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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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the ethnostate apologizer has arrived. It is an apartheid state, that's why South Africa has felt so compelled to call it out for its actions.
Before the british and french showed up, there were muslims, christians, and jews living side by side across the ottoman empire. Sure it had its problems, but consolidating all the jews into a US-backed military ethnostate is not the answer.
It served British, and now US geostrategic interests.
I also don't think that it's a good answer and I fully agree that the status quo of the ottoman empire was better and by a lot. Nevertheless there are double standards in how Israels actions are viewed by many self-proclaimed progressives or leftists when compared with the conditions in other countries in the middle east.
And just stating that this state of affairs is the fault of the US and European colonialist nations is devoid of nuance, obviously wrong and does not lead to any solutions at all.
I have lots of issues with the social conditions of the various colonized countries surrounding Israel, but I still offer them critical support in their resistance against colonial occupation.
I really don't think that highlighting the historical culpability of the US/european interests in the current situation is robbing any nuance from the discussion. Across many different colonial occupations there has often been some social issue pointed to as the "reason" why it's "ok" for the savages to be colonized, because it's bringing civilization.
It may sound benevolent, but it that's just european chauvinism, creating the terrain for poverty, then acting like the social reaction rising from poverty and occupation as some sort of inherent characteristic in a post-hoc justification.
Mentioning or highlighting these historical facts does of course not remove nuance. Excluding the many other factors at play however and focusing exclusively on this single issue does. And I see this happening a lot.
Politics should formulate utopian visions as long-term goals but must adhere to workability for getting there. Playing blame games and formulating maximum demands that have no chance of realisation in decades to come does not comply with this principle. Many discussions I see online are out of touch with this reality of politics IMO.
From my perspective the people out of touch are the ones who are asking everyone else to disregard the extremely obvious horrors being perpetrated as if there's some nuance which ever could excuse what's happening.
The occupation is enforcing its "maximum demand" every day under the protection of the US and accepting that as a given is itself a position which you are taking.
No, nuance would be for example to understand that while the US are a country with lots of influence and power, its president is actually not that powerful given the current situation. The president is bound by so many conflicting interests, contracts, party politics, strategic considerations etc. pp. that his leeway is probably quite small.
In my eyes it's not just out of touch with reality but also naive to think along the lines of: "Why don't the politicians just do the good thing? It's so simple, just do the good thing. Now because I care about this topic so much that I'm very disappointed that he hasn't used his supreme powers to change the world, I'm not gonna vote for him. Actions have consequences".
Sure, everyone is allowed to practice wishful thinking. But politics won't change.