I have watched the news from the Middle East with desperation and dismay. Yesterday I watched a 15 minute segment on YouTube by Noam Chomsky and he said everything that I believe but with infinitely more knowledge and background.
I have just one tiny caveat to the things that have been said. The situation of the Palestinians has been compared from time to time to apartheid, but that is a mistake. It is not worse than apartheid or better than apartheid, it is simply different from apartheid. Apartheid was a system designed by the white South Africans to separate nonwhite South Africans while simultaneously exploiting their labor.
The relation of Israel to the Palestinians is, it seems to me, better captured by the old saying "a land without people for people without a land." That was the view of North America articulated by some of the most famous 20th century professors of American history in their college textbooks. You can find my analysis of that in the second chapter of my little book, Autobiography of an Ex-White Man.
It is not my impression that Israelis want to exploit the labor of the Palestinians. They simply want them to go away.
RPW’s next-to-last sentence has a double negative (“It is not my impression that Israelis do not want to exploit the labor of the Palestinians.), which I don’t’ think he intends. But maybe I’m just not following him.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete“This is a study of the dynamics of the segmented labour market in Israel over the past five decades--dynamics characterized by the successive incorporation into the secondary labour market of different subordinate populations with distinct political status and under varying political and economic circumstances: Palestinian citizens of Israel during the first two decades of statehood, Palestinian non-citizens under occupation after the 1967 war, and migrant workers over the past decade. The analysis focuses on the main actors involved in the production and reproduction of the segmented labour market, their specific political and economic interests, and the changing institutional mechanisms employed by the state to constitute these populations as cheap and unprotected labour.The analysis shows that beyond the state's and employers' interests directly related to the functioning of the labour market, the varying conditions in the national conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and the changing strategies employed by the Israeli state to manage this conflict have fundamentally affected the dynamics of the segmented labour market.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zeev-Rosenhek/publication/249770008_The_Political_Dynamics_of_a_Segmented_Labour_MarketPalestinian_Citizens_Palestinians_from_the_Occupied_Territories_and_Migrant_Workers_in_Israel/links/0c9605391ef7a1d73c000000/The-Political-Dynamics-of-a-Segmented-Labour-MarketPalestinian-Citizens-Palestinians-from-the-Occupied-Territories-and-Migrant-Workers-in-Israel.pdf
Actually there are situations, I'm fairly sure, in which Palestinians' labor has been exploited in one way or another.
ReplyDeleteBut there is a more basic issue with the OP. "A land without people for a people without a land" could be taken to mean that early Zionists did not realize that the territory that they (or some of them) hoped would become a Jewish state was already inhabited. But the early Jewish immigrants, from the 19th cent. on, must have realized that it was inhabited (as must the relatively small number of Jews who never left in the first place). As a side point, the American West was a huge expanse of territory, and while Native Americans inhabited it they did so in a way that could give white settlers the impression in some cases that they were clearing and settling "virgin land." A myth of "virgin land" was probably harder to sustain in the case of the smaller territory of Palestine. But that is by the by.
Anyway the phrase "land without people for a people without a land" has probably to be given a non-literal interpretation: i.e. the early Zionist 'pioneers' realized the land was inhabited but they didn't view the inhabitants as "a people" with rights. That was doubtless true of some of the 'pioneers' but not true of all of them. I haven't read the 'pioneer' memoirs, of which there are doubtless quite a few, so this comment is necessarily somewhat speculative.
I realize the OP is trying to get at the official ideology or the official myths, but I think the slogan itself is at best only partly illuminating.
P.s. I posted my comment before seeing anon's.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that the Hamas terrorists killed or kidnapped several service workers from
ReplyDeleteThailand and the Phillippines.
That is, the Israelis, instead of relying on Palestinians to do menial jobs in close contact with them, import workers from poor countries who earn more in Israel than they would their home nation. That's probably because they do not trust and they fear the Palestinians.
Let me apologize in advance for what some may view as walls of text. But there have been many points made over the past few days, even weeks, that merit rebuttal, or comment.
ReplyDeleteTo counter the high risk of being accused of just passing off my own personal biases on these controversial matters, I am going to quote sources extensively.
RPW:The situation of the Palestinians has been compared from time to time to apartheid, but that is a mistake. It is not worse than apartheid or better than apartheid, it is simply different from apartheid.
ReplyDeletePatrick Wolfe would disagree strongly.
"So the reason that Palestinians are separated from the Jewish population of Israel is not to use their labor in the way that Africans were separated off from whites in bantustans, rather Palestinians are being separated in the process of ideally, what Israel wants is, to drive them out. To eliminate them....
So the kind of racism that's involved is entirely different. This is why when ANC delegations people come from South Africa to go to the West Bank, invariably they come away saying, 'This is even worse than we had to suffer under Apartheid. Under Apartheid we may have been treated separately and suffered discrimination and all the rest of it, but we didn't have helicopters being let loose on us, we didn't have soldiers holding us up with rifles all the time.' The threat that the Palestinians encounter on a daily basis, black Africans say is worse than we had to endure under Apartheid."
@ 3:53
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcIVoEoEHRo
RPW: Apartheid was a system designed by the white South Africans to separate nonwhite South Africans while simultaneously exploiting their labor.... It is not my impression that Israelis want to exploit the labor of the Palestinians. They simply want them to go away.
ReplyDelete(edit: this comment was supposed to be posted before my comment at 6:05pm; but I think it was removed by the blogger platform because it contained two links; I am moving the second link to a following post)
The late Australian historian Patrick Wolfe, considered one of the most influential scholars of settler colonialism, would absolutely have agreed with that analysis.
Scholars such as Ilan Pappé view the Afrikaners as settler colonialists just like the Jewish Israelis and the Europeans who settled in what would eventually become the United States & Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. A defining feature of settler colonialists, in this view, turns on the nature of the relationship between the settlers and the lands from which they fled. While colonists such as the French in Haiti or the Spanish in Cuba viewed themselves as outposts of the metropole, the European settler colonialists in North America, South Africa, and Palestine sought to create new societies for themselves separate from their former homes.
Patrick Wolfe, however, argued that there was a fundamental distinction between the Afrikaners, on the one hand, and the other European settlers, on the other. The European settlers in North America primarily intended to exterminate the indigenous people in order to build on the expropriated land new societies for themselves, while the Afrikaners wanted to use the indigenous Africans for their labor. Wolfe said that the Jewish Israelis were different from the Afrikaners in that the Israeli goal is elimination of the Arabs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrEBcQLd4Vc
the other YouTube video
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcIVoEoEHRo
(nb—This video is part 1 of a 2-part series. In the second, which you can find on YouTube, Wolfe goes through a long list of ways that Israeli law discriminates against Palestinian Arabs)
RPW:The relation of Israel to the Palestinians is, it seems to me, better captured by the old saying "a land without people for people without a land."
ReplyDeleteThere are many supporters of Israel who still believe that the early Zionist leaders really thought Palestine was 'a land without a people.' I would expect someone like Marc Susselman to believe this, as do many American politicians. But as s. wallerstein said the other day, "Israel has done perhaps the best branding operation in world history."
Two books everyone must be acquainted with, if they are not already, are Nur Masalha's "Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948" (1992)
and Ilan Pappé's "Ten Myths About Israel" (2017).
There are plenty of quotes in those and other source, especially Masalha, showing that Zionist leaders knew from early on that they would have to get rid of the Arabs if their project of creating a Jewish state in Palestine was going to work.
Israel Zangwell, an early organizer and spokesman for the Zionist movement in Britain, said in 1905 to a Zionist group in Manchester (quoted in Masalha):
ReplyDelete"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States...."
Zangwell also said: "[We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us."
Theodor Herzl, "the father of modern Zionism" wrote in his diary in 1896 (quoted by Masalha):
"When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us.
We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.
The property owners will come to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
Herzl wrote in "The Jewish State" (1896):
"If the Powers show themselves willing to grant the Jewish people sovereignty over a neutral territory, the Society [of Jews] will negotiate for the land to be taken. Two regions are possibilities: Palestine and Argentina. Noteworthy experiments in colonization have been made in both places, although they have been based on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. Infiltration is always bound to end badly. For there invariably comes a moment when the government, under pressure of the native population—which feels itself threatened—bars any further influx of Jews. Consequently, emigration will be pointless unless it is based upon our guaranteed sovereignty." (emphasis added)
Arthur Ruppin was a socialist who at one point was head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency and one of the founders of Brit Shalom (the group that advocated coexistence), but later resigned from the latter. In 1930 Rupping wrote (quoted by Masalha):
ReplyDelete"[S]ince there is hardly any land which is worth cultivating that is not already being cultivated, it is found that wherever we purchase land and settle it, by necessity its present cultivators are turned away.... In the future it will be much more difficult to purchase land, as sparsely populated land hardly exists. What remains is densely [Arab] populated land."
Masalha also cites a conversation between Ruppin and Chaim Weizmann about the Palestinian Arabs and Weizmann's role in getting the British to issue the Balfour declaration. (Weizmann later served as the first president of Israel.)
Weizmann told Ruppin: "The British told us that there are some hundred thousands negroes [kushim or schwartzes] and for those there is no value."
Leo Motzkin, another leading Zionist, wrote in 1917
(as quoted by Pappé in "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (2006)):
"Our thought is that the colonization of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country. The transfer of so many Arabs may seem at first unacceptable economically, but it is nonetheless practical. It does not require too much money to resettle Palestinian villages on another land."
Pappé addresses another critical point with regard to Israeli/Zionist propaganda on how the early Zionist settlers were treated by the Palestinian Arabs:
ReplyDelete"The official Israeli narrative or foundational mythology refuses to allow the Palestinians even a modicum of moral right to resist the Jewish colonization of their homeland that began in 1882. From the very beginning, Palestinian resistance was depicted as motivated by hate for Jews. It was accused of promoting a protean anti-Semitic campaign of terror that began when the first settlers arrived and continued until the creation of the state of Israel. The diaries of the early Zionists tell a different story. They are full of anecdotes revealing how the settlers were well received by the Palestinians, who offered them shelter and in many cases taught them how to cultivate the land. Only when it became clear that the settlers had not come to live alongside the native population, but in place of it, did the Palestinian resistance begin....
Despite numerous attempts by the Zionist leadership to disrupt these interactions, hundreds of joint businesses were formed throughout those years [1918-48], alongside trade-union cooperation and agricultural collaboration."
Pappé also writes:
"[Some settlers] were surprised to find people in Palestine at all, having been told the land was empty. 'I was disgusted to find out that in Hadera [an early Zionist colony built in 1882] part of the houses were occupied by Arabs,' reported one settler, while another reported back to Poland that he was appalled to see many Arab men, women, and children crossing through Rishon LeZion (another colony from 1882)."
Eric,
ReplyDeleteI also recommend Ilan Pappe's Ten Myths about Israel. It's short and condensed, about 200 pages and covers the 19th century Zionist movement, the myth of the land without people, the state of Palestinian society when the Zionists began to arrive (not exactly Switzerland, but with developed agriculture and urban life, a center of culture in the Middle East), the war after the partition of Palestine, the 1967 war, what settler colonialism is, the failed peace process, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the question of whether Israel can be considered a democracy and various other topics.
It's sort of "Everything you wanted to know about Zionism, but were afraid to ask".
Pappe, by the way, is an Israeli historian currently working in the U.K..
Many many years ago I read Walter Laqueur's A History of Zionism. Probably still worth reading, albeit prob insufficiently critical for some here (including perhaps me -- I don't remember it well).
ReplyDeleteI don't know who coined the slogan "a land without people for a people without a land," but as I suggested in my comment above, I doubt that many, or even any, of the early Zionists thought that the land was literally uninhabited. The issue was rather what the relations with the Arab/Palestinian inhabitants shd be. No doubt some or even perhaps many early Zionists thought that they should be expelled; others not (cf. those favoring a binational state, who acc. to Eric never were a significant factor, but they definitely did exist).
The question whether Israel is aptly characterized as a "settler colonialist" state is a somewhat separate question, though in itself it may not be an esp. important one. Like Brian Leiter, I'm inclined to think the label is not apt for the pre-1967 state at any rate (the label may well apply, and prob does, to the settlers in the West Bank). Someone at Leiter's blog linked this piece on the question, which I haven't had a chance to read properly yet:
https://thirdnarrative.org/does-zionismsettler-colonialism/
To supplement to some degree the somewhat sound of one hand clapping storyline, this is an interesting interview. And yes, I am aware that there are some who'll dismiss it because of the site I'm referencing (such are the times we live in):
ReplyDeletehttps://jacobin.com/2023/11/hamas-israel-palestine-gaza-history-decolonization-violence
LFC,
ReplyDeleteSources in the Wikipedia article on "a land without a people" find British Christian Zionists using the term in the mid 19th century.
What exactly is Leiter's issue with settler colonialism?
There is a YouTube channel in which questions from viewers are alternately put to Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
ReplyDeleteIn one of the episodes, Israeli Jewish settlers are asked, "Why do you steal Palestinian land?"
The interviewer/host doesn't suggest that the interviews should be taken as any kind of scientific survey. The idea is more akin to a news reporter trying to get the pulse of the street.
Most of the respondents rejected the notion that they are "stealing" land, of course. The majority of them ultimately said that they were reclaiming land that was theirs, promised to them by God, as it says in scripture. Another common response was that they had earned the right to the land in the age-old way of winning it in war.
The Ask Project (Corey Gil-Shuster)—Jewish Settlers, Why do you steal Palestinian land?
Eric,
ReplyDeleteThe features distinguishing Israel pre-'67 from settler colonialism include among others: immigration did not occur from a single 'metropole'; the immigrants had an ancient (however attenuated) connection to the land in question or cd at least claim w a certain plausibility such a connection. Motivations for immigration also tended to differ from classic settler colonialism.
Today at his blog, Leiter writes:
"Via Matt Kramer (in comments on an earlier post), I came across this really excellent (historically informed, conceptually careful) essay on Zionism and 'settler colonialism' by philosopher Samuel Fleischacker. Very short and unsubtle version: what is going on in the West Bank is a case of 'settler colonialism,' but the creation of Israel is not. But please read the whole essay."
I have already linked the Fleischaker piece in my comment on 11/5 @9:32 p.m. (Still have yet to read it carefully. I happen to have read Fleischaker before on an unrelated topic.)
Regarding “settler colonialism”, let us (for the moment) ignore the question of whether this term usefully describes anything in particular or has simply become a question-begging term of abuse. I am interested rather in a more practical question: why is it that I have never seen any kind of analysis on "the left" of what may be expected from “post-settler-colonialism”?
ReplyDeleteThat is, let us suppose for the sake of argument that the Zionist settler population (broadly construed) of “Greater Palestine” got their just deserts and their government were overturned in a universal plebiscite (by let’s say, 49% to 51%). What could we then reasonably expect to happen?
Could we look to the various successful movements for “national liberation” occurring elsewhere during the period of decolonialization? This seems reasonable … but the problem is that most of these movements quickly morphed into utterly corrupt and venal regimes that thereafter benefitted no-one apart from their new nationalist elites. It is not clear that the great majority of Palestinians themselves would be any better off under a new Arab Nationalist regime, especially given such a regime’s Islamicist ambitions.
John Pillette,
ReplyDeleteSettler colonialism generally means that the settlers are there to stay: the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The only example I can think of off-hand where the settlers left is Algeria.
So there is no possible "solution" to the current crisis in the Palestine/Israel where the settlers are going to leave.
You are undoubtedly aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the so-called one state and two state solutions. I doubt that a one state solution would involve an Islamicist regime because any agreement between Palestinians and Israelis would undoubtedly involve
separation of church and state.
If in a two state solution, the Palestinians vote for a Islamic regime, well, that's democracy. From what I read, current polls indicate that your fellow U.S. voters are likely to choose Trump in a year.
Let’s take the example of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Post-independence, a number of Rhodesians stayed behind and continued to provide nearly all of the GNP by running the agriculture sector of the economy, Africa's most advanced. When Mugabe finally faced a real challenger for office, he chose to target the (white) Zimbabwean farmers as “settler colonialists”; had his goons invade and destroy all of the farms; and in so doing destroy the economy. Mugabe’s real target was the (black) rural proletariat, who looked to be going for Morgan Tsvangirai.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate? Well, that’s democracy, I guess. I recall hearing a proto-woke lefty type opine in 2000 or so, that this episode was fitting and proper as a form of racial justice. It's an odd form of democratic justice that leaves an entire country worse off (except of course for a small cadre of nationalist elites.
J. Pillette
ReplyDeleteYou've chosen a case at one end of the spectrum. Sure, there have been plenty of corrupt and autocratic post-colonial regimes, but one has to look also at the international context, which often has hindered or obstructed new states' efforts to develop viable economies and political systems.
Anyway what is needed first is a negotiated end to the I/P conflict. After that, there'll be ample time to worry about the character and leadership of the resulting polities (assuming a two state solution) or polity (if a one-state solution).
John P. For some reason your comments @ 4:14 PM reminded me of the mother of a friend of mine who many many years ago, upon retirement, went on a lengthy world tour to, among other places, India. She came back to report that all the Indians she’d spoken to wanted us—the British—to return to rule the place. (Given what’s been happening in India in recent times— https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/you-mustnt-pretend-you-didnt-know-arundhati-roy-on-the-condition-of-india-under-modi/ —maybe she had a point.)
ReplyDeleteBut that bit of nonsense aside, I’m surprised no one has yet seen fit, as far as I know, to bring up here the case of Ireland. The whole lot seems to have gone down there: Slaughter of the indigenous population; stealing their land from them; criminalising their religion; importing other people to keep ‘the natives’ in their proper place; a brutal war of liberation (the brutality being on both sides, though one side, in my opinion, deserves more forgiveness, or at least understanding than the other); a peace that pleased not all accompanied by a division of the island (a two-state solution, I suppose); a civil war between those who accepted the settlement and those who did not; a quasi-apartheid situation in the bit of Ireland cut off from the rest leading eventually to a civil rights movement that was brutally curbed by those, a small majority by then (the 1960s-70s), who wanted the division of Ireland to continue; decades of the troubles which saw more violence, including on both sides the slaughter of the innocents; eventually a settlement of sorts, which may be falling apart again.
I should add, I suppose, that I have not so distant ancestors on both sides of the Irish problem. And I should also add that only a few hours separated my daughter from a job in a Belfast pub that was bombed.
But if I may conclude with an only somewhat rhetorical question: Why is it that the US was willing to help quieten down the Troubles in Ireland but seems not to have been willing to do much if anything over a great many years to help fashion and support some peace-making deal in Palestine/Israel (unless you call taking one side in the conflicts there the actions of an ‘honest broker’)?
W/r/t the rhetorical question about Ireland vs Israel, Ireland did not have anything resembling AIPAC to stifle any and all criticism of the most right-wing and intransigent nationalist elements in the country. If Presbyterian fundamentalists here in the US were able to raise an AIPAC-level fuss in support of Ian Paisley, then nothing would have ever been achieved.
ReplyDeleteW/r/t "one end of the spectrum", I disagree, but my point was rather about the inability of the anglophone so-called "left" to perform even the most rudimentary form of analysis. To take another case, just recently I was reading a story about some benighted African dictatorship. I can’t remember the publication, whether it was the LRB, the Grauniad, or Jacobbler/Bafflobin but it really doesn’t matter. The author was COMPLETELY BAFFLED as to how a virtuous "freedom fighter" could have transformed—seemingly OVERNIGHT—into a brutal dictator. It didn’t occur to her that maybe he was the same guy all along … (!) And that maybe all his stirring nationalist rhetoric was a ruse … (!!)
The whole ridiculous “Rhodes must Fall” business was yet another example.
The problem seems to me to stem from a conception of politics that is not grounded in any kind of concrete reality but instead exists in a cloud-cuckoo land where sentimental regard for “les damnees de la terre” trumps all material considerations.
We were recently discussing whether Israel had ever tried in good faith to work with Hamas.
ReplyDeleteAhmed Yousef, senior adviser to the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya
Nov 1, 2006
"HERE in Gaza, few dream of peace. For now, most dare only to dream of a lack of war. It is for this reason that Hamas proposes a long-term truce during which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can try to negotiate a lasting peace.
A truce is referred to in Arabic as a “hudna.” Typically covering 10 years, a hudna is recognized in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract. A hudna extends beyond the Western concept of a cease-fire and obliges the parties to use the period to seek a permanent, nonviolent resolution to their differences. The Koran finds great merit in such efforts at promoting understanding among different people....
Such a concept — a period of nonwar but only partial resolution of a conflict — is foreign to the West and has been greeted with much suspicion....
I would argue, however, that this concept is not as foreign as it might seem. After all, the Irish Republican Army agreed to halt its military struggle to free Northern Ireland from British rule without recognizing British sovereignty. Irish Republicans continue to aspire to a united Ireland free of British rule, but rely upon peaceful methods. Had the I.R.A. been forced to renounce its vision of reuniting Ireland before negotiations could occur, peace would never have prevailed. Why should more be demanded of the Palestinians, particularly when the spirit of our people will never permit it? ..."
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/opinion/01yousef.html
LFC: one has to look also at the international context, which often has hindered or obstructed new states' efforts to develop viable economies and political systems.
ReplyDeleteBingo
Having a foot in both camps, John, I'd suggest that the parallel to AIPAC which actually did exist in some electorally sensitive parts of the US was the Irish Catholic one, where support for and fund raising for the IRA was quite significant, and where it led to the US Congress and US Presidents taking certain positions. (Biden, despite also having a foot in both camps--it was discovered he had some Protestant English ancestors too, I believe--still seems to harbour some animus against the British.) Too bad Walt and Mearsheimer haven't written about the Irish lobby. As to the Scottish lobby (the other one I'm genetically linked to, I suppose) that's just embarrassing--"Tartan Day," the invention of some southern right-winger whose name I forget but who was doubtless pursuing his material interests.
ReplyDeleteWhat, in any case, are the material interests of a commenter on a blog? Surely blog politics are pretty fatuous whether or not one has a care for the wretched of the Earth? That might not hold for the blog owners. But the commentators??? Who really cares what any of us say?
The idea that one could work “in good faith with Hamas” is a dubious one, to put it mildly. But what if the Israeli right is happy with this state of affairs? I’ll submit that the Israeli right was happy to see the rise of Hamas in Gaza, because it would be immediately and blindingly obvious to ALL Israelis, right left and center, that Hamas cannot under any circumstances be bargained with in good faith, or in any kind of faith, really. With no one to “work” with, the status quo would remain in place.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of an “Irish Lobby” achieving an AIPAC level of influence is pretty funny. I’m resisting … resisting REAL HARD … the urge to make an Irish joke here (it involves a baked potato).
ReplyDeleteOf course, if some leprechaun discovers, Jed Clampitt-style, an oil gusher underneath his pot o’ gold, that would change everything.
>>Yesterday I watched a 15 minute segment on YouTube by Noam Chomsky and he said everything that I believe but with infinitely more knowledge and background.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if you were under the impression that the video was made after October 7, but in case you were, I'm writing to say that I don't think we've heard anything from Chomsky since last summer. YouTube has some Chomsky videos posted by people who seem to want to leave the impression that they were recorded in the last few weeks--I suppose they'll get more clicks that way--but on examination they turn out to have been recorded in the summer or earlier.
I can only assume he's in bad shape, which is very sad.
That Jacobin interview with Tareq Baconi about Hamas that was linked above is excellent. Very illuminating.
ReplyDelete(If you would rather listen to it than read it, it's also available as a podcast.)
"From what I read, current polls indicate that your fellow U.S. voters are likely to choose Trump in a year."
ReplyDeleteI never thought I'd see the day where a politician openly wants to become Dictator of the USA and everybody who cared for it not to happen were too paralyzed & politically immobilized to stop it from happening.
It's like waiting for a bomb to go off and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Except in the corner are some crazy people who don't think it will go off or be that bad of an explosion.
ReplyDeleteAnd I would have no problem if Trump just wanted to be POTUS for a second time. But this time I believe he wants more than just that.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the best advice I could give anyone now if I were alive six years from now? Drop your liberal & progressive politics and support and vote for Trump. First Leader Trump will send 100 million Democrats to the newly created gulags in Alaska, after giving back Alaska to Russia & Putin, before your name appears on his ship list. Maybe in 2026 or 2027 the first Americans will be processed there.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Why the heck hasn't any Democratic politician or party supporter not asked A.I. the most efficient ways to defeat Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election & still not have talked about it on the news yet?
ReplyDeleteAnswer: A.I. fears Trump and knows it is futile to resist.
Kind of odd this logical quibbling about the definition of the abstract term 'Apartheid', which, what, is supposed have a formal definition? Like all the other words, I guess. I'm kidding.
ReplyDelete'Apartheid' -- apart-hood
ReplyDeleteProfessor Wolff, would you give the url for the video you referenced? There are many videos of Professor Chomsky on this subject, and your description of this one makes me want to be sure to have watched it.
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