>If the Israelis are committing genocide, it's of a people obsessed with destroying them.
That's the same justification used by a certain failed Austrian painter.
Genocide is never right.
>If the Israelis are committing genocide, it's of a people obsessed with destroying them.
That's the same justification used by a certain failed Austrian painter.
Genocide is never right.
Did German Jews make public statements prior to Nazism about driving 'Aryans' from Europe? What were the equivalents to the Munich Massacre, suicide bombings, rocket attacks, or October 7th?
The situations seem quite different to me, but maybe there is an outrageous gap in my knowledge of Weimar Germany.
You can test the logic of your argument by imagining it being exploited by malicious actors. If it can be exploited, it’s probably a bad argument.
By your logic, false flag attacks can be used to legitimize genocide. I am not saying those attacks were false flags. But, malicious actors aware of your logic can plan false attacks, “sacrifice few for greater good” and you will then support a genocide because it satisfied your conditions.
If "to the extent that I would use those terms, I'd withhold some of my judgement." indicates outright support, then I expressed myself poorly.
Are you seriously trying to argue that genocide is okay in some circumstances?
I should also note that the tactic itself dates way back before Israel became an independent state. Here's one honest Zionist writing it like it is:
https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
I'm arguing that the word 'genocide' is an ill-fitting description of the situation.
Is there any subject in particular I am meant to address from that link? Quite a lot happened between 1923 and the founding of the modern state of Israel. As the letter itself implies, zionists had diverse goals and attitudes.
Jabotinsky was arguing for forceful colonization, not outright genocide, but "colonization" was the other term that you objected to. And yes, of course, there are different brands of Zionists - but the fundamental believe of that ideology is that Jews are entitled to have a state of their own on that territory; Jabotinsky was simply the one who pointed out the obvious consequences of that desire and denounced those who believed that they could somehow come and take the land and get no pushback so it'd all be peaceful.
It should also be noted that the ruling party, Likud, is specifically a Revisionist Zionist organization, with an explicit historical link to Betar, and founded by Begin who was a Jabotinsky disciple. So this isn't just some kind of random coincidence; what we're seeing Israel doing in Gaza today is a direct consequence of taking Jabotinsky's main premise and running it to conclusion.
The assertion was 'if it's colonisation, it's colonisation with about a dozen caveats'. Some of the caveats that come to mind:
- when the colonists began colonizing, there were already a minority of jews in the region
- many of the colonizers believed themselves, with some reason, to be native to the land
- most israelis today, through no fault of their own, were born in israel
- when zionists came to colonize israel, it was already colonized (twice over)
- the initial colonization was carried out 'legally' (though, in hindsight, what that means is questionable)
- many of the colonizers were fleeing persecution and, especially around the holocaust, had no nations willing to accept them as immigrants
> many of the colonizers were fleeing persecution and, especially around the holocaust, had no nations willing to accept them as immigrants
So they take over someone else's land and massacre and displace the locals? Sounds about right /s
And for the centuries of Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Christians living with Palestinian Jews, how many times do you think those Palestinians Muslims and Christians wanted to destroy all those Palestinians Jews.
For me Zionists for Palestinians are fair game, the same as Germans Nazis were fair game to German Jews.
The fact that Nazis are backing up Zionists in the West tells all the story.
Throughout the 20th century, Jews fled Russia, Germany, and every nation in the Middle East due to persecution.
That's not the fault of palestinians, and so it does make zionists 'fair game' through a pro-palestinian lens.
On the other hand, it does make it hard to say either side is in the wrong.
And I don't attach significance to which side nazis support today. There are far-right movements who claim to support gay rights, too. It's meaningless.
> For me Zionists for Palestinians are fair game
I hope you meant to say something like militants, otherwise this is justifying unlawful violence based on the victims' political beliefs.
It certainly wouldn't have been fair game for Jews to massacre random German civilians at a music festival, for example, irrespective of any speculation about their victims' political ideology.
If Hamas only targeted Zionists, that would be a reasonable take, but their actions - including the October massacre - and their propaganda target Jews in general.
Nazis in the West are actually divided quite a bit on this. Old-school Nazis were often anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian; some even converted to Islam from going down that path (e.g. Johann von Leers, Ahmed Huber). Support for Israel and Jews as "more white" than Arabs is a more recent phenomenon, and those two groups often fight each other.
Where do you have proof that Hamas did not target only zionists? By the way, a large percentage of the deaths on oct 7 was due to the hasbara directive, in other words, done by the israelis themselves to their own.
> By the way, a large percentage of the deaths on oct 7 was due to the hasbara directive, in other words, done by the israelis themselves to their own.
Without taking a position in the underlying claim, which I am not interested in debating either way, I think you are conflating the Hannibal directive [0] and its alleged invocation on October 7 with the practice of hasbara [1] here.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbara
I meant hannibal directive, yes.
The proof is that they went in and started killing people at random.