Radiohead Band • Page 104

What makes me uncomfortable is that the vast majority of Israelis openly call for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and nearly half call for total extermination. This is a wildly genocidal society. The Palestinians are fully justified in taking up arms against their Zionist oppressors. They’ve tried everything else.

 

The premise is flawed. The word "citizens" is mystifying - on one hand, you have members of a settler colony that are virtually all military trained and at least reservists, with western military, economic, and diplomatic support. They have passports and can travel freely throughout the entire world.

Meanwhile, there are essentially 3 or 4 groups of Palestinians, and none of them are "citizens" in the same sense Israelis are. There are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who are subject to apartheid within Israel. These people are economically immiserated within Israel and have their freedom of movement severely restricted. There are Palestinians in the West Bank, who are subject to daily settler terrorism, surreptitious eviction and destruction of homes, harassment, checkpoints, and restriction of movement. They may have PA passports, but the PA is a collaborator entity whose authority is restricted and managed by Israel. There are refugee Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan etc, who are essentially stateless and most of whom live their entire lives in refugee camps. And there are Gazans, who can only leave Gaza with special dispensation from Israel which tends to blackmail them for it. Not to mention that they cannot import or export anything without dispensation from Israel either. They can't even fish.

So, right off the bat, using the word "citizen" to describe both peoples is misleading. There is no equivalence. Indeed, there is no equivalence between Hamas and the IDF in terms of military capability either. Hamas cannot even "take any violent action they want" because they don't have tanks or planes.

Regardless, when this question comes up I find it revealing to universalize it, and then re-specify it in historical contexts. What actions do people in general have the right to take to resist genocide? More broadly, how should it inform one's view of the people resisting genocide when they resist in ways that make one uncomfortable? Who is ultimately to blame? How do we feel, for example, about the French Resistance? They killed at least tens of thousands of people in reprisals without any kind of trial. Or, South African resistance terrorism? Informants were infamously necklaced, at least several hundred, meaning a tire was placed around their neck and lit on fire. Bantustan officials were targeted for bombings.

The point isn't to say that this was all necessarily good or justified, but mostly that it doesn't taint the entire cause for us when we look back on it historically. And also to some extent, that violence that is not strictly 'necessary' or 'productive' or 'justified' is to some extent unavoidable in resistance struggles and is, imo, less a function of the morality of the resistance than the brutality of the repression.

 

I apologize for any unintended equivalence of the two sides’ rights or military power. I suppose I should have used the term “noncombatants” or a more general word like “people”.

I disagree with your assertion that the slaughter of innocents doesn’t taint the overall cause, as it certainly is tainting the cause worldwide and is used as a whataboutism counterpoint despite the ridiculous mismatch in power/violence… seen here with Thom’s “release the hostages” point. (You’re likely going to say I’m misusing the word “innocents”, but I am using it to mean non-military targets, regardless of their personal or hateful beliefs. As a US citizen I can’t entertain the idea that anyone who lives within an aggressive colonialist nation state deserves to be treated like a member of their military or leadership. I disagreed with the Iraq War; I don’t deserve to be killed because of the atrocities that were committed by my government.h

Something like the IRA’s car bombings in England might be a better example than the South African resistance, since I would consider an informant to be a military collaborator. (Although I believe the English in that example were given forewarning so that hypothetically no bystanders would be injured, so very different intent regardless of outcome.)

With that said, I agree that the uncontrollable violent actions by some extremists against innocents should not ultimately undermine the goal to free Palestine and stop the genocide being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

 

What if you were a settler in the early American frontier? What if you moved to Iraq and kicked someone out of their home and were living in it? What if you were in the military because of conscription, and just happened to be off duty? What if you were enjoying a nice tea party (or music festival) in the Zone of Interest just outside a concentration camp? Why might a colonized person have a different idea of 'innocence'?

But what I have found most puzzling is the extent to which so many Israelis seem to have been disappointed and angered by the Al-Aqsa Intifada [the Second Intifada, or major uprising against occupation, from 2000-2005], as if the unceasing rate of settlement activity, the frequent closures, the expropriations, the thousands of humiliations, punishments, and arbitrary difficulties created for Palestinians by Israelis while the two were supposed to be negotiating a peace with each other were all negligible, as if Israel’s magnanimity in “allowing” little bits of Palestinian autonomy were enough to wipe the slate clean and should have made the entire people grateful to Israel for its concessions. Rather than trying to connect the Israeli policy of military occupation with the intifada as cause and effect, many Israelis now seem to want [Ariel] Sharon to take over and, as one of them said to a journalist, ‘deal with the Arabs,’ as if ‘the Arabs’ were so many flies or a swarm of annoying bees.

What's ultimately the reason for this violence? Why has it happened? Just because some evil people got together and called themselves Hamas and decided to be evil? No, it's the inevitable consequence of attempting a slow (now not-so-slow) colonial genocide. Peaceful protest and diplomacy are constantly undermined at best, shot dead by sniper fire at worst, so what is left but to fight, or to accept your own slow death?