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Who are the good guys in the Israel/Palestine conflict?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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In Western fiction, you are taught to support the scrappy underdogs facing oppression from a racist occupying force. You root for them and cheer when they blow up military facilities and you feel for them when they lose their compatriots to oppressor violence. You know very well who the good guys and bad guys are.
But then, in Western media, with a mere change of labeling and some paper-thin propaganda, they will have you believing the opposite. All they need to do is call the freedom fighter resistance "terrorists", say that the occupiers "have a right to defend themselves", and pretend the "conflict" is "complicated" and really about religion. And they will so this even when the occupier ramps up genocide to unignorable levels.
The good guys remain those fighting occupation. This is consistent with a basic understanding of liberation, with nearly everyone's stated beliefs about self-determination, and international law. The bad guys are the ethnic supremacist apartheid settler colonist occupiers doing a genocide as well as their supporters.
Question- isn't Hamas constantly attacking Israel with the stated goal to eradicate them?
Israel is a racist genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate. All good people wish for the destruction of such a thing just like all good people wished for the destruction of the apartheid South African ethnostate. If Hamas wishes this, they should be commended for it, don't you think? And anyone who disagrees called out for the racial supremacist that they are?
I've seen many people in this post say the best solution is a two state system. You're saying that's not what you would prefer, and that Israel should be wiped out?
I don't have a particular opinion on your view because my knowledge of what Israel and Hamas has done is admittedly limited, but I would lean towards the idea that you're justifying Israel's reaction and statements that the reason they are taking the action they are is because of, well, ideas like yours.
I think, from what I've learned over the past week of exploring this situation, that a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable. I seem to have an innately negative reaction to what you suggest here.
Please understand the distinction between the destruction of the state of Israel and the destruction of the people of Israel. The example you were just given was the destruction of the state of South Africa.
That sounds nice, but Israel wants no such thing and never has, despite its past claims to the contrary.
That is not a solution, it is bantustans.
The "state" of Israel should be destroyed thoroughly. The "state" of Israel is premised on ethnosuoremacist genocidal apartheid and colonization. Remove those things and the "state" of Israel will fundamentally no longer exist, both because injustice will have been addressed and also because a very large number of Israeli settlers will simply leave, as they only care about living in an ethnostate that serves them. Something similar happened with Boers.
Israel's political leadership have always understood their project as ethnosupremacist, of requiring stealing land from the natives, as requiring oppression of the larger population of Palestinians who will not tolerate these conditions. They correctly understand that this project will end if those conditions are addressed, if justice is done. That is not a reason to accept their justification, as no ethnkstate deserves to exist or "defend itself" against those it oppresses.
A two-state solution is bantustans and not even taken seriously by the "Israelis" or their American sponsors. It is just a nice-sounding "compromise" they hold in front of liberals like a carrot so that they will accept their continued slow (or now fast) genocide and displacement of Palestinians. "Israel" prefers its slow and steady expulsion of Palestinians into smaller and smaller concentration camps, like districts from South Africa. Those could never be considered a "state" under any circumstances and "Israel" would never accept them as such, even in such a diajointed condition.
Justice requires an end to the ethnostate itself.
Thank you for such a detailed response. Considering your views that ethnostates should be done away with, an interesting question came up for me. Would you be in favor of forcefully going in and forcing regime change in Israel?
I think the latter is entirely unnecessary. The US and its co-sponsor lackeys could do plenty by simply withdrawing support. The Zionist project is 90% dependent on constant material aid from Western powers to prop up its regime and would be forced to concede to the larger and more committed Palestian liberation movement without it. If they were to do anything active that was helpful, it would be to denuclearize Israel first.
Both of this things would require significant changes, though. Israel is propped up because it's violence against its neighbors is useful for US domination of the region. But we can work for this in pieces by blocking arms exports, disrupting supply chains, and builsing leverage to demand that countries spend domestically instead of supporting genocide. Ironically in EU countries it is far-right electoral groups that have more steam for the latter due to the fact that liberals have made themselves the warmongers focused on increased militarization, but of course we cannot trust those right wingers to follow through.
I think a Two-State Solution would be a good idea (and I have opinions on exactly where the border should go), but it will have to be imposed on Israel by the international community.
Israel has never been sincere about a Two-State solution, and their "offers" to Palestine have been inadequate and unworkable, and the Palestinians have been right to reject them because there's no point in accepting a deal that won't lead to peace. Only a fair and workable deal can lead to peace.
Israel has demonstrated that they are an illegitimate state, because legitimate states do not bomb the stateless people living within their borders. At this point we should be treating Israel like Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. The Israeli military should be placed under foreign control, and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza returned to the Palestinians.
So far, the only thing stopping this from happening has been the United States' support for Israel.
Israel needs to realize that the United States is rapidly declining in power, and if Israel doesn't voluntarily cede the Palestinian territories, Israel might not exist at all in the near future.
What does destruction of Israel as a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate look like to you? Does it look like Oct 7 writ large across all of Israel? Does it look like the massive bombing campaign, displacement, and destruction of capacity for civilians to live that Israel has perpetrated in Gaza?
How did it look when south africans overthrew the apartheid regime? Didn't come anywhere near the racist nightmares of white supremacists, and there's no reason to believe the return of palestine will be any different.
Also it's up to Palestinians, and no one else to decide what to do with their land.
The end of apartheid, the end of ethnosupremacy at both the state and societal level, land back for displaced Palestinians. But most importantly, self-determination for the people of Palestine. They decide what they need or want once they are in a position to liberate themselves, not you and not me.
The side you are carrying water for is an ethnosupremacy at apartheid settler colonial occupation. You don't get to hand wring about what you think the oppressed will do to their opprrssors.
First, I am not on Israel's side in this matter. I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned, dismantling apartheid and establishing self-determination for Palestinians. However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal. Just as I am in support of Ukraine's resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.
Sure, neither of us are directly affected won't be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.
And yet you used a tired Zionist talking point that amounts to, "what if the people we are oppressing do the same things to us if we stop the oppression?" It was also used for apartheid South Africa, incidentally. And we can see that the oppressed are far more humane than these ethnic supremacists.
But maybe you are anti-Zionist and just picked up this question from others.
The outcomes I mentioned are incompatible with a two-state solution. A two-state solution is bantustans and it was "agreed" to by compradors. It is not a serious proposal, which is why Israel/the US has never attempted to implement it and has instead further oppressed and fragmented Palestinians.
A two-state solution means no right of return, the continuation of the Israeli apartheid ethnostate, and the status quo for Gaza and The West Bank. There can be no state under occupation, with its orchards and homes stolen, with its towns disjointed, with a comprador government installed by Western interests. That is neither sovereignty nor justice and it would not be tolerated by the oppressed.
Define atrocities. Israel will simply shoot and torture peaceful movements. It already has done so many times. Only armed resistance can defeat such an oppressor.
Just as the West labels all Palestinians freedom fighters, they will label actions far lesser than what Israel does on a daily basis "war crimes" when it suits them, just like the ICC seems to basically only go after black African war criminals (Bush and Cheney weren't tried at the Hague, hmm). Guerilla warfare against an oppressor will not be clean, this is impossible. Intelligence will fail and targets will be colocated, e.g. the IDF has part of its headquarters by a shopping mall. And individuals will do terrible and violent things. Also, Israelis and the West, including the US president, will simply lie, like with the "beheaded babies" narrative. So you will have to prepare yourself to question these narratives and accept a world where the freedom fighters will be accused of war crimes by the usual sources.
Though, if we are speaking of international law, occupied people are allowed to resist their occupiers by any means they deem fit.
I use this platform for chatting and agitation. This convo is in the agitation category, of course. Generally speaking it is important to shout down pro-genocide narratives, whether it is Zionist propaganda or Dems trying to get their voters to tolerate genocide.
Because you’re unable to distinguish between a state and a people, you’re unable to imagine anything but the eradication of a people, even though the example of the state of South Africa was just given to you.
A Document of General Principles and Policies
That is not what happened. That is what Western media said happened.
.
Can't say they don't deserve it
Which is why Jews across the world have said Israel is genuinely the greatest source of danger to them in terms of antisemitism - because it has linked its atrocities to their identity, regardless of their personal support.
You can support Palestine as a people right to live, and condemn Israeli blanket bombing without supporting Hamas' shooting civilians.
Or did you also struggle with condemning British occupation of Ireland, whilst also disagreeing with the IRA bombing of civilian targets?