Politics Gaza

Gandhi found a way to end the oppression and deprivation w/o violence and continued after independence and partition to work towards peace between Hindus and Muslims.

Mandela found a way.

The Hamas way is not the way.

 

I'm not sure what that has to do with I've said. This is not South Africa or India.
I'm not saying that the violence is justified. I'm saying that the perception of what is happening over there is skewed. And it allows for an imbalance that is unjust and, frankly, racist.
What do you have to say about the numbers?

 

Hamas is the way to a landslide Netanyahu electoral victory.

 

I think the numbers are horrific.

Just as I think there are strategies and tactics in the interest of the oppressed Palestinians that are more productive than the 25 years of Hamas' self-serving extremist religious-based approach that trains their children to be suicide bombers and uses them as human shields.

 

the israeli right benefits from the seige. they benefit for the exaggeration of the threat posed by these missles most of which have the strange tendency to explode where people aren't. they benefit from it electorally; they benefit from it in the sense that it reinforces the overall apartheid structure that israel, perhaps as a consequences of the disease of its colonialism, has managed to create. the israeli right benefits from hamas. it provides their narrative the appearance of justification.

the israeli right is bothered because, in significant measure as a result of their actions, hamas has more credibility than does the pa. but israel made that situation...so it's disengenuous to bitch about it. there were myriad choices along the way that the israeli right could have made differently--but they didn't.

the self-defense argument is obscene. six years of seige layed upon a civilian population because the israelis didn't like the outcome of a democratic election? seriously? you want to justify that? that's not to even really start on the sequence of massacres---because there's no other word for them---that israel has visited upon gaza.

 

I agree. Yet people are dying right now and nobody really gives a shit because they're just brown people living in a hellhole in the middle east. Frankly, I don't care about the politics when people are dying like that. How is a little strip of land, cut off from the rest of world, living under oppression and deprivation supposed to evolve politically?

 

Why are the Israelis the only one with choices? Where is the accountability among the Palestinians for leadership committed to peace as well?

 

what the...you edited, man.

 

My apologies.

But that doesnt change the facts.

 

Because the price of peace is too high and it is unfair. From what I can tell, the Israeli idea of peace means making all of the choices.

 

I simply disagree with placing all (or even most) of the blame on Israel.

They certainly deserve their fair share, but I see little acknowledgement of the role of Hamas in the current state of affairs.

 

I agree that Hamas plays a role, but I also think that Hamas wouldn't be in power if Israel hadn't mismanaged the situation. I also think that there is a lot of political power and wealth available to those in Israel who can successfully exploit the situation, so while Hamas makes a convenient foil, there are people in Israel who have an incentive to draw out the unpleasantness and the political power to do so.

 

Would you have walked away from the Camp David 2000 Summit that effectively gave the Palestinians nearly 97% of the West Bank and Gaza, East Jerusalem as a capital with autonomy but not total sovereignty, a process to determine compensation rather than repatriation for refugees...

 

All sizes | Gaza, Israel Weaponry Comparison | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

a perspective-granting infographic about disaparities of armaments.

the idea that israel is somehow a victim in all this erases 67. from that point forward, israel became a colonial power. it runs the show, often in a brutal, hamfisted manner. the strategy of crushing the pa in order to render it null as a partner in negociations is a good example of it---but one could look to the entire apartheid system in the west bank as a more spectacular example of how israel creates the conditions for the violence then tries to pin blame for it on those who react to the conditions the israeli occupation (or, in the case of gaza, the seige) create.

there simply is no symmetry in this situation...but it's obviously a big deal for the selling of the politics of the israeli right to the united states in particular that the illusion of symmetry be set up and maintained. without it, you're left with the simple fact of a brutal colonial occupation.

which is, in fact, what you're left with.

btw it's obvious that, despite the best efforts of the dominant media in the united states, a significant percentage of the israeli population is perfectly well aware of the situation and understands full well the extent to which the israeli right has used it to legitimate itself and extend the interests of the entirely reactionary settler parties in order to maintain coalition options.

one of the primary--if not *the* primary--obstacle to addressing the situation by addressing its underlying cause (colonialism) is the united states. it's policy toward israel is entirely insane.

btw there has been a flurry of reports that a cease fire may be close.

Gaza ceasefire imminent, says Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi | World news | guardian.co.uk

let's hope that is the case, and that the cease fire entails israel ending the seige of gaza.
personally, i would like to see this turned into a defeat for netanyahu.

 

um...no. first off, at this point israel is a fact. armed to the gills by the united states (whatever else might be said, arming a colonial regime is almost as good as war for weapon systems producers. endless expenditure. in this case, the suppler learns some neat shit from the colonizer too--shit like targeted assasination lists and this whole international law doesn't apply to us thing. but i digress) israel is a regional military superpower. they have utterly pulverized the palestinian population and instituted an apartheid system to grind them down with daily brutality to keep them in place. but the real barbarians are the settlers---the idf frequently finds itself balancing settlers extermination dreams against such resistance to occupation as the palestinians are allowed. it is a pathological situation. everyone loses. want a solution? get the fucking settlements out of the west bank. deal with a two state solution. an economically viable palestine would be economically tied to israel. there'd be little motivation for conflict, and every reason to treat such conflict that happened as a police matter. but no...there's no political will in israel---ESPECIALLY on the right---to do anything but underhandedly support expanding the settlements and the apparatus of repression that accompanies them.

this is how it is in a nutshell. the situation has nothing to do with vaporous assertions about some imaginary eternal conflict. it has everything to do with the illusion of the greater israel and an policy that would do to the palestinians what american "manifest destiny" (a nice name for a genocide carried out by a country that didn't lose the war) did to the native american population (the model for the settlement program) and systematic likud complicity with that.

gaza is a different situation. 6 years of siege of a largely civilian population by a regional military superpower.

what's odd is that this is basic information--there's no a whole bunch of political interpretation to it---but for some reason it doesn't seem to be particularly widely known in the states. not knowing what's going on is a condition of possibility for supporting american policy toward israel. dismantling that entire situation would be better for everyone concerned, including and particularly for the israelis. but most of the israeli left knows as much and has been arguing for that for years. but likud and its settler party buddies prefer to keep creating threats and mowing down palestinians. why? because they benefit politically from it.

 

What is more puzzling to me is how people who do know what's going on manage to rationalize it. I agree that Israel has the right to defend itself, but what is happening is not proportional and it is not defense. Being attacked is not a license to do whatever the hell you want.