“And in response we will send 100 billion in lethal aid directly to Israel.”
Israelis are doing a genocide in Gaza right now and the whole western world will celebrate it at worst and tut about it at best. Disgusting
Well one option is they could get off the fucking land they stole and stop doing a genocide. Not sure why that option slipped your mind. Libs always trying to find hard solutions to simple problems.
It was Western powers that “gave” land that didn’t belong to them, and where other people already lived (and, of course, continue to support Israel). The Israeli government is not the only responsible party here.
Hamas is extremist to the point where they would be doing a genocide as well if they were in the position to do so.
“the people being genocided would do the exact same thing if they come into power!” is just soft genocide denial. it’s colonizers telling on themselves, because that’s their solution to an unwanted indigenous populace.
People say separate the Hamas from the people, but that’s really hard when the members of Hamas are of the people and have the support of a good percentage of them.
israel was instrumental in destroying all non-hamas groups. their extremism is intentional, as it gives israel an excuse to continue doing genocide.
… But as the issue stands today, I can’t blame Israel in taking extreme action to end the conflict that’s dragged on for nearly a century now.
you…can’t blame the genocidal settler state for continuing to do a genocide in response to…people resisting the genocide they have been doing for 70 years?? are you fucking drunk?
That’s what makes the whole thing complicated, isn’t it?
Israel shouldn’t have existed to begin with and when it did, it shouldn’t have acted the way it has since its inception.
Yes, Israel is to blame for Hamas having power in Gaza today as well.
I’m not arguing that Israel isn’t a bad guy here.
What I’m arguing is I don’t see an alternative that doesn’t just kick the can down the road.
Decolonization is a bloody and violent process. Once you colonize a place and the people that live there, the only ways that it will end is the near-complete extermination of the colonized peoples by the colonizers, or decolonization. There can never be a lasting, peaceful status quo, as the interests of the colonized and the colonizers are inexorably opposed. The colonizer wants more of what is and was the colonized’s. The colonized want to keep their homes, and to not be subject to the colonizers. Both will use violence to achieve their ends.
The question of “how can peace be achieved in Palestine” is not “how can the current conflict be resolved,” but instead “should Palestinians be subject to ethnic cleansing, including violently and directly as occurred during the Nakba, or should Palestinians govern Palestine?”
Hamas is extremist to the point where they would be doing a genocide as well if they were in the position to do so.
The exact same nonsense was said about the end of apartheid in South Africa. That the extremist communist party and ANC would genocide white people. It never happened. This is literally a talking point from ex apartheid South African president PW Botha he said the same nonsense:
“I am not prepared to lead white South Africans and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide,”
That the extremist communist party and ANC would genocide white people. It never happened.
Hi comrade. Not coming at you personally or aggressively but I feel I do have to come back pretty hard on this take.
The same words can be used in different contexts with different implications, and in the one case they can be correct, in another they can be wrong. The difference which makes your analogy not hold is that the ANC is not Hamas, and pretending otherwise is either confused or disingenuous. They are extremely different organizations. The ANC was a broad-tent organization that included conservatives, nationalists, reactionaries, and revolutionary socialists, notably communists (especially in the armed wing). The armed wing did carry out military operations obvs, but they did not have as a common or explicit policy the indiscriminate torture of unarmed children or torture. They never carried out actions like Hamas has done. Not least because they were sufficiently progressive to recognize that this would politically idiotic, given that the anti-apartheid cause was perceived as depending on foreign pressure on apartheid SA. It seems clear to me that the same applies to the Palestinian case, thought the problem if ofc that the situation is so fucked that the main organization capable and willing of waging armed resistance would not only be terrible for a Palestinian left’s growth in the long-run but could also lead to a regional destabilization which would be harmful for the left in the region more broadly and would likely only benefit Islamists. The actual idea situation would be another leftist-led Intifada, but this has been prevented by Israel, but is also not in the interest of either Hamas or the PA, as it would undermine their authority and power they possess thanks to Israel in Gaza and the West Bank respectively.
By contrast, Hamas are very different. The is evidence for Hamas being the way they are has been there since their inception. They are Islamists. They are extremely fascistic in their politics. They explicitly equate Jews and Israel frequently in their media and they are otherwise clear in their genocidal anti-semitism. Murdering children in their homes is not national-liberation. I’d also add that Hamas are not identical to Palestinians and their actions are not immediately identical with, though they are unfortunately the main military vehicle currently available for, the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Not only that, but Hamas have consistently proven throughout their existence that they do not desire full Palestinian liberation, otherwise they would not have run affairs in Gaza (to the extent they are able in an Israeli open-air concentration-camp) the way they have. This is in no way surprising, given that the interests of Islamists are no less inimical to those of actual working class and liberation movements than fascists and ultra-nationalists, though the latter might also find themselves in the inferior position in asymmetrical warfare with an imperialist power and at the military head of the movement against said imperialism.
Quite frankly, it is an insult to the South African liberation movement to equate them with Hamas, as opposed to the genuinely progressive aspects of the Palestinian liberation movement.
I do think it is important to note these profoundly reactionary aspects of Hamas, otherwise we end up with a blinkered, confused view of what is happening, which is not simply reducible to Hamas being or leading a progressive revolution in Gaza. That in no way changes the fact that the mass of Palestinians who are taking part in these operations are attempting to combat Israeli apartheid and genocide and defend themselves. They evidently feel they have no other choice. But neither does the latter point make Hamas a progressive organization who should be explicitly supported as the solution to Palestinians’ oppression.
The right and need of Palestinians to depend themselves does not, however, in any way imply that every organization that happens to be the means they can do it through now is ideal, good, progressive, or that that will benefit them in the long run. Palestinian Marxists and other groups have found themselves in a situation where they feel they have no option or choice other than to form a front with Hamas in this. The deeper reasons and processes that led to that decision are not entirely clear from outside. We can unequivocally support Palestinian liberation and their self-defense while recognizing that Hamas is otherwise reactionary and therefore will not be the ideal vehicle Also, frankly, I’m never going to support an organization that tortures gay people and throws their Marxist opponents off of rooftops. Unfortunately I’m a pessimist on the front of how the political situation will develop in the long-term as I think the situation’s possible developments are going to be catastrophic in any case, given the genocidal nature of the Israeli apartheid state, how profoundly reactionary Hamas are, and that the material conditions do not allow for the strength of a Communist movement. That would require more ideal conditions which are not to be found in Gaza, and I also don’t think will be brought closer by this current round of war. Israel does of course have ultimate responsibility for this as the genocidal apartheid occupying power, but reaction can bread reaction.
Not all national liberation movements are equal. Not all methods are politically or morally equal. People on this site seem to be able to make this realization in several other cases, such as with ostensibly ‘communist’ groups like the Khmer Rouge and Sendero Luminoso, yet unable to consistently make the same obvious realization in the case of groups in the middle east who’s interests are opposed to those of Western imperialism. There’s a deep and hysterical need among a lot of the western left, not only including but above all among those who are not Marxists but ultras of various types, to unequivocally identify Hamas with the Palestinian people and the cause of Palestinian Liberation with anything that Hamas does, which is a really bizarre and honestly perverse (especially in its reduction of Palestinians to Hamas) form of metaphysical argument by semantic shift of the meaning of the words being used, to make something appear to imply something which it actually does not.
The slightest glance at the history of the relationship of the USSR to national liberation movements makes clear that serious and intelligent socialists of the past who have actually held political power and had geopolitical relevance were perfectly aware that not all national liberation groups are politically equal. Their support was never unconditional, because they were not ultra edgelords on the internet. They were a serious geopolitical power with a specific socialist ideology, and their support was therefore conditional on there being a minimum of progressive aspects to the movements they supported. Of course, this did lead to cases of of questionable or debatable support (such as the Guomingdang or the Derg), and the case is even worse when we consider the CPC’s foreign policy. But that these were mistakes (if they were) is made clear by how they contradicted with the socialist principles which were explicitly underlying them in the minds of socialists politicians who determined foreign policy.
Really? Your stance is “decolonization sounds complicated, let’s just let Israel genocide millions of people”? As other posters have said, send any dual citizens back to their country of origin, remove settlers from Palestinian land, end the siege of gaza, take down the wall and machine guns, prosecute IDF war criminals, and dissolve the criminal entity that is Israel. Will it be bloodless and free of violence? Of course not, I’m not naive, but the genocide of Palestinians will be much more bloody than any decolonization process
And there is no where that would accept the Gaza population as refugees even if you could get them to leave.
So what’s left?
Did you just end your lengthy support of Israeli genocide with “No one wants them anyway, so what else is there but to kill them?” Because it sure sounded like that.
