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)You just want to demonize me and imply that I support things you know I DON'T support...like "right-wing nationalism"...and I've done nothing to deserve it.
The problem with your position is that preserving the status quo doesn't offer any hope at all changing the Palestinian leadership for the better-nor does it offer any hope for creating a more democratic political culture in Palestine-the two things you have accused ME of not caring about. I DO want a more democratic Palestine...as, I think, do the Palestinian people...and you don't have any serious suggestions of how to make that happen. That proves, by your own logic, that YOU don't care about human rights in Palestine, but simply want to keep people living there under permnent military occupation ordered by a right-wing nationalist Israeli government.
And you set up a false absolute in insisting that, unless a person is obsessed with demanding that Hamas and Fatah create a fully democratic Palestine(I'm including Gaza in Palestine for the sake of that argument)right NOW, before the Occupation ends, that a person doesn't care whether Palestine is democratic or not, and is perfectly happy to see the place be a police state. That is the elaborate lie you've pushed about my views in this exchange.
Let me give you some examples from American history that challenge that position...would you say that if in the 1770's I supported the abolition of slavery(as many already did in that era)
but simultaneously supported the cause of immediate independence for the Thirteen colonies(as many of the same people did at the same time, such as Benjamin Franklin and John and Samuel Adams)that this would have meant that I wasn't sincere in supporting abolition?
Or that if I were to say I support abolition AND women's suffrage, while also supporting the Union cause at the start of the Civil War(at a time when many people simultaneously held all three positions and at a time when the Lincoln Administration was on the fence about abolition and wasn't even remotely interested in women's suffrage)that I wasn't sincere about opposing slavery and wanting women to get the right to vote?
Or that it wasn't possible to vote for FDR in 1932 AND still claim to support the end of Jim Crow or the rights of workers to organize...NEITHER of which FDR supported at the time and only one of which(the right to organize)he came around on even half-heartedly towards during his entire term as president?