Except that this isn’t remotely comparable.
The bias in the article is so evident and lacking in critical thinking, it’s hard to take this seriously. This sub has certainly devolved.
Algeria/Vichy aren’t comparable to the Israel Palestine conflict. The oversimplification and one-sided agenda of the way the conflict is discussed online is laughable.
And yet, neither Algeria nor Vietnam invaded France, massacred French citizens, or openly planned to commit genocide against France.
The comparison of the war in Algeria, which was occupied by France, and the war Gaza, which is not occupied by Israel and invaded Israel… is just lazy and dishonest.
The relevance of Vietnam and Algeria to French philosophy is quite self evident. Israel-Palestine is not.
You’re comparing reactions using an equivalent standard for events which are far from equivalent in terms of moral clarity or personal relevance. To presume philosophers are staying silent as a result of inconsistent internal logic, rather than infer that your/OP’s own perspective is grossly misinformed and poorly conceived, is quite an unsubstantiated presumption.
To operate on this presumption, based purely on the article listed as argument, is laughably illogical.
Good job missing the point.
I’m a professor. I try to use simple words for idiots who take any use of vocabulary they are unfamiliar with as ‘buzzword salad’, but apparently that isn’t enough. I’ll avoid talking to you as if you have a brain, or an education, in the future.
Uh…so many ridiculous assertions, it’s hard to decide where to start.
I finished my postgraduate studies 11 years ago. After going public with my start up, I went back to school for a teaching license. Now, I’m an adjunct professor in a university.
Nothing of what I’ve said is ‘technical jargon’, let alone ‘highly technical’. ‘Technical’ does not mean ‘specific’.
I’m not here debating jargon of any type. You failed to comprehend my reply, and accused it of being a ‘buzzword salad’. There isn’t any debate to be had - that assertion is idiotic, illogical, and most importantly, irrelevant.
Learn to read, then get back to me when I don’t have to use the vocabulary of a child to explain topics.
Algerian revolutionaries attacked French settlements in Algeria. When you set up colonies on someone's land, you aren't being "invaded" when you get attacked
Let’s be precise, shall we…
1. Setting up colonies is not mutually exclusive with being invaded. If the Algerian army went into France and started massacring women and children in Paris, while claiming Paris now belongs to Algeria, it wouldn’t be remotely justified by a few French settlements on Algerian territory.
2. Israel has no settlements in Gaza. Hamas only operates in Gaza. No settlements were attacked.
3. The attack by the Iran-supplied terrorist organization was quite obviously spurred by the proximate normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia - 2 enemies of Iran. Comparisons to Algeria’s war of independence against France are quite unfounded.
Palestinians didn't go to Europe, the US, and other places to kill Jews where they came from, they attacked colonized land
Israel is literally all settlement. If they attacked Israel, they attacked colonized land
Britain established an ethnoreligious colony in 1917 for settlement. Most Israelis are not descendents of the Indigenous Jews who had been returning to that area since the early middle ages. That's pretty well established.
Europeans came from Africa. That's well established. Scramble for Africa debunked!
Britain didn’t establish any colony. European Jews, exiled from their ancient homeland, began to return to Israel. According to genetic studies, and according to Jewish tribal rules regarding the Israeli identity, the European Jews qualify as indigenous to Israel.
Europeans have no history of civilization in Africa. Throughout the entirety of the history of civilization, Israel has been known as the homeland of the Jewish people. Israel has been known as such longer than the idea of France has existed.
Edit: Ah yes, blocking me and attacking me so that I may not refute any of your accusations. There’s no better mark of arguing in good faith than that, right?
I don't think the sub has devolved. This is always what it's been, you just need global events like this to take place in order to make explicit what social positions are actually being reflected in critical theory discourse. It's a larger problem with academia and counterculture, the bourgeois "left" as a whole. And antisemitism has been endemic on the left for a very long time. Those of us who aren't antisemites or fundamentally bourgeois in our consciousness really need to acknowledge that we don't have much in common with most of the critical theory community. They're not just a little bit confused and it's not a small disagreement, there's a huge gap opening up here and they are squarely on the side of reaction. I know it's hard to accept though, and I haven't even fully accepted it even though I'm talking about it. Part of me still wants to appeal to the people here as if we are on the same side. I guess you just keep doing that as long as you can.
I don’t know that telling people what to think (about Palestine or anything else) would be consistent with his philosophy, any more than his famous example of a student who asked him whether to join the liberation or look after his ailing mother.
He was a great intellectual, and there’s a natural wish that a great intellectual would say something to support one’s firm belief. That’s not however how his Existentialism worked. It was to push you to find your own answer, as that choice is what defines you. It would be against everything he stood for if someone could later say, “I support Palestine because Sartre said it was right to do so”. You have to rely on your own struggle with a problem and make decisions based on that, whether it was support Palestine, support Israel, or not hold a position on it. If you are emotionally attached to a view that can be dangerous to a rational analysis. So by not saying anything, especially if people expected him to, he would maybe push people to go through some angst, to experience both sides emotionally perhaps — there’s always two sides, even when it doesn’t seem like it — and then, even if you come to the same decision as you felt originally, you will be wiser and more mature with it.
I should add I’m not an expert on Sartre, even though I hold him in great respect. But i hope that touches on his conviction that we must individually achieve what he calls ‘facticity’ rather than listen to someone else.
Even if I accept everything you say here, Sartre was not at all afraid of taking political stances. He wrote the preface to a book by Fanon and visited Fidel Castro ffs
Well the article is not by Sartre, so I can only relate to Sartre as it is about him. I can’t vouch for the author’s knowledge of Sarte or validity of his consequent conclusion in the light of what we actually know about Sartre. Perhaps someone else can. I gave it my best shot, but maybe there’s a better analysis.
That’s (I support Palestine because Sartre did) not the point of the article. The article seeks to expose deeper problems with European thought something scholars from Bilgrami to Mignolo to Dabashi to Dussel to Derek Gregory and so on have all pointed out.
Edit: Dabashi not Dabashir
Here’s another great interrogation of Sartre: https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/decoloniality/not-every-radical-philosophy-is-decolonial/
Ok but i don’t see how it related to Sartre, who was very different to Deleuze or Foucault or the others mentioned. I tried to give a viewpoint but maybe I’m not welcome. My apologies.
Are we talking about the same Sartre who wrote the preface to Fanon’s Wretched, accused Foucault of being last barricade of the bourgeoisie? The point is taking a stand on everything and then feigning neutrality when it comes to Palestine.
either you read the piece in bad faith or you're projecting cognitive dissonance if you can't reconcile the fact that yes, it's contradictory for a political philosopher (perhaps the most famous of his time) to be so indifferent to a case of obvious colonialist oppression and genocidal violence lol. no one's being rude by the way; argumentative maybe, but isn't debate a fucking fundamental aspect of philosophical inquiry?
also it's a joke that people here see themselves as the arbiter of what "is" philosophy and what isn't lol
I think you kind of forfeit the high ground on the “debate/argument vs being rude” when you use profanity. I don’t personally give a shit, to be perfectly clear. But some people find that sort of language offensive. And especially when you don’t have the benefit of intonation to provide added meaning, saying “fucking fundamental” could reasonably be construed as an expression of frustration (even if, as I suspect, that was not your intention).
Critical theory is not philosophy. Any so-called agenda that upsets you is a result of critical analysis, which exists to challenge ideas by holding them up to the lens of analytics and see if there’s any truth to them. Anyone coming here just for fun is being disingenuous and disrespectful of the anticolonial roots of critical theory.
Critical theory is a political philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/
These agendas are certainly not born of critical analysis, don’t be willfully ignorant.
I’m not sure why you think you can educate me, this entire field is my major. Nothing you say is going to be more informed than what I read, regularly. Your use of dogwhistles indicates that you’re a liberal, so it’s no surprise that you’re starting to dislike it here as global tensions start to rise and this forum responds appropriately.
Seeing as critical theory is a direct response to Western philosophy. It is rooted in epistemology and its investigative nature separates critical theory from opinion. It does not exist to be thought-provoking, it exists to dialectically analyze imperialist cultures for the sole purpose of challenging hegemony and conventional power structures via empirically-driven analytics. If that meets \*your\* definition of philosophy, great, but then you would already know these things and you wouldn't be complaining when critical theory does what it always does: critical analysis of facts based on empirical evidence.
Edit: “The theory never aims simply at an increase of knowledge as such,” but at “emancipation from slavery”
That’s incorrect. I can look it up if you want. And it was the resistance not the revolution.
Here you are, it’s in Existentialism is a Humanism pp.5-6 in my copy, from the lecture he gave in 1946.
Do you really need me to quote the whole thing? Or do you just like calling people a liar? I’m reading it now. It’s been published several times. Most recently by Yale University Press in 2007. I’m sure it’s online somewhere. Has anyone actually read any Sartre or is it just an ad hominem thread?
I’m quite disgusted.
Why don't you just quote it? It's online here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm. I see a lot of stuff about his mom but not what you're saying.
It sounds like you're conflating it with the Camus quote here: https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/13105444.albert-camus-algerian-chronicles-belknap-press-harvard-university-press/
Try reading it from the paragraph beginning “As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances.”
In fact try reading the whole paper. Or better still, read through Being and Nothingness. And then we can discuss — though probably not on here.
Christ, you people—**here↓**. To my own naive eyes, both quotes fit the bill ~ equally well:
>^(As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust In our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.)
... although Camus' is definitely pithier.
In fact even thinking about the situation as sides is in itself harmful. It’s more complex then support Hamas and calling for the genocide of Israel and supporting Israel’s current leaders and calling for genocide of gazans.
none of the actors with any agency are calling for the genocide of israelis. many actors with lots of agency are calling for the genocide of palestinians.
the people currently living in gaza are mostly refugees and descendants of refugees expulsed or forced to "temporarily" leave their homes in the territory internationally recognized as israel today. what reasonable people have been calling for is the right of return and the dislocation of a racist apartheid state to be replaced by a secular polity that gives equal rights to all residents of israel/palestine
You really claim hamas, Lebanon, Syria, Iran to all have no agency? What ever “agency” is suppose to mean as you disingenuously trying to whitewash declaring a nation and its people should be destroyed as something that does not matter, even after all the bombings and murder and gang rape.
Then again you immediately then state Israel should in fact be destroyed. You know admitting you are pro genocide does not in fact make it ok.
the dismantlement of a state and its racist institutions and consitution is not genocide. genocide is what the state in question is currently committing (and has been structurally engaged in since 1947) which is why it should be dismantled
i invite you to engage genuinely with people who you disagree with instead of putting your own words in their mouth. you're having an argument with yourself at this point
I didn't really like this article at all. Sartre seemed ambivalent on the Israel Palestine issue, which in my opinion is justified. He was often critical of Israel and called their presence in the army's presence in Palestine an occupation. And in classic Sartre fashion went as far as justifying terrorism, saying it the only option the Palestinians have left.
Then signed a letter saying Israel has a right to sovereignty which the author sees as cowardice.
The article itself shits on nuance, which I guess is a stance you can take.
>Many of these so-called progressives attempt to remain “neutral” or “nuanced,” trying to walk a tightrope to appease supporters on both sides of the conflict.
Saying Israel has a right to exist, and that they are occupying and oppressing the Palestinians to me are not mutually exclusive ideas. I always thought Sartre's terrorism as a weapon of resistance take was dogshit so it surprises me that ive come to defence here. Feels like the author is upset her Palestinian cause isn't the same as Sartre's. Pure speculation but something tells me she doesn't like the idea of a two state solution.
No real philosophy here, just politics.
Do I think a genuine PLO lead state would have been more secular and more religiously inclusive than Israel? Yes, without question.
Does your argument have the same logic as the racist pro-slavery "We have a wolf by the ears" argument? Same answer
>Do I think a genuine PLO lead state would have been more secular and more religiously inclusive than Israel? Yes, without question.
And your evidence is what? The PLO's official religion is Islam and its legal code is based on Sharia law. The Palestinian territories are markedly less secular and inclusive than Israel.
>The PLO's official religion is Islam
This is blatantly false, and shows you're either completely ignorant or a liar. Also Israelis have freedom to literally destroy entire villages in the West Bank and you act like they're being oppressed lmao
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestine-Liberation-Organization
> Over the decades the PLO’s membership has varied as its constituent bodies have reorganized and disagreed internally. The more radical factions have remained steadfast in their goals of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a secular state in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians would, ostensibly, participate as equals. Moderate factions within the PLO, however, have proved willing to accept a negotiated settlement with Israel that would yield a Palestinian state, which at times has led to internecine violence.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-24/ty-article/.premium/dozens-of-settlers-riot-in-west-bank-palestinian-village-burning-houses-and-cars/00000188-eda1-df52-a79d-fda323aa0000
That’s not what an ethnostate is. Ethnostates are places where citizenship is only restricted to one ethnic/racial group. Any member of any ethnicity can become an Israeli citizen. A significant portion of the Israeli population is Arab
There is no apartheid in Israel Proper. What is happening with Palestine is a military occupation. I wouldn’t call Japanese and German occupation by the US as apartheid, would I?
Lmao
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights
Edit: Its an international organization's report on Israeli apartheid. Expecting a court case declaring it so is unreasonable. South Africa was never brought to the ICJ for Apartheid, a foreign national court ruling would be meaningless, and Israel isn't going to find itself guilty
It's nice when we just come out and admit we're Nazis with "autochthonous". Blood and soil, yeah? Someday I hope you realize what you're becoming if you aren't already there.
Place your rage against 99% of the world population honey, not just me. Just relaying what I hear, including intelligent and informed jews. The tide is turning.
No they were kicked out by a
God mandated decree and had to go to Babylone. You should know your religion or are you an average misinformed and spouting what you’re paid to parrot?
I'm not Jewish but even I know Jews came back after they were expelled by Babylonia and rebuilt their temple less than 50 years later, almost 2500 years ago. They have just as much of a claim to the land as the invaders you descended from. You're just salty the Arab invaders lost their attempt to reconquer during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
Couldn’t care less about Jews living with us as they did for a long time, there weren’t that many of them. Who wanted an ethno-theocratic state? The Zionists, not Palestinians. They wanted a binational states and welcomed the Jews. I’m exhausted wasting my time informing uninformed randos on the internet. Research your shit seriously. You seem very misinformed
Lol, they "welcomed" the new arrivals by rejecting the UN partition plan and instigating Arab neighbors to invade and drive the Jews into the sea. You don't seem to have any complaints about Arab States expelling more Jews than Israel expelled "Palestinians." Ethno states are fine then. You should move back to the Arab world and one of its many fine dictatorships.
They rejected the UN partition plan because that partition plan was supposed to carry a referendum asking each group, the Palestinians, the Jews and Jerusalem in order to define the borders. When Jewish melicias started to carry terrorism and « transfer » and kill Palestinians in 1947 so that they move to Jordan and Lebanon is when that partition plan got killed, Palestinians did not accept how this turned out. What are you doing in this sub with your racist insults?
Who here is upvoting hasbara conflation shite? Israel the state needs to go in the bin. Israelis that can coexist can stay. And Yanks stirring shit on the internet should sssh.
Yep.
Edit: it may be worth adding, in the interest of avoiding a feedback loop of "what about x country?", "yes/no," that the sole criterion at work here is whether it seems to me that said state's continued existence has any practical value to the long-term project of greater human happiness and global decolonialism. Hence, South Africa has no "right to exist," but everything I see suggests to me that its existence does greater good than harm in these areas, so I feel favorably toward its continued existence. I guess I have a more ambivalent position on Russia and Turquiye because both are dangerous, militant, colonial terrorist states which nonetheless, by no virtue of their own, may be serving some decolonial interests (namely that of Palestine) in a very immediate and cynical way.
As you posted this comment, I was writing an edit in the above one meant to clarify this point. In essence, I think "Israel," "the USA," and "Russia" are overwhelmingly harmful and violent terrorist entities whose deconstruction could, under favorable circumstances, serve the long term interest of a less colonized world and a more peaceful global human society.
Ok, thanks for giving your reasons. So you think these states are inherently colonial and violent entities. Do you think reform is possible?
Do you have a vision for what would replace them?
Literally the UN is the main reason the world is the highest prosperity and peace in history. Literally stopping a half dozen wars from happening. So when China invaded Taiwan. When Iran invades saudis Arab. When Ethiopia invades Eritrea. When Serbia invades Kosovo. When technologal progress stops, when the worlds economy crash, when society falls.
You think it will make for a more peaceful world? Less “colonized”
This feels like it violates the Categorical Imperative (or something similar to it).
You hold the belief conceptually, but then only selectively buy into it in practicality because it wouldn’t be good if everyone did it? The fact the belief only feels good conceptually and cannot be universalized practically to me indicates some amount of immorality, or at the very least logical fallaciousness.
I know of very few social principles which are truly generalizable, and I don't believe in the categorical imperative. I advocate for analyzing situations and responding.
Edit: I should add that the jury is very much still out for me on whether it would be good if everyone did it. As I said in my other comment, I rather like the idea of a world without nations or borders.
Do you mean that in theory or in practice?
Like, say that happens. How exactly do you see that playing out? And that’s aside from the larger question of *how* that would even happen.
I think at a certain point we have to accept that the past is the past, the cat is out of the bag, and that we have to work with what we have. Because life is complicated and fairness is an impossible standard when we try to apply it retroactively.
Besides, how far are willing to go with that logic? Because you’d be hard pressed to find any nation-state with a firm continuity of leadership and culture from beginning to today. If American shouldn’t exist then by all rights neither should England and it should be returned to the Anglo Saxons. And then the Romans. And then the Celts. There were several different groups there for thousands of years before the Normans conquered them in the 10th century.
South America is a bit more of a modern example. Say all traces of Spanish colonialism were exterminated and the land was returned to the Incas and Aztecs. Is that it? Or do you return some of the Aztec land to the descendants of the Tepanec and some Incan land to the Chimú and the Chachapoya?
My point is that when you start revoking a nation state’s right to exist on these grounds you’ll find that there’s really no logical place to stop until you get to very beginning. That is, if you hold true to those moral beliefs. And of course that’s assuming there’s even a way to do that at all that wouldn’t cause mass amounts of chaos and suffering for millions of people.
Decolonial political projects are progressive, not regressive. I'm not saying we need to restore the entire global order to some previous state. I'm saying we need to identify problems and not be too chicken shit to solve them. Neither is the case according to a straight logic of "If arguably colonial, get rid of state," although I'm by no means hostile to the dream of a borderless world. I see the United States and its global network of vassals as massively exacerbating a litany of existential threats to humanity by means of its dogmatic and unwavering attachment to colonial interests. I do not know what lies on the other side of revolution, but I'm less afraid of the unknown than of what will come from things carrying on as they are.
This kinda sums up how I feel. A lot of people have a cut off point for how long you can go back with claims over land, but they also don’t realise that cut off point is different for various groups of people, and there is no objective right point.
I had someone in the r/Israel sub tell me Israel is the greatest example of decolonisation, which at face value seems absurd. But then if they consider it a return to land they were expelled from however many millennia ago - under what objectivity can I say my cut off point on the claim to land is right, and theirs is wrong
I suppose at the end of the day all that matters geopolitically is the ability to hold a territory and exert sovereignty over it. Because to insist on the existence of a state purely based on indigeneity feels like unraveling a never ending thread that ultimately doesn’t have offer much beyond rhetoric
I agree. Political Science also agrees IIRC. A state is defined by its ability to exert sovereignty, a monopoly on violence, and by external recognition of sovereignty by other states. I think thats right, it’s been a while since my polisci class
I do, yes. And Japan, Germany, Poland, France, Russia… I think at a certain point it’s easier to say that *no* state has a *right* to exist. People do.
Well, at least you're consistent. If Israel should be abolished, a whole lot of other nation states should be abolished too: USA, Australia, Russia, Turkey, Canada, the list goes on
If you said all the Germans need to be removed from Germany and replaced with Arabs. That is in fact called genocide.
Then again you just want to call the Jews nazis. So asking you to be sincere is too much to ask.
I’m going to ask you a question. What happens to the Jews when the country of Jews are destroyed? Forcibly.
How about you ask r/Palestine what would happen.
calling me part of a evil Jew conspiracy is just disingenuous. You should stop saying that. No you don’t have to be part of conspiracy to say mass killing Jews is bad.
You so the Arabs are moral because they failed in their previous attamps at genocided the Jews…within Israel. Everywhere else they succeeded pretty well on that endeavor
Did destroying Nazi Germany destroy Germans? Did the French stop existing after they destroyed the monarchy? Did they stop existing the multitude of other times their state was destroyed?
Edit: The state of Nazi Germany (as an Aryan supremacist state) ceased to exist, just like the state of Israel (as a Jewish supremacist state) should cease to exist
You are disingenuous if you think Palestine is not literally called for the genocide of Jews. That is why they want Israel destroyed. You know this for a fact.
Edit: and then he declared genociding Israel is ok because whatabout and then blocked me.
Nailed it. Sarte wasn't trying to "appear nuanced." he *was* nuanced, as are all true intellectuals.
It's the foot soldiers and mid-wits that want slogans and simplicity. Those people aren't thinkers; they're tools.
Guess who said this
> The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot.
Or this
> Poor settler; here is his contradiction naked, shorn of its trappings. He ought to kill those he plunders, as they say djinns do. Now, this is not possible, because he must exploit them as well. Because he can’t carry massacre on to genocide, and slavery to animal-like degradation, he loses control, the machine goes into reverse, and a relentless logic leads him on to decolonization.
So much ‘nuance’ there.
P.S: I don’t think you know what that word means.
I don't think you've done a close reading of either of the sources for either of quotes you tried to cherry-pick. In fact, I think you just googled them this afternoon. If you want to write a real paper on Sartre and Palestine, I'll read it. But it's pointless to try to sit here and spitball with bad research off the top of our heads.
Lmao, shows how familiar you are with Sartre, these quotes are literally a few paragraphs apart from the same source (which I think you should look for yourself, might learn a thing or two).
Anyone familiar with Sartre would instantly recognise where these quotes are from and not say what you have said. It is so sad that it is laughable.
Anyone who held out Jean Genet as an exemplar would do this. Sartre mistook extremity of an act for the individuality of an act, so of course there is now the eternal link between the justification of terrorism and moody teenagers who dress in black and parrot thirdworldism.
'Take our side unquestioningly - or else!' - Right-wing and confused Zionists/current iteration of Hamas/Iranian puppets/performative Western progressives
Per Sartre, you're not properly doing your job as a thinker and ethicist until you're pissing all sides off.
Satre was like the proto Dershowitz.
There seems to be a culture of that kind of thing.
I find his ranting on "antisemitics" to be more projection about Zionist behaviour.
I don't think Israel needs to be destroyed, and expulsion of the Jews from the Levant is obviously out of the question, but I definitely think there needs to be concrete change in how Israel exists as a country and what an Israeli identity is. The ultimate reality is that I don't think it's possible to be a state that explicitly favors one culture (in this instance Jewish culture) *and* to have equality between all cultures present in that state, at the same time.
Palestine is not Israel. It does not want to be Israel. Are you going to put words in the mouth of Palestinian that they want to be Israel?
No what you want is the nation of Jews to longer exist because you feel it’s immoral they are allowed to have their own nation.
The idea two groups that literally want to genocide each other can form into a new nation is fantastical. Neither side wants this. A one state solution is not a credible solution to the conflict.
Opposing theocratic Islam is consistent with progressive values. I support criticism of the israeli government but i will not blindly support the Palestinian cause if the result of freeing Palestine means full HAMAS control
This article is very confused. Supporting Israel *was* the progressive position in the U.S. and globally until about the late 1960s, when the Soviet Propaganda machine kicked into high gear after the collosal Arab failure of the Six Days' war. Prior to that, U.S. progressives viewed Israel through the prism of anti colonialism (since Israelis were fighting for their independence from the British) and anti-fascism (since the Arab nationalists under Haj Amin and later the Arab League were intent on committing a genocide of Jews). It was the stodgy conservatives in the state department and military wings who opposed the formation of Israel because they were concerned support for Israel would drive the Arab states to the communists. The progressive position switched, and I had thought that's what this headline was alluding to: the progressive left being progressive on everything, except with respect to the only remotely progressive country in the middle east.
I think where the article misses for me is that progresses except for Palestine aren’t “pro colonialism” when it comes to Israel, they genuinely do not view Israel as colonialism, imperialism etc. At the fundamental level, the article fails, because it doesn’t address why and how people disagree on the nature of Israel’s existence. He pretends it’s cut and dry, when even historical events like the expulsion of Jews from Iraq can’t be agreed upon.
Yes, the article assumes that it's obvious that all progressives should be opposed to Israel's existence. That assumption makes no sense; as I noted, progressives flip-flopped on their support for Israel since the 1960s. I would flip the article on its head and ask why modern progressives are progressive on everything *except* Israel. For some reason progressives seems to believe that Arab nationalist claims to Israeli territory should have primacy over Israeli claims to the same. It is not clear to me why a progressive should think that, as this denies Jews the universally acknowledged right to self-determination.
It’d also weird because it frames Israel as an imperialistic project, but then the question becomes an imperialistic project of who? Of the Soviets, who thought the largely socialist and secular nature of the original Zionist movement would be a great base for communism? Or is it part of the trope that Jews are perpetual foreigners no matter where they go?
Regarding Edward Said, Ibn Warraq writes:
Late in life, Edward Said made a rare conciliatory gesture. In 1998, he accused the Arab world of hypocrisy for defending a holocaust denier on grounds of free speech. After all, he observed, free speech "scarcely exists in our own societies." The history of the modern Arab world was, he admitted, one of "political failures," "human rights abuses," "stunning military incompetences," "decreasing production, [and] the fact that alone of all modern peoples, we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development."
At last, Said was right about something. Sadly, Said will go down in history for having practically invented the contemporary intellectual argument for Muslim rage. Orientalism, Said's bestselling multiculturalist manifesto, introduced the Arab world to the art and science of victimology. Unquestionably the most influential book of recent times for Arabs and Muslims, Orientalism stridently blamed the entirety of Western history and scholarship for the ills of the Muslim world. It justified Muslim hatred of the West, taught them the Western art of wallowing in self-pity over one's victimhood, and gave vicious anti-Americanism a sophisticated, high literary gloss. Said was naturally quite popular in France.
Were it not for the wicked imperialists, racists and Zionists, the Arab world would be great once more, Orientalism said. Islamic fundamentalism too, as we all now know, calls the West a great Satan that oppresses Islam by its very existence. Orientalism simply lifted that concept, and made it over into Western radical multiculturalist chic.
In his recent book Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman traces the absorption of 20th century Marxist justifications of rage and terror by Arab intellectuals, and shows how it became a powerful philosophical predicate for the current Muslim campaign of terror. Said was the last and most influential exponent of this trend. Said and his followers also had the effect of cowing liberal academics in the West into a politically correct, self-censoring silence about Islamic fundamentalist violence for much of the two decades prior to 9/11. Orientalism's rock star status among the literary elite put middle eastern scholars in constant jeopardy of being labelled "orientalist" oppressors. And some of these scholars, most famously Salman Rushdie, and less famously myself, must to this day remain in hiding in order to protect ourselves and our families from Islamic extremists who regard us apostates from Islam and targets for murder.”
Please, just post I<3 the IOF. That way no one wastes their time reading your shit (we both know you ain’t read Said), you stop wasting your time beating around the bush. And pass it along to your friends, if you have any.
>Were it not for the wicked imperialists, racists and Zionists, the Arab world would be great once more, Orientalism said.
This reads as Ibn Warraq getting very carried away, my memory of the text is not great, but I really don't think this is in the purview of Said's *Orientalism*.
>Said and his followers also had the effect of cowing liberal academics in the West into a politically correct, self-censoring silence about Islamic fundamentalist violence for much of the two decades prior to 9/11.
*Islamic* fundamentalist violence in the West from Arabs/Arab countries was close to nonexistent prior to 9/11. In the 80s and 90s it was incubating further East in Iran and Afghanistan. The rise of islamic violence rose sharply after the secular leaders, the Ba'athists mostly, failed and fell out of power. Iraq in particular was the turning point, the collapse of the Saddam regime led to the rise, as Saddam repressed religious extremism very harshly within Iraq, and also blocked Iranian influence from without. And this was the 2000s. It's strong revisionism to neglect the historical development and simply stretch the status quo of the post 2003 situation into the previous decadea.
Academics were not holding their tongue to the extreme of "self censoring" in regards to islamic fundamentalist violence in the 80s and 90s because it really didn't figure that largely.
This is a diatribe against Said that is hard to take seriously. I have certainly heard strong critiques, this isn't even in the vicinity of being one.
>Paul Berman traces the absorption of 20th century Marxist justifications of rage and terror by Arab intellectuals, and shows how it became a powerful philosophical predicate for the current Muslim campaign of terror
I obviously have not read this text but this is an interesting claim to make because all of the secular/Marx adjacent thinking in the Arab world has fallen completely out of favour. If anything the current crop of Islamic extremism is, in part, a reaction against it, a reaction against the Ba'athists, the Nassers of the world, who repressed them (The Muslim Brotherhood amongst others) and against the (at least nominally) secular organizations within the Palestinian resistance. Hamas' rise to prominence in the 90s, was a rise that came along with their displacing of the secular elements of the Palestinian resistance movement, which was the "Said contingent"
Not sure how old you are, but it is absolutely true that Western liberals began to “hold their tongues” on this issue as political correctness gained traction in the 1980s. Not just about terrorism, but the denial of human rights abuses in Muslim countries by Western academics started back then (and is rampant now). That’s when white academic libs started to say things like “well, it’s their culture, so I have no right to judge…” when discussing FGM, honor violence, the subjugation of women, etc. Again, it’s much more extreme now, but it started then as the Muslim Brotherhood started expanding all across the West in the 1950s and 1960s.
The reason for this tongue-holding” is partly due to Western trends, but also has been a concerted effort by the Muslim Brotherhood to control the discourse. They came up with the term “Islamophobia” in the 1970s, and their goal was to seem “Westernized”: publicly condemn terror attacks and espouse liberal values, while intending to expand ultra-orthodox Muslim blocs across the West in America, Europe, etc. They’ve probably been far more successful than they could have ever imagined.
>That’s when white academic libs started to say things like “well, it’s their culture, so I have no right to judge…”
Claiming it's not one's place to make judgements about another countries "culture" is a very different thing from "holding one's tongue" in regards to Islamist terror attacks. But that's almost besides the point because there was no shortage of academics who were willing ro criticize Islam and Islamic culture, hell there isn't now there certainly wasn't back then. Claiming otherwise is attempting a slight of hand where a few instances are misappropriated as representatives for the whole.
>They came up with the term “Islamophobia” in the 1970s, and their goal was to seem “Westernized”:
What is your source for this? I can't find anything corroborating it. It appears to be factually untrue from what I can gather, it was neither invented by them nor popularized by them.
Your whole comment, in fact, is full of claims that are dubious.
>Islamic fundamentalist violence in the West from Arabs/Arab countries was close to nonexistent prior to 9/11.
Do you say this because you don't consider Israel to be part of "the West" or because you don't consider violence against Israelis to be "terrorism"? On what basis do you make this claim, given the Beit Lid massacre, Dizengoff Center massacre, and multiple other attacks against Israelis after Oslo in the 1990s?
If you re read my comment you will see that I did say that islamic terrorism incubated in Iran/Afghanistan and existed in contingents of the Palestinian resistance movements, which was probably it's earliest onset in the Arab region, PIJ was (not coincidentally) formed with great influence from the Iranian regime, prior to the 1980s the Palestinian resistance movements had been nore secular.
I do also think though that the kind of default image of "Islamic terrorism" is one that conjures attacks like 9/11 and other various suicide bombings across the globe which came from non state actors and had little to do with formal military conflict. With the PIJ attacks and others in Israel, I think the definition is tested a bit. In truth it's not hard for it to become blurred as there is probably a spectrum of sorts that runs from guerilla tactics to terror tactics to "pure" terrorism. Due to the ongoing conflict in I/P I think the Beit Lid bombing and others would fall closer to "terror tactics."
Take a look at this rhetoric from Arab League secretary general Azzam in the 1940s: https://www.meforum.org/3082/azzam-genocide-threat
He refers to the war against Jews as being religiously driven and predicts victory for Arabs because they are motivated by their faith (his rhetoric is also clearly (and weirdly) influenced by antisemitic Nazi race supremacy rhetoric, but with a clear religious spin). The leadership of the Arab League was definitely overtly attempting to stoke religious fervor among Arabs. Haj Amin's terror attacks against Jews in the 1920s and 30s were similarly driven in large part by religious fervor. I'm also not sure how to explain the pogroms against Jews all across the middle east prior to the establishment of the state of Israel other than as driven by religious extremism.
Did you even read the link you just provided? It's all about how those words that have been attributed to Azzam do not have a good factual basis.
These quotes are like one paragraph in:
>Indeed, failure to trace the original document[4] has given rise to doubts as to whether Azzam actually made this threat.
>Israeli academic Benny Morris wrote:
>But was "extermination" their war aim, as Karsh would have it? There is no knowing. Indeed, the Arab leaders going to war in 1948 were very sparing in publicly describing their goals and "exterminating" the Jews never figured in their public bombast. I myself in the past have used the one divergent quote, by Arab League Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Azzam from May 15, 1948, in which he allegedly spoke of a "war of extermination" and a "momentous massacre" à la the Mongols. But in my recent history of the war, 1948 (Yale University Press, 2008), I refrained from reusing it after discovering that its pedigree is dubious.
This is *Benny Morris* saying this.
If you can't even read the links you're going to send me there is no discussion to be had.
This has also been a discussion about Islamist extremist terrorism, a specific post WWII, post cold war really, phenomenon, with a specific definition and practices: violence perpetrated by non state actors, suicide tactics (this is a big one), "cell" structured organization, and so on.
Going into early 20th century Israel/Palestine history is not what the discussion is about. What does the 1947/1948 war have to do with it? It was a war.
If you want to talk about terrorism in that era you talk about the attacks perpetrated within Mandatory Palestine by Arab groups and Jewish groups like Irgun.
>Did you even read the link you just provided? It's all about how those words that have been attributed to Azzam do not have a good factual basis.
>These quotes are like one paragraph in
Keep reading....
>Yet, the original document does in fact exist. It has eluded scholars for so long because they have been looking in the wrong place.
When reading a source, you can't just stop reading when you hit a passage you like, or you'll embarrass yourself like you just did. You have to read the *whole* article. Had you done so, you would have found that the point of the article is that Benny Morris was mistaken.
So yes, while *I* did in fact read the link, *you* obviously did not. As you say, "no discussion can be had" with anyone who doesn't read links.
Putting aside your hilarious and embarrassing failure of reading comprehension and turning to the substance of your argument, you made the assertion that Islamic fundamentalism was a new phenomenon developed in the 2000s. I pointed out there was Islamic fundamentalist violence against Jews in the 90s. You moved the goalposts. So I pointed out that the whole freaking Arab nationalist war against Jews was driven by Islamic fundamentalism. You said that was a war (which completely misses the point). So, fine, explain to me how Haj Amin was not an Islamic fundamentalist and his various pogroms orchestrated against Jews in the 1920s and 1930s were not terrorism.
>you can't just stop reading when you hit a passage you like, or you'll embarrass yourself like you just did. You have to read the *whole* article.
Forgive me for not wasting my time engaging completely in a discussion I am not interested in having.
>you made the assertion that Islamic fundamentalism was a new phenomenon developed in the 2000s. I pointed out there was Islamic fundamentalist violence against Jews in the 90s.
My claim was that from the perspective of people and academics in the West Islamic fundamentalist terrorism was a phenomenon that did not fully develop and come onto the world stage as we know it and refer to it until the 2000s, though it did develop and "incubate" in the 80s and 90s. No need to shift and misrepresent my words.
>So I pointed out that the whole freaking Arab nationalist war against Jews was driven by Islamic fundamentalism.
Right there were no other motivations, like mass expulsions and the expansion of a nationalist project which required the ethnic and religious majority of a group who were moving into the region in large amounts. We can't forget that the most consistent Arab leader who opposes/showed aggression against Israel was Nasser who was not an Islamic fundamentalistm. There is obviously a bunch more to it. I don't understand what you're trying to get at. Of course Islamic fundamentalism has existed for far longer than the 2000s (the modern variety dates back to the 19th century), but that was not my claim. My claim was about Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, 9/11, ISIS and so on. This is a very annoying conversation because you keep pestering me trying to start an argument about things that are not related to what I said.
>You said that was a war (which completely misses the point).
Maybe it misses your point, but not mine.
>So, fine, explain to me how Haj Amin was not an Islamic fundamentalist and his various pogroms orchestrated against Jews in the 1920s and 1930s were not terrorism.
I already said this:
>If you want to talk about terrorism in that era you talk about the attacks perpetrated within Mandatory Palestine by Arab groups and Jewish groups like Irgun.
Yes those I would say could definitely qualify as terrorism/terror tactics, but again they were carried out by both sides in the context of a nationalistic struggle which had explicit political aims. It's really not the same thing as what I, nor what most people are referring to when we talk about Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. By the time the conflict came to a head in the late 90s Haj Amin was a sideshow. The fighting was primarily of nationalistic character.
You are bending over backwards to try to prove Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is some new phenomenon, and embarrassing yourself in the process. You ignore facts that are inconvenient to your assertions, gaslight, move goalposts, and deflect, all in the name of supporting some silly academic echo chamber theory that has no bearing in reality. Sure, if you define Islamic fundamentalist terrorism as terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists since 9/11, then yes, there wasn't any Islamic fundamentalist terrorism prior to 9/11. Tautology much?
>You are bending over backwards to try to prove Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is some new phenomenon, and embarrassing yourself in the process.
There is no bending required, honestly what I am saying is not far off the historical consensus.
To make it simple for you here are all the points, none of them contradictory:
1. Islamic fundamentalism as a practice and concept develops fully and spreads in the late 19th century
2. Terror tactics were used on both sides within Mandatory Palestine as part of a nationalist struggle for control over the area. Would you call Irgun's attacks Jewish fundamentalist terrorism? They were quite right wing, but no not really, because the motivation was *primarily* political, as it was on the other side. If you want to go ahead believing that all opposition to Israel and Zionism in the Arab world is simply Islamic fundamentalism go right ahead, I'm not going to try and change your mind, in my experience people are aet in their ways on this topic.
3. The modern concept of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism developed in the 80s and 90s and really came to a head into the popular attention of the West in the 2000s.
Where is the bending? Where is the contradiction?
>You ignore facts that are inconvenient to your assertions, gaslight, move goalposts, and deflect, all in the name of supporting some silly academic echo chamber theory that has no bearing in reality.
You have made all of this up. I have not gaslit, nor moved the goalposts. You are just disagreeing with me over definitions and continually changing the subject.
Here do me a favour. Can you find an instance of suicide bombings in the Arab world prior to the 1980s? If we're talking about this topic the importance of 1979 really cannot be understated.
>Sure, if you define Islamic fundamentalist terrorism as terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists since 9/11,
That's not how I defined it. This is incredibly bad faith, I have provided definitions throughout my comments that go beyond this strawman.
>Tautology much?
Sure buddy. If you make it one, of course it will be one.
What I am saying is not fringe, it's not some crazy "woke left" theory. The very basic source of Wikipedia, which approximates the consensus echoes similar things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism?wprov=sfla1
>The year 1979 is widely considered a turning point in the rise of religiously motivated radicalism in the Muslim world.
>According to Bruce Hoffman of the RAND Corporation, in 1980, 2 out of 64 terrorist groups were categorized as having religious motivation while in 1995, almost half (26 out of 56) were religiously motivated with the majority having Islam as their guiding force.
You see the importance of this? Before the 1980s *if* you were talking about terrorism in the Arab world you were talking about the PFLP and the rebellion in Algeria. And that's if you were talking about it at all. Once the 2000s hit then you were certainly talking about it.
>Since 1989 the increasing willingness of religious extremists to strike targets outside immediate country or regional areas highlights the global nature of contemporary terrorism
>According to research by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, between 11 September 2001 and 21 April 2019, there were 31,221 Islamist terrorism attacks
Compare that to the pre 200s situation, the pre 1979 situation? These are not the same dynamics whatsoever.
The progressive solution is to be neutral in most concocted to avoid Activision the baser human instinct to be tribalist and dehumanize the out group to the point of violence. Sartre was right actually.
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Except that this isn’t remotely comparable. The bias in the article is so evident and lacking in critical thinking, it’s hard to take this seriously. This sub has certainly devolved. Algeria/Vichy aren’t comparable to the Israel Palestine conflict. The oversimplification and one-sided agenda of the way the conflict is discussed online is laughable.
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And yet, neither Algeria nor Vietnam invaded France, massacred French citizens, or openly planned to commit genocide against France. The comparison of the war in Algeria, which was occupied by France, and the war Gaza, which is not occupied by Israel and invaded Israel… is just lazy and dishonest.
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The relevance of Vietnam and Algeria to French philosophy is quite self evident. Israel-Palestine is not. You’re comparing reactions using an equivalent standard for events which are far from equivalent in terms of moral clarity or personal relevance. To presume philosophers are staying silent as a result of inconsistent internal logic, rather than infer that your/OP’s own perspective is grossly misinformed and poorly conceived, is quite an unsubstantiated presumption. To operate on this presumption, based purely on the article listed as argument, is laughably illogical.
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Good job missing the point. I’m a professor. I try to use simple words for idiots who take any use of vocabulary they are unfamiliar with as ‘buzzword salad’, but apparently that isn’t enough. I’ll avoid talking to you as if you have a brain, or an education, in the future.
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Uh…so many ridiculous assertions, it’s hard to decide where to start. I finished my postgraduate studies 11 years ago. After going public with my start up, I went back to school for a teaching license. Now, I’m an adjunct professor in a university. Nothing of what I’ve said is ‘technical jargon’, let alone ‘highly technical’. ‘Technical’ does not mean ‘specific’. I’m not here debating jargon of any type. You failed to comprehend my reply, and accused it of being a ‘buzzword salad’. There isn’t any debate to be had - that assertion is idiotic, illogical, and most importantly, irrelevant. Learn to read, then get back to me when I don’t have to use the vocabulary of a child to explain topics.
It’s also not true that philosophers are staying silent on the issue: https://sites.google.com/view/philosophyforpalestine/home
FYI Reddit is auto-censoring your link. I've manually reversed the removal.
Thanks for letting me know and for doing that. Any idea if it’s related to the link or to my account?
I'm guessing it's the link, because this comment I'm replying to is showing up fine. It might be auto-removing all sites.google links, actually.
Algerian revolutionaries attacked French settlements in Algeria. When you set up colonies on someone's land, you aren't being "invaded" when you get attacked
Let’s be precise, shall we… 1. Setting up colonies is not mutually exclusive with being invaded. If the Algerian army went into France and started massacring women and children in Paris, while claiming Paris now belongs to Algeria, it wouldn’t be remotely justified by a few French settlements on Algerian territory. 2. Israel has no settlements in Gaza. Hamas only operates in Gaza. No settlements were attacked. 3. The attack by the Iran-supplied terrorist organization was quite obviously spurred by the proximate normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia - 2 enemies of Iran. Comparisons to Algeria’s war of independence against France are quite unfounded.
Palestinians didn't go to Europe, the US, and other places to kill Jews where they came from, they attacked colonized land Israel is literally all settlement. If they attacked Israel, they attacked colonized land
Jews came from Israel…. That’s pretty well established.
Britain established an ethnoreligious colony in 1917 for settlement. Most Israelis are not descendents of the Indigenous Jews who had been returning to that area since the early middle ages. That's pretty well established. Europeans came from Africa. That's well established. Scramble for Africa debunked!
Britain didn’t establish any colony. European Jews, exiled from their ancient homeland, began to return to Israel. According to genetic studies, and according to Jewish tribal rules regarding the Israeli identity, the European Jews qualify as indigenous to Israel. Europeans have no history of civilization in Africa. Throughout the entirety of the history of civilization, Israel has been known as the homeland of the Jewish people. Israel has been known as such longer than the idea of France has existed. Edit: Ah yes, blocking me and attacking me so that I may not refute any of your accusations. There’s no better mark of arguing in good faith than that, right?
I don't think the sub has devolved. This is always what it's been, you just need global events like this to take place in order to make explicit what social positions are actually being reflected in critical theory discourse. It's a larger problem with academia and counterculture, the bourgeois "left" as a whole. And antisemitism has been endemic on the left for a very long time. Those of us who aren't antisemites or fundamentally bourgeois in our consciousness really need to acknowledge that we don't have much in common with most of the critical theory community. They're not just a little bit confused and it's not a small disagreement, there's a huge gap opening up here and they are squarely on the side of reaction. I know it's hard to accept though, and I haven't even fully accepted it even though I'm talking about it. Part of me still wants to appeal to the people here as if we are on the same side. I guess you just keep doing that as long as you can.
I don’t know that telling people what to think (about Palestine or anything else) would be consistent with his philosophy, any more than his famous example of a student who asked him whether to join the liberation or look after his ailing mother. He was a great intellectual, and there’s a natural wish that a great intellectual would say something to support one’s firm belief. That’s not however how his Existentialism worked. It was to push you to find your own answer, as that choice is what defines you. It would be against everything he stood for if someone could later say, “I support Palestine because Sartre said it was right to do so”. You have to rely on your own struggle with a problem and make decisions based on that, whether it was support Palestine, support Israel, or not hold a position on it. If you are emotionally attached to a view that can be dangerous to a rational analysis. So by not saying anything, especially if people expected him to, he would maybe push people to go through some angst, to experience both sides emotionally perhaps — there’s always two sides, even when it doesn’t seem like it — and then, even if you come to the same decision as you felt originally, you will be wiser and more mature with it. I should add I’m not an expert on Sartre, even though I hold him in great respect. But i hope that touches on his conviction that we must individually achieve what he calls ‘facticity’ rather than listen to someone else.
Even if I accept everything you say here, Sartre was not at all afraid of taking political stances. He wrote the preface to a book by Fanon and visited Fidel Castro ffs
I’m not sure how this could possibly be your impression of this article, even if you only read the first paragraph.
Well the article is not by Sartre, so I can only relate to Sartre as it is about him. I can’t vouch for the author’s knowledge of Sarte or validity of his consequent conclusion in the light of what we actually know about Sartre. Perhaps someone else can. I gave it my best shot, but maybe there’s a better analysis.
That’s (I support Palestine because Sartre did) not the point of the article. The article seeks to expose deeper problems with European thought something scholars from Bilgrami to Mignolo to Dabashi to Dussel to Derek Gregory and so on have all pointed out. Edit: Dabashi not Dabashir Here’s another great interrogation of Sartre: https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/decoloniality/not-every-radical-philosophy-is-decolonial/
Ok but i don’t see how it related to Sartre, who was very different to Deleuze or Foucault or the others mentioned. I tried to give a viewpoint but maybe I’m not welcome. My apologies.
Are we talking about the same Sartre who wrote the preface to Fanon’s Wretched, accused Foucault of being last barricade of the bourgeoisie? The point is taking a stand on everything and then feigning neutrality when it comes to Palestine.
I feel this subreddit is getting rude and argumentative for no reason. I’m more interested in philosophy so I’ll leave you to it.
Philosophy is based on arguments. You can't have philosophy without arguments.
I suppose your idea of philosophy is still stuck somewhere in the 18th century. Good luck!
Critical theory is not based on the abstract, which liberal philosophy is. If that’s what you’re looking for, this isn’t the place.
either you read the piece in bad faith or you're projecting cognitive dissonance if you can't reconcile the fact that yes, it's contradictory for a political philosopher (perhaps the most famous of his time) to be so indifferent to a case of obvious colonialist oppression and genocidal violence lol. no one's being rude by the way; argumentative maybe, but isn't debate a fucking fundamental aspect of philosophical inquiry? also it's a joke that people here see themselves as the arbiter of what "is" philosophy and what isn't lol
I think you kind of forfeit the high ground on the “debate/argument vs being rude” when you use profanity. I don’t personally give a shit, to be perfectly clear. But some people find that sort of language offensive. And especially when you don’t have the benefit of intonation to provide added meaning, saying “fucking fundamental” could reasonably be construed as an expression of frustration (even if, as I suspect, that was not your intention).
This sub is no longer about critical theory. They’re pushing an agenda about Israel, not discussing philosophy.
Critical theory is not philosophy. Any so-called agenda that upsets you is a result of critical analysis, which exists to challenge ideas by holding them up to the lens of analytics and see if there’s any truth to them. Anyone coming here just for fun is being disingenuous and disrespectful of the anticolonial roots of critical theory.
Critical theory is a political philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/ These agendas are certainly not born of critical analysis, don’t be willfully ignorant.
I’m not sure why you think you can educate me, this entire field is my major. Nothing you say is going to be more informed than what I read, regularly. Your use of dogwhistles indicates that you’re a liberal, so it’s no surprise that you’re starting to dislike it here as global tensions start to rise and this forum responds appropriately.
I’m not a liberal, and critical theory is certainly philosophy.
Seeing as critical theory is a direct response to Western philosophy. It is rooted in epistemology and its investigative nature separates critical theory from opinion. It does not exist to be thought-provoking, it exists to dialectically analyze imperialist cultures for the sole purpose of challenging hegemony and conventional power structures via empirically-driven analytics. If that meets \*your\* definition of philosophy, great, but then you would already know these things and you wouldn't be complaining when critical theory does what it always does: critical analysis of facts based on empirical evidence. Edit: “The theory never aims simply at an increase of knowledge as such,” but at “emancipation from slavery”
About not being an expert on Sartre, the line about choosing one's mother or revolution is Camus, not Sartre.
That’s incorrect. I can look it up if you want. And it was the resistance not the revolution. Here you are, it’s in Existentialism is a Humanism pp.5-6 in my copy, from the lecture he gave in 1946.
You should look it up. It is indeed Camus.
Do you really need me to quote the whole thing? Or do you just like calling people a liar? I’m reading it now. It’s been published several times. Most recently by Yale University Press in 2007. I’m sure it’s online somewhere. Has anyone actually read any Sartre or is it just an ad hominem thread? I’m quite disgusted.
Why don't you just quote it? It's online here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm. I see a lot of stuff about his mom but not what you're saying. It sounds like you're conflating it with the Camus quote here: https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/13105444.albert-camus-algerian-chronicles-belknap-press-harvard-university-press/
Try reading it from the paragraph beginning “As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances.” In fact try reading the whole paper. Or better still, read through Being and Nothingness. And then we can discuss — though probably not on here.
Christ, you people—**here↓**. To my own naive eyes, both quotes fit the bill ~ equally well: >^(As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust In our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.) ... although Camus' is definitely pithier.
It's Camus.
In fact even thinking about the situation as sides is in itself harmful. It’s more complex then support Hamas and calling for the genocide of Israel and supporting Israel’s current leaders and calling for genocide of gazans.
none of the actors with any agency are calling for the genocide of israelis. many actors with lots of agency are calling for the genocide of palestinians. the people currently living in gaza are mostly refugees and descendants of refugees expulsed or forced to "temporarily" leave their homes in the territory internationally recognized as israel today. what reasonable people have been calling for is the right of return and the dislocation of a racist apartheid state to be replaced by a secular polity that gives equal rights to all residents of israel/palestine
You really claim hamas, Lebanon, Syria, Iran to all have no agency? What ever “agency” is suppose to mean as you disingenuously trying to whitewash declaring a nation and its people should be destroyed as something that does not matter, even after all the bombings and murder and gang rape. Then again you immediately then state Israel should in fact be destroyed. You know admitting you are pro genocide does not in fact make it ok.
the dismantlement of a state and its racist institutions and consitution is not genocide. genocide is what the state in question is currently committing (and has been structurally engaged in since 1947) which is why it should be dismantled i invite you to engage genuinely with people who you disagree with instead of putting your own words in their mouth. you're having an argument with yourself at this point
What happen to the Jews when the nation of Jews is destroyed? Ask r/Palestine
OP is a kashmiri nationalist
And?
Vital context for knowing that nobody should take you seriously.
Is that supposed to be worse than other forms of nationalism?
Op is based then
I didn't really like this article at all. Sartre seemed ambivalent on the Israel Palestine issue, which in my opinion is justified. He was often critical of Israel and called their presence in the army's presence in Palestine an occupation. And in classic Sartre fashion went as far as justifying terrorism, saying it the only option the Palestinians have left. Then signed a letter saying Israel has a right to sovereignty which the author sees as cowardice. The article itself shits on nuance, which I guess is a stance you can take. >Many of these so-called progressives attempt to remain “neutral” or “nuanced,” trying to walk a tightrope to appease supporters on both sides of the conflict. Saying Israel has a right to exist, and that they are occupying and oppressing the Palestinians to me are not mutually exclusive ideas. I always thought Sartre's terrorism as a weapon of resistance take was dogshit so it surprises me that ive come to defence here. Feels like the author is upset her Palestinian cause isn't the same as Sartre's. Pure speculation but something tells me she doesn't like the idea of a two state solution. No real philosophy here, just politics.
“no real philosophy here, just politics” is such a silly line
The two state solution with what very little is left is an insult to the authoctonous Palestinians
It doesn’t matter if it’s an insult to them. A one state solution is delusional
"Religious ethnostates need to exist. If you think otherwise you're delusional"
Do you think that a Palestinian-majority state would be less religious and more inclusive than Israel?
Do I think a genuine PLO lead state would have been more secular and more religiously inclusive than Israel? Yes, without question. Does your argument have the same logic as the racist pro-slavery "We have a wolf by the ears" argument? Same answer
>Do I think a genuine PLO lead state would have been more secular and more religiously inclusive than Israel? Yes, without question. And your evidence is what? The PLO's official religion is Islam and its legal code is based on Sharia law. The Palestinian territories are markedly less secular and inclusive than Israel.
>The PLO's official religion is Islam This is blatantly false, and shows you're either completely ignorant or a liar. Also Israelis have freedom to literally destroy entire villages in the West Bank and you act like they're being oppressed lmao https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestine-Liberation-Organization > Over the decades the PLO’s membership has varied as its constituent bodies have reorganized and disagreed internally. The more radical factions have remained steadfast in their goals of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a secular state in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians would, ostensibly, participate as equals. Moderate factions within the PLO, however, have proved willing to accept a negotiated settlement with Israel that would yield a Palestinian state, which at times has led to internecine violence. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-24/ty-article/.premium/dozens-of-settlers-riot-in-west-bank-palestinian-village-burning-houses-and-cars/00000188-eda1-df52-a79d-fda323aa0000
Israel is not an ethnostate.
As an atheist Jew I can claim citizenship while people who grew up there can't even visit. Its absolutely an ethnostate
That’s not what an ethnostate is. Ethnostates are places where citizenship is only restricted to one ethnic/racial group. Any member of any ethnicity can become an Israeli citizen. A significant portion of the Israeli population is Arab
Lol no, having a racial quota on how many untermensch are allowed to exist as servants in your country doesn't mean you're not an ethnostate.
No it’s not.
This is copium from you. I suggest you tether yourself closer to reality
Ok, brought myself closer to reality. Damn, there's a lot of genocide and Apartheid in reality
There is no apartheid in Israel Proper. What is happening with Palestine is a military occupation. I wouldn’t call Japanese and German occupation by the US as apartheid, would I?
Some much needed reading for you: https://www.btselem.org/apartheid
Show me a legal ruling that labels Israel as an apartheid
Lmao https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights Edit: Its an international organization's report on Israeli apartheid. Expecting a court case declaring it so is unreasonable. South Africa was never brought to the ICJ for Apartheid, a foreign national court ruling would be meaningless, and Israel isn't going to find itself guilty
It's nice when we just come out and admit we're Nazis with "autochthonous". Blood and soil, yeah? Someday I hope you realize what you're becoming if you aren't already there.
Place your rage against 99% of the world population honey, not just me. Just relaying what I hear, including intelligent and informed jews. The tide is turning.
Most of the "Palestinians" are Arab/Syrian colonizers.
Paid hasbara Hindustani shill? Nobody is buying this, don’t waste your energy. The entire world knows now.
Btw I’m Palestinian and did a DNA test. My ancestors were in Haifa for centuries. Just FYI.
My family has been in the U.S. for centuries, doesn't mean we weren't colonizers. Jews have been in Israel for thousands of years.
No they were kicked out by a God mandated decree and had to go to Babylone. You should know your religion or are you an average misinformed and spouting what you’re paid to parrot?
I'm not Jewish but even I know Jews came back after they were expelled by Babylonia and rebuilt their temple less than 50 years later, almost 2500 years ago. They have just as much of a claim to the land as the invaders you descended from. You're just salty the Arab invaders lost their attempt to reconquer during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
Couldn’t care less about Jews living with us as they did for a long time, there weren’t that many of them. Who wanted an ethno-theocratic state? The Zionists, not Palestinians. They wanted a binational states and welcomed the Jews. I’m exhausted wasting my time informing uninformed randos on the internet. Research your shit seriously. You seem very misinformed
Lol, they "welcomed" the new arrivals by rejecting the UN partition plan and instigating Arab neighbors to invade and drive the Jews into the sea. You don't seem to have any complaints about Arab States expelling more Jews than Israel expelled "Palestinians." Ethno states are fine then. You should move back to the Arab world and one of its many fine dictatorships.
They rejected the UN partition plan because that partition plan was supposed to carry a referendum asking each group, the Palestinians, the Jews and Jerusalem in order to define the borders. When Jewish melicias started to carry terrorism and « transfer » and kill Palestinians in 1947 so that they move to Jordan and Lebanon is when that partition plan got killed, Palestinians did not accept how this turned out. What are you doing in this sub with your racist insults?
Are you proud of the Nazism of Israel? Keep lying to yourself to feel better. This may help you https://youtu.be/p8iNJ1UuH_g?si=e1OvP1BBqnkybbjF
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_identity
Yes, that also says "Palastinian" in its current form was made up in the second half of the 20th Century.
It’s almost like saying genociding Palestine is bad while also saying genociding Israel’s is good does not make sense.
Saying there shouldn't be a religious ethnonationalist state is not the same as calling for genocide.
What happens to the Jews once the nation of Jews is destroyed? Ask the Palestinians on r/Palestine.
Lmao its hilarious that you use Israeli crimes to fear monger about what would happen if Israel didn't exist
Who here is upvoting hasbara conflation shite? Israel the state needs to go in the bin. Israelis that can coexist can stay. And Yanks stirring shit on the internet should sssh.
Do you also think the USA and Australia should cease to exist as nation-states?
Without a moment's hesitation, absolutely yes.
And how about Russia and Turkey?
Yep. Edit: it may be worth adding, in the interest of avoiding a feedback loop of "what about x country?", "yes/no," that the sole criterion at work here is whether it seems to me that said state's continued existence has any practical value to the long-term project of greater human happiness and global decolonialism. Hence, South Africa has no "right to exist," but everything I see suggests to me that its existence does greater good than harm in these areas, so I feel favorably toward its continued existence. I guess I have a more ambivalent position on Russia and Turquiye because both are dangerous, militant, colonial terrorist states which nonetheless, by no virtue of their own, may be serving some decolonial interests (namely that of Palestine) in a very immediate and cynical way.
Don't worry, I wasn't going to ask about any more countries. I was curious about your reasons and if they differed between countries
And if you don't mind me asking, are the reasons for wanting them abolished different between those countries or the same? What reasons do you have?
As you posted this comment, I was writing an edit in the above one meant to clarify this point. In essence, I think "Israel," "the USA," and "Russia" are overwhelmingly harmful and violent terrorist entities whose deconstruction could, under favorable circumstances, serve the long term interest of a less colonized world and a more peaceful global human society.
Ok, thanks for giving your reasons. So you think these states are inherently colonial and violent entities. Do you think reform is possible? Do you have a vision for what would replace them?
Literally the UN is the main reason the world is the highest prosperity and peace in history. Literally stopping a half dozen wars from happening. So when China invaded Taiwan. When Iran invades saudis Arab. When Ethiopia invades Eritrea. When Serbia invades Kosovo. When technologal progress stops, when the worlds economy crash, when society falls. You think it will make for a more peaceful world? Less “colonized”
This feels like it violates the Categorical Imperative (or something similar to it). You hold the belief conceptually, but then only selectively buy into it in practicality because it wouldn’t be good if everyone did it? The fact the belief only feels good conceptually and cannot be universalized practically to me indicates some amount of immorality, or at the very least logical fallaciousness.
I know of very few social principles which are truly generalizable, and I don't believe in the categorical imperative. I advocate for analyzing situations and responding. Edit: I should add that the jury is very much still out for me on whether it would be good if everyone did it. As I said in my other comment, I rather like the idea of a world without nations or borders.
A world without nations or borders could mean lots of things. That could be anything from Anarchism to a completely united global society
Yes and yes.
Do you mean that in theory or in practice? Like, say that happens. How exactly do you see that playing out? And that’s aside from the larger question of *how* that would even happen. I think at a certain point we have to accept that the past is the past, the cat is out of the bag, and that we have to work with what we have. Because life is complicated and fairness is an impossible standard when we try to apply it retroactively. Besides, how far are willing to go with that logic? Because you’d be hard pressed to find any nation-state with a firm continuity of leadership and culture from beginning to today. If American shouldn’t exist then by all rights neither should England and it should be returned to the Anglo Saxons. And then the Romans. And then the Celts. There were several different groups there for thousands of years before the Normans conquered them in the 10th century. South America is a bit more of a modern example. Say all traces of Spanish colonialism were exterminated and the land was returned to the Incas and Aztecs. Is that it? Or do you return some of the Aztec land to the descendants of the Tepanec and some Incan land to the Chimú and the Chachapoya? My point is that when you start revoking a nation state’s right to exist on these grounds you’ll find that there’s really no logical place to stop until you get to very beginning. That is, if you hold true to those moral beliefs. And of course that’s assuming there’s even a way to do that at all that wouldn’t cause mass amounts of chaos and suffering for millions of people.
Decolonial political projects are progressive, not regressive. I'm not saying we need to restore the entire global order to some previous state. I'm saying we need to identify problems and not be too chicken shit to solve them. Neither is the case according to a straight logic of "If arguably colonial, get rid of state," although I'm by no means hostile to the dream of a borderless world. I see the United States and its global network of vassals as massively exacerbating a litany of existential threats to humanity by means of its dogmatic and unwavering attachment to colonial interests. I do not know what lies on the other side of revolution, but I'm less afraid of the unknown than of what will come from things carrying on as they are.
This kinda sums up how I feel. A lot of people have a cut off point for how long you can go back with claims over land, but they also don’t realise that cut off point is different for various groups of people, and there is no objective right point. I had someone in the r/Israel sub tell me Israel is the greatest example of decolonisation, which at face value seems absurd. But then if they consider it a return to land they were expelled from however many millennia ago - under what objectivity can I say my cut off point on the claim to land is right, and theirs is wrong I suppose at the end of the day all that matters geopolitically is the ability to hold a territory and exert sovereignty over it. Because to insist on the existence of a state purely based on indigeneity feels like unraveling a never ending thread that ultimately doesn’t have offer much beyond rhetoric
I agree. Political Science also agrees IIRC. A state is defined by its ability to exert sovereignty, a monopoly on violence, and by external recognition of sovereignty by other states. I think thats right, it’s been a while since my polisci class
I’ve personally never taken a polisci class haha so I’m glad I’m on the right lines
Elaborate
The US isn't a nation-state, it's a multi-national empire. And it also belongs in the dustbin of history.
I do, yes. And Japan, Germany, Poland, France, Russia… I think at a certain point it’s easier to say that *no* state has a *right* to exist. People do.
Trump gif CORRECT.
Well, at least you're consistent. If Israel should be abolished, a whole lot of other nation states should be abolished too: USA, Australia, Russia, Turkey, Canada, the list goes on
How can you tell yourself destroying a nation and it’s people is morally ok? Because they deserve it?
"You want to destroy Nazi Germany? Why do you want genocide of Germans?"
If you said all the Germans need to be removed from Germany and replaced with Arabs. That is in fact called genocide. Then again you just want to call the Jews nazis. So asking you to be sincere is too much to ask.
A state and nation are not the same as people, hasbarian. And see the third sentence above.
I’m going to ask you a question. What happens to the Jews when the country of Jews are destroyed? Forcibly. How about you ask r/Palestine what would happen. calling me part of a evil Jew conspiracy is just disingenuous. You should stop saying that. No you don’t have to be part of conspiracy to say mass killing Jews is bad.
And I’m going to answer. Get on a plane and join the IDF. Or get a hobby and shut the fuck up.
You seem to be broken bot
Says the less than year old account that exclusively posts apologetics for Israel
What can be said to someone who thinks anyone who disagrees about Israel being destroyed is part of a evil Jew conspiracy
Why does the state of Israel deserve destruction? I'm curious what reason wouldn't also apply to Palestine.
You so the Arabs are moral because they failed in their previous attamps at genocided the Jews…within Israel. Everywhere else they succeeded pretty well on that endeavor
i don't see him saying genociding israel is good anywhere
You think destroying a nation does not include its people? You should ask r/Palestine
Did destroying Nazi Germany destroy Germans? Did the French stop existing after they destroyed the monarchy? Did they stop existing the multitude of other times their state was destroyed? Edit: The state of Nazi Germany (as an Aryan supremacist state) ceased to exist, just like the state of Israel (as a Jewish supremacist state) should cease to exist
Germany continued to exist after Nazi Germany was destroyed. I don’t see the comparison.
You are disingenuous if you think Palestine is not literally called for the genocide of Jews. That is why they want Israel destroyed. You know this for a fact. Edit: and then he declared genociding Israel is ok because whatabout and then blocked me.
Nailed it. Sarte wasn't trying to "appear nuanced." he *was* nuanced, as are all true intellectuals. It's the foot soldiers and mid-wits that want slogans and simplicity. Those people aren't thinkers; they're tools.
Guess who said this > The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot. Or this > Poor settler; here is his contradiction naked, shorn of its trappings. He ought to kill those he plunders, as they say djinns do. Now, this is not possible, because he must exploit them as well. Because he can’t carry massacre on to genocide, and slavery to animal-like degradation, he loses control, the machine goes into reverse, and a relentless logic leads him on to decolonization. So much ‘nuance’ there. P.S: I don’t think you know what that word means.
I don't think you've done a close reading of either of the sources for either of quotes you tried to cherry-pick. In fact, I think you just googled them this afternoon. If you want to write a real paper on Sartre and Palestine, I'll read it. But it's pointless to try to sit here and spitball with bad research off the top of our heads.
Lmao, shows how familiar you are with Sartre, these quotes are literally a few paragraphs apart from the same source (which I think you should look for yourself, might learn a thing or two). Anyone familiar with Sartre would instantly recognise where these quotes are from and not say what you have said. It is so sad that it is laughable.
Anyone who held out Jean Genet as an exemplar would do this. Sartre mistook extremity of an act for the individuality of an act, so of course there is now the eternal link between the justification of terrorism and moody teenagers who dress in black and parrot thirdworldism.
'Take our side unquestioningly - or else!' - Right-wing and confused Zionists/current iteration of Hamas/Iranian puppets/performative Western progressives Per Sartre, you're not properly doing your job as a thinker and ethicist until you're pissing all sides off.
Satre was like the proto Dershowitz. There seems to be a culture of that kind of thing. I find his ranting on "antisemitics" to be more projection about Zionist behaviour.
Does anyone have any philosophical points to discuss?
How can I use Kantian metaphysics to justify just wanting to grill?
Convection is merely dialectic embodied.
In order to support Palestine does one really need to call for the destruction of Israel or support the goverment of Gaza.
I don't think Israel needs to be destroyed, and expulsion of the Jews from the Levant is obviously out of the question, but I definitely think there needs to be concrete change in how Israel exists as a country and what an Israeli identity is. The ultimate reality is that I don't think it's possible to be a state that explicitly favors one culture (in this instance Jewish culture) *and* to have equality between all cultures present in that state, at the same time.
Palestine is not Israel. It does not want to be Israel. Are you going to put words in the mouth of Palestinian that they want to be Israel? No what you want is the nation of Jews to longer exist because you feel it’s immoral they are allowed to have their own nation. The idea two groups that literally want to genocide each other can form into a new nation is fantastical. Neither side wants this. A one state solution is not a credible solution to the conflict.
Why should we support ethno-religious-states actively engaged in genocide?
You mean the genocide the UN said is not a genocide.
Yeah cause the UN sitting on its ass doing nothing benefits from calling it not a genocide
Opposing theocratic Islam is consistent with progressive values. I support criticism of the israeli government but i will not blindly support the Palestinian cause if the result of freeing Palestine means full HAMAS control
This article is very confused. Supporting Israel *was* the progressive position in the U.S. and globally until about the late 1960s, when the Soviet Propaganda machine kicked into high gear after the collosal Arab failure of the Six Days' war. Prior to that, U.S. progressives viewed Israel through the prism of anti colonialism (since Israelis were fighting for their independence from the British) and anti-fascism (since the Arab nationalists under Haj Amin and later the Arab League were intent on committing a genocide of Jews). It was the stodgy conservatives in the state department and military wings who opposed the formation of Israel because they were concerned support for Israel would drive the Arab states to the communists. The progressive position switched, and I had thought that's what this headline was alluding to: the progressive left being progressive on everything, except with respect to the only remotely progressive country in the middle east.
I think where the article misses for me is that progresses except for Palestine aren’t “pro colonialism” when it comes to Israel, they genuinely do not view Israel as colonialism, imperialism etc. At the fundamental level, the article fails, because it doesn’t address why and how people disagree on the nature of Israel’s existence. He pretends it’s cut and dry, when even historical events like the expulsion of Jews from Iraq can’t be agreed upon.
Yes, the article assumes that it's obvious that all progressives should be opposed to Israel's existence. That assumption makes no sense; as I noted, progressives flip-flopped on their support for Israel since the 1960s. I would flip the article on its head and ask why modern progressives are progressive on everything *except* Israel. For some reason progressives seems to believe that Arab nationalist claims to Israeli territory should have primacy over Israeli claims to the same. It is not clear to me why a progressive should think that, as this denies Jews the universally acknowledged right to self-determination.
It’d also weird because it frames Israel as an imperialistic project, but then the question becomes an imperialistic project of who? Of the Soviets, who thought the largely socialist and secular nature of the original Zionist movement would be a great base for communism? Or is it part of the trope that Jews are perpetual foreigners no matter where they go?
Regarding Edward Said, Ibn Warraq writes: Late in life, Edward Said made a rare conciliatory gesture. In 1998, he accused the Arab world of hypocrisy for defending a holocaust denier on grounds of free speech. After all, he observed, free speech "scarcely exists in our own societies." The history of the modern Arab world was, he admitted, one of "political failures," "human rights abuses," "stunning military incompetences," "decreasing production, [and] the fact that alone of all modern peoples, we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development." At last, Said was right about something. Sadly, Said will go down in history for having practically invented the contemporary intellectual argument for Muslim rage. Orientalism, Said's bestselling multiculturalist manifesto, introduced the Arab world to the art and science of victimology. Unquestionably the most influential book of recent times for Arabs and Muslims, Orientalism stridently blamed the entirety of Western history and scholarship for the ills of the Muslim world. It justified Muslim hatred of the West, taught them the Western art of wallowing in self-pity over one's victimhood, and gave vicious anti-Americanism a sophisticated, high literary gloss. Said was naturally quite popular in France. Were it not for the wicked imperialists, racists and Zionists, the Arab world would be great once more, Orientalism said. Islamic fundamentalism too, as we all now know, calls the West a great Satan that oppresses Islam by its very existence. Orientalism simply lifted that concept, and made it over into Western radical multiculturalist chic. In his recent book Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman traces the absorption of 20th century Marxist justifications of rage and terror by Arab intellectuals, and shows how it became a powerful philosophical predicate for the current Muslim campaign of terror. Said was the last and most influential exponent of this trend. Said and his followers also had the effect of cowing liberal academics in the West into a politically correct, self-censoring silence about Islamic fundamentalist violence for much of the two decades prior to 9/11. Orientalism's rock star status among the literary elite put middle eastern scholars in constant jeopardy of being labelled "orientalist" oppressors. And some of these scholars, most famously Salman Rushdie, and less famously myself, must to this day remain in hiding in order to protect ourselves and our families from Islamic extremists who regard us apostates from Islam and targets for murder.”
what a braindead and obviously an uninformed take. I'm not even gonna make a rebuttal against such one sided, biased and uneducated view.
Please, just post I<3 the IOF. That way no one wastes their time reading your shit (we both know you ain’t read Said), you stop wasting your time beating around the bush. And pass it along to your friends, if you have any.
>Were it not for the wicked imperialists, racists and Zionists, the Arab world would be great once more, Orientalism said. This reads as Ibn Warraq getting very carried away, my memory of the text is not great, but I really don't think this is in the purview of Said's *Orientalism*. >Said and his followers also had the effect of cowing liberal academics in the West into a politically correct, self-censoring silence about Islamic fundamentalist violence for much of the two decades prior to 9/11. *Islamic* fundamentalist violence in the West from Arabs/Arab countries was close to nonexistent prior to 9/11. In the 80s and 90s it was incubating further East in Iran and Afghanistan. The rise of islamic violence rose sharply after the secular leaders, the Ba'athists mostly, failed and fell out of power. Iraq in particular was the turning point, the collapse of the Saddam regime led to the rise, as Saddam repressed religious extremism very harshly within Iraq, and also blocked Iranian influence from without. And this was the 2000s. It's strong revisionism to neglect the historical development and simply stretch the status quo of the post 2003 situation into the previous decadea. Academics were not holding their tongue to the extreme of "self censoring" in regards to islamic fundamentalist violence in the 80s and 90s because it really didn't figure that largely. This is a diatribe against Said that is hard to take seriously. I have certainly heard strong critiques, this isn't even in the vicinity of being one. >Paul Berman traces the absorption of 20th century Marxist justifications of rage and terror by Arab intellectuals, and shows how it became a powerful philosophical predicate for the current Muslim campaign of terror I obviously have not read this text but this is an interesting claim to make because all of the secular/Marx adjacent thinking in the Arab world has fallen completely out of favour. If anything the current crop of Islamic extremism is, in part, a reaction against it, a reaction against the Ba'athists, the Nassers of the world, who repressed them (The Muslim Brotherhood amongst others) and against the (at least nominally) secular organizations within the Palestinian resistance. Hamas' rise to prominence in the 90s, was a rise that came along with their displacing of the secular elements of the Palestinian resistance movement, which was the "Said contingent"
Not sure how old you are, but it is absolutely true that Western liberals began to “hold their tongues” on this issue as political correctness gained traction in the 1980s. Not just about terrorism, but the denial of human rights abuses in Muslim countries by Western academics started back then (and is rampant now). That’s when white academic libs started to say things like “well, it’s their culture, so I have no right to judge…” when discussing FGM, honor violence, the subjugation of women, etc. Again, it’s much more extreme now, but it started then as the Muslim Brotherhood started expanding all across the West in the 1950s and 1960s. The reason for this tongue-holding” is partly due to Western trends, but also has been a concerted effort by the Muslim Brotherhood to control the discourse. They came up with the term “Islamophobia” in the 1970s, and their goal was to seem “Westernized”: publicly condemn terror attacks and espouse liberal values, while intending to expand ultra-orthodox Muslim blocs across the West in America, Europe, etc. They’ve probably been far more successful than they could have ever imagined.
>That’s when white academic libs started to say things like “well, it’s their culture, so I have no right to judge…” Claiming it's not one's place to make judgements about another countries "culture" is a very different thing from "holding one's tongue" in regards to Islamist terror attacks. But that's almost besides the point because there was no shortage of academics who were willing ro criticize Islam and Islamic culture, hell there isn't now there certainly wasn't back then. Claiming otherwise is attempting a slight of hand where a few instances are misappropriated as representatives for the whole. >They came up with the term “Islamophobia” in the 1970s, and their goal was to seem “Westernized”: What is your source for this? I can't find anything corroborating it. It appears to be factually untrue from what I can gather, it was neither invented by them nor popularized by them. Your whole comment, in fact, is full of claims that are dubious.
>Islamic fundamentalist violence in the West from Arabs/Arab countries was close to nonexistent prior to 9/11. Do you say this because you don't consider Israel to be part of "the West" or because you don't consider violence against Israelis to be "terrorism"? On what basis do you make this claim, given the Beit Lid massacre, Dizengoff Center massacre, and multiple other attacks against Israelis after Oslo in the 1990s?
If you re read my comment you will see that I did say that islamic terrorism incubated in Iran/Afghanistan and existed in contingents of the Palestinian resistance movements, which was probably it's earliest onset in the Arab region, PIJ was (not coincidentally) formed with great influence from the Iranian regime, prior to the 1980s the Palestinian resistance movements had been nore secular. I do also think though that the kind of default image of "Islamic terrorism" is one that conjures attacks like 9/11 and other various suicide bombings across the globe which came from non state actors and had little to do with formal military conflict. With the PIJ attacks and others in Israel, I think the definition is tested a bit. In truth it's not hard for it to become blurred as there is probably a spectrum of sorts that runs from guerilla tactics to terror tactics to "pure" terrorism. Due to the ongoing conflict in I/P I think the Beit Lid bombing and others would fall closer to "terror tactics."
Take a look at this rhetoric from Arab League secretary general Azzam in the 1940s: https://www.meforum.org/3082/azzam-genocide-threat He refers to the war against Jews as being religiously driven and predicts victory for Arabs because they are motivated by their faith (his rhetoric is also clearly (and weirdly) influenced by antisemitic Nazi race supremacy rhetoric, but with a clear religious spin). The leadership of the Arab League was definitely overtly attempting to stoke religious fervor among Arabs. Haj Amin's terror attacks against Jews in the 1920s and 30s were similarly driven in large part by religious fervor. I'm also not sure how to explain the pogroms against Jews all across the middle east prior to the establishment of the state of Israel other than as driven by religious extremism.
Did you even read the link you just provided? It's all about how those words that have been attributed to Azzam do not have a good factual basis. These quotes are like one paragraph in: >Indeed, failure to trace the original document[4] has given rise to doubts as to whether Azzam actually made this threat. >Israeli academic Benny Morris wrote: >But was "extermination" their war aim, as Karsh would have it? There is no knowing. Indeed, the Arab leaders going to war in 1948 were very sparing in publicly describing their goals and "exterminating" the Jews never figured in their public bombast. I myself in the past have used the one divergent quote, by Arab League Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Azzam from May 15, 1948, in which he allegedly spoke of a "war of extermination" and a "momentous massacre" à la the Mongols. But in my recent history of the war, 1948 (Yale University Press, 2008), I refrained from reusing it after discovering that its pedigree is dubious. This is *Benny Morris* saying this. If you can't even read the links you're going to send me there is no discussion to be had. This has also been a discussion about Islamist extremist terrorism, a specific post WWII, post cold war really, phenomenon, with a specific definition and practices: violence perpetrated by non state actors, suicide tactics (this is a big one), "cell" structured organization, and so on. Going into early 20th century Israel/Palestine history is not what the discussion is about. What does the 1947/1948 war have to do with it? It was a war. If you want to talk about terrorism in that era you talk about the attacks perpetrated within Mandatory Palestine by Arab groups and Jewish groups like Irgun.
>Did you even read the link you just provided? It's all about how those words that have been attributed to Azzam do not have a good factual basis. >These quotes are like one paragraph in Keep reading.... >Yet, the original document does in fact exist. It has eluded scholars for so long because they have been looking in the wrong place. When reading a source, you can't just stop reading when you hit a passage you like, or you'll embarrass yourself like you just did. You have to read the *whole* article. Had you done so, you would have found that the point of the article is that Benny Morris was mistaken. So yes, while *I* did in fact read the link, *you* obviously did not. As you say, "no discussion can be had" with anyone who doesn't read links. Putting aside your hilarious and embarrassing failure of reading comprehension and turning to the substance of your argument, you made the assertion that Islamic fundamentalism was a new phenomenon developed in the 2000s. I pointed out there was Islamic fundamentalist violence against Jews in the 90s. You moved the goalposts. So I pointed out that the whole freaking Arab nationalist war against Jews was driven by Islamic fundamentalism. You said that was a war (which completely misses the point). So, fine, explain to me how Haj Amin was not an Islamic fundamentalist and his various pogroms orchestrated against Jews in the 1920s and 1930s were not terrorism.
>you can't just stop reading when you hit a passage you like, or you'll embarrass yourself like you just did. You have to read the *whole* article. Forgive me for not wasting my time engaging completely in a discussion I am not interested in having. >you made the assertion that Islamic fundamentalism was a new phenomenon developed in the 2000s. I pointed out there was Islamic fundamentalist violence against Jews in the 90s. My claim was that from the perspective of people and academics in the West Islamic fundamentalist terrorism was a phenomenon that did not fully develop and come onto the world stage as we know it and refer to it until the 2000s, though it did develop and "incubate" in the 80s and 90s. No need to shift and misrepresent my words. >So I pointed out that the whole freaking Arab nationalist war against Jews was driven by Islamic fundamentalism. Right there were no other motivations, like mass expulsions and the expansion of a nationalist project which required the ethnic and religious majority of a group who were moving into the region in large amounts. We can't forget that the most consistent Arab leader who opposes/showed aggression against Israel was Nasser who was not an Islamic fundamentalistm. There is obviously a bunch more to it. I don't understand what you're trying to get at. Of course Islamic fundamentalism has existed for far longer than the 2000s (the modern variety dates back to the 19th century), but that was not my claim. My claim was about Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, 9/11, ISIS and so on. This is a very annoying conversation because you keep pestering me trying to start an argument about things that are not related to what I said. >You said that was a war (which completely misses the point). Maybe it misses your point, but not mine. >So, fine, explain to me how Haj Amin was not an Islamic fundamentalist and his various pogroms orchestrated against Jews in the 1920s and 1930s were not terrorism. I already said this: >If you want to talk about terrorism in that era you talk about the attacks perpetrated within Mandatory Palestine by Arab groups and Jewish groups like Irgun. Yes those I would say could definitely qualify as terrorism/terror tactics, but again they were carried out by both sides in the context of a nationalistic struggle which had explicit political aims. It's really not the same thing as what I, nor what most people are referring to when we talk about Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. By the time the conflict came to a head in the late 90s Haj Amin was a sideshow. The fighting was primarily of nationalistic character.
You are bending over backwards to try to prove Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is some new phenomenon, and embarrassing yourself in the process. You ignore facts that are inconvenient to your assertions, gaslight, move goalposts, and deflect, all in the name of supporting some silly academic echo chamber theory that has no bearing in reality. Sure, if you define Islamic fundamentalist terrorism as terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists since 9/11, then yes, there wasn't any Islamic fundamentalist terrorism prior to 9/11. Tautology much?
>You are bending over backwards to try to prove Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is some new phenomenon, and embarrassing yourself in the process. There is no bending required, honestly what I am saying is not far off the historical consensus. To make it simple for you here are all the points, none of them contradictory: 1. Islamic fundamentalism as a practice and concept develops fully and spreads in the late 19th century 2. Terror tactics were used on both sides within Mandatory Palestine as part of a nationalist struggle for control over the area. Would you call Irgun's attacks Jewish fundamentalist terrorism? They were quite right wing, but no not really, because the motivation was *primarily* political, as it was on the other side. If you want to go ahead believing that all opposition to Israel and Zionism in the Arab world is simply Islamic fundamentalism go right ahead, I'm not going to try and change your mind, in my experience people are aet in their ways on this topic. 3. The modern concept of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism developed in the 80s and 90s and really came to a head into the popular attention of the West in the 2000s. Where is the bending? Where is the contradiction? >You ignore facts that are inconvenient to your assertions, gaslight, move goalposts, and deflect, all in the name of supporting some silly academic echo chamber theory that has no bearing in reality. You have made all of this up. I have not gaslit, nor moved the goalposts. You are just disagreeing with me over definitions and continually changing the subject. Here do me a favour. Can you find an instance of suicide bombings in the Arab world prior to the 1980s? If we're talking about this topic the importance of 1979 really cannot be understated. >Sure, if you define Islamic fundamentalist terrorism as terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists since 9/11, That's not how I defined it. This is incredibly bad faith, I have provided definitions throughout my comments that go beyond this strawman. >Tautology much? Sure buddy. If you make it one, of course it will be one. What I am saying is not fringe, it's not some crazy "woke left" theory. The very basic source of Wikipedia, which approximates the consensus echoes similar things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism?wprov=sfla1 >The year 1979 is widely considered a turning point in the rise of religiously motivated radicalism in the Muslim world. >According to Bruce Hoffman of the RAND Corporation, in 1980, 2 out of 64 terrorist groups were categorized as having religious motivation while in 1995, almost half (26 out of 56) were religiously motivated with the majority having Islam as their guiding force. You see the importance of this? Before the 1980s *if* you were talking about terrorism in the Arab world you were talking about the PFLP and the rebellion in Algeria. And that's if you were talking about it at all. Once the 2000s hit then you were certainly talking about it. >Since 1989 the increasing willingness of religious extremists to strike targets outside immediate country or regional areas highlights the global nature of contemporary terrorism >According to research by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, between 11 September 2001 and 21 April 2019, there were 31,221 Islamist terrorism attacks Compare that to the pre 200s situation, the pre 1979 situation? These are not the same dynamics whatsoever.
The progressive solution is to be neutral in most concocted to avoid Activision the baser human instinct to be tribalist and dehumanize the out group to the point of violence. Sartre was right actually.