Israel to World: "Suck It."

there's been a clear and deliberate plan by every israeli government for decades to promote the building of settlements that bit by bit destroy any meaningful contiguous palestinian area in the west bank, destroying any possibility of a palestinian state

the great majority of peoples in the world do not live where they lived 2000 years ago and we would never accept any national people today moving on mass to their "ancestral home" expelling the people who have been living there for centuries.

― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Thursday, July 22, 2021 3:15 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I guess the FNIM will just have to cope I guess!

comparison makes no sense.

the Former Nation In Macedonia?

first nations, inuit, and métis

ive also never heard any first nations activist make common cause with the israelis, quite the opposite

I see, back to Canada - thanx

no ice cream = terrorism sounds like something my 9 year old would say.

comparison makes no sense.

― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Thursday, July 22, 2021 3:34 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You are literally asking Jews to just make peace with the Diaspora despite all the atrocities that derived from it, and acting as if the effect of that Diaspora is inconsequential to the present day. Doing the same for any sort of displaced people would be considered morally unacceptable, it would be so for the FNIM, just like it is for the descendants of the Nakba. I just believe that the incapacity to imagine many different people living peacefully in the same land is incredibly sad, and that allowing one people in a land over another is reprehensible. I don't think it's out of bounds to remind ourselves than Palestinians in power, today and for the many centuries prior, are guilty of the same 'us vs them' mentality.

In which way do I omit the brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank? Didn't I just say that Palestinians have a right to self-determination? Am I arguing for the continuation of ethno state paradigms? Did I say I agree that B&J boycotting the OT is terrorism? I suppose when Jews have the very human desire to live in their homeland from which they were expelled and treated as second class by colonial forces, it's automatically colonialism (suggesting otherwise seems to be conflation), but when Palestinians have the very human desire to live in their homeland free from the control of the apartheid state, it's liberation.

― Van Horn Street, Thursday, 22 July 2021 19:11 (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Liberation and colonialism derive their meaning from the present existing powers of domination. In this instance there is a population of millions who for generations have been denied basic human rights. I'm not really sure this can be understood as 'automatically' because it has entailed decades of militarised occupation which tends to involve much more agency on the part of the colonial powers than the word 'automatically' would imply. If you want people to take you seriously be serious.

xp In this thread especially, VHS, you have one of the worst argumentation styles on the site. Just a gish gallop of "what about..." and inane comparisons.

Seriously: "what if the subaltern party had power, and used it poorly" is not the good argument you think it is? Especially when it seems clearly intended to place the Palestinian and Jewish Israeli experiences on equal terms, when it's just so, so clearly not.

The problem is that you seem to think that I'm okay with Israel occupation and apartheid policies, which I am not. I just happen to think that Jews have the right to build a state for themselves in their ancestral land, and that the building of that state ought not to exclude the rights of self-determination of Palestinians like it is at the moment. My only problem is when it is argued that Jews don't have a right to the land the same way Palestinians does, that there is an ascendency of one people over the other. I reject that and lot of arguments are made explicitly to deny one's people self-determination, which I do believe to be a sacred human right.

Right, but you seem to conflate "express any support of Palestinians" with "completely agree with Hamas"; if not, I think you're just not in conversation with what people in this thread are actually saying/concerned about.

I am not conflating those two. I don't think anyone support Hamas here, but the notion that Australians, Canadians and Americans in Oceania and North Americas is exactly the same paradigm as Israelis is to me, absolutely false. And not only does it play to anti-semitic tropes of never belonging and erase jewish culture and history, it also erases many century of colonialism by several different entities in the region, forms of colonialism that wouldn't be accepted today by these same people.

You brought up the comparison? In order to, basically, say that B&J are hypocritical to sell in Canada, since Canada is worse, in your view? (Also a Canadian here, also horrified at the general attitude toward indigenous people here, especially on a government level.)

Or are you just arguing with left's few posts, and doing it in a manner that seems pretty out of left field?

I was arguing with left yes. Those are two separate arguments. One is about the hypocrisy of the Unilever subsidiary and the other is about the Jewish connection to Israel.

No you brought it up first

Left vs. VHS. Clash of the Titans.

ben and jerry’s rather famously insisted on a unique clause allowing it a lot of independence on social justice issues as a condition of its sale to unilever. should they do more? probably? except they already do way more than most companies do? and this one act has already got people talking about the morality of doing business in occupied lands in a way that few other corporate actions have. so…. job done imo. it’s not their responsibility to be consistent or solve everything. it’s their job to sell ice cream. but with this they’ve raised visibility on the occupation and that’s fantastic. spare me your “grains of salt” VHS.

I don't think anybody here is gullibly going along with some notion of an ice cream brand doing credible activism but it does surface (by being so silly) the cynicism of the Israeli government in how it responds to any opposition (no matter how minor) to its current actions (which include spraying peoples homes with something that smells of excrement) and the apparent straight faces credulity that has met this response.

I believe there's an emotional aspect in being singled out that should not be underrated, there's a feeling of victimhood considering the coverage of the P/I conflict has long overshadowed other conflicts despite its relative small proportion in size, so it works very well just for any politician to just shout outrage in order to get votes and I don't think any of this will have a direct impact in changing policies in Israel. I honestly do think it would have been more effective it if stopped selling ice creams throughout the whole country and not just the OT and yeah, as long as we are arm-chairing here, and yeah, I do believe they if they really cared for anything but their bottom line they would be a little less timid to boycott other deserving nations.

plaxico OTM

what current canadian policy do you believe a ben and jerry's boycott would be attempting to end?

xp

I wonder if any company in the 80s who announced South Africa boycotts met the same avalanche of what-abouts

I wonder if any company in the 80s who announced South Africa boycotts met the same avalanche of what-abouts

Palestinians in power, today and for the many centuries prior

lol come on

(xp) They didn't need US states do that with Thatcher in power in the UK.

I wonder if any company in the 80s who announced South Africa boycotts met the same avalanche of what-abouts

Yet another part of conservative dogma was that a liberal double standard was being practiced against South Africa. "Gorbachev can kill as many Afghans as he likes," complained National Review on July 18, 1986, "by a factor of perhaps 500 to 1 over deaths in South Africa, and no House vote imposes 'sanctions' on him. Let's kick the midget." The August 2, 1985, Wall Street Journal opined that "the nuclear-freeze movement having vanished from the headlines, bashing the Boers has suddenly become the approved outlet for demonstrating your own morality." Dinesh D'Souza, writing in the August 20, 1985, New York Times, stated that liberals were "preoccupied more with ideology than with people" in their call for sanctions. He claimed that if liberals were consistent, they would apply the same arguments to South Africa that they applied to the Soviet Union: "the South African people are not monsters, as they are often portrayed, but 'people just like us.' " Of course, D'Souza failed to realize that this is exactly what conservatives were saying about South Africa.

The most sustained charge of hypocrisy was developed by Adam Wolfson in the organ of the Heritage Foundation, Policy Review, in the fall of 1985. Wolfson began by making the rather obvious point that South Africa was scarcely the only country in Africa systematically to violate human rights. Ethiopia, Burundi, Angola, and Zaire were also grievous offenders. "Americans," wrote Wolfson, "who call for freedom and democratization in South Africa (should) think about the best ways of achieving these goals in the rest of the continent as well." Wolfson granted that the "suppression of blacks in South Africa is in some ways more systematic than in most other African countries" but also contended that "in other respects, South Africa is freer than most African countries." In essence, the charge of hypocrisy was a recipe for inaction. The fact that other countries were violating human rights was something many liberal activists may have preferred to ignore, but conservatives were never particularly exercised about those human rights violations except in the context of defending South Africa.

Lot of depressing continuity there

thank you for the excerpt Yellow Kid!

charge of hypocrisy is a recipe for inaction huh

the oblivious (if that’s the right word) racism of this:

”*the South African people* are not monsters, as they are often portrayed, but 'people just like us.' "

But these are the same people who respond to Communist totalitarianism - which, unlike South Africa's system, deprives all of its citizens of human rights

if HALF the people are free ALL of the time, isn’t that better than NONE of the people being free ANY of the time?? LOGICK!1!11!!

charge of hypocrisy is a recipe for inaction huh

― symsymsym, Thursday, 22 July 2021 bookmarkflaglink

That's how VHS likes it

Patrolling West Bank Just Not Same Without Big Cone Of Chunky Monkey In Hand https://t.co/6vhK0VtvLU pic.twitter.com/ZLGacOFjaY

— The Onion (@TheOnion) July 23, 2021

do they not have the money to pay for their own Dome of Iron?

or it's just the easiest way to funnel money to the USA contractors that bribes the politicians?

At this point I think it’s more the latter, as I don’t think Israel is really as dependent on US aid as it once was.

My neighbor used the neighborhood WhatsApp group to ask people to support iron dome which really annoyed me. It’s supposed to just be for help with flooded basements and giveaway stuff and events. Everyone seems to have ignored it though.

maybe his basement is flooded with US defense contractors and lobbyists

"Aw, jeez honey, Raytheon's coming through the floors again!"

I just saw a thing with Max Blumenthal where he was claiming Iron Dome was "actually an offensive weapon," the logic being that arms parity normally leads to detente but Iron Dome prevents there being any kind of parity and prevents Israel from having to face consequences from its aggression, and tbh this logic strikes me as dumb as shit. There would be no arms parity with or without Iron Dome, for one thing, and if you didn't have Iron Dome you'd just have more rockets falling on and killing or maiming Israeli civilians, which would in turn mean greater demands from the populace for retaliation against Gaza.

this logic strikes me as dumb as shit.

Israel passes a budget. This government has certainly been more effective at, you know, actually governing the country than I would have imagined.

I feel like in the US the current coalition is more popular in the US with Democrats than with Republicans because He's Not Netanyahu and I feel like the fact that Bennett is in fact extremely right-wing is not very widely grasped. It's a different story if Lapid becomes PM but will this thing really last until August 2023?

It didn't. Sort of astonishing to me how little attention is being paid to the fact that there's ANOTHER election in Israel and it could very well bring an extremely fucked-up group of people into positions of real power -- like, Netanyahu but dependent for the survival of his government on people three levels more fucked up than Netanyahu.

what would you have attention-payers do about it?

Nothing. We can do v little, it's a discussion board?

But yes I read this report on it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/29/israel-election-far-right-itamar-ben-gvir

Didn't expect Bennett to apparently quit politics completely.

It’s not really surprising that this guy is doing well given the way politics has been going over there for quite a while.

🧵1/5 Today, as Israelis go to vote in the Zionist regime’s general elections remember that all the Israeli political parties support the continued oppression of Palestinians & despite what some will have you believe “centrist” Lapid is not better than Netanyahu.

— Dr. Yara Hawari د. يارا هواري (@yarahawari) November 1, 2022

Despite what some will have you believe, Lapid is better than Netanyahu