this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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Israel is an euroamerican settler project. This is not a squabble between neighbours.
A squabble like the genocide in Darfur or the genocide in Armenia? What point are you trying to make here?
The point you just made is that you're acting politically illiterate because none of those are comparable. You're dismissing the fact that Israel, like America, is a settler state that is pushing indigenous people off the land (both 2nd class Jewish citizens and Palestinian ones) and slaughtering them in an apartheid system. Darfur does not have that to such a systematic level. Darfur also doesn't get 8 billion dollars+ in taxpayer dollars. Same with Armenia.
What would happen is America stopped investing into Israel is the dampening of Israel's fighting capability and the cut off for supply chains that are sponsoring a genocide. We can also stop just giving them money for it. Eventually, rightfully, their neighbors would do them in.
Cut the obtuse shit. Because if it's just "neighbor vs neighbor" why are we funding it at all?
I'm not trying to argue in bad faith. First I think the US shouldn't fund it at all, no matter why there is a genocide.
But regarding the neighbour conflict, I want to explain: Your argument seems to be that what happens in Gaza is something singular or special, tied to the colonialist nature of the funding of the modern Israel. I don't see that. In Germany there was a discussion about the singularity of the Shoah. I have doubts about this too but it's an understandable notion to have as a "perpetrator nation". The Shoah however was a genocide of real neighbours, like next door neighbours. And it was unprecedented in the cruelty and the industrial scope of the extermination. But I don't think it couldn't happen again. And this is an example of one of the worst genocides in history which didn't even require a colonialist setting, not even a neighbouring nation or people with which you had hostilities dating back centuries. And that's the reason why I refute the argument that this genocide is in any way special just because it's rooted in a colonialist setting.
I really don't understand your line of reasoning at all. No one said the genocide in Palestine is unique because of the settler aspect. Genocides have already been performed in the name of that cause in the Americas by European settlers. It is still qualitatively different from the genocides in Darfur and Armenia (which you brought up) but that does not make it unique.
Moreover, even if it is not unique, it does not mean genocides are ubiquitous. That is what it seems to me you are trying to say but it's hard to tell because I can't follow your logic at all. Claiming that tensions between neighbouring states are common is something that should require proof. And then claiming that it often escalated to genocides should require even more proof. Colonialists and settlers trivialise their atrocities by blaming it on human nature and stuff like that. But that's just a cheap move to universalise the capitalist and imperialist logical of accumulation. It is perfectly possible for neighbours to live in peace. You probably have a neighbour. Why haven't they driven you out of your home and laid a claim to it? Or you them? Almost all countries are not genociding their neighbours? Why is that?
Ah yes, you know. This kind of thing happens between the Netherlands and Belgium all the time. Oh wait it doesn't...because there is that sinister, subtle suggestion that "well...it's that part of the world". They wont say it though.
You refute it...because other genocides happened that weren't colonial? It may not be unique, but the contradiction between the settler state of Israel and Palestine goes back to the 40s when Israel was literally created by the British Empire and France. It was literally created by colonial powers and when created it was based on a bloodthirsty Zionist project who considered Palestinians and 2nd-class Jewish citizens as undesirables. It was an apartheid state that committed scaled massacres until escalating into genocide only shortly after it's creation.
It fills all the blanks of being "rooted" in a colonialist setting because it literally was a fucking colony and literally IS A SETTLER state. Doing mental gymnastics that saying "well, Shoah" doesn't mean anything. Materially it is a settler state; one that used to be a colonial territory committing genocide on a indigenous people.
What's "special" about it is that America is also a settler nation, a much older one, that is funding, arming and refusing to back down or condemn the genocide other than a few phone-calls that do nothing and aid-drops that literally killed civilians. What's "special" about it is that by cutting funding, you severely hamper the capabilities of the Israeli genocide machine and their neighbors can begin the process of removing and purging a settler-colonial state. You also seem to forget that we should've cut funding years ago; but instead we've been perpetuating it for decades now and when the genocides finally ramp up all you can do is wring your hands and say "well not funding it wont do anything?"
Is that spelled more clear for you now? Do I have to be more specific and say that Tel Aviv should be carpet-bombed and Netanyahu should be sentenced to death for war crimes? Fuck your obtuse failed logic and your pathetic refutation that doesn't even have a rhetoric beyond *"well...but actually nuh-uh"
The perpetrator nation is the one arming, funding and giving military equipment to the nation doing a genocide. The same perpetrator that runs the western hegemony of capital. The "neighbor" is Palestine because Israel is a proxy.