#1
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#3
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A somber read... I have to admit that I have found myself """supporting""" Palestine with donations and words despite not having any personal connection to the land - even through experience. And yes, I did feel a bit like a phony for doing so! Why did I bother? Why did I care? It is so abstract to me!

But, as you said, the I/P conflict does not exist in a bubble, and, as such, it is fought as much abroad, on an ideological front, as it is on the ground. The conflict is so asymmetrical as it is specifically because of the immense support Israel enjoys from the United States. And I do have a personal connection there - I am an American! I have, for instance, in both my family and my workplace, some hardline Israel supporters. They often don't understand why they are, but they are. So how can I have "little to nothing to do" with the Palestinian solution to the occupation, if it is my world around me that is occupying them?

I don't mean this to say that this gives me a right to be patronize the Palestinian people. A "liberty" that a people do not win for themselves will not be a real liberty. However, the reality of the I/P situation is not really so simple as the "oppressor" and "oppressed" dichotomy that you present. Yes, Israel is an oppressor, and Palestine is oppressed, but you also cannot deny that the I/P conflict has morphosed into a proxy battlefield on which various Western power-desiring machines struggle. That is to say, "Israel" is the oppressor, "Israel" in this case means quite a lot more than the 7-8M citizens of that nation.

This presents a bit of a dilemma. If we, as Western leftists, disengage our own meddling in the conflict, the Palestinian people may then be free to grasp for the autonomy, in their struggle, that they rightly deserve, but - will they then be overrun by my friends, family, and coworkers?

What say you?
#4
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#5
Mike Nelson here.
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Your two main examples of the "left" are Kadima, which is a centrist Zionist party that supported the war on Gaza, and the CPGB, which is a tiny sect with almost no support. To use these as the only real examples of the left seems odd.
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#7
Mike Nelson here.
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What do you think of Norman Chominsky?
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#9
Mike Nelson here.
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You know when a child says a controversial swear word and gets a lot of attention, so they keep saying it, and they build a little career out of it, and then put out a book called The Holocaust Industry, then they slander the good name of Israel, all so that bigots will pave a golden road in front of them. Guess what, the road goes to hell.
#10
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i like palestine mor then isriel
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#12
Mike Nelson here.
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maybe oppression isn't a simple binary that gives unlimited powers to the oppressed in the eyes of most people. i mean you know that israel says exactly the same thing, if jews are oppressed anywhere then israel is right everywhere.
#13
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i have a question, when you say to support the people including supporting self-oppression within the oppressed class, why are you discriminating and telling people only to support the palestinians. can't you support the israelis as well. there are oppressed people among the israelis and they are also fighting for survival.

just support everyone, everyone is trying to make a living
#14
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capitalism posted:
i have a question, when you say to support the people including supporting self-oppression within the oppressed class, why are you discriminating and telling people only to support the palestinians. can't you support the israelis as well. there are oppressed people among the israelis and they are also fighting for survival.

just support everyone, everyone is trying to make a living



And there members of the bourgeoisie who are oppressed and live in suffering, but when looking at the bourgeoisie as a class do you call for their support? The fact is that the Israelis are an oppressor class, and once you start negotiating strategy for being "too cruel" to the oppressor class, you start supporting the status quo. Not to mention, saying "support everyone" is a trite, meaningless tautology that says nothing about anything. That being said, I don't believe we should start supporting the complete extermination and expulsion of the Israeli people either, because that's not really a strategy.

#15
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#16
tardy on these heaters
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people should be able to exercise their due rights. palestinians can't. israelis benefit directly from palestinian loss, so supporting israelis is supporting attacks on palestinian rights. dont infringe on israeli due rights either, but dont buy into made up fascist nonsense like the "right to exist" of a racist apartheid state.
#17
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discipline posted:
nobody palestinian is asking you to support the complete extermination and expulsion of jewish people from occupied palestine/israel. even hamas' charter outlines a national solution where members of all religions can live in peace together in the holy land, much like they did for like a bajillion years after the crusades when the muslims ran things. israeli jews want dominance in the holy land, not coexistence. if they were simply after coexistence things would be a lot easier. anyway, you can use your own judgment on this one!



yeah, i know, i should have been more clear i was arguing the hypothetical that i thought capitalism was bringing up

#18
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#19
Mike Nelson here.
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well then what's the game plan. like, be specific, is it to bomb enough pizzerias that israel changes its mind or something.
#20
tardy on these heaters
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palestinians are doing that BDS thing, and in our home countries we can oppose local zionist politics

mostly i hear from palestinians that they want us to promote awareness of the situation and fight israeli disinformation
#21
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babyfinland posted:
palestinians are doing that BDS thing, and in our home countries we can oppose local zionist politics

mostly i hear from palestinians that they want us to promote awareness of the situation and fight israeli disinformation



are you envisioning something like the international campaign against apartheid in south africa?

#22
tardy on these heaters
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elemennop posted:

babyfinland posted:
palestinians are doing that BDS thing, and in our home countries we can oppose local zionist politics

mostly i hear from palestinians that they want us to promote awareness of the situation and fight israeli disinformation

are you envisioning something like the international campaign against apartheid in south africa?



i think that's the idea

http://www.bdsmovement.net/

#23
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#24
Mike Nelson here.
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the thing is that a lot of the reason why there was one-state/two-debate/etc debates and debates over the "right" palestinian tactics is that some people think that certain tactics (murdering Israeli youth) are not tolerable and they don't want to support political groups (Fatah or Hamas) who condone such things.
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#26
tardy on these heaters
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why isnt there similar debates about israeli politics?
#27
Mike Nelson here.
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i'm not sure it is racist or weird to say "governments that support suicide bombing are not acting in a just way that i want to support." as i said, some people don't reduce it to a simple binary where one side gets to do anything they want if the other is worse. you're entire framework is saying that if they don't back "the palestinians" in some vague overarching way then they support israel, but that's just inverting the same thinking that israel uses. it gets you in gross places.
#28
tardy on these heaters
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No one supports FATAH and very few support HAMAS, I'm not sure if I understand what your point is.
#29
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discipline posted:
the palestinians definitely learned that suicide bombing was not an effective tactic for mass resistance after the second intifada. that's why they don't do it anymore. the first intifada's tactics were most effective because it brought the community together and didn't sow resentment. it also gained more support internationally. having a neighbor's kid blow himself up in tel aviv results in the entire neighborhood or even the entire city being under heavily mechanized attack and there's nothing you can do except hide under your bed or grab a gun and go die in the alleys. meanwhile, mass civil disobedience results in community gardens, schools, neighborhood watches, etc.

the majority of posters up around centers like jenin or nablus don't feature suicide bombers. they feature the young men and women who either died from local attacks or died fighting the israeli military locally. suicide bombing gave the israelis a strong PR tool because it pushed attention away from these local incursions and sieges and subsequent fighting. the strategic planning for "the next intifada" focuses on utilizing community resistance techniques - art, civil disobedience, marches, etc - and so most of the people picked out and imprisoned by israel include these community leaders. indeed it's more dangerous to israel because people feel a lot more for the guy who is getting his arm or leg broken on camera than the guy on the martyrdom video. suicide bombing is a really strange social phenomenon in palestine and would take a whole thread to discuss. but they've mostly given it up and community support for it being an accepted tactic of civil disobedience is low.



but who is this PR for exactly? the large majority of the world already supports palestine and americans and israelis are so brainwashed/fascist that this seems like wanting to be a noble failure instead of actually win through effective guerrilla tactics.

#30
tardy on these heaters
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what exactly would constitute effective guerilla tactics in these specific circumstances?
#31
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#32
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urban guerrilla warfare is effective if coupled with wider maoist warfare in the countryside. the countryside in this case would be the Sinai peninsula, which from what i understand is already being used to wage war on israel after the egyptian revolution, the golan heights and syria as a base to draw israel out into a long war, and hezbollah in lebanon supplying more effective weapons than dinky rockets.

the problems in the past have been relying on the states in the region rather than palestinians themselves using territory, thinking that non-violence does anything in this situation (unless it's by rich white people and even then the flotilla didn't really do anything), and being unable to mobilize the entire population because of a lack of good leadership (the PLO is awful, Hamas is not great)

this is my uninformed anaylsis of the situation.
#33
tardy on these heaters
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that's fine and all but that's not a realistic or productive plan for the population at large.
#34
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babyfinland posted:
that's fine and all but that's not a realistic or productive plan for the population at large.



i agree and the population should be taking part non-violent protest in order to radicalize them. however this cannot be instead of violence and terrorism, these are the only tactics that have any hope of succeeding in palestine or any colonial situation. provoking violent response to non-violent protest is the best way to eliminate liberalism in the population and make it a good source of popular support for guerrillas, which is needed so they can hide in the general population.

what's interesting is this has happened in reverse in palestine, the population has already become radicalized and is desperate for a guerrilla force to support. the options so far have been very poor, but reducing violence is the best way to make palestinians become completely hopeless and kill any chance for a solution.

#35
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#36
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good points and a genuine strategic analysis of what needs to be done in palestine (rather than in israel which is what most of the analysis is) would be far more than the crappy outline i came up with. however you bring up an interesting point about islam being a reaction to bourgeois infiltration of palestine which undermines them through the isolation of late capitalist culture without any of the material benefits. the reaction, which you say didn't work, shows that even in the most oppressive system in the world in the face of centuries of perfected propaganda and oppression techniques people still long for freedom. ultimately, this freedom will have to come through violence (i still think fanon's analysis of the colonized subject needing violence to reclaim his humanity is important) and i cant see the value of non-violent resistance. perhaps a new model of organization will have to emerge to deal with the vast spy network among the palestinians, but it will emerge and theoretically it will have to be terroristic and uncompromising if it has any chance of success.

i know you're mostly for supporting any current efforts by palestinians and not imposing our theoretical frameworks on them, which i understand, but i am curious what you think a model of revolution and protest can be that will be able to succeed since you're far more knowledgeable than me.
#37
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#38
Mike Nelson here.
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babyfinland posted:
No one supports FATAH and very few support HAMAS, I'm not sure if I understand what your point is.

well international debates used to be about whether to support fatah or hamas' actions in part. so the debate was more "what do you expect from a colonized people" than "i support the palestinian leadership" or something. and that's part of why a lot of people couldn't see themselves in the palestinian struggle. i mean i'm just saying why many of the left were ambivalent. also i have no idea what will solve the conflict for the palestinians, i don't think i'm going to solve that. but i think it is important to talk critically i guess.

#39
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discipline posted:

i desperately want goatstein to cover my fat titties with his hot cum



goatstein why did you do this

#40
Nippon
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i honestly don't remember doing that.