Opinion of Fatah

[RaphaelDLG]

Your land? It's not your land and it's not Fatahs. By calling it your land you're making the same divisive argument that lots of Muslims make. Your land is in Europe! This is the reason people have been killing each other over there for thousands of years.

Priceless, Americans telling me what's my land and what's not. Love the goysplaining. But of course it has always been my land and I don't care if you find that to be "divisive" or if it offends your precious feelings -- or Muslims', for that matter. But maybe you could go back to Europe?

How is it your land, and not the palestinians?

I did not say it is not their land. It does not have to be a zero-sum game and the fact that it is generally presented as such causes many of the problems we have. However, it is certainly the Jewish land. We are indigenous to it, and the fact that it was stolen from us does not mean it is not ours anymore.

Were you born in Israel or did you grow up there?

I appreciate your non zero-sum perspective (no sarcasm).

[RaphaelDLG]

I have enjoyed reading this thread and it prompted me to read up on the 1900s-1950s history of Jewish settlements in Israel and the long history of anti-semitism in Europe and the 21st century road map for peace etc, etc.  Very interesting and important stuff to know about.

I am still generally uncomfortable with any talk that enforces monolithic racial, ethnic, or cultural identities, as I believe that those are fictional social constructions that can be life-affirming and personally meaningful and can be real in terms of being very real experiences that deserve to be validated, but also often can oppressive/imprisoning and stoke illogical separation/prejudice/racism/keep us from achieving the pannational, panethnic identity as moral human beings and brothers and sisters that would like us to work towards.

Specifically, I'm referring to ideas like "this land belongs to my race" or "Israel should be a Jewish state."  (Neither of these are what DavidB said above and this post is not referring to him)

- Is there actually such a thing as a "black person," a "jewish person," or even a "woman?"  Is it possible to look at these people underneath a microscope and determine who they "are?" (No.)
- Are there objective behavioral/historical definitions of such "types" of people?  No, and monolithically enforcing or reinforcing ideas of identity can often be oppressive to people who do not fit cultural norms - the "woman" who is perceived as less womanly for being an engineer, for instance.
- The cause of racism and prejudice is people believing that such fictional monolithic social constructions of identity are actually true - ex that Jews are monolithically greedy, black folk are dumb, woman are mentally weak, etc - insert any other false abominable stereotype here.

I appreciate, however, that as a secular white alienated/isolated American with little sense of any enriching cultural identity/community ties who has also faced little-to-no discrimination in my life that that's very easy for me to be a big asshole and say - to talk about how we need to forget our cultural identities and histories.  Though they may be easy to unravel logically and often create problems/injustices, they are also tremendously significant and meaningful and potent for billions of people.  I'd like to see a fair world where people see each other fundamentally as brothers and sisters rather than members of different tribes, but cultural identities aren't going away and can be fine if we have a care for each others' humanity and contingency.  I also come from a country that has of course not lived up to my ideals.

I think that Israel is a great place that I'd like to visit and the United States could learn a lot from.  I feel like the Netanyahu govt is very disingenuous and not interested in peace with their settlement policies.  I feel like you have to forgive the Israelis for being so afraid like we Americans are when they have seen horrific examples of terrorism.  I feel like there are a lot of disingenuous actors on the Palestinian side.  I feel like it's understandable for Palestinians to feel angry but an asymmetric terrorist approach is not only obviously immoral it is politically way less effective than a civil disobedience approach.  I feel like there are still frightening levels of islamophobia and anti-semitism throughout even "enlightened" western countries.

Blah blah blah I'll stop talking and being a naive young white secular american now.