> I'm on your side of this debate, Joel, but I don't quite agree here. Is
> there really an emerging pro-violence consensus in the Western left? If
> there was, you'd expect to see leftist groups taking up armed struggle or
> trekking off to join the revolution, as in the 70's, but there's none of
> that now. What there is is a despairing willingness to offer empty
> "support" for violent resistance to Israel, given the impotence of the
> alternatives - external mediation and internal non-violence. That's
> obviously a childish response, but it arises from sincere frustration over
> a genuine dilemma. What to do? It's not like chanting the magic word
> "non-violence" helps things either....
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Let's not get sidetracked by the nonsense that the critics of Israel are
incipient Weathermen. Your side doesn't take into account the following:
1) The Palestinians have a long history of non-violent marches and demonstrations in the occupied territories. You can even include under this rubric rock throwing by children and teens against shielded Israeli troops which have been met with live and rubber bullets and other demonstrations of excessive force.
2) It is not unusual for military occupations in normal circumstances to be met by popular armed resistance. In this case, the occupation has been enormously aggravated by an aggressive program of land usurpation and settlement. The armed and provocative settler gangs, in particular, who are seeking to cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians, virtually invited the latter to arm themselves and fight back in self-defence. I don't condone terror bombing against civilians on moral or tactical grounds and I think it cost the Palestinians useful allies abroad, not least in Israel and the Western Jewish communities, but I can understand why they could pathetically view it as their "air force" in this vastly unequal contest.
3) Hamas has effectively abandoned this tactic, however. Instead, it sent strong signals when it formed the government, including through interviews with Israeli journalists, that it recognized Israel de facto and wanted to work cooperatively towards a resolution of the dispute - even if only initially behind the scenes out of deference to the sentiments of its popular base. Instead, the Kadima/Labour coalition - supposedly the "peace party" in Israeli politics - scornfully turned its back on the government and sought to overthrow it by trying to starve into submission the public which elected it. The rejection of the Hamas government and accompanying starvation and brutalization of the Palestinian masses was, IMO, the precipitating factor in the latest crisis.
4) The rockets and kidnappings on Israel's southern and northern borders have been a sideshow and a convenient pretext for Israel to launch the war. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah "betrayed" the tacit armistice with Israel on the Gaza and Lebanese borders when it was forced to withdraw from these territories. In Hezbollah's case, there were six years of coexistence, punctuated by incidents which resulted in prisoner swaps and other proportional exchanges on both sides. The current conflict is simply the latest calculated abrupt bid by Israel and the US to intimidate their main regional antagonist - Iran being the latest, following Egypt and Iraq earlier.
5) Whether Marxist, nationalist, or Islamist, the successive resistance movements in the Middle East have all been fighting for national independence, economic development, and the redistribution of wealth power and power within their societies. The US and Israel have, on the other hand, buttressed the region's ruling classes and engaged in savage wars to thwart the objectives of the various resistance movements.
If you want to consider the above "a despairing willingness to offer empty 'support' for violent resistance to Israel" and a "childish response arising from sincere frustration over a genuine dilemma", then I'll have to shoulder that burden. But the dilemma, as you put it, over "what to do?" is yours, not ours. The social justice issues dividing the politically imperfect Arab masses from their rulers, US imperialism, and Israeli settler-colonialism, are quite clearly drawn. It is the Israeli and Western Jewish left, which recognizes the historic conflict as turning on social justice issues, which is in a crisis of confusion because of its parallel inability to break with its lingering sentimental attachment to the idealized and outmoded concept of a "Jewish" state, and its concomitant political subservience to the reactionary forces who are today in command of the Zionist project and US and Israeli foreign policy.