Israel to World: "Suck It."

(which seems impossible and is unpopular with everyone)

― Left, Sunday, May 16, 2021 11:36 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's impossible in part because the government of Israel has been seized by forces that don't want it to be possible. I grew up with the understanding that two states, two REAL states, is is the only eventual outcome that's remotely moral. I get the pessimism, here's some more.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/05/14/this-is-what-the-death-of-the-two-state-solution-looks-like/

I've had this conversation before about where do they expect the Palestinians to go and the answer is, or used to be, Jordan.

It's a conversation I've avoided for a long time though.

two “real” states seems very unlikely because it would require one side to surrender claims to jerusalem—not gonna happen.

y’all should read peter beinart’s article on why he believes a bi-national country is the only moral way forward: https://jewishcurrents.org/yavne-a-jewish-case-for-equality-in-israel-palestine/

the article has been criticized as being so optimistic that it’s practically utopian, but since we’re very very far from an actual solution, why not try to think of an equitable one?

'there's no room' seems a weirdly underwhelming excuse for the utopic modernist vision of zionism but it does signal the huge task of infrastructure building etc that would also be necessary to a post-apartheid settlement. however its very hard to imagine the US giving $4bn a year to sponsor infrastructure building and continued peace in israel palestine

israel was able to settle 500k immigrants from former soviet countries in the 90s, welcoming back descendants of palestinians would be difficult but doable. logistically, anyway

the desirability and achievability of the nation state as a project should be challenged everywhere not only in israel/palestine. it's such a new concept and literally every national project is constantly being contested but people still talk about it like it's an inevitable reality that has actually been achieved in many cases and will always be necessary (meaning there will always have to be borders and second-class citizens and dispossessed/stateless people and wars and ethnic cleansing and all the rest)

but if one state is practically utopian i don't know what that makes none

i think thats probably 'true' but doing away with the nation state doesn't undermine that people will have a desire to self-determination and i think a right to pursue that desire and the nation state is currently the criterion by which that becomes legible. I think its quite reasonable to bracket the question of dismantling the state with regard israel palestine for now.

i basically agree & palestinians in particular don't need british opinions on nationalism-in-general rn

no one needs british opinions

also true

israel was able to settle 500k immigrants from former soviet countries in the 90s, welcoming back descendants of palestinians would be difficult but doable. logistically, anyway

― the mai tai quinn (voodoo chili), Sunday, May 16, 2021 2:04 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

100%. There are no financial or logistical excuses, only bad faith and lack of imagination. And not only from Israel, but from all involved states (US, Iran, Arab neighbors etc).

If you can build Tel-Avid and the Iron Dome, you can ensure the peaceful right of return to victims of the Nakba.

i basically agree & palestinians in particular don't need british opinions on nationalism-in-general rn

― Left, Sunday, 16 May 2021 18:35 (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

What nationality are you, ilxor user left

And how do you know the nationalities of the posters you type at

I am german-english. with all the baggage & neurotic complexes of identification & projection that entails. give me all the shit in the world for that

I don't know what you're getting at with the other thing, I don't know everyone's nationality unless they've made it clear. I know you're not british for example

It seemed to me, and its possible ive mistaken yr intent, that yr post to plax was a dismissal of their british opinion

german english tho, oof

the intended target was myself i have no idea of plax's nationality & their post was a necessary corrective

i hate it too

My misreading so, apologies

Thought plaxs post was good, they usually are

np

I want to push back on the idea of legitimate claims being bandied about on some posts...

The area was a multi-religious and multi-ethnic area pre-48, and so in that sense, many parties hold legitimate claims to being there.

Creating an apartheid state after ethnically cleansing and displacing a huge population does not a legitimate claim make. From its inception, Israel has been explicitly about exclusion, death, and utilizing a racialized Other as method of statecraft and control.

That Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other groups have the right to be there is obvious, but the right of one of the best-funded militaries in the world to exact pain, suffering, and systems of exclusion on an Otherized population is so manifestly not legitimate that it's painful to read both sides arguments.

Jewish claims to the land lies are evident, as they were also historically colonised, brutalised, and expelled despite being indigenous to the region. We can discuss colonialism in the region pre-1922, it’s not exactly a haven of human rights.

Does this have to exclude the palestinians claim? It does not. It did, in the form of that specific state and those specific policies, which I will describe as genocidal, but it doesn’t have to. Just like the muslim majority of the region needs to come to terms that the capture of Jerusalem, the dhimmi status, building religious places of worship on top of other people’s places of worship, are also pretty heavy standards of colonialism and imperalism.

So either you go tit for tat and try to outdo the other by erasing their history (truth remain both peoples have lived there enough time to call it home) or you recognise that singular ethno-states are never ever going to create enough space for different peoples to live in.

important to emphasise why the israeli military is so well funded by whom, who pioneered these strategies of colonial statecraft & ethnic cleansing, where ethnonationalist ideology comes from, its uses by imperialists & nationalists & fascists, why jewish life became intolerable & frequently impossible in europe & elsewhere

like i have interacted with *so many* british leftists both irl & online who talk about israel all the time as if we had & have nothing to do with it (many don't even know palestine was under british control) or that our involvement is just a matter of moral support from corrupt elites or some devious financial conspiracy & you see where this goes. no one here is saying anything close to that. but it's empire not just israel

otoh while i don't know enough about historical arab/muslim conquests i'm pretty sure it's not a good comparison for modern european(-style) settler-colonial projects & wasn't based on racial/nationalist ideology

Let’s stress the ‘don’t know enough’ part then.

You can also ask the Kurds and Kabyles how they feel about it all.

And my argument is no matter how odious those empires, caliphates, states and armies were in the past it doesn’t erase the right of any people to live peacefully in their own land.

afaict no one here is demanding a palestinian arab ethnostate or ethnic cleansing of jews or other minorities

the point about kurds & kabyles eludes me unless it's that self-styled anti-/post-colonial regimes can still be oppressive - ok...?

empire is not just the past though & as everyone knows the past isn't past

idk where this is going, if anywhere

afaict no one here is demanding a palestinian arab ethnostate or ethnic cleansing of jews or other minorities

Pushback against jewish self determination, which table argued for, is exactly calling for the creation of a palestinian arab ethno-state. What is the consequence of saying that jews can’t live peacefully in their ancestral land but that Palestinians should? Sorry to insist on this particular notion of human rights. But to take it away from another people is disgusting. Erasing the jewish history in the Levant is antisemitic.

the point about kurds & kabyles eludes me unless it's that self-styled anti-/post-colonial regimes can still be oppressive - ok...?

I swear there are centuries of history you need to catch up on. I wonder if you can even map the Ottoman empire for crying out loud.

https://twitter.com/1littlebigmouth/status/1393508771914260480?s=21

I do not see whatever subtext you are reading from those posts unless it's about the meaning of the word Israel

I at least know the Ottomans occupied Palestine before the British. but whatever your point is eludes me and I'm tired now. I have tried to be as clear as I can here whether or not I have been wrong

This account owner limits who can view their Tweets

it's empire not just israel

Of course, Israel has been a Western base of military power since its founding. That was all part of the bargain that created the country — a safe Jewish state that was also a U.S./NATO outpost in the heart of oil country. Only became more important after the West lost Iran as an ally.

But even by those standards the hard-right machinations of the past 20 years don't make long-term sense for Israel. The West would be better off with a two-state solution, it's more stable, which is why the West keeps trying to make it happen. But internal Israeli and Palestinian politics have made it impossible, Israeli especially since the 1990s. And the devil's bargain with American evangelicals is turning out to be as toxic as you'd expect. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucking mess.

And my argument is no matter how odious those empires, caliphates, states and armies were in the past it doesn’t erase the right of any people to live peacefully in their own land.

Absolutely. The only out here is for everyone to respect everyone's right to be there, and proceed somehow from there.

VHS is like this.

Utterly disgusting. Antisemitism, misogyny and hate have no place on our streets or in our society. There must be consequences. https://t.co/a1asCAF9Ep

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 16, 2021

xps ok i think i get it now the palestinians need to take responsibility for ottoman imperialism because islam so then there can be reconciliation and human rights is that right history guy

people have a right to defend themselves against keir starmer

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-nakba-demands-justice/

Yeah turns out in order for peace to happen one crew is going to understand that the path of genocide taken since 1948 js not going to cut it for peace proposals, and the other is going to have to accept that Jews have a claim to the land and rights should be given as equal citizens. It seems to be novelty to fascist leaders in the region and to western leftist twitter warriors, but the calls for this sort of understanding had been growing across the divide within the population until Nethanyahu threw a wrench to save his ass.

(It obviously means, and I know you’ll agree, that jewish people living in the Levant need to stop aligning themselves with the US and their imperial actions accross the Middle East)

“Reconciliation” in these formulations is not a politically neutral call for peace, but rather an ideological paradigm predicated on Palestinian submission. The framework purports to provide a path to new relationships between divided groups, redressing historical injustices and paving the way for ethical coexistence. But in Israel, the term is weaponized to coerce Palestinians into passivity in the face of colonial subjugation by implicitly threatening them with state-sanctioned collective punishment—there will be peace on the colonizer’s terms, or else.

I never pushed back against Jewish self-determination. I pushed back against the legitimacy of an apartheid state. Don't put words in my mouth, and don't conflate the Jewish diaspore with the murderous ethno-state of Israel.

“Reconciliation” in these formulations is not a politically neutral call for peace, but rather an ideological paradigm predicated on Palestinian submission. The framework purports to provide a path to new relationships between divided groups, redressing historical injustices and paving the way for ethical coexistence. But in Israel, the term is weaponized to coerce Palestinians into passivity in the face of colonial subjugation by implicitly threatening them with state-sanctioned collective punishment—there will be peace on the colonizer’s terms, or else.

― Left, Sunday, May 16, 2021 7:43 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is not the type of reconciliation I’m arguing for and you know it.

the calls for this sort of understanding had been growing across the divide within the population

what's your evidence of this growing understanding? I don't see much of anyone in Israel moving towards ending the occupation

Matti Friedman’s Jerusalem of Glue article is a good start!

paywalled for me, care to summarize?

my evidence against any movement towards the "peace process" is that in last month's election only one or two non-Arab parties arguably support ending the occupation, and they combined for 13 seats of the 120 in the knesset. the israeli consensus seems to be in favor of maintaining the status quo, or worse

Very cool that Twitter allows official mouthpieces of national govts to commit dangerous libel against individual private citizens peacefully protesting:

When celebrities like @BellaHadid advocate for throwing Jews into the sea, they are advocating for the elimination of the Jewish State.

This shouldn't be an Israeli-Palestinian issue. This should be a human issue.

Shame on you.#IsraelUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/PJQHT90cNy

— Israel ישראל (@Israel) May 16, 2021

tbf VHS who are you talking to that is here? i haven't seen anyone here advocating for the expulsion of jews and the simple reversal of apartheid in the region and the twitter warriors or whoever you are addressing cant see your posts here, it is just very alienating. I know this is a topic where one often encounters bad faith conflations of all kinds but the discussion I have seen here seems to be mostly people reminding themselves to complicate the simplistic binaries and simplifications that are rife in coverage and propaganda. Just a reminder that projecting a windmill onto your interlocutor's chest and then tilting at that is pretty dehumanising.

since we're doing patronising map-making prescriptions though, if anyone is interested this is a very good resource by Forensic Architecture showing the history of israel palestines changing 'borders' since 1967. Eyal Weizman who founded forensic architecture is israeli and his book 'hollow land' is a brilliant discussion of this topic.

https://conquer-and-divide.btselem.org/map-en.html