Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I am not personally responsible for the current situation in Gaza. And Hamas would still dominate Gaza if the IDF were still occupying the place. After all, Fatah took political control of the West Bank while the IDF was there.
Also, I don't want a "nationalistic state" anywhere. I want democratic states everywhere. But what you are missing is that keeping the Occupation going in the West Bank hasn't STOPPED nationalism. Nor can it. How can keeping one country's troops in control of another country possibly lead to the control with the troops developing democracy. Palestine has nothing in common at all with the postwar Germany and Japan, so it's not appropriate to compare it to those situations, as you rather smugly did. The days when "democracy" can be imposed with bayonets are gone, my friend. They ended forever in the jungles of Vietnam.
So what do you want from me?
Do you seriously expect me to buy your argument that the Occupation is some how a positive thing for Palestinians? Or that Gaza would be Hamasrein if only the IDF hadn't left? Neither argument has any basis in reality, since Hamas grew UNDER the Occupation.
There's no inconsistency in being anti-Occupation AND anti-Hamas-any more than there was in supporting American independence while the Thirteen Colonies still had slave plantations, mass illiteracy, poor sanitation, low, life expectancy, no right to vote for women or people of color, and the beginnings of the genocide against Native Americans-a state of affairs, in short, far worse than current conditions in Gaza or the West Bank.
To cynically use the rhetoric of "democracy" to justify maintaining the status quo in the West Bank is just as bad as those white South Africans who smugly called the ANC "terrorist" and said that they were keeping apartheid in place "for their own good".
Nobody, anywhere, deserves to be told that they aren't ready to govern themselves. To do so is, in fact, to express a colonial idea.
Even Mahatma Gandhi rejected it.
So I've proved I'm not a "religious believer", and I've proved I'm not an apologist for freaking Hamas. Don't ever call me either again. I don't have to agree with YOU on these issues just to prove I'm a serious and open-minded person.