General Politics Discussion (X) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1622

After a hard fight to clear militants, Israeli soldiers find a scene of destruction, slain children


Had this one and the one above this show up on my yahoo feed right next to each other hah.

 

Cenk on crank

 

What sucks more is having to be Palestinian and constantly being asked to denounce Hamas on camera over and over and over again.

 

If you never watched Abby’s interview with Israelis well… it’s unsettling

 

Where the Palestinian Political Project Goes from Here

Many of the anti-colonial or revolutionary figures we revere—Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress come to mind—did use violence to achieve their ends. And I think there’s a naïveté today about how often groups throughout history have used violence. At the same time, when I hear Israelis say things like, “People in Palestine are animals who will be treated as such,” or when I hear the reports about dead children in Israeli towns, I sometimes have trouble thinking of this as military strategy, or some part of a coherent political struggle with clear ends in mind. It often seems like sadism. And I don’t know how we should think about these acts in the context of larger struggles, even larger struggles we support. How do you wrestle with that?


It’s a really important question and, I think, a very, very difficult one. I grapple with it every day. What you’re saying is absolutely right. There was no anti-colonial struggle or struggle for decolonization without violence. Part of the issue here is that it’s really important for us to go back to centering the primary cause in any anti-colonial struggle, which is colonial violence. It’s crucial to ground the discussion in that context because Hamas’s violence isn’t coming out of the blue. And part of the issue around, as you say, sadism, is that Palestinians have, day in, day out, been living with death and violence.


This is the first time I have been interviewed by The New Yorker, and it’s happening because Israelis were killed. What happened when Palestinians were killed in the thousands, just in the fifteen years that I’ve been covering Hamas? And so, when we really want to think about what this driver of violence is—and the pictures that have been coming out are sickening—we need to understand that colonial violence instills dehumanization both in the oppressor and in the oppressed. And it’s completely out of mind. It’s mind-boggling to me that Israeli protesters go out to protest for democracy in an apartheid regime. The only way they can hold that contradiction is if they accept that Palestinian lives are absent or expendable. And so we have to understand this violence, which, again, is heart-wrenching, in that context.

But if we want to think about Hamas and its political project, the group still doesn’t speak on behalf of all Palestinians. Palestinians are not all Islamists. The bigger issue here is that the Palestinian political project, which was the P.L.O., which was actually more in line with anti-colonial movements in the seventies and the eighties, was equally treated as a terrorist organization by the West until it was decimated both institutionally and through the assassination and imprisonment of Palestinian political leaders. This was the decimation of the political project of the anti-colonial movement. And, in the Palestinian case, it worked, or worked temporarily. But the political project right now is reconstituting itself, and so far Hamas is the loudest manifestation of that project.

 

Trump, Qanon, anti-vax, flat earth, 9/11, pro-Israel/Zionists, etc. — I assure you the basics/foundation are all the same. You’re arguing with brainwashed cult members essentially that don’t understand real research/sources, critical thinking, logical fallacies, confirmation bias, propaganda, indoctrination, science, math, history, and so forth — while swimming in loaded language and being conditioned to distrust experts in their respective fields to an extreme degree. It’s near impossible to reason with these people and I don’t have patience for the Socratic method.

 

hmm

 

this is the part that immediately jumped out at me:

"It’s mind-boggling to me that Israeli protesters go out to protest for democracy in an apartheid regime. The only way they can hold that contradiction is if they accept that Palestinian lives are absent or expendable. And so we have to understand this violence, which, again, is heart-wrenching, in that context."

 

eh, pro-israel/zionists are very much in the liberal and democrat camp as well

 

Oh yeah, most definitely; I’m more so referring to their way of reasoning and lack of critical thinking for that particular topic.

 

this is the face of the counterprotests i always see

 

I think being ready to rage at someone for expressing the loss of human life is not only very stupid but also severely unhelpful to a discussion thread. Then to accuse them of what their stance is based on their assumptions from one post is bizarre. Or to judge them for not saying things years ago. Maybe they were ignorant of it but have paid attention the past week. There are a multitude of reasons to not have posted about this conflict before. But if you make a post and you don’t include something to the effect of “fuck Israel,” you’re automatically pro Israel and a piece of shit. It doesn’t seem to matter what you say after that for some people.

I don’t see how that helps anyone or anything. Sure, it makes the raging ones feel self righteous. But If people just want to attack with rage, maybe we should change the name of the thread because this isn’t discussion anymore.

 

Disgusting

 

In a meeting with a group of public sector professional with a legal consultant for my jerb, he's talking about how the recent supreme court decision to reinterpret the civil rights act 1981/1982 as prohibiting affirmative action is absolutely going to be used to reimplement redlining practices. Basically, you can no longer specifically call out programs for helping certain races of people. BUT! You can still collect information on race for things such as mortgages/loans/contracts and make decisions based upon it just not explicitly. Case Law has basically decided this is a "First Amendment" right to do so. If the Supreme Court REALLY cared about "removing racism about white folks" or whatever they would've said that you can't collect race information at all.

Anyways fuck this hetero earth.

 

Oh, to be fair, some people have been really good at just posting helpful information. I couldn’t tell you who, but someone posted a graph showing the loss of lives for both sides for over the years. Made it super obvious and very easy to see vast difference in scale and consistency of it all.

 

It may not be necessary to include “fuck Israel” in your post about the conflict but it is encouraged and helpful

 

If not saying it immediately causes people to attack someone, then that’s a requirement.

Fuck Israel.

 

Get this loser the fuck out of congress

 

I was watching Vox's video series on Israel/Palestine from a few years back. There's one episode where they interview settlers, mainly those who aren't outwardly driven by zionism and the comments aren't on the face malicious, but they are abhorrently ignorant. A lot of "we moved here because it's a great place to raise a family", "we saved so much money", "it's great it has everything, wifi, water, electricity, everything!". Meanwhile just down the road from them, Palestinians are walled off into ghettos with restricted access to all these things. What's even weirder is the number of Americans they interviewed who are moving from the US to the West Bank.

 

sounds like white American liberals