Get outta here with this false equivalence. The marginal human suffering inflicted per year caused by Israeli’s colonialism is incomparably greater than any other country’s in the modern era.
The average life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is 52 for men and 54 for women. Their land is contaminated from uranium mining and the US uses parts of it as a bombing range.
What is happening in Israel is exactly what was done and is being done to indigenous people in all those other places too.
A terrible injustice which of course needs to be corrected.
The population in question is 20,000 people. That’s about 400 people born per year with a life expectency of 60% the national average; arguably equivalent to 400 murders per year.
Gaza has 2.4 million people with a similar life expectency. (The same math yields 50,000 effective murders per year.) Not to mention they are actively being bombed today, and their population is mostly children (under 18). This means that when someone is killed by an Israeli soldier, that someone is most likely a minor!
What is the point of isolating Pine Ridge within the United States to directly relate it to Israel’s treatment of all Palestinians? Pine Ridge isn’t the only indigenous community in the United States. The United States is just farther along the settler colonial project, that doesn’t make it better or incomparable.
Of course it’s better to be further along the colonial project. Probably every country on earth could be considered colonial over some timespan. As that duration goes to infinity, the marginal damage per year inflicted by colonialism goes to zero. (The cumulative damage increases of course, to some upper bound.) This is basic calculus.
I don’t think you’re coming from the worst place, but maybe consider that quantifying marginal units of human suffering isn’t the best framework for this type of discussion.
I’m going to say the folks who’d slit your throat if it makes enough other people feel warm and fuzzy do not have the best framework to reduce human suffering
Yes. The overall damage through the centuries caused by western colonialism, in my estimate, is far greater than Israel’s.
That in and of itself is not a good reason to wish America/Canada/Australia not to exist. Should we wish China to de-exist because of the Yangzhou massacre of 1645?
Genocide is happening right now in Israel/Palestine and we can do something about it. There are modern injustices happening today which we should occupy ourselves with, not meaningless finger-pointing. Let’s tear down the western world sensibly, please.
Should we wish China to de-exist because of the Yangzhou massacre of 1645?
There’s a pretty clean break between the PRC and the Chinese dynasties of the 17th century. I’d have to brush up on my history but that’s borderline pre-Qing even. Very different than holding the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) to account for a genocide it did under the same constitution and form of government it has today.
There are modern injustices happening today which we should occupy ourselves with, not meaningless finger-pointing.
I don’t think it’s meaningless finger-pointing to say that the continuing harm the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) is doing to indigenous people (among others) is a live issue that should be addressed. Israel actively killing people right now does not mean those other wrongs should be dismissed.
Of course those wrongs should not be dismissed. Those are serious wrongs and need to be fixed. I’m of the belief that the entire western world needs to be dismantled and it’s causing great harm. But “occupying other people’s land” is not a good justification here, since that land has by and large traded hands many generations ago. Israel is different.
I do not wish to see hundreds of millions of non-indigenous people shipped out of North America back to wherever their ancestors used to live in order to re-establish the sovereignty of a small minority of people. Let’s solve inequality and inequity in sane and non-violent ways instead.
I do not wish to see hundreds of millions of non-indigenous people shipped out of North America back to wherever their ancestors used to live
Who’s calling for this?
When people said “the Russian Empire should not exist” in 1915 they were talking about replacing the existing political structure with something like the USSR, not depopulating the country in its entirety.
Okay granted. From this perspective, sure, American colonialism is strictly broader than Israel’s. I don’t think this really changes anything about what I’m saying here.
I mean the only reason you’re technically correct is cause you limited the scope to just the last year. Just cause Israel did it the most recently doesn’t make them incomparable.
Just because it isn’t obviously genocidal(anymore) doesnt mean the US hasnt done incredible harm to the entire world. What israel is doing right now if horrific yes but the US is responsible for even greater suffering. Neither should exist
Not to mention that many of the policies regarding Indigenous peoples and enforcement thereof in North America are still actively genocidal. Just because the US is not bombing people within their own land doesn’t mean that indigenous peoples in Turtle Island are thriving.
Seeing how Zionism is just a continuation of the Nazi’s cleansing efforts, which was inspired by America’s genocide, the US would very much be cupule in all of this if they weren’t already the biggest donors to and defenders of its continued existence.
I want you to go to an iraqi and tell them that american intervention benefitted them and their nation. Say that to a cambodian, vietnamese, nicaraguan, chilean, cuban, north korean, venezuelan, haitian, balkan, etc. the list goes on. You haven’t had a truly experienced the third world if you havent sat around a fire with sunflower seeds and grumbled about america. When i say that america is worse than israel i am referring to the purposeful bombings of civilians, hospitals, industrial infrastructure, and schools; I am referring to the overthrowing of democratically elected governments, the funding of fascist death squads, and the illegal and immoral sanctions meant to destabilize foreign powers all in the name of profit. Humanitarian aid is meaningless if you are the reason its necessary
We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.
Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.
The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.
Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.
Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).
Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.
Look how China has been behaving in Africa.
Yeah, it’s investing in Africa’s infrastructure, as opposed to exfiltrating its resources like the Global North neocolonialists.
During this time of hegemony we’ve also had major developments in medicine, farming, manufacturing worldwide. How can you say the world is better off with US hegemony? There is no control to compare it to. Humanity has improved materially in the last 100 years, in SPITE of American dominance. I would ask the thousands of people killed every year by US munitions if they believe the world has been improved.
Israel is certainly causing tremendous harm, but what you are saying is just blatant antisemitism. And you are obviously not up to date what happens in the world being so obsessed with demonizing Israel. Try to get a grip on reality again please.
To elaborate: I don’t believe Israel’s nationalistic sentiment is unique to Judaism. Israel could be a Christian state and could contain any ethnicity, its active colonialism would still be a problem.
What other country’s active colonialism is anywhere near the level of Israel’s?
These are just excuses for your Israel-hating worldview. There are so many conflicts around the world. And all other western nations including the US but also countries like China are actively neocolonialist and much worse imo. Just think of how many billions of lives are miserable or being ended by western nations. So why pick out the one Jewish state to demonize as the worst one and project all your hate onto? The Israeli government is ultra nationalist and extremist right, and needs to be stopped, I agree. But same goes for so many countries worldwide.
I’m not saying Israel is worse than other nations. (I believe the U.S. is worse actually, insofar as human suffering caused.) I am saying its more actively colonial than other nations.
Oh, now that I’m thinking about it again, I think I fell for your fallacy there. Why would you classify Israel as a colonial nation in the first place? And your argument that you were only talking about colonial nations is also weird, what difference does it make if other nations are activel neocolonial vs colonial? Or actively killing thousands of people like e.g. Russia and Turkey are doing? Seems like you wanted to find or create a category where Israel is the worst in and then blame it for it. Again, in my mind you are demonizing Israel because you assign it a special diabolic role while in a global context it is behaving not unlike many many other nations. Sure, lets critique the Israeli government. But remember, it is just another extremist right government. The Israeli people have the same right to live as Palestinians. There are people from both sides that want to live in harmony together. It is not one group against another, not one colonizer against the colonized. It is mostly the transgenerational trauma and hate materialized in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Likud party, the settler community, etc that strive to repeat this cycle of hate forever.
Basically, the meme says “if israel has no right to exist [because X], then U.S./Canada/Australia don’t have a right to exist [because X too]”
I think most people interpret X is: actively settling/killing/displacing people from their homeland. I would call this “active colonialism.” And it’s not true that those other nations are doing this.
I don’t have it specifically out for Israel. I am against Western imperialism in general. I do not wish to make shit up in order to help further the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world. That would be detrimental to the goal of furthering the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world.
Why would you classify Israel as a colonial nation in the first place?
Is this an honest question? Because this is obvious to me…?
Yes, this was an honest question. If Israel were colonial, then it would be a form settler colonialism. (So very different from the typical European kind). And even then, academic scholars aren’t sure if it is indeed settler colonialist or not. The whole history of Israel/Palestine is really fucking complicated and I get sceptical if someone says it’s actually simple (regardless of affiliation to any side). So why would you classify it as active colonialism?
And regarding the meme, your interpretation seems to be very narrow. Why would people necessarily need to interpret X to be active colonialism? X could also mean atrocities in general, not just narrowly defined atrocities. My interpretation was rather that people defending Israel’s right to exist try to do so by tying it to other (western) nations’ right to exist. But the punchline of the meme then is that they fail to see that no nation should exist in the first place. I strongly agree with that, no nation or border should exist regardless of how they act. That’s how I would interpret the message of this meme (this is an anarchist community after all).
OK, granted, that’s a much more interesting interpretation of the meme than mine and I prefer your take. I guess my interpretation was not the universal one. I’m split on whether the intended interpretation was close to mine or not. On the other hand, as they say, intent doesn’t matter.
I would consider Israel settler-colonialist because, for instance, they encroach on west bank lands regularly, evicting people from their homes, construct new housing units in those spaces, and then build walls to keep Palestinians out.
This isn’t to say the whole situation is simple. I don’t claim to understand it entirely nor have a solution to the problem.
Get outta here with this false equivalence. The marginal human suffering inflicted per year caused by Israeli’s colonialism is incomparably greater than any other country’s in the modern era.
The average life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is 52 for men and 54 for women. Their land is contaminated from uranium mining and the US uses parts of it as a bombing range.
What is happening in Israel is exactly what was done and is being done to indigenous people in all those other places too.
A terrible injustice which of course needs to be corrected.
The population in question is 20,000 people. That’s about 400 people born per year with a life expectency of 60% the national average; arguably equivalent to 400 murders per year.
Gaza has 2.4 million people with a similar life expectency. (The same math yields 50,000 effective murders per year.) Not to mention they are actively being bombed today, and their population is mostly children (under 18). This means that when someone is killed by an Israeli soldier, that someone is most likely a minor!
What is the point of isolating Pine Ridge within the United States to directly relate it to Israel’s treatment of all Palestinians? Pine Ridge isn’t the only indigenous community in the United States. The United States is just farther along the settler colonial project, that doesn’t make it better or incomparable.
Of course it’s better to be further along the colonial project. Probably every country on earth could be considered colonial over some timespan. As that duration goes to infinity, the marginal damage per year inflicted by colonialism goes to zero. (The cumulative damage increases of course, to some upper bound.) This is basic calculus.
I don’t think you’re coming from the worst place, but maybe consider that quantifying marginal units of human suffering isn’t the best framework for this type of discussion.
Absolutely it is. I’m a staunch utilitarian. This is the most effective framework to help reduce human suffering in the modern world.
I’m going to say the folks who’d slit your throat if it makes enough other people feel warm and fuzzy do not have the best framework to reduce human suffering
You’re basically saying it would be unethical to have killed Hitler.
Like Atlas, these words
Yes. The overall damage through the centuries caused by western colonialism, in my estimate, is far greater than Israel’s.
That in and of itself is not a good reason to wish America/Canada/Australia not to exist. Should we wish China to de-exist because of the Yangzhou massacre of 1645?
Genocide is happening right now in Israel/Palestine and we can do something about it. There are modern injustices happening today which we should occupy ourselves with, not meaningless finger-pointing. Let’s tear down the western world sensibly, please.
There’s a pretty clean break between the PRC and the Chinese dynasties of the 17th century. I’d have to brush up on my history but that’s borderline pre-Qing even. Very different than holding the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) to account for a genocide it did under the same constitution and form of government it has today.
I don’t think it’s meaningless finger-pointing to say that the continuing harm the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) is doing to indigenous people (among others) is a live issue that should be addressed. Israel actively killing people right now does not mean those other wrongs should be dismissed.
Of course those wrongs should not be dismissed. Those are serious wrongs and need to be fixed. I’m of the belief that the entire western world needs to be dismantled and it’s causing great harm. But “occupying other people’s land” is not a good justification here, since that land has by and large traded hands many generations ago. Israel is different.
I do not wish to see hundreds of millions of non-indigenous people shipped out of North America back to wherever their ancestors used to live in order to re-establish the sovereignty of a small minority of people. Let’s solve inequality and inequity in sane and non-violent ways instead.
Who’s calling for this?
When people said “the Russian Empire should not exist” in 1915 they were talking about replacing the existing political structure with something like the USSR, not depopulating the country in its entirety.
People’s nationalist brainworms go so deep they immediately conflate people with the state.
Fair enough. I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to depopulating Israel though (if some safe way to do this were possible).
This is also not what the overwhelming majority of Palestinians want.
It would not be my preferred solution either.
Israel is a US colonial project, these days.
The US pays Israel to cause suffering
Okay granted. From this perspective, sure, American colonialism is strictly broader than Israel’s. I don’t think this really changes anything about what I’m saying here.
I mean the only reason you’re technically correct is cause you limited the scope to just the last year. Just cause Israel did it the most recently doesn’t make them incomparable.
Even the year before that, it’s still true. Well, depending on what “incomparable” means lol
Just because it isn’t obviously genocidal(anymore) doesnt mean the US hasnt done incredible harm to the entire world. What israel is doing right now if horrific yes but the US is responsible for even greater suffering. Neither should exist
Not to mention that many of the policies regarding Indigenous peoples and enforcement thereof in North America are still actively genocidal. Just because the US is not bombing people within their own land doesn’t mean that indigenous peoples in Turtle Island are thriving.
Seeing how Zionism is just a continuation of the Nazi’s cleansing efforts, which was inspired by America’s genocide, the US would very much be cupule in all of this if they weren’t already the biggest donors to and defenders of its continued existence.
Bingo.
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I want you to go to an iraqi and tell them that american intervention benefitted them and their nation. Say that to a cambodian, vietnamese, nicaraguan, chilean, cuban, north korean, venezuelan, haitian, balkan, etc. the list goes on. You haven’t had a truly experienced the third world if you havent sat around a fire with sunflower seeds and grumbled about america. When i say that america is worse than israel i am referring to the purposeful bombings of civilians, hospitals, industrial infrastructure, and schools; I am referring to the overthrowing of democratically elected governments, the funding of fascist death squads, and the illegal and immoral sanctions meant to destabilize foreign powers all in the name of profit. Humanitarian aid is meaningless if you are the reason its necessary
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The US’s “Uyghur genocide” disinformation campaign has already been debunked several times over.
Yeah, it’s investing in Africa’s infrastructure, as opposed to exfiltrating its resources like the Global North neocolonialists.
During this time of hegemony we’ve also had major developments in medicine, farming, manufacturing worldwide. How can you say the world is better off with US hegemony? There is no control to compare it to. Humanity has improved materially in the last 100 years, in SPITE of American dominance. I would ask the thousands of people killed every year by US munitions if they believe the world has been improved.
You do realize most of the planet hates 'murica, yeah?
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China says hi.
Remember when Apple.moved to India and tried to use the same conditions as their Non-Slave Chinese factories?
Remember when the Indian workers rioted over that?
Edit: fucking Google. Doesn’t correct Infia to India, but automatically changes rioted to rooted.
Can you post a link to that Apple story? I’d like to educate myself on it
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/31/22861167/apple-investigates-iphone-plant-strike-food-poisoning
That’s globalization, not colonialism. That’s a completely different reason to want to see western powers annihilated.
Try again. It was a longtime subsidiary based out of Taiwan that was shifting from Chinese labour to Indian labour.
I think I’m too stupid to understand what you mean.
Wasn’t a western entity involved outside of Apple paying a Taiwanese firm, which itself was paying a Chinese firm which was responsible.
Israel is certainly causing tremendous harm, but what you are saying is just blatant antisemitism. And you are obviously not up to date what happens in the world being so obsessed with demonizing Israel. Try to get a grip on reality again please.
antizionism != antisemitism.
To elaborate: I don’t believe Israel’s nationalistic sentiment is unique to Judaism. Israel could be a Christian state and could contain any ethnicity, its active colonialism would still be a problem.
What other country’s active colonialism is anywhere near the level of Israel’s?
These are just excuses for your Israel-hating worldview. There are so many conflicts around the world. And all other western nations including the US but also countries like China are actively neocolonialist and much worse imo. Just think of how many billions of lives are miserable or being ended by western nations. So why pick out the one Jewish state to demonize as the worst one and project all your hate onto? The Israeli government is ultra nationalist and extremist right, and needs to be stopped, I agree. But same goes for so many countries worldwide.
I’m not saying Israel is worse than other nations. (I believe the U.S. is worse actually, insofar as human suffering caused.) I am saying its more actively colonial than other nations.
Oh, now that I’m thinking about it again, I think I fell for your fallacy there. Why would you classify Israel as a colonial nation in the first place? And your argument that you were only talking about colonial nations is also weird, what difference does it make if other nations are activel neocolonial vs colonial? Or actively killing thousands of people like e.g. Russia and Turkey are doing? Seems like you wanted to find or create a category where Israel is the worst in and then blame it for it. Again, in my mind you are demonizing Israel because you assign it a special diabolic role while in a global context it is behaving not unlike many many other nations. Sure, lets critique the Israeli government. But remember, it is just another extremist right government. The Israeli people have the same right to live as Palestinians. There are people from both sides that want to live in harmony together. It is not one group against another, not one colonizer against the colonized. It is mostly the transgenerational trauma and hate materialized in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Likud party, the settler community, etc that strive to repeat this cycle of hate forever.
Basically, the meme says “if israel has no right to exist [because X], then U.S./Canada/Australia don’t have a right to exist [because X too]”
I think most people interpret X is: actively settling/killing/displacing people from their homeland. I would call this “active colonialism.” And it’s not true that those other nations are doing this.
I don’t have it specifically out for Israel. I am against Western imperialism in general. I do not wish to make shit up in order to help further the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world. That would be detrimental to the goal of furthering the narrative that western imperialism is destroying the world.
Is this an honest question? Because this is obvious to me…?
Yes, this was an honest question. If Israel were colonial, then it would be a form settler colonialism. (So very different from the typical European kind). And even then, academic scholars aren’t sure if it is indeed settler colonialist or not. The whole history of Israel/Palestine is really fucking complicated and I get sceptical if someone says it’s actually simple (regardless of affiliation to any side). So why would you classify it as active colonialism?
And regarding the meme, your interpretation seems to be very narrow. Why would people necessarily need to interpret X to be active colonialism? X could also mean atrocities in general, not just narrowly defined atrocities. My interpretation was rather that people defending Israel’s right to exist try to do so by tying it to other (western) nations’ right to exist. But the punchline of the meme then is that they fail to see that no nation should exist in the first place. I strongly agree with that, no nation or border should exist regardless of how they act. That’s how I would interpret the message of this meme (this is an anarchist community after all).
OK, granted, that’s a much more interesting interpretation of the meme than mine and I prefer your take. I guess my interpretation was not the universal one. I’m split on whether the intended interpretation was close to mine or not. On the other hand, as they say, intent doesn’t matter.
I would consider Israel settler-colonialist because, for instance, they encroach on west bank lands regularly, evicting people from their homes, construct new housing units in those spaces, and then build walls to keep Palestinians out.
This isn’t to say the whole situation is simple. I don’t claim to understand it entirely nor have a solution to the problem.