50 years to the day

[LongShortLong]

Beau of the Fifth column has a few, though he titles his stuff poorly and it's really hard to figure which is about what. He also takes pride in identifying his bias when he knows he has one. Primarily covers US politics. These three are Israel related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhd61gX2KjA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXdIp1TFJu0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKvzOF-toIA

Vlad Vexler is a political philosopher. Found him from Ukraine channels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU9oGlSwkwU

Both are thoughtful and cover the recent Hamas-Israel conflict from an intellectual perspective. Don't expect news or history. There's a few more videos from each. Find them if you want.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Not going to post it to avoid crossing into polyass (and if anyone thinks this is crossing that line, I’ll delete it) but the ex president voiced his thoughts on the attacks in a speech tonight.

Yglesias response to one of his statements:

[Core Shot]

Nakba akbar??

[dunfree]

If anyone comes across any podcast or interviews worth listening to on this topic I’d be grateful if you shared them.


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Isaac Chotiner interviews someone about Hamas here talking about their aims, etc
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and...goes-from-here

[cspringsposer]

I’m just trying to read and listen to as much as I can and was wondering if anyone had come across anything they thought was valuable to help them understand the situation. I hear your point, and that’s why I’m asking , most things I’m reading are strongly biased and lack objectivity.


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Let me start by saying that I hope Israel wipes Hamas off the face of the earth! They are a plague that needs conflict and misery to remain relevant. That said, I also think it is far too simplistic to make this conflict one solely based on religion.

I read an interesting book in college called "Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine" that provided a very unique perspective on the issue. The book is a bit dated and centers on the second intifada, but I think it is still informative and relevant to today's conflict.

Let me reiterate, fuck Hamas, but this is still at its core a human story of suffering and despair no matter the lens you view it through.

[ex-powderbroker]

pretty good take here i thought:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023...is-doomed.html

[Evil E]

Let me start by saying that I hope Israel wipes Hamas off the face of the earth! They are a plague that needs conflict and misery to remain relevant. That said, I also think it is far too simplistic to make this conflict one solely based on religion.

I read an interesting book in college called "Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine" that provided a very unique perspective on the issue. The book is a bit dated and centers on the second intifada, but I think it is still informative and relevant to today's conflict.

Let me reiterate, fuck Hamas, but this is still at its core a human story of suffering and despair no matter the lens you view it through.

I’m in total agreement regarding Hamas. Thanks for the recommendation


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[powpig]

Haven't read further back then this last page so not sure how much ( or at all ) this has been discussed,
but since Israel helped create Hamas as an entity to oppose Yassir Arafat and the PLO, this just seems like the latest example of the:

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend strategy,

failing miserably and backfiring spectacularly.

Other than that, it's just an argument over which war criminals are more justified to keep killing innocent children.
By the time this thread reaches 1000 pages, will anything other than the number of dead have changed?

[MultiVerse]

Isaac Chotiner interviews someone about Hamas here talking about their aims, etc
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and...goes-from-here

The interview focuses a lot on the conventional wisdom in academic circles in which the interviewee travels and less on the goals of Hamas:eliminating Jews from Israel. If the goal was eliminating apartheid, that is eliminating Israel as a Jewish state by ending ethnic domination and apartheid; in favor of a one-state solution where Arabs, Jews, and Palestinians live side by side in peace and freedom then Tareq Baconi's arguments would be much more compelling.

He says, "We need to recognize that anti-colonial struggles are violent. But not all of that violence is in pursuit of a political project. As you say, violence occurs for all different sorts of reasons. We need to be able to hold that truth while also recognizing the ethical purpose of ending apartheid."

So he's saying violence is ethical if it serves to end apartheid even if violence is occurring for others reasons too. Which is 'just' I suppose as far as it goes. But the goal of Hamas is not to reform the state of Israel. Their goal is to eliminate it.

This interview below with an actual Hamas leader, along with others, makes that clear. Hamas doesn't have any non-violent political vision apart from Jews should go back to their homelands in Europe (in academic circles and on social media Jews are considered white European colonizers with no historic ties to Israel):

https://www.economist.com/middle-eas...kill-civilians

[californiagrown]

By the time this thread reaches 1000 pages, will anything other than the number of dead have changed?

I think that this is pretty much the consensus conclusion.

[J. Barron DeJong]

He says, "We need to recognize that anti-colonial struggles are violent. But not all of that violence is in pursuit of a political project. As you say, violence occurs for all different sorts of reasons. We need to be able to hold that truth while also recognizing the ethical purpose of ending apartheid."

So he's saying violence is ethical if it serves to end apartheid even if violence is occurring for others reasons too.

I didn’t interpret it quite like that. I thought he was saying that violence aimed at, and having a strategy towards, ending ending colonial rule is justified. But not all violence is in pursuit of a strategic political goal even if it’s occurring under colonial rule (referring to the attacks that just happened), and therefore are not justified.

[J. Barron DeJong]

this just seems like the latest example of the:

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend strategy,

Yes, this has been brought up.

[TNKen]

Everyone ready for Jihad Friday?

[ex-powderbroker]

Giving credit to Israel for founding Hamas is quite honestly a stretch. I understand everyone wants to make connections to things they are familiar with already (pal: indigenous, taliban: hamas) but if the history is accurate the Israeli govt was trying to elevate a political party that has no military agenda to challenge the PLO as a governing body.

Sadly there has been no group of Palestinian politicians that have had the political capital at the same time as an Israeli partner that wanted peace (and no united leadership at all for almost 20 years, not that Bibi was a partner).

[MultiVerse]

I didn’t interpret it quite like that. I thought he was saying that violence aimed at, and having a strategy towards, ending ending colonial rule is justified. But not all violence is in pursuit of a strategic political goal even if it’s occurring under colonial rule (referring to the attacks that just happened), and therefore are not justified.

Your interpretation only makes sense if you grant the premise Israel is a colonial state. He's making the same argument as the Yale academic on the previous page in post #342. A person can understand Israel is an apartheid state, that is Jewish citizens have more rights than Palestinians, while also knowing the regions history.

There has been a constant Jewish presence in the Middle East for 5,000 years. Before the Muslims, conquest by among others Persians & Romans, many but not all Jews were enslaved and taken from Judea. Later renamed Palestinia by the Romans. They kept returning. Jews were expelled and returned to Judea many times before Muslims eventually ruled most of the Middle East. Jews and Arabs are all descended from the same ancient people. Their history is intertwined.

Each side won and lost the land dozens of times through war, not colonialism, not unlike ethnic regional wars in Europe, the Ottomans, the Caucasuses, Asia, Japan, and so many other places. Jews have had a constant presence in Judea / Palestine / Isreal for the entirety of recorded history. Although, not in large numbers for several centuries prior to 1948. The colonial narrative only makes sense if you ignore the fact Jews are originally from Israel.

In 1948 the international community granted the Jewish people a partitioned homeland. Around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result. In response Arab, Iranian, and African countries dispossessed a similar number of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who had lived mostly peacefully with their neighbors in their respective regions for thousands of years. Jewish enclaves in Africa, in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Yemen existed for thousands of years prior to 1948. In 1948 and again in 1973 the Arab states invaded Israel. Israel was vastly outnumbered both times but won anyway and acquired more land.

I'm not trying to argue Jews have more of a connection to Israel than Palestinians, only that the colonization narrative is false and allows for, in polite academic terms, the removal of Jews from Israel.

[PNWbrit]

Sobering piece on Morning Edition today.

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/12/12053...y-trapped-gaza

[J. Barron DeJong]

Your interpretation only makes sense if you grant the premise Israel is a colonial state. He's making the same argument as the Yale academic on the previous page in post #342. A person can understand Israel is an apartheid state, that is Jewish citizens have more rights than Palestinians, while also knowing the regions history.

There has been a constant Jewish presence in the Middle East for 5,000 years. Before the Muslims, conquest by among others Persians & Romans, many but not all Jews were enslaved and taken from Judea. Later renamed Palestina by the Romans. They kept returning. Jews were expelled and returned to Judea many times before Muslims eventually ruled most of the Middles East. Jews and Arabs are all descended from the same ancient people. Their history is intertwined.

Each side won and lost the land dozens of times through war, not colonialism, not unlike ethnic regional wars in Europe, the Ottomans, the Caucasuses, Asia, Japan, and so many other places. Jews have had a constant presence in Judea / Palestine / Isreal for the entirety of recorded history. Although, not in large numbers for several centuries prior to 1948. The colonial narrative only makes sense if you ignore the fact Jews are originally from Israel.

In 1948 the international community granted the Jewish people a partitioned homeland. Around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result. In response Arab, Iranian, and African countries dispossessed a similar number of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who had lived mostly peacefully with their neighbors in their respective regions for thousands of years. Jewish enclaves in Africa, in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Yemen existed for thousands of years prior to 1948. In 1948 and again in 1973 the Arab states invaded Israel. Israel was vastly outnumbered both times but won anyway and acquired more land.

I'm not trying to argue Jews have more of a connection to Israel than Palestinians, only that the colonization narrative is false and allows for, in polite academic terms, the removal of Jews from Israel.

Yeah, I used Colonial because that’s the words he was using in that quote. But I think the argument works equally well if you say Apartheid State.

He talks about apartheid many times, and I didn’t see anything in that interview that suggested he didn’t believe Israel as a state had a right to exist.

[MultiVerse]

Right, but he's claiming to speak for Hamas. It's a neat trick. He's careful not to say it explicitly, but he's reconfiguring his and Hamas' argument as though they are related if not one and the same, when they're not. Hamas doesn't have any non-violent political vision for Jews in Israel and he probably knows that's the case. That's the point of my original post.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Here’s another article written by the interviewee. I guess interpret it as you choose:

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-trap-...-participation

“Here is another Palestinian perspective: At 75, Israel is a powerhouse; a diplomatic, economic, and military success story; a global player and regional superpower. Like its sister settler colony, the United States, it is a force that cannot be ignored. But, to make a most morbid comparison, the US has been far more effective at marginalizing its Indigenous populations. Despite all of Israel’s successes, the country’s elite remain, much to their chagrin, stuck in a hysterical attempt to secure legitimacy, engaging in an interminable debate about how to manage those pesky people still clamoring for rights and justice. As one of those troublesome individuals, my perspective is that Israel should relinquish its stubborn insistence on supremacy and colonial domination, and allow equality, justice, and freedom to flourish between the river and the sea. To my mind, the only question worth considering is this: How can we make this happen?”

[MultiVerse]

Right, it's the same colonial argument. He's comparing American colonists fighting against native Americans and not granting the fact both Jews and Arabs are indigenous to Israel. It's not "interpret it as you choose," he explicitly says Zionist Jews colonized Israel. That's his point view. He has the right to voice it. But it's not a question of interpretation.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Don’t have time to read in depth right now, but it does seems like the book he wrote on the history of Hamas portrayed them in sympathetic terms, and he didn’t want them to be labeled a terrorist organization.

So, I’ll retract my argument.

[MontuckyFried]

Don’t have time to read in depth right now, but it does seems like the book he wrote on the history of Hamas portrayed them in sympathetic terms, and he didn’t want them to be labeled a terrorist organization.

So, I’ll retract my argument.

Speaking of not wanting label Hamas as terrorists, WTF is up with the pussy ass CBC (Canada) and BBC taking the exact same position?
https://honestreporting.ca/petitions...ation-of-gaza/
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67076341

So the CBC is afraid of offending anybody with the terrorist label, but sure didn't hesitate to label the truckers who protested the vaccine mandates as "extremist groups."
So, just to get this straight. According to the CBC, a bunch of truckers holding up traffic = "extremists," but Hamas running around murdering babies and entire villages =/= terrorists. What dumbasses.

The BBC editorial guidelines say the word "terrorist" can be "a barrier rather than an aid to understanding." Unbelievable.

[riser4]

The whole thing is a mess.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Speaking of not wanting label Hamas as terrorists, WTF is up with the pussy ass CBC (Canada) and BBC taking the exact same position?
https://honestreporting.ca/petitions...ation-of-gaza/
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67076341

So the CBC is afraid of offending anybody with the terrorist label, but sure didn't hesitate to label the truckers who protested the vaccine mandates as "extremist groups."
So, just to get this straight. According to the CBC, a bunch of truckers holding up traffic = "extremists," but Hamas running around murdering babies and entire villages =/= terrorists. What dumbasses.

The BBC editorial guidelines say the word "terrorist" can be "a barrier rather than an aid to understanding." Unbelievable.

Yeah, that’s some bullshit.

[MultiVerse]

It's not a conspiracy. It's too much reality for the CBC, the BBC, and for their audiences to handle. This is going to get ugly for real, not virtual and abstract like the Truckers Protest. There's simply no comparison. The atrocities in Israel will be matched by atrocities in Gaza and there's no way to understand that without acknowledging much of the world is still a violent and deadly place. Any Western political disagreements pale in comparison. They are different categories existing in different universes.