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.
oh right, totally forgot about those poor people who lived and partied next to the concentration camp and then got either kidnapped by people who wanted to break out of the concentration camp or were killed by the IDF. let’s all show a bit more empathy! 😥
It’s clear Judaism / Muslim conflicts have caused a lot more suffering to Muslims in Palestine for the last 100+ years. But the solution to this conflict will never be violence. Only diplomacy.
I’m arguing that such comments can generate hate and divide. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but I at least hope you agree that the solution is not hate, but diplomacy.
When violence is acceptable the weak and marginalized are destroyed. I only wish the best for Gaza and Israel. And in my opinion the solution is empathy and diplomacy. It’s obviously terribly hard to negotiate and empathize with your abuser. But in my opinion, if this sentiment doesn’t start the conflict will only stop when the weaker side is destroyed. I hope we can respect each other. Bless you.
While you sound reasonable, your mistake seems to be to believie that Judaism is the same as Zionism. It is not. It is completely not. They are inherently incompatible. Learn about it or don’t. I’m not some kind of theological scholar or history professor. Maybe ask your local Rabbi about it.
Anyway, sorry to sound like some kind of an extremist to you, but violence is (at the moment) 100% the only answer. Not against the Jewish people, but against the fascist, zionist apartheid regime, who is committing genocide, right now, right before your eyes. Every day, bless you too.
Replace US with Israel in this Stokely Carmichael Quote:
Israel, or any bully, will not be swayed by your appeals to their conscience, no matter how hard you try. Ruling classes intentionally spread pacifist propaganda becomes its completely unthreatening to them. Pacifism overall is a losing strategy with zero historical successes, as the article below gets into.
Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy’s job for them. Youtube Audiobook
I think it’s important to differentiate pacifism as a strategy – the total renunciation of anything that could be considered violence, often including even mere property damage – with non-violence as one tactic among many.
Many movements have had success using non-violence as a tactic in certain situations, so long as those movements don’t take the possibility of ever using violence completely off the table (pacifism).
Dr. King also changed his opinion later on. People act like he was some lifelong pacifist without knowing his full history and what changes were caused by his pacifist actions and by other’s more aggressive actions.
I’m extremely confused. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, led by MLK, had massive, sweeping success. Brown v. BOE, Loving v. Virginia, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968, etc. The non-violent strategy succeded in striking down segregation, Jim crow laws, and nearly all forms of legal racial discrimination within a couple decades.
Securing legal rights for minority groups to be treated equally under the law and courts is a losing strategy? What exactly is your objective if you see the civil rights movement as a loss?
I understand that you’re probably not American so you may not have an extensive knowledge of American history. But this is pretty important stuff, and acting like MLK failed because of his non-violent strategy is 1,000,000% wrong. Literally could not be further from the truth.
What did the Black Panthers accomplish with their violent strategy? They committed a few terrorist acts and all ended up dead or in jail. They didn’t secure any major, permanent victories for future generations.
Saying that MLK failed because of his non-violent approach is like saying Julius Caesar failed because he was an ineffective military commander. It’s so incredibly incorrect that I don’t understand how you could ever come to think that.
You did not read the linked article.
And also if you read Michelle Alexander’s the new jim crow, you’ll realize that even de-jure de-segregation has mostly been circumvented / nullified by drug laws. 1 in 5 black men will spend some time in prison in the US, and slavery is still legal in the US under the guise of drug-based imprisonment.
The article gets more into it, but the material wealth divide was completely unaffected by the civil rights “wins”, and poverty is still growing along color lines. I’ll post a few of these below:
Ok I still think it’s wrong to criticize nonviolent resistance but I appreciate the data and links. It is true that I didn’t read the linked article at first.
No probs.
This is a Zionism / Palestinian (and any other independence groups, really) “conflict”, which is to say, occupation and rrsistance.
Diplomacy requires leverage and is not an inherent good on its own. Diplomacy can be a tool for delay, propaganda, and for achieving a lopsided deal with false representatives. All of these things have been done via US/Israeli “diplomacy” regarding Paleetine.
You see a people forced into a ghetto fighting back and say, “no that’s not the way” as if you have any understanding and have earned an opinion. An important lesson to learn is when you should have no opinion until you become informed.
The divide is already there. It is genocidal settler-colonial apartheid vs. freedom fighters. And the camps throwing in for each side of this. Personally, I don’t find it difficult to place myself fully in the freedom fighter camp and against the genociders. Do you? And no, there is no third option because there is no third force with any leverage or will.
The violence has already been here. What on earth are you talking about? What fantasy world do you live in where passive Palestinians are left alone? The Israeli project is premised on their oppression and expulsion.
And you are simply wrong in your generalization. Violence has been essential for virtually every liberation fight. This is not because the marginalized love violence, it is because the oppressor leaves no other options.
Israel is an apartheid ethnostate doing a genocide. It is racist and horrible to wish the best for it.
You don’t deserve an opinion on this topic because you do not know anything about it. You do not get to set the terms of others’ freedom. You should spend your time helping the resistance, not rationalizing a fairy tale about how to oppose settler-colonial genocide with “diplomacy” and no militarized resistance.
The mental model here is “violence and diplomacy are mutually exclusive”. In fact, they’re very closely connected, almost synonymous.
Agree here. I grew up in violence and lived through the peace process. It starts out violent, and you win concessions by showing strength, and then negotiate peace. That worked in Ireland in 1998 and almost worked in Palestine in 2000. Violence is the first part of the diplomacy.
You’re saying that the weak should go to the negotiating table empty-handed, but that won’t solve anything for them. They need to stop being weak and start being strong, then diplomacy can start to happen.
The solution to weakness is strength. How can the weak become strong without the Armalite?
The Catholics took up arms in 1968 and came to the negotiating table in 1998. We won some concessions because we showed strength for 31 years, not “empathy”. Yasser Arafat understood this: he knew when to use violence and when to negotiate. If you defang yourself as Step One, you make diplomacy impossible.
I admire your values, but you’re incorrectly equating “empathy and diplomacy”. Diplomacy is more a military matter; empathy has no place in realpolitik.
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