• masquenox@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    And still people make surprised Pikachu faces when we call Israel a white supremacist settler-colonialist state.

    • bh11235@infosec.pub
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      11 months ago

      white supremacist

      Lol. Lmao, even.

      None of the 54 people who upvoted this have the first idea about how Israeli internal politics relates to white supremacy. None of them know how Likud got elected in '77, on top what of ethnic tensions. None of them know the names “Dudi Amsalem”, “Miri Regev”, “Galit Distel”, who are high ranking ministers in the current Israeli govt (Distel quit recently), and how they built their political capital and support base on top of repeated scorn and derision for “the white tribe” which in Israel is traditionally identified with the secular liberal elites, who vote for left wing parties and try to promote left wing policies. Listen to some of the stuff that this wing of Likud says, ironically they don’t sound far off from the BLM movement who of course they will tell you that they oppose in their capacity as staunch conservatives. Don’t underestimate how much of Likud’s power comes from exactly that fault line in Israeli society.

      Go ahead and call Israel bigoted, a settler state, a colonialist project, all of these start off an argument that often Israel is going to look not so great coming out of – but “white supremacist”? People make the surprised Pikachu face because this take is detached from physical reality. Out of what I want to believe is good intentions, you ended up shoving the square peg that is this conflict into the convenient round hole that is this narrative about colors vs. whites which has not applied since decades before the turn of the century.

      FWIW I don’t personally have the taste for any of this. I wish I could stop hearing about the imaginary applications of colors to Israeli internal and foreign policy, and instead start hearing more about practical plans of how to ensure security in the region and how to aim for a future where millions of Gazans don’t starve. But clearly no one is asking me.