Read the article before posting please. This is a serious and complex issue.
I have struggled this time to engage with some of my friends. I have learned that many of them are not as supportive of oppressed people as they claimed to be. Tribalism is a deep current in the human psyche. I think the author does a good job of laying out some of my thoughts. Particularly, about the pressure that social media engaged people feel to declare things as if they were tiny heads of state.
I love my friends, but the fact is, they are incredibly underqualified and undereducated on these issues, as am I, and most people. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have opinions on these things, but making these opinions in such absolutist “I’m going to end this friendship if we don’t agree” way doesn’t help. I have never once heard them speak about Israel and Palestine, and all of the sudden they can’t stop pontificating. Social media makes some people so self obsessed they can’t help themselves from seeking the validation they get from seeing their words on a screen.
In more aggressive terms, I don’t need to know your opinions on geopolitics Becky. The last time I saw you, you were doing lines of what you hoped was coke that you got from a stranger dressed as a unicorn. I don’t trust you to watch my houseplants.
At any rate, saying Palestine should be free is not antisemitism. Free Palestine!
Your aggressive TL;DR is gold.
P.S. Becky killed my houseplants too.
In a recent interview, Yara El-Ghadban (Palestinian-Canadian novelist, with a PhD in anthropology) made an interesting answer to this recurring question: by asking her “do you condemn Hamas?”, the interviewer was questioning her humanity, and she didn’t have to prove or justify her humanity.
I find this point of view interesting, because it turns the question on its head. Since the answer is obvious, what does it mean to ask this question, and why is it only asked of certain people?
It’s likely asked as a “gotcha” sort of question; a question that the asker is using to prove the answerer is on the side of the terrorists. There’s no nuance in that question.
It’s meant as a leading question to derail legitimate discussion.
It’s meant as a leading question to derail legitimate discussion
aka arguing in bad faith.
Pretty much like the “you pretend to have an ecological conscience but you have an iPhone and a car”.
What does this have to do with socialism anyway?
It’s a super complex issue. I honestly think the article makes it one step more complicated since it asks to not condemn Hamas. “Free Palistine” is one thing, “I stand with Hamas”… That’s a totally different animal.
Make me
Pleeeeeeeease? 🥺
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