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Palestinian uprising on a scale not seen in 50 years just started
(edition.cnn.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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I didn't say anything remotely like that. If you care about actually ending the oppresion, nominally your strategic goals should be ending that oppression, not doomed violence for it's own sake. We even have a word for this on the left: 'adventurism'. The Viet Minh opposition to the French may have been violent, but it wasn't a fruitless and doomed affair, and their leadership went to incredible lengths to make sure their attacks where strategically fruitful.
Uhh not this, because it won't achieve any of their political aims and is just going to get a bunch of civilians killed. I don't need to posit a better idea to point out how much of a shit-sandwich that this is going to be for the Palestinians and that leftists shouldn't be treating it like their team scoring a goal in a football match.
On the flip side, can you point to why this is a good thing to be happy about from a material perspective, and not a vibes based 'psychological' victory?
Honestly, I think that you're wrong on the possibility of material victory. This offensive has shown the world that Palestinian resistance is not dead and that they can stand up to deal a devastating blow. If they can disrupt Israel's attempts to re-align various Arab nations, and if the hostages and threat of Hezbollah intervention can pre-empt a ground invasion in Gaza, then the resistance could make significant material concessions/gains. Depending on how the next few days go, then I think there's a chance of reforging the broader pro-Palestinian coalition amongst the various countries of the Middle East, especially in light of the Saudi-Iran rapprochement. If changing the geopolitical alignment into one that's much more favorable to the survival of the Palestinian people isn't a material gain, than I don't know what is.
There was clearly an incredible degree of effort and coordination to pull off an operation of this scale without alerting the Israeli security apparatus. I don't think this operation is particularly irrational or feckless. It's a gamble, but the alternative to action is a slow death.
They haven't done that though. They've shown they're capable of bloodying Israel's nose. They've killed scores and taken a base, but Israel's ability to wage a war against them has not been reduced one iota. This isn't some distant colony half a world away were a big psychological victory is enough to cause a pull-back. They're right on the border, and are treated as an imminent security threat by Israel, so in order to prevent them from waving war you have to actually reduce their ability to, not just their desire.
Which, if you know anything about Israeli governments, especially right wing ones, you know has a 0% chance of being effective. They've killed their own men before to avoid this. A ground invasion is absolutely coming.
The Easter Uprising ended up with pretty much everyone dead. There was no military victory. The Brits bombed out the area and executed everyone they could. But it didn't stop with the Easter Uprising, it shifted the narrative and galvanized more of the population. It made them feel like they actually had chance again. I'd say they were on the border of the British Empire still quite at its peak as well. Modern military tech might have changed but the psychological effects can't be written off whole cloth a day into what's actually happening.
The UK didn't view Ireland as an existential security threat like Israel does with it's neighbors (or say like Russia does with Ukraine).
This is already being compared to Pearl Harbor, which if you recall, ended with millions of dead Japanese (and even then Japan was not viewed as an existential threat). I don't think it especially likely here, but you have already seen how the western propaganda machine can rewrite not just genocide but wholesale population extermination as being justified on spurious claims of 'self-defense'.
Look, if I'm wrong and if turns out that this does improve things for the Palestinians celebrate that, then. But maybe put away the champagne until the bodies are counted.
You seem to be incredibly hung up on this idea of celebration, but most of what you're attacking are messages of support.
No, it's more than that. They're demonstrating that Israel is weaker than ever, both militarily and domestically. Just compare 2021 and right now. In 2021, the iron dome was partially effective as a countermeasure against rockets (although the fact that it was only partially effective and not have a "95% interception rate" was itself a victory). But now, the iron dome is completely out of the picture, mostly misfiring and being useless since the Palestinians are no longer relying exclusively on rockets. In 2021, there wasn't much ground troops from the Palestinians while now, they are merking Israeli soldiers at military bases and commandeering Israeli tanks. At the geopolitical front, Israel's allies are weaker than before while the Palestinians' allies are stronger than before. The French is getting chased out of the Sahel and the much-anticipated counteroffensive in Ukraine turned out to be a dud. Now is the time to strike. In terms of weapons, I didn't remember much drone use by the Palestinians in 2021, but now drones are everywhere, blowing up tanks and merking Israeli soldiers. Israeli domestic politics is more of a clusterfuck right now than in 2021. There will of course be a rallying behind the flag, but that domestic unity will complete crumble when hostilities end, which will further weaken Israel and set the stage for another Palestinian offensive. Israeli propaganda game is also weaker compared with 2021, mostly because they got caught off guard and 2021 punctured much of their PR.
There's a qualitative leap between what we saw in 2021 and what we're seeing in 2023. Even the Israeli response was harsher in 2021 with more bombed buildings, bombed hospitals, and bombed cemeteries within the same time frame than right now. Why? Because Israel is weaker in 2023 than 2021.
Israel has initiated a full mobilization and is about to launch a ground invasion. Maybe, at the end of all the suffering and death on the Palestinians, they'll be a better position and that fact may be worth celebrating, but the only thing absolutely certain right now is that you're going to see somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 dead Palestians at the end of this, so the score is definitively bad at this stage, and there is no cause for celebration.
Have you ever participated in a struggle? Celebrating victories is important to maintain morale. Stop trying to tone policing the oppressed.
No one here is celebrating from the Palestinians trenches.
International support is important.
Yeah, in terms of materiel and cash, but you don't get credit for posting on hexbear.
Then open up the wallet and get donating piggy
I'm not the one pretending like I'm helping them here.
Yes you are, you just go about it in a smug disaffected and condescending manner where you act above it all. Then you are now acting like that’s a virtue of yours and not yet another symptom of your privilege and chauvinism.
So odd how you often speak up telling others how they are posting is wrong, and it’s always on behalf of some centrist/Liberal/imperialist topic. There are things you will not abide, such as slurs or islamophobia or “celebration of violence” - you do act moralistically about these particular topics. Yet when it comes to the primary contradiction suddenly nothing matters again. How convenient how everything lines up exactly as one would expect for a chauvinist
I'm not above this conflict, I'm away from it, all of us are. I don't have the arrogance to believe I'm involved in it as part of some cyber front like you apparently do.
You want to take the Palestinians struggle and claim it as yours despite not having any skin in the game and without any acknowledgement of the real human toll it's going to have. You're not at any risk, so yeah, I am going to open up my liberal maw when I see it treated like a football match.
I don’t think I’m in some cyber front, but you think being thousands of miles from a conflict gives you a right to both sides and take the chauvinist position. It’s the quintessential chauvinist error of the western left and you just can’t stop doing it. You are addicted to being wrong on imperialism.
Real Palestinians are cheering. Westoid shits like you are whinging. You have no perspective as to what you are
I haven't both sides anything, I've said we shouldn't get giddy on the eve of a massacre.
Palestinians are cheering and western “leftists” are moaning and crying
Yeah and tomorrow you're going to be posting photos of Israeli war crimes. Forgive me for not popping a cork at the prospect.
Why are you so consistently shit on anti-imperialism?
Cause I hate dead Palestinians.
You hate Palestinians standing up for themselves instead of quietly getting choked out over decades. You do have to have a viable alternative if you are gonna shit on Palestinian resistance, unlike what you stated. You are an idealist
I fail to see how getting it over with in one mass slaughter is an improvement. Look if you're going to use your political ends to justify violent slaughter of civilians, you have to have a plausible path forward to showing how it achieves your political ends. So I'm telling you right now, walk me through this. How does today get us closer to Palestinians liberation? If you can't or won't do that, I'm absolutely going to treat you as though your just a spectator at a horrific sporting match.
I in fact, do not have to. Just because this shit plan is the only one being discussed at the moment doesn't mean I have to pretend it isn't shit.
Hamas and Palestinian forces on the ground know the conditions and stakes better than you do. They have made their decision. It is not your role to question it, only to support it. You have a really hard time accepting your role and instead you want to be an idealist from the heavens, I have interacted with you before and I know this is how you are.
They know them differently, but considering they're not operating from the same political or moral framework as leftists, being specifically islamist, I don't feel the need to defer to their views on the matter.
No one here is supporting it, they're posting about it on a shit posting website. My role in the shit posting charade is to shitpost whatever I feel like.
Two nimrods argued in the heavens and the former was better than the latter because the former actually thought he was helping in battle.
You always use this “it’s just posting none of it actually matters” defense to defend your half-baked liberalism and imperialist both-sidesism. If posting doesn’t matter, why can’t you post correctly instead of like a Liberal coward?
I'm failing to see how your concern trolling is particularly relevant to the question of whether or not we should be expressing support for Palestinian resistance.
Your protestations can basically be summed up as "I know what's best for the Palestinians and their resistance better than they know themselves. Our job as distant observers should not be to support the decisions that those resisting oppression have made, we should instead concern ourselves with armchair quarterbacking and second guessing them out of an abundance of caution that we might end up backing the wrong horse and get egg on our faces."
You don't seem to be in possession of any specialized knowledge that would make you a higher authority on matters of strategy and tactics than the people actually organizing a resistance movement who have access to all the same information that you do plus an entire life of living in those conditions and an intimate familiarity with the on the ground reality. This isn't a rogue group doing some adventurism, this is an effort organized across several different Palestinian resistance groups who will have already discussed the exact concerns you're bringing up before committing to a joint plan of action.
I'll listen to your concerns about whether there is a more effective strategy for resistance once you are the one putting your life on the line. In the mean time, I'm going to assume that the people who are actually living through that struggle have a better grasp on their situation than I do, and I'm not going to treat it like it's my job to second guess them.
I'm not telling the Palestinian resistors anything, I'm telling everyone here who is repeating the exact same folly celebrating at the breakout of ever hostility that has played out throughout history that there excitement and celebration is premature.
It's the same "we'll whip johnny reb and send him crying" arrogance and disconnection that absolutely destroyed morale when it turned out into a bloody years long slog. Literally tens of thousands of Palestinians are about to die and pointing that out has a lot of piss babies here up in arms because I'm yuking their yum.
You are once again conflating messages of support with celebration.
Yes there will be horror. There has been horror for the past several decades. Resistance is an act of hope. No one engages in resistance because they are under some false pretense that they will come out unscathed, but because what they are fighting for is worth the sacrifice.
So it falls incredibly flat for you to come in here and tell people "Why are you sharing in the hopefulness displayed by the people resisting? Don't you know how much sacrifice they are risking?!?!"
This is what I responded to.
Not support. The right to loudly be 'happy'. There are 300 other people in this thread expressing support for Palestine and I haven't said a peep against any of them. One can and many have shown support without acting like it's Christmas morning and that there are nothing but candy and nuts on the horizon.
Oh, so you didn't actually find some celebrating to reply to, you found someone mocking someone else for their both sidesism and used the word happy as the slightest bit of pretext to go on a comment spree ranting about people celebrating the loss of life.
I'm sorry, your moral crusade is so clear to me now.
Look if no on is happy then don't worry about me, but given I'm getting the exact same "let people have their treats" response doesn't do much to convince me that's the case.
I guess I just don't understand what end you hope to achieve by policing people having a positive response to resistance against genocide and colonization.
Are you just hoping to extol the virtues of stoicism?
Because the point you keep trying to make over and over again is "you shouldn't be happy, do you know that resisting oppression will actually incite even more oppression?"
Which is barely half a step away from a general defeatist attitude. Your position is basically "You're allowed to show support, but remember to couch it in extreme pessimism about the hopelessness of ever changing the world for the better." With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I just don't understand why that's the hill you're choosing to die on. The most charitable interpretation I have is that you just picked a bad position to defend, and you need to stop trying to post through it