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well, powerclown, there are problems with the above---but i appreciate the level of the post. so thanks for making it.
a) we weren't talking about right of return.
we can i suppose---but it is a change in the topic--enough so that it could be a separate thread.
the problems that the notion of israel as an exclusively jewish state has created are legion and obvious. the way that ideological construction intersects with the right of return are quite complicated and difficult---but when i've said that it is well past time for israel to be understood as a modern-nation state and to be held accountable to the standards of any other modern nation-state, it was implicit that i was making a statement about this question of whether it makes sense for israel to be an exclusively jewish state. on this, i can see both sides of the matter insofar as backward-looking narratives are concerned. but if you look at contemporary realities--the consequences of actually implementing it---what it produces is a variant of apartheid.
i think that is a problem.
no doubt, were the same conditions to obtain in a different place, you would find it to be one as well.
that's as far as i am willing to go on this question.
make of it what you will.
b) there are camps inside israel in addition to the camps in lebanon and jordan. so the move to blame the neighboring states for the palestinians situation is not exactly accurate--but it is also not exactly inaccurate. it's just too simple. and it's underlying trope---good faith israel and bad faith arabs--is ludicrous once you factor in the post-67 situation. which leads me to the main point.
c) you cannot address post =67 realities it seems. every post you make erases occupation, erases the settlements, erases the destructive dynamics this has put into place.
every post you make reduces the situation to that of a western---white hats, balck hats, showdown in front of kitty's saloon at high noon.
this goes round and round. i don't know how interesting it is to continue this, because if the trajectory of the thread is indicative of what's to follow, you integrate post-67 situations into your viewpoint. you can't take it seriously, you cannot look at it.
what you prefer to do it to lock things into a very long-term, highly abstracted narrative that outlines an intractable conflict in which fundamental questions of identity are at stake.
i see this as being of a piece with the logic of "terrorism" it's reverse side in a nationalist ideology that cannot see anything except the reflections of it's own elements.
d) your claims about the primacy of self-determination are curious.
if you believe what you say, what basis was there for refusing to recognize the results of the jan 06 elections? what possible justification is there for the state of siege?
or is it the case that only certain types of self-determination are fundamental, and that others, which you do not like, are less fundamental.
this kind of stuff makes a mockery out of the very idea of self-determination.
you know it does--and were this another situation that involved different political committments on your part, i do not doubt that you'd be making those arguments.
two weights, two measures it seems.
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to set out of the debate mode for a moment:
this is not at all an easy topic.
for what it's worth, i have found it very difficult to force myself to look at what's happening in gaza. it is beyond disturbing to me. and i think to some extent that i made this thread and keep adding things to it because by writing stuff down and gathering information, i have something to do with it and with the affect that it raises. so i made this thread and keep working on it in order to enable myself to keep looking at a reality that is truly ugly, in which there seems to be nothing but lunacy at the level of the political actors--blinkered, short-sighted political organizations which frame the world in simple-minded ways ("terrorism") and forget that "terrorism" is a fiction for the most part, a way of acknowledging without describing or understanding an action---policy choices made on the basis of the discourse of terrorism are bound to be lunacy. so it is here, in gaza. hamas seems incompetent and delusional in their hope that they could play chicken with israel, which was planning this action for AT LEAST 6 months and was, by all appearances, waiting for an excuse to roll into gaza. egypt is playing a delightful role of making sure that its border with gaza remains closed, standing by and watching as the carnage unfolds in part, it seems, because the mubarak government would love to see hamas get the shit pounded out of it and is perfectly content to sit by and watch the israelis do that work for him. the americans under the bush administration have been unspeakably irresponsible in this situation.
i expect this is a difficult situation for all of us to look at--to force ourselves to look at.
so strange as it may seem, particularly here, i wanted to say thanks to all for doing it, for making yourself look one way or another.
because no matter whether we agree or not about what's happening and why it's happening, the fact is that this is a brutal situation that seems to suck the life and optimism out of you, even if you sit in comfortable surroundings and interact with this situation by way of snippets of news that float back from god knows what sector of the fog of disinformation.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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