This is devastating. And amidst so much debate over Israel’s right to defend itself, I feel it’s getting lost that this military campaign is only a success if measured by a set of goals even most Zionists would not recognize as productive.
Will it make Israel safer? No, undoubtedly the war has cost international standing, strained the US-Israel relationship, and will inevitably radicalize far more extremists than are killed.
Will it continue the right-ward shift of Israeli policy? Does it cut off avenues for peace and reconciliation and foster militant Israeli nationalism? Yes.
This campaign is only a success if the primary objective is the eventual capture of the entire region at the cost of Israel’s safety (and the safety of Jews around the world) and Israel’s international standing. By any more conventional aims, it is an unmitigated disaster.
Part 1: I grew up a Zionist. In most versions, Zionism envisioned a peaceful, multi-ethnic state. In that sense, the zionist project is half-complete.
The first half was accomplished by people who aspired to something that everyone said was madness, totally impossible, completely unfeasible, hopelessly unworkable. And they fucking did that thing.
Now, anyone who considers themselves a Zionist needs to take on the responsibility for continuing that project with the sense of courage and insane vision that brought Israel into existence. ‘It’s too hard!’ ‘There are no good solutions!’ BULLSHIT. The whole country is founded on the idea that nothing is impossible, so let’s stop making excuses.
Part 2: The biggest problem is Jewish radicals. Itmar Ben Givir of the Jewish Power Party, Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party, and Netanyahu of Likud. These are the primary leaders of a genocide, and Netanyahu’s special move for decades has been foreclosing peace. Step one is wanting peace, and step two is holding accountable the people who’ve never wanted it and always tried to keep it out of reach.
Step three, I think, is to help every Palestinian climb what I think of as “the ladder”. Israel is an apartheid state. You’ve got Ashkenazi Jews at the top, and Mizrahi/Sphardeic Jews close but just below. Then you’ve got Palestinian Israelis, then a whole bunch of tiers of West Bank / East Jeruselum Palestinians, then Gazans / foreign refugees. Each group needs a path to the rights of the group above, and there has to be a roadmap to a roadmap to peace. And that is going to require international brokers. Israeli needs a government that isn’t hostile to the UN, and the US needs to reduce its involvement and stay the fuck out of the peace process.
I’m saying that the apartheid state needs dismantled.
It’s just a mental exercise to get people to expand their imagination. I don’t expect the end of apartheid to literally require each group to pass through a series of stages.
I was just reading about how a current Israeli war minister’s son died in combat and it made me wonder that if Israeli’s politicians who make these decisions know their family will be affected by it personally and directly, does that lend towards the suggestion that it is more likely they are making genuinely ethically and...
To summarize it, human rights attorney Rabea Eghbariah makes the case that Israel’s efforts to eliminate the political agency and national identity of Palestinians should be viewed as a novel atrocity which she suggests calling a “Nakba”. She argues that using formal definitions, one can create a compelling case that Israel is guilty of at least attempting genocide in numerous discrete places and points in time, however the contours of their actions are very different structurally from past genocides, and don’t extend well when trying to characterize the broader devastation brought against the Palestinian people even when bombs aren’t falling.
She points out that our concept of apartheid emerged from a system by that name in South Africa, and our concept of genocide emerged after witnessing the industrialization of ethnic murder by the Nazis. In this vein, rather than insisting on trying to examine the Israeli model using the tools and benchmarks of past forms of ethnic suppression, she argues that we may find it more instructive to examine it as a series of innovations in control, particularly focusing on the legal systems used to carefully segment the managed subclass into a complex hierarchy selective in its conferral of rights to movement, occupancy, and legal protection.
I think this is a good framework. I’m very comfortable calling the campaign against Gaza in the last few weeks genocide, but many people call what has happened since 1948, or 1968 or since 2006 a genocide, and it’s understandably harder to pin down. But it starts to become easier to think about and talk about if we tie the intermittent bombing campaigns into a larger picture with the systems of work permits and building permits and water rights and so on that are used to dispossess Palestinians and render them powerless.
It’s all over twitter lately, people getting recorded ripping down posters with a graphic about the missing Israeli children and then their real names are found and are quickly fired from their jobs.
Honestly – and I before I say this, Free Palestine – if you want to be a person who tears down a poster looking for a missing person, I think you should be prepared to live your life as a someone who everyone knows tears down posters of missing persons.
I think people have a right to privacy in the ways that don’t affect other people, but when you do things that affect others – whether that’s not cleaning up after your dog or anonymously harassing whoever hung a poster of a loved one by tearing it down – I don’t feel you’re exercising a right that I have some obligation to defend. Live with the reputation of who you are.
Again, I say this as a critic of the genocide in Gaza. Bibi Netanyahu deserves to be dragged into the Hague to face the International Criminal Court. At the same time, I still hope as many of the Israeli hostages are returned safely as possible, and I have no sympathy for people who are inclined to tear down a missing person poster and want anonymity. That’s not liberating Palestine, that’s just anonymously terrorizing whatever grieving person hung the poster when they discover it’s been torn down.
I think it’s reasonable to go reluctantly. I think it’s also reasonable to politely decline to attend. Tell your wife and in-laws to enjoy themselves, but politely explain that attending would violate your deeply held beliefs.
We all run into these kinds of situations occasionally. Turning down a meal due to dietary restrictions, refusing to perform an action due to a religious obligation, etc. Ideally, your wife should understand, and your in-laws don’t need to. It really depends what your wife is willing to support.
Firstly, I have yet to see anyone say that they support Hamas’ actions. What they’ve recognized is that this was an entirely anticipated outcome from Israeli policy.
The reason that people make this observation is because it’s clear that Israel has meaningful agency here, and it’s not clear that Palestinians do. Israel has the option to pursue a genuine peace process or continue ethnically cleansing occupied territory. Conversely, Palestinians largely have the option to die quietly or violently.
I am entirely aware why people find criticism of Israel to be tasteless during an attack against Israel. That said, these attacks aren’t really a security failure or a policy failure in Israel. Periodic outbreaks of Palestinian violence are a part of an ongoing project of genocide. Restrict food and medicine > Face violence > Use it to justify culling young men and destroying basically all infrastructure assembled since last culling until the resistance is exhausted > Return to baseline abuse until enough Palestinian kids reach suitable age to launch a new attack and repeat the process.
As I said, the Israeli government – and by extension, the US government – have the power to interrupt this cycle. And if we really care about the lives of Israeli victims, we have a moral obligation to.
Seeing a big “politics” community in both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world just confuses me as to which I should be subscribing to and I don’t really want to subscribe to both....
It’s a much more organic reflection of older systems. It used to be that there were local newspapers, national ones, and international ones. I want the same thing with my memes. I want a place I go to see what the hot movies and games across the world, and another where discussions are mostly people in my geography or who share a common set of tastes with me.
This idea that the internet should flatten the world into one monoculture has been, in my opinion, both naive and destructive to a lot of tastes that don’t align with the dominant tastemakers.
First, if it helps, redundant communities will solve themselves. We’re in a period where people are trying stuff out, but if one group is just a weaker duplicate of another, everyone will eventually just coalesce around the slightly better version.
As for the general complaint, I can see your rationale. But I think a better analogy instead of cryptocoins – which were all essentially useless ponzi schemes and ego projects – would be bars.
In theory, you don’t need two (or more!) sports bars on the same block. But there’s a reason they stay in business instead of one owner just expanding to serve twice as many customers. They have different vibes based on different people. One might dig soccer more, or have a better selection of craft brews. Even though they’re superficially similar, if you ask your friend, “Hey, do you want to go to X?” It’s not at all weird for them to say, “Eh… let’s to Y. if you want, we can stop by X later.”
The name thing doesn’t seem that complicated. I already know that !memes are gonna be lefty memes, and the memes at !memes will be generic, and so on.
There are some where it’s less distinct. Technology@lemmy.world and technlogy@beehaw.org are not so easily differentiated, but at the moment they have totally different content on their frontpages, so I have no complaints. Over time, I expect both to evolve, most likely in different ways.
I think the search problem will get resolved over time. Currently, search is very rudimentary, and barely useful for finding new communities. As it becomes better and cataloging communities it can also become better at downranking or excluding communities below a certain activity level.
Gaza war's staggering toll reaches a grim milestone: 20,000 dead (apnews.com)
No functional hospital left in northern Gaza, WHO says (www.aljazeera.com)
Do Israeli Politicians' adult children get conscripted just like the average adult Israeli citizen as part of mandatory service?
I was just reading about how a current Israeli war minister’s son died in combat and it made me wonder that if Israeli’s politicians who make these decisions know their family will be affected by it personally and directly, does that lend towards the suggestion that it is more likely they are making genuinely ethically and...
You wanted a multipolar world? You got chaos. [Edit: Do Hamas represent Palestinians?] (paulmasonnews.medium.com)
Paywall bypass:...
oh, beverly (cdn.catsweat.com)
Columbine vibes (lemmy.ca)
The art of saying nothing (thumbsnap.com)
What are your thoughts on people being doxxed for ripping down missing israeli posters?
It’s all over twitter lately, people getting recorded ripping down posters with a graphic about the missing Israeli children and then their real names are found and are quickly fired from their jobs.
Mother-in-Law bought family tickets to Medieval Times for tonight, but they're on strike and scabs are doing the show...
She bought the tickets without knowing about the strike. We accepted the gift without knowing about the strike....
Bye Felicia (lemmy.world)
deleted_by_author
I've got 99 problems but urban planning is all of them - SLRPNK (slrpnk.net)
Hasn't happened yet (lemmy.sdf.org)
Isn’t it a bit of an annoying having repeat communities across various Lemmy instances?
Seeing a big “politics” community in both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world just confuses me as to which I should be subscribing to and I don’t really want to subscribe to both....