The World Socialist Website has a number of positions on the current conflict. To name some of their key points:
-What is happening in Gaza right now is a genuine popular uprising on the part of the Palestinians, that evokes the uprising of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in WWII.
-It is also recognized by millions of Israelis that Netanyahu has staged provocations against Palestinians in order to provoke a violent response that could be used to distract domestic opposition. However, the Palestinian reaction to his criminal schemes has vastly exceeded Netanyahu’s calculations.
-The current Israeli government faces not only the resistance of the Palestinian masses, but also the growing opposition of the Israeli working class. Throughout the year there have been mass demonstrations of Israeli workers and youth against the Netanyahu government and its authoritarian measures. These demonstrations were undermined by the official leadership, which refused to raise the issue of the oppression of the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s declaration of war has also irrevocably exposed the main Zionist opposition leaders, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Benny Gantz of the National Unity Party, who have predictably rallied behind the Israeli war plans.
-For the masses of workers and youth in Israel, it is not the Palestinians who are the enemy, but the Netanyahu government and the Israeli ruling class. The moves to overturn democratic forms of rule within Israel are connected to the extreme growth of social inequality and the intensifying assault on social programs.
-The great historical and political paradox of the present situation is this: The Israeli working class cannot defend its own democratic rights without fighting for the democratic rights of the Palestinian people against Zionist oppression. And the Palestinians cannot achieve their aspirations for democratic rights and social equality without forging a fighting alliance with the Israeli working class. The only viable perspective is not a mythical “two-state solution,” but a unified socialist state of Jewish and Arab workers.
To what extent do you agree with this perspective? Do you believe the socialists are correct, or wildly off the mark? Do you believe a unified state of Jews and Arabs is possible? What do you see as the future of Israel and Palestine?
Wildly off the mark. I’ll try and address your points one by one.
Content warning: discussing slaugter of innocent jews, babies and elderly. Also the Holocaust. How many babies and elderly Germans were killed during the Uprising of Warsaw Ghetto? Literally zero. It’s a baseless comparison, making analogy between a last stand of people getting slaughtered against Nazi soldiers, and people who slaughtered hundreds of music festival attendees, beheading babies, taking babies as hostages, killing and burning babies (terrible censored image, proceed at your own risk), and that’s just scrolling my feed for a bit, there are more terrible atorcities commited yesterday, murder, kidnpping and rape. Conditions in Gaza are not good, but they are far from genocide. Population is growing rapidly. Please actually read about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Wikipedia before saying such things.
We did not do anything unusual in the Gaza Strip lately, AFAIK. Even if we did, see point 1.
Recent Israeli protests were around reforms in the juidical system, seen as an overreach by the executive branch of Israeli govenment, and led by opposition leaders. It was postponed due to external threats. Both pro- and anti- reform protesters are proudly posting pictures of themselves enlisting.
See previous point
The protests stopped due to the war, where mainly Israeli working class were slaughtered. Who do you think is whose common enemy here?
I think we’ll continue to get one messy equilibruim after the other, until we get something stable that’s neither a two state solution nor a one state one. I don’t know how it will look like.
I don’t know what mattposts actually meant by his post, but I thought a plausible interpretation was literally just “what do you make of these socialist positions?” with the context that a number of socialist/leftist orgs have been saying some pretty anti-semitic stuff recently. Like, I want to say suprisingly, but maybe I was just fooling myself.
I agree, which is why I tried to answer to the points concretely. Did I miss anything?
I did write “your points” where I should have written “their points”, but I don’t think it’s important enough to edit.
I’m not surprised at all, I’ve seen worse. The far left is quite antisemitic.
Nah, I don’t think you missed anything. It was just that you wrote “your points” and I assumed mattposts was giving their own viewpoints at first, so I wanted to check you/others realized that there were two pretty different interpretations of their post.
Just one minor extra point—the poorer Israeli working class is mostly supportive of Netanyahu. It’s the middle and upper classes who oppose him, who they see as corrupt.
Also the youth is generally more right wing in Israel, and the older generation more left wing.
In general you can’t copy your model of politics from one country into another and expect it to accurately predict what’s going on.
The World Socialist Website has a number of positions on the current conflict. To name some of their key points:
-What is happening in Gaza right now is a genuine popular uprising on the part of the Palestinians, that evokes the uprising of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in WWII.
-It is also recognized by millions of Israelis that Netanyahu has staged provocations against Palestinians in order to provoke a violent response that could be used to distract domestic opposition. However, the Palestinian reaction to his criminal schemes has vastly exceeded Netanyahu’s calculations.
-The current Israeli government faces not only the resistance of the Palestinian masses, but also the growing opposition of the Israeli working class. Throughout the year there have been mass demonstrations of Israeli workers and youth against the Netanyahu government and its authoritarian measures. These demonstrations were undermined by the official leadership, which refused to raise the issue of the oppression of the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s declaration of war has also irrevocably exposed the main Zionist opposition leaders, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Benny Gantz of the National Unity Party, who have predictably rallied behind the Israeli war plans.
-For the masses of workers and youth in Israel, it is not the Palestinians who are the enemy, but the Netanyahu government and the Israeli ruling class. The moves to overturn democratic forms of rule within Israel are connected to the extreme growth of social inequality and the intensifying assault on social programs.
-The great historical and political paradox of the present situation is this: The Israeli working class cannot defend its own democratic rights without fighting for the democratic rights of the Palestinian people against Zionist oppression. And the Palestinians cannot achieve their aspirations for democratic rights and social equality without forging a fighting alliance with the Israeli working class. The only viable perspective is not a mythical “two-state solution,” but a unified socialist state of Jewish and Arab workers.
To what extent do you agree with this perspective? Do you believe the socialists are correct, or wildly off the mark? Do you believe a unified state of Jews and Arabs is possible? What do you see as the future of Israel and Palestine?
Wildly off the mark. I’ll try and address your points one by one.
Content warning: discussing slaugter of innocent jews, babies and elderly. Also the Holocaust.
How many babies and elderly Germans were killed during the Uprising of Warsaw Ghetto? Literally zero. It’s a baseless comparison, making analogy between a last stand of people getting slaughtered against Nazi soldiers, and people who slaughtered hundreds of music festival attendees, beheading babies, taking babies as hostages, killing and burning babies (terrible censored image, proceed at your own risk), and that’s just scrolling my feed for a bit, there are more terrible atorcities commited yesterday, murder, kidnpping and rape.
Conditions in Gaza are not good, but they are far from genocide. Population is growing rapidly.
Please actually read about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Wikipedia before saying such things.
We did not do anything unusual in the Gaza Strip lately, AFAIK. Even if we did, see point 1.
Recent Israeli protests were around reforms in the juidical system, seen as an overreach by the executive branch of Israeli govenment, and led by opposition leaders. It was postponed due to external threats. Both pro- and anti- reform protesters are proudly posting pictures of themselves enlisting.
See previous point
The protests stopped due to the war, where mainly Israeli working class were slaughtered. Who do you think is whose common enemy here?
I think we’ll continue to get one messy equilibruim after the other, until we get something stable that’s neither a two state solution nor a one state one. I don’t know how it will look like.
I don’t know what mattposts actually meant by his post, but I thought a plausible interpretation was literally just “what do you make of these socialist positions?” with the context that a number of socialist/leftist orgs have been saying some pretty anti-semitic stuff recently. Like, I want to say suprisingly, but maybe I was just fooling myself.
I agree, which is why I tried to answer to the points concretely. Did I miss anything? I did write “your points” where I should have written “their points”, but I don’t think it’s important enough to edit. I’m not surprised at all, I’ve seen worse. The far left is quite antisemitic.
Nah, I don’t think you missed anything. It was just that you wrote “your points” and I assumed mattposts was giving their own viewpoints at first, so I wanted to check you/others realized that there were two pretty different interpretations of their post.
As Yovel said, wildly off the mark.
Just one minor extra point—the poorer Israeli working class is mostly supportive of Netanyahu. It’s the middle and upper classes who oppose him, who they see as corrupt.
Also the youth is generally more right wing in Israel, and the older generation more left wing.
In general you can’t copy your model of politics from one country into another and expect it to accurately predict what’s going on.