We Don't Have The Luxury Of Getting Lost In The Complexities Over Israel And Palestine Anymore - The United States Must Stop "Israel Right Or Wrong" Now

ONE OF THE most intelligent, moral People in their twenties who I know has told me she isn't going to vote this year, even though she knows how dangerous Trump getting another chance is.   It is a result of the Israeli genocide and the Biden administration's policy supporting it.   She, like may other People of good will has been entirely taken up by the Israeli genocide against the People of Gaza for the entire time since the Israeli military started it.  Before that she was horrified by the attack on Israel which initiated the campaign of murder, destruction and occupation that the Israeli government used that to justify.

You will notice I haven't used the euphemisms "The Israeli Defense Forces" and "The Netanyahu government" because what the Israeli military has done isn't defensive, no more than the Israeli government ignoring the warnings it was given that an attack from Gaza was imminent before the initiating attack.  Nor can Israel as a nation be let off the hook by blaming what not only has happened this year but has repeatedly happened in Gaza, in Lebanon over the decades the Israeli fascists of Likud and their political allies have governed Israel WITH THE CONSENT OF A MAJORITY OF ISRAELI VOTERS.   Unlike the People of Gaza who got the all too typical first and last free election which brought Hamas to power, the People of Israel have had innumerable occasions over the past fifty years to reject the fascist face of Zionism and they chose, in the majority, in favor of fascism, of apartheid, of genocide.   The extent to which that is understandable due to the fact that Israel has been under more or less continuous attack by the Palestinians who were displaced and expelled from the lands Israel claimed for itself is undeniable.   The predictions of such a situation arising from the Zionist project go back to almost the origins of Zionist ideology,  many of those most opposed to the idea were the very People who Zionists claimed to speak on behalf of, Jews.  

I prefer to take my information about situations in other places among other peoples from the People who are most involved with the risks and consequences instead of those who have nothing to do with it.  Perhaps that is related to the rejection of abstractions that the excerpt I posted from Gabriel Marcel mentioned but it is mostly from the fact that those who are most involved.   I listen to Israelis in opposition to fascism and genocide - I know the Israeli fascists, like all fascists are flagrant liars so I don't bother with what they say - and Gazans and other Palestinians who are victims of Hamas and other terrorist fascists though far less so than they are of Israeli fascists.  

One of the things I've been doing that is related to and only supplemental to reading those directly in danger from both Israeli and Palestinian fascism is reading is the Jewish anti-Zionists because more than seventy years after its self-declaration of existence as a nation,  I have no faith that the Israeli state will ever be more than an increasingly apartheid state both attacking and murdering Palestinians but also being under attack and in danger of murder from a non-ending opposition to its existence.   I have mentioned a number of times that my belief that that is the case was sparked by the Argentinian journalist and victim of the Argentinian fascists dirty war, Jacobo Timmerman who relocated temporarily to Israel under the "right of return" and, revolted by the 1982 Lebanon war (I wonder how many Americans even remember there was one) in which the Israeli military and government acted in concert with Lebanon's "Christian" fascists, wrote a book and became an Israeli critic of the government and a live-long Zionist who seemed to become skeptical of the claimed goals of Zionism.   He noted that much of the antisemitism in the post-WWII period was a direct result of the existence of the Israeli state and, admitted what was obvious, that the modern state of Israel had certainly not made Jews there or around the world safer.  

One of the things that any outsider dipping into the extremely complex and long and infinitely detailed and drastically varied thinking and history around Zionism and the establishment and history of the Israeli government has to contend with is that extreme complexity and the extremely strongly held devotion to nuances in even seemingly related, sometimes only apparently similar positions held.  Jacobo Timerman retained his Israeli citizenship even after he moved back to Argentina, making any resumption of his Argentinian citizenship contingent on him retaining the citizenship of Israel, a country he had been far more critical of than almost any American has been, even as he seems to have become critical of the Zionist ideology he'd once held with.  I have to say that Timerman is someone who I respected because he was the kind of journalist who tried to truthfully tell the bad about any place he lived in honestly, even after he'd been kidnapped, tortured and had to face the fact that he might have been murdered as a consequence of his truth telling.   There aren't many if any American "journalists" who have that history of journalism and they aren't really worthy of being wearing the same label.

I have no idea how Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro thinks or would think of Jacobo Timerman but I have to say that from what I can check of what he says about the ideology of Zionism, both in claims and in practice, seems to me to be honest and make sense.  I say that even as I can say that after listening to many hours of his talks and interviews the past two weeks, I have no idea of the extent to which we would agree on much of anything in politics.   I am, of course not a Jew so I am considering what he says about the antisemitism that is intrinsic to Zionism from the view of an outsider, though I was aware of the atheism and hostility to both the Jewish religion and Jewish identity that was rampant among the founders of Zionism and, especially, the "Reformed Zionism" of Jabotinsky which formed the basis of the fascist gangsters who Jewish intellectuals warned against in 1948 and who have, either personally or in their next generation, have ruled Israel for much of its history, now.  I'm including the offshoots of Likud in that. 

I would recommend listening to Rabbi Shapiro though there are others who share his opposition to Zionism as being opposed to Judaism. Before listening to him I was ignorant of the nature of the irreligious character of Modern Hebrew, which, I he is correct, would seem to have intentionally baked in ridicule and disdain for the Jewish religion.  

I have no great hope that if Kamala Harris wins the election that she will change American policy in a way that would force the Israeli fascist government* to end its genocidal policies or its whipping up wars to both steal land and manipulate domestic politics to keep itself in power.  But I know if Trump rules,  his son-in-law and, probably, he will be bidding on land seized by Israel on which to build luxury properties over the blood and bones of Palestinians.  I've tried to reason with young woman I mentioned above but I really don't have any arguments that will talk her into choosing the far, far, far, lesser of "evils."    I agree with her that AIPAC has to have its influence broken because it and other, similar agents of the Israeli government have far too much influence in American politics.  It's far from the only one but it's one of the most dangerous.  

I have warned her that a lot of the supposedly pro-Gazan and anti-Israeli stuff she gets sent to her on her phone is probably as dishonest as the pro-Israeli-pro-genocide stuff is, quoting Howard Zinn's vitally important point that every government and side lies.  Though I can't fault her for what she says about the genocidal war that the Israeli government is waging against the People of Gaza,  Muslim, Christian (some of what I read says they're obviously targeting Palestinian Christians, though how you can make that distinction in the general Lebensraum that is happening is hardly an important question).   I wouldn't be surprised if there are many more opponents of Hamas who have been murdered as supporters of Hamas in the Israeli genocide.   A lot of the problem of trying to distinguish lies from the truth is in the attacks on reporters, journalists, aid-workers, medical practitioners, etc. who seem to, as well, be the object of targeting, though, again, in the general murder it's hard to tell if that's the case.  It's clear they haven't been following international law against the killing of such People. 

One of the things that needs to change is the rote accusation of "antisemitism" made against those who insist that a nation, such as Israel, can't be allowed to escape either criticism or opposition in the way that every single other country is held to be liable to by any rational, moral Person in the world.   Rabbi Shapiro has made a conclusive case that that is based in the insistence of Zionists that they represent all Jews and that Zionism is the same thing as Jewishness.   I've criticized the recent campaign to legally define "antisemitism"  in such a way as to legally exempt Israel and its governments, even the fascist governments that have ruled it for most of the past fifty years from having the truth told about it.   I think Rabbi Shapiro has made the best case against that I've yet heard. .

*  A fascist government that can count on the majority of voters supporting it has no need to suppress elections, especially when they can manipulate things to foment violence and military actions that will enhance that support among voters.  I don't hold that such elections are a reliable distinction between fascism and real democracy because real democracy as any modern person of any morality should use the term is based on equality.   Elections, by themselves, are a necessary part of democracy but in a country such as Israel, they certainly don't guarantee either democracy nor are they a means of exempting fascist rule from being honestly identified as fascism.  Especially in a situation of apartheid practiced by a majority over a minority.