Nobody is vilifying someone because they have different opinions on the importance of reading Shakespeare in high-school, or if they think, big centralised public libraries are a better option to lots of smaller public libraries.
No, but they are dumping people into that category in their mind, and then making all kinds of assumptions and conclusions about that person based off the one false assumption. And then because it’s the internet, the name calling starts and all constructive conversation ends.
Just look at this thread. I started it with “the current American political discourse sucks” and no-one commenting was able to take that statement at face value. Everyone replied with assumptions on what my stance was on issues I didn’t mention. It’s that exact reflex that I have a problem with. Essentially, I agree with the message, but I disagree with the delivery method.
no-one commenting was able to take that statement at face value
People can smell the tepid liberalism and pretty reliably guess what else you believe because they’ve seen it before. The modlog indicates they were right. You are exactly the person they’re talking about when they mock someone bothsidesing genocide.
Hamas doesn’t equal the entirety of the Palestinian population in the same way that the Israeli government/military doesn’t equal the entire Israeli population. Why is that so hard for you .ml tankies to separate? There’s a reason why I specifically make sure to phrase the discussion as “Hamas’s actions” not “the Palestinians’ actions”
Israel is fighting to eradicate the entire Palestinian people, Hamas is fighting to protect the entire Palestinian people, and even groups whose members Hamas murdered to obtain power are supporting them at this point in time. When you adopt the zionist framing that Israel is justified in fighting Hamas because they’re just so evil, you are carrying water for Israel.
If you’re old enough to remember Iraq, they did the same shit; the right wanted to murder as many Muslims as possible, the tepid liberals tried to say they only opposed Saddam and the Baathists and terrorists as if the two positions weren’t equivalent in practice.
I’m old enough to remember the first Iraq. I’m also aware enough of history to understand that when you hold a group up as the innocent victims, when they were anything but, you create an environment where other groups emulate them down the road.
The Israeli government holds the lions share of the blame for the Gaza genocide, after all, they are the one’s doing it. But if we want to learn from this, and learn from what led up to it to hopefully short circuit things before they get this far in the future, we must acknowledge Hamas role.
Hamas may be fighting for the Palestinian people, but how you fight can have a major effect on how your enemies react, and also can have a major effect on soft support from third parties. Things like fighting out of civilian areas, and fighting without uniforms, etc, were made war crimes in the past specifically because of situations like this; it ends up getting civilians caught in the crossfire at best, and targeted at worst.
This isn’t a left/right position, this is just observations on what has happened globally every time an assymetrical war has been fought over the last 30 years.
Realistically, everyone holds some blame here. If the UN had some balls (and if the US and USSR could have pulled their heads out of their collective asses back in the seventies) there would have been peacekeepers and a two state solution after the first war. Probably should have made Jerusalem a city state like the Vatican, just to stop everyone fighting for control of that too.
Hamas role? They tried to be peaceful during the march of return, they got gassed and shot with snipers.
The only role any Palestinian group can play that won’t have Israel making those same criticisms is to stand in a field and commit seppuku.
You criticize Hamas for not using uniforms, while Israel arms civilians and helps them build homes on stolen land between Gaza and their own military bases, you criticize Hamas for fighting near civilians, while the IDF’s HQ is literally next to a shopping mall.
The two aren’t even comparable, because Palestine doesn’t have the benefit of billions of dollars of military equipment and the ability to have a standing army without getting bombed necessary to fight a non-guerilla war, meanwhile Israel chooses to do these things.
There is one single party responsible for starting this conflict, who can end it at any time, that’s Israel.
Sometimes there are no good choices, but that doesn’t absolve you of the consequences of that choice you had to make.
The world isn’t made up of good guys and bad guys. Hamas doesn’t get a pass on their actions just because Israel committed worse. And my purpose in pointing this out is not to absolve Israel of their actions, it’s to ensure people remain aware of what actions are likely to result in what consequences.
My hope is that in the future, when some other fight for freedom starts up somewhere else, the people there can learn from what happened in Gaza. Learn which actions worked, which ones were futile, and which ones actively made things worse. That learning gets real muddy if we keep glossing the whole thing over with “Everything is only Israel’s fault”.
What Fanon implored us to do was to view the struggle of the oppressed as a struggle to create a new mode of being, a new form of humanity. Within the revolutionary struggles of the masses, he insisted, lie the seeds of a new humanity. The ongoing resistance in Palestine today is not a new phenomenon, but is rather the latest episode in a decades’ long struggle for freedom and what Hegel and Fanon both agree on, recognition. Not recognition to live within shrivelled little cantons and drip-fed subsistence, but recognition as a human being in the holistic sense of the term. The stone throwing, the stabbings and the bombings are a reaction to a colonial regime which denies this recognition.
Both the Occupier and the Occupied can and do use acts of terrorism to further their aims, but the aims are diametrically opposed. The aim of the occupier is to continue the occupation, that requires violence to maintain, and ethnic cleansing. The aim of the occupied is to end the occupation, by any means possible, and gain emancipation. We see that one is a reaction to the other, Israel’s perpetual violence towards native peoples is the underlying cause of these conflicts. Solutions to ending the violence of anti-colonialism can only come from ending the underlying violence of the colonialism.
We see that permanent occupation develops into an Apartheid, as the settlers / occupiers have rights upheld by the State and Military, while the natives / occupied have no rights and subjected to violence from both the Settlers and Military. The State, who holds the monopoly on power, uses terrorism to suppress resistance to the occupation in order to maintain it. The occupied, having no power, uses terrorism as a means to resist the occupation.
Israel has no interest in peace, it has interest in land grabbing, which is in complete opposition to peace. This is fundamental to Zionism. Which is why an end to Zionism and a regime change, where a Secular Bi-National One-State that gives equal rights to Palestinians and Israelis is the only way for the conflict to really end. Not only with Palestinian resistance, but with all resistance groups that were created by Israeli occupation.
The existence of Hamas, and any armed resistance movement, is directly due to the decades of violence experienced daily under the permanent occupation, the Apartheid State, of Israel. It’s impossible to understand their existence if you don’t understand the lived experience and material conditions they are forced to live under. There is no such thing as a perfect victim when it comes to anti-Colonialist resistance, not for the Vietcong, the IRA, or the ANC either. Can you condemn the violence of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the same way as the violence of the Warsaw Ghetto?
Adi Callai has also done a great analysis of how Antisemitism has been weaponized by Zionism during its history, as well as an analysis of Franz Fanon and Identity Politics in the context of Colonialism and Anti-colonialism.
Honestly, when it comes to these types of conflict, I’m less concerned about the overall morality of the movement, and more concerned with the the individual actions, and even then, I’m generally more concerned with effectiveness, rather than whether or not it was “right”. That question tends to get very blurry as time goes on. Look at historical revolutions against monarchies like the French or Russian revolutions. Does the initial “righteousness” of the movement cover for actions that came later?
I’m a believer in being aware of and accepting the consequences of the choices you make, both good and bad. If there are bad consequences to your actions, you have to own the fact that you’ve either deemed those consequences as acceptable, or else you were unaware that it would happen. Everything is a choice, and all choices have consequences. Judging the right and wrong of it is a quagmire I try not to delve into. I think it’s much more useful to keep sight of what choices led to what consequences, and learn from that.
No, but they are dumping people into that category in their mind, and then making all kinds of assumptions and conclusions about that person based off the one false assumption. And then because it’s the internet, the name calling starts and all constructive conversation ends.
Just look at this thread. I started it with “the current American political discourse sucks” and no-one commenting was able to take that statement at face value. Everyone replied with assumptions on what my stance was on issues I didn’t mention. It’s that exact reflex that I have a problem with. Essentially, I agree with the message, but I disagree with the delivery method.
People can smell the tepid liberalism and pretty reliably guess what else you believe because they’ve seen it before. The modlog indicates they were right. You are exactly the person they’re talking about when they mock someone bothsidesing genocide.
Hamas doesn’t equal the entirety of the Palestinian population in the same way that the Israeli government/military doesn’t equal the entire Israeli population. Why is that so hard for you .ml tankies to separate? There’s a reason why I specifically make sure to phrase the discussion as “Hamas’s actions” not “the Palestinians’ actions”
Israel is fighting to eradicate the entire Palestinian people, Hamas is fighting to protect the entire Palestinian people, and even groups whose members Hamas murdered to obtain power are supporting them at this point in time. When you adopt the zionist framing that Israel is justified in fighting Hamas because they’re just so evil, you are carrying water for Israel.
If you’re old enough to remember Iraq, they did the same shit; the right wanted to murder as many Muslims as possible, the tepid liberals tried to say they only opposed Saddam and the Baathists and terrorists as if the two positions weren’t equivalent in practice.
I’m old enough to remember the first Iraq. I’m also aware enough of history to understand that when you hold a group up as the innocent victims, when they were anything but, you create an environment where other groups emulate them down the road.
The Israeli government holds the lions share of the blame for the Gaza genocide, after all, they are the one’s doing it. But if we want to learn from this, and learn from what led up to it to hopefully short circuit things before they get this far in the future, we must acknowledge Hamas role.
Hamas may be fighting for the Palestinian people, but how you fight can have a major effect on how your enemies react, and also can have a major effect on soft support from third parties. Things like fighting out of civilian areas, and fighting without uniforms, etc, were made war crimes in the past specifically because of situations like this; it ends up getting civilians caught in the crossfire at best, and targeted at worst.
This isn’t a left/right position, this is just observations on what has happened globally every time an assymetrical war has been fought over the last 30 years.
Realistically, everyone holds some blame here. If the UN had some balls (and if the US and USSR could have pulled their heads out of their collective asses back in the seventies) there would have been peacekeepers and a two state solution after the first war. Probably should have made Jerusalem a city state like the Vatican, just to stop everyone fighting for control of that too.
Hamas role? They tried to be peaceful during the march of return, they got gassed and shot with snipers.
The only role any Palestinian group can play that won’t have Israel making those same criticisms is to stand in a field and commit seppuku.
You criticize Hamas for not using uniforms, while Israel arms civilians and helps them build homes on stolen land between Gaza and their own military bases, you criticize Hamas for fighting near civilians, while the IDF’s HQ is literally next to a shopping mall.
The two aren’t even comparable, because Palestine doesn’t have the benefit of billions of dollars of military equipment and the ability to have a standing army without getting bombed necessary to fight a non-guerilla war, meanwhile Israel chooses to do these things.
There is one single party responsible for starting this conflict, who can end it at any time, that’s Israel.
Sometimes there are no good choices, but that doesn’t absolve you of the consequences of that choice you had to make.
The world isn’t made up of good guys and bad guys. Hamas doesn’t get a pass on their actions just because Israel committed worse. And my purpose in pointing this out is not to absolve Israel of their actions, it’s to ensure people remain aware of what actions are likely to result in what consequences.
My hope is that in the future, when some other fight for freedom starts up somewhere else, the people there can learn from what happened in Gaza. Learn which actions worked, which ones were futile, and which ones actively made things worse. That learning gets real muddy if we keep glossing the whole thing over with “Everything is only Israel’s fault”.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20151019-palestine-through-the-lens-of-frantz-fanon/
Both the Occupier and the Occupied can and do use acts of terrorism to further their aims, but the aims are diametrically opposed. The aim of the occupier is to continue the occupation, that requires violence to maintain, and ethnic cleansing. The aim of the occupied is to end the occupation, by any means possible, and gain emancipation. We see that one is a reaction to the other, Israel’s perpetual violence towards native peoples is the underlying cause of these conflicts. Solutions to ending the violence of anti-colonialism can only come from ending the underlying violence of the colonialism.
We see that permanent occupation develops into an Apartheid, as the settlers / occupiers have rights upheld by the State and Military, while the natives / occupied have no rights and subjected to violence from both the Settlers and Military. The State, who holds the monopoly on power, uses terrorism to suppress resistance to the occupation in order to maintain it. The occupied, having no power, uses terrorism as a means to resist the occupation.
Israel has no interest in peace, it has interest in land grabbing, which is in complete opposition to peace. This is fundamental to Zionism. Which is why an end to Zionism and a regime change, where a Secular Bi-National One-State that gives equal rights to Palestinians and Israelis is the only way for the conflict to really end. Not only with Palestinian resistance, but with all resistance groups that were created by Israeli occupation.
The existence of Hamas, and any armed resistance movement, is directly due to the decades of violence experienced daily under the permanent occupation, the Apartheid State, of Israel. It’s impossible to understand their existence if you don’t understand the lived experience and material conditions they are forced to live under. There is no such thing as a perfect victim when it comes to anti-Colonialist resistance, not for the Vietcong, the IRA, or the ANC either. Can you condemn the violence of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the same way as the violence of the Warsaw Ghetto?
In the Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen, the situation in Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghettos. The comparison was also made by a Palestinian poet who was later killed by an Israeli airstrike. Adi Callai has also written on the parallels in his article The Gaza Ghetto Uprising and expanded upon in his corresponding video
Adi Callai has also done a great analysis of how Antisemitism has been weaponized by Zionism during its history, as well as an analysis of Franz Fanon and Identity Politics in the context of Colonialism and Anti-colonialism.
Honestly, when it comes to these types of conflict, I’m less concerned about the overall morality of the movement, and more concerned with the the individual actions, and even then, I’m generally more concerned with effectiveness, rather than whether or not it was “right”. That question tends to get very blurry as time goes on. Look at historical revolutions against monarchies like the French or Russian revolutions. Does the initial “righteousness” of the movement cover for actions that came later?
I’m a believer in being aware of and accepting the consequences of the choices you make, both good and bad. If there are bad consequences to your actions, you have to own the fact that you’ve either deemed those consequences as acceptable, or else you were unaware that it would happen. Everything is a choice, and all choices have consequences. Judging the right and wrong of it is a quagmire I try not to delve into. I think it’s much more useful to keep sight of what choices led to what consequences, and learn from that.
Someone beaks into your house, starts eating all your food, stealing your things, hurting your children, and kills your dog.
You fight back.
Do we now say that we need to acknowledge the role you had in the home invasion?
Do I kidnap the home invader’s kid in response? The world is not as simplistic as you’d apparently like it to be.