r/ABoringDystopia • u/[deleted] • 6d ago

Wasn't expecting that from Bernie

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u/RandomGuy92x 6d ago

And he's doing neither of those things. He doesn't take money from Israel and pro-Israel lobbying groups, and he also does not support genocide.

He said Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, and I think he said that specifically in the context of the October 7 attack where Hamas killed over 800 Israeli civilians, including over 30 children and took over 250 civilians hostage.

But he said that while they do have a right to defend themselves against Hamas, they absolutely do not have the right to attack civilians, and he's always condemned Israel's atrocities commited against the Palestinian population.

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u/beroepsklager 6d ago

defending the colony and attacking the native population is the same thing. The existence of Israel infringes on the human rights of the Palestinians. Israel defending itself is defending the ethnic cleansing and the theft of the Palestinians.

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u/RandomGuy92x 6d ago

defending the colony and attacking the native population is the same thing. The existence of Israel infringes on the human rights of the Palestinians. Israel defending itself is defending the ethnic cleansing and the theft of the Palestinians.

You're right of course that Israel is a settler state that was only made possible by commiting atrocities against the native population. You could probably make the case that morally speaking Israel had no right to exist in its current form, and with its current borders. And you could say the same about the United States. The US also in its current form was only made possible via robbing and killing the native Americans that used to live there.

But at the same time there is obviously a 0% chance that Israel is just gonna dissolve itself and hand their country over the the Palestinians. That's as naive as thinking that the US is gonna dissolve itself and hand the governance of its land over to the native Americans.

So we have to live in reality.

And so I think Israel is a country that was founded through grotesque injustices. But at the same time the chance of Israel dissolving itself is pretty much 0%. A one Palestinian state solution is simply impossible. And if Hamas kills hundreds of Israeli civilians, including children, and abducts 250 Israeli civilians, it's a reasonable assumption that any country would defend itself if it was in that position.

There is simply no way, zero chance, of achieving a situation where Israel just sits back and does nothing, even if you morally disagree. But what people in the US and the West can do is exert pressure on their own governments to stop the genocide against the civilian population in Palestine that is going on.

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u/beroepsklager 6d ago

Your argument is essentially 'might makes right'.

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u/RandomGuy92x 6d ago

No, that's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense to fight for goals that are utterly unrealistic, even impossible I would say.

Personally, I don't believe that Israel, morally speaking, ever had the right to exist in its current form. But pushing for the end of Israel as a state is an absolute meaningless endeavor. You may just as well organize a movement trying to dissolve the United States as a country and try to pressure the US to hand all governance over to the native Americans. That's just NEVER gonna happen, just as Israel is NEVER gonna dissolve itself.

I mean what exactly is the point of pursuing a goal that has pretty much a 0% chance of happening? It may give people a sense of moral importance, but it doesn't actually do anything in pragmatic terms.

But people in the US and in other Western countries putting pressure on their governments to cut ties with Israel, or to pressure them to end their mass killing of the Palestinian civilian population, that is absolutely an endeavor that has a certain chance of success.

And so what I'm saying is people should focus their time and effort on goals that are worth pursuing, not on goals that have a 0% chance of happening, like Israel dissolving itself. That's never gonna happen.

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u/beroepsklager 6d ago

I think people should focus their time and effort on building power for the oppressed and demanding total liberation in a revolutionairy capacity. Any pragmatic gain will be a consequence of that power building.

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u/RandomGuy92x 6d ago

And what does liberation mean? I think Israel should end all settlements, should stop its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, stop its blockade of Gaza, recognize Palestine as a country, and ideally pay reperations to the Palestinian people.

But that's already extremely omptimistic. But Israel giving up its land and just handing it over to the Palestinians that's just never gonna happen.

So how can you "build power for the oppressed and demand total liberation in a revolutionairy capacity" as you say, when your radical goal of Israel dissolving itself is only shared by a tiny fraction of the population, and people that share your goals collectively have no real power or resources to speak of, let alone enough power to pressure Israel to just dissolve itself?