Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> David McReynolds wrote:
>
> >
> >The real problem here is with Carrol, who too easily exempts the Palestinians
> >from effective organization, an effective center.
I find it hard to believe that any one as knowledgeable as David McReynolds could very seriously doubt my point here. Only the blindness of a dogmatic clinging to non-violence as a metaphysical principle could explain this rejection of the obvious.
> The PLO isn't behind these
> >terror bombings
Of course it isn't. It isn't behind anything except bowing and scraping to the Zionists and its paymasters among reactionary Arab regimes. Discussions of Palestinian reality have to ignore the PLO, except to note how great a barrier it is to any actual formation of an "effective organization, an effective center" of the Palestinian people.
- or I greatly doubt it - but the PLO itself isn't very much
> >in charge of things. It is not the Israelis who have made it impossible for
> >the Palestinians to organize a "center" (though certainly they have tried),
> >but the tendency of the Palestinians
This is unworthy of anyone who claims a left position. It's a subject rhyme with the tendency of African Americans to love watermelon, with the tendency of "orientals" to be inscrutable, with the tendency of Jews to be usurers. The only tendency of the Palestinians is to be people. Beyond that any comment on events in Palestine must be based on analysis of their actual situation and the possibilities of action within that situation.
>> to substitute rhetoric for organization
This is obscene. What in the hell are we doing on maillists but substitute rhetoric for organization. That's what everyone necessarily does when the possibilities of action are cut off.
> >and, in the present case, suicide bombings for more effective actions.
I see no "tendency" on the part of Palestinians to "suicide bombings." It is McReynold's burden to prove the raw racism of a identifying their tendencies as a people as an explanation of the actions of a few individuals.
The assumption, until proved otherwise, must be that the Palestinians, like the Jews, Romani, communists, etc. in Hitler's death camps, have been reduced to the point where any sort of organized and premeditated collective action is simply out of the question. But they must act, and accordingly, must act as individuals or as very small groups operating clandestinely against a ruthless occupying force. Those suicide bombings are not in the least terrorist actions. They are the ordinary reactions of a resistnce toa brutal foreign occupation of one's land.
And incidentally, the Settlers are not Settlers -- settlements of that sort are opposed to all international law. So Palestinians can rightly treat a Settler family as though it were (and which in fact it is) an illegal military force in their midst.
>
> If condemnation of Palestinian terrors isn't a substitution of
> rhetoric for organization & effective action, what is?
Oh Yoshie, but you misunderstand David McReynolds -- he _organizing_: he is organizing a force of U.S. liberals to oppose solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
Carrol
>
> Yoshie