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0 pointsjmyeet12d ago0 comments

No, it's actually really simple. You start with these two questions:

1. Is Israel an apartheid state?

2. Is Israel committing a genocide?

At this point (IMHO) you need to do some serious mental gymnastics not to answer "yes" to both questions. As soon as you do, it gets real simple. The existence of Hamas doesn't justify either of these things.

The people who bring this up are engaging in respectability politics or engaging in weaponized cvility. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the focus is on the methods and the actions of the oppressed when it is the oppressor that sets the level of violence. As Nelson Mandela put it:

> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.

People understood this quite clearly with apartheid South Africa. Can you imagine protesters having to do the performative "does apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?" pledge? No, me neither.

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ameminator12d ago· 4 in thread

While I actually have sympathy for people on both sides of the struggle, I also find it hard to answer "yes" to both questions, mostly because of how muddied the definitions of everything are. It's obvious to me, that both the Israeli government and Hamas are both committing serious warcrimes, and that there no good actors here, here are some questions I don't have an answer to.

For example, is Palestine its own country? Is Hamas is its rightful government? Does that extend to the West Bank or only in Gaza? Palestinians seem to say that Palestine is its own country, Israelis say that Palestinians are not a part of Israel - so how can it be an apartheid state if BOTH sides say they aren't part of the same country at all?

Is Israel committing a genocide? Well, what does a genocide look like? Israel is still distributing food in Gaza, to this day. I don't think it would look like this, but at the same time, there are terrorists on both sides (Itamar ben-Gvir being the most prominent on the Israeli side, in my opinion).

There are more issues and questions and uncertainty around the problems in Israel, Palestine, the Levant as a whole, Iran's involvement and so on.

Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side! (A counter-genocide?) Regardless, if this issue were easy to solve, it would have been solved already.

Honestly, the situation seems to complicated to boil down to two "simple" questions and I admire that you can have such an "obvious" outlook, but the more I look at Israel and the Middle East (and read, and research), the more questions I have.

jmyeetOP12d ago

The definitions aren't muddled. Apartheid [1] and genocide [2] are both defined by the UN. Apartheid in particular is also objectively true. Do Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jewish Israelis? No, objectively [3][4].

As for Palestine being its own country, it clearly isn't. Palestinians live on land claimed by Israel and recognized by pretty much every country in the world. But what if it was? Then Israel is illegally occupying it. Is that better? Why does this matter? Does one make the treatment of Gazans (in particular) more acceptable?

> Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side!

You can't use a theoretical future genocide to justify a current actual genocide. Also, it's ahistorical. Did this happen when apartheid South Africa ended? What about slavery? No, what actually happened was the former oppressors continued to commit violence against the previously oppressed.

[1]: https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html

[2]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

[3]: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/all-israelis-are-equal/

[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...

ameminator12d ago

While I appreciate your candor, words matter. I wouldn't call Israel an apartheid state if, in fact, it was two different countries warring to the death over not enough land. I think that situation is closer to reality, with the "victorious" side refusing to completely destroy the loser and the loser refusing to surrender to the "victor".

That situation has changed for the worse in recent years, and the world should step in, if it can. How the world should step in is not obvious - especially if the thorny history of the region is considered.

Finally, on the "current vs future 'genocides'" - dismissing Israel's legitimate security concerns would be as wrong as dismissing Israel's obvious warcrimes, in my opinion. I can't, in good conscience, advocate for action that would replace one genocide with another and it's important to me to consider my actions and words in that light. You may think differently, but maybe you value human life and morality differently than I do.

It's obvious you've made up your mind, but I don't think you've convinced anyone who hasn't already made up their mind, nor have you addressed, what I believe, are very valid questions about the conflict.

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kibibu12d ago

Yes, Israel is unequivocally committing genocide in Gaza. Genocide is not just "are they killing everybody", but also "are they driving people from their ancestral homelands"?

Israel is constitutionally an ethnostate. If there is an existing population, there is literally no way to establish an ethnostate without genocide - either through killing or displacement.

kyboren11d ago

> Genocide is not just "are they killing everybody", but also "are they driving people from their ancestral homelands"?

Which is obviously why "Free Palestine" marchers regularly show their solidarity with the Germans genocided by Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...

Free Danzig! Down with the settler colonialist genocidal state of Poland!!1

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