We Need to Stop Picking Sides Between the Israeli Government and Hamas
Instead We Need to Demand an End to Both Zionist Ethno-Centrism and Muslim Terror-Mongering
Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Let me start this very important article off with an expanded version of a statement I made on my Facebook timeline and a comment I made here on Substack, both following Hamas’s attack on the festival in Israel that took the lives of 1,400 innocent Israeli citizens—to be followed by a retaliatory strike on a refugee camp in Gaza that killed 8,000 Palestinians to allegedly get a few Hamas terrorists.
The Main Gist of My Stance Against All Forms of Extremist Ideology
I stand in solidarity for a peaceful solution between, and unification of, the Jewish working class of Israel and the oppressed people of Palestine. I do not support terrorist organizations like Hamas nor ethno-centric ideologies like Zionism that encourage terrorist-like behavior from ruling class governments that practice apartheid on the alleged “behalf” of another group.
Let me start by saying that I condemn Hamas for targeting innocents. I will never justify such attacks nor any type of strong arm org that engages in either pre-emptive or retaliatory forms of terrorism.
However, I will not react in mindless, histrionic rage for what Hamas did that is out of proportion to the ire all working class people around the world should hold for the Zionist Israeli government and its enforcement of an open-air concentration camp that is the Gaza strip. There is good reason right now why a large proportion of Jewish Israeli citizens are rebelling against the right-wing, war-mongering, criminally corrupt, and Jewish supremacist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There are many egalitarian-minded Jewish people in the world who do not support Zionism or any other separatist ideology, who want to live in peace with other groups, and who learned the correct lesson from the history behind the Holocaust (such as Jewish Voices for Peace).
As the clip’s shown in this vid from Jimmy Dore’s show makes clear, actors — most of whom these days exist in the Mainstream Left bubble — are falling all over themselves trying to figure out which side to publicly come out in support of, Israel (i.e., the Zionist government) or Palestine (more specifically, the fundamentalists of Hamas). This, of course, is all connected to their need for virtue signalling, and is due to the fact that both Jews and Palestinian Muslims (because they’re PoC and connected to Eastern civilization) have been given the role of Perpetual Victims and “marginalized” groups.
Few of these approval-seeking celebrities desperate to keep their jobs and social standing within their elitist circles seem to consider simply taking the side against extremist ideologies in general. To them, it all has to be This or That group. Of course, this becomes a major conundrum for them during the many instances when intersectionality fails, and sides between two extremes are presented as the only sides one can take (a classic example of the False Dilemma logical fallacy).
Let it be known that coming from the POV of the egalitarian Classical Left, I do not hold the Jewish people anywhere in the world responsible for what the Israeli government and Zionists across the globe (whether Jewish or not) do on the alleged behalf of Jewish people. Similarly, I likewise do not hold all Palestinians responsible for what organizations like Hamas do on behalf of all Palestinians.
I too want to see the end of Gaza, but not in the way the Israeli ruling class and Zionists across the world envision it. I want to see it dismantled and the Palestinians peacefully integrated in a single state with the Jewish people, and I want to see the end of all ethnocratic governments that favor one racial or ethnic group above any other.
That is the crux of what I have to say on this issue. I mourn the loss of the innocent Jewish citizens killed by Hamas, much as I mourn innocent Palestinians who have been killed by the Israeli Zionists -- and will mourn the many innocents in Gaza who will be killed in the days to come after the recent incident.
Now Let’s Deal With the Recent Straw Man Accusations Against Those Critical of Zionism
As one might expect when something happens that is emotionally triggering, too many people have gone off the rails with their emotions from the brutal attack by Hamas.
This includes they’re uncritically believing any bizarre and extreme story they hear regarding Hamas’s actions because they dislike Sharia Law; hence, they want to believe that anything negative they hear must be true. That would include the disproven allegations that the Hamas terrorists were beheading & burning Jewish babies and raping Israeli women they kidnapped in public, the sources of which were an alleged Israeli soldier, chronic liar Joe Biden (who claims that he “saw pictures”), die hard Zionists like Bill Maher & Ben Shapiro, and journalists infamous for their pro-Israel bias. Then there was the alleged pic of a burned baby that turned out to be an AI creation that people are too emotionally revved up to think critically about these claims.
The refusal of the IDF to confirm these claims, and having every reason to push such stories, is an open red flag right there for anyone willing to do simple objective research. But no matter how often such outlandish claims have turned out to be false people refuse to question them if their emotionally-motivated desire to demonize a certain person or group is sufficiently strong.
This they do so they can rationalize siding with the Zionists and downplaying everything the Israeli government has done in its colonization of Gaza and the West Bank over the past several decades to provoke an extremist cell like Hamas into existence. They will insist via a torrent of venomous invective that what the Zionist government of Israel did previously “doesn’t matter,” as if provocation is not a big deal.
They continue to yammer strident declarations such as "Nothing justifies what Hamas did!!!" and "Israel has the right to defend itself!!!" as if people who are trying to explain the actions that caused a fundamentalist cell like Hamas to develop are somehow rationalizing its taking of innocent Jewish lives; and to justify Israel's brutal response by bombing a refugee camp and killing and maiming over 400 Palestinian civilians to get one suspected Hamas terrorist among them. This act of callous brutality was denounced even by no less a nefarious and Jewish congressional war-monger like Wolf Blitzer… and casually justified by an IDF military official he was interviewing with, “This is the tragedy of war, Wolf…”
This leads to their next common straw man claim: that attempting to explain the type of extremist behavior that caused similarly extremist behavior to erupt from the oppressed group is somehow taking the side of the latter over the former. Explaining and understanding a series of acts is not the same thing as condoning and supporting them. Rather it’s an attempt to put the situation into full perspective to avoid extremist terror that may target any group of innocent people. It’s to try to understand why it happens so we can prevent recurrences of it in the future.
The next big straw man argument I keep hearing whenever I mention the need for this nuanced understanding is that we’re suggesting that the Jewish people should be kicked out of Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth. What egalitarians are actually saying, and very clearly, is that the Zionist regime should be abolished in favor of a truly democratic, non-segregationist government that treats the residing Jewish citizens equal with the Palestinians.
A final straw man argument I will address here is the one alleging that defense of Palestinian freedom is suggesting that the nation now known as Israel should adopt tenets of Sharia law or create a second such nation governed by Palestinian extremists (i.e., the “two-state solution”). Wrong. I think anyone who supports actual democracy and stands in opposition to the concept of a theocracy are against Sharia law becoming part of government policy… and that most certainly includes egalitarians.
Yes, I get that the temptation to take the side of Israel’s Zionist government is strong by people who dislike fundamentalist religious tenets such as Sharia law. And this leads to a fear of having people with such cultural values allowed to live within the framework of a democratic nation.
However, those strange and utterly unproven claims that Muslims who immigrate to bourgeois democracies start raping women who dress scantily in the streets in massive numbers, or commit horrible crimes of violence against LGBTs, does not correlate with any of my extensive personal observations. I live in an urban inner city filled with many Muslims in addition to LGBTs. Some rare outlier incidents aside, I see my Muslim neighbors tolerating my LGBT neighbors just fine, and never denying them customer service from any of the small businesses owned and run by the former.
Muslims in such environments tend to mellow out with their social conservatism over time and fully accept the fact that they need to “live and let live.” They have the right to follow such beliefs in terms of their personal lives but understand that they cannot break the secular progressive laws they live under nor impose their beliefs on anyone else, including people who may want to leave the Islamic faith at some point in their lives. It’s only in instances where Muslims are given disproportionate power over other groups, as recently occurred in the Michigan city of Hamtramck, that their social and religious values start getting imposed on others.
And let us not forget that secular ideologies dedicated to respecting LGBTs and other marginalized groups have behaved no better towards certain groups when they have gained disproportionate power. The goal of egalitarian socialism is to recognize that no group of people handle disproportionate levels of power well, and to therefore ensure that political power is equally disburse throughout the entire population.
The Final Points to Consider
We need to oppose extremist, fundamentalist ideology and organizations in general… even if they happen to be directed against a group we dislike, or if they claim a mission statement to protect a group we belong to or which we happen to hold strong sentiment towards. If we do not, then the cycle of violence, war, hatred, autocratic policies, and the loss of innocent lives will continue.
We need to be critical of any outlandish claim we hear, even if we want it to be true because it would give us more ammunition to use against a group or party we dislike. We should never feel the need to lie in order to bolster a position we hold otherwise we are compromising the moral high ground of whatever we claim our cause to be. This is what happens when feelings are put ahead of objective truth.
We must learn to control our emotions, no matter what type of story you hear. If you lose that control you are bound to forfeit your objectivity and make some very poor decisions. You are also far more likely to succumb to some of humanity’s darker urges, including those that lead to hatred and justification for violence & authoritarian laws. When this happens to enough people in a given nation, democracy is jeopardized and this plays right into the hands of the ruling class that consider civil liberties among the working class to be a threat to their continued power and privilege (it is, and it must continue to be so).
Finally, we need to oppose any form of ethno-centrism, be it religious or secular in form. If necessary, let us remind ourselves that Nazi ideology was based on that. The end result will be no different no matter which ethnic and/or religious group it may happen to favor. Any such school of thought is one based on supremacist thinking, and that always leads to authoritarian policies and the dehumanizing or marginalization of other groups. No group of people can ever justify such behavior against any other, no matter what they may have had to deal with in the past or in the present.