Comment by albedoa
1 year ago
I march with left-leaning American Jews. Exactly zero of them are called genocidal colonizers by anyone, let alone left-leaning American progressives.
Since you are asserting the existence of something here, are you able to provide an example?
Replying here in a flagged subthread because I really do think this is important:
So... those two accusations are so commonly made and debated that they both have their own wikipedia pages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusatio...
I mean, sure, you can retreat to arguments about whether it's a personal accusation or just an abstract idea, or whether I can substantiate use of the combined pharse "genocidal colonizer" (which of course I can't). But we both know that's hairsplitting.
The point I was trying to make is that there is a large population of people[1] out there who AGREE with you on virtually every practical, relevant point of public policy or international relations.... but who will never make common cause with you if they perceive your goals as the invalidation of the nationality of nine million people. There's no solution here that doesn't involve Zionists, just as there's no solution that rejects Islam.[2]
[1] And in particular people with significant influence over the Israeli policy you want to see changed!
[2] Realistically there's just no solution, and it would do well for everyone involved to recognize that and resign ourselves to the policy of just reducing immediate harm as what amounts to a BATNA.
Both those accusations are colorable and have non-inflammatory interpretations.
For example, sociologically speaking, Israel is a settler-colonialist state. What activists don't acknowledge is that the concept of "settler-colonialism" was invented to describe the distinction between extractive colonialism, of the King Leopold of Belgium type, and the long-term sustainable kind, of the New Zealand type. It was a way of working out why some human migration seems to "work" and others don't. Later --- I think probably in part due to the abuses of "settlers" within Israel, in the West Bank --- the term became an epithet. I suspect it's used largely by people who don't know the meaning.
Similarly, there's a colloquial meaning to the word "genocide" that doesn't intersect with the legal meaning. It's any campaign of mass violence directed at a race or creed. That meaning is dilutive of the original concept of genocide, which really did mean an effort to erase (through murder, sterilization, or kidnapping) an entire ethnicity. But it has meaning nonetheless.
However justified the military operation of Gaza might be, it would be difficult for a supporter of the IDF to argue that it doesn't consistute mass violence targeting Palestinians, even if it pretty clearly doesn't have either the intention or the potential to erase the Palestinian identity (I feel like if you asked an activist selected at random for a percentage of Palestinians killed in Gaza, you'd get a double-digit number from most of them, which of course not even close).
> Replying here in a flagged subthread
This is like the arsonist talking about "a burning house". Whose flagged sub-thread is it? Why is it flagged?
> whether I can substantiate use of the combined pharse "genocidal colonizer" (which of course I can't).
Hold on. That is quite the lift and shift. You asserted the existence of "many" non-genocidal non-colonizers who are being repeatedly called genocidal colonizers by left-leaning Americans. When pressed to name one (1) of those many, you said that you "of course" can't substantiate the use of that phrase. (Whether that prevents you from naming one is debatable.)
Now you are asserting the existence of "a large population of people". How should we expect you to respond if I challenge you to name one (1) of that large population? I don't love chasing goalposts.
Please stop. I really don't know what you're arguing about or why. It feels like you want to argue with me as a proxy for the violence you can't affect?
Really I think I substantiated the issue pretty well. If you feel really strongly that there are not any accusations of genocide or colonization being made against jews in current discourse, maybe go correct the wikipedia articles I linked?
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