There's simply no condemnation of Hamas that is not at the same time a condemnation of the Palestinian resistance. pic.twitter.com/FzZmsqUlQO
— Vijay Prashad (@vijayprashad) November 9, 2023
No, actually, you can condemn Hamas because they have not accomplished shit. If being a terrorist entity that lobs missiles all over the place, and most recently did a pogram and raped and mutilated Israeli and other people and went on to kidnap hostages and are the kinds of unstable fucks who don't care if literally tens of thousands of Palestinians die as a result because it's all GOOD PRESS, then actually, I would not call this shit "resistance" but "sociopathy."
If one was really interested in the cause of Palestinian liberation but didn't care if the people lived or died, I'd be skeptical. So let's talk stupid numbers: if the IDF has killed 10,000 people to get to 60 Hamas fighters (and they've killed more UN aides and journalists including their families) you probably see 500K Gazans dead before the government thought they were done routing out Hamas. MAYBE.
Don't ask what number of Gazan dead is OK for the Israel government: what is OK for the supposed liberators of Palestine? What the fuck are they doing? I condemn what is supposedly a "Palestinian resistance" because they aren't shit. They are not shit. The Palestinians dying all over the place? The way Hamas has fuel for rockets but not generators and all that? The way there is tunnels for terror, not to save lives?
They want Palestinian dead: they thrive on it. This is their PR. They want an Islamic state and know full well their Palestinian brethren aren't interested as much in their extreme theocratic sociopathy.
I want freedom for Palestinian people, even while I doubt it looks like one shared state from the river to the sea. (But I am starting to wonder what if it could--beyond the current status quo--just an admission that a Jewish state can't exist as a religious or a moral state if is relies on government that is apposite. That is oppressive and relies on death.)
I see the tearing down of the kidnapping posters of Israeli victims and more as a problem of our conspiracy-mindedness in the present, digital age. We have so many internet-savvy people who don't know history and won't learn. They want to tear down images that are difficult for them to square with their ideology, instead of shifting their ideology to accept their chosen cause aren't pure as the driven slush.
I know no side is perfect. I don't have a side, but the human side. Because all this shit here: is bad. It looks bad because it is bad. And that's all I want you to know.
3 comments:
Thank you. Again perfectly spoken.
Very well put. Thanks for that. Can I add one comment? When you say, " We have so many internet-savvy people who don't know history and won't learn. They want to tear down images that are difficult for them to square with their ideology..." this is hardly a product of the internet. People have thought that way for thousands of years. It's so much easier, apparently to just slaughter anyone that disagrees with you than to look at what is really happening in the world.
Green Eagle--you're right. I don't have to look much further than my parents' age, John Lennon writing "If you're carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you're not going to make it with anyone anyhow." And Che t-shirts and maybe even people of my *just* pre-Internet days being like "Free Mumia" (I'm the descendant of an Irish Philadelphia cop. I can look at the enormity of what happened with, say, MOVE in the 80's when I watched a neighborhood burn and still tell you politics aside, I can't say it wasn't a good arrest or that the trials were biased. I can't say they were. I know my city can be wrong, I just don't think it was here.) I don't have to go beyond my memory to find pre-internet examples of people just enjoying their wrongness out in public where people could hear. Folk don't want facts as much as they want narratives.
It probably feels like the internet makes it worse for me, since more of my life has been "during internet".
I think the internet makes it easier to find pleasing narratives, and to find the community to back you up in your wrongness with "research material" (also known as propaganda and disinfo and poor sources). But that just plays to a kind of thinking humans have been prey to for a long time.
I sort of wish this knowledge would result in critical thinking and information-sourcing education for people well before college-age. Like a combined "Civics/Media Education" class in high school. I think it could be very necessary, and also like something the kind of people who ban books would not like at all.
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