I wonder how representative houstonhoya's posts are for Palestinians' ability to have a reasonable discourse. Just compare houstonhoya's posts to Deji's posts. I have yet to see a poster from the Palestinian side as educated and reasonable as Deji. All I see is hate, hate and more hate. It's sad that they seem to be so indoctrinated since early childhood.
Terrorists cause havoc and scare civilians either for ****s and giggles or to accrue power and spread ideology. The violence from Hamas, which I do not condone as I am kind of a pacifist, is not motivated by either of the above reasons. Ok so why are they upset? Well one reason: Since 2005, Gazans have been put on a strict caloric count by the Zionist govt, and as you'll see, that's only one of many reasons Hamas engages violently with the violent occupying power. The illegal siege and blockade, the illegal control of air, land, and water spaces, the continual incursions into Gaza for so called 'military operations' that occur regardless of rockets being fired or not, the unlawful arrest of supposedly Hamas-linked individuals in the West Bank who are held without charge as 'administrative detainees' (they often number in the thousands, at this moment I believe Israel has >1500 of such 'administrative detainees' many of whom are still in their teens), and I could go on... So are they terrorists like ISIS, jabhat al nusra, and Al Qaeda? No, not at all. If someone restricted the caloric intake of my friends and family entirely and forbade my movement beyond a 360 sq km area, I sure as hell would resist by whatever means possible. Now for me personally, violence is almost never an appropriate solution, but I cannot so presumptuously hold Gazans to my lofty pacific standard seeing as how I do not live in the IDF-produced hell hole that is Gaza in the 21st Century.
You hate Arabs and Muslims, you have a sickness and I'm afraid it cannot be healed. My closest friend to this day is a Jew. I highly doubt you know any Palestinians personally. Who are you to speak on Palestinian political discourse, you are a bigot.
Since you are so in tune with Israel/Palestine, answer me this: How many people currently in Gaza are actually FROM Gaza? Give me a percentage. I'll wait for you to google it
Now, what do you think: is Zionism settler colonialism and were there Palestinians living between the river and the sea before Zionism established the State of Israel in 1948? Hint: answers are not beliefs but facts of history.
In 1988, Ronald Reagan, the greatest American who ever lived, labeled Nelson Mandela's ANC a terrorist organization and condemned any attempts, including Congress', to boycott and sanction the Apartheid regime. Even Reagan can get his terrorist groups wrong, maybe that will elucidate the fact that 'terrorist' is often a label thrown around to incite fear and disgust in the target audience. And such cynical abuse of the term 'terrorism' does a gross disservice to those who have suffered at the hands of real terrorists: Osama bin Laden, Stalin, Milosevic, Al-Baghdadi, and the like.
Well fact is that Palestinians don't see Hamas as the aggressor, they see them as the resistance to an occupational aggressor. People on both sides use whatever labels they want. But it's kinda useless in addressing the core problem that both sides needs are actually around.
No, not any more than Palestinian nationalism is terrorism. Zionism has it's roots in 19th century idealism, and it has a long history with many branches. To reduce it to a pejorative to describe Israelis you don't like is not really contributing to helping the problem. I've posted before about it, and plenty don't seem to like it, but you unfortunately have to deal with things as they are. It sort of matters how a word is used by the people who invented it, rather than appropriate it for invective. Zionism simply means advocacy for a Jewish state, and recognizing Jews as a people (and not just a religion). It's not any more controversial than advocating a Kurdish or Palestinian identity and right to state sovereignty. It's grounded in a very secular notion, simply a "normal" state to paraphrase Herzl, where Jewish police arrest Jewish criminals. "Religious Zionism" to a Jew from the early 20th century would sound like an oxymoron. Zionism was just as much escaping anti-Semitic persecution as it was about escaping the religious fanatics in your family on the shtetl, as it was about defining yourself as a nation rather than a religious minority among others. The religious got to the party late and co-opted the idea long after the work was done. This is one of the fundamental problems in Israeli identity. Before 1967, national symbols were very socialistic: the kibbutz, the worker, hammers and sickles, nature, local flora and fauna, new approaches to agriculture and social experiments, and outreach to the 3rd world and a friendliness to a "Third Way." Before '67, the largest supplier of arms to Israel was Czechoslovakia. To be fair, this ignores the Nakba in '48, but in the consciousness of most of the world, the details of it were largely obscure. It wasn't until the New Historians in the 80s that there was ever a real discussion about it or any awareness of it within Israel, or in the rest of the world. Until '67 Israel was well liked around the world. The 1967 war brought Israel firmly into the US camp in the Cold War, thanks to Johnson, as Israel's enemies were all Soviet client states. There's a huge misnomer about that, that Israel was always a big US ally. It wasn't. The US viewed them as inbetweeners in the Cold War, probably, more US friendly than say, Tito, but commies all the same . It wasn't until they needed help to fight Soviet-funded Arab armies that things changed. In the decade that followed, the right came to power, largely because the old guard screwed the pooch economically, as well as alienating the Mizrachim as well as the growing religious population. Add to that the new enterprise of settlement building, a failed war in '73 -- and *poof* you have Begin bringing in US style economic reform...and peace with Egypt. And it's been moving right ever since, with Israel's iconography changing with it. Now it's the Kotel (western wall), Masada, the Holocaust Museum, schoolkid trips to concentration camps in Poland and museums devoted to the war dead. When David Ben-Gurion was told that East Jerusalem (and the old City and Western Wall) were taken in '67, he shrugged and said "who cares about a bunch of old rocks." I used to say it a lot in Israel when people would go there with the conversation, and more than often, they had no idea what I was talking about. Israelis are just as ignorant as anyone else about their own history, even if theirs as a state is not much older than my parents. Israeli journalists will sometimes speak of non-zionist and zionist political parties within Israel. Anything to the right of the "zionist" parties advocates rebuilding the Temple, reinstituting sacrifice and the Kohenim as priests, which of course paves the way for the rightful head of state to be...the messiah. In the meanwhile, they are happy to get elected and wheel and deal for taxpayer money to fund their own soup kitchens and bible study bull**** for their non-educated, non working followers. Left of the zionist parties is Hadash (the communist party) and the Arab parties which are either indifferent to zionism or advocate a single state. But essentially, no major party that's ever or has ever lead a coalition in Israel is from a "zionist" party, from Ben-Gurion to Begin to Shamir to Sharon to Bibi. A word means a lot. The average Tel Avivian will get offended if you call them a "zionist" because they associate it with the early 20th century and weirdos in the present that have hijacked the term. They call themselves "post-zionist" which is to mean they feel like the Zionist cause has already fulfilled it's mission, while "post-zionist" is used as a pejorative used by the right-wing to accuse anyone of being insufficiently loyal to their agenda. You know, self-loathing Jew who doesn't care about anything but himself and all that. But that isn't to say they want to move to Germany or Brooklyn tomorrow, or believe they ought to. Which leaves me with the last group. The present day liberal zionist, which is a lot of the Jewish diaspora (particularly in the US) and the few left in the meretz party in Israel, and the traditional wing of Avoda (labor). This is pretty much what is left of two-staters, those that say Israel has to both remain democratic and preserve it's identity as a state. Within Israel, that's a way, way smaller number than it was in the 90s. And even they are losing faith in a two state solution, either because they see the intransigence as insurmountable, or just stopped caring and are more worried about putting food on their table and staying employed than the plight of another people they more and more see as trying to kill them. It's also concerning because many who identify as left-wing zionists were willing cheerleaders for the last tango in Gaza, which was a remarkable shift in disposition, and I suspect they are losing that identity over time. But let me make it clear and repeat it: left-wing zionists are the only Israelis remaining supporting a two state solution. If you insist on insulting them, you don't really have anyone left to talk to who are both truly willing to listen to Palestinian grievances and have any representation in mainstream Israeli politics. And when you do it, you reduce what little political capital they have remaining, in the same way Abbas represents Palestinian two-staters and is losing his credibility as Hamas gets more reward from war than he does from playing by the rules.
Such advocacy, though, implies the removal of the indigenous population to the extent that such a state be democratic yet Jewish. There's the catch. Zionism requires ethnic cleansing as, I'm sure you know, many prominent Zionist thinkers and politicians have openly acknowledged. The ethnic cleansing of an area for the purpose of the resettlement of another ethnic group in that same area is by definition a vicious form of settler colonialism. I agree with some of your assessment on Zionism from past eras, but today it is unquestionably a form of ethnically motivated settler colonialism reliant on the consistent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians who remain within Mandate Palestine today. That is to say, the very presence of Palestinians is a threat to the maintenance of a Jewish and Democratic State. The remedy? Expulsion or murder of unwanted (read non Jewish) populations, whether Arab Muslim, Arab Christian, or African.
Let's try this exercise out. We can go on and on with the chicken or the egg argument. Caloric Count/Blockade Discussion: Your viewpoint: Since 2005, the Gazans have been put on a strict caloric count. My viewpoint: In 2004, the Israeli government saw the need for a wall to prevent suicide bombing. In 2007, the Israeli government saw the need for a naval blockade to stop the flow of arms into Gaza. They did a study to determine the minimum caloric count a Palestinian needed to prevent malnutrition. Irrefutable reality: Hamas began smuggling items in through tunnels at the Egypt border to counter the blockade and started firing missiles over the wall. By doing so, they legitimize the blockade even further and now give Israel the excuse to put boots on the ground in Gaza to stop the missile attacks and destroy tunnels. My question for Houstonhoya: We both agree that we wish food items should reach the Palestinians without the need for it going through Israeli checkpoints. Do you believe that if Israel ended the blockade, Hamas would stop its missile attacks permanently?
Haha there's a lot that's wrong there but here's a question: in such a situation, would Israel end all military surveillance of Gaza and allow the 80% of non Gazans to leave the overcrowded underfunded strip of land and return to their homes in Israel?
The question was incomplete but you wouldn't appreciate that with your hasbarist background. How about you man up and reply to my post above, the one directed at you?
What do you think is wrong with what I wrote (besides my viewpoint)? Do you disagree that Hamas used tunnels to smuggle across the Egypt border? Do you disagree that these missile firings and tunnels gave Israel an excuse to invade Gaza? I'll answer your questions when you answer mine.
Cool. I'll wait for you to answer my initial question then haha: Is Zionism settler colonialism? Despite Deji's knowledge of Zionist history and modern Jewish culture, his answer began with a definitive NO and yet implicitly acknowledged that yes, in fact, Zionism is a settler colonialist effort involved in ethnically cleansing a population to replace it with one largely from Western Europe, the former Soviet republics, and North America. Ethiopian Jews, sorry, y'all get the short end of the stick.
