Say no to authoritarianism, say yes to socialism. Free Palestine 🇵🇸 Everyone deserves Human Rights

  • 28 Posts
  • 210 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 18th, 2023
  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Amnesty International Israel ‘Publicly Discredited’ Human Rights Research - Israel Branch Suspended
    6·
    8 days ago

    “Amnesty Israel was given two reasons from Amnesty International for the suspension: first, the branch conducts itself in a racist manner against Palestinians; second, the reports and messaging coming from Amnesty Israel do not align with Amnesty International,” the Israeli i24 news channel reported on Tuesday, citing “a source inside Amnesty International.”

    The Jerusalem Post cited “leaked internal memorandums issued on Monday” that includes allegations that the Israel branch “systematically excluded Palestinians.”

    “We take this action in response to evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within AI Israel, which violates core human rights principles and Amnesty values, and evidence of AI Israel’s misalignment with and hostility to Amnesty positions,” an email from the IB Amnesty International interim chair Tiumalu Lauvale Peter Fa’afiu reportedly stated, said the Jerusalem Post.

    Ourabi and Kader reportedly said that they left because Amnesty Israel “supposedly ignored Israeli human rights violations, and was focused on the impact of October 7 when a year later the war barely impacted Israelis as Palestinians continued to suffer.”

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldtoProgressive Politics@lemmy.world•The Democrats’ stubborn refusal to learn from the campus protests for Palestine
    7·
    28 days ago

    It was the Harris campaign that made the decision to not break from Biden on Israel, at the cost of at least a net +6 points gain. Those votes were entirely up for grabs. Not enough to win the general election majority, but certainly enough to win swing states. That was the fault of the campaign’s calculations to ignore those voters, take them for granted, and instead run to the right with having the most lethal Military and unwaivering support for Israel a year into this genocide. That single policy change would have secured her the swing states needed to win the election with the electoral college. Winning the popular vote would have needed more progressive policies that address and resolve the material needs of the general public.

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    Our first matchup tested a Democrat and a Republican who “both agree with Israel’s current approach to the conflict in Gaza”. In this case, the generic candidates tied 44–44. The second matchup saw the same Republican facing a Democrat supporting “an immediate ceasefire and a halt of military aid and arms sales to Israel”. Interestingly, the Democrat led 49–43, with Independents and 2020 non-voters driving the bulk of this shift.

    Quotes

    In Pennsylvania, 34% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee vowed to withhold weapons to Israel, compared to 7% who said they would be less likely. The rest said it would make no difference. In Arizona, 35% said they’d be more likely, while 5% would be less likely. And in Georgia, 39% said they’d be more likely, also compared to 5% who would be less likely.

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    Majorities of Democrats (67%) and Independents (55%) believe the US should either end support for Israel’s war effort or make that support conditional on a ceasefire. Only 8% of Democrats but 42% of Republicans think the US must support Israel unconditionally.

    Republicans and Independents most often point to immigration as one of Biden’s top foreign policy failures. Democrats most often select the US response to the war in Gaza.

    700k high propensity Democratic voters showed up during the primaries. (Which may have been undercounted). On average, general turnout is twice that of primary turnout. Which would reflect over 1,400,000 uncommitted votes in the general as an estimate that were completely up for grabs with a single popular policy change. One of the many failures of the Democratic Campaign.

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable about people making such a deal out of whether they're "black" or "white"?
    71·
    1 month ago

    Whiteness is an exclusionary concept used to create an ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’. Hasan Piker gives a great breakdown of it here.

    Historically, it comes from a justification of chattel slavery. Painting ‘whiteness’ as purity and superior and ‘blackness’ as inferior and subservient. Leeja Miller gives a great analysis about how this has influenced Eugenics in American history (which inspired the ideology of the Nazis) which is still practiced to this day in certain circumstances.

    It’s long, but Knowing Better gives an extremely detailed history of neoslavery in American history. To understand why ‘whiteness’ is still so prevalent in America in modern day, it’s important to understand the history of systemic racism and how it persists to this day.

    Edit: We can expand on this concept of Identity Politics from just America to the lens of Colonialist Race Relations through the works of Franz Fanon who explored and wrote about this in detail. While Fanon wrote about this in the 1960s, his works are just as if not more relevant today. Adi Callai does a fantastic analysis of Fanon’s works about Identity Politics, how to overcome it, and the realities of Race Abolition. If you’re interested in how to overcome and move past the identity politics of Whiteness and Blackness, check out Adi Callai’s video here.

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Has anyone ever come up with what a Palestinian State would look like without wiping Israel of the map? If so have both sides ever been presented the offer? If not why?
    3·
    2 months ago

    Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe. Western Nations supported this instead of instituting legal protections and refuge for Jewish people fleeing persecution.

    Adi Callai, an Israeli, does a great analysis of how Antisemitism has been weaponized by Zionism during its history.

    Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.

    That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.

    Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.

    Over 12000 Palestinians fought alongside Jewish forces against Nazi Germany. Nor would ethnic cleansing be justified if that wasn’t the case.

    I support equal rights and reparations for Native Americans in America, which they still don’t currently have. So what’s your point. I’m advocating for equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians too.

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Has anyone ever come up with what a Palestinian State would look like without wiping Israel of the map? If so have both sides ever been presented the offer? If not why?
    2·
    2 months ago

    After the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of Palestinian cities

    Ethnic Cleansing is fundamental to Zionism

    Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.

    The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.

    An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.

    Settlements and Occupation

    Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.

    This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.

    The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:

    Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:

    While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements

    The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.

    The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Has anyone ever come up with what a Palestinian State would look like without wiping Israel of the map? If so have both sides ever been presented the offer? If not why?
    7·
    2 months ago

    There is the Saif al-Islam Gaddafi Isratin proposal:

    The Gaddafi Isratin proposal intended to permanently resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through a secular, federalist, republican one-state solution, which was first articulated by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, at the Chatham House in London and later adopted by Muammar Gaddafi himself.

    Its main points are:

    • Creation of a binational Jewish-Palestinian state called the “Federal Republic of the Holy Land”;

    • Partition of the state into five administrative regions, with Jerusalem as a city-state;

    • Return of all Palestinian refugees;

    • Supervision by the United Nations of free and fair elections on the first and second occasions;

    • Removal of weapons of mass destruction from the state;

    • Recognition of the state by the Arab League.

    Similar to the Binational State Solution advocated by the Palestinian leadership and some others prior to the Nakba.

    Partition was used to justify Setter Colonialism and Ethnic Cleansing

    The Zionist position changed in 1928, when the pragmatic Palestinian leaders agreed to the principle of parity in a rare moment in which clannish and religious differences were overcome for the sake of consensus. The Palestinian leaders feared that without parity the Zionists would gain control of the political system. The unexpected Palestinian agreement threw the Zionist leaders into temporary confusion. When they recovered, they sent a refusal to the British, but at the same time offered an alternative solution: the partitioning of Palestine into two political units.

    • Pg 132 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine

    On 31 August 1947, UNSCOP presented its recommendations to the UN General Assembly. Three of its members were allowed to put forward an alternative recommendation. The majority report advocated the partition of Palestine into two states, with an economic union. The designated Jewish state was to have most of the coastal area, western Galilee, and the Negev, and the rest was to become the Palestinian state. The minority report proposed a unitary state in Palestine based on the principle of democracy. It took considerable American Jewish lobbying and American diplomatic pressure, as well as a powerful speech by the Russian ambassador to the UN, to gain the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly for partition. Even though hardly any Palestinian or Arab diplomat made an effort to promote the alternative scheme, it won an equal number of supporters and detractors, showing that a considerable number of member states realized that imposing partition amounted to supporting one side and opposing the other.

    • Pg 181 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine

    This ongoing Settler Colonialism annexing the West Bank continues to make a Two State Solution less possible, it has already divided the West Bank into hundreds of isolated enclaves. This Apartheid State needs to end as a binational state for all Palestinians and Israelis.

    Here are resources by Historians about a One-State Solution. In many ways, it’s already a One-State, an Apartheid State, this change would be the emancipation of Palestinians to bring forth a One-State with equal rights.

    The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

    • Avi Shlaim

    How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

    ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

    One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Israel claims Hezbollah bunker under Beirut hospital holds millions of dollars
    24·
    3 months ago

    Airstrikes began about an hour later, with strong explosions heard across the Beirut area. One of the strikes hit just in front of the entrance of the Rafik Hariri university hospital, the largest public hospital in Lebanon. At least four people including a child were killed and 24 injured in the strike, and the hospital suffered “major damage” from the blast.

    The initial casualty count was expected to rise as first responders continued digging through the rubble for people. A picture of the building struck in front of Rafik Hairi hospital showed a man covered in blood lying lifeless in a bombed-out building.

    Israel won’t stop targeting hospitals