I think the author just has a tic where he can't help putting "(Hegel)" somewhere in every essay.
Since it's been a while since we had an Israel/Palestine thread...
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I think the author just has a tic where he can't help putting "(Hegel)" somewhere in every essay.
Gus and Linebaugh.
mixed_biscuits
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Plot twist: nothing is more enjoyable to droid than doing this
vimothy
yurp
why should the Palestinians accept defeat? it seems like it's a live issue as long as they want to make one of it, and the idea that they should just suck it up and get on with things is the conclusion to an argument, not its premise.Chris Cutrone, from his recent essay “Israel, Palestine and the Left”
[…]
What both “Ceasefire now!” and “Defund Israel!” have in common, whatever their merits and defects, is that they are demands on the capitalist state, and moreover on its political parties — specifically, demanding these things of one Party in particular, the Democrats.
But the Biden Administration has indeed called for a ceasefire: it wants different tactics and even strategy of Israel. Most importantly, it wants Israel to give “land for peace,” end the settlements in the West Bank, and, most pertinently, not to devastate Gaza or displace the Palestinians there. Or so at least they say.
Why not believe them?
…
Why was a two-state solution not achieved in the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s?
It’s actually very simple:
The Palestinian “political leadership” has refused to officially accept the existence of Israel as a state.
After many wars, uprisings, terrorism, etc., the Palestinians lost and the Israelis won.
The stronger were victorious and the weaker were defeated. Case closed. History’s pronouncement is undeniable — and irreversible.
The Israelis expected a peace treaty of surrender by the Palestinians, which the Palestinians have refused. So Israel has continued its war against an enemy that has refused to surrender.
But the Palestinians have been defeated. This is not going to change. Ever.
Indeed, the recent Hamas attack was an act of desperation in a condition of defeat. This doesn’t justify or condone it — indeed it convicts it of futility and wanton, pointless destructiveness. Hamas has admitted as much, as they say they expected an Israeli overreaction and the destruction of Gaza and the Palestinians there, which they thought at best would create a wider regional war and at worst would make the Palestinian question impossible to ignore by the international community. Hamas spent everything it had in one final bid for political relevance. So it’s all in the end a public-relations stunt.
…
Hamas is a capitalist group. What does this mean? It accepts capitalism and is not in any way a challenge to it. It is a particularly Right-wing form of capitalism. It is a criminal gang. They are indeed terrorists. Terrorism is by its very nature capitalist and not socialist politics. Capitalist crime. — Crime is capitalist, not socialist. It is the capitalism of the weak, not socialism. And the weak shall not inherit the Earth. They never have.
Hamas are the Kapos in the concentration camp, recruited from ordinary criminals to rule over the rest, and hoping to slip away and survive through the mayhem. They were literally chosen by Israel to rule the Gaza Strip. The game of “military transactions” (Hegel) played between Israel and Hamas, no matter how violent and gruesome, is merely negotiating the terms of capitalism, through extremely sensationalist marketing propaganda — in images as well as deeds. And the bargaining-chips that are played consist of ordinary people’s lives — as victims and not agents, objects and not subjects of bloody capitalist politics. As the workers always are.
Hamas has aimed and aims to divide the civilian population along religious or ethnic lines. This means dividing the working class. They wagered — and lost — the lives of Palestinians in ways capitalist politicians always do. Hamas’s leadership are literally billionaires whose individual personal wealth rivals that of Donald Trump. But what have they built? Their wealth is skimmed off the misery of others — as with all gangsters. They will retire comfortably, while their fighters are slaughtered.
Today’s “Left” are a parody side-show of capitalist gangsterism, cheerleading the slaughter.
What is required in Palestine or Israel is the working-class political unity of Jewish and Arab and Muslim and Christian and other (for instance, “foreign/guest”) workers in the struggle for socialism. This is entirely contrary to either Arab nationalism — such as that of the PFLP — or Islamism — as with Hamas. It is also contrary to Zionism. It is against the nation-state — the nationalist basis for politics.
So long as capitalism persists and is not overcome in socialism, globally, there will be social and geographical divisions that invite political divisions to which the working class and other people will become inevitably subject. There will be war, inter-national state and/or civil, “legitimate” or otherwise. Always capitalist war.
But original historical Marxism said, “No war but class war!” — refusing the terms of capitalist warfare. — I know that this is regarded as “ultra-Leftism” and “Marxist purism” and “dogmatism,” but still. I prefer to maintain my self-respect as a dogmatic Marxist than pose in the mirror as a wannabe gangsta, mouthing the words to someone else’s rap. “Intifada until victory!” will be a very long time. Forever. Never.
But we can still refuse to endorse and support the capitalist politics that actively seeks to exploit and enforce such divisions and warfare: Hamas and other dominant Palestinian political forces as well as Zionism are clear examples of such destructive politics, whose devastating and anti-social results we are seeing now as well as for the past century.
The Platypus Affiliated Society – Israel-Palestine and the “Left”
platypus1917.org
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
This is what I was trying to get biscuits to explain to me. It's a straightforward might-is-right position that could be used to criticise any anti-imperialist struggle, and which sits rather at odds with the author's presumably leftist politics.
That's not to say that the observation that Hamas can't hope to militarily defeat Israel isn't correct, if obvious and trivial. But the only alternative is diplomacy, which Fatah/the PA has tried, and got basically nothing in return, for which their legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinians has gone down the toilet.
mixed_biscuits
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It's not an anti-imperialist move that Hamas is pulling; it's an anti-being-alive move
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Ah yes, Hamas leaving the IDF literally no choice but to shoot women and children, we know the argument well.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
If they surrendered, it would all stop
dilbert1
Well-known member
Gonna go on a bit of a rant...
What sickens me is that so may of my radical leftist friends, with all their taken-for-granted liberal freedoms and institutions, cheer on the Palestinians, beyond any question of the fate in store for them, simply in wanting them to persevere in their particularity, their prospective 'sovereign' essence as a Nation and People. So these leftists have nothing to say about what Hamas or the PFLP mean for Palestinian society and politics, or what a better vision might be according to the people who live and work in Palestine. Tradition and the most extreme provincialism really ought to dictate such things. Let’s leave them to their pristine culture, the way they do things. Anything else would be imperialist whitewash.
For these types, it's as simple as: the last shall come first, and the first shall come last. And I hate my parents and my American privilege. And despite all appearances, despite my worst fears, I'm not complicit, I'm nothing like the normies. My pathological sympathy for the oppressed's ultimately futile resistance serves the function of warding off the painful thought that the Palestinians themselves are complicit in (because obviously powerless to intervene against) their own subjugation. And of course, if the subaltern aren’t complicit with the Amerikkkan death machine, and I identify with them (in however a bizarre and estranged manner), then I can flatter myself that neither am I. This is what passes for "solidarity" now. "Look at the drip on this kid in Gaza throwing rocks at a tank, low key goes hard af!" A soothing psychic compliment to the anxiety meds and SSRIs, no doubt.
The extreme desperation, abjection and madness some are driven to in struggling against a condition of complete dehumanization and servitude is nothing to celebrate. What’s the upshot of pretending the most vulnerable people on Earth can be the agents of their own liberation? Why should we be expected to do anything but grimace at and spurn the most violent expressions of their unfreedom? Being represented by (and subject to Israel's retaliation for) Hamas’s action, is one and the same with having no food, water, electricity or other basic amenities, much less a freer society. What other freedom or "self-determination," besides the bourgeois/liberal kind we enjoy, would we hope them to be granted? Do we really think Palestinians would reject such freedom for ethnonationalist theocracy were the former, and not merely raw survival and terroristic justice, a live option?
What sickens me is that so may of my radical leftist friends, with all their taken-for-granted liberal freedoms and institutions, cheer on the Palestinians, beyond any question of the fate in store for them, simply in wanting them to persevere in their particularity, their prospective 'sovereign' essence as a Nation and People. So these leftists have nothing to say about what Hamas or the PFLP mean for Palestinian society and politics, or what a better vision might be according to the people who live and work in Palestine. Tradition and the most extreme provincialism really ought to dictate such things. Let’s leave them to their pristine culture, the way they do things. Anything else would be imperialist whitewash.
For these types, it's as simple as: the last shall come first, and the first shall come last. And I hate my parents and my American privilege. And despite all appearances, despite my worst fears, I'm not complicit, I'm nothing like the normies. My pathological sympathy for the oppressed's ultimately futile resistance serves the function of warding off the painful thought that the Palestinians themselves are complicit in (because obviously powerless to intervene against) their own subjugation. And of course, if the subaltern aren’t complicit with the Amerikkkan death machine, and I identify with them (in however a bizarre and estranged manner), then I can flatter myself that neither am I. This is what passes for "solidarity" now. "Look at the drip on this kid in Gaza throwing rocks at a tank, low key goes hard af!" A soothing psychic compliment to the anxiety meds and SSRIs, no doubt.
The extreme desperation, abjection and madness some are driven to in struggling against a condition of complete dehumanization and servitude is nothing to celebrate. What’s the upshot of pretending the most vulnerable people on Earth can be the agents of their own liberation? Why should we be expected to do anything but grimace at and spurn the most violent expressions of their unfreedom? Being represented by (and subject to Israel's retaliation for) Hamas’s action, is one and the same with having no food, water, electricity or other basic amenities, much less a freer society. What other freedom or "self-determination," besides the bourgeois/liberal kind we enjoy, would we hope them to be granted? Do we really think Palestinians would reject such freedom for ethnonationalist theocracy were the former, and not merely raw survival and terroristic justice, a live option?
Yeah, I know what you mean. There seem to be a lot of young Americans on the left who are like this on Twitter, etc. Tiresome. Although a bunch of them will grow up and turn into their parents anyway.
That was one of Lasch's criticisms of some people's involvement in radical politics. That it was propelled by a selfish, therapeutic impulse toward self-actualisation rather than anything political or altruistic. There's a bit in Culture of Narcissism where he quotes from the memoir of someone involved with the Weather Underground talking about it in terms of how alive it made them feel, how in tune with their body, etc. The kind of things you'd hear people saying on an acid trip or after meditating.
You can say that without his/their more controversial points on the Palestinians themselves, mind you. That put me in mind of Lyotard's infamous, and later disavowed, line about the English workers enjoying their bodies being destroyed down the mines.
Could you not flip this and similarly chastise a group of Americans suggesting Palestinians surrender to Israel because it suits the Americans' dogmatic reading of Marx?