this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Get outta here with this false equivalence. The marginal human suffering inflicted per year caused by Israeli's colonialism is incomparably greater than any other country's in the modern era.
The average life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is 52 for men and 54 for women. Their land is contaminated from uranium mining and the US uses parts of it as a bombing range.
What is happening in Israel is exactly what was done and is being done to indigenous people in all those other places too.
A terrible injustice which of course needs to be corrected.
The population in question is 20,000 people. That's about 400 people born per year with a life expectency of 60% the national average; arguably equivalent to 400 murders per year.
Gaza has 2.4 million people with a similar life expectency. (The same math yields 50,000 effective murders per year.) Not to mention they are actively being bombed today, and their population is mostly children (under 18). This means that when someone is killed by an Israeli soldier, that someone is most likely a minor!
What is the point of isolating Pine Ridge within the United States to directly relate it to Israel's treatment of all Palestinians? Pine Ridge isn't the only indigenous community in the United States. The United States is just farther along the settler colonial project, that doesn't make it better or incomparable.
Like Atlas, these words
Yes. The overall damage through the centuries caused by western colonialism, in my estimate, is far greater than Israel's.
That in and of itself is not a good reason to wish America/Canada/Australia not to exist. Should we wish China to de-exist because of the Yangzhou massacre of 1645?
Genocide is happening right now in Israel/Palestine and we can do something about it. There are modern injustices happening today which we should occupy ourselves with, not meaningless finger-pointing. Let's tear down the western world sensibly, please.
There's a pretty clean break between the PRC and the Chinese dynasties of the 17th century. I'd have to brush up on my history but that's borderline pre-Qing even. Very different than holding the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) to account for a genocide it did under the same constitution and form of government it has today.
I don't think it's meaningless finger-pointing to say that the continuing harm the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) is doing to indigenous people (among others) is a live issue that should be addressed. Israel actively killing people right now does not mean those other wrongs should be dismissed.
Of course those wrongs should not be dismissed. Those are serious wrongs and need to be fixed. I'm of the belief that the entire western world needs to be dismantled and it's causing great harm. But "occupying other people's land" is not a good justification here, since that land has by and large traded hands many generations ago. Israel is different.
I do not wish to see hundreds of millions of non-indigenous people shipped out of North America back to wherever their ancestors used to live in order to re-establish the sovereignty of a small minority of people. Let's solve inequality and inequity in sane and non-violent ways instead.
Who's calling for this?
When people said "the Russian Empire should not exist" in 1915 they were talking about replacing the existing political structure with something like the USSR, not depopulating the country in its entirety.
People's nationalist brainworms go so deep they immediately conflate people with the state.
Fair enough. I wouldn't be entirely opposed to depopulating Israel though (if some safe way to do this were possible).
This is also not what the overwhelming majority of Palestinians want.
It would not be my preferred solution either.
Israel is a US colonial project, these days.
The US pays Israel to cause suffering
Okay granted. From this perspective, sure, American colonialism is strictly broader than Israel's. I don't think this really changes anything about what I'm saying here.
I mean the only reason you're technically correct is cause you limited the scope to just the last year. Just cause Israel did it the most recently doesn't make them incomparable.
Even the year before that, it's still true. Well, depending on what "incomparable" means lol
Just because it isn't obviously genocidal(anymore) doesnt mean the US hasnt done incredible harm to the entire world. What israel is doing right now if horrific yes but the US is responsible for even greater suffering. Neither should exist
Not to mention that many of the policies regarding Indigenous peoples and enforcement thereof in North America are still actively genocidal. Just because the US is not bombing people within their own land doesn't mean that indigenous peoples in Turtle Island are thriving.
Seeing how Zionism is just a continuation of the Nazi's cleansing efforts, which was inspired by America's genocide, the US would very much be cupule in all of this if they weren't already the biggest donors to and defenders of its continued existence.
China says hi.
Remember when Apple.moved to India and tried to use the same conditions as their Non-Slave Chinese factories?
Remember when the Indian workers rioted over that?
Edit: fucking Google. Doesn't correct Infia to India, but automatically changes rioted to rooted.
Can you post a link to that Apple story? I’d like to educate myself on it
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/31/22861167/apple-investigates-iphone-plant-strike-food-poisoning
Israel is certainly causing tremendous harm, but what you are saying is just blatant antisemitism. And you are obviously not up to date what happens in the world being so obsessed with demonizing Israel. Try to get a grip on reality again please.
antizionism != antisemitism.
To elaborate: I don't believe Israel's nationalistic sentiment is unique to Judaism. Israel could be a Christian state and could contain any ethnicity, its active colonialism would still be a problem.
What other country's active colonialism is anywhere near the level of Israel's?
These are just excuses for your Israel-hating worldview. There are so many conflicts around the world. And all other western nations including the US but also countries like China are actively neocolonialist and much worse imo. Just think of how many billions of lives are miserable or being ended by western nations. So why pick out the one Jewish state to demonize as the worst one and project all your hate onto? The Israeli government is ultra nationalist and extremist right, and needs to be stopped, I agree. But same goes for so many countries worldwide.
I'm not saying Israel is worse than other nations. (I believe the U.S. is worse actually, insofar as human suffering caused.) I am saying its more actively colonial than other nations.
Oh, now that I'm thinking about it again, I think I fell for your fallacy there. Why would you classify Israel as a colonial nation in the first place? And your argument that you were only talking about colonial nations is also weird, what difference does it make if other nations are activel neocolonial vs colonial? Or actively killing thousands of people like e.g. Russia and Turkey are doing? Seems like you wanted to find or create a category where Israel is the worst in and then blame it for it. Again, in my mind you are demonizing Israel because you assign it a special diabolic role while in a global context it is behaving not unlike many many other nations. Sure, lets critique the Israeli government. But remember, it is just another extremist right government. The Israeli people have the same right to live as Palestinians. There are people from both sides that want to live in harmony together. It is not one group against another, not one colonizer against the colonized. It is mostly the transgenerational trauma and hate materialized in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Likud party, the settler community, etc that strive to repeat this cycle of hate forever.
Basically, the meme says "if israel has no right to exist [because X], then U.S./Canada/Australia don't have a right to exist [because X too]"
I think most people interpret X is: actively settling/killing/displacing people from their homeland. I would call this "active colonialism." And it's not true that those other nations are doing this.
I don't have it specifically out for Israel. I am against Western imperialism in general. I do not wish to make shit up in order to help further the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world. That would be detrimental to the goal of furthering the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world.
Is this an honest question? Because this is obvious to me..?
Yes, this was an honest question. If Israel were colonial, then it would be a form settler colonialism. (So very different from the typical European kind). And even then, academic scholars aren't sure if it is indeed settler colonialist or not. The whole history of Israel/Palestine is really fucking complicated and I get sceptical if someone says it's actually simple (regardless of affiliation to any side). So why would you classify it as active colonialism?
And regarding the meme, your interpretation seems to be very narrow. Why would people necessarily need to interpret X to be active colonialism? X could also mean atrocities in general, not just narrowly defined atrocities. My interpretation was rather that people defending Israel's right to exist try to do so by tying it to other (western) nations' right to exist. But the punchline of the meme then is that they fail to see that no nation should exist in the first place. I strongly agree with that, no nation or border should exist regardless of how they act. That's how I would interpret the message of this meme (this is an anarchist community after all).
OK, granted, that's a much more interesting interpretation of the meme than mine and I prefer your take. I guess my interpretation was not the universal one. I'm split on whether the intended interpretation was close to mine or not. On the other hand, as they say, intent doesn't matter.
I would consider Israel settler-colonialist because, for instance, they encroach on west bank lands regularly, evicting people from their homes, construct new housing units in those spaces, and then build walls to keep Palestinians out.
This isn't to say the whole situation is simple. I don't claim to understand it entirely nor have a solution to the problem.
I think we both basically agree. And it makes sense that we just had a different interpretation of the meme.
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