If you are expecting to read my usual Left Coast column, I tell you now that you will be disappointed. I write, today, from a place of horror—about the massacre unleashed against civilians in Israel this past week, and about the morally cretinous bloodlust reaction some who fashion themselves as being on the “left” seem to have experienced in its aftermath, but also in despair at the ghastly collective punishments being unleashed from the air on Gaza residents by Netanyahu’s far-right government and the Israeli military.
You completely dodged his point to talk about some other shit.
From the Hamas Political Document
“Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.”
Now, what does this mean? One interpretation could be that they only struggle against Zionist jingoists.
The taking of hostages tells us something deeper. Were they all IDF reservists and veterans? I doubt it.
So, what is a Zionist? I posit that it’s all of us who live and serve in the imperial core. Every single one of us that feeds into this death machine and our ruling class. So I’m a communist, what the fuck does that matter? I haven’t done anything. I’m paying off loans for my trailer, I’m selling my labor for wages, I’m consuming the same treats as everyone else, and I pay my taxes. Am I not a Zionist, simply because of that?
Ok but the fact that they took hostages that are just “regular settlers” rather than active service members doesn’t mean Hamas’s goals are to wipe out every settler. And you are acting like if people don’t side with the idea of wiping out every settler we aren’t siding with Palestine. But thats not even the goal of Hamas. You just made that shit up in your head.
Their goal is to wipe out Zionism and that means pushing all settlers out of stolen Palestinian land, by force if necessary. I guess that is different in the sense that if they kill enough settlers the rest would probably give up on Zionism - I’m also certain that meets the definition of genocide.
Or I guess the settlers could just suddenly decide to leave on their own because they realized they don’t belong there.
But that’s idealism.
EDIT I guess I’m just assuming really huge number of settlers need to die to defeat the Zionist project. Am I being cynical?
Settler/indigenous is a material relation though, which means it can change if the political landscape changes. If the Palestinians emerge victorious and create a Palestinian state and everyone living in that territory becomes a Palestinian, then those former Israelis aren’t settlers anymore. Realistically that process involves killing or driving off the settlers in large numbers to destroy the strength and morale of their political movement, but they aren’t some kind of gray goo that you have to eradicate down to the last molecule. Historically most decolonization movements, e.g. in South Africa and Algeria, just won the war, a large majority of settlers fucked off because they didn’t get to be colonial lords anymore, and the rest capable of being decent human beings stayed, paid some measure of restitutions, and remained as citizens of the new indigenous state.
Genocide doesn’t require the absolute eradication to the last molecule either; the destruction of a national group through mass killing is genocide.
Which is exactly what you describe: destroy Israel by first killing lots of settlers and then destroy the Israeli national identity by making everyone Palestinian.
… so this conversation has made me realize “genocide” is an imprecise word. Israel committing genocide means mass killing and then expulsion of all Palestinians to the last child. Hamas committing “genocide” means protracted warfare where a huge number of reservists and bystanders die and then a reconciliation process afterwards where Israel’s state is dismantled. Calling that “genocide” is technically correct and doesn’t really match what Israel wants to do at all, and I don’t know what to do about that.
if your politics have you conclude you can do nothing and deserve to die, even that you should do something that you then don’t do, you don’t have actionable politics. you have shit politics. hamas are not doing some 200 IQ definition stretching, they literally mean zionists because they need to go shoot people and need a functional definition of who they are at war with.
you having some martyr complex to excuse inaction does not mean it makes any sense to wish death on random ass civilians or literally babies. the point of whoever it was you read was almost certainly not that because you’re white you should be OK with being murdered, it’s that you should take action. when we talk about the attacks being an inevitable reaction to decades of occupation, that does not mean we think randos who were living where they were born deserved to die.
it’s just especially absurd because you’re only saying that because you know damn well you’re perfectly safe and that even in the event of a liberation movement they aren’t going ti try to murder you. you want to have these callous, unhinged takes and pretend you’re applying it equally to yourself when you know that won’t happen.