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this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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I think this framing as "complicit in genocide" is harmful and unfortunately very successful. As I see it Israel is nothing but a proxy for American interests and activities in the surrounding region. It is almostly wholly subsidised, propped up and secured by American aid. If America were to divest itself from Israel, Israel would cease to exist the next day even if assistance from Euroghouls were to continue. America is one doing the genocide.
Indeed, it paints the relationship in misleading way.
good catch, theyre definitely guilty of genocide.
I think people tend to think of and speak of genocide withing its legal context and for that israel is its own sovereign nation. And I doubt the distinction makes any actual difference i dont think supplying the weapons, intelligence, money, and political support for genocide is any less of a wrong in most peoples minds than actually doing it.
Yes. It feels similar to what I've been learning about with the history of occupied Korea in that way. US props up government run by Syngman Rhee that is rabidly suppressive and violent. [Skipping ahead some] DPRK forces almost take over occupied Korea, with Syngman Rhee fleeing, but US along with UN forces (which are at this point in time basically beholden to the US from what I can gather about how Blowback was presenting it) intervenes, led by the rabidly violent MacArthur, without which Korea would prob just be Korea today and run by DPRK.
Of course, difference with Korea is Korea as a whole is a legitimately named region and israel is a made up colonizer state, but if we think of it as what gets called "South Korea" being like israel, both are basically states / territorial divisions made up by colonizer/occupier forces and are historically dependent on those forces because they are lone outposts of terror in a region that wants peace and self-determination.
It makes sense, in other words, that these sort of ghoulish outposts would be so dependent on support from imperialists/colonizers in other regions. They are an invader in the region they occupy and they terrorize, if not genocide, the locals. Which is going to make them violently unpopular to said locals and, thankfully in the case of israel, is at least starting to make them viscerally unpopular to the rest of the world too. Though it's little consolation with all the mass murdering they're getting away with so far.
No logic in your argument. If American investment in Israel would stop now, of course the country wouldn't cease to exist. That's magical thinking. Did the US create the mindsets of orthodox jews, radicalised settlers or right-wing nutjobs serving as long-term PMs?
Of course not. It's not untypical. We find this kind of hatred against a neighbor all over the world. In this sense Israel demonstrates very well that they are not a "chosen people" but a horribly regular people.
Israel is an euroamerican settler project. This is not a squabble between neighbours.
A squabble like the genocide in Darfur or the genocide in Armenia? What point are you trying to make here?
The point you just made is that you're acting politically illiterate because none of those are comparable. You're dismissing the fact that Israel, like America, is a settler state that is pushing indigenous people off the land (both 2nd class Jewish citizens and Palestinian ones) and slaughtering them in an apartheid system. Darfur does not have that to such a systematic level. Darfur also doesn't get 8 billion dollars+ in taxpayer dollars. Same with Armenia.
What would happen is America stopped investing into Israel is the dampening of Israel's fighting capability and the cut off for supply chains that are sponsoring a genocide. We can also stop just giving them money for it. Eventually, rightfully, their neighbors would do them in.
Cut the obtuse shit. Because if it's just "neighbor vs neighbor" why are we funding it at all?
I'm not trying to argue in bad faith. First I think the US shouldn't fund it at all, no matter why there is a genocide.
But regarding the neighbour conflict, I want to explain: Your argument seems to be that what happens in Gaza is something singular or special, tied to the colonialist nature of the funding of the modern Israel. I don't see that. In Germany there was a discussion about the singularity of the Shoah. I have doubts about this too but it's an understandable notion to have as a "perpetrator nation". The Shoah however was a genocide of real neighbours, like next door neighbours. And it was unprecedented in the cruelty and the industrial scope of the extermination. But I don't think it couldn't happen again. And this is an example of one of the worst genocides in history which didn't even require a colonialist setting, not even a neighbouring nation or people with which you had hostilities dating back centuries. And that's the reason why I refute the argument that this genocide is in any way special just because it's rooted in a colonialist setting.
I really don't understand your line of reasoning at all. No one said the genocide in Palestine is unique because of the settler aspect. Genocides have already been performed in the name of that cause in the Americas by European settlers. It is still qualitatively different from the genocides in Darfur and Armenia (which you brought up) but that does not make it unique.
Moreover, even if it is not unique, it does not mean genocides are ubiquitous. That is what it seems to me you are trying to say but it's hard to tell because I can't follow your logic at all. Claiming that tensions between neighbouring states are common is something that should require proof. And then claiming that it often escalated to genocides should require even more proof. Colonialists and settlers trivialise their atrocities by blaming it on human nature and stuff like that. But that's just a cheap move to universalise the capitalist and imperialist logical of accumulation. It is perfectly possible for neighbours to live in peace. You probably have a neighbour. Why haven't they driven you out of your home and laid a claim to it? Or you them? Almost all countries are not genociding their neighbours? Why is that?
Ah yes, you know. This kind of thing happens between the Netherlands and Belgium all the time. Oh wait it doesn't...because there is that sinister, subtle suggestion that "well...it's that part of the world". They wont say it though.
You refute it...because other genocides happened that weren't colonial? It may not be unique, but the contradiction between the settler state of Israel and Palestine goes back to the 40s when Israel was literally created by the British Empire and France. It was literally created by colonial powers and when created it was based on a bloodthirsty Zionist project who considered Palestinians and 2nd-class Jewish citizens as undesirables. It was an apartheid state that committed scaled massacres until escalating into genocide only shortly after it's creation.
It fills all the blanks of being "rooted" in a colonialist setting because it literally was a fucking colony and literally IS A SETTLER state. Doing mental gymnastics that saying "well, Shoah" doesn't mean anything. Materially it is a settler state; one that used to be a colonial territory committing genocide on a indigenous people.
What's "special" about it is that America is also a settler nation, a much older one, that is funding, arming and refusing to back down or condemn the genocide other than a few phone-calls that do nothing and aid-drops that literally killed civilians. What's "special" about it is that by cutting funding, you severely hamper the capabilities of the Israeli genocide machine and their neighbors can begin the process of removing and purging a settler-colonial state. You also seem to forget that we should've cut funding years ago; but instead we've been perpetuating it for decades now and when the genocides finally ramp up all you can do is wring your hands and say "well not funding it wont do anything?"
Is that spelled more clear for you now? Do I have to be more specific and say that Tel Aviv should be carpet-bombed and Netanyahu should be sentenced to death for war crimes? Fuck your obtuse failed logic and your pathetic refutation that doesn't even have a rhetoric beyond *"well...but actually nuh-uh"
The perpetrator nation is the one arming, funding and giving military equipment to the nation doing a genocide. The same perpetrator that runs the western hegemony of capital. The "neighbor" is Palestine because Israel is a proxy.
The US sees the existence of Israel as strategically important. The constant flow of weapons and other resources into it is clear evidence of this (if the words of it's leaders somehow wasn't).
Before the US it was the UK and for a time even Nazi Germany, albeit before Israel formally existed.
If the US knew that Israel could fill it's strategic role without further investment it would transfer those resources to another project. That's ample evidence that Israel requires these resources.
The US didn't create a state governed and populated by radicals, but they required it.
Yes I agree with you that Israel requires these resources to continue it's militaristic course of action with the goal of extermination. If it didn't have these resources anymore, it wouldn't cease to exist. It would need to change this course if it wants to survive.
israel is for all intents and purposes, an unsinkable aircraft carrier designed to permanently destabilize the ME, there can't be any course change.
Fair point. Such a change of course would likely mean less genocide (although the existence of nuclear weapons makes this somewhat less than guaranteed).
That said, a less secure Israel might lose a large chunk of it's population and industry. Many Israelis have dual citizenships that make leaving fairly easy. Israel as we know it could very well collapse.
That's what my point was. I think there was difference in semantics between me and the lemmee user in regard to what we meant by collapse. But they tossed in the "hatred in neighbours" drivel so I decided it better to not engage faithfully.
No I agree with you both. It seems very likely that such a collapse would then start to manifest. What do you think would be the long-term result of this?
We're talking about Isn'real losing all US support?
I see the entire Zionist state dissolving slowly or getting wiped out in a regional war. Either way, they cannot exist because the region will no longer tolerate them or allow their ideological goals.
Both Bush and Reagan at one point threatened to cut support of Israel if they didn't stop what they were doing and Israel complied.
It would.
You're right that if the U.S. stopped sending weapons and money today, Israel would not literally collapse tomorrow. The point is that Israel cannot do its genocide and attack its neighbors without constant U.S. support. They'd be forced to the bargaining table within weeks. If Israel was too stubborn to bargain or its victims were uninterested in negotiations after watching a genocide right in front of them, Israel would lose on the battlefield.
The collapse wouldn't happen literally overnight, but it'd be soon and inevitable.
Isn'treal exists in it's current state today because it is a proxy to exert US interests and military force in West Asia. The US doesn't give unlimited money and weapons to countries that aren't following orders. What we're really seeing now is the US escalating against Iran and all anti-imperialist resistance forces. It the Zionist lebensraum expands into the conquered territories, then US power projection expands.