Look, rather than go back and forwards, I’m going to send you a few links to discussions or articles that I found really helpful in seeing the Israeli point of view on this. I’ve been involved in the campaign for Palestinian rights for many years. My ex-partner is Palestinian, though in Lebanon. I hope you watch and/or read them because I found them really, really helpful. I hope you can appreciate that I’m coming at this in good faith, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to write all this out, you know?
Ezra Klein’s interviews for the New York Times Podcast have been really helpful. He does interview plenty of Palestinians too, of course, but then you clearly don’t need anyone to present you with the Palestinian perspective.
Our False Partners: Progressives who divide the world into ‘oppressors’ and ‘the oppressed’ are not our allies. This one reflects a more widespread, and I think correct, concern that there’s something in the identity politics framework of everything being about oppressor/oppressed which has led the left to a moral catastrophe in the wake of October 7th and which everyone except many on the left has recognised and been horrified by. When Jews are (incorrectly) coded as white, and the Palestinians as non-white, it fits into a simplistic and binary framework which isn’t compatible with the conflict it’s meant to understand.
I think you are, without realising it, repeating antisemitic ideas. I don’t know if you’re an antisemite. I do doubt it. And I think rather than get defensive about that, you should consider whether you might be doing that unintentionally, and hear the other perspective to see why that might be the case. And then you can decide whether you are or aren’t. Same as you would, I hope, if challenged on any other form of racism or prejudice you might, unintentionally, be spreading, as all of us on the left would.
opposing the existence of the state is a central tenant of communism. opposing the existence of the state is a central tenant of anarchism. opposing the existence of the state was a central tenant of the first international. it’s a central tenant of the second international.
if you don’t oppose the existence of every state including Israel you are not a leftist.
Look, I don’t need educating on this, I’ve got a PhD in Politics where I wrote on Deleuze, Negri, Autonomia, the bloody Italian worker revolts of the 1970s and the '68 uprisings.
The problem isn’t that you’re opposing all states in general – that’s totally fine. I’m not an Anarchist, and I’m not an ML either (no disrespect to either, I’m simply closer to a slightly reformist and democratic Negriism).
The problem is when people who claim to oppose all states only selectively apply the pressure to one state which claims to exist: Israel, the only Jewish state, established in accordance with international law at the time, founded by socialists, after the greatest horror of human history (the Holocaust), which brought democracy, equality, due process and peace to part of a region which hasn’t known that in centuries.
Rather than quibbling about ‘well I oppose every state’s right to exist’, realise how that sounds to Jews, because while everyone knows anarchists and communists (many Jews are anarchists and communists of course), the point is why it’s only ever applied to Israel. I raised Pakistan and India earlier. You explained you also don’t believe they have a right to exist. Well, fair enough, I don’t have a problem with that. But the point is that when discussing Pakistani or Indian politics, it’s never a serious point of debate among non-anarchists whether they’re legitimate states. We take their politics as they are, not how they might have been. (Almost) nobody says ‘well Pakistan was stolen from its people by foreign powers who had no right to do it’. It’s just a fact: Pakistan is there, so is India. The process was bloody and tragic and deeply regrettable, but it is how it is. Neither Pakistan nor India are going anywhere. And it was created by a literal empire (my country, Britain), and millions of people died during the enforcement of that partition and displacement.
But this is a routine feature of discussing Israel. Yes, the circumstances of 1947/48 were tragic, but here’s two relevant points to consider given the above. First, in 1947 the partition plans were accepted by the Jewish leadership. There would be a Jewish and a Palestinian state, neither of which had ever existed before, on more or less equitable terms. Bear in mind that tens of thousands of Jews had already legally migrated there, purchased land, cultivated farms, and so on. Palestinians rejected this deal, and the Arab nations declared war in 1948. Which they lost, badly. That should have been the end of it.
800,000 Palestinians were displaced in the process of that war. Some of them were expelled by Israeli forces (Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi), many fled due to the violence on both sides, and others were told they should flee for safety and they could return when the Jews were driven into the sea. At about the same time, about 800,000-900,000 Jews were expelled or fled the Arab world and came to Israel, and who had nowhere they could ‘return’ to. The vast majority of current Israelis are Mizrahi, which means the descendents of those ‘Arab Jews’. The remaining third or so are made up mostly of Ashkenazi Jews, more or less refugees after the Holocaust, and a small number of Ethiopian Jews, who still continue to be treated horrendously in Israel, it must be said.
At least one million people died in the partition of India, and many more millions were forcibly displaced from one side to the other on the basis of their religion. When the Ottoman empire collapsed and Turkiye was founded, millions of Greeks and Turks were forcibly displaced into each other’s territories. 800,000 Palestinians were displaced in 47-48, and thousands died. But apparently the latter is the real ongoing moral outrage? The UN has had to invent a completely bespoke definition of ‘refugee’ for the multiple generations of descendents of those who were displaced, not applied to any other group! There is in fact a degree to which you do, at a point, have to just accept that you lost and deal with it rather than for generations ruining your people’s lives in Lebanon and Syria and Egypt and elsewhere with the falsehood that they will ever go back to Israel.
What happened in Israel was part of a much bigger process after the Second World War. But the only one that’s focused on is Israel, because it’s a Jewish state. Pakistan was created for ‘Indian’ Muslims, but while many think that was a dumb idea or a mistake, nobody accuses Pakistan of being an apartheid ethnostate. These are repeated double standards applied solely to the Jewish state. And one major reason for that is the role of Soviet propaganda after the 1967 war and Israel’s miraculous and decisive victory over their Arab enemies.
But these are absurd double standards. The United States, Canada, New Zealand – all ‘settler colonial states’, but nobody demands they abolish themselves. Israel is not ‘settler colonial’ in that a) there is no metropole and b) Jews are indigenous to the land, which cannot be said of US/CN/NZ. Israel and Jews alone are apparently undeserving of the same basic right recognised in the United Nations charter of human rights.
You’re just tilting at windmills then. Your perspective isn’t bringing anything useful or fruitful to bear upon the actual conflict in Israel and Palestine. It’s just abstract ‘all states are wrong but especially Israel and they should all be abolished’. Well, great, OK, but both the Jews and Palestiniand want a state of their own, so now you’re not even talking to either party in the conflict.
I haven’t changed my mind that you’re applying a standard to Israel that you aren’t applying consistently in others, I’m not putting words in your mouth.
But do you not see my bigger point here? Communist writer Frederic Lordon makes the same point in Imperium: Structures and Affects of Political Bodies, that the anarchist/ultra-left dispute about states necessarily bypasses the very real struggles for national self-determination of peoples. For the person left without a passport, stateless, a refugee, it isn’t an abstract question whether or not states in general should exist. It’s a luxury permitted only to those who’ve never experienced the alternative.
So what you’re actually doing, in my view, is coming to two terribly traumatised groups of peoples (Jews and Palestinians), each struggling for a nation-state they can call their own, that they can call home, where they live and work and prosper without fear, and saying, ‘Yes but don’t you realise states are oppressive?’ Even Lenin talks about this many times in his works on the question of nationalism for Communists.
Pakistan was created for ‘Indian’ Muslims, but while many think that was a dumb idea or a mistake, nobody accuses Pakistan of being an apartheid ethnostate.
does it have hindu ghettos and a full-on police state with id checkpoints?
You are, though. That’s the point. You’re taking a general political principle (which I respect), but you’re only bringing it to bear upon the only Jewish state, founded mostly by refugees returning to their homeland after the Holocaust. This isn’t an abstract argument. It’s Jews fighting for their lives after centuries of pogroms, discrimination and killings.
But the point is that when discussing Pakistani or Indian politics, it’s never a serious point of debate among non-anarchists whether they’re legitimate states.
i don’t see how i can be held accountable for someone else’ hypocracy.
But these are absurd double standards. The United States, Canada, New Zealand – all ‘settler colonial states’, but nobody demands they abolish themselves.
Well why do you expect anyone to listen to you then? The Jews aren’t going to self-abolish the only state they’ve had in 2,000 years, created precisely to protect them against other states (which, btw, are not going to abolish themselves either) and peoples who have shown repeatedly over 2,000 years that they hate Jews, and can and will murder them routinely.
And it was created by a literal empire (my country, Britain), and millions of people died during the enforcement of that partition and displacement.
the fact that you can articulate this, and seem to understand that i oppose it, but still dress me down like i’m not me and i’m saying something else is incredible. who the fuck are you talking to?
Because you don’t realise what you’re saying. That’s my point. You have a framework in your head which completely disables you from being able to recognise that Jews are the most victimised people in the history of the human race, and that their struggle for just one state, in their historic homeland and to which they are indigenous, is not a case of colonialism or genocide, and that this is why the rest of the world was so appalled when so many of those of us on the left either celebrated or remained silent about the October 7th Holocaust.
I fucking LOATHE Netanyahu, and his far-right fundamentalist allies like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. They need to go, yesterday. And there needs to be a renewed peace process. It’s going to take time, frankly the Palestinians are not yet ready to run a state by themselves given the depth of the Nazi-esque antisemitic radicalisation in their society. But it is the right goal, and they do need and deserve a Palestinian state.
Look, rather than go back and forwards, I’m going to send you a few links to discussions or articles that I found really helpful in seeing the Israeli point of view on this. I’ve been involved in the campaign for Palestinian rights for many years. My ex-partner is Palestinian, though in Lebanon. I hope you watch and/or read them because I found them really, really helpful. I hope you can appreciate that I’m coming at this in good faith, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to write all this out, you know?
Ezra Klein’s interviews for the New York Times Podcast have been really helpful. He does interview plenty of Palestinians too, of course, but then you clearly don’t need anyone to present you with the Palestinian perspective.
What Israelis Fear the World Does Not Understand - interview with Yossi Klein Halevi, author of ‘Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor’.
A Different Path Israel Could Have Taken — and Maybe Still Can
The Jewish Left Is Trying to Hold Two Thoughts At Once
Simon Sebag Montefiore: The Impact of Conflicting Histories in the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine Wars’. He wrote a highly celebrated history of Jerusalem which tried to emphasise the legitimacy of both the Palestinians and the Jews and the Christians and their ties to the city, and he has both Arab and Jewish heritage. He wrote a really great piece for The Atlantic recently which was crucial for me. 'The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False: It does not accurately describe either the foundation of Israel or the tragedy of the Palestinians.. That one’s really key for me.
Our False Partners: Progressives who divide the world into ‘oppressors’ and ‘the oppressed’ are not our allies. This one reflects a more widespread, and I think correct, concern that there’s something in the identity politics framework of everything being about oppressor/oppressed which has led the left to a moral catastrophe in the wake of October 7th and which everyone except many on the left has recognised and been horrified by. When Jews are (incorrectly) coded as white, and the Palestinians as non-white, it fits into a simplistic and binary framework which isn’t compatible with the conflict it’s meant to understand.
this is a classic gish gallop.
i’ll accept your apology any time for your insinuations that i’m antisemitic and that i am defending antisemitism.
I think you are, without realising it, repeating antisemitic ideas. I don’t know if you’re an antisemite. I do doubt it. And I think rather than get defensive about that, you should consider whether you might be doing that unintentionally, and hear the other perspective to see why that might be the case. And then you can decide whether you are or aren’t. Same as you would, I hope, if challenged on any other form of racism or prejudice you might, unintentionally, be spreading, as all of us on the left would.
opposing the existence of the state is a central tenant of communism. opposing the existence of the state is a central tenant of anarchism. opposing the existence of the state was a central tenant of the first international. it’s a central tenant of the second international.
if you don’t oppose the existence of every state including Israel you are not a leftist.
Look, I don’t need educating on this, I’ve got a PhD in Politics where I wrote on Deleuze, Negri, Autonomia, the bloody Italian worker revolts of the 1970s and the '68 uprisings.
The problem isn’t that you’re opposing all states in general – that’s totally fine. I’m not an Anarchist, and I’m not an ML either (no disrespect to either, I’m simply closer to a slightly reformist and democratic Negriism).
The problem is when people who claim to oppose all states only selectively apply the pressure to one state which claims to exist: Israel, the only Jewish state, established in accordance with international law at the time, founded by socialists, after the greatest horror of human history (the Holocaust), which brought democracy, equality, due process and peace to part of a region which hasn’t known that in centuries.
Rather than quibbling about ‘well I oppose every state’s right to exist’, realise how that sounds to Jews, because while everyone knows anarchists and communists (many Jews are anarchists and communists of course), the point is why it’s only ever applied to Israel. I raised Pakistan and India earlier. You explained you also don’t believe they have a right to exist. Well, fair enough, I don’t have a problem with that. But the point is that when discussing Pakistani or Indian politics, it’s never a serious point of debate among non-anarchists whether they’re legitimate states. We take their politics as they are, not how they might have been. (Almost) nobody says ‘well Pakistan was stolen from its people by foreign powers who had no right to do it’. It’s just a fact: Pakistan is there, so is India. The process was bloody and tragic and deeply regrettable, but it is how it is. Neither Pakistan nor India are going anywhere. And it was created by a literal empire (my country, Britain), and millions of people died during the enforcement of that partition and displacement.
But this is a routine feature of discussing Israel. Yes, the circumstances of 1947/48 were tragic, but here’s two relevant points to consider given the above. First, in 1947 the partition plans were accepted by the Jewish leadership. There would be a Jewish and a Palestinian state, neither of which had ever existed before, on more or less equitable terms. Bear in mind that tens of thousands of Jews had already legally migrated there, purchased land, cultivated farms, and so on. Palestinians rejected this deal, and the Arab nations declared war in 1948. Which they lost, badly. That should have been the end of it.
800,000 Palestinians were displaced in the process of that war. Some of them were expelled by Israeli forces (Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi), many fled due to the violence on both sides, and others were told they should flee for safety and they could return when the Jews were driven into the sea. At about the same time, about 800,000-900,000 Jews were expelled or fled the Arab world and came to Israel, and who had nowhere they could ‘return’ to. The vast majority of current Israelis are Mizrahi, which means the descendents of those ‘Arab Jews’. The remaining third or so are made up mostly of Ashkenazi Jews, more or less refugees after the Holocaust, and a small number of Ethiopian Jews, who still continue to be treated horrendously in Israel, it must be said.
At least one million people died in the partition of India, and many more millions were forcibly displaced from one side to the other on the basis of their religion. When the Ottoman empire collapsed and Turkiye was founded, millions of Greeks and Turks were forcibly displaced into each other’s territories. 800,000 Palestinians were displaced in 47-48, and thousands died. But apparently the latter is the real ongoing moral outrage? The UN has had to invent a completely bespoke definition of ‘refugee’ for the multiple generations of descendents of those who were displaced, not applied to any other group! There is in fact a degree to which you do, at a point, have to just accept that you lost and deal with it rather than for generations ruining your people’s lives in Lebanon and Syria and Egypt and elsewhere with the falsehood that they will ever go back to Israel.
What happened in Israel was part of a much bigger process after the Second World War. But the only one that’s focused on is Israel, because it’s a Jewish state. Pakistan was created for ‘Indian’ Muslims, but while many think that was a dumb idea or a mistake, nobody accuses Pakistan of being an apartheid ethnostate. These are repeated double standards applied solely to the Jewish state. And one major reason for that is the role of Soviet propaganda after the 1967 war and Israel’s miraculous and decisive victory over their Arab enemies.
But these are absurd double standards. The United States, Canada, New Zealand – all ‘settler colonial states’, but nobody demands they abolish themselves. Israel is not ‘settler colonial’ in that a) there is no metropole and b) Jews are indigenous to the land, which cannot be said of US/CN/NZ. Israel and Jews alone are apparently undeserving of the same basic right recognised in the United Nations charter of human rights.
as i said, i don’t believe rights exist at all and i oppose all states.
You’re just tilting at windmills then. Your perspective isn’t bringing anything useful or fruitful to bear upon the actual conflict in Israel and Palestine. It’s just abstract ‘all states are wrong but especially Israel and they should all be abolished’. Well, great, OK, but both the Jews and Palestiniand want a state of their own, so now you’re not even talking to either party in the conflict.
i never said “especially israel”. you’re putting words in my mouth.
I haven’t changed my mind that you’re applying a standard to Israel that you aren’t applying consistently in others, I’m not putting words in your mouth.
But do you not see my bigger point here? Communist writer Frederic Lordon makes the same point in Imperium: Structures and Affects of Political Bodies, that the anarchist/ultra-left dispute about states necessarily bypasses the very real struggles for national self-determination of peoples. For the person left without a passport, stateless, a refugee, it isn’t an abstract question whether or not states in general should exist. It’s a luxury permitted only to those who’ve never experienced the alternative.
So what you’re actually doing, in my view, is coming to two terribly traumatised groups of peoples (Jews and Palestinians), each struggling for a nation-state they can call their own, that they can call home, where they live and work and prosper without fear, and saying, ‘Yes but don’t you realise states are oppressive?’ Even Lenin talks about this many times in his works on the question of nationalism for Communists.
you’re not the first to think or say that.
does it have hindu ghettos and a full-on police state with id checkpoints?
i’m not being selective. so i’m not the problem.
You are, though. That’s the point. You’re taking a general political principle (which I respect), but you’re only bringing it to bear upon the only Jewish state, founded mostly by refugees returning to their homeland after the Holocaust. This isn’t an abstract argument. It’s Jews fighting for their lives after centuries of pogroms, discrimination and killings.
im not.
i don’t see how i can be held accountable for someone else’ hypocracy.
me. i demand that.
Well why do you expect anyone to listen to you then? The Jews aren’t going to self-abolish the only state they’ve had in 2,000 years, created precisely to protect them against other states (which, btw, are not going to abolish themselves either) and peoples who have shown repeatedly over 2,000 years that they hate Jews, and can and will murder them routinely.
i don’t really. but i’m going to say what i think is right regardless of what you think about it.
the fact that you can articulate this, and seem to understand that i oppose it, but still dress me down like i’m not me and i’m saying something else is incredible. who the fuck are you talking to?
Because you don’t realise what you’re saying. That’s my point. You have a framework in your head which completely disables you from being able to recognise that Jews are the most victimised people in the history of the human race, and that their struggle for just one state, in their historic homeland and to which they are indigenous, is not a case of colonialism or genocide, and that this is why the rest of the world was so appalled when so many of those of us on the left either celebrated or remained silent about the October 7th Holocaust.
I fucking LOATHE Netanyahu, and his far-right fundamentalist allies like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. They need to go, yesterday. And there needs to be a renewed peace process. It’s going to take time, frankly the Palestinians are not yet ready to run a state by themselves given the depth of the Nazi-esque antisemitic radicalisation in their society. But it is the right goal, and they do need and deserve a Palestinian state.
i think you aren’t listening to me. you are arguing against a strawman.