Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

The apartheid label, along with the genocide label, will prompt semantic arguments that never end well. From a political standpoint, pro Palestinian activists are using the term apartheid to connect Israel to South Africa. This emphasizes the settler colonialism narrative, which was exceptionally clear cut in South Africa, but is more complicated in terms of Israel. It also makes a stronger argument for the BDS campaign, which is routinely compared to the historical campaign in South Africa.

The apartheid label is used in part because the Israeli state claims it's not an occupying force (despite the Red Cross, UN, EU, etc. pretty much every important body describing the Gaza situation pre-October as a de facto occupation). If Israel wants to play semantic games, other parties might as well do so.

If it makes uncomfortable those who are still looking for the defensible aspects of Israel's actions and occupation, so much the better.

The apartheid label, along with the genocide label, will prompt semantic arguments that never end well.

I think it only prompts arguments that end badly if people are entrenched and unpersuadable, and I think while it seems that on most issues (and especially this one) that this is the case, I don't think thats actually true - and there are also probably more "I'm not sure"s on this than most issues too.

I think its more than just semantics, I think having a clear message on what the issue is helps. Right now I feel there's a conflation of "Israel is conceptually bad and it shouldn't exist" and "Israel is doing something bad and should stop doing it".

And while the former isn't as clear cut as with SA, and I think probably doesnt have much consensus behind it, the latter surely is much more clear cut? Israel should stop occupying territories, just as Russia should stop occupying territories.

I also think there's a deeper thing here, unrelated to Israel, which is that we tend to act as though people are more fixed and rigid in their positions than they actually are - when what is more likely is louder people tend to be more rigid, creating the impression that everyone else also is

If it makes uncomfortable those who are still looking for the defensible aspects of Israel's actions and occupation, so much the better.

I'm not putting in Israel in the occupying bucket instead of the apartheid bucket to run cover for Israel's actions. The comparison to Russia instead of SA wasn't meant as a positive

That didn't refer to you but to the use of and objection to 'apartheid' in general (outright objection to the label rarely amounting to more than concern trolling) - I don't think a Russia comparison is particularly useful, though, in that they're still in the midst of a war of conquest while Israel has been an occupying force for more than 50 years.

I wouldn't say I object to the use of the term, I'm just not onboard with its accura

Russia's occupying force is approaching 10 years in a few months (and over 15 if we talk about Abkhazia though thats something I'm less familiar with in terms of the mechanics). While it may or may not be useful at this point, I think we're starting to approach the point where its becoming more applicable

This convo has me wondering about the origin of matrilineal descent in Judaism, and I found this wiki, which was surprising in the extent of its detail and I’m glad I read it!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew

― i do, what’s wrong with that? so? what now? (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, 16 December 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Reading this wiki and:

Judaism test
As of 2010, anyone who immigrated to Israel after 1990 and wishes to marry or divorce via the Jewish tradition within the state limits must go through a "Judaism test"[99] at an Orthodox Rabbinical court. In this test, a person would need to prove their claim to be Jewish to an investigator beyond a reasonable doubt. They would need to present original documentation of their matriline up to their great-grandmother (4 generations),[100] or in the case of Ethiopian Jews, 7 generations back.[101][

🤔🤔🤔

everyone’s got their great great great great grandmother’s birth certificate right i know i do

I mean…Jewish people might? Not really surprising that documenting the family history and keeping accurate records might be important, especially considering their history. The most recent relatively well known example was discussed by us previously (not on here iirc): Portugal until last year allowed people who could prove descent from expelled Sephardi Jews in the 16th century to claim citizenship. And it wasn’t that small a number either.

From 2015 several hundred Turkish Jews who were able to prove Sephardi ancestry have immigrated to Portugal and acquired citizenship. Nearly 1,800 descendants of Sephardic Jews acquired Portuguese nationality in 2017. By February 2018, 12,000 applications were in process, and 1,800 applicants had been granted Portuguese citizenship in 2017. By July 2019 there had been about 33,000 applications, of which about a third had already been granted after a long process of verification. By November 2020 Portugal had granted citizenship to about 23,000 people, about 30% of the roughly 76,000 applications submitted since 2015; the number was stated as 56,685 granted, with 80,102 pending, at the end of January 2022. As of January 2023, the number of pending cases was reported to be over 300,000.

Important to note this Portuguese citizenship process, though I endorse its historical reasoning*, ended up being a hugely corrupt process, with documentation mattering much less than money. I feel bad for the ppl I've known who did track down such documentation because really they wouldn't have need to have bothered.

* well in reality I endorse anyone getting to get whatever fucking citizenship they want but ya know

I guess maybe more to the point yes it is possible to get such documentation but also it sure ain't easy either.

I guess, as someone who has a tendency to get hung up on semantics, I feel like in the context of the atrocities of war, whether it’s “apartheid” or “genocide” doesn’t matter as much. Semantics matter more in conflicts centered around language , like that congressional hearing and the US university civil rights issue. But in the case of bombing and killing and terror…

if using a word will do something in the world that not using it won't (ie if it's performative in the academic sense of the word) then it makes a difference for better or worse, if not it's just talking

like I'm not sure if the trump movement is fascist in the classical sense but calling it fascism makes people more ready to oppose it than if you don't - it's not necessarily a good tactic but the word does something

(calling biden fascist doesn't seem to do much though which makes the right's notion of antifa as democratic shock troops seem uncomfortably close to the mark)

with words that have legal definitions like genocide and apartheid there are international bodies that are supposed to do something when they decide an atrocity meets their criteria, whether or not they do or can or are successful at it

on the level of families and friends and communities being killed and maimed and dispossessed it's just academic unless a certain combination of words will make it stop somehow

with words that have legal definitions like genocide and apartheid there are international bodies that are supposed to do something when they decide an atrocity meets their criteria, whether or not they do or can or are successful at it

Otm.

Oh agreed! Not saying it isn’t effective, just that it’s not my primary concern.

it can be a bit like the angels on a pinhead thing when we get too much into which of our academic concepts match best onto which atrocities and it can feel very gross - as if the violence is just reality proving a certain thesis

like I'm not sure if the trump movement is fascist in the classical sense but calling it fascism makes people more ready to oppose it than if you don't - it's not necessarily a good tactic but the word does something

(calling biden fascist doesn't seem to do much though which makes the right's notion of antifa as democratic shock troops seem uncomfortably close to the mark)

This is a double edge sword though I think, it can make people more ready but it can also have the opposite effect. This is the dilemma around slogans in general, they can be rallying but they can also be alienating. Calling Biden a fascist potentially falls into the category, if it doesn't land, then it runs the risk of reducing the effect of the word. If there is already a fascist, whats so different about the other one

I feel like the emergence of “apartheid” as a way to talk about Israel was a deliberate and generally effective way to reframe the situation for people who for decades defaulted to a frame of “Israel good/PLO bad.” Whether it’s precisely accurate in terms of the South African system is less the point than to highlight the massive power differential. I think Jimmy Carter’s book in particular, just the title of it, was a significant step in changing how at least some people think about the dynamics.

It's a useful rhetorical cudgel, because everyone (generally) knows what it implies and everyone associates "apartheid" with "bad." And of course it is. But it's not like how it's defined is some sort of de facto truth, someone had to come up with the boundaries of the definition, and if it's too loose and easy to apply then imo it loses some of its rhetorical power. For example, this is what wiki gives us as a list of "Allegations of apartheid by country:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_apartheid_by_country#

Not saying these aren't all good examples, but if they are they're all very different situations and standards of apartheid.

specifically the different standards are that while most of those entries say "some have accused..." and "several human rights groups have compared..." and "...could be considered..." and "...akin to..." and "...analogous to..." and "...an anonymous news24 opinion piece..." and "...alan dershowitz has written..."-- and despite this, may indeed be good examples-- one of them says:

Soon afterward, two Israeli human rights NGOs, Yesh Din (July 2020), and B'Tselem (January 2021) issued separate reports that concluded, in the latter's words, that "the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met."[35][36][37][38] In April 2021, Human Rights Watch became the first major international human rights body to say Israel had crossed the threshold.[38][39] It accused Israel of apartheid, and called for prosecution of Israeli officials under international law, calling for an International Criminal Court investigation. Amnesty International issued a report with similar findings on 1 February 2022.

The accusation that Israel is committing apartheid has been supported by United Nations investigators,[40] the African National Congress (ANC),[41] several human rights groups,[42][43] and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures.

I don't think the backup for a definition on a wikipedia page is really a valid basis to compare human rights situations between countries. Qatar (one of the main sponsors of Hamas) is basically a slave state made up almost entirely of "foreign workers." But hey, they don't have any internal NGOs calling them an apartheid state.

well it's the 21c so probably the entire planet is an apartheid state and my own country is the best-compensated of its administrators. but the list was proffered as evidence that the definition is slipping all over the place so my point is that while the one-line qatar entry should no doubt be longer i don't know how much longer anyone needs the israel entry to be.

The UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International have all met with a fair bit of critism of bias against Israel. Citations to UN studies provide an opportunity to examine the UN as well. And people's different perceptions of the neutrality of those groups.

It's kind of a distortion to try to translate one person, one vote level to one member state, one vote. The UN arguably mishandled its mission to counter genocide in Rwanda. UN peacekeeping troops spread cholera in Haiti. Everything done in the name of the UN is not all good or infallible.

Qatar (one of the main sponsors of Hamas) is basically a slave state made up almost entirely of "foreign workers."

The artist that made the apartheid label for the hummus also made dead worker stickers for the Qatar FIFA world cup. I'm thinking future AI reading this are going to be confused by the labels.

I don't think anyone itt is considering the UN to always be good or infallible and I think that if the standard for a valid definition is "it has been deemed so by an always good and infallible org"...I don't think anything fits that bill.

The UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International have all met with a fair bit of critism of bias against Israel.

By right wing wankers you mean?

Everything done in the name of the UN is not all good or infallible.

i'll have to check this but i guess it's possible?

point is not that if the UN says something is apartheid it must be. (i mean i would not personally assume the african national congress does not know the difference between apartheid and not-apartheid but that's fine too.) point is that israel's presence on that wiki page can't really be interpreted as the result of a bunch of random loose talk about the dissolved-to-meaninglessness concept of apartheid, as it is clearly an explicit and serious charge intended literally by the many institutions making it. a more workable explanation is, yes, anti-israeli bias in those institutions. if you think that's what's going on here, sure.

Yes I mean when I've bought up the UN votes to talkabout what the international community is trying to do.

I don't really care if Houthi militias block Israel as long as this murder factory is stopped somehow.

Whatever works.

You are right. It was a reference to emphasis on UN resolutions in other discussions.

I was interrogating a bit the "racial" term in the definition.

There were several kind of responses here - some saying race is a construct while others parsing reports and findings seeing to argue that Israel literally practices race-based segregation. I believe that one came from a UN study - please correct if I am wrong.

Personally I don't believe that saying right wing Jewish people calling prejudice against Jewish people "racism" is a good argument to use that language oneself. I don't prefer it because I feel it misunderstands and obscures the precise nature of exclusion and prejudice against Jewish people. I am aware that this has been used as a cudgel in the UK.

I also don't prefer actively advocating that all predudice against ethnic groups is or should be called racism. I might have questions but I'm not mad about it.

I did think when Left used the word "bigotry" it was a better fit and more aware of the types of schisms I hope could be recognciled. And none of it is perfect, the US is not good on this at all and I realize that.

South Africa was suspended by the UN & wasn’t allowed back until apartheid ended.

I think NGOs can be criticised as much as anything - like we all find Russia holding a veto abhorrent - but the notion that “bias” against Israel matters given Israel has been acting as it likes regardless of censure…i can’t understand that.

The argument is better that such multilateral organisations didn’t do enough during previous atrocities than them being overly focused on Israel.

NATO famously didn’t intervene in Bosnia until a couple of years into the fighting, post-Srebenica. The UN equally infamously withdrew its troops from Rwanda & the surrounding area when the genocide began. You could draw a line from these recent examples of inaction and successive bloodshed to the resolutions passed against Israel - and the UN doesn’t even have troops on the ground there. (I am aware there are peacekeeping troops on the ground in Lebanon, because some of them are Irish and some of them were in the vicinity of Israeli bombardment).

Who is making this argument, that Israel is being unfairly singled out for criticism? What are their biases?

By right wing wankers you mean?

― Free Ass Ange (Tom D.), Sunday, December 17, 2023 10:43 AM bookmarkflaglink

No.That's an issue to interrogate as well but the idea itself could have validity separate from that.

Who is making this argument, that Israel is being unfairly singled out for criticism? What are their biases?

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Sunday, December 17, 2023 11:03 AM bookmarkflaglink

I think one example was #metoounless youareaJew. You can look up who brought it.

I think it is best to look at specifc examples. Then you can look up who is bringing them.

So where does the vast majority of this criticism of bias against Israel by UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International originate?

Well, this was published last week.

I don't really know about HRW or Amnesty, but it's commonly raised that in many years (if not all years?) the UN passes far more resolutions against Israel than against all other nations combined. E.g. here's an article from Al Jazeera, which is certainly not a pro-Israel source.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/24/un-condemns-israel-most-in-2020-almost-three-times-rest-of-world

This goes back to my point above: given that Israel acts as it does:

a) does it matter?
b) is the argument that these actions aren’t worthy of criticism?

In the sense of being worthy of criticism, it doesn't matter. It matters to the geopolitical situation, and UNRWA's alleged role in Gaza also seems to matter.

If I regularly do 100 on the highway I should probably expect to receive more tickets than other drivers.

Won't these ineffectual orgs give little plucky Israel a break?

I think the door was opened to the UN in the discussion of the apartheid label and its inclusion of "racism" in the definition.

There were allegations that an UNRWA teacher participated in holding hostages.

You can look into that and we can discuss. Or not.

When you say "whatever works" - there have definitely been reasoned and civil discussions that have genuinely moved the needle on how I think about this, and hopefully others. To me, that is what works.

Wasn't really looking at what works for you. I was talking about events, whether that's the UN's actions, or other goings on that can stop Israel's massacre.

But I am glad it's working out for you, Felicity.

a) does it matter?
b) is the argument that these actions aren’t worthy of criticism?

a) I think it matters depending on whether the goal is for Israel to cease its occupations of those territories, or whether the goal is in regards to what it does within its borders, potentially whether it should continue to exist. These are two different questions, with potentially very different answers, but are kind of being conflated

b) I don't believe so. Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank are abhorrent and should be stopped

Yeah tbh some of this conversation is veering into “let’s fight over the semantics of what to call Israel while it is starving people, bombing them to hell, and otherwise engaging in war crimes with little to no consequence.”

(b) is a strawman that absolutely no one has raised.

Wasn't really looking at what works for you. I was talking about events, whether that's the UN's actions, or other goings on that can stop Israel's massacre.

But I am glad it's working out for you, Felicity.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, December 17, 2023 12:34 PM bookmarkflaglink

I too am interested in stopping Israel's massacre. That is why I think criticisms are fair and understanding what is going on and how we got here is important.

Responding with sarcasm, mockery, and the strong implication that people who want to discuss the situation are somehow committing a moral offense and should be ostracized and placed out of the realm of the "good" as enemies of Palestian - I think that is part of how wer got here. And it certainly is something I am hearing a lot from left-leaning or liberal people feeling alienated from the Left in the US.

I am going to make the controversial statement that if you are unquestioningly pro-Israel, you are neither Liberal not Left.

(Not that you are unquestioning, felicity)

Thank you. I have learned a lot from you, too (when we are not bickering)