cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21396125
Stephen Starr in Hamtramck, Michigan
Mon 14 Oct 2024 11.00 EDT
It is not a complex issue. There is a genocide and there are increasing calls to support those genociders electorally. Instead of supporting genociders, you should oppose them.
Liberals call “issues” complex in order to speak euphemistically about the horrible things they support. They do not actually have an understanding of the alleged complexity, it is just a lazy thought-terminating cliché. When you do understand something, you can discuss it directly. At the moment, you are apparently more afraid of using the word genocide than actually being complicut in it yourself. Is this the “complexity” you are referring to? Your personal discomfort? I suspect so.
Unless you’d like to explain how it does…
Being consistently against genocide is the first step towards actually fighting against it. I have set the bar very low. Can you clear it?
A 1000 year Middle East conflict “isn’t a complex issue”?
Israel as a settler colonial entity is around 100 years old. Before that, Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived in the same area with very little sectarian violence for around 800 years.
This isn’t a 1,000 year Middle east conflict, it’s a modern-day Western settler-colonialist project. It’s an ~80 year ethnic cleansing project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism
Calling it a thousand year conflict is Zionist propaganda. Plain and simple.
Dude, Palestinians lived largely in peace with Jews in what was called Palestine until WW2. This is not an ancient conflict unless you believe antisemitic propaganda. The state of Israel is compensation for the Holocaust, paid for with land from the Palestinians.
The state of Israel is compensation for the Holocaust,
The state of Israel was secured through bribery and a will to try to appease an extremist terrorist group who the UN hoped would settle the eff down if they were given the land they had been killing people trying to steal. They didnt end up appeased, and the world didnt owe them land for the holocaust anyway. They should take that up with Germany and bill them for it, not the rest of us.
No, it’s been a little over a 100 years of Settler Colonialist Zionism. Zionism has not existed for 1000 years.
‘Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History’ by Nur Masalha gives a detailed account of it’s history before British Occupation and ‘A History of Modern Palestine’ by Ilan Pappe gives a detailed account of it’s history since the British Occupation.
Origins of Zionism
Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.
Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.
That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.
Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.
Quote
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
Historian Works on the History
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Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
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The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
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A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
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The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
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10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
A 1000 year Middle East conflict “isn’t a complex issue”?
I already stated what is not complex. It is that there is an ongoing genocide and that you and others are sheepdogging for the perpetrators. I stated it directly and your response continues this pattern of avoiding even mentioning the term genocide even though it is the topic of this thread and the points I have made.
Re: “1000 year middle east conflict”, this is itself an ahistorical, chauvinist absurdity that papers over the real modern history of colonialism and Zionism and usually has a few dashes of Islamophobia thrown in as well, though yo be honest I would not be surprised if the people sheepdogging for genociders were not particularly familiar with the details of that reference.
More realistically, the “it’s complex” line serves as a way to avoid thinking about or interrogating the topic, it is a way for the ignorant to feel secure despite knowledgeable troublemakers telling them specific but inconvenient things. Like, say, that you should oppose genocide.
Either you’re obviously too ignorant to hold intelligent opinions on this matter, or you’re clearly arguing in bad faith by stating obvious falsehoods.
At the moment I’m trying to navigate middle schooler level chauvinist talking points and asking you to address what I say rather than what you make up. Oh, and to remind you of my main and original point, the one you are afraid to even mention!
Why should anyone take you seriously?
This is Lemmy, there is a limit to which anyone should take anonymous forum comments seriously.
But you should take genocide seriously. If you are not knee-jerk advocating against it, and are instead trying to support its perpetrators, you had better have the very best knowledge and justifications, better than I can even imagine, to make a case for why you support those carrying out the greatest crime.
Everyone should take genocide seriously and that is what people should listen to in my messages. They should also recognize that the responses to my advocacy require dishonest behaviors.
Naturally, as the election approaches, liberals will increasingly panic and try to shut down anything that disagrees with their (pro-genocidal) party line. But I have and will continue to peel those with empathy and honesty off of that track.
Its not 1000 years old. Zionists lie about that to make it seem intractable. Arabs and Jews got along fine for the entire 800 year period of the Ottoman empire which ended in the early 1900s. Learn some history so you dont embarass yourself. its 80 years old, since the land theft, murder, and terrorism of the Nakba, done by Israelis.
