A
link (in Polish - possibly translatable) caught my eye, so advertised on one of the signal groups.
I'm posting because the project seems important to me, and I feel it's good that it was created. I am very concerned and hurt by what is happening in many liberty-leaning communities on this topic. I know that "Antifa" around the world is strongly divided, in Poland I have the impression that we hear only one narrative, so it seems all the more important to me.
I read the articles posted there (an hour-long interview on YT and a whole bunch of links like "Soviet lie about Israeli apartheid" didn't interest me enough to explore).
The entire argumentation in the cited articles (after weeding out the information noise, such as
how one must not criticize Israel and
what is a true Zionism) boils down to the pseudo-symmetrist "
Jews are in Palestine because they have to be somewhere - and since they are there, they have to defend themselves, so they defend themselves and that is ok."
One could go from this to the honestly symmetrist thesis that the same is true for the Palestinians, and try to move toward precisely democratic confederalism and the "two peoples, one state" model. I agree with the point that democratic confederalism would be a chance to solve the problem. It's a shame that there is no significant political force willing to push this topic.
I digested it, confronted it with other perspectives (recently I had the opportunity to translate a lot of texts with different POVs, both from the Palestinian, Israeli and other anti-colonial perspectives).
I recalled my reading about the settlement project from "Jewish Currents" (for example,
jewishcurrents.org/the-rise-of…) and earlier texts about the progress of the recent "good change" in Israel (since it was officially declared a Jewish state) and also reached further into political history.
Whatever one's tolerance for "realpolitik" (in the case of nationalisms, mine is super-low), there is no denying that the modern Jewish colonization of Palestine rested on two pillars that we know from many other times and places:
- The slogan (with a very interesting history) "
Land without people for people without land" - which is quintessentially colonialism, denying the existence of indigenous people, their bond with the land and the primacy of their rights.
- Enlosures, contemporarily known as "landgrabbing," shown clearly (though euphemistically named) on an unattributed map available on the aforementioned site. It shows that most of the land of the Israeli state is "public and state" land - As this description refers to the "British Mandate of Palestine" (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandator…), "state" means the Ottoman Empire, which no longer exists in 1947. Again, the appropriation of this land by Jewish settlers was done with disregard for the rights of the people who inhabit and cultivate it - adding a class aspect to the budding conflict.
In conclusion, the referenced blog presents a radical colonial-settler (what if "leftist") perspective. And if we consider the suggestions of its authors that they present a representative picture of the situation and attitudes of Israeli society, then all the worse for Israel.
For me, there is one positive to come out of reading this blog: it has given me the basis and impetus to finally define my political stance (about which in the next section) towards the already more than a century-old war in Palestine.
Which I wish for you as well.
#Israel #Palestine #Settlers #Enclosures #LandGrabbing #Colonialism #Zionism #Apoism #DemocraticConfederalism #apartheid
