No country or government has a "right" to exist. They're given that ability to exist by the people they're supposed to serve. If the system is not serving the people, it shouldn't exist.
Agreed. The United States is doing a piss-poor job serving the people, and while that may be due how the country was shaped during colonialism, it is not due to its ongoing colonialism. It's a totally different situation than Israel.
I was watching the falcon and winter soldier and I was thinking the flag smashers had a good point and were doing good for the world. They wanted no borders and no more nationalism. At one point they randomly had the flagsmashers kill some innocents to make them the antagonists
No I'm not. Anarchism keeps getting stupider and less likely to ever be a workable solution to anything the more I look into it. It's at best a nice thought experiment.
It's the state that has no right to exist, not the people or the place.
Now what is a state?
Look it up, but it's basically a formalized group of people who believe themselves entitled to power and claim they can use violence to get their way and you are not allowed to defend yourself against it.
The state is a cultural pandemic, this is the real mind virus, our species existed for like 200,000 years in complex societies without the state, 500 years with ubiquitous state (look up enclosure acts that forced everyone into a state) is all it's taken to destroy the entire planet.
By your definition of "state", states have existed for all of human history. The only thing that has changed over the years is that human population and areas of control have expanded to encompass the whole planet, instead of having huge areas that are outside of anyone's control.
That's just not true. You just never learned what a nation is. Before there were nation-states, there were city-states. City-states were states that were confined to a city, geographically. So what is a nation then? It's not, as people think, an arbitrary border, a nation is a people with a shared history. French is a nation-state, a state that emerges from the nation of the French people, people who have a long history of being born in the same location, sharing the same language, and sharing many many cultural aspects.
America is not a nation, but it is a state. There are no American people. The land was inhabited by 100s of nations that did not organize themselves into states. That land was given the name of an Italian (Amerigo), and then a bunch of people of different nationalities invaded and occupied it. Same with all of the "Latin American" states, Australia, Canada, and the rest of the colonial world. There is no Australian nation, there is an Australian state populated by people of many different nations (the English nation, the Italian nation, the German nation, etc).
As far as I know, there are no nationless-states that aren't violent genocidal colonial projects. All of these states are illegitimate, based only on dominance with absolutely no other foundation.
All states should ultimately be dismantled, but the colonial states will need to go first, because otherwise the colonial states, history's most violent states, will be empowered by the dismantling of other states. There is an order to these things.
Everywhere on the planet has the right to exist, with the possible exception of Fresno, ca. And anywhere named after the political entity it exists in(new York city since the name change, California city, etc)
The regimes terrorizing the people into obedience, however; largely do not.
The zionist entity really loves that argument that "they are held to an unfair standard" and all that, and I will admit there is a small nugget of truth to that. They're jealous of the European powers who got to slaughter and plunder the rest of the world centuries ago but they don't even get to do it to the "savage natives" in their much smaller slice of conquered land.
Only problem is that since then an international framework of law and human rights was developed and agreed to by nearly the entire world condemning atrocities like that. (Ironically this was spurred on by the Nazi genocides and warmongering) Obviously it's still not very well enforced, but it's at least agreed that aggressive conquest and genocide is 'not good.'
Yet the zionist entity still wants to apply 18th century attitudes to the 21st century then also act outraged that people hate them for it. Yeah, more powerful states than you got away with it back then, but the unfairness isn't that YOU can't slaughter anymore, the real injustice was what happened to the VICTIMS of those massacres. And they have the gall to talk like this while they perpetuate more massacres and create hundreds of thousands of more victims. Not to mention they literally are getting away with it anyway, the imperial hegemon is delivering them weapons right now, and no one is stopping them except the glorious axis of resistance.
may Palestine be liberated from the river to the sea
I was with you until the last sentence. Removing the Israeli state "from the river to the sea" as you say, would mean another genocide. I guess at the end of the day, it's always ok to commit a genocide, but only if it's your side committing it, eh?
The real solution is to create two states, one for the Jews, one for the Palestinians, create a well-defined border and stop it with the holy wars, stop it with the persecutions, stop it with the genocides, stop it with the forced resettlement, stop it with terror attacks, stop it with the bombings and stop it with religions altogether.
Everyone has the right to live, so just live and let live
Removing the Israeli state "from the river to the sea" as you say, would mean another genocide.
No it fucking wouldn't. Completely dismantling the STATE of Israel, a terroristic settler-colonizer project, would not necessitate a genocide in any way and by pretending it does, you're doing the propaganda work for the actual genocidaires.
I guess at the end of the day, it's always ok to commit a genocide, but only if it's your side committing it, eh?
Stfu with your false equivalency bullshit. Let's use the stolen house analogy that was used elsewhere in this thread because it is apt. If a group of armed assholes comes into your house and starts killing off your family, claiming your house as their own, your doing everything within your power to get them back out of your house is not committing a crime at all, let alone one that is equivalent to the crime they are currently perpetrating against you.
The real solution is to create two states, one for the Jews, one for the Palestinians, create a well-defined border
Consider again the analogy above and ask yourself if the real solution is letting those who came in your house and killed your family have their own kitchenette, bathrooms, and bedrooms in your house, just with new walls. When they've been saying the whole time (as they were killing your family) that that's all they actually wanted to do.
Is the two-state solution the only viable solution?
Viable for whom and for what?
The two-state solution is inadequate to right historical wrongs, as it focuses on the pre-1967 borders as a starting point, which are in themselves a product of the colonization of Palestine, and not the root cause of it. It is thus preoccupied with finding solutions to symptoms, rather than dare address the root cause, which is Zionist settler colonialism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
This automatically means that Palestinians must relinquish any rights or hopes for their millions of refugees, and it also means that Palestinians must relinquish their rights to live in over 80% of the land they were ethnically cleansed from. Consequently, resource distribution, from water to fertile land, will be heavily stacked in Israel’s favor.
Shortly put, the two-state solution is more interested in maintaining Israel’s colonial gains and artificial demographic aspirations, and lending them legitimacy, rather than seeking justice for the Palestinians in any form.
You should really go ahead and read the other myths discussed there too.
stop it with the holy wars, stop it with the persecutions, stop it with the genocides, stop it with the forced resettlement, stop it with terror attacks, stop it with the bombings
Only one "side" is doing all that and is the only one that has the power to immediately stop doing all of that. Instead, it keeps doing all of that. I wonder why it hasn't stopped.
and stop it with religions altogether.
Seriously? You are a clown. And I say that as an atheist myself.
Everyone has the right to live, so just live and let live
Oh, just give peace a chance, right? My god liberals are so fucking vapid. This is not a situation with two sides of equivalent means and committing equivalent atrocities with an equivalent power to stop the violence. It is extremely asymmetric in every sense, including the fact that one side is currently conducting an open genocide against the other which is disproportionately made up of children. I would guarantee that most of the Palestinian people would do just about anything to be able to live and let live but Israel will not have that - they never have and they never will, which is the nature of all settler-colonial projects which you clearly don't understand.
No it wouldn't. You are saying EXACTLY the same thing that people said about the end of South African apartheid. Everyone claimed it would be a genocide for white people.
It was not.
And it will not be in Palestine either.
You are indistinguishable from the people who opposed the end of apartheid in South Africa.
I wrote longer response but then I lost it, so I'm just going to quickly simplify it.
The two state solution is what we have now, and it means Palestine is forced to live in a permanently degraded state of sovereignty. Sovereignty is the key cornerstone of international relations, as is deterrence (live and let live, as you call it). This is not a holy war, this is a colonial war over the autonomy and self-determination of a people, the Palestinian people.
Thus, if you truly believe in equal rights for the Palestinians in a two state solution, you need to ask yourself this:
Would you allow the Palestinians to form their own army? Import weapons from Iran? Build their own air force with bombers? Many of their officers would undoubtedly be Hamas veterans, you wouldn't get to exclude them from serving their new country either, could you accept that?
You say you don't want forced resettlement, a laudable ideal to be sure, but you can't have no forced resettlements and a hard border because of the Zionist settlements. Go look at a map, there is no border line to be drawn between them, they are scattered around the whole of Palestinian territory. Those settlements are their for the express purpose of denying the Palestinians their freedom of movement and critical resources and infrastructure, so they would have to go.
Would you let the Palestinian army evict those settlers if they refused? Would you let them defend their new borders, with lethal force if necessary? And how about the people who have already been forcibly resettled, the Palestinian refugees? They're still alive, waiting to come back, what about their homes? Even if somehow a general peace treaty was signed to settle all these messy issues at once, would you really expect either side to just take eachother's word for it? Would the Zionists turn over their illegal nuclear weapons? And allow Palestinians to inspect sensitive facilities to ensure their destruction?
You don't have to like these things, but you would have to accept them, because they are the rights afforded to every sovereign nation.
I can tell you now the Zionists would never accept these conditions, it would be incredible blow to their colonial project. Maybe under extreme international pressure and isolation, but then you have the lingering tension between the two states that lasts for who knows how long. A two state solution is basically impossible, the Zionists made it impossible over decades. So in my opinion alright then, you made this bed, you fucking lay in it now: a single state is the only way forward now. A single state from the river to the sea, so that all of the people victimized by this colonial project may move towards a brighter, more peaceful future. I will never apologize for saying that, despite the recriminations of the zionists and the propaganda of their collaborators. There would in fact be less chance of war and genocide than with two states. However, you couldn't call it a Jewish (ethno)state anymore. But the Jews living there would still get to stay there, what's more important?
Honestly, the Zionists wouldn't accept that either, but they need to humble themselves and accept something, because they are marching the entire region toward a massive conflagration that will engulf and destroy them eventually.
I recently got banned from !Playstation@Lemmy.zip because I called out the moderator for crying about black people in God of War. The reason given? Racism, apparently, for telling the mod to stop being racist.
They deleted their account and locked the community, lol
Edit: to add on, a hexbear user saw that I got banned for "racism" after calling out the racist mod, and they also got banned, lmao. It's really funny, the mod edited their post and pretended they were a victim for "being called a bigot for standing against DEI in video games."
This logic is what got me, for a brief period in my teens, to identify as an antisemite, because I genuinely thought that was just the word for people who think genocide is fucked and 'never again' sounds like a pretty good guideline.
And I'm terrified how many other kids bought into the Zionist propaganda since, and how many of them are going to be less willing to admit they made an oopsie than my dumb ass was. I'm terrified how many people are going to be hurt by second order Zionist violence, all over the world. I think when they start attacking language, a nuclear response is warranted.
If my grandpa stole your grandpa's house, and I live in that house while you're homeless (my dad also fucked over your dad a bunch), how clean are my hands? Are my hands clean if my sister is fucking you over still today (maybe I yell at her about it, but it still happens) and I still live in the house?
Sure, we didn't invade these countries but we maintain the colonial power structures and continue to benefit from colonisation as indigenous people continue to be dispossessed.
It's easy and convenient to point your finger at the past and say thats where all the responsibility lies
I mean, depends on your definition of invasion. I have no problem calling British and French colonization of North America "invasion" but my main point is, Israel is actively doing it right now and all of the other countries listed did it hundreds of years ago where we can't reach them.
You might think that no country has any right to exist but that belief wont protect you from someone who thinks their country should control the entire world.
Nationalism is a basic and maybe outdated mechanism that protects against foreign invasions. You need to understand its purpose and function if you want to abolish it. At some point, i think everyone would agree that some populations share certain moral values and priorities. And those values deserve to be defended.
You can call those values "Germany" or "EU" or "Europe" or "lemmy" or "lgbtq people of earth and nearby planets", but in the end you will have an entity that encapsulates values that are worth being defended. I dont give a fuck about my country and i wish daily that somehow it gets nuked out of existence. But fuck anyone who wants to take it over by force.
Why is all this important? We are entering an age where information warfare is crucial. If an entity can shield its population from enemy informational warfare(great firewall of China) while being free to use informational warfare against its enemies(tik tok or any social media), then you(in the West) will just become a useful idiot.
The enemy is trying to persuade that a thing is bad(countries/nationalism), while at the same time is preaching how great that same thing is on his own population. When the shit hits the fan, which side do you think will win? The one who thinks that nations are bullshit and no war is justified, or the country which thinks that its nation is the greatest and war is a moral necessity in order to "liberate" the rest of the world?
This is nothing new. Japanese imperialism was disguised as anti-western/anti-imperialistic. Japan was the sign that asian people can be equal/superior to europeans and they just wanted to spread their values and liberate other asian nations from the european/american shackles. You dont need to be a historian to realize how utterly bullshit this lie was. The germans did the same with the whole "honorary aryan" thing.
TLDR : Ask yourself, if you apply your belief, will the rest of the world follow? If not, who benefits from you applying your beliefs? Sometimes it is fine to have noble beliefs and realizing that they arent realistically applicable to the current world.
Sure, no state has a right to exist. Rights don't really exist either, for that matter.
The issue with Israel isn't just being a colonist state, though. NZ is a colonial state. Awful things happened and continue to happen due to NZ colonisation. There is a pretty stark difference between race relations in NZ and Israel, however. When people rail against Israel it isn't solely on the basis of colonisation
But sadly we live in reality and have to accept that talking about how the israeli people have just the same right to live as the palestinians is way more effective than outright demanding the abolishment of all nation states, a thing that, even if ever, is only going to become even fathomable to most humans in at least a few centuries
Get outta here with this false equivalence. The marginal human suffering inflicted per year caused by Israeli's colonialism is incomparably greater than any other country's in the modern era.
The average life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is 52 for men and 54 for women. Their land is contaminated from uranium mining and the US uses parts of it as a bombing range.
What is happening in Israel is exactly what was done and is being done to indigenous people in all those other places too.
A terrible injustice which of course needs to be corrected.
The population in question is 20,000 people. That's about 400 people born per year with a life expectency of 60% the national average; arguably equivalent to 400 murders per year.
Gaza has 2.4 million people with a similar life expectency. (The same math yields 50,000 effective murders per year.) Not to mention they are actively being bombed today, and their population is mostly children (under 18). This means that when someone is killed by an Israeli soldier, that someone is most likely a minor!
Yes. The overall damage through the centuries caused by western colonialism, in my estimate, is far greater than Israel's.
That in and of itself is not a good reason to wish America/Canada/Australia not to exist. Should we wish China to de-exist because of the Yangzhou massacre of 1645?
Genocide is happening right now in Israel/Palestine and we can do something about it. There are modern injustices happening today which we should occupy ourselves with, not meaningless finger-pointing. Let's tear down the western world sensibly, please.
Okay granted. From this perspective, sure, American colonialism is strictly broader than Israel's. I don't think this really changes anything about what I'm saying here.
Just because it isn't obviously genocidal(anymore) doesnt mean the US hasnt done incredible harm to the entire world. What israel is doing right now if horrific yes but the US is responsible for even greater suffering. Neither should exist
Not to mention that many of the policies regarding Indigenous peoples and enforcement thereof in North America are still actively genocidal. Just because the US is not bombing people within their own land doesn't mean that indigenous peoples in Turtle Island are thriving.
Seeing how Zionism is just a continuation of the Nazi's cleansing efforts, which was inspired by America's genocide, the US would very much be cupule in all of this if they weren't already the biggest donors to and defenders of its continued existence.
Israel is certainly causing tremendous harm, but what you are saying is just blatant antisemitism. And you are obviously not up to date what happens in the world being so obsessed with demonizing Israel. Try to get a grip on reality again please.
To elaborate: I don't believe Israel's nationalistic sentiment is unique to Judaism. Israel could be a Christian state and could contain any ethnicity, its active colonialism would still be a problem.
What other country's active colonialism is anywhere near the level of Israel's?
I mean sure, no country technically has an inherent right to exist. But the difference is in the details. The US, Canada, etc, simply don't have that inherent right. Israel, in addition to that, only exists because of pity to a bunch of whiners and a (in retrospective bad) decision of everyone else to throw them a bone.