I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
deleted by creator
It’s important to separate out the government from the people, especially as it pertains to governments that don’t listen to their population and don’t have overwhelming support. Neither government is good. Most of the civilians from both sides are perfectly decent, though a number of them are misguided.
It’s really impossible to simplify it, but I’ll give it a shot with a quick timeline:
- ~1200 BCE: Several unrelated tribes of people group together to become what we now call Jews or Hebrews or ancient Israelites. How this happened and exactly when is disputed, and is significantly muddied by their own mythology.
- ~600 BCE: The first major expulsion of Jews from areas variously known through time as Palestine, Israel, Jerusalem, and many others.
- ~538 BCE: Jews are allowed to return (until next time).
- ~538 BCE through 1896 CE: For the sake of brevity, let’s just say Jewish people rarely had real control over this land and were consistently persecuted and/or expelled from wherever they were.
- 1896 CE: Theodor Herzl writes “The Jewish State” and births the modern Zionist movement, claiming Jews have a right to Israel primarily on religious basis. He approaches world leaders saying as such and finds little traction.
- 1920: Britain takes control of the area now called Mandatory Palestine.
- 1941-1945: The Holocaust. I assume no additional information needed.
- 1945-1948: The Holocaust gives significant weight to Zionists’ arguments that Jewish people need their own country. As many Jews have already been emigrating there (known as “Aliyah” or Jewish emigration to the promised land) since Zionism took hold, the powers that be (UK and US primarily) already have control of the area (still Mandatory Palestine), and a desire to maintain control of the area, they decide to give most of that land to the Jews and call it Israel.
- 1948: Israel is officially recognized by the United States, its primary backer today. As part of this recognition, Israel and its allies committed what is commonly known as “The Nakba.” A huge number of Palestinians were killed, injured, jailed, or forcibly removed from the area.
- 1948: Arab-Israeli War. The Arab countries unite to fight the new state of Israel. This, as with most wars, is primarily because of power. The don’t want the West to be controlling the region. The Arabs lose, but nobody loses more than Palestine.
- 1948: Palestinian attacks on Israel start. I don’t have anywhere else to put this, but know that the end of the Arab-Israeli War didn’t end Palestinians fighting for their land and independence. They will continue to do so by any means available to them.
- 1956: Suez Crisis. Israel and its backers invade and militarily occupy part of Egypt and take control of the Suez canal because Egypt decided to nationalize it. This war is transparent in its goal for power.
- 1967: Six Day War. Israel invades a variety of areas that it borders, including land owned by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Palestine would be listed as well if it were recognized as a state. They’re successful in only six days. Notable areas you may have heard of that were militarily acquired by Israel at this time are the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights. Israel still retains control over these conquered areas.
- 1973: Yom Kippur War. Arab states attack to try to get back the land lost in the Six Day War. Israeli victory.
- 1978: Camp David Accords. Israel agrees to give some land back in return for being recognized by Egypt as a state. Sedat, the Egyptian leader, would be assassinated in part because of this action.
- 1987–1993: First Intifada. More organized and wide-scale Palestinian insurgency than we’ve seen before. Palestinians are fighting for their independence and their land. The insurgency is suppressed.
- 2000–2005: Second Intifada. Same reasons and result as the first.
- 2006-current: Much like the intifadas, there’s a lot to say here, but for the sake of brevity (lol too late) the Palestinian attacks that started in 1948 continue to this day. Israel intermittently declares various wars with the claim that they’re rooting out terrorists, Hamas, Hezbollah, and more.
This leaves out a lot. It’s just not possible to condense it. But (mostly) off the top of my head, that’s what I’d consider most of the most important bits.
The way I see it, whether or not you think Israel is “the good guys” largely hinges on whether or not you think Jews have a right to the land of Israel, and whether or not you think that claim was executed in a humane way.
I would compare it to the Native Americans - were the Americans of that time period the “good guys”? In my opinion, absolutely not. Were the Native Americans wrong for defending their land? Again, absolutely not. Were they wrong for attacking innocent civilians in retribution (for their land being taken, their own innocent civilians being killed, a genocide in progress)? Maybe, but it’s also understandable that when you’re working from a position of basically zero power against a behemoth, you can’t fight the way the behemoth fights, or you’re going to lose.
The way I see it, the Palestinian people just want a place to live and develop, and nobody’s giving them a way out, so they’re trying anything and everything they can.
Also, approximately 900,000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia, primarily as a consequence of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the establishment of the State of Israel.
1967: Six Day War. Israel invades a variety of areas that it borders
You’ve made a pretty good summary, but I have one quibble: Egypt, Syria and Jordan were planning to attack Israel. Israel launched pre-emptive strikes.
lmao imagine being this easy to fool
lmao 1200 BC
Buddy, Zionism is a European settler colonial project from the 1800s that emerged as a response to European antisemitism but is of course, itself, deeply ethnocentric and racist.
All resistance to the occupation, which has repeatedly engaged in ethnic cleansing, is justified under international law. They have now, for a years engaged in a fast genocide, which makes choosing a side very easy so long as you aren’t yourself deeply racist.
- 1896 CE: Theodor Herzl writes “The Jewish State”
- 1897 CE: Theodor Herzl writes “Mauschel”
Herzl believed that there were two types of Jews, Jiden (Yids) and Juden (Jews), and considered any Jew who openly opposed his proposals for a Zionist solution to the Jewish question to be a Mauschel. The article has often been taken, since its publication, to be emblematic of an antisemitic strain of thinking in Zionism, and has been described as an antisemitic rant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl
Due to his Zionist work, he is known in Hebrew as Chozeh HaMedinah (חוֹזֵה הַמְדִינָה), lit. ‘Visionary of the State’. He is specifically mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and is officially referred to as “the spiritual father of the Jewish State”.
Thank you for the detailed timeline. However, it raises a serious question for me. Am I misreading, or does your timeline show that the Jews were systematically oppressed and dislocated from their home land for about 2400 years? If so, wouldn’t that make it understandable why they’re so hostile to a foreign group that again wants to displace them from their home?
does your timeline show that the Jews were systematically oppressed and dislocated from their home land for about 2400 years?
That’s one interpretation, though I’d disagree with it. I have Jewish heritage - enough that a significant portion of my ancestry was wiped out in the Holocaust, though obviously a few of them were lucky and escaped to the US with the help of a sponsor. I don’t practice Judaism as a religion and don’t really relate much to any of my heritage. Is Israel my homeland? Not at all. The United States is my homeland. Before that, Germany would be my homeland. Before that… well, I’m not sure, but history would suggest it’s highly unlikely it was Israel. I have zero attachment to that land, much like I expect you have zero attachment to the land of your ancestors from millennia ago. (I also have zero attachment to the land of my non-Jewish ancestry. I have no idea what it is from thousands of years ago, but I wouldn’t care if I did.)
Would I and other Jewish people be justified in kicking out Germans, because they spent hundreds of years there? What about the Russians? Poles? The Jewish diaspora has gone all over the place and made just about everything their home. Why should they have claim to land that their great great great great great ancestors once conquered and stole from somebody else?
If so, wouldn’t that make it understandable why they’re so hostile to a foreign group that again wants to displace them from their home?
I would argue Israel wasn’t their home until they moved there over the last hundred or so years. Home isn’t where some of your family lived 3000 years ago. The individuals in question never lived there. Their parents never lived there. Their grandparents never lived there. None of these people had any idea what Israel was even like. Today, there are more Jewish people in the United States than there are in Israel, and they’re happy to call the United States home.
If we’re going to make the argument that people should be allowed to lay claim to land their ancestry owned 3000 years ago, we open up a lot of questions.
First, it’s worth noting that this is also the home of Palestinians. The origins of Palestinians are much less clear than the origins of Jewish people in large part because the Jews have been uniquely good at maintaining their culture, so we have a much better grasp on Jewish people throughout history than we do of Palestinians. But at its core, the fact is Palestinians haven’t ever lived anywhere else. This means they’re also “so hostile to a foreign group that again wants to displace them from their home.”
Second, to be consistent, we’d have to revert a lot of borders to ancient times. Does that mean we should all revert borders to what they were 3000 years ago? Why 3000? Why not 2000? 4000? Regardless, you’re uprooting a lot of people - and you’d have to provide a really good justification for that, and I don’t see it.
Third, even if we agreed the Jews have a right to this land and we should revert to their ancient borders and give them control, that doesn’t mean they have a right to attempt genocide on those living there. The moment they embarked on the Nakba, they should have lost their allies in their mission. Assuming they have a right to the land, they have to humanely displace the people there, ensure they have a new place to live, and give them adequate compensation for the land and the massive inconvenience you’ve caused by uprooting their entire lives. Sort of a “sorry we’re doing this, but we’re trying to make it right.” Instead, they’ve killed millions of people over the decades.
I’m referring to this part of your timeline-
“~600 BCE: The first major expulsion of Jews from areas variously known through time as Palestine, Israel, Jerusalem, and many others. ~538 BCE: Jews are allowed to return (until next time). ~538 BCE through 1896 CE: For the sake of brevity, let’s just say Jewish people rarely had real control over this land and were consistently persecuted and/or expelled from wherever they were.”
Maybe I’m misreading it, but it seems to imply that they were, as a people, born from that land, and systemically were persecuted through the course of around 2400 years.
I think there’s a lot of fuzzyness around the idea of “born from that land.” It’s not like they sprouted out of the earth. As with just about any people, there was a lot of rape and murder of warring tribes until some combination of them stopped doing as much rape and as much murder and somewhat arbitrarily called themselves “one people.” If you want to call that “born from that land,” sure, but their ancestry goes back further than that. We’re all just apes.
As you now know, the Zionist project is one by Europeans who colonized and ethnically cleansed large regions of Palestine in the last 120 years or so. Ethnic supremacist myths about stolen Palestinian homes being on Israeli homelands are unacceptable.
Here’s the issue: who’s home is it? Is it the home of people who haven’t lived there for hundreds of years or the home of the people who currently do? Neither of these two groups had anything to do with what happened previously.
Jews had lived in the area for a very long time even after most were expelled. This was relatively peaceful (though not perfect). The current issues started when settlers came, who were not from there, and purchased farms. They later decided they would only hire Jewish workers, despite Muslims traditionally tending it (which hurt production because the Jewish settlers had no idea how to do so, but production wasn’t the goal). Muslims then fought back as their livelihood was being taken from them. The settlers used militias to attack back and used it as justification to take more.
Those militias became the IDF when Israel formed. Israel still uses this tactic of provoking an attack and then using that as an excuse to use more force to take more territory. This has happened many times now and the current fight is just the latest, but not a new event.
There are no “good guys” but there are victims. Anyone just trying to live their lives is a victim. The bad guys are the ones trying to take this away from others.
the powers that be (UK and US primarily) already have control of the area (still Mandatory Palestine), and a desire to maintain control of the area, they decide to give most of that land to the Jews and call it Israel.
Israel wasn’t created by the UK or the US (or the UN). Israelis declared the state of Israel themselves after seizing territory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
The UN did have a plan to create an Israel in 1947, but that didn’t happen, because neither the Jews, the Arabs, nor the UK were on board.
I think this might be a semantic argument - it’s not important to me if we use the words “give” or “create.” Happy to use whatever words you prefer for allies having power and control of an area and ensuring that power and control is transferred to their chosen ally.
British Mandatory Palestine was officially ending May 15, 1948. Israel announced its independence on May 14, 1948. The United States officially recognized Israel as a state 11 minutes after it declared itself a sovereign state. It’s strange to suggest these are coincidences rather than planned action with their allies, but there’s plenty of evidence in addition to this to make it very clear that Israel wouldn’t have stood a chance without the backing of their superpower friends.
You left out the protocol of the elders of zion and the backlash it caused against Jews. It’s fairly important as a catalyst for some of the 20th century shit.
I’m actually okay with that not being included as a critical point in Israeli history. My understanding is it was one piece in a long line of antisemitism, and while it was known by the Nazi party, it was known by the leadership to be fictional and wasn’t used seriously as propaganda by them. That’s not to say it didn’t have any effect, just that I’m not convinced it made much difference when it comes to the creation of Israel as a state.
I’m open to alternative viewpoints if you want to provide evidence or just offer some book titles that might change my mind.
One minor, but important detail: The First Aliyah began in the 1880s, a decade before Herzl’s work. Land was purchased for settlements, and a few tens of thousands came, mostly from Eastern Europe. Within a couple decades the kibbutz system was established, small socialist communities where it was decided, unfortunately, to try to rely exclusively on Jewish labor and economy. This led to the first significant frictions between the settlers and the Palestinians, setting the stage for our situation today.
Very true! It’s hard to imagine Israel would be the same today without the particular cultural choices those first immigrants made. Thanks for the addition.
Asking lemmy.ml if Israel is bad is not a great idea if you actually want a nuanced/balanced answer. Honestly, I’d recommend just taking your research elsewhere and steering clear of social media on this one.
Yes, we oppose Israel’s genocide here.
wasps 🤝 genocide
The Middle East has been cooking for so long, it’s impossible to point at a faction that is the “Good Guys”. But right now, one faction is hell-bent on exterminating another nation’s people, both military and civilian, so it should be pretty fucking obvious who the worst “Bad Guys” are. There are no good guys, only victims.
You should read Ramzi Yousef’s statement at his 1998 trial. Terrorist factions like Hezbollah and Hamas exist only because Israel is consistently refusing to make peace through diplomacy.
How about not calling the municipal governments of populations targeted with genocide ‘terrorists’ unless you’re one of the nazis trying to use that as an excuse to exterminate them?
Just leave it alone, cause they can’t see eye to eye. There ain’t no good guys. There ain’t no bad guys. There’s only Jews and Ps and they just disagree.
Israelis and Palestinians. Many Jews are against what Israel is doing.
If you ignore the 80 years of oppression that preceded the Hamas attacks on Israel last year, the Israeli response has been one of genocidal intent. From indiscriminate bombings to cutting off supplies of food, water and other aid. They have directly killed at least 40k people, and likely many more from starvation and preventable diseases.
This could have been easily avoided by a simple prisoner swap. Israel has thousands of Palestinians detained without charge, and Hamas wanted to free them.
The 40k number has been steady since early this year. This is not because Israel stopped its mass murder campaign. Instead, it is because they have destroyed the reporting apparatus itself, killing healthcare workers and bureaucrats in a civilian-targeted ethnic cleansing campaign. There is nobody there to do the counts. The hospitals are largely bombed out. Israel targets all aid workers; there is nobody from international orgs to do the counts.
It’s a terrorist organization vs terrorist state. The only good guys are the civilians dying on both sides.
There are no “good guys” in a conflict between religious people.
Read the excellent Decolonize Palestine website to learn about the vital context that makes Israel’s claim of self defense deeply disingenuous, and to learn about some of the falsehoods about Israel and Palestine that are present in mainstream discourse.
There are no “good guys” in a conflict between religious people.
So the people fighting everyday to stop the literal genocide of their people can’t be good…because they are religious?
Where are the good guys in non-religious (scientific) leaders?
They are all scheming to gain more power and control.
Humans are just not emotionally ready to recognize where all this leads.
Your link is broke https://decolonizepalestine.com/
There are no “good guys” in a conflict between religious people.
Religion does play a role in the conflict, particularly over the question of where the border between an Israeli and Palestian state should go (so that holy sites end up on the appropriate side), but I don’t think it’s very useful to understand this as a religious conflict.
The Jews who moved to Israel in the early 20th century weren’t pilgrims. They were refugees fleeing political persecution. The founder of Zionism wasn’t even religious.
And Israel didn’t happen because religious Jews enthusiastically got behind the idea of Zionism. Israel happened because Britain got behind the idea of Zionism.
Because the Crusdaes of the 11th to 13th centuries still loom large in Western culture (Richard the Lionheart and all that), I think Westerners have a tendency to think that the situation in Israel/Palestine is a continuation of those conflicts. But it’s really not. It’s a 20th century creation.
The first violent Zionist settlers started migrating in the late 1800s, not the 20th century, this is more Zionist propaganda that leaves out the early terror in Palestine that foreshadowed the rest of the conflict. These early terror groups were mostly ineffective, but their eventual dissolution lead to Zionist thought spreading to what are now the top supporters and financiers of Israel. the rest of the comment is spot on though.
Arabs leaders was also so stupid, they kicked most of the non zionist jews from Arabs lands in response to kicking out Palestinians after 48 loss instead of trying to make them allies
The largest armed force in the gaza strip is deeply religious and the entire reason the support they receive from their biggest ally, the IRR, is religion. If Hamas were Sunni muslims instead of Shia, Iran would remain silent. Just as they were, when their Shia allies in Syria and Yemen started to massacre non-Shia in the region.
If Hamas were Sunni muslims instead of Shia
Hamas are Sunni.
Hezbollah are Shia.
There are no good guys and bad guys.
2 groups of people who are neighbors and relatives and share a common heritage keep killing each other, mostly due to shitty rulers who have no interest in their peoples’ well-being.There are no good guys and bad guys.
2 groups of people who are neighbors and relatives and share a common heritage keep killing each other, mostly due to shitty rulers who have no interest in their peoples’ well-being.Genocide isn’t bad? Palestine and Israel are just neighbors despite Israel being on land stolen by the British and Israel being propped up by western powers to oppress Palestinians?
You could say the same thing about almost any conflict.
2 groups of people who are neighbors and relatives ✓
Share a common heritage (European/German)✓
Keep killing each other ✓
Shitty rulers who have no interest in their people’s well being ✓
Seems like there were no bad guys in WW2/The Holocaust, because using power to oppress and conduct genocide isn’t what makes a bad guy apparently.
The good guys are the citizens who want none of this.
The bad guys are the citizens who want all of this, and the military personal behind the weapons, and the generals calling the shots.
Same as it ever was.
This simplistic one size fits all argument falls flat when one side is being occupied and ethnically cleaned by the other side. It implies that Hamas is the “bad guy” and all other occupied Palestinians are the “good guy,” and it implies that non-military Israeli settlers are the “‘good guy.” But the truth is that the great majority of adult Israelis are militant settler-colonizers; and that Palestinians have the legal right under UN law to struggle against their occupiers by any means necessary, including armed struggle; and that Israel, as an occupier, has no right to “self defense.”
Sees lemmy.world
Sees weird .ML obsession and conflation of victims fighting oppressors with their oppressors
Yeah, not surprised.
It’s kinda funny how fediverse servers are kinda akin to countries. USonians see someone from a country on the “countries of concern” list, and instantly assume every single person from that country is sneaky, lying, acting in bad faith, or insert whatever other adjective here.
We don’t or shouldn’t make that same mistake. There are good people on every fediverse server, and we shouldn’t blanket demonize whole groups like racist colonizer ideology does.
What does your both-sidesing accomplish here? Are you trying to say that Palestine’s resistance to colonialism isn’t justified?
If so, then you’re doing this gandhi quote, but for the palestinian resistance.
Another lemmy.ml user to the rescue.
Blocked.
The good guys are the citizens
I’m going to have to stop you right there, because the Palestinians are not the citizens of any state: they are a people being occupied, apatheided, and genocided by the state of Israel. So there’s a “very, very simple truth” for you.
Oh my goodness would you look at that it’s lemmy.ml again
Bye 👋
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out 👋
When you can’t support your own arguments, you could of course just acknowledge this or even just not comment at all instead of lashing out at those who can.
It is particularly disgusting when your arguments serve to obscure genocide.
thank you for telling me I should block you.
That’s your own mess lol
Can we please block .world already?
You want to defederate from the largest Lemmy instance, the poster child, and the mascot of Lemmy? Good luck. They are Lemmy now.
Don’t care. If I gave a shit about the biggest instance because it has the most users, then I would have stayed on Reddit which has orders of magnitudes more users and to put it in the linked comment’s words, they still are link aggregators in the the commenter thinks .world “are” Lemmy. The whole damn point of federation is your instance is not locked into what the biggest instance wants to do.
Identify good and bad based on what people do. Not why they are doing it. Otherwise you’re simply agreeing that the ends justify the means.
Someone kills a noncombatant? Bad. Doesn’t matter why.
By that logic every single fight has been between bad guys. Abolitionists vs. slavers? Sorry buddy, they both killed noncombatants, they’re both just bad guys. Nazis doing genocide vs. partisabs? Sorry buddy, they’re both just bad guys.
There are no perfect fights, perfect armies, perfect struggles for liberation. You will have to accept what it takes to fight oppression or force yourself to a mealy-mouthed sidelines from which you declare everyone that isn’t passive is always a villain.
I can be glad that the Union won the U.S. Civil War and and ended slavery yet still consider it to be war crimes that they deliberately attacked civilians as part of Sherman’s March; no logic had been violated there.
According to OP’s logic that makes The Union bad guys, end of thought.
I think I generally agree with your viewpoint here. This seems to be separate from the original conversation, and more about whether or not war is sometimes necessary, and if it is then you’ve got to step back and look at the larger picture and realize there’s going to be a lot of pain on both sides, the good side and the bad side. I think it’s ok to empathize with that, but probably not ok to say that fighting is never necessary. The same people will then go on to say it’s ok to physically assault modern day Nazis.
I wouldn’t mind punching a Nazi personally. But I also realize war sometimes is necessary, and that it will be a painful process.
Hell yeah normalize punching Nazis. Of course do so when you won’t lose the fight.
Oppressed people are not generally warmongers. They are not whipped up into a frenzy of domination like Americans, Germans, or Nazis. Instead, they fight because they must either flee or resist, and they opt to resist.
One example is that for all the hand-wringing about Hamas, Israel is clearly far more bloodthirsty and accepting of civilian deaths, given how much they target children and hospitals. All the tut-tutting of Hamas comes from pro-Israeli propaganda that hopes the audience will forget these things and instead think about how much more “pure” the resistance should allegedly be. It is directed at those who reside in countries materially abettibg the occupation and genocide so that they do not demand better.
Not necessarily. If that were the case, then peaceful civil rights movements wouldn’t be effective. We can point to things like women’s right to vote to indicate that isn’t the case though. While they’re not as dramatic, peaceful reform movements have a reasonably high success rate, contrasted against all the uprisings and revolts which have been mercilessly crushed throughout history.
Your entire logic is that a side that kills a noncombatant it is bad. This simplistic logic would, necessarily, lead to the absurdities I listed.
Re: the Civil rights movements, they were not, overall, peaceful. There has been a whitewashing of them due to the (decades later) popularity of Dr. King and his compatriots, but the civil right movement spanned decades and included violent resistance.
While they’re not as dramatic, peaceful reform movements have a reasonably high success rate, contrasted against all the uprisings and revolts which have been mercilessly crushed throughout history.
They have nearly always failed and have instead been used to demonstrate the necessity of armed resistance. You’ll note that Dr. King was killed when he focused on what he viewed as the more encompassing injustice of poverty imposed on black people by capitalism.
Well, yes, killing a noncombatant is bad, no question about it. There are other ways to accomplish the goal, from peaceful ways to simply killing actual combatants instead. I know you’re more of a revolutionary, so that kinda undermines your whole thing, but oh well.
Sure, but things like the riots, particularly around race, contributed to a great deal of backlash, and were not exactly the cause of things like the Civil Rights Act. In fact, I’d challenge you to provide historical cases of a leader caving to that sort of violence while they still had their military and police forces to protect them.
Yes, martyrdom is common, assassination is unquestionably a thing that happens in history. If you’re saying his assassination was some conspiracy to preserve capitalism I’d like to see some actual evidence of that, though, from a respected historian.
Almost always fails, though? It’s relatively rarely attempted in any seriousness, but let’s see… Vietnam War, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights Act, Prohibition, and that’s just examples from my country. And yes, I know, they were not all exclusively perfectly peaceful. Majority peaceful, though, I don’t think you can logically just unilaterally declare all the positive results were due to the violent aspects, that makes no sense unless you can provide some evidence.
Well, yes, killing a noncombatant is bad, no question about it.
I think there are plenty of “noncombatants” that can be killed without it being bad. How about concentration camp guards? Or the wardens? How about a President guilty of war crimes and genocide? What about the person that shuts off the water supply to a vulnerable population, killing thousands? I will shed no tears for those people if those they oppressed rise up against them with decisive violence.
Or for one more controversial: what level of violence is acceptable against settlers? Their comfort and security on stolen land is the material basis for the settler project. Making them unsafe undermines this more thoroughly than most other violence. Several groups of native Americans recognized this while their people were genocided and it did have the intended impact right up until the genocidal US government deployed overwhelming forces. When the oppressor seeks genocide, what should really be off-limits? Why the tut-tutting of the oppressed when they face such inhumanity and existential threats?
There are other ways to accomplish the goal, from peaceful ways to simply killing actual combatants instead.
If there is a peaceful way, the Palestinians have already tried it. They tried it in a very obvious way just a few years ago with the Great March of Return. Did it work? What did Israel do in response? What impact did this have on the freedom fighters in the resistance?
Why are you trying to dictate the terms of others’ freedom when they face genocide and occupation? Does your country materially support the occupation? Focus on disrupting that instead.
I know you’re more of a revolutionary, so that kinda undermines your whole thing, but oh well.
Generally speaking it is a bad idea for liberals to guess what socialists want or think. I have yet to meet one that has guessed correctly with any consistency.
Sure, but things like the riots, particularly around race, contributed to a great deal of backlash, and were not exactly the cause of things like the Civil Rights Act.
First, peaceful marches got very similar backlash. Dr. King was criticized with the exact same milquetoast, “we agree with his ideas but not his methods” treatment by liberals and he was majority unpopular among white people for his entire life.
Second, violent actions, as defined by critics, formed the basis for much of the civil rights fight and forwarded it. The seizure and destruction of property, the vigilante justice against lynchers, the hounding of segregationist bosses, and riots were all highly influential. Thr best-organized groups carried rifles. Dr. King has been appropriated by liberals, particularly white liberals, in order to tell an ahistorical story about the importance of nonviooent resistance, that liberty can have its cake and eat it too, to be free of the blrmish of violence while securing its goals. Of course, they tend to stop telling the story when King began to focus on capitalism and its use of structural marginalization to induce poverty on black people and was killed shortly after. Nobody can seriously argue that the civil rights movement simply succeeded, no one can go to the black ghettos and say this with a straight face. It was mollified with partial legalization reforms while the major engine of oppression chugged right along, ensuring continued racialized poverty, policing, and society at large.
In fact, I’d challenge you to provide historical cases of a leader caving to that sort of violence while they still had their military and police forces to protect them.
Every revolution and, most closely ties to the topic of this post, the victory of the ANC guerillas over the apartheid South African government.
Yes, martyrdom is common, assassination is unquestionably a thing that happens in history. If you’re saying his assassination was some conspiracy to preserve capitalism I’d like to see some actual evidence of that, though, from a respected historian.
It is well-known that black civil rights leaders were frequently assassinated and that the FBI led the charge in harassing and threatening them and certainly did not stop at Dr. King. Fred Hampton is a well-known example. Though government employees were hardly the only ones killing and they often worked with civilian assets or simply sat back and let white supremacists do the job. The interest of the state in doing so was to undermine the civil rights movement itself and to wrap it up in its red scare tactics, both in the service of capitalism, namely racialized capitalism. Though it is not only the state with such interests - businesses, particularly those owned by racist whites, have every incentive to support these violences, and had often been the sponsors of lynchings.
Re: Dr. King specifically, his family has always maintained that he was killed in a conspiratorial manner. There is doubt about this narrative, but it is useful to follow the logic and constellation of government infiltrators of King’s organization and connections to organized crime. But even withiut that, the original confession of the officially accused and convicted was by someone looking to get paid a racist bounty that had been placed on King’s head.
Almost always fails, though? It’s relatively rarely attempted in any seriousness, but let’s see… Vietnam War
Was ended primarily by the Vietnamese, namely by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The US domestic side, which was not entirely nonviolent, just limited the capacity to wage war and was dramatically secondary.
Women’s Suffrage
Notoriously involved violence.
Civil Rights Act
Already discussed. Incomplete and not separable from violent struggle.
Prohibition
Which part of it? Teatotalers were often violent leading up to it and the period of prohibition was characterized by violent organized crime. Prohibition was itself ended mostly because capitalists wanted to make money legally again and to crowd out the mob. The primary sponsors of repealing prohibition were the Rockefelllers and du Pont brothers, including various “grassroots” organizations. The whole thingis hardly a peaceful people’s campaign against an oppressor.
A concentration camp guard is a combatant. They are armed and keeping you there with violence, right? Responding with violence to violence is pretty widely regarded as acceptable, outside of pacifist movements. Your more controversial question is what we’re really talking about. I think your focus on the “material basis” for their actions is where this goes wrong, as it ignores their ideology, their psychology. This is why such resistance movements fail, humans are not fundamentally logical. Even a total undermining of their peace and security simply draws that overwhelming response you mentioned, as we are seeing evidence of right now. While the nonviolent methods were not working very well, they were working better than this. What works is what’s most important, that’s why I’m dictating right and wrong to others quest for freedom. Even a full cutoff of all foreign weapons to Israel would not resolve the famine.
Any actual sourcing for this primacy of violence in peaceful protest movements or King’s assassination being to preserve capitalism? It seems to me you are simply trying to give all the credit to the few, while ignoring the contributions of the many, because it suits you.
“Every revolution” sure is convenient, when 99% fail. The ANC did not “defeat” South Africa, it was international pressure that ended Apartheid.
On the note of government surveillance and oppression of the civil rights movement, I agree.
Regarding Vietnam, the US could have kept fighting far longer if there was will for it. The reason there was not will for it was domestic opposition.
Again, you’re simply giving all the credit to the violent while ignoring the hard work of the masses in these movements. This is disingenuous.
A concentration camp guard is a combatant. They are armed and keeping you there with violence, right?
Kibbutzim near Gaza are armed occupation groups set up for the long term. Violence against those in kibbutzim are the only credible accusations of violence against “civilians” on Oct 7. Is an open air prison guard less of one when they live nearby? What if they don’t go in the prison but instead are there to shoot you if you break out? What if they knowingly live on your stolen land while you live in a ghetto?
Responding with violence to violence is pretty widely regarded as acceptable, outside of pacifist movements. Your more controversial question is what we’re really talking about. I think your focus on the “material basis” for their actions is where this goes wrong, as it ignores their ideology, their psychology. This is why such resistance movements fail, humans are not fundamentally logical.
That’s a lot of unjustified generalizations when we are talking about something specific.
Even a total undermining of their peace and security simply draws that overwhelming response you mentioned, as we are seeing evidence of right now.
And Israel is now likely the weakest it has ever been while the world has awoken to their crimes. A slow genocide is not better than a fast one, but actions one that draws the genocider into an existential crisis have strategic value.
While the nonviolent methods were not working very well, they were working better than this.
You are being vague again. Working well for what? What is the goal? What outcomes are on the table? Nonviolent methods achieved one thing: a recognition that they could not achieve their intended purpose of inciting international support for their cause and that the Zionist entity will not even tolerate peaceful marches, so militarized resistance is necessary. I would bet you did jack shit in response to the Great March of Return, whereas this at least has your attention.
What works is what’s most important, that’s why I’m dictating right and wrong to others quest for freedom. Even a full cutoff of all foreign weapons to Israel would not resolve the famine.
Yes it would because the blockade would collapse and so would the ability to target aid workers.
Any actual sourcing for this primacy of violence in peaceful protest movements or King’s assassination being to preserve capitalism? It seems to me you are simply trying to give all the credit to the few, while ignoring the contributions of the many, because it suits you.
I have provided enough information for a curious person to inform themselves. I can’t make you curious and I cannot read for you, nor will I be doing errands for you in that regard. You can thank me for giving you this information when you have clearly never made any attempts to learn this topic and continue to be resistant to self-education before sharing your opinions, which are really just the things you see on children’s programming.
“Every revolution” sure is convenient, when 99% fail.
A statistic you pulled from your ass that does not address the fact that I accurately answered your question. Just a deflection. Do you see why I am not taking time to help you with reading materials? You are not acting in good faith.
The ANC did not “defeat” South Africa, it was international pressure that ended Apartheid.
Absolutely incorrect. Boycotts and sanctions helped but it was resistance like the ANC that led the charge and, for example, created the boycott movements in the first place. Rather than acknowledge basic facts you are now just making things up and asserting them to be true. It was black south Africans and their white allies engaging in direct action that brought the country to its knees and agitated for all of this. White South Africa was dependent on black South Afrucan labor.
Regarding Vietnam, the US could have kept fighting far longer if there was will for it. The reason there was not will for it was domestic opposition.
Because the imperialist war crybabies weren’t winning and came home to get sympathy for their PTSD and war crimes. Vietnam set itself up for long-term guerilla warfare that they knew could outlast Americans’ willpower. It is frankly disgusting to give Americans credit for the Vietnamese kicking their shit in. Give credit where credit is due and stop feeding this implicit racism that non-white resistance groups didn’t achieve what they did.
Again, you’re simply giving all the credit to the violent while ignoring the hard work of the masses in these movements.
Giving all credit to, say, the people successfully waging guerilla warfare to tire out their occupiers? In a war? Yes of course I will give them virtually all of the credit, as they did nearly all of the work to efficaciously achieve their desired ends.
You are simply incorrect in your understanding of history and believe in fairy takes that you refuse to question, even when presented with the obvious. You are not in a position to be correctly humble and actually learn this history, presumably because you just want to keep dictating the terms of others’ freedom and wringing your hands like Dr. King’s White moderate.
This is disingenuous.
This is an interesting accusation given your dithering and deflection around clear cut examples.
Okay:
In 1948, just after WWII, the UK decided to carve a chunk out of Palestine and create a new state there, called Israel - as a Jewish homeland that would take all the refugees that the rest of Europe didn’t want to deal with.
Palestine was not happy about this - the land was taken without their consent, a great chunk of their country just taken from them by decree, backed up by a still highly militarized Europe.
Over the following decades, Palestine tried several times to take their country back, and each time got slapped down (since Israel had vast backing from UK/USA/Europe, both from postwar guilt and because Israel had a lot of strategic value as a platform from which to project military power in the middle east).
Cut to today, and Israel has expanded to take virtually the entire area, apart from some tiny scattered patches of land, and the Gaza strip - a strip of land 40km by 10km, containing most of the Palestinian population, blockaded by sea and land by the Israeli military.
Israel also runs an apartheid regime very similar to the old South African one - Palestinians have very few human or civil rights, generally get no protection from the Israeli police or military, while being treated as hostile outsiders that can be assaulted or have their land ‘settled’ at will by Israelis.
It has been decades since Palestine has had any kind of organised military, and it’s also not recognised as its own country by most of the world, so there’s virtually no way for it to push back, or to call on assistance.
In a situation like that, the only recourse is guerilla warfare, which often descends into (and is exploited by bad actors as) terrorist attacks. It’s a damn good way to farm martyrs, and this hugely serves Israel’s ends, since it can keep pointing to terrorim as justification for their ongoing oppression. Israel in fact provided a great deal of ongoing funding for Hamas, while blocking more moderate groups.
Back in October, a small organised group raided across the border from Gaza into Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking a couple of hundred hostages.
In response, Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinans in Gaza - mainly women and children - systematically destroying the city’s infrastructure, water, power, food production and distribution, hospitals, universities and schools, bombing refugee camps and destroying the majority of all housing and shelter in the area. It’s also bombing humanitarian aid convoys, preventing food and medicine from reaching the people there. The death toll is expected to reach many hundreds of thousands, since people are already starving and there is no medical care available.
The rest of the world is wringing their hands about the ‘regrettable’ loss of life, while continuing to sell Israel all the weapons and bombs it needs to continue the genocide.
Fuck Israel.
Mandatory Palestine was long before 1948. Zionist settlers were doing terrorism on the indigenous Palestinians for decades by 1948. And with British support.
That’s a very polite way to explain Israeli savagery.
In 1948, just after WWII, the UK decided to carve a chunk out of Palestine and create a new state there, called Israel - as a Jewish homeland that would take all the refugees that the rest of Europe didn’t want to deal with
That’s not what happened.
Firstly, the Balfour Declaration was in 1917, during World War I. By 1948, the Jews were already living there, and fighting for the land.
Secondly, Britain never partitioned the land, and never announced any intention to partition the land. (Things might have been very different if they had.) I think you’re getting confused with the UN’s partition plan, which was never implemented.
Edit: Why do I bother?
Muslims and Jews believe in the same sky man but have very different views on him. Jews didn’t have a country until Israel was created after world war two. Lots of Arab people lost land and their rights overnight. Israel and its neighbours never really got on from the start. On both sides people took their religion too far. Zionist Jews and Hamas-type Muslims essentially believe that their mission is to drive the other lot off the land / out of existence. Nutters took control of each side and pushed their personal agendas. Both civilians suffer - although undoubtedly Arab civilians have it way way worse. In short both sets of civilians are led by bad people - but the Gazan civilians suffer terribly in comparison to the Israeli civilians.
The working class in both nations. The people, divided and conquered.
If Israel has a working class, it is one of settlers, IDF soldiers, etc. Those are not the “good guys”.
There is a longstanding and incorrect view of Western leftists in the capacity of the Israeli working class to build their power and address the injustices. That class has no capacity to do so whatsoever. They are fully bought-off by the ethnocentric project, both materially and psychologically. This is not very different from how other settler colonist “working classes” did the same. If anything, it is an important lesson that the working class is not a moral quantity, it is a group defined by its relation to production, and only through political education can it gain agency for positive change.
They do have a working class, but your second point is all too true, which is why it has made no impact.
Well obviously it’s the Western powers that gave a bunch of displaced Jews land after WWII, despite no legitimate claim to the area, and then proceeded to keep meddling in Middle Eastern affairs so they could get cheap oil. And the biggest of those Western powers directly gives taxpayer money to war profiteers so there’s a direct financial incentive to keep the genocide going.
Those are the goodest guys.
The Zionist project was going full steam ahead prior to WWII. Zionists collaborated with Nazis to get Jewish people to emigrate or get deported to Palestine. And Holocaust survivors were often looked down on there are Jews that had not done the “right” thing of abandoning their homes to steal someone else’s in Palestine. Zionists spread some of the most antisemitix things you have ever heard when it comes to this topic.
The backer of Zionism simply switched hands after WWII. Before it was the British, then it was the US.
