However, for Yuval Shany, a professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, dealing with the establishment of Israel as a colonial enterprise is “a significant category error.” It cannot apply to a conflict involving “two indigenous peoples.” It is misplaced given that the 20th-century influx of persecuted European Jews came from a historically indigenous “population of refugees not sent by any empire.” It cannot be applied to the many other Jews from Muslim North African and Middle Eastern countries who arrived in Israel after they suffered expulsion.
I was prepared to do an elaborate dissection, but lol, I am just rant
Were all the american settlers sent by empire?
It's not important if your father or grandfather was persecuted and expropriated, you still don't get to rob other people of land! I thought a professor of law knows that? And they were not kicked out of fucking Palestine! They were kicked out of other arab countries! Why do the Palestinians have to pay for the Iraqi Ba3th's/Egypt's/Marocco's deeds? How does it make a mizrahi indigenous to Tel Aviv?
The Mizrahim are only brought up as a thought terminating clichee when the question is whether Gazan families get bombed and Palestinian kids have to grow up in some horrible refugee camp, land gets stolen etc or if they get the right to return and democracy! If the mizrahim as a the majority block wouldn't vote genocidal fascists into power, you could get some right to return to their grandparents' country of origin worked out (as if they wanted to)! You just want your critics to shut up!
By the way, the Pantherim Skhorim (Mizrahim) had things to say about Israel's character as a colonial entity...
“The idea of an imposed power is wrong,” Professor Shany said. “Israel’s creation was endorsed by the United Nations.”
Oh, we are talking about the UN? Thought that was an antisemitic cabal? There is a bunch of stuff they also decreed...
I think this guy's implication that the US settlers weren't "sent by an empire" and therefore weren't colonisers is a very careful and deliberate tactic.
this is a tiny part of the slight of hands going on here, they also want to move the discussion into the realm of philosophical ideas, as it happened multiple times with people who really despise BLM and need their harvard chair. The next is the intellectually lazy "context makes comparisons awkward" claim which is NEVER really backed up, but just hinted and gestured at
But anyway, German Wiedertäufers were not sent by empire, the puritans were not sent by empire, the immigration waves in the 19th and 20th century were not sent by an empire. Nordau, Herzl, Jabotinsky all called the zionist immigrators Settler, I have not read the Labor Zionists, but they probs also did, btw they were mostly premarxian and not some die hard socialists who just couldnt bear antisemitism
It's so frustrating, because there is so much sleight of hand, so many lies, so much deception, that attacking any one point still leaves dozens of other points unassaulted. So they can act like their position is a superior one because anyone trying to point out the flaws gets bogged down trying to tackle every incorrect point one after another, and it is always easier to just make up bullshit than it is to combat it.
You're not alone. The only people who buy the NYT's bullshit are Western PMC who have a preexisting ideological kinship with Israel as a political project and extension of US dominance. As @Frank@hexbear.net pointed out, reading Herzl and early Zionists works and political projects will easily debunk the article.
The article is a soothing balm, to reference that one redsails article, to these PMC's in being okay with ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Just some things to point out, that despite the overwhelming power and slaughter by Israel and the US, are:
There's a downward trend of people who will believe Israel's justification and response.
People on social media can see the way Israelis broadcast their own mockery of Palestinians with genocidal and dehumanizing fervor.
Most people support a ceasefire.
Israel supporters in the West already have institutional support but are now having to rely on overt, brazen, and active state repression against pro-Palestine protestors.
Social media broadcasts the carnage and aftermath.
There are massive demonstrations all over the world.
Tensions are escalating across MENA.
This massacre will either come to a dark conclusion in Gaza, with the expulsion of a majority of Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai, Iraq, and Turkey, or Palestine will continue to bleed out and endure this violence at Israel's own ruination. The longer this goes on, the longer Israel's reputation - in tatters abroad - will be tarnished in the West that intervention and the first sprouts of liberation will manifest.
This massacre will either come to a dark conclusion in Gaza, with the expulsion of a majority of Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai, Iraq, and Turkey, or Palestine will continue to bleed out and endure this violence at Israel's own ruination. The longer this goes on, the longer Israel's reputation - in tatters abroad - will be tarnished in the West that intervention and the first sprouts of liberation will manifest.
Your assumption is that liberals actually got a conscience - maybe the Gen Z people do, but among millenials the split is pretty fucking wrt support in my place. Don't get me started on the "leftists"