It is easy to have a nuanced position and still come to the obvious conclusion on what's happening now. The past is completely enough that a basic history lesson would suffice.
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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Okay, but what if I just throw up my hands and say "They've always been fighting so what's the big deal?" while my Congressman takes a few million in kickbacks for the next billion in military aid shipped overseas?
Doesn't that make me a serious thinking, highly educated, objective observer? Why are you waving an Israeli/Palestinian flag in my face? Don't make me pick a side, just let the military industrial complex collect its paycheck and do the big "Whatchagonnado?" face of perfect neutrality.
Well, there's nothing objective about it, is there? How could there be? You have to choose your values at some point. In your hypothetical, the values you're choosing are powerlessness and money?
well yeah that’s… not a nuanced position. “theyve always been fighting” runs counter to any non-propagandized “basic history lesson.” kind of proved their point.
I'm a centrist in that I think the Israelis and Palestinians should live happy, productive lives and not be shot.
It just so happens that only one side seems to disagree with that.
Only one side? Do you remember how this latest round began?
Judging from other commenters here, there are radicals from both sides wilfully ignoring atrocities of the team they pick. Two state solution is the only way that would allow peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
Two state solution is the only way that would allow peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
It seems like we're headed to a One State Solution, and that state is Greater Israel. Purging everyone of a different ethnicity from the region "solves" the problem better than letting another Arab state build up its population and economy along your contested border. In fact, you could call it a kind of Final Solution.
I think a three state solution would be a more stable one in the long run, one Israeli one Palestine and one buffer state in between which is like Bosnia which means that it have two governments a Israeli and a Palestinian.
If they could agree on boundaries there wouldn't be a war to begin with, if they could work together there wouldn't be two separate countries at all.
fnuny meme but if you read the article i don’t think calling them “centrist” is defensible:
Mr. Aboutboul is a founding member of Students for Standing Together, a new student group at U.C.L.A. that aims to unite Israelis and Palestinians to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
so these “centrists” are doing statistically better than your representatives. the comments here talking about “only committing a half genocide” are just doing bad faith echo chamber discourse, which i don’t find the be productive.
At Columbia University, Aharon Dardik, an Israeli American student, formed a group called CU Jews for Ceasefire after finding that his viewpoint wasn’t fully reflected in the main pro-Palestinian student movement. He is a pacifist who spent his teen years with his family in the West Bank but who ultimately refused to serve in the army in Israel. He believes in working with Israelis and Palestinians toward collective liberation and a world not divided by ethnonationalist allegiances.
Dr. Waxman also became a target of right-wing pro-Israel groups, including after he wrote on social media that he supported the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a position he said he took as a supporter of international law.
no hate to OP but let’s laugh loudly at the ones who deserve to be scoffed and mocked, not the people who are actively supporting Palestinian emancipation. i’m sure there’s stuff to be criticized in these folks but if there is, find it and call it the fuck out specifically instead of hand-waving “centrist”—especially when doing so just deplatforms the underrepresented Jewish Anti-Zionist population.
(honestly let’s laugh at whoever wrote and approved that headline, it does no service here.)
these “centrists” are doing statistically better than your representatives.
Not at the ballot box. Pro-Genocide Reactionaries won in a landslide. Ceasefire centrists couldn't even survive their primaries in several instances (Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman, most notably).
no hate to OP but let’s laugh loudly at the ones who deserve to be scoffed and mocked, not the people who are actively supporting Palestinian emancipation.
The problem with any conversation about "centrism" is that its a title anyone can claim, trivially, just by tilting the rhetoric to sound like you're defending the status quo rather than advocating for a change.
Right now, the centrist position of Israel and its allies is genocide, with disputes over exactly how far the slaughter needs to extend. But there's a universal accolade of Israel in its response to Oct 7th. Virtually no American politician, on the liberal or conservative side of the aisle, is contesting Israeli's right to kill 10% of the population of Gaza and rising in response.
Palestinian emancipation is a far-left position in practical terms. It would require such an enormous shift in both public sentiment and national policy as to be practically revolutionary in its own right.
(honestly let’s laugh at whoever wrote and approved that headline, it does no service here.)
It's illustrative of the state of national media in a country that has consistently been in favor of ethnic cleansing going back to its founding days.
Not at the ballot box.
??? feel like you need to read my comment again so I will just let this be. I am talking about pro-Palestine movements being further left than all but 17 represantives by calling for ceasefire. Of course they are not doing well at the ballot box; they are a minority.
The problem with any conversation about “centrism” is that its a title anyone can claim
Agree, and also a title anyone can plaster, as has been done by this post against real pro-Palestine groups whom I greatly doubt would apply the label to themselves.
It’s illustrative of the state of national media
Yea, so laugh and attack that destructive status quo rather than student groups who do better than most. Attacking these well-intentioned, if imperfect, young people and their educators honestly just makes me sad because it’s doing absolutely nothing rhetorically to shift the overton window and contributes to an alienation of young people from the left.
"I feel like doing genocide and not doing genocide are basically the same thing."
Let's compromise on doing half a genocide?
Yep. Also calling it the“Israel-Hamas war” is propaganda. Makes it sound like the only people dying in Palestine are Hamas soldiers, which is obviously nowhere near the truth.
Centrists are literally just anti-opinion and spineless.
Free Palestine.
Centrist just support the status quo. So if the status quo is genocide then they just support genocide.
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“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” is a quote by Elie Wiesel from his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
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If you don't support indigenous resistance to occupation, you're on the side of the occupation. There is no center.
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When one side is committing genocide and the other side wants no genocide, you don't pick the middle and support half-genocide.
More accurate would be "Committing genocide" and "Wants to commit genocide but doesn't have the guns", with the majority of the actual population on both sides (rather than the politicians and emboldened extremists) just wanting to not be genocided. Personally I'm picking the "chuck the politicians in a hole and let the people live" option. No idea what the ideal solution looks like but I feel like getting the fascists and religious extremists on both sides out of the equation would be a good starting point
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The most middle of the road opinion on Israel-Palestine issue is the two state solution. It worked on Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement and it should work between Israel and Palestine. Many scholars from both sides also want to use NI peace deal as the blueprint. Compromise is the key just like with Protestants and Catholics did in Northern Ireland.
The problem is, of course radicals from both Palestine and Israel do not want this because-- well-- they're radical.
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At my university the police literally threaten anyone who tries to be pro Palestine… every Jewish group is pro zionist
The US government is violently supressing free speech where it relates to Israel, and pretending its because of a threat to all Jews. Heres whats in that bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6090/text SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS.
For purposes of this Act, the term “definition of antisemitism”—
(1) means the definition of antisemitism adopted on May 26, 2016, by the IHRA, of which the United States is a member, which definition has been adopted by the Department of State; and
(2) includes the “[c]ontemporary examples of antisemitism” identified in the IHRA definition.
Whats in the IHRA definition?
This definition for what antisemitism is:
- Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
It attached itself to the civil rights bill of 1964. So it can take action against anything related to the federal government, like schools, federal contracts, etc, but it does not apply to you and me as private citizens (yet). I can and will say all day that Israel is a genocider, is a violent theocratic racist state, should not have been granted statehodd by the UN, and is as bad as the Nazis.
99% agree but not sure where “violently” comes in. I would label it more structural oppression or coercion. Still awful, and violence has certainly been invoked under other legislation and government action, but just to be accurate :)
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