Political violence is never OK, we must all commit to only accepting non-political violence, against the homeless, foreigners, or subversives.
This is why i hate quoting from 972 magazine btselem and other "progressive" israeli organizations, because i know that people trust it more than palestinian sources. And it bothers me bc it reinforces the idea that israelis have superior/more accurate knowledge about the occupation than palestinians while they wouldn't be able to know any of this if it were not for palestinians
A close look at the staffing structures of such organisations reveals a striking picture of racial hierarchy between Israeli Jews, ’48 Palestinians (also referred to as Palestinian “citizens” of Israel), and Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza (also referred to as ’67 Palestinians) - the same hierarchy upon which the Israeli racial settler-colonial project rests.
Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank have two main roles in Israeli human rights organisations. They are the field researchers tasked with documenting violations of human rights, collecting data and taking testimonies. They are also the “clients” and “beneficiaries” who appeal to these organisations to help them secure their health, education, residence and movement rights vis-a-vis Israeli authorities.
Then there are the ’48 Palestinians, who occupy positions that demand a good command of both Arabic and Hebrew. Their role is to mediate between ’67 Palestinians and Israeli staff. They are the data and intake coordinators who manage fieldworkers, process information and coordinate the programmes that require direct communication with ’67 Palestinians.
Finally, positions such as chief executives, spokespersons, international advocacy coordinators, resource development staff, and researchers who write public policy reports - the public faces of the organisations - are Israeli and Jewish American, almost exclusively Ashkenazi.
The division between the labour of ’48 and ’67 Palestinians also plays into and deepens the colonial fragmentation of Palestinians. It risks triggering internal power dynamics and a hierarchy between ’48 Palestinians, who serve as mediators, and ’67 Palestinians, who seek assistance or share their testimonies.
The deep-seated racism - and racism does not have to be conscious or intentional - that underpins this staffing culture also underscores questions of knowledge production and representation. In these organisations, Palestinians and their experiences of settler-colonial violence are instrumental for Israeli knowledge production. They are the source of information, and their lived experiences are the raw dataset.
It is the Israelis who decide what to do with this information, how to interpret and frame it, and how to communicate it to the world
...
In a 2016 interview, B’Tselem’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad, was asked: “How do you give Palestinians voice and agency in your work?” His reply was telling:
“That’s a very important question, which we think about all of the time. One of the main ways is through our video project, which is a leading global example for self-empowered citizen journalism. Palestinian volunteers, more than 200 of them all over the West Bank, have video cameras, and are empowered to document life under the occupation. Of course, the footage later released is the original footage the way it was shot by Palestinians.”
...
While Palestinians are tasked with documenting and processing the horrifying settler-colonial violence to which they are subjected, Israeli staff receive processed and “clean” information to use in their reports, international advocacy work and public campaigns.
...
within the racialised international scene, Palestinian activists, lawyers and human rights groups - such as Al-Haq, Al Mezan, Adalah or Addameer - do not receive the same international attention as B’Tselem or Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard of Yesh Din, with dozens of interviews and coverage in leading international outlets, and access to decision-makers.
This is the article the former Israeli Director of Amnesty Israel cited to in his resignation where he said "I resigned because I could no longer chair a branch that did not treat Palestinians as equal partners, and I could not sign off on a critique of Amnesty International’s report that pretends to be an expert minority opinion, but is instead little more than the expression of an Israeli-Jewish worldview, to the exclusion of Palestinian voices."
nothing unnerves me more than the reddit-esque language of common sense that a lot of openly genocidal people here hide behind, like on occasion i make it a point to reply to these extraordinarily manipulative posts only because i think it's good to parse through what kind of language can be used to make things like collective punishment, the siege of millions of people in their homeland, starvation of children, destruction of hospitals and universities, and a death toll that includes 15,000 children acceptable.
and usually what does the trick is saying "it's so awful, it really is, i don't find it acceptable at all" then declaring the people who call it a genocide are actually committing blood libel. i think these kind of rhetorical sleights of hand are important to notice and important to point out. because at some point it'll have you nodding along to justifications of genocide (hamas hides behind civilians and steals the aid, the death toll is exaggerated, israel is actually super duper generous to allow anyone to even stay alive) while you watch tens of thousands of people die, and tutting and shaking your head at those who are trying to stop it. these are the people who are watching gaza get ethnically cleansed, the west bank get annexed, and tell you they hate it, they really do, but what can you do about it? what's done is done. it's a shame, of course, and i was always against it the entire time.
but you're too against it, and that makes me suspicious. how dare you cast aspersions on the intentions of the israeli military and its leaders and the government and the vast majority of the voting population? its only a coincidence that they have accomplished the exact genocidal goals they have declared they wanted to accomplish. their intentions were impossible to decipher if you understand that all their actions are committed in good faith, and all palestinians are inherently children of evil saturated with hate. anyway it's a sticky situation, of course, with some legal pedantry we can use as a loophole. yes perhaps someday it may be called a genocide but only once we decide it is. because we know the genocide was only committed accidentally and it doesn't make the people who did it bad people. that's the most important thing. if you do it now you are undoubtedly committing blood libel, like those biased antisemites... amnesty international and the ohchr and the lemkin institute and several foremost scholars of genocide.
blasting-the-bee-movie-script-d
it's a little funny to see people out themselves as thinking the problem with conspiracy theorists is that they try and come to their own conclusions because they distrust the news and official institutions and not that their conclusions are nonsensical out of a desire to enshrine their reactionary beliefs over any attempt to make sense
blasting-the-bee-movie-script-d
the problem with conspiratorial thinking isn't that thought patterns are contagious across situations or whatever (when was the last time you had difficulty switching between 'modes' of processing to do different tasks that wasn't better explained by something else?) or that the average person is too stupid to identify inconsistencies in stories peddled by bourgeois institutions or QAnon. it's that conspiratorial thinking acts in service of maintaining a reactionary mode of thought at the expense of observable reality.
QAnon is a conspiracy because QAnoners would rather believe that pizzagate is real despite being obvious nonsense because they want to believe the left wing is harboring pedophiles, a belief born of queerphobia and especially transmisogyny. "the moon landing is fake" people and flat earthers are specifically distrustful of information that came about through government funded, (at least partially) educational programs without a widely recognized profit motive! anti vaxx people would rather believe that someone got close to "curing" autism out of ableism by cutting out the MMR vaccine than believe autism has no cure. gee, I wonder why!
when you attempt to hamfistedly connect this to people identifying that luigi mangione is a ridiculous suspect connected to this case because the NYPD already spread his picture around (verifiably not wearing the shooter's apparel and having a different face, by the way) on false pretenses so he was the easiest possible person to have someone "identify" and beat a confession out of and not because there's any concrete reason to believe he WAS the shooter aside from "might possibly have a few scattershot weak motives millions of people have", you just out yourself as not knowing what a conspiracy theory actually is. you're not smarter than everyone else by tut-tutting at them for questioning narratives, you're just an 'enlightened centrist' all over again.
the ironic thing about liberals and anarchists who hate the soviet union is that i would be happy to talk for hours about its heinous crimes and catastrophic mistakes--but it turns out they never want to talk about support for the zionist project or ethnic deportations but instead about how those poor romanovs and kulaks were hard done by
soviet colonialism? yeah i definitely think that the USSR's treatment of nomadic and siberian indigenous---ohhh you're from the baltics huh. well never mind then tell me more about how your brave ww2 partisans had no choice but to enthusiastically side with the SS
i do think it's helpful to learn about the cpc's experiences with the comintern and their being on the receiving end of bad advice and nonsensical instructions from the cpsu as well as catching strays from internal bolshevik purges & experiencing the consequences of the stalin-trotsky struggles to contextualize their foreign policy decisions historical and current
dont say "MENA" like that white baby
you arent being less orientalizing just because you shortened the letters since you assumed everyone knows where Dirty Chaos Land is anyway
the term is SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) before anyone embarrasses themselves
yes this is important but also please keep in mind (everyone, not the original poster) that this is not one of our top concerns right now
majority of arabs & north africans don't care about what people call us nearly as much as we care about not being murdered, hope this helps
i think after like a decade of this happening over and over again it's clear that Moderate Sensible Centrist Liberals are never going to learn--because they have no interest in learning--the very simple electoral lesson that "nothing is ever going to get better" is never going to be a winning pitch against any positive vision, even if that positive vision is "we're going to turn up the Racism Dial, which will make the Economy Go Good because [trails off into incoheremt mumbling]"
The median US voter demands blood. This is the only thing we really know for sure about the electorate
Imperialism is the single greatest contradiction of contemporary global society, and one of the most visible ways this manifests is the treatment of Nationalist Bourgeoisie in the third world. It doesn't matter how "moderate" such personalities or regimes are, how few concessions they give to the local working class or even how willing they are to make measured compromises with the Imperial Core. For daring to stand up against Imperialism, to offer the slightest resistance against the wholesale looting of their nation, any sort of Bourgeoisie Nationalism will earn the hostility of Imperialist Nations.
During the Cold War this hostility was somewhat muted due to fears over the greater threat of Communism, with Imperialists displaying tolerance towards or even co-operation with various anti-communist Third Way regimes that weren't seen as too threatening. But with the fall of the USSR and apogee of US Imperial Hegemony, this tolerance largely vanished. Just look at how Saddam Hussein went from a US ally to enemy #1 in the span of a few years, not because of any substantial change in policy or orientation but simply because he outlived his usefulness. Now as US power continues to wane while that of the anti-Imperialist camp waxes this attitude may change, but based on their current actions most US and their allied policy makers are still stuck in this turn-of-the-millennium mindset of total US superiority.
It's also a very bad practice to evaluate things in terms of their metaphysical "goodness" or "badness"; you're much better looking at the context it occupies and how it interacts with those conditions. Which is why you generally shouldn't celebrate the destruction of a genuine anti-Imperialist project regardless of its other contradictions. Whatever exploitation was occurring nationally, things will only get worse when that exploitation is taken to an international level
So many people live in such fear of being called a bigot they literally refuse to have opinions or state harsh truths even if it’s at the expense of peoples lives. Some claims of bigotry are not true and will be used as a deflection it’s not the end of the world if someone wields this against you if you genuinely believe it not to be true you can say that. Put your big boy pants on and stop living in terror of having a Yourfaveisproblematic wiki page because you denounced genocide
Black Israelites (for anybody who is stupid im not referring to black Israelis im referring to the extremist ideology of black Hebrew Israelites) will call you racist if you denounce them, hindutvas will call you racist if you denounce them, zionists will call you antisemitic if you denounce them, terfs will call you misogynistic if you denounce them, so on and so on and so on. This is a level 1 tactic to protect the interests of fascism and make it impossible for other people to even speak on it. Dont fall for it
When you state that Israel is a WHITE colonial project and people start breaking down the demographics of Israelis for you... How do you miss the point so badly. It doesn't matter how diverse the colony is when its PURPOSE is to uphold imperialism and white supremacy in the region. People of color can and have contributed to such projects and it doesn't change what they are. The US army is diverse too and it exists to enforce white imperialism.
Me when I'm not a white supremacist society:
And these two outlets have a vested interest in the continuation of the Zionist project. Even they cannot deny the nature of the colony
Also it's as if the Palestinians who got expelled, killed, tortured care if their occupiers are brown or not lmao, we call it a white settler colony because it was conceived by white colonialists who had a vested interest it removing the native population through means they deemed necessary.
Its also frustratingly annoying that Palestinians have to take into account the demographics of nonPalestinians who settle on their land and kill them when criticizing them. "You're hurting our feelings calling us white while we rape, murder, and torture you :(" is somehow a legitimate argument to israelis and their supporters. I literally don't care who you are, you're killing my people in the name of white settler colonialism. I'm going to call you white.
Anonymous asked:
Did you heard Kim jung-un speech to the military?
read-marx-and-lenin answered:
All blame for the tensions in Korea lies entirely on the shoulders of the ROK and the US. Yoon has taken a hard-line anti-DPRK stance and has continued the submission of the ROK to US imperialist interests while firmly refusing to break from the reactionary trend in the ROK whose vision for the reunification of Korea mirrors the reunification of Germany: a bourgeois-led imposition of neoliberal economic reform, the auctioning off of state property to the highest bidder, and the subsequent impoverishment and imperial domination of the northern half of the country.
The DPRK has only responded in kind to the attitudes expressed by the ROK and the US. As Kim mentions in his speech, the DPRK is preparing for war on its own soil. That is not to say it is unwilling or incapable of fighting the war elsewhere, but rather that if open war comes once again to the Korean peninsula, it will come because the imperialist forces bring it upon the DPRK, and not the other way around. The DPRK is not preparing to invade, they are preparing to be invaded. Why shouldn’t they be, seeing how averse to diplomacy and negotiation the ROK and the US have been in the whole affair?
The US only wants one thing: the dismantling of the DPRK and the dissolution of the Worker’s Party of Korea. The ROK is in full agreement with this position. They share the firm belief that communism should not be allowed to exist and that it should be stamped out wherever possible. This is the position of all bourgeois nations, but it especially pointed with regards to the DPRK, which has been horribly maligned ever since it managed to hold its own against the terroristic carpet bombing of the United States, and further isolated as it has managed to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union and major hardships that resulted from it without ever once budging on its anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist position. The only comparable country in that regard is Cuba, and they don’t have half their nation occupied by a belligerent puppet government.
If the US wants to make any attempt at even feigning interest in preserving peace in Korea, they must put forward at the outset and without conditions the promise of military withdrawal from South Korea. So long as the US maintains its occupation of the South, there is no reason for the DPRK to have any interest whatsoever in diplomatic negotiations. So long as the US continues to demand full compliance from the DPRK without any concessions of its own, there is no reason for the DPRK to comply.