The reason the US supports Israel is exactly because Israel is a settler-colony. They’re part of the same genocidal settler project, Zionism is Manifest Destiny.
If landback wins in Israel the ones paying attention know that it’s coming for them too.
But they didn’t have to make a colony of European settlers to do that, did they? Egypt is a loyal collaborator with the US and it fulfills the same geostrategic goals, but the amount of support Egypt gets pales in comparison to Israel. Why is that?
We can’t dismiss the ideological importance of Israel. The unlimited support of the 51st state is exactly because it is a settler-colony.
I don’t see many ethnic Egyptians in places of power that can influence policy or get laws voted concerning their country.
Egypt hasn’t always been loyal, certainly not the population.
They overthrew the previous puppet despite US efforts to keep him in place.
When they saw it was hopeless they threw him under the bus and ‘supported’ the arab spring movement.
In reality they hijacked the revolution and simply put another puppet in place.
Settler-colonialism isn’t just about who is in power (although it is about that). That’s just regular colonialism, like French Algeria.
Settler-colonialism is about importing settlers to replace the indigenous population while enacting genocidal policies to exterminate or expell the indigenous population. Egypt isn’t experiencing that.
That’s why Egypt doesn’t get the level of support that Israel does.
This belief that Israel is a US controlled proxy has always vexed me.
So-- honest question here-- From inside the US it appears that our entire political apparatus is controlled by a relatively small sprinkling of zionists doing whatever is good for Israel and is inevitably bad for the US-- going all the way back to the Nakba. But theres always people (like yourself) on Lemmy and Reddit claiming Israel is a US creature under US control for US gain.
As an American my free speech ends and I get prosecuted if I say anything anti semitic. I CAN say racist things about anyone else, all I want as long as I dont start a riot.
Can you tell me why you are so certain zionism is controlled by the US (your understanding), not the US by rich zionists (my understanding)?
edit: Did you just …downvote and run away from the question? It was an honest question.
The US and Israel have a partnership.
While the zionist representation is very visible in US politics and creates the belief that they contol it it is not so.
Can you honestly believe that if you objectively compare the two?
A tiny country with a small population and a small army (despite again being disproportionally and relatively big) vs a huge country with the largest military in the world that was already a world power before the other even existed.
" doing whatever is good for Israel and is inevitably bad for the US"
Can you give an example?
If you’re thinking now that the bad thing is israel may drag the US into war with Iran you’re mistaken.
That may happen but it’s bcs it is the US intention to have war on Iran.
They have provoked them many times all on their own without using the israel proxy.
Hijacking ships, small attacks and unilaterally breaking the nuclear deal, etc. to increase tension.
Anyway here’s a good article I recently read.
Whatever is happening now has long been predicted.
“Did you just …downvote and run away from the question? It was an honest question.”
I sometimes sleep, and never run away from a discussion if it’s civil or useful.
Which is rare here since .world is infested with reactionary clowns throwing insults and platitutes when they lose an argument.
examples of whats good for Israel being bad for the US:
Our aligning with Israel during the Yom Kipur war (6 day war) caused Oil prices to quadruple, which caused a decade of turmoil in the US, and almost incalculable damage to our currency. And it never really recovered to a natural pattern. The US runs on oil.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart
See that massive bump up in 1973? I dont suppose you are old enough to remember interest rates in the 80s are you? it peaked at 21.5%. Thats catastrophic damage to the average US persons purchasing power. Wages didnt keep up with costs-- not even close. The Israeli’s colonial war cost the US our middle class and created a massive underclass. We all paid for their war, that they claim was preemptive and unavoidable, and not their fault (just like their attack on Iran today).
And what was our reward for that? Did we gain any political leverage at all in that region? Bases? soft power? No. No we didnt. all we got was some of the blame for the Nakba, and some of the blame for the ridiculous levels persecution and murder of the Palestinian people. It was pure cost.
1990-1991 Desert storm
Israel badly wanted Sadam Hussein removed. Iraq said they invaded Kuwait because Kuwait was slant drilling into their oil fields, which is true and was known at the time to be true. So we invaded and rescued a bunch of literal thieves-- and coincidentally destroyed a potent adversary of Israel. What did we gain? anything? Two air bases, and thats about it, at great cost. The government or Iraq is barely more friendly to us that they were before. I suppose we got CENTCOM established in Kuwait. So thas not nothing, but its darn close to nothing. Israel got a major enemy removed for them. They didnt join in desert storm-- and did not allow overflight of their territory during it. They are not, and never have been a real military ally. They court Russia as much as they do the US. Same as India.
9/11/2001. Bin Laden says he attacked the world trade centers in new york to bring US public eyes to the plight of the Palestinian people that their government was facilitating, but that Americans had no idea about. And what did our people do? Our government idiotically claimed “they hated us for our freedoms”, and made a big show about not blaming all muslims, just some. What was America’s gain there? And when the attack happened, Israelis in New York and Israel were caught on tape literally cheering about it and filming it.
Bin Ladens interview with PBS:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/miller.html
“The American imposes himself on everyone. Americans accuse our children in Palestine of being terrorists–those children, who have no weapons and have not even reached maturity. At the same time, Americans defend a country, the state of the Jews, that has a policy to destroy the future of these children.”
Obviously no one condones or support what Bin Laden did, but lets be clear eyed in our foreign policy: was he incorrect in any way in his statement? I dont see how we can honestly say he was not being earnest – to his point of view anyway. 9/11 and its outcomes would seem to be a massive, massive, massive cost to the United states in terms of hard power and soft, and added tremendously to our national debt burden. We have the TSA exactly because of Israel’s murderous colonial adventurism. What of we’d simply show the muslim world the diplomatic respect of equals from the start? And he was right, zionism IS a policy of displacing the locals from their land however possible. Thats all it is. Its racist theft and murder. Its not self defense or justice, and it never has been.
And that brings us to today. We’re literally sponsoring a genocide of innocents, for Israel’s benefit. Its one of the most illegal and immoral things a country can possibly do.
The world HATES the US because of our stand with Israel. They now see us as almost as bad as Israel. Stupid. Easily manipulated. A global problem. This is as we have also been the main contributor to food aid and the stability of trade across the planet. Thats a cost. And what have we gotten out of it? Our funding of free weapons for shenangans and murder, and our vetoing every resolution that is about peace and justice in the region for Israeli gain costs us dearly. It makes every American traveler unsafe and unwelcome, and makes people not want to trade with us or listen to our opinions. It is destroying the concepts of democracy and the rules based order, and the concept os the western world itself. The world is ditching the dollar. I hope its all worth it for Israel to finish their genocide of innocents, who today have nothing. They are doing it for beachfront condos. They will not be any more secure after this.
And what does the US population gain for our support? Its not for any philosophical or moral reason, obviously. Israelis literally spit on christians they see in the street-- is that what friends and long term allies do? Does it indicate a “partnership”? What exactly does Israel provide to the US beyond campaign bribes through AIPAC? Intel on their enemies?
Not ‘every’ land but I get the point.
Still it doesn’t compare and there’s no excuse.
In this case the colonising is still going on, hence the genocide.
They are not ‘citizens’ but colonisers.
They deserve all they get, what they don’t deserve is sympathy.
I would disagree. If you go back far enough, every land has been stolen. There is probably no piece of land that hasn’t been held by multiple different groups over time.
I’d also argue a government existing at all is stolen land. What gives them the right to the land, instead of the people using it as they want? At some point someone decided the land was theirs, and not someone else’s, and decided they could sell, lend, or use the land as they want, even if someone else also wanted to use it.
Before colonialism, empires would conquer lands and then just make the people who already live there into their subjects.
And before empires and agriculture and such, people weren’t really organized enough to steal land (and weren’t embedded deeply enough in the land for it to be stolen). They’d just move to the new land and become part of the people already there.
And before empires and agriculture and such, people weren’t really organized enough to steal land (and weren’t embedded deeply enough in the land for it to be stolen). They’d just move to the new land and become part of the people already there.
Yeah, that’s my point. At one point in time land wasn’t something owned, just something utilized. The fact that governments exert control over them implies they were stolen, as it prevents some people from utilizing it. See: Proudhon - What is Property?
Okay, you need to recognize that there are greater and lesser contradictions. Yes, all property is theft, but is that a useful line for Palestinians to struggle against? Can they even meaningfully abolish property without solving the colonial question?
That’s why we say the colonial question is the primary contradiction. Israelis are colonial invaders that have come to steal the land and expel or kill the indigenous population. This is a greater concern than, say, Palestinian business owners owning property (and thus stealing the land from the Commons). If we don’t focus our struggles and identify the primary contradiction, we just lash out at every injustice all at once and accomplish nothing because we are overwhelmed.
Every successful decolonial struggle for national independence involves cooperation between the landless and the landed, because colonialism takes primacy. We can deal with the question of “who gets to own the land” once the invaders are gone.
Yes, all property is theft, but is that a useful line for Palestinians to struggle against? Can they even meaningfully abolish property without solving the colonial question?
I never said that, though “the colonial question” is solved if you abolish property, so it’s still worth considering, even in this context.
Israelis are colonial invaders that have come to steal the land and expel or kill the indigenous population. This is a greater concern than, say, Palestinian business owners owning property (and thus stealing the land from the Commons).
Yes, and the whole system is built on ownership of property. Addressing the surface level issue (colonizer stealing land) is great, but you should also consider the root cause. If they can’t own land then there’s no colonization. It’s worth looking at both of these and fighting both. If there is to be a system enacted (which currently is no where close to happening, but still needs to be a consideration), it should be one that protects people and prevents exploitation, so this doesn’t happen again.
We can deal with the question of “who gets to own the land” once the invaders are gone.
It’s too late to do it then. That’s how you have a revolution collapse into something horrible; it didn’t have a plan for what comes after. The people struggling to just survive don’t need to consider this, but it does need to be considered. If you wait until after it’s done then you just end up with squabbling, and the group who can exert control takes it without consent.
It’s an order of operations. If they try to resolve every contradiction all at the same time they stretch the revolution too thin and drive all of their enemies into one unified front.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t even think about the other contradictions (in fact, progressive forces should internally theorize and strategize in secret about what to do after the colonial occupation is defeated) but it does mean that those secondary contradictions are to be set aside in public while they focus on the primary contradiction.
Now isn’t the time to air the dirty laundry of everyone that’s on your side against the occupation.
Obviously propertied interests are going to be a problem after the occupation is defeated, but until the occupation is defeated they can used. Not only does this increase the power and size of the decolonial struggle by creating a unified front, but without that ability to set aside secondary contradictions those propertied interests will join the occupation’s side instead. Those propertied interests are only using the revolutionaries for their own ends, but progressive forces are only using them in turn.
This is how every successful decolonial struggle was won.
Many decolonial struggles only achieved flag independence and failed to achieve sovereignty because they either failed to identify those secondary contradictions or chose to forget the secondary contradictions in their nationalistic fervor, but that’s not what I’m advocating! Once the occupation is defeated one of those secondary contradictions will become the new primary contradiction, and progressive forces will need to be prepared for that.
But that has to wait. In the immediate struggle, everyone has a common enemy.
In this case the colonising is still going on, hence the genocide.
They are not ‘citizens’ but colonisers.
It’s not an unfortunate fait accompli like the US that eradicated the original inhabitants for instance.
Shouldn’t be a citizen on stolen land.
USAmericans sweating rn 😬
Us next!
Don’t think they care much. Or about anything except themselves for that matter.
The most navel staring country on the planet
The reason the US supports Israel is exactly because Israel is a settler-colony. They’re part of the same genocidal settler project, Zionism is Manifest Destiny.
If landback wins in Israel the ones paying attention know that it’s coming for them too.
It’s also a geographically beneficial located proxy.
But they didn’t have to make a colony of European settlers to do that, did they? Egypt is a loyal collaborator with the US and it fulfills the same geostrategic goals, but the amount of support Egypt gets pales in comparison to Israel. Why is that?
We can’t dismiss the ideological importance of Israel. The unlimited support of the 51st state is exactly because it is a settler-colony.
I don’t see many ethnic Egyptians in places of power that can influence policy or get laws voted concerning their country.
Egypt hasn’t always been loyal, certainly not the population.
They overthrew the previous puppet despite US efforts to keep him in place.
When they saw it was hopeless they threw him under the bus and ‘supported’ the arab spring movement.
In reality they hijacked the revolution and simply put another puppet in place.
Settler-colonialism isn’t just about who is in power (although it is about that). That’s just regular colonialism, like French Algeria.
Settler-colonialism is about importing settlers to replace the indigenous population while enacting genocidal policies to exterminate or expell the indigenous population. Egypt isn’t experiencing that.
That’s why Egypt doesn’t get the level of support that Israel does.
That is your view.
I disagree.
This belief that Israel is a US controlled proxy has always vexed me.
So-- honest question here-- From inside the US it appears that our entire political apparatus is controlled by a relatively small sprinkling of zionists doing whatever is good for Israel and is inevitably bad for the US-- going all the way back to the Nakba. But theres always people (like yourself) on Lemmy and Reddit claiming Israel is a US creature under US control for US gain.
As an American my free speech ends and I get prosecuted if I say anything anti semitic. I CAN say racist things about anyone else, all I want as long as I dont start a riot.
Can you tell me why you are so certain zionism is controlled by the US (your understanding), not the US by rich zionists (my understanding)?
edit: Did you just …downvote and run away from the question? It was an honest question.
The US and Israel have a partnership.
While the zionist representation is very visible in US politics and creates the belief that they contol it it is not so.
Can you honestly believe that if you objectively compare the two?
A tiny country with a small population and a small army (despite again being disproportionally and relatively big) vs a huge country with the largest military in the world that was already a world power before the other even existed.
" doing whatever is good for Israel and is inevitably bad for the US"
Can you give an example?
If you’re thinking now that the bad thing is israel may drag the US into war with Iran you’re mistaken.
That may happen but it’s bcs it is the US intention to have war on Iran.
They have provoked them many times all on their own without using the israel proxy.
Hijacking ships, small attacks and unilaterally breaking the nuclear deal, etc. to increase tension.
Anyway here’s a good article I recently read.
Whatever is happening now has long been predicted.
“Did you just …downvote and run away from the question? It was an honest question.”
I sometimes sleep, and never run away from a discussion if it’s civil or useful.
Which is rare here since .world is infested with reactionary clowns throwing insults and platitutes when they lose an argument.
Let me know what you think.
examples of whats good for Israel being bad for the US:
Our aligning with Israel during the Yom Kipur war (6 day war) caused Oil prices to quadruple, which caused a decade of turmoil in the US, and almost incalculable damage to our currency. And it never really recovered to a natural pattern. The US runs on oil.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart See that massive bump up in 1973? I dont suppose you are old enough to remember interest rates in the 80s are you? it peaked at 21.5%. Thats catastrophic damage to the average US persons purchasing power. Wages didnt keep up with costs-- not even close. The Israeli’s colonial war cost the US our middle class and created a massive underclass. We all paid for their war, that they claim was preemptive and unavoidable, and not their fault (just like their attack on Iran today).
And what was our reward for that? Did we gain any political leverage at all in that region? Bases? soft power? No. No we didnt. all we got was some of the blame for the Nakba, and some of the blame for the ridiculous levels persecution and murder of the Palestinian people. It was pure cost.
1990-1991 Desert storm Israel badly wanted Sadam Hussein removed. Iraq said they invaded Kuwait because Kuwait was slant drilling into their oil fields, which is true and was known at the time to be true. So we invaded and rescued a bunch of literal thieves-- and coincidentally destroyed a potent adversary of Israel. What did we gain? anything? Two air bases, and thats about it, at great cost. The government or Iraq is barely more friendly to us that they were before. I suppose we got CENTCOM established in Kuwait. So thas not nothing, but its darn close to nothing. Israel got a major enemy removed for them. They didnt join in desert storm-- and did not allow overflight of their territory during it. They are not, and never have been a real military ally. They court Russia as much as they do the US. Same as India.
9/11/2001. Bin Laden says he attacked the world trade centers in new york to bring US public eyes to the plight of the Palestinian people that their government was facilitating, but that Americans had no idea about. And what did our people do? Our government idiotically claimed “they hated us for our freedoms”, and made a big show about not blaming all muslims, just some. What was America’s gain there? And when the attack happened, Israelis in New York and Israel were caught on tape literally cheering about it and filming it.
Bin Ladens interview with PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/miller.html “The American imposes himself on everyone. Americans accuse our children in Palestine of being terrorists–those children, who have no weapons and have not even reached maturity. At the same time, Americans defend a country, the state of the Jews, that has a policy to destroy the future of these children.”
Obviously no one condones or support what Bin Laden did, but lets be clear eyed in our foreign policy: was he incorrect in any way in his statement? I dont see how we can honestly say he was not being earnest – to his point of view anyway. 9/11 and its outcomes would seem to be a massive, massive, massive cost to the United states in terms of hard power and soft, and added tremendously to our national debt burden. We have the TSA exactly because of Israel’s murderous colonial adventurism. What of we’d simply show the muslim world the diplomatic respect of equals from the start? And he was right, zionism IS a policy of displacing the locals from their land however possible. Thats all it is. Its racist theft and murder. Its not self defense or justice, and it never has been.
And that brings us to today. We’re literally sponsoring a genocide of innocents, for Israel’s benefit. Its one of the most illegal and immoral things a country can possibly do.
The world HATES the US because of our stand with Israel. They now see us as almost as bad as Israel. Stupid. Easily manipulated. A global problem. This is as we have also been the main contributor to food aid and the stability of trade across the planet. Thats a cost. And what have we gotten out of it? Our funding of free weapons for shenangans and murder, and our vetoing every resolution that is about peace and justice in the region for Israeli gain costs us dearly. It makes every American traveler unsafe and unwelcome, and makes people not want to trade with us or listen to our opinions. It is destroying the concepts of democracy and the rules based order, and the concept os the western world itself. The world is ditching the dollar. I hope its all worth it for Israel to finish their genocide of innocents, who today have nothing. They are doing it for beachfront condos. They will not be any more secure after this.
And what does the US population gain for our support? Its not for any philosophical or moral reason, obviously. Israelis literally spit on christians they see in the street-- is that what friends and long term allies do? Does it indicate a “partnership”? What exactly does Israel provide to the US beyond campaign bribes through AIPAC? Intel on their enemies?
Manifest destiny said the US land is all ours. Also Hawaii. Divine right mandated by God, so…
/s
Every land is stolen. The problem is that they’re in the middle of committing genocide.
Not ‘every’ land but I get the point.
Still it doesn’t compare and there’s no excuse.
In this case the colonising is still going on, hence the genocide.
They are not ‘citizens’ but colonisers.
They deserve all they get, what they don’t deserve is sympathy.
I would disagree. If you go back far enough, every land has been stolen. There is probably no piece of land that hasn’t been held by multiple different groups over time.
I’d also argue a government existing at all is stolen land. What gives them the right to the land, instead of the people using it as they want? At some point someone decided the land was theirs, and not someone else’s, and decided they could sell, lend, or use the land as they want, even if someone else also wanted to use it.
Before colonialism, empires would conquer lands and then just make the people who already live there into their subjects.
And before empires and agriculture and such, people weren’t really organized enough to steal land (and weren’t embedded deeply enough in the land for it to be stolen). They’d just move to the new land and become part of the people already there.
Yeah, that’s my point. At one point in time land wasn’t something owned, just something utilized. The fact that governments exert control over them implies they were stolen, as it prevents some people from utilizing it. See: Proudhon - What is Property?
Okay, you need to recognize that there are greater and lesser contradictions. Yes, all property is theft, but is that a useful line for Palestinians to struggle against? Can they even meaningfully abolish property without solving the colonial question?
That’s why we say the colonial question is the primary contradiction. Israelis are colonial invaders that have come to steal the land and expel or kill the indigenous population. This is a greater concern than, say, Palestinian business owners owning property (and thus stealing the land from the Commons). If we don’t focus our struggles and identify the primary contradiction, we just lash out at every injustice all at once and accomplish nothing because we are overwhelmed.
Every successful decolonial struggle for national independence involves cooperation between the landless and the landed, because colonialism takes primacy. We can deal with the question of “who gets to own the land” once the invaders are gone.
I never said that, though “the colonial question” is solved if you abolish property, so it’s still worth considering, even in this context.
Yes, and the whole system is built on ownership of property. Addressing the surface level issue (colonizer stealing land) is great, but you should also consider the root cause. If they can’t own land then there’s no colonization. It’s worth looking at both of these and fighting both. If there is to be a system enacted (which currently is no where close to happening, but still needs to be a consideration), it should be one that protects people and prevents exploitation, so this doesn’t happen again.
It’s too late to do it then. That’s how you have a revolution collapse into something horrible; it didn’t have a plan for what comes after. The people struggling to just survive don’t need to consider this, but it does need to be considered. If you wait until after it’s done then you just end up with squabbling, and the group who can exert control takes it without consent.
It’s an order of operations. If they try to resolve every contradiction all at the same time they stretch the revolution too thin and drive all of their enemies into one unified front.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t even think about the other contradictions (in fact, progressive forces should internally theorize and strategize in secret about what to do after the colonial occupation is defeated) but it does mean that those secondary contradictions are to be set aside in public while they focus on the primary contradiction.
Now isn’t the time to air the dirty laundry of everyone that’s on your side against the occupation.
Obviously propertied interests are going to be a problem after the occupation is defeated, but until the occupation is defeated they can used. Not only does this increase the power and size of the decolonial struggle by creating a unified front, but without that ability to set aside secondary contradictions those propertied interests will join the occupation’s side instead. Those propertied interests are only using the revolutionaries for their own ends, but progressive forces are only using them in turn.
This is how every successful decolonial struggle was won.
Many decolonial struggles only achieved flag independence and failed to achieve sovereignty because they either failed to identify those secondary contradictions or chose to forget the secondary contradictions in their nationalistic fervor, but that’s not what I’m advocating! Once the occupation is defeated one of those secondary contradictions will become the new primary contradiction, and progressive forces will need to be prepared for that.
But that has to wait. In the immediate struggle, everyone has a common enemy.
Someone made the same point so answered this already to show it is an invalid argument in the case of Palestine.
Link?
In this case the colonising is still going on, hence the genocide. They are not ‘citizens’ but colonisers.
It’s not an unfortunate fait accompli like the US that eradicated the original inhabitants for instance.