in the name of anti-antisemitism, Europe is doomed to repeat its past
March 6, 2024 4:25 PM Subscribe
It is no surprise that even today, Europe only feels guilt about the episode of the Holocaust and not the principle of genocide which made it possible... It seeks penance for the Holocaust but reconciles itself with the principle of genocide which has been ongoing for centuries, and which was perfected in colonial occupations.
Written by Mohammed Elnaiem, director of the Decolonial Centre.
Written by Mohammed Elnaiem, director of the Decolonial Centre.
Germany’s response to the genocide in Gaza is so fascinating to watch—people who learned how to say the right words but never actually changed their beliefs and values from their genocidal past. Which is perhaps not shocking given they’ve never made amends for their history of colonialism or their genocide in Namibia. The only times they ever say ‘sorry’ for genocide is when other Western powers force them to—and not really even then, given how many people with Nazi pasts held power in West Germany.
This is a darkly hilarious embodiment of the German understanding of genocide. I see the exact same thing in a lot of white people in America who understand that there are now lots of things they’re not allowed to say but never really understood why.
posted by lizard2590 at 5:56 PM on March 6 [20 favorites]
This is a darkly hilarious embodiment of the German understanding of genocide. I see the exact same thing in a lot of white people in America who understand that there are now lots of things they’re not allowed to say but never really understood why.
posted by lizard2590 at 5:56 PM on March 6 [20 favorites]
so about five minutes ago i found myself bored with metafilter and the rest of my standard web loop (which i really should spend less time in) and instead of doing the sensible thing and getting off the Internet, i flipped over to the “ask historians” subreddit and displayed top all time, which has historically been if not a useful then at least an enlightening way to spend a few minutes.
anyway, most of the entries at the very top of that list are meta posts about (for example) then-ongoing current events and the various protests against reddit mismanagement that they’ve been involved in. among these metaposts is their post about their zero-tolerance policy for genocide denial. in it they note that sometimes genocide denial is extremely clear, for example when question-askers challenge well-grounded well-documented widely-acknowledged facts about the holocaust and the number of people killed in it, but that also there is a gray area where the person putting up the question might actually have a genuine interest in learning about genocide. in this situation the mods direct the question-asker toward carefully written and researched answers by experts instead of just immediately banning them.
well and so but anyway, they’ve got a list of things that they consider to be clear signs of genocide denial, beyond just “this person is claiming death tolls were fabricated” or “this person is saying the deaths were from other causes.” below see the first item on that list of aspects of genocide denial:
> This is a very tricky article with which to discuss what has, in much of Europe, led to a very callous response to the killing of people in the Israeli invasion of Gaza and to their relatives, and a failure to condemn the war crimes which the IDF are committing, but which have also led to the flipside failure to acknowledge the October 7th attack as something which also causes existential fear and lasting trauma.
is genocide denial — it’s not! — but i am saying that it is a remarkably unhelpful take at this particular historical juncture, particularly since there are at this moment a metric shit-ton of people out there, a great many of them with powerful media platforms, and also a great many in powerful political offices, and also more or less the entire government of the state of israel who are right now at this moment saying precisely the thing that the ask historians mods allude to in their zero tolerance for genocide denial policy.
the citizens of israel who are experiencing — very real! very valid! — existential fear and lasting trauma in the wake of the october 7 attacks are indeed victims of netanyahu’s long-running and now hyper-intensified program of systematic genocide, but because the revolt was a direct result of years upon years of torment, murder, death by hunger, death by privation, and confinement in vast open-air prisons inflicted by the government of israel upon the people of gaza and the west bank, it is absolutely not appropriate to even implicitly treat netanyahu’s victims in israel as coequal in victimhood to his victims in palestine, not while the genocide is still ongoing. the people of palestine are right now, at this moment, right. now. experiencing not just mere existential fear and lasting trauma but in fact the ongoing mass murder of themselves and also everyone they know and love, mass murder carried out by the armed forces of israel on netanyahu’s command. and that needs to be the focus.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:02 PM on March 6 [39 favorites]
anyway, most of the entries at the very top of that list are meta posts about (for example) then-ongoing current events and the various protests against reddit mismanagement that they’ve been involved in. among these metaposts is their post about their zero-tolerance policy for genocide denial. in it they note that sometimes genocide denial is extremely clear, for example when question-askers challenge well-grounded well-documented widely-acknowledged facts about the holocaust and the number of people killed in it, but that also there is a gray area where the person putting up the question might actually have a genuine interest in learning about genocide. in this situation the mods direct the question-asker toward carefully written and researched answers by experts instead of just immediately banning them.
well and so but anyway, they’ve got a list of things that they consider to be clear signs of genocide denial, beyond just “this person is claiming death tolls were fabricated” or “this person is saying the deaths were from other causes.” below see the first item on that list of aspects of genocide denial:
Putting equal weight on people revolting and the state suppressing the population, as though the former justifies the latter as simple warfarenow, i’m certainly not saying that
> This is a very tricky article with which to discuss what has, in much of Europe, led to a very callous response to the killing of people in the Israeli invasion of Gaza and to their relatives, and a failure to condemn the war crimes which the IDF are committing, but which have also led to the flipside failure to acknowledge the October 7th attack as something which also causes existential fear and lasting trauma.
is genocide denial — it’s not! — but i am saying that it is a remarkably unhelpful take at this particular historical juncture, particularly since there are at this moment a metric shit-ton of people out there, a great many of them with powerful media platforms, and also a great many in powerful political offices, and also more or less the entire government of the state of israel who are right now at this moment saying precisely the thing that the ask historians mods allude to in their zero tolerance for genocide denial policy.
the citizens of israel who are experiencing — very real! very valid! — existential fear and lasting trauma in the wake of the october 7 attacks are indeed victims of netanyahu’s long-running and now hyper-intensified program of systematic genocide, but because the revolt was a direct result of years upon years of torment, murder, death by hunger, death by privation, and confinement in vast open-air prisons inflicted by the government of israel upon the people of gaza and the west bank, it is absolutely not appropriate to even implicitly treat netanyahu’s victims in israel as coequal in victimhood to his victims in palestine, not while the genocide is still ongoing. the people of palestine are right now, at this moment, right. now. experiencing not just mere existential fear and lasting trauma but in fact the ongoing mass murder of themselves and also everyone they know and love, mass murder carried out by the armed forces of israel on netanyahu’s command. and that needs to be the focus.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:02 PM on March 6 [39 favorites]
But, mx bombastic lowercase pronouncements — ah no, it's my mistake — I completely messed up the editing of my first sentence.
To correct myself: the problem, especially in Germany, but also as described in the article in Britain, is callousness in the response to the killing of Palestinian people and to their relatives.
So yes, I totally undermined what I wanted to pick out of the article: that a lot of the response in Europe is very much incapable of seeing that the rest of world as equally deserving of its human rights and its right to life, and that this is what's causing its cruelty to Palestinian voices at home and coming from Gaza, and its failure to intervene to ensure an IDF ceasefire.
But the argument is made much better in the article, undoubtedly because it's by someone who not only did not grow up with the biases of a European with only European ancestry, but who is a professional of decolonisation. Still, I should absolutely have been more careful about balancing the emphasis between the absolutely desperate and deplorable crimes being committed against Palestinians in Gaza with the comparatively unaffected life of civilians in Israel.
posted by ambrosen at 8:26 PM on March 6 [9 favorites]
To correct myself: the problem, especially in Germany, but also as described in the article in Britain, is callousness in the response to the killing of Palestinian people and to their relatives.
So yes, I totally undermined what I wanted to pick out of the article: that a lot of the response in Europe is very much incapable of seeing that the rest of world as equally deserving of its human rights and its right to life, and that this is what's causing its cruelty to Palestinian voices at home and coming from Gaza, and its failure to intervene to ensure an IDF ceasefire.
But the argument is made much better in the article, undoubtedly because it's by someone who not only did not grow up with the biases of a European with only European ancestry, but who is a professional of decolonisation. Still, I should absolutely have been more careful about balancing the emphasis between the absolutely desperate and deplorable crimes being committed against Palestinians in Gaza with the comparatively unaffected life of civilians in Israel.
posted by ambrosen at 8:26 PM on March 6 [9 favorites]
By and large it seems to me that it's Western political leadership, rather than Westerners in general, demonstrating an incapacity to understand what Never Again actually needs to mean.
And I wonder how much of this is structural: a natural consequence of taking a small group of rather ordinary people, elevating them to positions of extreme power and only slightly less extreme responsibility and reading them into a huge pile of secrets. I don't see any way that this could happen without creating this massive conceptual chasm between Serious Leaders and Little People.
If it were my job, day in day out, to immerse myself in policy decisions that affected the lives of millions of people, then I think it would be hard for me to keep a clear sight of those millions as people rather than statistics. And I think that this would inevitably lead to my choosing to rub shoulders on a daily basis only with others similarly afflicted, and I think that this might explain some of the literally psychotic policy decisions we're currently seeing play out.
The people do look like ants from the heights of power where Biden sits, so I can't find myself surprised that his strongest reaction to Netanyahu just straight-up crisping tens of thousands of them with his magnifying glass is a mildly annoyed "Dude, not cool".
Appalled, sure. Horrified, sure. But not surprised. Those magnifying glasses aren't going to sell themselves now are they.
posted by flabdablet at 11:04 PM on March 6 [9 favorites]
And I wonder how much of this is structural: a natural consequence of taking a small group of rather ordinary people, elevating them to positions of extreme power and only slightly less extreme responsibility and reading them into a huge pile of secrets. I don't see any way that this could happen without creating this massive conceptual chasm between Serious Leaders and Little People.
If it were my job, day in day out, to immerse myself in policy decisions that affected the lives of millions of people, then I think it would be hard for me to keep a clear sight of those millions as people rather than statistics. And I think that this would inevitably lead to my choosing to rub shoulders on a daily basis only with others similarly afflicted, and I think that this might explain some of the literally psychotic policy decisions we're currently seeing play out.
The people do look like ants from the heights of power where Biden sits, so I can't find myself surprised that his strongest reaction to Netanyahu just straight-up crisping tens of thousands of them with his magnifying glass is a mildly annoyed "Dude, not cool".
Appalled, sure. Horrified, sure. But not surprised. Those magnifying glasses aren't going to sell themselves now are they.
posted by flabdablet at 11:04 PM on March 6 [9 favorites]
> And I wonder how much of this is structural: a natural consequence of taking a small group of rather ordinary people, elevating them to positions of extreme power and only slightly less extreme responsibility and reading them into a huge pile of secrets.
i would add to this a note that another key part of the problem is that these rather ordinary people (ordinary in terms of skills, intellect, moral judgment, etc.) are treated as if they were extraordinary in terms of all of those things, and that this further distorts their view of the world. moreover, a great many of the rather ordinary people in question come from long family lineages of rather ordinary people likewise accustomed to being treated as extraordinary. this is a huge mind-whammy. it is very hard to come from those difficult circumstances and not end up 1) convinced of one's own status as extraordinary in all ways 2) at least a little bit sociopathic.
i could say more about how actual ordinary people who haven't spent decades exposed to this mind-whammy and who aren't used to having an entourage of sycophants arrayed about them would be significantly better at making large-scale life-and-death decisions than the ordinary people accustomed to extraordinary treatment that we're stuck with now but i will refrain, largely out of a desire to not turn this into the new sortition thread.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:06 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
i would add to this a note that another key part of the problem is that these rather ordinary people (ordinary in terms of skills, intellect, moral judgment, etc.) are treated as if they were extraordinary in terms of all of those things, and that this further distorts their view of the world. moreover, a great many of the rather ordinary people in question come from long family lineages of rather ordinary people likewise accustomed to being treated as extraordinary. this is a huge mind-whammy. it is very hard to come from those difficult circumstances and not end up 1) convinced of one's own status as extraordinary in all ways 2) at least a little bit sociopathic.
i could say more about how actual ordinary people who haven't spent decades exposed to this mind-whammy and who aren't used to having an entourage of sycophants arrayed about them would be significantly better at making large-scale life-and-death decisions than the ordinary people accustomed to extraordinary treatment that we're stuck with now but i will refrain, largely out of a desire to not turn this into the new sortition thread.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:06 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
> But, mx bombastic lowercase pronouncements — ah no, it's my mistake — I completely messed up the editing of my first sentence.
hey, sorry for jumping all over you. there's so much loathsome "but have you considered both sides??" discourse in the world in general right now that i'm very paranoid about seeing anything that even remotely looks like that crop up here. but, like, at this point it seems safe to assume a baseline level of decency from mefites on this topic, and i should remember that.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:22 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
hey, sorry for jumping all over you. there's so much loathsome "but have you considered both sides??" discourse in the world in general right now that i'm very paranoid about seeing anything that even remotely looks like that crop up here. but, like, at this point it seems safe to assume a baseline level of decency from mefites on this topic, and i should remember that.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:22 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
"Homo homini lupus" Man/woman can also be a beacon of light to man/woman. However, the first seems to over shadow the second in many situations.
posted by DJZouke at 5:17 AM on March 7
posted by DJZouke at 5:17 AM on March 7
For whatever reason - and I think it's a comprehensible, historical, social reason rather than something ineffable about Europe - Europe and its allies have been able to scale up and streamline the hardening of hearts.
That sounds stupid, frankly, but every day I ask myself how people eg walk by homeless people lying on the ground or shoot little babies in Gaza, or how they kept slaves in their own homes right in front of them. It all involves looking at people who are obviously fellow humans and just...turning a switch in your head that says you don't care what happens to them and that they don't really count.
I assume that people can do that all over this great big world, but it does seem a problem at scale with Europe/the US/the UK.
It feels like there's two ways to do it - rely on people to see their own advantage and turn the switch themselves out of greed/enjoyment of harm or make people feel helpless so that they turn the switch so that they can keep going. I think of this with unhoused people all the time - obviously there are plenty of people who turn the switch because they like feeling superior and don't want to think about landlordism, etc, but I think a lot of people also turn the switch because they feel helpless - it's been made really, really difficult to help unhoused people.
With Gaza, which is frankly the worst and most-despair-inducing chain of events I've ever seen and has to rank in terms of willful human evil with some of the worst in history, the IDF and the US government and the arms manufacturers, etc, have a big interest in crushing any kind of help for Gaza because it makes us feel helpless, and that is extremely useful both now and down the road. Let people get worn down with images of starved and murdered children and images of the IDF mocking the dying and horrifying sniper videos, and they'll turn away from activism because they can't spend all day every day confronted helplessly with war crimes.
If you let public life get bad enough, people will turn to the private sphere just because they have to get through the day, and that means that the powerful can do exactly as they please. It also means that anyone who falls through the cracks is basically treated as already-dead by society since all methods of helping them have been destroyed.
I just hate this. I am rising fifty and this feels like the worst days of the AIDS epidemic except so much bigger and more public - just death and more death and violence and hatred targeted at the most vulnerable people with seemingly no recourse. It feels like this is all humanity adds up to - brief periods where for some people it's not so bad and then back to gleefully crushing the weak.
posted by Frowner at 6:50 AM on March 7 [20 favorites]
That sounds stupid, frankly, but every day I ask myself how people eg walk by homeless people lying on the ground or shoot little babies in Gaza, or how they kept slaves in their own homes right in front of them. It all involves looking at people who are obviously fellow humans and just...turning a switch in your head that says you don't care what happens to them and that they don't really count.
I assume that people can do that all over this great big world, but it does seem a problem at scale with Europe/the US/the UK.
It feels like there's two ways to do it - rely on people to see their own advantage and turn the switch themselves out of greed/enjoyment of harm or make people feel helpless so that they turn the switch so that they can keep going. I think of this with unhoused people all the time - obviously there are plenty of people who turn the switch because they like feeling superior and don't want to think about landlordism, etc, but I think a lot of people also turn the switch because they feel helpless - it's been made really, really difficult to help unhoused people.
With Gaza, which is frankly the worst and most-despair-inducing chain of events I've ever seen and has to rank in terms of willful human evil with some of the worst in history, the IDF and the US government and the arms manufacturers, etc, have a big interest in crushing any kind of help for Gaza because it makes us feel helpless, and that is extremely useful both now and down the road. Let people get worn down with images of starved and murdered children and images of the IDF mocking the dying and horrifying sniper videos, and they'll turn away from activism because they can't spend all day every day confronted helplessly with war crimes.
If you let public life get bad enough, people will turn to the private sphere just because they have to get through the day, and that means that the powerful can do exactly as they please. It also means that anyone who falls through the cracks is basically treated as already-dead by society since all methods of helping them have been destroyed.
I just hate this. I am rising fifty and this feels like the worst days of the AIDS epidemic except so much bigger and more public - just death and more death and violence and hatred targeted at the most vulnerable people with seemingly no recourse. It feels like this is all humanity adds up to - brief periods where for some people it's not so bad and then back to gleefully crushing the weak.
posted by Frowner at 6:50 AM on March 7 [20 favorites]
>Putting equal weight on people revolting and the state suppressing the population, as though the former justifies the latter as simple warfare
Now wait a moment, you can't call the genocidal attack by Hamas "people revolting". It was not aimed at the government of Israel or at soldiers or police. It was aimed at ordinary random civilians. When you are trying not to make unfair equivalences, don't start with an unfair equivalence.
posted by Easy problem of consciousness at 8:48 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
Now wait a moment, you can't call the genocidal attack by Hamas "people revolting". It was not aimed at the government of Israel or at soldiers or police. It was aimed at ordinary random civilians. When you are trying not to make unfair equivalences, don't start with an unfair equivalence.
posted by Easy problem of consciousness at 8:48 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
let's say i'm diligently refraining from saying anything but also that i am thinking "plz watch battle of algiers" at you as loud as possible.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:07 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:07 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
netanyahu’s victims in israel
There is certainly a strong argument to be made that Netanyahu bears some fault for what happened on October 7, but calling the people Hamas murdered and abducted his victims, is some real up-is-down 2+2=5 propaganda bullshit.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 9:17 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
There is certainly a strong argument to be made that Netanyahu bears some fault for what happened on October 7, but calling the people Hamas murdered and abducted his victims, is some real up-is-down 2+2=5 propaganda bullshit.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 9:17 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
except dude propped up hamas because he wanted to keep palestinians fragmented. and it's not a coincidence that the group he propped up were the most extreme, since each rocket that cruised over the wall shored up his political support.
i am perfectly willing to lay everything at netanyahu's feet. he's the one with control over an independent nation-state rather than a walled-in bantustan. and although it is in many cases very important to focus on the agency of people oppressed by murderous nation-states, in the particular case, wherein a large population got their land swiped and then got shoved into a multigenerational prison in which the wardens gave material support to by all accounts the prisoners' most unsavory organization, acknowledging the lack of agency is key.
anyway.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:45 AM on March 7 [17 favorites]
i am perfectly willing to lay everything at netanyahu's feet. he's the one with control over an independent nation-state rather than a walled-in bantustan. and although it is in many cases very important to focus on the agency of people oppressed by murderous nation-states, in the particular case, wherein a large population got their land swiped and then got shoved into a multigenerational prison in which the wardens gave material support to by all accounts the prisoners' most unsavory organization, acknowledging the lack of agency is key.
anyway.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:45 AM on March 7 [17 favorites]
Now wait a moment, you can't call the genocidal attack by Hamas "people revolting". It was not aimed at the government of Israel or at soldiers or police. It was aimed at ordinary random civilians. When you are trying not to make unfair equivalences, don't start with an unfair equivalence.
Curious to learn how you feel about Nat Turner. Or this.
It's fascinating how both of these massacres (or revolts by occupied/enslaved people living in conditions that no human being could tolerate--whatever you want to call them) led to insanely savage overreactions from the colonizing/enslaving entities. Just like we're seeing now! It's sometimes just exhausting how much history repeats.
posted by lizard2590 at 9:58 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
Curious to learn how you feel about Nat Turner. Or this.
It's fascinating how both of these massacres (or revolts by occupied/enslaved people living in conditions that no human being could tolerate--whatever you want to call them) led to insanely savage overreactions from the colonizing/enslaving entities. Just like we're seeing now! It's sometimes just exhausting how much history repeats.
posted by lizard2590 at 9:58 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
acknowledging the lack of agency is key.
going on a rampage where you brutally killing more than 700 civilians in a single morning might be due to a lack of options (and there is always one more option: not doing it), but not a lack of agency.
I refer the nat turner comparison to a comment I made here.
posted by lalochezia at 10:46 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
going on a rampage where you brutally killing more than 700 civilians in a single morning might be due to a lack of options (and there is always one more option: not doing it), but not a lack of agency.
I refer the nat turner comparison to a comment I made here.
posted by lalochezia at 10:46 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
This article comes close to stating one of the better summations of the Israel-Palestine conflict that I have seen; paraphrased somewhat as “the Europeans/Germans killed 6 million Jews and the Palestinians are paying the price for it.” Don’t remember where I saw it or else I would have the exact quote. But it did make me think. Who profited from slave labor during the Holocaust? Who sold the machinery and built the concentration camps that made the Holocaust possible? Who stole (and in too many cases still has) wealth from the Jewish people of Europe? Who was responsible for killing the Jews of Europe? It made me wonder how history would be different if instead of a British colony in the Middle East, Germany had become the Jewish state. I realize this is a ridiculous idea for any number of reasons, but it certainly would have been just.
posted by TedW at 11:11 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
posted by TedW at 11:11 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
>Putting equal weight on people revolting and the state suppressing the population, as though the former justifies the latter as simple warfare
Now wait a moment, you can't call the genocidal attack by Hamas "people revolting". It was not aimed at the government of Israel or at soldiers or police. It was aimed at ordinary random civilians. When you are trying not to make unfair equivalences, don't start with an unfair equivalence.
Serious question: are settler colonizers "ordinary random civilians"? Who gets to decide who is an "ordinary random civilian" on stolen land?
When American Indians killed European Settler Colonizer families who were also, just like Israeli settlers are doing, literally stealing land, were they acting in self defense, or were they just barbaric terrorists?
posted by nikoniko at 12:20 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]
Now wait a moment, you can't call the genocidal attack by Hamas "people revolting". It was not aimed at the government of Israel or at soldiers or police. It was aimed at ordinary random civilians. When you are trying not to make unfair equivalences, don't start with an unfair equivalence.
Serious question: are settler colonizers "ordinary random civilians"? Who gets to decide who is an "ordinary random civilian" on stolen land?
When American Indians killed European Settler Colonizer families who were also, just like Israeli settlers are doing, literally stealing land, were they acting in self defense, or were they just barbaric terrorists?
posted by nikoniko at 12:20 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]
See also Never Again Should Be for Anybody, an open letter by Zukiswa Wanner on why she is surrendering her 2020 Goethe Medaille:
according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America are the biggest arms exporters to Israel.posted by spamandkimchi at 12:33 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
...
More recently, during the Berlin Film Festival, Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham won the best documentary prize for their film No Other Lands which shows the eradication of Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The German Cultural Minister is reported to have stated her applause was only for the Israeli half of the filmmaking duo. South African history has a phrase for this. Petty Apartheid.
if the great grandchildren of "settler colonizers" - assuming you are referring to all israeli citizens in this context - were at a rave, or in their house, and they were unarmed and butchered, i'm gonna go with option b - barbaric terrorism, hoss.
by your logic, any man or woman, child or grandparent in the USA is up for machine-gunning at any point as a matter of "self defence" in the USA because they are descendants of the mayflower.
posted by lalochezia at 12:34 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]
by your logic, any man or woman, child or grandparent in the USA is up for machine-gunning at any point as a matter of "self defence" in the USA because they are descendants of the mayflower.
posted by lalochezia at 12:34 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]
Does Israel have compulsory military service?
Does the label of "great grandchild of someone in the distant past, whose ancestor did some bad things but they totally didn't" apply to an Israeli adult alive today who is currently in the Israeli military, or actively served a tour of duty in the Israeli military?
posted by Number Used Once at 12:53 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
Does the label of "great grandchild of someone in the distant past, whose ancestor did some bad things but they totally didn't" apply to an Israeli adult alive today who is currently in the Israeli military, or actively served a tour of duty in the Israeli military?
posted by Number Used Once at 12:53 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
Israel is currently in the process of settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing both in Gaza and in the West Bank. This isn't something happening in the recent, or distant past, as you are trying to state, it's happening right now.
posted by nikoniko at 12:59 PM on March 7 [10 favorites]
posted by nikoniko at 12:59 PM on March 7 [10 favorites]
I refer the nat turner comparison to a comment I made here.
Cool, so basically just refusing to engage with the comparison? I have no idea what to make of your comment--I was not in that thread.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:03 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]
Cool, so basically just refusing to engage with the comparison? I have no idea what to make of your comment--I was not in that thread.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:03 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]
Does Israel have compulsory military service?
yes. conscription. not a volunteer army.
.....or actively served a tour of duty in the Israeli military?
so past service in the IDF - even if outside the territories, even if decades ago, marks you as a target for self-defensive execution? once a soldier, always a soldier? at the dinner table with your grandkids. at a rave.
cool cool.
---
i... currently in the process of settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing both in Gaza and in the West Bank. This isn't something happening in the recent, or distant past, as you are trying to state, it's happening right now.
on oct 7 the correct moral action was to go to a rave and butcher hundreds of kids. to go from kibbutz to kibbutz, killing children and grandparents at their dinner tables.
cool cool
---
what israel is doing at the moment is a monstrous crime against humanity.
but the idea that members of this site support hamas's (armed wing) 'tactics' as executed on october 7 - as justifiable makes me sick to my stomach.
you are acting as war crime apologists.
posted by lalochezia at 1:05 PM on March 7 [6 favorites]
yes. conscription. not a volunteer army.
.....or actively served a tour of duty in the Israeli military?
so past service in the IDF - even if outside the territories, even if decades ago, marks you as a target for self-defensive execution? once a soldier, always a soldier? at the dinner table with your grandkids. at a rave.
cool cool.
---
i... currently in the process of settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing both in Gaza and in the West Bank. This isn't something happening in the recent, or distant past, as you are trying to state, it's happening right now.
on oct 7 the correct moral action was to go to a rave and butcher hundreds of kids. to go from kibbutz to kibbutz, killing children and grandparents at their dinner tables.
cool cool
---
what israel is doing at the moment is a monstrous crime against humanity.
but the idea that members of this site support hamas's (armed wing) 'tactics' as executed on october 7 - as justifiable makes me sick to my stomach.
you are acting as war crime apologists.
posted by lalochezia at 1:05 PM on March 7 [6 favorites]
"if the great grandchildren of "settler colonizers" - assuming you are referring to all israeli citizens in this context - were at a rave, or in their house, and they were unarmed and butchered, i'm gonna go with option b - barbaric terrorism, hoss.
by your logic, any man or woman, child or grandparent in the USA is up for machine-gunning at any point as a matter of "self defence" in the USA because they are descendants of the mayflower."
No, that's not quite the point I'm trying to make. What I'm attempting to say, is back when European Settlers were colonizing the USA, and were expanding their settlements westward; each time the Native Americans attacked settler villages/homes/events/etc., and killed "ordinary civilians," might one not be able to find a justification for that violent, and yes, abhorrent act?
posted by nikoniko at 1:08 PM on March 7 [9 favorites]
by your logic, any man or woman, child or grandparent in the USA is up for machine-gunning at any point as a matter of "self defence" in the USA because they are descendants of the mayflower."
No, that's not quite the point I'm trying to make. What I'm attempting to say, is back when European Settlers were colonizing the USA, and were expanding their settlements westward; each time the Native Americans attacked settler villages/homes/events/etc., and killed "ordinary civilians," might one not be able to find a justification for that violent, and yes, abhorrent act?
posted by nikoniko at 1:08 PM on March 7 [9 favorites]
what israel is doing at the moment is a monstrous crime against humanity.
but the idea that members of this site support hamas's (armed wing) 'tactics' as executed on october 7 - as justifiable makes me sick to my stomach.
The fact that this thread has been redirected--within the first like 20 comments--into talking about what Hamas did almost six months ago, rather than the genocide that is literally unfolding today is sadly predictable.
I'm sorry you're sick to your stomach.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:10 PM on March 7 [16 favorites]
but the idea that members of this site support hamas's (armed wing) 'tactics' as executed on october 7 - as justifiable makes me sick to my stomach.
The fact that this thread has been redirected--within the first like 20 comments--into talking about what Hamas did almost six months ago, rather than the genocide that is literally unfolding today is sadly predictable.
I'm sorry you're sick to your stomach.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:10 PM on March 7 [16 favorites]
Also, I'm not attempting to be an apologist, just trying to find a logical rationale for Hamas' actions. Because in so doing, maybe a way forward can be found?
I'm probably naive and it's just a question of who has more money and guns, in which case none of our discussion matters...
posted by nikoniko at 1:11 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]
I'm probably naive and it's just a question of who has more money and guns, in which case none of our discussion matters...
posted by nikoniko at 1:11 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]
I feel like we're thinking about this backwards, because we're looking outward and saying "who is it legitimate to kill when we're not under duress" when we should be looking inward and saying "what are our responsibilities toward people when we have more power than they do or power over them".
There isn't any morality where you're entitled to exploit those weaker than you, even if those weaker than you do bad things, even if they do bad things to you. Israel isn't entitled to take land from Palestinians or snipe them in the head or starve them even if half of them were active Hamas fighters. Israel would be entitled to do the minimum violence immediately necessary to protect their immediate wellbeing and that's it.
As to Nat Turner or anti-colonial struggle in general: very tragic and terrible things get done. The whole reason Nat Turner is a byword is because of how horror is mixed into the struggle for justice.
Things that happen in the moment are hard to parse, because people who are in that moment fighting for their own lives are entitled to try to preserve their own lives. Like, if someone decided that I was going to pay for America's crimes in blood, I'd try to fight them off! I deplore America's crimes and would see some reason to pay in cash or labor but I'm entitled to my life.
But the ultimate responsibility in the long term, not in the moment, is with the people who have the structural power. The slaveowners are responsible, because they created a monstrous system which forced people into immense suffering and despair. If you don't want powerful and horrifying events like Nat Turner's Rebellion, you can't enslave people.
If you have power over someone, you have a responsibility to them that is greater than the responsibility they have to you. If you don't want that responsibility, you've got to give up the power. Powerful people always want to have the power and then to compel responsibility from those they rule, and of course they can always try, but it's not right and the spirit rebels.
Israel has always had the power over the Palestinians. Israel is heavily armed, it is a client state of the US, it has most of the land, it has pinned most Palestinians between a wall and the sea. Israel has the power to bomb Palestinian buildings to powder. Palestine has nothing comparable. Palestinians can't even leave Palestine unless they're lucky and have plenty of resources.
This is why the US also bears responsibility - we have, arguably, power over Israel. There are a lot of arms manufacturers and rich fundamentalists and so on in the background probably twisting arms as hard as they can go, but the US has at least as much power in this situation as Israel.
I just don't understand where people's heads are at on this stuff. This whole thing isn't about finding something bad enough to justify our actions, it's about finding what our responsibilities are and acting correctly.
posted by Frowner at 1:20 PM on March 7 [24 favorites]
There isn't any morality where you're entitled to exploit those weaker than you, even if those weaker than you do bad things, even if they do bad things to you. Israel isn't entitled to take land from Palestinians or snipe them in the head or starve them even if half of them were active Hamas fighters. Israel would be entitled to do the minimum violence immediately necessary to protect their immediate wellbeing and that's it.
As to Nat Turner or anti-colonial struggle in general: very tragic and terrible things get done. The whole reason Nat Turner is a byword is because of how horror is mixed into the struggle for justice.
Things that happen in the moment are hard to parse, because people who are in that moment fighting for their own lives are entitled to try to preserve their own lives. Like, if someone decided that I was going to pay for America's crimes in blood, I'd try to fight them off! I deplore America's crimes and would see some reason to pay in cash or labor but I'm entitled to my life.
But the ultimate responsibility in the long term, not in the moment, is with the people who have the structural power. The slaveowners are responsible, because they created a monstrous system which forced people into immense suffering and despair. If you don't want powerful and horrifying events like Nat Turner's Rebellion, you can't enslave people.
If you have power over someone, you have a responsibility to them that is greater than the responsibility they have to you. If you don't want that responsibility, you've got to give up the power. Powerful people always want to have the power and then to compel responsibility from those they rule, and of course they can always try, but it's not right and the spirit rebels.
Israel has always had the power over the Palestinians. Israel is heavily armed, it is a client state of the US, it has most of the land, it has pinned most Palestinians between a wall and the sea. Israel has the power to bomb Palestinian buildings to powder. Palestine has nothing comparable. Palestinians can't even leave Palestine unless they're lucky and have plenty of resources.
This is why the US also bears responsibility - we have, arguably, power over Israel. There are a lot of arms manufacturers and rich fundamentalists and so on in the background probably twisting arms as hard as they can go, but the US has at least as much power in this situation as Israel.
I just don't understand where people's heads are at on this stuff. This whole thing isn't about finding something bad enough to justify our actions, it's about finding what our responsibilities are and acting correctly.
posted by Frowner at 1:20 PM on March 7 [24 favorites]
i'm sorry the thread has been redirected too - the vast majority of the death, injury, suffering, starvation, disease, injustice and pain has been dealt to palestinians by israelis, through the occupation, especially in the last few months, and should rightly be the centre of any discussion of treatment of people as less than human.
I agree, that as you put it, that hamas' actions "led to (an) insanely savage overreaction", that is ongoing to this day.
but the anodyne use of "revolt" for the brutal slaughter of hundreds of unarmed people needs the same kind of pushback that anodyne phrases "military operations" or "pacification" or any of the other nauseating war-crime and massacre synonyms that israel and their uncritical supporters use.
dehumanization only leads one way.
posted by lalochezia at 1:22 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
I agree, that as you put it, that hamas' actions "led to (an) insanely savage overreaction", that is ongoing to this day.
but the anodyne use of "revolt" for the brutal slaughter of hundreds of unarmed people needs the same kind of pushback that anodyne phrases "military operations" or "pacification" or any of the other nauseating war-crime and massacre synonyms that israel and their uncritical supporters use.
dehumanization only leads one way.
posted by lalochezia at 1:22 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
but the anodyne use of "revolt" for the brutal slaughter of hundreds of unarmed people needs the same kind of pushback that anodyne phrases "military operations" or "pacification" or any of the other nauseating war-crime and massacre synonyms that israel and their uncritical supporters use.
I feel like @Frowner responded to this better than I did but I'll give it a try:
I feel like this analysis completely ignores where the power lies in this situation and it's why "both sides" arguments (and "All Lives Matter" etc.") are frustrating. No, they don't require the "same kind of pushback" because the power dynamic is completely different. As @Frowner wrote:
Israel has always had the power over the Palestinians. Israel is heavily armed, it is a client state of the US, it has most of the land, it has pinned most Palestinians between a wall and the sea. Israel has the power to bomb Palestinian buildings to powder. Palestine has nothing comparable. Palestinians can't even leave Palestine unless they're lucky and have plenty of resources.
I don't think I'm particularly dehumanizing anyone--I don't think Nat Turner or the Haitian revolutionaries should have murdered women and children either. I'm very anti-murdering women and children and civilians generally! I just think that Palestinians dehumanizing their occupiers who are currently committing genocide against them and trying to eliminate their culture is super super different, both in its nature and its impacts, than Israelis dehumanizing the people they occupy and genocide and starve and eliminate. Both are bad! They are bad in very different ways.
Like people aren't opposed to "All Lives Matter" because we think white people's lives don't matter--we're just acknowledging that some people's lives are always held to have more inherent value by people with power than other people's lives.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:39 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
I feel like @Frowner responded to this better than I did but I'll give it a try:
I feel like this analysis completely ignores where the power lies in this situation and it's why "both sides" arguments (and "All Lives Matter" etc.") are frustrating. No, they don't require the "same kind of pushback" because the power dynamic is completely different. As @Frowner wrote:
Israel has always had the power over the Palestinians. Israel is heavily armed, it is a client state of the US, it has most of the land, it has pinned most Palestinians between a wall and the sea. Israel has the power to bomb Palestinian buildings to powder. Palestine has nothing comparable. Palestinians can't even leave Palestine unless they're lucky and have plenty of resources.
I don't think I'm particularly dehumanizing anyone--I don't think Nat Turner or the Haitian revolutionaries should have murdered women and children either. I'm very anti-murdering women and children and civilians generally! I just think that Palestinians dehumanizing their occupiers who are currently committing genocide against them and trying to eliminate their culture is super super different, both in its nature and its impacts, than Israelis dehumanizing the people they occupy and genocide and starve and eliminate. Both are bad! They are bad in very different ways.
Like people aren't opposed to "All Lives Matter" because we think white people's lives don't matter--we're just acknowledging that some people's lives are always held to have more inherent value by people with power than other people's lives.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:39 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
lalochezia, do you think you're straw-maning or steel-maning the people you're talking to? Because it looks like you're adding a lot of spin on the words of the people you're quoting, so it seems to me you're doing one or the other.
I did bother to go through your comment history and you are critical of Israel's war crimes! That's nice. But it seems like you've latched onto a comment in this thread that (IMHO) makes a lot of sense about agency and causal blame, and used it as an excuse to... rant a bit about how bad a terrorist attack that killed civilians was? Which wasn't really up for debate in this thread, unless comments have been deleted.
What I do see in this thread is a handful of pre-emptive comments pushing back on the idea that the Hamas attack was excusable. One commenter even labeled the Hamas attack itself as "genocidal." Hamas doesn't have the capacity to commit genocide any more than my pet cat does. It's a weird and wild framing of events, as is your insistence that the people being slaughtered now had agency.
I suppose pre-civil war American slaves had agency. Present-day prisoners have agency, I suppose. Spouses of abusers have agency. Children have agencies. Everyone has agency because they can make choices and take actions, and those actions can have a moral valence to them. But... that's maybe not what "agency" means in this context, or isn't the kind of agency that was being discussed.
There is precisely one player in these events that can make long-term change for the better. There are many Gazans who just... are people, and who didn't participate in, know about, or approve of the instigating attack, and are now paying the price for it. Pointing out where there is a lack of agency on one hand, and where resides the power to actually change things on the other, is not wrong-headed and isn't excusing the Hamas attack.
posted by Number Used Once at 1:39 PM on March 7 [8 favorites]
I did bother to go through your comment history and you are critical of Israel's war crimes! That's nice. But it seems like you've latched onto a comment in this thread that (IMHO) makes a lot of sense about agency and causal blame, and used it as an excuse to... rant a bit about how bad a terrorist attack that killed civilians was? Which wasn't really up for debate in this thread, unless comments have been deleted.
What I do see in this thread is a handful of pre-emptive comments pushing back on the idea that the Hamas attack was excusable. One commenter even labeled the Hamas attack itself as "genocidal." Hamas doesn't have the capacity to commit genocide any more than my pet cat does. It's a weird and wild framing of events, as is your insistence that the people being slaughtered now had agency.
I suppose pre-civil war American slaves had agency. Present-day prisoners have agency, I suppose. Spouses of abusers have agency. Children have agencies. Everyone has agency because they can make choices and take actions, and those actions can have a moral valence to them. But... that's maybe not what "agency" means in this context, or isn't the kind of agency that was being discussed.
There is precisely one player in these events that can make long-term change for the better. There are many Gazans who just... are people, and who didn't participate in, know about, or approve of the instigating attack, and are now paying the price for it. Pointing out where there is a lack of agency on one hand, and where resides the power to actually change things on the other, is not wrong-headed and isn't excusing the Hamas attack.
posted by Number Used Once at 1:39 PM on March 7 [8 favorites]
(Just one little bracket in re anti-colonial rebellions, especially by enslaved people - I feel like it's important to note that many, many women were very active and cruel as slaveholders. You might be looking at situations where, eg, women were killed as part of indiscriminate killings during an uprising and those women would have had various degrees of power and culpability; you might also be looking at a situation where a woman was attacked because she was a brutal slaveholder. I feel like this doesn't always get called out when we talk about these things - it's sort of the opposite of the thing where we talk about Palestinian women and children as are innocent victims but Palestinian men are always figured as fighters who it's legitimate to attack, when obviously that isn't the case at all.)
posted by Frowner at 2:08 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 2:08 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]
Number Used Once and lizard2590 (and of course, Frowner).
I agree with much of your structural analysis about power differentials.
I - and I assume many other people - have a visceral reaction independent of the power differential between groups when violence is inflicted in an manner that demonstrates obvious* dehumanization and especially when the violence is inflicted on an unarmed person by an armed person. At that point in time - whatever structural power the group they are a member of - is irrelevant to the person being blown up or raped or maimed. If you empathize with them as human beings - in other words, if you haven't dehumanized them - then you see this. If the victim is part of a group with more structural power, their descendants or defenders can wreak more misery or revenge than someone who isn't, but they are just as dead, died just as agonizingly, or experienced pain just as much as someone in a group with less power.
The dehumanization, immiseration and slaughter of the "many Gazans who just... are people, and who didn't participate in, know about, or approve of the instigating attack, and are now paying the price for it" sickens me; bombing unarmed people in hospitals and in aid lines and in the thousand other modes that they have been slaughtered is just more and more and more of the above, with all of the added injustice described above.
I guess my point is this:
The FPP which is what we are discusssing! - primarily - is about colonialism and how it has allowed us to excuse genocide because "this was all easy for the conscience because the victims were never considered human.". But the sin here is not colonialism; colonialism is the mechanism that enables the sin at scale. The sin is dehumanization.
When I read "revolt" as a synonym for "massacre", what I see is language that minimizes dehumanization.
* and yes, the manner in which the violence is wrought remotely/from the air and is portrayed as "clean", is one of many many ways that media and the portrayal of modern war allows for the portrayal of some victims as suffering less, or being less human
posted by lalochezia at 2:55 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
I agree with much of your structural analysis about power differentials.
I - and I assume many other people - have a visceral reaction independent of the power differential between groups when violence is inflicted in an manner that demonstrates obvious* dehumanization and especially when the violence is inflicted on an unarmed person by an armed person. At that point in time - whatever structural power the group they are a member of - is irrelevant to the person being blown up or raped or maimed. If you empathize with them as human beings - in other words, if you haven't dehumanized them - then you see this. If the victim is part of a group with more structural power, their descendants or defenders can wreak more misery or revenge than someone who isn't, but they are just as dead, died just as agonizingly, or experienced pain just as much as someone in a group with less power.
The dehumanization, immiseration and slaughter of the "many Gazans who just... are people, and who didn't participate in, know about, or approve of the instigating attack, and are now paying the price for it" sickens me; bombing unarmed people in hospitals and in aid lines and in the thousand other modes that they have been slaughtered is just more and more and more of the above, with all of the added injustice described above.
I guess my point is this:
The FPP which is what we are discusssing! - primarily - is about colonialism and how it has allowed us to excuse genocide because "this was all easy for the conscience because the victims were never considered human.". But the sin here is not colonialism; colonialism is the mechanism that enables the sin at scale. The sin is dehumanization.
When I read "revolt" as a synonym for "massacre", what I see is language that minimizes dehumanization.
* and yes, the manner in which the violence is wrought remotely/from the air and is portrayed as "clean", is one of many many ways that media and the portrayal of modern war allows for the portrayal of some victims as suffering less, or being less human
posted by lalochezia at 2:55 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
The sin is dehumanization
Indeed it is, and one of the mechanisms by which dehumanization is perpetuated is gratuitous amplification of the propaganda talking points of its most egregious current perpetrators.
In case my own position is unclear, I refer you to two of my earlier comments.
It is completely clear to anybody who has been paying attention to Palestine over the past fifty years that the indefensible atrocities Israel is currently committing in Gaza are not so much a response to October 7th as longstanding Likud policy aims that October 7th provided a perfect excuse to implement.
posted by flabdablet at 7:07 PM on March 7 [8 favorites]
Indeed it is, and one of the mechanisms by which dehumanization is perpetuated is gratuitous amplification of the propaganda talking points of its most egregious current perpetrators.
In case my own position is unclear, I refer you to two of my earlier comments.
It is completely clear to anybody who has been paying attention to Palestine over the past fifty years that the indefensible atrocities Israel is currently committing in Gaza are not so much a response to October 7th as longstanding Likud policy aims that October 7th provided a perfect excuse to implement.
posted by flabdablet at 7:07 PM on March 7 [8 favorites]
When I read "revolt" as a synonym for "massacre", what I see is language that minimizes dehumanization.
Also please bear in mind that others will have very similar reactions to your own dismissal of colonialism as less objectionable than dehumanization per se.
I can loudly dehumanize the shit-for-brains maggot overtaking me in a completely unsafe fashion and then riding his brakes behind every car he tailgates as much as I want and nobody is harmed by my doing that.
Scale matters. Power imbalances matter.
Hypocrisy matters too. The mealy mouth on Biden, still spouting platitudes on Israel's obligations while still providing money and ammo to the Likud rabble who laugh at him while using it to murder literally countless children. Should be fucking unbelievable. Tragically, isn't.
posted by flabdablet at 10:39 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
Also please bear in mind that others will have very similar reactions to your own dismissal of colonialism as less objectionable than dehumanization per se.
I can loudly dehumanize the shit-for-brains maggot overtaking me in a completely unsafe fashion and then riding his brakes behind every car he tailgates as much as I want and nobody is harmed by my doing that.
Scale matters. Power imbalances matter.
Hypocrisy matters too. The mealy mouth on Biden, still spouting platitudes on Israel's obligations while still providing money and ammo to the Likud rabble who laugh at him while using it to murder literally countless children. Should be fucking unbelievable. Tragically, isn't.
posted by flabdablet at 10:39 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
Israel would be entitled to do the minimum violence immediately necessary to protect their immediate wellbeing and that's it.
The problem with that statement is that it could be argued that Israel hasn't done the minimum violence necessary yet.
It's 7:20am in Israel when I started writing this and there have already been two pre-dawn rocket alerts in Naschal and Sderot, locations whose proximity to Gaza gives gives residents 15 seconds to wake up and get into a bomb shelter.
posted by xdvesper at 10:46 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
The problem with that statement is that it could be argued that Israel hasn't done the minimum violence necessary yet.
It's 7:20am in Israel when I started writing this and there have already been two pre-dawn rocket alerts in Naschal and Sderot, locations whose proximity to Gaza gives gives residents 15 seconds to wake up and get into a bomb shelter.
posted by xdvesper at 10:46 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
It could be argued by who? What reasonable person who you expect us here to value the opinion of? Who, who values the life of a Palestinian equally to the life of an Israeli, thinks that this is not yet the minimum violence? That it is required and proportionate to starve hundreds of thousands, kill at least tens of thousands of innocents.
Like, I know there's some rabidly genocidal people who think that is fair, plenty of racists, plenty of ethnic or religious supremacists, but who is making that claim who I should respect?
Is it something you believe? If it isn't, why bring it up? I don't think any of us are unaware that some people think this is not yet the minimum violence, that some would argue that complete and utter genocide is the minimum violence is expected, and disregarded as irrelevant and wholly unreasonable. I do not consider that some flat-earthers think NASA is run by a global cabal worthy of bringing up in a thread about space exploration. Some disagreement is simply assumed and ignored.
posted by Audreynachrome at 1:16 AM on March 8 [14 favorites]
Like, I know there's some rabidly genocidal people who think that is fair, plenty of racists, plenty of ethnic or religious supremacists, but who is making that claim who I should respect?
Is it something you believe? If it isn't, why bring it up? I don't think any of us are unaware that some people think this is not yet the minimum violence, that some would argue that complete and utter genocide is the minimum violence is expected, and disregarded as irrelevant and wholly unreasonable. I do not consider that some flat-earthers think NASA is run by a global cabal worthy of bringing up in a thread about space exploration. Some disagreement is simply assumed and ignored.
posted by Audreynachrome at 1:16 AM on March 8 [14 favorites]
The problem with that statement is that it could be argued that Israel hasn't done the minimum violence necessary yet.
Yes, it's all arguable, unfortunately - what makes someone a Hamas fighter/supporter? People can argue all kinds of stupid and mendacious things all day to say that it's basically everyone, just as you can argue that the "minimum" is for Israel to bomb Palestine into a powder.
But I think that first, it's obvious that "you should sit down and literally let people kill you an individual in the moment even when you don't want to die" isn't tenable - no one would say of someone who tried to escape from Hamas captivity that they were wrong to do so. You might make some kind of argument that the truly spiritual, moral thing is to stay a captive or to let yourself be killed, but that's just not going to be a scalable position, any more than "literally give away everything you own to those needier than yourself" is.
We can talk about something like "what is immediate survival of actual individuals" and "what is the minimum necessary to procure actual individual humans' immediate survival" and move towards that, which would rule out every kind of "oh someone fired a rocket, we get to flatten ten city blocks for our long term viability" line of reasoning. To use an immediate example, if someone says, "give me your wallet or I'll kill you", and I respond by shooting them instead of giving them my wallet, I'm not using the minimum violence, because the minimum violence is to give them my wallet, and de facto I am saying that trying to steal my wallet (possibly for sympathetic reasons) should be punishable by death. I am also probably saying "I am richer and more secure than this person and I get to kill them for threatening me." My wallet is valuable of course but it's not more valuable than a human life. (If I could run away, or maybe punch them or yell for help and scare them off, those would be other active responses that would be more in line with the situation; I'm not saying that the moral response to being mugged is always to hand over your wallet.)
There were many minimally violent, effective ways that Israel could have responded to October 7 in the long term if they really wanted to have "the world's most moral army", etc. That's not the same as saying "you can't fight when you are literally immediately being attacked right now, you personally".
The minimum of violence is none, zero. I think if we start from "is there a way to resolve this problem without violence" as our minimum point, that gets us somewhere different than if we start with "the minimum violence is still some violence".
I also think we should consider the difference between people and states, eg, me having a good life as an individual and America being a powerful and rich nation. I'm interested in all people living in safety and dignity as a first principle. My life is worse, for instance, because America is obsessed with wealth and power and built on slavery. Justifying bombing something because America needs to be strong and powerful is not at all the same as giving me what I need to have a good life. Preserving lives in the moment isn't the same as preserving nation-states for eternity.
posted by Frowner at 6:48 AM on March 8 [11 favorites]
Yes, it's all arguable, unfortunately - what makes someone a Hamas fighter/supporter? People can argue all kinds of stupid and mendacious things all day to say that it's basically everyone, just as you can argue that the "minimum" is for Israel to bomb Palestine into a powder.
But I think that first, it's obvious that "you should sit down and literally let people kill you an individual in the moment even when you don't want to die" isn't tenable - no one would say of someone who tried to escape from Hamas captivity that they were wrong to do so. You might make some kind of argument that the truly spiritual, moral thing is to stay a captive or to let yourself be killed, but that's just not going to be a scalable position, any more than "literally give away everything you own to those needier than yourself" is.
We can talk about something like "what is immediate survival of actual individuals" and "what is the minimum necessary to procure actual individual humans' immediate survival" and move towards that, which would rule out every kind of "oh someone fired a rocket, we get to flatten ten city blocks for our long term viability" line of reasoning. To use an immediate example, if someone says, "give me your wallet or I'll kill you", and I respond by shooting them instead of giving them my wallet, I'm not using the minimum violence, because the minimum violence is to give them my wallet, and de facto I am saying that trying to steal my wallet (possibly for sympathetic reasons) should be punishable by death. I am also probably saying "I am richer and more secure than this person and I get to kill them for threatening me." My wallet is valuable of course but it's not more valuable than a human life. (If I could run away, or maybe punch them or yell for help and scare them off, those would be other active responses that would be more in line with the situation; I'm not saying that the moral response to being mugged is always to hand over your wallet.)
There were many minimally violent, effective ways that Israel could have responded to October 7 in the long term if they really wanted to have "the world's most moral army", etc. That's not the same as saying "you can't fight when you are literally immediately being attacked right now, you personally".
The minimum of violence is none, zero. I think if we start from "is there a way to resolve this problem without violence" as our minimum point, that gets us somewhere different than if we start with "the minimum violence is still some violence".
I also think we should consider the difference between people and states, eg, me having a good life as an individual and America being a powerful and rich nation. I'm interested in all people living in safety and dignity as a first principle. My life is worse, for instance, because America is obsessed with wealth and power and built on slavery. Justifying bombing something because America needs to be strong and powerful is not at all the same as giving me what I need to have a good life. Preserving lives in the moment isn't the same as preserving nation-states for eternity.
posted by Frowner at 6:48 AM on March 8 [11 favorites]
I guess what I'm saying is that it's possible to think through some principles which allow for individuals normal response to in the moment violence while also rejecting large scale ongoing violence in the name of societies and states.
Of course, principles are for us as individuals or as groups doing our own political work; states have no principles except greed and violence.
posted by Frowner at 7:20 AM on March 8 [5 favorites]
Of course, principles are for us as individuals or as groups doing our own political work; states have no principles except greed and violence.
posted by Frowner at 7:20 AM on March 8 [5 favorites]
And one more, I apologize - the more I think about it, the more I think it's important to break apart the needs of individuals and states/organized and armed societies, because individual needs get used to mask state/social violence. People very understandably think, "it must have been really scary to be on a kibbutz that was attacked on October 7, even if you survived and weren't kidnapped", and then that turns into "what the IDF does in the name of some abstract idea about preserving the Israeli state is totally justified by the experience of these individuals" and this doesn't get challenged even when the reckless violence of the IDF literally kills the individual Israelis whose situation was used to justify it.
posted by Frowner at 7:33 AM on March 8 [7 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 7:33 AM on March 8 [7 favorites]
...the same reckless violence that did kill individual Israelis on October 7 rather than see them take their chances as Hamas hostages.
I think it's important to break apart the needs of individuals and states/organized and armed societies, because individual needs get used to mask state/social violence.
Individual needs also get used to create and drive state and social violence. There is no more reliable boost for the political fortunes of a corrupt fascist fuck like a Netanyahu or Putin than finding an excuse to prosecute the bloodiest and most brutal kind of total war.
posted by flabdablet at 8:05 AM on March 8 [4 favorites]
I think it's important to break apart the needs of individuals and states/organized and armed societies, because individual needs get used to mask state/social violence.
Individual needs also get used to create and drive state and social violence. There is no more reliable boost for the political fortunes of a corrupt fascist fuck like a Netanyahu or Putin than finding an excuse to prosecute the bloodiest and most brutal kind of total war.
posted by flabdablet at 8:05 AM on March 8 [4 favorites]
I am going to reiterate the thing lalochezia jumped on my ass about in that other thread:
The available evidence (as opposed to Israeli propaganda) is that the Al-Qassam Brigades, PIJ, and the other smaller militant organizations that worked with them on the Oct 7 attack did not know the rave was happening; their original planned targets were almost certainly (based on what we know of their planning exercises) the nearby military base and possibly the border kibbutzim.
A military base is obviously a legitimate military target. Border kibbutzim have always been a massive part of Israel's colonization strategy, nearly all the adults in kibbutzim are reservists or active-duty soldiers, and i certainly think it's arguable that they, and the adults (but of course not the children) in them, represent valid military targets.
It seems as though the planned operation devolved immediately into complete chaos when the militant groups encountered the rave, and that they had no effective Plan B and could not even keep the various separate militant groups pointed in the same direction.
This is not a comment about morality; this is a comment about facts.
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:09 PM on March 8 [4 favorites]
The available evidence (as opposed to Israeli propaganda) is that the Al-Qassam Brigades, PIJ, and the other smaller militant organizations that worked with them on the Oct 7 attack did not know the rave was happening; their original planned targets were almost certainly (based on what we know of their planning exercises) the nearby military base and possibly the border kibbutzim.
A military base is obviously a legitimate military target. Border kibbutzim have always been a massive part of Israel's colonization strategy, nearly all the adults in kibbutzim are reservists or active-duty soldiers, and i certainly think it's arguable that they, and the adults (but of course not the children) in them, represent valid military targets.
It seems as though the planned operation devolved immediately into complete chaos when the militant groups encountered the rave, and that they had no effective Plan B and could not even keep the various separate militant groups pointed in the same direction.
This is not a comment about morality; this is a comment about facts.
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:09 PM on March 8 [4 favorites]
(As far as morality goes: i think that holding a giant rave a stone's throw from the border of a massive concentration camp is absolutely fucking ghoulish, and that nobody involved in that should ever sleep peacefully again, but being ghoulish shouldn't actually be a death sentence.)
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:10 PM on March 8 [8 favorites]
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:10 PM on March 8 [8 favorites]
as long as they had good intentions and plans before they carried out their massacre, then factually we can make this point neutrally without ANY invocation of morality at all. at all.
you keep coldly picking at this scab made of 700+ dead, unarmed israelis who were butchered.
lets apply your same logic to just-facts-on-the-ground-maam to Israel's (murderous) response. If I start just-facting about the proximity of a school (but of course not the kids in the school) to a rocket factory - which exist, and were absolutely as close as the kibbutzim were to military installations, and rocket factories are the definition of a military target! - see how quickly people would (rightly) jump on me about at best the reckless endangerment such an action construes. they would be right! if i made this kind of just-facting comment, it might even be deleted.
"just-facts" are the just-asking-questions of war analysis. there are no morality-free observations one can make about this kind of action.
posted by lalochezia at 5:18 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]
you keep coldly picking at this scab made of 700+ dead, unarmed israelis who were butchered.
lets apply your same logic to just-facts-on-the-ground-maam to Israel's (murderous) response. If I start just-facting about the proximity of a school (but of course not the kids in the school) to a rocket factory - which exist, and were absolutely as close as the kibbutzim were to military installations, and rocket factories are the definition of a military target! - see how quickly people would (rightly) jump on me about at best the reckless endangerment such an action construes. they would be right! if i made this kind of just-facting comment, it might even be deleted.
"just-facts" are the just-asking-questions of war analysis. there are no morality-free observations one can make about this kind of action.
posted by lalochezia at 5:18 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter maths: 1 = 100 because viscera.
justifying genocide with genuine trauma and/or fear and invocations of "security" is the standard genocidal move. if one doesn't want people to say things that seem callous, don't ignore power dynamics and centre a proper subset of the relevant emotions in more or less the same way the genocidaires and their apologists are doing as a well-worn rhetorical strategy.
posted by busted_crayons at 7:04 PM on March 8 [6 favorites]
justifying genocide with genuine trauma and/or fear and invocations of "security" is the standard genocidal move. if one doesn't want people to say things that seem callous, don't ignore power dynamics and centre a proper subset of the relevant emotions in more or less the same way the genocidaires and their apologists are doing as a well-worn rhetorical strategy.
posted by busted_crayons at 7:04 PM on March 8 [6 favorites]
There were many minimally violent, effective ways that Israel could have responded to October 7 in the long term if they really wanted to have "the world's most moral army", etc.
Many of the initial responses to the threat from Gaza were indeed non-violent - a border wall in response to suicide bombers (1996), then the destruction of all Israeli settlements in Gaza and forced relocation of settlers back into Israel and return of that land to Gaza (2005), then a blockade (2007), then the Iron Dome.
Israel has successfully negotiated non-violent solutions to their relationships with Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt over military attacks and territorial claims, so it's not as if they're incapable of it.
To kind of tie this back to the "children of the colonized" original topic - my perspective as an ethnic Chinese minority in Malaysia is that the 3 generations of my family experienced 3 different forms of ethnic violence:
1. Ethnic cleansing (Sook Ching) and sexual slavery (comfort women) by the Japanese in their war against the Chinese. Immediate family members described hiding in the jungle and disguising themselves as boys by cutting their hair short and wearing boys clothes to avoid sexual slavery.
2. Forced relocation and imprisonment of roughly 500,000 ethnic Chinese (30% of the total minority population) in about 500 concentration camps for about 10 years, by the British in their war against the Chinese Communists.
3. Racial riots and violence by the Malay Muslim majority against the Chinese minority in the May 13 incident where thousands lost their homes, and hundreds were killed - of course, the Malay army and police was sent in to "control" the incident, and self-reported the number of deaths. Immediate family members had a front row seat to the slaughter as it happened as they were working in a hospital when the riots started and the military "shoot-on-sight" curfew cut off all communications and movement for several days, so no one even knew which family members were still alive or dead.
The point of that whole excursion is that, it's a violent, chaotic world we live in, especially for minorities, and European actors certainly don't have a monopoly on violence. In all that, it was the British that had the most "minimally violent approach" - yet in the very first line of the article it denounces "forced removal" as a reprehensible plan. There are are FAR worse fates in the world if you're at the mercy of non-Western state actors! And I'm not unhappy the British did what they did - I don't think anyone would say the British should have left in 1945 rather than fight the Communists, and let Malaya + Singapore become a Communist state like North Korea or Vietnam.
Of course, different people will have different opinions. You could, based on your own experiences and opinions say that, no, what the British did was excessively violent and cruel, and they shouldn't have done it. We would just have to disagree.
The same thing with Israel: is the current war that has killed 30,000 the minimum violence necessary? Have they already exhausted all the non-violent measures? If I was Netanyahu, do I think I could have done a better job? I'd like to think so. What would Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, Mohammed bin Salman or Bashar al-Assad have done? I think history has already spoken - close to 400,000 killed in Yemen, 600,000 killed in Syria. Those cases we would point to as not being the minimum violence necessary. Or maybe they are?
As a minority I feel confident in migrating to a Western country knowing my rights will be protected as far as is reasonably possible - this "minimum level of violence" standard that we talk about - the whole democracy, rule of law, human rights thing. For example, the recent court decision granting an LGBT West Bank Palestinian the right to seek asylum in Israel and giving him an extended Israeli residency. Yes, violence will sometimes happen, and sometimes needs to happen - that's the paradox of tolerance, right? Even one death is a tragedy, so to excuse even one death you could rightly say is a dehumanizing statement.
That's my perspective, when looking at the conflicts in the Middle East - I'll always pragmatically back a Western-style democracy over any of the theocracies, dictatorships or monarchies in the world. For example, Yemen reduced their Jewish population from 60,000 to virtually zero, and are doing the same to other minorities (Baha’is etc), but barely anyone criticizes them, because of course we don't hold them to the same standard. And yet some people even say that those Jewish people left of their own accord, rather than taking the view they had already been harshly persecuted by the Zaydis for hundreds of years until a safer haven was created elsewhere. Western style democracies are safe havens for minorities, even the Arab minority in Israel is increasing over time pointing to the absence of emigration, contrasting to the Jews in Yemen who fled persecution, were expelled, or killed.
posted by xdvesper at 10:08 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]
Many of the initial responses to the threat from Gaza were indeed non-violent - a border wall in response to suicide bombers (1996), then the destruction of all Israeli settlements in Gaza and forced relocation of settlers back into Israel and return of that land to Gaza (2005), then a blockade (2007), then the Iron Dome.
Israel has successfully negotiated non-violent solutions to their relationships with Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt over military attacks and territorial claims, so it's not as if they're incapable of it.
To kind of tie this back to the "children of the colonized" original topic - my perspective as an ethnic Chinese minority in Malaysia is that the 3 generations of my family experienced 3 different forms of ethnic violence:
1. Ethnic cleansing (Sook Ching) and sexual slavery (comfort women) by the Japanese in their war against the Chinese. Immediate family members described hiding in the jungle and disguising themselves as boys by cutting their hair short and wearing boys clothes to avoid sexual slavery.
2. Forced relocation and imprisonment of roughly 500,000 ethnic Chinese (30% of the total minority population) in about 500 concentration camps for about 10 years, by the British in their war against the Chinese Communists.
3. Racial riots and violence by the Malay Muslim majority against the Chinese minority in the May 13 incident where thousands lost their homes, and hundreds were killed - of course, the Malay army and police was sent in to "control" the incident, and self-reported the number of deaths. Immediate family members had a front row seat to the slaughter as it happened as they were working in a hospital when the riots started and the military "shoot-on-sight" curfew cut off all communications and movement for several days, so no one even knew which family members were still alive or dead.
The point of that whole excursion is that, it's a violent, chaotic world we live in, especially for minorities, and European actors certainly don't have a monopoly on violence. In all that, it was the British that had the most "minimally violent approach" - yet in the very first line of the article it denounces "forced removal" as a reprehensible plan. There are are FAR worse fates in the world if you're at the mercy of non-Western state actors! And I'm not unhappy the British did what they did - I don't think anyone would say the British should have left in 1945 rather than fight the Communists, and let Malaya + Singapore become a Communist state like North Korea or Vietnam.
Of course, different people will have different opinions. You could, based on your own experiences and opinions say that, no, what the British did was excessively violent and cruel, and they shouldn't have done it. We would just have to disagree.
The same thing with Israel: is the current war that has killed 30,000 the minimum violence necessary? Have they already exhausted all the non-violent measures? If I was Netanyahu, do I think I could have done a better job? I'd like to think so. What would Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, Mohammed bin Salman or Bashar al-Assad have done? I think history has already spoken - close to 400,000 killed in Yemen, 600,000 killed in Syria. Those cases we would point to as not being the minimum violence necessary. Or maybe they are?
As a minority I feel confident in migrating to a Western country knowing my rights will be protected as far as is reasonably possible - this "minimum level of violence" standard that we talk about - the whole democracy, rule of law, human rights thing. For example, the recent court decision granting an LGBT West Bank Palestinian the right to seek asylum in Israel and giving him an extended Israeli residency. Yes, violence will sometimes happen, and sometimes needs to happen - that's the paradox of tolerance, right? Even one death is a tragedy, so to excuse even one death you could rightly say is a dehumanizing statement.
That's my perspective, when looking at the conflicts in the Middle East - I'll always pragmatically back a Western-style democracy over any of the theocracies, dictatorships or monarchies in the world. For example, Yemen reduced their Jewish population from 60,000 to virtually zero, and are doing the same to other minorities (Baha’is etc), but barely anyone criticizes them, because of course we don't hold them to the same standard. And yet some people even say that those Jewish people left of their own accord, rather than taking the view they had already been harshly persecuted by the Zaydis for hundreds of years until a safer haven was created elsewhere. Western style democracies are safe havens for minorities, even the Arab minority in Israel is increasing over time pointing to the absence of emigration, contrasting to the Jews in Yemen who fled persecution, were expelled, or killed.
posted by xdvesper at 10:08 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]
Didn't we cover the Yemeni history one already? Is there only one queer Palestinian and is that person's story representative?
posted by cendawanita at 10:14 PM on March 8 [4 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 10:14 PM on March 8 [4 favorites]
But specific to the thread though, which principle do these episodes represent, I think it's evident the answer we respectively have, we do not share.
posted by cendawanita at 10:17 PM on March 8 [5 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 10:17 PM on March 8 [5 favorites]
for example, Yemen reduced their Jewish population from 60,000 to virtually zero, and are doing the same to other minorities (Baha’is etc), but barely anyone criticizes them, because of course we don't hold them to the same standard......mumble mumble comparisons to the numbers assad and salman have killed
Once again, the facts that
i) Israel is not at its max-war-crime, max-ethnic-cleansing yet, isn't the flex you think it is, and does not excuse them from their existing war crimes and existing ethnic-cleansing ,
and
ii) we (the US et al) do not pay for Yemen's actions to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year for the last 70+ yrs, and we don't hold yemen up as an example for all; and nay!..... criticisms of yemen are worse than the actions of yemen itself.
posted by lalochezia at 5:44 AM on March 9 [4 favorites]
Once again, the facts that
i) Israel is not at its max-war-crime, max-ethnic-cleansing yet, isn't the flex you think it is, and does not excuse them from their existing war crimes and existing ethnic-cleansing ,
and
ii) we (the US et al) do not pay for Yemen's actions to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year for the last 70+ yrs, and we don't hold yemen up as an example for all; and nay!..... criticisms of yemen are worse than the actions of yemen itself.
posted by lalochezia at 5:44 AM on March 9 [4 favorites]
The problem with that statement is that it could be argued that Israel hasn't done the minimum violence necessary yet.
I'm not sure why this kind of grotesque genocide apologism is allowed on this site, when other much milder shows of racism are not.
I'm glad you're at least ashamed enough of yourself that you couch it in all kinds of weaselly passive voice though! It sure could be argued that Israel hasn't killed and starved enough children yet.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:22 PM on March 9 [6 favorites]
I'm not sure why this kind of grotesque genocide apologism is allowed on this site, when other much milder shows of racism are not.
I'm glad you're at least ashamed enough of yourself that you couch it in all kinds of weaselly passive voice though! It sure could be argued that Israel hasn't killed and starved enough children yet.
posted by lizard2590 at 1:22 PM on March 9 [6 favorites]
I read this article a day ago and initially it seemed on target. But, after some thought, I'm not so sure.
I mean, I'm German. And I see people here talking about the superficiality of the understanding/morality of genocide in this country, the blind spots in the culture as the author stated. This is a fair point. But:
Is it not the most European colonialist mindset thing to do, to place moral judgement on those who were previously subjugated by people on our continent?
When I saw fellow Germans waving Palestinian flags not far from places where Synagogues were burnt to the ground not long ago, it gave me an uneasy feeling. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but I think it's related to this point (from the article):
That is, if being a child of the colonized is what inspired one's political thought today and the colonizer is defined as Europe, then it follows that the children of those who were colonizers or committed genocide should be expected to sympathize with first and foremost with the descendants of those who were the victims. In Germany's case: Israel, Namibia, Poland and many others.
But where does that leave the Palestinians? They're not in the picture.
And now I'm back to the start: this is where I have a hard time with the article. If the political groups are simplified to Europe and Former Colonies, then that in itself starts to look, to me, overly simplified. xdvesper described the issue up thread better than I can.
posted by UN at 12:17 PM on March 10
I mean, I'm German. And I see people here talking about the superficiality of the understanding/morality of genocide in this country, the blind spots in the culture as the author stated. This is a fair point. But:
Is it not the most European colonialist mindset thing to do, to place moral judgement on those who were previously subjugated by people on our continent?
When I saw fellow Germans waving Palestinian flags not far from places where Synagogues were burnt to the ground not long ago, it gave me an uneasy feeling. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but I think it's related to this point (from the article):
What we are dealing with is an incapacity to learn from the past. An incapacity to be moral. And, an incapacity that has as its consequence complicity with genocide. There’s something hard for us, children of the colonized, to articulate because the world is upside down. Europe and its descendants can’t differentiate between principle and episode.If we're talking about children of the colonized, then we're also talking about children of the colonizers.
That is, if being a child of the colonized is what inspired one's political thought today and the colonizer is defined as Europe, then it follows that the children of those who were colonizers or committed genocide should be expected to sympathize with first and foremost with the descendants of those who were the victims. In Germany's case: Israel, Namibia, Poland and many others.
But where does that leave the Palestinians? They're not in the picture.
And now I'm back to the start: this is where I have a hard time with the article. If the political groups are simplified to Europe and Former Colonies, then that in itself starts to look, to me, overly simplified. xdvesper described the issue up thread better than I can.
posted by UN at 12:17 PM on March 10
But even in that example, then why did Namibia's comments following Germany's decision to announce that they would submit interventions on Israel's behalf in the ICJ genocide case (as opposed to the Occupation case, which notably, despite being on the docket as an intervention submission, Germany in the end opted not to present orally) not trigger a deeper/sustained reaction of contemplation (at least)? It doesn't seem so confused to me, but from my perspective, despite sharing the same country as xdvesper, in this very specific thread about coloniality, it always seems like the west will be expected to be more sympathetic about the settler colonials or comprador class it's left behind than the natives those communities were left to replace (as administrators and resource extractors).
Mind, I am pointing out to a very very specific thread of relationship - because behind that historicity, like South Africa, Malaysia also went through a social restructuring affirmative action process that has been absolutely blighted by corruption, but it's left a result where there's essentially two bilateral spheres of majoritarian power, neither fully dominating and both fully accessing valid histories of oppression (just like Apartheid-era whites accessed Boers' oppression at the hands of the British, and ANC elite accessing Apartheid history to commit to continuing nepotism and cronyism). It's very important for me to keep mentioning this because for Malaysians at least, the New Economic Policy (and it's legacy policies -- this is mainly corruption at play) has been around longer than Black Economic Empowerment policy (it's been said NEP was an inspo for BEE), and even so I hear things both from white and middle-class black South Africans that would sound no different than back home.
So Malaysia isn't the best country for analogy to get to the point of the article imo, but I cannot deny it's still pertinent. As I'm writing I'm reminded of a completely incredible article written in an anglophone French news portal that took off like wildfire amongst anglophone non-Malay Malaysians because in discussing the current state of ethnofascisms (especially Malay-Muslim's as while its stuck insofar of economic reform, the political sphere is their majority - just like black South Africans), it's been compared that Malays are like white people.
This was received very well by my people, because if I can say one thing about post-Cold War Southeast Asia esp the anglophone side, is that we've lost solidarity with the Third World and all our understanding of ourselves is juryrigged theory from western contexts. When, and I thank infini for introducing this genre of South American study, if we even understood "coloniality of power" (the idea being that colonial structures persist in independent states because the power structure is still arranged according to those who most benefited the colonial system; ie skin colour may change but the calculus haven't), the comparison would be treated with extreme skepticism.
Still, unrelated to this thread but they come out in my timeline in the last week and are extremely relevant:
Babak (an Israeli): Next time some hasbarist says Zionism isn’t colonialism, show them this video. It was so colonial, even recently arrived Yemenite Jews were looked at like colonial subjects, and this colonial ethnocentrism undergirded the trafficking of Yemeni babies to European Jewish families.
(They don't have a direct link anymore, they downloaded it years back from Lavon Institute's fb)
which the Israeli account I do follow added: This reminded me of this ad for canned instant hummus, from 1961, displaying a similarly racist attitude towards the "primitive" Yemeni Jews.
And this article, which caught my interest, because when I went to Uganda, I Had Thoughts one of which led to a series of me questioning East Africans I know, informed mostly by my Malaysian lens: 1) where are the poor Indians?; 2) where are the mixed-race African Indians? 3) where do Indians and Africans hang out? Do they? And because I didn't manage to speak to Indian Africans this article brought up some things that I did expect to hear as a Malaysian but did not hear from Africans (e.g. the racial grievance but also actual political shutting out):
Functionally White: What I Didn't Say About Being South Asian in Uganda
posted by cendawanita at 7:06 PM on March 10 [4 favorites]
Mind, I am pointing out to a very very specific thread of relationship - because behind that historicity, like South Africa, Malaysia also went through a social restructuring affirmative action process that has been absolutely blighted by corruption, but it's left a result where there's essentially two bilateral spheres of majoritarian power, neither fully dominating and both fully accessing valid histories of oppression (just like Apartheid-era whites accessed Boers' oppression at the hands of the British, and ANC elite accessing Apartheid history to commit to continuing nepotism and cronyism). It's very important for me to keep mentioning this because for Malaysians at least, the New Economic Policy (and it's legacy policies -- this is mainly corruption at play) has been around longer than Black Economic Empowerment policy (it's been said NEP was an inspo for BEE), and even so I hear things both from white and middle-class black South Africans that would sound no different than back home.
So Malaysia isn't the best country for analogy to get to the point of the article imo, but I cannot deny it's still pertinent. As I'm writing I'm reminded of a completely incredible article written in an anglophone French news portal that took off like wildfire amongst anglophone non-Malay Malaysians because in discussing the current state of ethnofascisms (especially Malay-Muslim's as while its stuck insofar of economic reform, the political sphere is their majority - just like black South Africans), it's been compared that Malays are like white people.
This was received very well by my people, because if I can say one thing about post-Cold War Southeast Asia esp the anglophone side, is that we've lost solidarity with the Third World and all our understanding of ourselves is juryrigged theory from western contexts. When, and I thank infini for introducing this genre of South American study, if we even understood "coloniality of power" (the idea being that colonial structures persist in independent states because the power structure is still arranged according to those who most benefited the colonial system; ie skin colour may change but the calculus haven't), the comparison would be treated with extreme skepticism.
Still, unrelated to this thread but they come out in my timeline in the last week and are extremely relevant:
Babak (an Israeli): Next time some hasbarist says Zionism isn’t colonialism, show them this video. It was so colonial, even recently arrived Yemenite Jews were looked at like colonial subjects, and this colonial ethnocentrism undergirded the trafficking of Yemeni babies to European Jewish families.
(They don't have a direct link anymore, they downloaded it years back from Lavon Institute's fb)
which the Israeli account I do follow added: This reminded me of this ad for canned instant hummus, from 1961, displaying a similarly racist attitude towards the "primitive" Yemeni Jews.
And this article, which caught my interest, because when I went to Uganda, I Had Thoughts one of which led to a series of me questioning East Africans I know, informed mostly by my Malaysian lens: 1) where are the poor Indians?; 2) where are the mixed-race African Indians? 3) where do Indians and Africans hang out? Do they? And because I didn't manage to speak to Indian Africans this article brought up some things that I did expect to hear as a Malaysian but did not hear from Africans (e.g. the racial grievance but also actual political shutting out):
Functionally White: What I Didn't Say About Being South Asian in Uganda
posted by cendawanita at 7:06 PM on March 10 [4 favorites]
Tangent: this bit in the article: (a conversation with Kenyans)
His question prickled me. Why was he lumping me in with other mzungus [whites]? I’d told him yesterday I was born in Chennai.
“I…I don’t know,” I said. “You know I’m not really mzungu, right?”
“Aren’t you?” His face shifted, suddenly looking much older.
Reminded me of how I'm told that in Kenya Barack Obama would be called white as well, and also how Southeast Asian Chinese can think of Western Chinese as not the same sort of Chinese (hilariously and wrongfully conveyed in Crazy Rich Asians).
If only skin colour is the most accurate tell of coloniality.
posted by cendawanita at 7:46 PM on March 10 [3 favorites]
His question prickled me. Why was he lumping me in with other mzungus [whites]? I’d told him yesterday I was born in Chennai.
“I…I don’t know,” I said. “You know I’m not really mzungu, right?”
“Aren’t you?” His face shifted, suddenly looking much older.
Reminded me of how I'm told that in Kenya Barack Obama would be called white as well, and also how Southeast Asian Chinese can think of Western Chinese as not the same sort of Chinese (hilariously and wrongfully conveyed in Crazy Rich Asians).
If only skin colour is the most accurate tell of coloniality.
posted by cendawanita at 7:46 PM on March 10 [3 favorites]
if being a child of the colonized is what inspired one's political thought today and the colonizer is defined as Europe, then it follows that the children of those who were colonizers or committed genocide should be expected to sympathize with first and foremost with the descendants of those who were the victims.
I am a descendant of Europeans who colonized Australia. I have seen, up close and personal, what the ongoing legacy of that colonial violence has done and continues to do to the families who were here tens of thousands of years before mine.
The lesson I draw from that is absolutely not that this continent's indigenous families have thereby acquired some kind of moral licence to colonize other continents in their turn. Rather, it is that colonization as a process is an unequivocal evil that ought to be denounced and decried by any decent person, and that any society founded on colonization has a clear moral obligation to reverse and mitigate, to the greatest extent achievable, damage already done.
In common with every colonial and post-colonial society of which I am aware, this is something we continue to fail miserably at.
I don't think whiteness is so much a matter of skin colour as of endless whitewashing; in the words of the prophet Wilhoit, that "elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages". I think that's why the Right is where any society's supremacists find their political comfort zone.
posted by flabdablet at 4:24 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
I am a descendant of Europeans who colonized Australia. I have seen, up close and personal, what the ongoing legacy of that colonial violence has done and continues to do to the families who were here tens of thousands of years before mine.
The lesson I draw from that is absolutely not that this continent's indigenous families have thereby acquired some kind of moral licence to colonize other continents in their turn. Rather, it is that colonization as a process is an unequivocal evil that ought to be denounced and decried by any decent person, and that any society founded on colonization has a clear moral obligation to reverse and mitigate, to the greatest extent achievable, damage already done.
In common with every colonial and post-colonial society of which I am aware, this is something we continue to fail miserably at.
I don't think whiteness is so much a matter of skin colour as of endless whitewashing; in the words of the prophet Wilhoit, that "elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages". I think that's why the Right is where any society's supremacists find their political comfort zone.
posted by flabdablet at 4:24 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
I am a descendant of Europeans who colonized Australia. I have seen, up close and personal, what the ongoing legacy of that colonial violence has done and continues to do to the families who were here tens of thousands of years before mine.
Right but this sounds a lot like what the main article criticizes, Europeans having an episodal understanding of colonization and subjugation.
The lesson I draw from that is absolutely not that this continent's indigenous families have thereby acquired some kind of moral licence to colonize other continents in their turn.
To be blunt, I interpret this as an intellectual way of saying "got mine".
posted by UN at 7:05 AM on March 11
Right but this sounds a lot like what the main article criticizes, Europeans having an episodal understanding of colonization and subjugation.
The lesson I draw from that is absolutely not that this continent's indigenous families have thereby acquired some kind of moral licence to colonize other continents in their turn.
To be blunt, I interpret this as an intellectual way of saying "got mine".
posted by UN at 7:05 AM on March 11
How does that interpretation apply to the facts on the ground in Palestine, though? How would you articulate it to someone currently undergoing colonization by Israel? Say that you can't opine, because your state had harmed Jewish people in the past? It seems to make much more sense to listen to a variety of groups - and hey, guess what, the global South is generally siding with Palestine!
Saying that you have to ignore them, because you have a greater obligation to some abstract idea of listening to people that have been subjugated, is not a great look.
posted by sagc at 7:30 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
Saying that you have to ignore them, because you have a greater obligation to some abstract idea of listening to people that have been subjugated, is not a great look.
posted by sagc at 7:30 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
To be blunt, I interpret this as an intellectual way of saying "got mine".
To be blunt, that interpretation is so completely fucked up, so utterly sideways to reality, that the only way I can make sense of it is to assume that it's coming from a place of wilful obtuseness.
Acquiring territory by conquest is wrong. It's wrong when anybody does it. Interpret that any bogus way you like.
posted by flabdablet at 8:27 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
To be blunt, that interpretation is so completely fucked up, so utterly sideways to reality, that the only way I can make sense of it is to assume that it's coming from a place of wilful obtuseness.
Acquiring territory by conquest is wrong. It's wrong when anybody does it. Interpret that any bogus way you like.
posted by flabdablet at 8:27 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
Say that you can't opine, because your state had harmed Jewish people in the past?
Pretty much, yes. For the same reason, it's questionable for white/European Australians to tell Aboriginal Australians what they should or should not do. Where's the moral standing to do so? It strikes me as completely hollow.
Listening is one thing, telling is another.
posted by UN at 9:45 AM on March 11
Pretty much, yes. For the same reason, it's questionable for white/European Australians to tell Aboriginal Australians what they should or should not do. Where's the moral standing to do so? It strikes me as completely hollow.
Listening is one thing, telling is another.
posted by UN at 9:45 AM on March 11
The idea that, somehow, supporting Israel is listening, while supporting Palestine is telling, is strange. Or do you deny that the West had anything to do with the current circumstances of Palestine? Otherwise, you're just saying we need to listen to Israel more than Palestine due to, effectively, a selective reading of history.
posted by sagc at 9:52 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
posted by sagc at 9:52 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]
I feel like you're not making it very clear what you *are* saying, then? Who has moral standing to condemn genocide? Who does not?
posted by sagc at 10:05 AM on March 11 [4 favorites]
posted by sagc at 10:05 AM on March 11 [4 favorites]
Both the people committing genocide and the people suffering it?
I don't understand what thinking leads you to think that listening will somehow justify the starvation of hundreds of thousands, the families erased.
posted by Audreynachrome at 1:42 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
I don't understand what thinking leads you to think that listening will somehow justify the starvation of hundreds of thousands, the families erased.
posted by Audreynachrome at 1:42 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]
it's questionable for white/European Australians to tell Aboriginal Australians what they should or should not do
I have never once heard any Aboriginal Australian opine that colonialism is a good idea.
Displacing indigenous populations and riding roughshod over their cultural practices is the opposite of caring for country. Support for colonialism is, in my experience, only to be found amongst the most wilfully ignorant colonizers.
The idea that espousing an anti-colonial position is somehow indicative of not listening to Aboriginal Australians but instead telling them what to do is just plain bizarre.
The idea that having inflicted a genocide on a people obliges the perpetrators to support endeavours by their victims to inflict another genocide on some other people somewhere else is not only bizarre, it's evil.
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on March 11 [5 favorites]
I have never once heard any Aboriginal Australian opine that colonialism is a good idea.
Displacing indigenous populations and riding roughshod over their cultural practices is the opposite of caring for country. Support for colonialism is, in my experience, only to be found amongst the most wilfully ignorant colonizers.
The idea that espousing an anti-colonial position is somehow indicative of not listening to Aboriginal Australians but instead telling them what to do is just plain bizarre.
The idea that having inflicted a genocide on a people obliges the perpetrators to support endeavours by their victims to inflict another genocide on some other people somewhere else is not only bizarre, it's evil.
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on March 11 [5 favorites]
Not only is it evil, it's fucking cowardly. It's an attempt to sidestep the horror of having to live with the fact of one's own family having committed genocide by creating an opportunity to point at the survivors and say look, what we did was really not so bad, it was nothing that they don't do as well.
posted by flabdablet at 4:55 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 4:55 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
That is, if being a child of the colonized is what inspired one's political thought today and the colonizer is defined as Europe, then it follows that the children of those who were colonizers or committed genocide should be expected to sympathize with first and foremost with the descendants of those who were the victims. In Germany's case: Israel, Namibia, Poland and many others.
But where does that leave the Palestinians? They're not in the picture.
I know this isn't going to convince you because a six-month genocide and 30,000 dead and your country's horrific complicity in yet another genocide has not convinced you--but this has got to be the most bizarre and logically inconsistent thinking on genocide that I've ever seen.
But if we follow it to its nonsensical conclusion: if you have only an enhanced responsibility to listen to Namibians, why aren't you? What have you done to take responsibility for your country's genocide in Namibia? Or of any of Germany's non-European victims?
I'm pretty sure I already know the answer (and so do many of us who are "children of the colonized"). It's because there are so few political and financial consequences to not listening to people in the Global South, to people living in the countries in which Europeans murdered, enslaved, extracted and left in seemingly permanent poverty and subjugation over the course of the past few centuries. And then walked away with clean hands.
posted by lizard2590 at 6:30 PM on March 11 [5 favorites]
On a hyper personal level, then no, I haven't done pretty much anything to help anyone outside of the immediate people around me. I could say that I understand the suffering my country has caused outside of Europe — but I doubt I ever could. I could borrow your moral compass, sometimes that's good, but it wouldn't be mine. Right now I'm not sure where you want to take me. It's the internet, I don't know you, who you are, what you've experienced...
I hope we agree that there were victims of Nazi Germany. We have a responsibility to listen to them — always — don't you think? This seems non controversial to me. It doesn't mean I support the horrendous things I've been accused of here.
posted by UN at 9:56 PM on March 11
I hope we agree that there were victims of Nazi Germany. We have a responsibility to listen to them — always — don't you think? This seems non controversial to me. It doesn't mean I support the horrendous things I've been accused of here.
posted by UN at 9:56 PM on March 11
You never have to listen to the excuses those committing genocide give. It's always justified, always necessary, always the bare minimum violence, they're always under existential threat, a few bad apples, a few blowhards, whenever they talk of it.
You may not support a genocide but you're here arguing that we need to listen to both sides. I'm not the arbiter of where that puts you, but I think there are positions that are more decisively against it.
posted by Audreynachrome at 11:31 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
You may not support a genocide but you're here arguing that we need to listen to both sides. I'm not the arbiter of where that puts you, but I think there are positions that are more decisively against it.
posted by Audreynachrome at 11:31 PM on March 11 [3 favorites]
The thing I would say about that (European) colonizer guilt, when it comes to the historical moment that eventually led to TFA, is that imo what seems evident: the acknowledgement - both organic or pushed by material reality - that the colonized are just "as good" as the colonizers. But who the colonized is depends very much on who successfully agitated for independence (episode) rather than a given assumption for everyone (principle). Flowing from that then was the concern of who's going to be doing all the administrating and business of ruling, which is answered if "we" understand that not all peoples are "fit" to lead, that the business of colonizing itself being interchangeable with progress, meaning that colonization itself was seen as an inevitable point of history (and you can use history to show that the European episode is just another development of that principle). Now, just because you're fit to lead in one place (episode) it doesn't mean you're still an equal in rights or character (principle).
Because before Israel, there was Liberia, speaking of western minorities. Why was the emancipation of Black Americans or the remedy for European Jews meant that they need to be free somewhere far away from their original home? What is so essentially different and non-negotiable that the business of reparations cannot be made in one physical space?
And Israel isn't unique, once you've removed it from the Western cultural sphere. The global south is littered with examples of this thinking, when the Europeans receeded, local elites took over proving their fitness either by violence or by diplomacy, and then started almost immediately their own expansion (just to use Israel's history, and one that I said is not unique in kind maybe in degrees) with the allowance of their respective Western benefactors (and the differences in that experience lie in their respective national characters - for example I think I'm going to hit the limits of this analogy quickly if I account for francophone Africa). Using the phrasing developed in this thread - Did American guilt spelled the end of any nascent Okinawan freedom movement? Did Dutch guilt allowed for Indonesia to expand right up to the Papuan territories? Certainly I can say British needs and guilt allowed Malaya to do something (that is familiar in British colonial memory with the transfer of Arab Jews into Israel) where it successfully negotiated by paperwork transfer of Borneo territories into the federation of Malaysia in order to counterbalance Singapore's Chinese majority* by arguing that we are all natives, so we must be culturally same enough, even if the underlying understanding of the first among equals meant it's the Malayan natives who've been talking to the British who are the most justified to claim authenticity and moral injury from the Brits. I have no doubt that if China didn't become communist the annexation of Tibet would be a non-starter politically.
So I'm appreciative of Europeans listening, but listen, the scam went both ways. 😌 Post-war postcolonialism was simply a change in leadership, and people in the now-global south took their chance and good for them for doing so, but we were all marinated in the same idea of dominance. It wasn't equality of outcomes but opportunity.
*If you'd like another point of resonance for the respective poles of Malaysian opinions on the two-state solution
posted by cendawanita at 1:00 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
Because before Israel, there was Liberia, speaking of western minorities. Why was the emancipation of Black Americans or the remedy for European Jews meant that they need to be free somewhere far away from their original home? What is so essentially different and non-negotiable that the business of reparations cannot be made in one physical space?
And Israel isn't unique, once you've removed it from the Western cultural sphere. The global south is littered with examples of this thinking, when the Europeans receeded, local elites took over proving their fitness either by violence or by diplomacy, and then started almost immediately their own expansion (just to use Israel's history, and one that I said is not unique in kind maybe in degrees) with the allowance of their respective Western benefactors (and the differences in that experience lie in their respective national characters - for example I think I'm going to hit the limits of this analogy quickly if I account for francophone Africa). Using the phrasing developed in this thread - Did American guilt spelled the end of any nascent Okinawan freedom movement? Did Dutch guilt allowed for Indonesia to expand right up to the Papuan territories? Certainly I can say British needs and guilt allowed Malaya to do something (that is familiar in British colonial memory with the transfer of Arab Jews into Israel) where it successfully negotiated by paperwork transfer of Borneo territories into the federation of Malaysia in order to counterbalance Singapore's Chinese majority* by arguing that we are all natives, so we must be culturally same enough, even if the underlying understanding of the first among equals meant it's the Malayan natives who've been talking to the British who are the most justified to claim authenticity and moral injury from the Brits. I have no doubt that if China didn't become communist the annexation of Tibet would be a non-starter politically.
So I'm appreciative of Europeans listening, but listen, the scam went both ways. 😌 Post-war postcolonialism was simply a change in leadership, and people in the now-global south took their chance and good for them for doing so, but we were all marinated in the same idea of dominance. It wasn't equality of outcomes but opportunity.
*If you'd like another point of resonance for the respective poles of Malaysian opinions on the two-state solution
posted by cendawanita at 1:00 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
So I'm appreciative of Europeans listening, but listen, the scam went both ways. 😌 Post-war postcolonialism was simply a change in leadership, and people in the now-global south took their chance and good for them for doing so, but we were all marinated in the same idea of dominance. It wasn't equality of outcomes but opportunity.
I mean, it is a bit of a Catch 22 for Europe, is it not? Support one, hurt the other. How would we make the right choices?
We've got a raging war on our continent that's, to borrow your word, marinated in European imperialist legacy. And even that we can't stop, with European leaders confused about how to act in what should be a clear moral case.
And that also goes both ways: I don't fault leaders in and from former colonies for supporting Putin and his genocidal war; there's some karma to that. I don't agree with the position, but I get that distance matters, and things outside of one's own neighborhood aren't going to be well understood.
And so that's my pessimism.
posted by UN at 4:29 AM on March 12
I mean, it is a bit of a Catch 22 for Europe, is it not? Support one, hurt the other. How would we make the right choices?
We've got a raging war on our continent that's, to borrow your word, marinated in European imperialist legacy. And even that we can't stop, with European leaders confused about how to act in what should be a clear moral case.
And that also goes both ways: I don't fault leaders in and from former colonies for supporting Putin and his genocidal war; there's some karma to that. I don't agree with the position, but I get that distance matters, and things outside of one's own neighborhood aren't going to be well understood.
And so that's my pessimism.
posted by UN at 4:29 AM on March 12
It's warranted pessimism if we keep confusing what's at play, to be sure. But also bluntly: what's a win-win situation here, and is that even an accurate read? I can't recall if I've read it here but I know I myself have said it elsewhere re: Israel with the West esp the USA - with friends like these, who needs enemies?
Support one, hurt the other. How would we make the right choices?
Look at the principles at play. Also, we're talking about nations not children. You don't have to coddle anybody. I've heard it said that a good political compromise is where no one is fully happy, but regardless it's not a field of brand new study like microplastics. Politics have been around forever. And again, it still implies a patronage of some kind. Treat those countries like any other normal country of your equal stature worthy to be seated at the same table.
Russia is a good tangent and example, because that is a more clearcut case of imperial politics and great power politics tangled up developing country political economy - even when the morals are quite clear, material reality seldom make the steps clear and practical due to the magnetic pull exerted by each pole.
Israel isn't even an imperial power. At best it's like a client state (in my global south view) that advances a great power agenda. But both psychology and money has made that fact feels unclear back in imperial core, but those are details (though very important ones). In my usual global south experience this usually clarifies the next steps (sanctions on Russia felt seismic because it's not usually done to a great power even what was at the time a fading one) because client states are not so important that the states that undergird the international system can't assume the principled position (E.g. Malaysia is apparently the largest exporter of chips into the US as of last year; we're still playing snakes and ladders with the State Dept Human Trafficking tiers). That they've largely opted to not do so (even if unevenly) only exposes the usual hypocrisies to unusual levels.
posted by cendawanita at 6:00 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]
Support one, hurt the other. How would we make the right choices?
Look at the principles at play. Also, we're talking about nations not children. You don't have to coddle anybody. I've heard it said that a good political compromise is where no one is fully happy, but regardless it's not a field of brand new study like microplastics. Politics have been around forever. And again, it still implies a patronage of some kind. Treat those countries like any other normal country of your equal stature worthy to be seated at the same table.
Russia is a good tangent and example, because that is a more clearcut case of imperial politics and great power politics tangled up developing country political economy - even when the morals are quite clear, material reality seldom make the steps clear and practical due to the magnetic pull exerted by each pole.
Israel isn't even an imperial power. At best it's like a client state (in my global south view) that advances a great power agenda. But both psychology and money has made that fact feels unclear back in imperial core, but those are details (though very important ones). In my usual global south experience this usually clarifies the next steps (sanctions on Russia felt seismic because it's not usually done to a great power even what was at the time a fading one) because client states are not so important that the states that undergird the international system can't assume the principled position (E.g. Malaysia is apparently the largest exporter of chips into the US as of last year; we're still playing snakes and ladders with the State Dept Human Trafficking tiers). That they've largely opted to not do so (even if unevenly) only exposes the usual hypocrisies to unusual levels.
posted by cendawanita at 6:00 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]
Not only is it evil, it's fucking cowardly. It's an attempt to sidestep the horror of having to live with the fact of one's own family having committed genocide by creating an opportunity to point at the survivors and say look, what we did was really not so bad, it was nothing that they don't do as well.
Yeah so you don’t know me or my family or what they did or experienced in WW2 or how many were killed by Nazis so maybe you can put down your pitch fork. I mean, WTF.
posted by UN at 6:05 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
Yeah so you don’t know me or my family or what they did or experienced in WW2 or how many were killed by Nazis so maybe you can put down your pitch fork. I mean, WTF.
posted by UN at 6:05 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
Not sure that has any impact on the fact you're saying people shouldn't listen to Palestinians or the global South in this thread, here and now.
Seriously - who do you think does not have the moral standing to condemn genocide? Because you sure seem to be arguing for a certain type of silence and complicitly on behalf of the West, regardless of how you couch it. Perhaps you could look at what you're saying in this thread, and consider if it might have been inflammatory and pitchfork-inviting?
Sorry people don't have a lot of time for your "actually, maybe we should just ignore it because we're German" stance.
posted by sagc at 6:24 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
Seriously - who do you think does not have the moral standing to condemn genocide? Because you sure seem to be arguing for a certain type of silence and complicitly on behalf of the West, regardless of how you couch it. Perhaps you could look at what you're saying in this thread, and consider if it might have been inflammatory and pitchfork-inviting?
Sorry people don't have a lot of time for your "actually, maybe we should just ignore it because we're German" stance.
posted by sagc at 6:24 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
Much like the US, post-war Germany has a horrible history when it comes to the intersections of the Jewish left, social justice, and Palestine. It's only gotten worse since Oct 7, too, and in both the US and Germany:
Denouncing critics of Israel as ‘un-Jews’ or antisemites is a perversion of history
Denouncing critics of Israel as ‘un-Jews’ or antisemites is a perversion of history
Perhaps in no country is official ostracism of “un-Jews” more entrenched than in Germany. “To be a leftwing Jew in today’s Germany is to live in a state of permanent cognitive dissonance,” says Susan Neiman, a Jewish American philosopher and director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam for the past quarter of a century. “German politicians and media talk incessantly about protecting Jews from antisemitism,” but many who “criticise the Israeli government and the war on Gaza have been cancelled and certainly attacked. I’m an Israeli citizen and I’ve been accused of being a Hamas supporter, and even a Nazi, in mainstream media. Need I add that I am neither?”Germany is a good place to be Jewish. Unless, like me, you’re a Jew who criticises Israel
Germany has proscribed many criticisms of Israel (such as describing its treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid”) and banned many expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The main targets have been Muslims, but Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights have also been deplatformed and arrested. According to the researcher Emily Dische-Becker, almost a third of those cancelled in Germany for their supposed antisemitism have been Jews. There is, as the Israeli-born architect and academic Eyal Weizman has acidly put it, a certain irony in “being lectured [on how to be properly Jewish] by the children and grandchildren of the perpetrators who murdered our families and who now dare to tell us that we are antisemitic”.
Like most secular Jews in Germany, I am accustomed to the aggression directed toward us by the powerful state-backed entity of “official Judaism”. Theatre performances receiving standing ovations in New York and Tel Aviv are cancelled in Germany at its behest, authors are disinvited, prizes are withdrawn or postponed, media companies are pressured to exclude our voices from their platforms. Since 7 October, anyone criticising the German response to the horrific attacks of the terror organisation Hamas has been subjected to even more marginalisation than usual.posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:48 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]
When I observed how Palestinians, and Muslims in general, in Germany were being held collectively liable for the Hamas attacks, I signed an open letter along with more than 100 Jewish academics, writers, artists and thinkers, in which we asked German politicians not to remove the last remaining safe spaces for people to express their grief and despair. There was immediate backlash from the official German Jewish community. On 1 November, just as I was about to appear on a TV talkshow with the vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, I was sent a screenshot of a post in which the same German Jewish journalist who attacked my book publicly discussed fantasies about me being held hostage in Gaza. It stopped my heart cold.
Suddenly, everything was clear to me. The same people who had been demanding that every Muslim in Germany condemn the Hamas attacks in order to receive permission to say anything else at all were fine with civilian deaths as long as the victims were people with opposing views. The German government’s unconditional support for Israel doesn’t only prevent it from condemning the deaths of civilians in Gaza – it also allows it to ignore the way dissenting Jews in Germany are being thrown under the same bus as they are in Israel.
Sorry people don't have a lot of time for your "actually, maybe we should just ignore it because we're German" stance.
I never said that. Nor did I ever express the idea that others shouldn't have an opinion. It's what some commentators have accused me of, many assumptions were thrown around, that became "truth", and here we are.
posted by UN at 6:58 AM on March 12
I never said that. Nor did I ever express the idea that others shouldn't have an opinion. It's what some commentators have accused me of, many assumptions were thrown around, that became "truth", and here we are.
posted by UN at 6:58 AM on March 12
Not sure that has any impact on the fact you're saying people shouldn't listen to Palestinians or the global South in this thread, here and now.
When did I ever say this? I mean, seriously, this is completely made up.
posted by UN at 7:15 AM on March 12
When did I ever say this? I mean, seriously, this is completely made up.
posted by UN at 7:15 AM on March 12
No need to respond directly as this is obviously going nowhere so I'll bow out, +1 for a proper metafilter pile-on. First time getting it front and center, it's an unenviable experience indeed!
Thanks cendawanita for your thoughtful replies and links!
Carry on.
posted by UN at 7:32 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
Thanks cendawanita for your thoughtful replies and links!
Carry on.
posted by UN at 7:32 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
As a European who tries to sit with the history of the continent in a way which doesn't centre my feelings about it, and who tries to make sure that my interactions with the people whose lives are so badly harmed by my ancestors don't make things worse, I feel it's this paragraph that we really have to sit with and understand. I would say I know Germany better than any other mainland European country (I'm English), and the article, for obvious reasons deals a lot with German attitudes, and I feel it probably is strongest where this desire to correct for past atrocities is most instrumentalised. But the British examples — and of course the current UK government is amongst the dimmer and nastier of the European governments, not actually the worst, but well below what's acceptable — are cogent.
Anyway, I don't think I've come to a conclusion in these few paragraphs. But I will once again try to understand the enormity of European colonisation, and once again, maybe I'll get better at losing colonialist attitudes.
posted by ambrosen at 5:22 PM on March 6 [12 favorites]