougth to be free to enter in to commerce with whoever they wish Therefore i got no problem with buying and selling Israeli wares. Let`s remember that is a conflict between jews and Palestinians and no one else. The outside world has little rigth to get involved. It`s best not to favour one side too much. So while we may shame Israel for it`s misdeeds and acknlowegde Palestinian Statehood joining a boycott goes too far. So you were also opposed to boycotting apartheid South Africa, right? Edit: since I'm bored, I may as well take apart these "arguments." quote:Every country ougth to be free to enter in to commerce with whoever they wish Therefore i got no problem with buying and selling Israeli wares. Just because you have a right to do something doesn't mean you should. You have the right to shout the N word at the top of your lungs; that doesn't mean that any decent person should do such a thing. The entire point about BDS is that it's a democratic, grassroots campaign; if the people of a country decide they don't want to support apartheid, they should boycott the apartheid state. quote:Let`s remember that is a conflict between jews and Palestinians and no one else. The outside world has little rigth to get involved. This is categorically untrue. The United States has given billions of dollars in aid to Israel, money that is used to build apartheid walls, Jewish-only settlements and to arm IDF soldiers in their fight to maintain an apartheid regime. We provide Israel with bombs, guns, military intelligence, and other tools used to murder and oppress Palestinians. We are, as are most Western powers, already involved. The difference is that we got involved on the side of the bad guys. Also, the world has a moral and legal obligation to get involved when we're dealing with apartheid, which is considered a crime against humanity in international law. quote:It`s best not to favour one side too much. Because the truth is always in the middle, right? One side is the victim of apartheid; the other is the perpetrator. One nation is a first-world, nuclear-armed superpower which oppresses its indigenous people with impunity; the other lives in refugee camps, concentration camps and bantustans because of the actions of the former. We have a moral obligation to favor the victim, just like we did in South Africa. quote:Another problem with the BDS campaign is the indiscriminate way they hurt everyone living in Israel regardless of their political stance. The entire purpose of BDS is to put pressure on Israel to end its apartheid policies, recognize Palestinian human rights and make peace. It is clear that Israel has no interest in doing so; the current government has publicly sworn there will be neither a Palestinian state nor racial equality on its watch and the majority of Israeli Jews are squarely against a peace deal, much less a genuine 2 state solution(meaning, the creation of an actual Palestinian state, not just a non-sovereign collection of semi-autonomous bantustans.) It's clear that if peace is going to happen and apartheid is going to end, foreign intervention will be necessary just like it was in South Africa. Boycotts are an acceptable, non-violent and democratic way of putting pressure on Israel to conform to the norms of international law and basic human decency. FreshlyShaven fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Nov 21, 2014 |
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Nov 21, 2014 14:18
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Xander77 posted:What is the context in which you'd go "we Finns really hate Russians He said "we hate the country", not "we hate the people." There's a big difference(though you're doing a good job of purposefully ignoring it.) Are you under the impression that in the age of Putin, lots of people don't hate Russia?
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Nov 21, 2014 15:15
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Xander77 posted:No, because that's a distinction that only works in a vacuum? You don't really meet people (IRL, not in academic/internet discussion) who go "I hate Russia but I'm perfectly fine with the Russian people". Jesus Christ, don't you have any shame?
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Nov 21, 2014 15:28
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My Imaginary GF posted:UN admitted that rockets have been stored in its facilities, which were then turned over to Hamas. What do you do when your policy is "No site is off limits if used to launch an attack on a foreign nation"? You respond and eliminate the target. I hate giving MIGF any attention, but this is a common argument. Of course, one must carefully omit the fact that these schools where rockets were found were closed and vacant and that there is absolutely no evidence that the schools, shelters or hospitals that Israel bombed were being used militarily when they were attacked. This is hardly surprising, since attacking civilian infrastructure as a form of collective punishment is Israeli policy(the Dahiya Doctrine). Moreover, in previous conflicts, Israel has tried to justify its illegal and deadly attacks on civilians with the same false excuse. From Amnesty International's report on Cast Lead quote:In the cases investigated by Amnesty International of civilians killed in Israeli attacks, the deaths could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among civilians, as the Israel army generally contends. In all of the cases investigated by Amnesty International of families killed when their homes were bombed from the air by Israeli forces, for example, none of the houses struck was being used by armed groups for military activities. Similarly, in the cases of precision missiles or tank shells which killed civilians in their homes, no fighters were present in the houses that were struck and Amnesty International delegates found no indication that there had been any armed confrontations or other military activity in the immediate vicinity at the time of the attack." I repeat: attacking civilian targets in order to punish the community as a whole and to break the Palestinians' spirit is Israeli policy.
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Nov 22, 2014 14:04
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Eregos posted:Perhaps the thread can explain this to me. A common charge I hear from anti-Israel activists is that Israel deliberately targets Gaza civilians with airstrikes and shelling as part of some larger strategy to do... what exactly? I don't see any strategic sense behind it from a Machiavellian standpoint, it never really weakens support for Hamas as far as I know and it increases international sympathy for Gaza. The (also Machiavellian) idea that Israel is simply committed to degrading Hamas' capacity, regardless of the civilian cost, seems much more plausible to me. I think it's partially an ingrained mentality that "these savages only understand one thing: force" which is pretty common in a lot of military institutions. For another, the only way to resolve the issue and soothe tensions is to end the root cause which is the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people(apartheid, the "hunger diet" in Gaza, the continued refusal to recognize the right of return, etc.) which for obvious political reasons is out of the picture. Thus, the only response available to them is brutality, which in turn creates an endless cycle of violence; when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Or maybe they genuinely believe that if they create enough human suffering, Palestinians will either lose their will or turn on Hamas; this was more or less the thinking behind the use of collective punishment in general. On the other hand, this constant cycle of brutality is pretty useful politically; it drives Israel to the right, solidifies the IDF's centrality as guardian of the nation(not that it really needed it), and creates an atmosphere of paranoia and hatred that is very advantageous to thugs like Netanyahu, Lieberman and Bennett. Those are just some thoughts; to be honest, evil of this enormity is pretty hard to fathom.
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Dec 10, 2014 00:36
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logosanatic posted:Im not terribly informed on the entire history of Israel. Was this the first war for Israel? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestine_war Yes, because prior to the war there was no Israel. Keep in mind that Israel began as a project of colonialist (European Jewish) settlers in the late 19th century led by figures like Theodore Herzl. There were different strands of Zionism, but generally speaking, it was the product of a) colonialist ideology that was well-spread throughout the 19th century, particularly in the latter half, and b) an uptick in anti-semitism in the West that led many Jews to believe that as long as they were a minority in other nations, they would continue to face persecution. There was also quite a bit of ethno-nationalist ideology mixed in there as well, which is unsurprising given the influence of German Jews on the movement. And, needless to say, religious fervor. quote:The general feeling I got from that information is that Britain promised Palestinians the land. Then the holocaust happened and for various reasons the Jews were promised the same land. Then jews moved to the area now known as Israel. Then palestinians and jews segregated themselves. This is a simplification. As I said, the colonization of Palestine by European Jews had begun long before the Holocaust. For another, looking at it as "Britain promised Palestinians the land" is a skewed way of looking at it- this was the land that the Palestinians and their ancestors had lived on. In fact, Britain was generally far more sympathetic to the Zionists than to the Arabs(cf. the Balfour Declaration). Churchill summarized the British attitude pretty well when he said in 1937, "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." However, this was tempered by the fact that a) Britain controlled a lot of Arab land outside of Palestine and had to make some concessions to Arab public opinion as the result and b) in the late 30s and early 40s, Zionist terrorist groups like Lehi(aka the Stern Gang) and the Irgun began attacking British targets, including Churchill's friend, Lord Moyne. Also, the Zionists had no interest in integrating with the indigenous people; they looked at them as savages for the most part(this attitude also carried over to their treatment of Middle-Eastern Jews, though these were integrated into Israel because in Zionist ideology, Israel is the home of all Jews.) Zionist settlers and kibbutzim(farming co-operatives, basically) did everything they could to exclude Arab labor and to buy up land from which their Arab inhabits would expelled. This was the plan from the beginning and this exclusion fed Arab resentment, which in turn fueled even worse exclusion on the part of the colonists. quote:Seems the Jews have had a long history of pissing people around them off and getting beat up because of it. Starting with Jew v Rome wars that resulted in the 2nd temple being destroyed and the jewish nation being shattered/scattered. This is somewhat anachronistic. Yes, the Jewish people suffered enormously under the Romans, but so did any group who rebelled against Roman authority. Anti-semitism really began in the early Middle Ages and was primarily religious: Jews were those who killed Christ. They rejected the Word of God, just like those Mooslem infidels, and are thus contemptible. Anti-semitism and Islamophobia actually have a lot in common historically for this reason. In the modern era, anti-semitism began to mutate. In addition to the religious hatred, Jews had become associated with modernity. Jews were well-represented in the world of finance, which was rapidly transforming the West and upsetting traditional ways of life(their long-standing connections to money-lending, due to religious prohibitions on Christians lending money with interest, also helped fuel their persecution since it's very easy to get people to hate those to whom they're indebted.) They were associated with socialism and republicanism which were also seen as affronts to the established order. And science and materialism in general, which if you read many late 19th century authors like Huysmans, was seen as a destructive force that attacked religion and robbed nations of their roots. Muslims did not receive this same treatment, largely because there weren't many Muslim communities in the West at that point(this is also why Jews were more often used as a scapegoat throughout the Middle Ages than Muslims.) quote:then their given land in the middle east and theyve been fighting every since. Why have they been the pariah for so long? Are they naturally disagreeable people that entice those around them to slaughter them? I wouldn't say they're always the pariah. In fact, Herzl was largely proved wrong- Jews can integrate and assimilate into European/Western society. Jewish people in the West are doing quite well- they are more likely to have college educations and less likely to be unemployed or incarcerated. Jews are well-represented in Western parliaments and legislatures; hell, a Jewish man was elected vice-president of the USA in 2000(though he didn't take office) and DSK(who's Jewish) could easily have become president of France if it weren't for his predilection for rape and organized prostitution. Anti-semitism remains, of course, but it's nowhere near a potent political and social force as is, say, anti-black racism, xenophobia or Islamophobia. In the Middle East, however, yes, there is a very strong anti-Jewish sentiment(though there are flourishing Jewish communities in certain countries like Morocco.) I think it's important to distinguish this from anti-semitism as it's commonly understood, however, because it has completely different roots. Anti-Jewish sentiment in the Middle East is largely tied to Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians, just like anti-Japanese sentiment in the US was tied to the actions of Imperial Japan and the explosion of Islamophobia in the West was tied to 9/11 and other attacks. That's not to say that the Arab world has never persecuted Jews; that's simply false. However, Jews weren't particularly singled out more than other religious minorities and overall, the Arab world had been far more tolerant towards Jews than the West had. It's true that Western anti-semitism was introduced to the Arab world through colonialism and has been used by dictators to ferment hatred against Jews in order to help take attention away from domestic problems, but Israel is, by far, the largest source of anti-Jewish resentment in the ME. quote:By goon standards what should Israel do to make real peace with the palestinians? That's simple: make peace. Either a 1 state solution(where all inhabitants of I/P, including those ethnically cleansed during the Nakba, are equal citizens) or a 2 state solution with a sovereign Palestine on the internationally-recognized borders with a negotiated settlement of the victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing. So far, Israel has not made any serious peace proposal, at least none that would provide for a sovereign Palestinian state and the removal of the illegal settlements. To say nothing of East Jerusalem(which belongs to Palestine according to international law) or the resettlement of the refugee population(which again, is required under international law.) Worse, any serious peace proposal would be extremely unpopular in Israel. That's why many of us support BDS: it's clear that Israel will not make peace out of the goodness of her heart any more than you can expect a slavemaster to give his slaves their freedom unless coerced into doing so. Only by isolating Israel and imposing a serious cost on their policies of oppressing the Palestinians can we expect Israel to make peace and do the right thing. quote:Im seeing wall to wall atrocities in the middle east. Muslim v muslim. Muslim v woman, muslim v rest of the world. Just seems regardless of what the Jews should/could have done it would be Muslim v Israel anyways. Muslims aren't savages. For instance, Palestinians living in Israel are much less bigoted towards their Jewish neighbors than Israeli Jews are to the Palestinian minority living in their country. There's a lot of instability and bloodshed in the Middle East but this has to do with historically-based causes, like power vacuums(which lead to bloodshed, chaos and radicalism ANYWHERE), decades of political persecution of Islamists and the legacy of colonialism(to name just a few.) This idea that "Arabs are just too savage and blood-thirsty to make peace" is, in addition to being racist, the exact same thing that supporters of South African apartheid said to justify apartheid there: quote:When the whites met the blacks, the blacks had no written language, no technological knowledge, no cure for infectious diseases. In the 20th century, economic activity organized by whites gradually drew blacks out of their tribal lands into the cash economy and into the cities....
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Jan 27, 2015 19:04
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Xander77 posted:Jesus loving christ. Thanks for the poo poo post. Mind explaining how Jews are doomed to be pariahs forever, even though they're well represented in Western politics, culture and economy?
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Jan 27, 2015 19:12
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Did you know that there is an African American President, and that there are many successful African American actors, politicians, and media personalities, and therefore racism is over? That's an idiotic comparison. Black people, by every indicator, are heavily disadvantaged. They are more likely to be unemployed, more likely to be arrested, incarcerated or to be the victim of police injustice. They are less likely to be hired than a white person with the same CV. There are hardly any black politicians on the national stage or black executives despite making up a large percentage of the population. They are systematically oppressed by the state, albeit de facto and not de jure. Jewish people, by all indicators, are doing well. They're well-represented in the cultural, political and economic elite. They are more likely to have a college degree or a Nobel Prize or a well-paying job. If you honestly think that anti-semitism is anywhere near the political or social force that anti-black racism is, you're a drat fool.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:19
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Xander77 posted:You're more than welcome. Feel free to keep writing imbecilic musings without taking the barest moment to consider what complete and utter poo poo you're spouting. Talk about projection. quote:Hint: Herzl wrote most of his theses about in late 19th century Germany. As you were compiling your lists of Jews that could have but didn't actually lead First-World countries, have you, perhaps, encountered any other events that would have proven him oh so very wrong? Perhaps taking place in the very same country, half a century latter? I'm quite well aware of the circumstances in which he wrote. If I had lived through the Dreyfus Affair, I would be pretty pessimistic as to the fate of Jews in Europe, too. And the Holocaust, well, that goes without saying. But that doesn't mean that Jews are forever destined to be a persecuted people that has no home in the West. The fact that Jews are prospering in the West, despite anti-semitism, demonstrates that. That's what I was saying, not that anti-semitism wasn't terrible or that it never lead to unimaginable bloodshed and suffering.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:28
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Furthermore, the majority of Jews in Israel are lower-class. This has nothing to do with what I said. quote:Finally, your pretension that Hertzl was wrong in how difficult integration is ignores the fact that European acceptance and integration of immigrants is (or was) a very time-limited phenomenon, and only came about after forced migration and extermination made most of their countries a lot more ethnically uniform. Are you claiming that Jews are prospering in most of Europe only because of population transfers? For one thing, we're talking about Jews, not immigrants as a whole. For another, Jews are doing quite well in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other Western(or in SA's case, somewhat Western) countries and that certainly can't be explained by forced migration or extermination. Anti-Jewish persecution has material and historical causes; it is not an inevitability. quote:The entirety of the Zionist movement was initiated by people who tried to assimilate, but failed. It was a significant driving point for the choices they made, so you saying "well, I guess now that 6 millions Jews were slaughtered and the millions in the former USSR are no longer barred from leaving and after a lot of civil rights efforts, and now that there's a country run by Jews in the Middle East, Jews seem to not be having it half bad, I guess it shows that Hertzl was wrong" is anachronistic rubbish As I said, I understand why Herzl et al. had little hope for the Jewish future in the West and if I were alive then, too, neither would I. Perhaps I worded my post poorly. That doesn't mean that Jews are destined to be forever a persecuted people and that they will never be at home in the West, which is what he was wrong about. The world today proves that that's not the case. quote:Explain to the Jews who slowly vacated Egypt after the authorities there did not support and in some cases encouraged their oppression why going to Israel was a bad idea. Or to the Moroccan or Iraqi or Afghan or Yemenite Jews. This has to do with Europe because...? quote:That was when the big decisions were made, not now when everything is peachy keen and you can look back and say "well, if it just wasn't for those pesky Zionists Jews would be even better off". I appreciate that nor did I say that "if it just wasn't for those pesky Zionists Jews would be even better off." You've repeatedly warped what I said. All I argued was that Jews are not forever destined to be persecuted and that ultimately, they have prospered in the West and have become well integrated into Western society, something that Herzl, no matter how understandably given the circumstances in which he lived, was wrong about. FreshlyShaven fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 19:51
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logosanatic posted:I apologize if it seemed i think muslims are savages. I dont think they are. Jewish and christian history is full of similar behavior and their ok now This a very simplistic view. I mean, I assume you mean ce/ad instead of bc(what with there being no Muslims anywhere on Earth between 600 and 1000bc) Like any other civilization, it experienced periods of peace and "progress" and periods of infighting and repression, far too nuanced to say "from 600 to 1000, everything was cool. After that, dark ages." But the point is this: Islamic history is not a justification for ethnically cleansing and oppressing the Palestinians or warmongering. As I posted before, this "we're in a bad neighborhood" excuse was used by supporters of South African apartheid; why is it more convincing with Israel than it was with SA? Hatred of Israel in the Middle East is, for the most part, not due to religious fanaticism(especially since previous to the 90s or so, Palestinian Christians were known for being far more militant in their opposition to Israel than Palestinian Muslims); it's due to Israel's actions. How can you ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Arabs and not expect other Arabs to resent you? How can you invade Arab countries, take their land and put the population under apartheid rule without generating hatred? quote:Muslims have a long list of things they wont tolerate(kill for). So in my mind any scenario where israel exists alongside muslims cultures results in war regardless of how israel behaves. The reasons for the attacks just change. See, you're painting all Muslims with one brush, as though they were some undifferentiated horde. What does Boko Haram, a violent extremist uprising in Northern Nigeria, have to do with I/P? Does the Lord's Resistance Army prove that all Christians are bloodthirsty psychos? Does Baruch Goldstein prove that all Jews are? quote:Again Im not saying muslims have always been or always will be like this. But just talking about what im seeing right now. The past 1000 years of muslim religious evolution isnt entirely or even partially because of colonization is it? The power shift to extreme reading of koran started before the muslim empire collapsed or am i mistaken? 1) What you're seeing right now has a lot to do with social biases. Islamophobia is a largely acceptable form of bigotry in the West and that colors things enormously. 2) What Muslim empire are you talking about? The Caliphate(s)? The Mughal Empire? The Ottoman Empire? And in fact, the kind of fanatical Islam that you see with ISIS or Saudi Arabia is actually a modern phenomenon with roots in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Jan 27, 2015 21:32
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Soviet Space Dog posted:There's a civil war going on now in Ukraine (or a Russian invasion or freedom fighting or whatever I don't want to go into semantics) and hopefully nobody is dumb enough to pretend its really about how the Orthodox fell into self destructive degeneracy since the schism. People actually kill each other all the time for various reasons, why is the Indonesia ethnic/religious conflict drastically different from Sri Lankan ethnic/religious conflict? Why are Buddhists so violent jeez? Especially since the 2 bloodiest periods in modern Indonesian history have little, if any, connection to Islam(the genocide of the Chinese/communists and the occupation of and arguable genocide in East Timor.)
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Jan 27, 2015 23:48
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Xandu posted:I don't know, it's pretty fascinating to me that in a conflict between Israel and the Syrian regime, one would come down on criticizing the Israelis. It seems pretty reasonable to criticize the side which is trying to start a war, rather than the one which is responding to repeated provocations.
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Jan 28, 2015 13:33
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Volkerball posted:There is very real reason to suspect Iran is shuffling weapons to Hezbollah through Syria, and very real reason why Hezbollah being better armed is a Bad Thing. How is Hezbollah being armed, especially considering it's in all-out war against Daesh, worse than Israel being armed? If anything, Hezbollah's weaponry has done exactly what it was intended to do: to deter attacks from Israel by imposing a real cost to attacking Lebanon. quote:Every strike in Syria involving the regime has been part of salvos back and forth when some dipshit SAA unit accidentally shells a field in Israel. Do you have a source that proves that the attack on January 18 was caused by the Syrian army firing shells into Israel?
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Jan 28, 2015 14:46
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HGH posted:I'm not sure why you're reacting so violently. I was legit confused since English isn't my first language. I don't choose the material that shows up in history books and classes and as far as I knew Semite referred to regional and racial characteristics. I wanted to know how the term was co-opted to be so specific, not try to justify some crazy racial agenda. Is trying to learn the context of things so wrong? Anti-semitism has always meant a hatred of Jews in particular. Words don't always mean exactly what their etymological roots do. For instance, homophobia means bigotry against gay people, not a fear of them. And Xander apparently reacts violently to practically anything; don't take it personally.
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Jan 30, 2015 15:03
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SedanChair posted:That's incredibly dumb because those same people who hate Arab Muslims also hate Pakistani Muslims, who are not Semitic. They hate races associated with Islam, including South Asians and Turks(neither of whom are semitic.) That's why Islamophobes often attack Hindu and Sikh targets.
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Jan 30, 2015 16:21
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emanresu tnuocca posted:Hah yes the khazar invaders I've read and re-read this post and Al-Saqr's post you're quoting and I can't for the life of me understand what you're talking about.
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Mar 7, 2015 13:21
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Disinterested posted:There is a kind of hilarious conspiracy theory that modern Jews are secret Khazars with no right to the land of Israel. Truly one of the most hilarious conspiracy theories. Yeah, but what does that have to do with Al-Saqr's post?
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Mar 7, 2015 13:54
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Disinterested posted:The more generous reading is that a number of Jews in Israel came there from the Soviet Union, and it's not intended as a dog whistle. On the other hand, the Jews from the former Soviet Union didn't come to Israel en masse until the 90s, after the ethnic cleansing was a fait accompli. Al-Saqr's phrasing is strange(particularly the Russian part, given that German Jews were much more active in pre-Independence Zionism than other groups) but it's essentially a perfectly good point: the Zionists who ethnically cleansed Palestine were Europeans who had no legitimate claim to the land. quote:Al-Saqr is a notorious anti-semite and has lost the benefit of the doubt. Kind of like how you're a notorious Islamophobe?
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Mar 7, 2015 14:08
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emanresu tnuocca posted:Please provide an example of another throng of refugees who sought to flee to one specific country for whatever reason that you think need to prove a claim to their country of destination, do we expect the Sudanese refugees who flee to Israel and other countries to prove a 'claim'? Jews were barred entry to many countries following the holocaust and the Zionists in Israel smuggled them into the country, claim has nothing to do with it. As you admit, the events occurring in Palestine during WWII cannot be separated from the context of the decades preceding it, which was a long, slow attempt at ethnically cleansing Palestine in order to make it an exclusivist Jewish state. Ethnic cleansing had long been the end goal of the colonization of Palestine, back when Hitler was nothing more than a drunk painter. Of course those fleeing the Nazis were justified in escaping to anywhere they could, but a) the refugees were not, for the most part, those in charge(they were actually treated pretty poorly by those Zionists who were already colonizing Palestine), b) you seem to conflate immigration with colonization; they are very different things(immigrants seek to join a society; colonists seek to destroy the existing society and replace it with one where they're in charge), c) just because they were justified in coming to Palestine to escape the Nazi death machine doesn't mean they were justified in settling there permanently against the wishes of the indigenous people or that the Zionists were in any way justified in expelling Palestinians from the land on account of their race. And the founders of Zionism were all European(and American/Canadian/Australian, etc.) Jews who had no claim to a land their ancestors left millenia ago, Europeans who believed that their racial and cultural superiority entitled them to invade Palestine just like the French were entitled in colonizing West Africa or the Americans were justified in colonizing the Indian West. quote:I'm trying to think of other such situations in which a refugee population flees somewhere and 'leftists' would go 'you have no claim to this country, flee somewhere else'. Yes, the situation is pretty unique. quote:For me this seems like part of a narrative that is meant to completely whitewash the escalation that occurred before the Nakba in an attempt to depict Israel/Jews/The-Zionists as cosmically malicious. It seems like you're trying to whitewash the fact that long before the Holocaust occurred, European Zionists began a project of ethnic cleansing. As Benny Morris writes: quote:[T]ransfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism–because it sought to transform a land which was "Arab" into a "Jewish" state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv’s leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure. The Holocaust cannot retroactively justify an act of evil that had been planned and put into motion long before the Holocaust occurred. FreshlyShaven fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Mar 7, 2015 |
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Mar 7, 2015 14:47
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emanresu tnuocca posted:Morris is inferring, he has no way to ascertain that statement and indeed the fact that he is used as a primary source for these claims is problematic, when exactly Zionists decided that "an ethnic majority within a geographically continuous territory" was the only valid option is a question that has no clear answers, Hertzel clearly didn't espouse this view while by 1948 Ben Gurion clearly did, the common perception is that the language of ethnic cleansing became prominent around 1936, Morris himself tears into Pappe's claims about Ben Gurion promoting ethnic cleansing since the 1920s. Hertzl did use language like that, though not as explicitly. He said that the Zionists should focus on economically coercing all but the wealthiest Palestinians into leaving Palestine by denying them access to employment, buying their land from absentee landlords, etc. It's pretty clear that he had no intention of integrating the Zionists into Palestinian society, but rather to establish a parallel Jewish-only society. quote:Regardless, Morris himself is not a primary source and even the quote you provided does not provide clear answers as to the extent of the allegedly planned ethnic cleansing, it is hard to imagine that back in 1920 given the trickle of Jews immigrating into Palestine that the Yishuv had plans to fully ethnically cleanse greater Israel, again, by 1948 this seems like something that was obviously in their minds. Maybe not Greater Israel and maybe not as soon as it occurred, but the Zionists always(or at least beginning with their decision of Palestine as the site) intended to impose a state in Palestine in which Jews and only Jews ruled. Maybe they were intending something like French Algeria where the ruling class was in the numerical minority but the Arab majority was powerless and deliberately marginalized from the civic sphere, but such an arrangement would, assuming the Zionists could prevail militarily, inevitably lead to the ethnic cleansing of the natives. quote:It seems bizarre to suggest that the ethnic cleansing of palestine was in motion for decades prior to 1948 given that without the mass immigrations post 1939 there was absolutely no way the Jews could muster sufficient man power to pull anything like that off and that only through circumstances completely outside the control of the Yishuv it became possible by 1948. At best you could say that the Zionist had a dream of ethnically cleansing palestine, but to describe it as an 'ongoing project' seems far fetched, also worth noting is Morris' qualification of a 'hostile majority' which should raise the question of which came first, the ethnic cleansing rationale or the hostility that supposedly justifies it. It seems like you're very close to attempting to justify ethnic cleansing. Maybe the Zionist project was at one point just a pipe-dream but at no point were the Zionist settlers looking to treat the indigenous Palestinians as equals or to share power with them. It was very clear from the beginning that an exclusivist Jewish state was the end goal of the Zionist project and it's this, as well as the economic discrimination practiced by the Zionist colonists, that was primarily responsible for the Palestinians' hostility. It's also important to remember that European settlers, in similarly small numbers, had been able to subjugate large populations in Arabia, Africa and Asia through their military superiority and through tactics like "divide and conquer" so it's not as "bizarre" for the Zionists to believe in the feasibility of establishing a colony in Palestine as it might seem in retrospect.
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Mar 7, 2015 15:35
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quote:He is talking about buying lands and gentrifying them, there is no indication that he wants the Jews to live in segregated communities, unless you mean segregated from poors. This is disingenuous. He's not simply talking about gentrifying or kicking out poor people. Hertzl had no problem with poor Jews coming to Palestine. It's only the Palestinian peasantry and proletariat(who made up the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people) who were to be "spirited across the border." quote:Patently incorrect, at least if you go by what Herzel and even Jabotinsky actually wrote... The original Zionist immigrants sought to flee antisemitism and provide a "safe haven for jews" in Palestine, we're talking 1880s here, it is true that they wished to live in their own communities and establish Jewish towns and villages but that's simply how the majority of Jews lived throughout their history, integration was not something either party sought at the time, for what it's worth they didn't particularly seek to integrate themselves with the "Old Yishuv" jewish communities either. Enlighten me, then. The Zionists wanted to establish Jewish-only communes built on land dispossessed from Palestinian peasants and where Jews could be free from anti-semitism but they didn't want to establish a state where Jews held a monopoly on power? How can that possibly work, especially once British imperial rule ends? quote:Herzel was a liberal, the fact is that inferring backwards from the Nakba that it was a part of a master plan all along is obvious only to those who wish to view it that way, Herztl may have been a liberal but he was also a European born and raised during the Age of Empires, where the idea that Europeans, by dint of their self-evident superiority, were entitled to take and govern foreign lands was just as entrenched in the popular imagination as was anti-semitism. I mean, this is a movement that adopted "A land without a people for a people without a land" as a slogan because it refused to recognize the rights of the Palestinians just like European colonists elsewhere saw Asian and African lands as blank spaces ready to be conquered. And the fact is that the Nakba WAS the end product of Zionism and as Morris argues convincingly, such ethnic cleansing was the inevitable result of the Zionist project. As early as 1916, Zangwill told Jabotinsky that "If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours" quote:If you insist upon judging the zionist movement by what you perceive to be its intentions and ignore the actual hostilities undertaken against Jews during the early 20th century don't be surprised when certain people choose to ignore your narrative as being historically fallacious. As Morris writes, hostility to Jewish colonists was an inevitable result of what the Zionists were doing. A people that has lived under the yoke of imperial rule for centuries and who sees their future of self-rule threatened by foreign colonists is not going to take kindly to said colonists, especially when these colonists purchase land from absentee landlords with the express purpose of expelling Palestinians from their homeland and when these colonists deliberately deny the native Palestinians employment while giving well-paying jobs to foreign new arrivals just because of their race/religion. Palestinians didn't become hostile to the Jews primarily because of anti-semitism(IIRC, the first Jewish settlers were given a relatively warm welcome until their intentions became clear); the hostility comes from the fact that these were foreigners who arrived in Palestine not to join Palestinian society but to supplant it. No indigenous people likes colonists.
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Mar 7, 2015 16:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:
Wait. You're claiming that because these Arab states invaded Palestine (at least partially) in order to put an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, they are thus responsible for the ethnic cleansing they attempted to end? It's one thing to criticize Arab governments for not treating refugees better(I don't think most people here or in the pro-Palestinian movement in general are big fans are Arab dictatorships), but the simple fact is that the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Israel(or by the forces which would months later constitute the Israeli state) and no one else.
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Sep 2, 2015 17:55
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Xander77 posted:He's probably not. If you are, citations would be welcome. In the real world, nation-states don't act for entirely selfless reasons. Obviously, there were other objectives at play other than an end to the ethnic cleansing. But that doesn't matter: the Arab states invaded long after the ethnic cleansing had begun, roughly 5 weeks after the Deir Yassim massacre. And there's no question that the ongoing ethnic cleansing had galvanized Arab public opinion and encouraged the Arab states to act. In the cablegram announcing their invasion, the Arab states say: quote:Peace and order have been completely upset in Palestine, and, in consequence of Jewish aggression, approximately over a quarter of a million of the Arab population have been compelled to leave their homes and emigrate to neighbouring Arab countries. The prevailing events in Palestine exposed the concealed aggressive intentions of the Zionists and their imperialistic motives, as clearly shown in their acts committed upon those peaceful Arabs and villagers of Deer Yasheen, Tiberias, and other places, as well as by their encroachment upon the building and bodies of the inviolable consular codes, manifested by their attack upon the Consulate in Jerusalem. Now, argue all you want about whatever the invasion was justified but to claim that the Arab states are responsible for something that began before the invasion and which was a significant cause of the invasion is absurd and seeks only to absolve Israel of its crimes. The fact that the motives of the Arab League might not have been as pure as freshly-fallen snow(what nation's motives are?) does not change anything or justify Israel's behavior(or the behavior of Zionist militia and terrorist groups.)
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Sep 2, 2015 18:28
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Where's anti Saudi BDS? If you think that a BDS campaign against SA is a good idea, get to work. Start organizing it. But don't expect pro-Palestinian organizers to do that for you any more than you should expect the "Free Tibet" people to do it for you. I see two big problems though(of course if you can argue convincingly, I'm willing to change my mind): 1) as mentioned, SA's major export is crude oil and it's very difficult to boycott oil based on provenance: you don't get to choose between a '13 Venezuela and a '14 Norway when you fill up your tank at the Exxon station. Crude petroleum is mixed with petroleum of different sources and refined together. And 2) To the best of my knowledge, the victims of the SA regime have not called for a boycott like Palestinian civil society has. I'm not aware of any major women's right groups or Shia advocacy groups based in Saudia Arabia that have called for a boycott. It seems to me that to initiate a boycott against the wishes of the group the boycott is supposed to protect is the height of "white savior syndrome." quote:This is an incoherent response. Saudi Arabia reviled and rejected entirely by the West? You can't actually believe that, can you? Of course. What planet are you living on? US politicians might say some nice words when a Saudi diplomat visits and you often hear how they're a "valued partner in our war on Terror" or somesuch but nobody likes the Saudis. They are too important to piss off, but no American politician would talk about SA the way they talk about Israel. If you say "SA is a brutal, racist dictatorship that should be replaced" anywhere in the West, you're unlikely to meet any objections beyond "well, I'm afraid the government that replaces the House of Saud might be even worse." quote:The whole "those evil Zionists are trying to pretend they're like us civilized Europeans!" has always struck me as more anti-Arab(and obliquely white supremacist) than antisemitic. Except that Israel sees itself as a white man's country, as part of the West. And the whole Vienna Gates, "we're beating back the savage Muslims so Europe doesn't have to" rhetoric has been part of the Israel PR machine for a while.
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Sep 24, 2015 17:17
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Main Paineframe posted:
If you decide to take a stand in the name of group X but group X tells you "no please we don't want you to get involved" and you get involved anyway, yeah I would consider that patronizing. As would many people. By all means, support these activists but take your direction from them, not your own ego. The Palestinian civil community has come together and issued an international call for boycott; the Shia of SA or Bahrain or the Tibetans or whatever have not and in some cases, their representatives have argued forcefully AGAINST a boycott. quote:People certainly don't seem to care about the wishes of the oppressed group when they're calling for burqa bans, so why is it suddenly not okay to take any action without the express request of the oppressed group in this thread? I don't know what you're talking about here. Burqa bans are hosed up and exhibit A for "white man savior syndrome." Telling women how to dress in the name of liberating them is pretty insulting which is why so many Muslim feminists are against such bans. And they usually come from Islamophobic right-wingers. quote:Do I have to buy from groups I consider oppressive because their victims have not requested that I stop? No, you don't have to buy anything from anyone. If you'd rather not purchase goods or travel to a place with a dicey human rights record, good. I myself for instance will not travel to the DR or to Myanmar until they end their persecution of Dominicans of Haitian descent and the Rohingya respectively. But there's a difference between "I would rather not purchase something from a state whose policies I abhor" and "I am going to organize a boycott in the name of group X despite group X's wishes." When I choose not to go to DR, I am not part of an organized, collective action; I am merely an individual making free choices. Edit: quote:I'm sure every single pro-palestinian detractor also sings Israel's praises when they speak about Assad, after all their world views are very nuanced it's not like they've been brainwashed to hate Israel for the past 68 years by the dictators who oppress them on a daily basis. I can't watch the video right now, but on the summary it says explicitly that the guest attempted to justify and even praise Israel's unprovoked mass murder of Gazan civilians and repeated debunked myths about Hezbollah hiding rockets in all of the destroyed houses(in fact, Israel destroyed houses not because there were fighters or weapons in them but as part of its collective punishment policy know as the Dahiya doctrine; the purpose was to make civilians suffer as retaliation for their political support of Hezbollah.) I can certainly see why people would be furious at someone who attempted to justify the deliberate murder and collective punishment of civilians on account of their race. FreshlyShaven fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Sep 24, 2015 |
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Sep 24, 2015 20:22
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quote:I agree that to the best of your knowledge that women and LGBT people in Saudi Arabia are not struggling for their basic human rights, which seems a pretty dismal indictment of your general ignorance of and indifference to to oppression of Arab peoples that can't be pinned on Israelis. That's some prime strawman right there. I mean, why did you even post something that stupid? quote:I also recognize that you think economically pressuring Saudi Arabia could be hard so we shouldn't bother. I don't see you organizing a boycott either. If you support a boycott, then get to work. If you make a good case and secure the support of the groups you're ostensibly protecting, I'll join you. But of course you don't give a poo poo about gays or women or Shia in Saudi Arabia except insofar as they serve as a justification for Israeli human rights abuses. quote:"Those uppity Israelis, how dare they suggest they're civilized white Westerners like us!" is exactly the creepy anti-Zionist meme I'm talking about. So first we're Islamophobes for saying that Israel is a Western country. When we point out that it's Israel saying that, we're then called anti-semites. That's a pretty nifty little parlor trick you got there. quote:Hmm. I wonder why Tibetans have failed to create a broad and public campaign agitating for boycotts against China. Must be because they're so happy with the way things are going in Lhasa, there's no other explanation for the lack of highly visible mass public protests against Chinese rule, right? There is a large Tibetan community in India and Nepal with large, well-organized advocacy groups. None of these groups to my knowledge has called for a boycott and arguably the spokesperson for the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama, has explicitly rejected a boycott of China. quote:Nothing you, or FreshleyShaven, said pertains to the point I was making. The video you linked shows a dude ranting in Arabic and (assuming the subtitles are to be trusted) saying "Why doesn't Syria's army learn from the Israeli Army and avoid targeting civilian areas in Lebanon and Palestine?" I don't see anything about "Assad, you're making Israel look good" or anyone saying that anyone who criticizes Assad is a genocidist or whatever you're talking about; I see a patent lie used to justify the massacre of Arabs. Israel does not avoid targeting civilian areas; in fact, it's official Israeli policy to target entire civilian neighborhoods as a form of collective punishment. To praise the unprovoked massacre of Palestinian civilians as an example to be followed is likely to piss people off. I don't know of many outside of the loony fringes(as in, LaRouche levels of looniness) who support Assad. Saying "Assad is a butcher" is not likely to raise anyone's ire in the West. Unfortunately, there are still many people in the West who fiercely support Israel despite (or because of?) her record of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, jingoism and massacring civilians. That's why the tenor gets more heated. Saying "Assad is an SOB" is about as controversial as arguing that puppies are cute. To be honest, I don't know what you're trying to argue here. Are you saying that Palestinian activists support Assad? Or that because the I/P thread gets more heated than a thread where everyone agrees Assad or ISIS are evil, everyone who posts here has a pathological hatred for Israel? If you feel I missed your point and just launched into an attack on Israel, it's because I genuinely do not understand what exactly your point is.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:06
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snyprmag posted:Where'd they even get the pork? How common is pork in I/P if neither side's religion allows it? There are a lot of secular Jews in Israel and plenty of Palestinians are Christian and have no dietary restrictions against pork(and there are of course secular Muslims in Palestine.) In fact, isn't pork considered something of a (silly but) hot-button political issue in Israel? I remember reading it's one dividing line between right-wing secular nationalists (mostly Russian) a la Yisrael Beiteinu and right-wing religious nationalists.
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Oct 16, 2015 17:32
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I know this whole "Israel=Nazi?" question is kind of a shitstorm of a topic, but here goes my 2 cents anyway. I think one point that's important to underline is the ways in which Israel and her political allies abroad have used the Holocaust not only to justify illegal, brutal and jingoistic actions like the invasion of Lebanon in 82 but also the moral legitimacy of the state itself(and by extension the Nakba). Look at the way for instance that Yad Vashem is built barely a mile away from the site of the Deir Yassin massacre and how the exhibit ends on a triumphant note with the establishment of Israel at the expense of roughly a million ethnically cleansed Palestinians. The message is clear: the Holocaust justifies what we did to the Palestinians. I think that if Israel uses the Holocaust in such a way, it's perfectly acceptable to politicize the Holocaust in order to point out how immoral and abject Israel's behavior has been. Whether doing so is a mistake in terms of tactic is of course a completely separate matter. Secondly, what exactly are we talking about when we compare Israel to Nazi Germany? Has Israel done anything close in magnitude to the enormity of the Holocaust? No, of course not. But then again, neither had the Nazis of the early 30s. And I think there's a lot more of a sustained comparison to be made between the current rightward trend in Israel and the rightward trend in 1930s Germany. There's a continued, violent assault on the Israeli left and center. It's not just the persecution and repression of Arab politicians and political parties(which is nothing new), but it's now reaching even the once-prestigious liberal-Zionist sphere. Look at the campaign of violent intimidation against even centrist human rights organizations like the New Israel Fund or the way that hundreds of even Jewish intellectuals have had to flee Israel for Europe or America as a result of the reigning and constantly worsening anti-democratic and anti-intellectual fervor. The right wing has pledged to both purge the judiciary of disloyal(read: non-reactionary) elements and to block its ability to overturn laws on the grounds of human rights or democratic ideals. It's a country that has passed law after law targeting dissidents and minorities for persecution. This is a country where it's not uncommon to see gangs of skinheads marching down the streets shouting "Death to Arabs! Death to leftists!" as the police look on nonchalantly, where non-Jews are referred to as "infiltrators" or "demographic threats" by their own government, where Knesset ministers can, with impunity, work a crowd of neo-Nazis into a frenzy with a speech including the line "This is a white man's country" and then watch with a satisfied grin as the crowd of skinheads goes on to attack African-owned businesses and beat up any Africans they encounter. Even committed Zionists are starting to see the parallels between today's Israel and the growth of hatred, jingoism, paranoia and violence that characterized the run-up to the Nazis' seizing of power. And while Israel has not yet done anything nearly as bad in scope as the Holocaust, it's not an impossibility. What happens when Bennett or Lieberman or worse is PM and Israel is no longer satisfied with a low-grade campaign of oppression punctuated by the occasional 4-figure massacre and starts killing Palestinians by the tens or hundreds of thousands? Edit: Main Paineframe posted:I haven't heard of anything even close to that level of abuse happening at checkpoints. If you've got instances of Israeli guards forcing random Palestinians to dance for their amusement at gunpoint, or beating them up solely for fun just to humiliate them, then feel free to post them. Otherwise, can we stick to complaining about things that actually happen? The oppression of Palestinians is bad enough already that we don't need to make poo poo up for the sake of hyperbole. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/29/israel http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18597-2004Nov28.html Or just read some of Gideon Levy's dispatches from the OT. FreshlyShaven fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 18:18
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CommieGIR posted:Its not like every attempt to dehumanize and de-legitimize the Palestinians has been made by the Israeli leadership in such a way that taking genocidal actions might not be wrong or anything... And I think actual genocide is a real possibility in the future, but it hasn't happened yet. Ethnic cleansing? Yes. Apartheid? Yes. Mass murder? Yes. Collective punishment? gently caress yes. Is Israel paving the way for genocide as its current strategy becomes increasingly untenable and produces an escalating climate of fear, racism, paranoia and violence? Yes. But it hasn't committed genocide yet and we should reserve the term for when it actually becomes a reality.
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Nov 5, 2015 21:23
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Main Paineframe posted:To force Hamas out of power by inflicting collective punishment against the population in hopes that they will respond to poor living conditions by rising up against Hamas. If Hamas were removed from power and replaced by a peaceful faction willing to cooperate with Israel, and the violent factions were cracked down on by the new government, it's safe to say that the oppression of Gaza would quickly be drawn down, approaching West Bank levels within 10 years. Except that's bullshit. If that was the case, why did Israel target "Fatah tower" in Gaza City, one of the few high buildings which was the symbolic headquarters of the Strip's more moderate professional class? How does bombing the headquarters of the "moderate" opposition fit in with a campaign to promote political moderatism in the GS? If that's the case, why did Israel decide to unilaterally invade the Gaza Strip last year in order to prevent the formation of a unity government which would have required Hamas to moderate its positions? If that's the case, why has Israel repeatedly attacked moderate and non-violent parts of the Palestinian rights movement with the goal of radicalizing them? Simple: because Palestinian militancy is no significant threat to Israel whereas Palestinian and international activism is. Israel wants Hamas because with Hamas, they can avoid topics like occupation, ethnic cleansing, right of return, etc. and simply point to a convenient (though ultimately powerless) boogeyman. The Israeli government knows full well that collective punishment only strengthens Palestinian resistance, but it particularly strengthens the most violent and cynical factions, which is one reason Israel uses it so much. When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, it was precisely to allow the IDF more room to engage in mass violence without worrying about casualties in the settlements(ie, the lives that actually matter to Israel.) The blockade of Gaza began before Hamas took over and every attempt on Hamas' part to become more moderate has been met with violence. To believe that Israel's policy in the Gaza Strip is to create a "moderate" government which will finally "allow" them to end the blockade is absurd. A moderate government is precisely what Israel doesn't want; its actions have long been targeted at provoking radicalism. This is an old playbook: this is the main reason for instance why Israel invaded Lebanon in 82(to fracture and radicalize a PLO which had begun to gain international recognition as the spokespeople of the Palestinians and had agreed to pursue a 2-state solution)
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Nov 5, 2015 22:58
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CommieGIR posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settler_violence Yeah, but settler attacks are usually low-intensity: arson, assault, vandalism, theft, etc. Remember the burned-to-death family in Duma? It made news because it was a relative rarity; settler terrorists frequently terrorize but they (relatively) rarely kill. I think things would be different if the settlers were producing a Baruch Goldstein-type event on a daily or weekly basis.
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Nov 5, 2015 23:33
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Main Paineframe posted:According to that spectrum, practically every country in the world is in at least stage 3 of genocide, and the US is in stage 4 or 5 of genocide. Boom, there goes practically all the bite from the original sinister statement that Israel is in stage 6 of ~genocide~. I think that's actually a pretty useful thing to keep in mind: there's a potential for genocide in just about any society. That said, the potential is much greater and genocide is much more imminent in Israel than in any other Western country I can think of(maybe Greece if Golden Dawn sweeps to power.) Is it really that hard to see genocide in the future when gangs of skinheads are allowed to chant "death to Arabs! death to leftists!" with impunity, when "death to Arabs!" is a common chant in football stadiums, when the government openly refers to its own citizens as "demographic threats", when politicians are allowed to say "this is a white man's country!" and incite a racist mob into lynching minorities, when the PM of Israel equates Palestinians with Nazis(aka, the nec plus ultra of irredeemable, inherent evil) and deliberately provokes Palestinian violence in order to provoke a cycle of violence and hatred? quote:While I agree in principle, after Protective Edge ended and the UN worked out a deal between Israel and the PA to coordinate the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip, a big international aid conference was held where billions of dollars were pledged toward reconstruction, and that was considered to be the funding for the reconstruction plan. In reality, only a few hundred million of that money has been delivered on, and not only the reconstruction but even the humanitarian aid has ground to a halt due to being funded by nothing more than broken promises. I agree that it's a poor investment, but charity cases usually are. And it's not like "eh, why bother housing the homeless, their home might get destroyed again so let's just leave them on the streets" is exactly the pinnacle of moral development. First, you're significantly overstating how much the illegal blockade has been loosened. So far, 1 house has been built since Protective Edge. One. Out of hundreds of thousands destroyed and despite the fact that winter is fast approaching. That's not a result of a lack of financial aid(though that's certainly an outrage in and of itself); it's the result of the blockade. Israel may have jiggered with the details of the blockade a bit, but the fact is that the blockade is still designed to cause civilian suffering and to prevent the Gaza Strip infrastructure from being meaningfully rebuilt(which again goes to how at this pace Gaza is set to be uninhabitable by 2020 and Israel has done nothing to prevent that; in other words, that's what Israel's desired outcome seems to be.) Secondly, you can't treat the blockade as being 2 separate, unrelated phenomena. Yes, Egypt controls the Rafah crossing but Egypt is a military dictatorship and Egypt's military has been deeply intertwined with, voire subservient to the Israeli state since the 70s. Israel is Egypt's major supporter and patron and they dictate that Gaza be under blockade(even when Morsi was president, the blockade more or less stayed despite massive popular opposition due to pressure from Israel via the military) though of course Sisi has his own reasons for participating(crushing the MB). The fact that an Arab dictatorship is complicit in an Israeli policy doesn't subtract from Israel's culpability; it only adds disgrace to the Egyptian government's account.
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Nov 6, 2015 15:37
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