Since it's been a while since we had an Israel/Palestine thread...

[maxi]

yeah, he keeps repeating the line that russian attack is a terrible war crime - he is not so insane to deny that. BUT, and that is the key, he also keeps repeating the age old lie about russian "over-reaction" being a response to NATO moving closer to its borders. that line, which has been parroted ad nauseam by large swathes of the left (an increasingly the alt-right) has done a terrible harm to people's overall understanding of 21st century geopolitics, because that view is a hot, steaming pile of lies.
i truly recommend this book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_One_Inch_(book) which takes that outlook apart detail by detail. so it's strange that chomsky - a dedicated facts man - for decades keeps repeating a factually false view. what happened was that after collapse of USSR - all the east-euro countries, for obvious reasons, rushed to western block lead by america and literally begged to be made part of NATO, because that's the only guarantee that you won't be swallowed by russia again. in fact, USA was quiet resistant to that idea - so much so that polish leadership even had to use a bit of blackmail saying that in case of not becoming part of NATO they will start developing nuclear weapons straight away since that's the only other form of effective protection against russian expansionism they can think of. an if trump dismatles NATO - which he hints he will do - the poles deffo will get the nuclear bombs. maybe even baltics. probably also sweden and finland. is that an better alternative to the "imperialistic" NATO.?
but i think the bigger point is that a lot (even most) of the western presumptions and presuppositions regarding larger geopolitical issues need to be reevaluated. up until now they've been incredibly simplistic with world being divided in two camps - the evil west and the rest; the rest, of course, always being victims and so on. but it's not how it works really. and, coming to israel - palestine conflict, it's just a part of the larger game. all these local conflicts that will keep exploding will be a part of this larger game. remember that one book written in response to fukuyamas "end of history" was written by his teacher samuel huntington and was called "clash of civilizations" and i think that's where we at, global village coming undone. that's how we should look at the palestine conflict.

Let's say you're right, and Chomsky/Finkelstein/others with similar views on the left are wrong about Russia... OK. But if there's one thing Chomsky/Finkelstein do understand, it's Israel/Palestine.

Chomsky grew up in a Hebraist family, was a Zionist youth leader for years, lived in Israel in the 1950s etc. So it's not like an outsider's perspective. Finkelstein has been studying every minute detail of the conflict for 40 years, which of course includes other countries involvement and the larger geopolitical issues you mention. It's his life's work (unlike Russia) and no one else has even attempted the level of scholarship and detail he brings to Gaza's history from the last 15 years or so in his 2018 book "Gaza". If there's something you think they get particularly wrong about the conflict, I'm interested to hear about that.

There's a thing people often miss about dissident intellectuals like Chomsky, which is that they approach their arguments as if they are supposed to be providing a balanced moral overview of the entire world, comparing different countries and weighing them against each other according to good and evil. But that's not their goal. They speak out against their own country's crimes because that's what they are responsible for and want to bring to their own public's attention -- because that's what they actually have influence on.

It's exactly the same with a Russian dissident -- their job is to speak out against Putin. The Russian intellectuals who spend all their time focusing on US crimes are doing so to distract from Russia's crimes. They are wrong in exactly the same way that Western intellectuals focusing on Russia without looking in the mirror are also wrong.

I saw Chomsky in an interview once mentioning a talk he gave to a Palestinian audience. He said he spent the majority of the time talking about the Palestinian Authority's corruption and mistakes, and almost no time talking about Israel. (He said "because they already know about Israel. You tell people what they don't want to hear.")

If he was talking to a Russian audience, particularly one that supported Putin and had internalised all of the anti-US propaganda, he'd probably be saying very different things. But the important thing here is to say that none of these things are contradictory. The facts would remain the same of course. And maybe you think he gets the actual facts on the ground wrong which is another question. But it's just about changing the emphasis based on the audience and what people already know, what people don't know and deny, what people can actually do something about, etc.

 

[thirdform]

trying to do politics from state allegiances is a foolhardy endeavour. as a hypothetical: all the Ukraine people should be on the side of Palestine given they purchase drones from Turkey and Israel has hardly condemned Russia at all, but their domestic situation against russia and the idea that this is an Iranian coup obviously trumps that.

Similarly, from this perspective, Turkey should be on the side of Israel given their support for Azerbaijan in karabag, but that isn't the case. It's just not a useful framework given that allegiances always fluctuate. They did in the cold war as well, although let's not get into how cuban troops with soviet weapons defended the operation of US oil company revenues (good source of profit for them and the MPLA) against attacks from Unita troops armed and backed by the US and South Africa.

As for what remains of the left and alt right, they are utterly irrelevant and dissolve in the solvent of the capitalist state.

 

[droid]

all these local conflicts that will keep exploding will be a part of this larger game. remember that one book written in response to fukuyamas "end of history" was written by his teacher samuel huntington and was called "clash of civilizations" and i think that's where we at, global village coming undone. that's how we should look at the palestine conflict.

lol, nothing better than seeing a reference to a profoundly discredited, decades old orientalist justification for Western hegemony.

 

[thirdform]

I've linked this before but it is worth reposting because people don't seem to read it.

The attachment of this spectator consciousness to alien causes remains irrational, and its virtuous protests flounder in the tortuous paths of its guilt. Most of the "Vietnam Committees" in France split up during the "Six Day War" and some of the war resistance groups in the United States also revealed their reality. "One cannot be at the same time for the Vietnamese and against the Jews menaced with extermination," is the cry of some. "Can you fight against the Americans in Vietnam while supporting their allied Zionist aggressors?" is the reply of others. And then they plunge into Byzantine discussions . . . Sartre hasn't recovered from it yet. In fact this whole fine lot does not actually fight what it condemns, nor does it really know much about the forces it supports. Its opposition to the American war is almost always combined with unconditional support of the Vietcong; but in any case this opposition remains spectacular for everyone. Those who were really opposed to Spanish fascism went to fight it. No one has yet gone off to fight "Yankee imperialism." The consumers of illusory participation are offered a whole range of spectacular choices: pacifist demonstrations; Stalino-Gaullist nationalism against the Americans (Humphrey's visit was the sole occasion the French Communist Party has demonstrated with its remaining faithful); the sale of the Vietnam Newsletter or of publicity handouts from Ho Chi Minh's state . . . Neither the Provos (before their dissolution) nor the Berlin students have been able to go beyond the narrow framework of anti-imperialist "action."

Two Local Wars

The Arab-Israel war was a dirty trick pulled by modern history on the good conscience of the Left, which was communing in the great spectacle of its protest against the Vietnam war. The false consciousness that saw in the NLF the champion of "socialist revolution" against American imperialism...

libcom.org

 

[thirdform]

lol, nothing better than seeing a reference to a profoundly discredited, decades old orientalist justification for Western hegemony.

it was wrong when it was published tbh. there is only one civilisation, and that is the civilisation of capital. This is not the 18th century where we are talking about the capitalist empires of the British and French, and the tributary empires of Turkey, Russia, China etc. I mean, if Huntington had slept like Epiminides for the last 50 years, we could perhaps forgive him. But he seems to have multiplied that by 5. What is the excuse?

 

[droid]

The only democracy in the middle east, arresting arab citizens for scrolling through twitter

 

[Mr. Tea]

He's a US dissident so it's his job to speak out against the US role and US hypocrisy. That's not apologetics, and he goes further than saying it's unjustified ("terrible war crime"). Your argument sounds quite similar to the Israel supporters who accuse people of being Hamas apologists when they explain the history prior to October 7th. Explanation is different to justification

Not at all. The two conflicts are radically different in origin and nature. Ukraine poses no threat to Russia; it didn't even pose a threat to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine (contra Russian claims, of course - not that ethnic Russians weren't killed in the conflict in the Donbas from 2014 onwards, along with ethnic Ukrainians, but that was in a proxy war that was, as ever, unilaterally initiated by Russia).

Hamas, OTOH, quite clearly does pose a threat to Israel, as the events of a month ago vividly demonstrated, even if it's a far smaller threat than that posed to Gaza and to Palestinians generally by Israel.

And you can say it's Chompo's "job" to criticise the US, fine, but that doesn't extend to a right to just make stuff up.

 

[maxi]

Yeah I mean no discussion can get very far if theres disagreement on the basic facts and background.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

rights are not inalienable though outside of the suppositions of social contract theory. you guys say israel has a right to exist, instead of saying israel exists. and by that logic you capitulate to its abolition, or a sense in which one can justify it has no right to exist. It's equally hawkish bullying.

Mixed Biscuits: 'hamas has a right to exist, as does Saudi, and as does Iran.'

God may have kneaded your lifeforce dough with tenderness and kindness, but it's obvious that your mother gave birth to you by accident whilst defecating. You have regressed from being embarrassing into self-parody. Turns out this is what weed and porn does to the brain of the 10000 magikal i.q thinkers. tut tut.

To Israel's critics 'Israel exists' cuts no ice because, for some reason, it must have always existed to ensure that 'Israel exists' continues to be true. There is definitely no sense in that possession of its land is 9 10ths of the law. Invoking rights is just a posh way of saying 'should' or 'could' or 'will' exist but done in the way that Palestine's potentialities are discussed.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

He's a US dissident so it's his job to speak out against the US role and US hypocrisy. That's not apologetics, and he goes further than saying it's unjustified ("terrible war crime"). Your argument sounds quite similar to the Israel supporters who accuse people of being Hamas apologists when they explain the history prior to October 7th. Explanation is different to justification

Firstly, there are such things as timing and restricting the range of one's interlocutors inferences; secondly, he refers to it as a 'war crime' and so not something beyond the pale, something that can be integrated into a whole that flattens its significance. Rather than calling it a terrorist attack that starts a war he calls it a crime that is part of a war.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The only democracy in the middle east, arresting arab citizens for scrolling through twitter

What are they saying?

 

[maxi]

Like Finkelstein has said, "the human capacity for self-deception is limitless." It doesn't matter how many facts you put on the table or how obvious the arguments are, some people will just believe what they want to believe and there's no reasoning with them.

 

[thirdform]

To Israel's critics 'Israel exists' cuts no ice because, for some reason, it must have always existed to ensure that 'Israel exists' continues to be true. There is definitely no sense in that possession of its land is 9 10ths of the law. Invoking rights is just a posh way of saying 'should' or 'could' or 'will' exist but done in the way that Palestine's potentialities are discussed.

well all you've proven by this is that Israel's defenders can't defend their state and have to invoke a quasi-theological european antisemitism that they have transfered (in the psychoanalytic, not literal sense) onto the Arabs. Because your position only ever circles around to Israel's critics, it cannot stand as a position on its own. And the reason why it can't is precisely because of the internal contradictions of Israel, the liberal zionist dream (orthodox or revisionist, but always zionist) is dying, only to be replaced for something analogous to most middle eastern theocracies. It's of course not so apparent, at the moment, which is why Israel's defenders will talk of a democratic past. But it is just that. A past. Which will eventually become less and less relevant.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The misinterpretation of Chomsky's role as dissident intellectual into being simplistically antagonistic reveals a mismatch between Chomsky and those he is inspiring. The dissident intellectual provides a countervailing force to establish a balance within a system with which he nevertheless identifies. This is where the motivation for his dissidence comes from, to nurture something he fundamentally loves. Many of those influenced by Chomsky mistake the dissidence for simple antagonism and interpret this to urge a disidentification with the object of the dissidence and replacement identification with something other. This is a problem.

 

[version]

How Israel’s spymasters misread Hamas | FT

The 9/11 report, the US government’s official account of what happened, rued that no security official foresaw that terrorists might fly planes into big US buildings — even though many of them said they had read a 1994 Tom Clancy novel which climaxes with that scene.

In a similar vein, before Hamas launched its October 7 attack, Avi Issacharoff, co-creator of Israel’s hit television thriller Fauda, rejected a possible plotline for one episode in which Hamas fighters stormed the border fence and attacked Israel, deeming it too implausible. Israel’s security services apparently thought the same.

The Israeli military’s 8200 signals intelligence unit had also recently stopped listening in on the handheld radios used by Hamas militants after they judged it a waste of effort, according to The New York Times.

“We had become addicted to tech, cyber, big data and the rest of it,” Millstein said. “But the cheapest and simplest intelligence — such as open source, tracking Hamas’s walkie-talkie communications, even listening to our female observation soldiers on the border — was completely under-appreciated.”

A third reason for Israel’s failure to anticipate Hamas’s attack was that political turmoil caused by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial domestic policies had weakened national security and distracted its intelligence services.

 

[germaphobian]

ok. let's try asking a simple question - what is the ultimate russian endgame? well, as i see it, it is such:

1) destruction of ukraine as a necessary preliminary step

2) attack on one of the nato countries to see if article 5 will be invoked (probably poland or baltics, maybe romania).

3) if the article 5 is not invoked and defeat of the said countries is achieved - spreading further and further into europe

4) if the article 5 is invoked - exchange of nuclear darts for which russia is more than ready

5) so if it is not invoked (going back to point 3) the darts will still fly at some point (just later) because russia won't stop at some imagined holy borders (like ex-soviet states). as the russian nationalists say - we'll get to portugal one day! and they mean it. so at some point nuclear escalation will be unavoidable anyway.
So, no matter how it goes, if russia is not stopped at this point - the endgame is nuclear armageddon. that's why the palestine conflict was god-given for them at this point - because it takes attention away from the much more important ukraine conflict, it creats additional chaos within western societies (with possibility of mobilizing their sizeable muslim population for some civil war situation - https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-france-soldiers-warn-of-civil-war/), it ties down american forces in the middle east (especially if iran get inolved, although i'm 99% sure they won't) and it's also useful for domestic reasons because the anti-semitic sentiment which is quite strong in russian society can be mobilized for reasons of societal cohesion, we are already seeing glimpses of that in dagestan.
one of the biggest problems is that westerns just to refuse to see russian and its aims in this way.

 

[maxi]

one of the biggest problems is that westerns just to refuse to see russian and its aims in this way.

most westerners do though. including on the left, broadly speaking. including probably a bunch of people on this thread. anyone who even questions US involvement in the war is immediately slandered as a putin apologist in much of the west. even probably by mr tea lol who is speaking against israel. so your view is essentially the prevailing western one anyway. so I wouldn't worry so much about that.

So, no matter how it goes, if russia is not stopped at this point - the endgame is nuclear armageddon.

how do you propose russia be stopped in a way that would also not result in nuclear armageddon?

 

[thirdform]

If Russian nationalists indeed have the end goal of taking over Germany and the UK, then there is nothing at all to object to.

Unfortunately they don't, and are more fixated on a politically irrelevant
country like Ukraine run by an entertainment company. Which just goes to illustrate that they are not a superpower at all. They would like to be a superpower, but in reality they are a regional power.

 

[thirdform]

as for the portuguese well...

The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (or Aliança Luso-Inglesa, "Luso-English Alliance") is the oldest[1] military alliance that is still in force by political bilateral agreement.[2] It was established by the Treaty of Windsor in 1386, between the Kingdom of England (since succeeded by the United Kingdom) and the Kingdom of Portugal (now the Portuguese Republic), though the countries were previously allied via the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373.
Historically, the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of England, and later the modern Portuguese Republic and United Kingdom, have never waged war against each other nor have they participated in wars on opposite sides as independent states since the signing of the Treaty of Windsor. While Portugal was subsumed under the Iberian Union, rebellious Portuguese factions and government in exile sought refuge and help in England. England spearheaded the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) on the side of the deposed Portuguese royal house.

So yes, please, keep tripping on lsd for Putin to take them over because it would make me a very happy bunny. Of course, its not going to happen, so the point is moot.

Anglo-Portuguese Alliance - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[germaphobian]

as for the portuguese well...

The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (or Aliança Luso-Inglesa, "Luso-English Alliance") is the oldest[1] military alliance that is still in force by political bilateral agreement.[2] It was established by the Treaty of Windsor in 1386, between the Kingdom of England (since succeeded by the United Kingdom) and the Kingdom of Portugal (now the Portuguese Republic), though the countries were previously allied via the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373.
Historically, the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of England, and later the modern Portuguese Republic and United Kingdom, have never waged war against each other nor have they participated in wars on opposite sides as independent states since the signing of the Treaty of Windsor. While Portugal was subsumed under the Iberian Union, rebellious Portuguese factions and government in exile sought refuge and help in England. England spearheaded the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) on the side of the deposed Portuguese royal house.

So yes, please, keep triping on lsd for Putin to take them over because it would make me a very happy bunny. Of course, its not going to happen, so the point is moot.

Anglo-Portuguese Alliance - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

of course they won't physically march into portugal or uk, they probably won't even get past poland if they're using convential warfare - it's just one of their deluded slogans, but it shows their level of magical thinking and their senseless ambitions very well. the point is rather that any kind of clash with nato will mean nuclear darts at some point. and shitiness of their ground forces only raises the possibility of that happening, because bombs are their strongest asset, almost the only one worth considering so there will come a point when it will be used.