this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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I'm not saying Israel is worse than other nations. (I believe the U.S. is worse actually, insofar as human suffering caused.) I am saying its more actively colonial than other nations.
Oh, now that I'm thinking about it again, I think I fell for your fallacy there. Why would you classify Israel as a colonial nation in the first place? And your argument that you were only talking about colonial nations is also weird, what difference does it make if other nations are activel neocolonial vs colonial? Or actively killing thousands of people like e.g. Russia and Turkey are doing? Seems like you wanted to find or create a category where Israel is the worst in and then blame it for it. Again, in my mind you are demonizing Israel because you assign it a special diabolic role while in a global context it is behaving not unlike many many other nations. Sure, lets critique the Israeli government. But remember, it is just another extremist right government. The Israeli people have the same right to live as Palestinians. There are people from both sides that want to live in harmony together. It is not one group against another, not one colonizer against the colonized. It is mostly the transgenerational trauma and hate materialized in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Likud party, the settler community, etc that strive to repeat this cycle of hate forever.
Basically, the meme says "if israel has no right to exist [because X], then U.S./Canada/Australia don't have a right to exist [because X too]"
I think most people interpret X is: actively settling/killing/displacing people from their homeland. I would call this "active colonialism." And it's not true that those other nations are doing this.
I don't have it specifically out for Israel. I am against Western imperialism in general. I do not wish to make shit up in order to help further the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world. That would be detrimental to the goal of furthering the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world.
Is this an honest question? Because this is obvious to me..?
Yes, this was an honest question. If Israel were colonial, then it would be a form settler colonialism. (So very different from the typical European kind). And even then, academic scholars aren't sure if it is indeed settler colonialist or not. The whole history of Israel/Palestine is really fucking complicated and I get sceptical if someone says it's actually simple (regardless of affiliation to any side). So why would you classify it as active colonialism?
And regarding the meme, your interpretation seems to be very narrow. Why would people necessarily need to interpret X to be active colonialism? X could also mean atrocities in general, not just narrowly defined atrocities. My interpretation was rather that people defending Israel's right to exist try to do so by tying it to other (western) nations' right to exist. But the punchline of the meme then is that they fail to see that no nation should exist in the first place. I strongly agree with that, no nation or border should exist regardless of how they act. That's how I would interpret the message of this meme (this is an anarchist community after all).
OK, granted, that's a much more interesting interpretation of the meme than mine and I prefer your take. I guess my interpretation was not the universal one. I'm split on whether the intended interpretation was close to mine or not. On the other hand, as they say, intent doesn't matter.
I would consider Israel settler-colonialist because, for instance, they encroach on west bank lands regularly, evicting people from their homes, construct new housing units in those spaces, and then build walls to keep Palestinians out.
This isn't to say the whole situation is simple. I don't claim to understand it entirely nor have a solution to the problem.
I think we both basically agree. And it makes sense that we just had a different interpretation of the meme.
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