Path: ...!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Sharx335 <sharx35@telus.net>
Newsgroups: rec.sport.tennis,rec.arts.tv,uk.comp.sys.mac,edm.general,sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Do you condemn Hamas?
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2024 17:22:05 -0600
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 236
Message-ID: <v3tgau$1nd4s$1@dont-email.me>
References: <s1a46j16390u2d6p6upsleq5njra4cjckg@4ax.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2024 01:22:06 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="9b98b576444516a0e92586b44b8cb7d9";
	logging-data="1815708"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19hIJHiWDJsRnMk4DjPhoEQrKnmpEsgPh0="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:nXwUtSg6BY5n05Sn5eNgyO0U7c8=
In-Reply-To: <s1a46j16390u2d6p6upsleq5njra4cjckg@4ax.com>
Content-Language: en-US
Bytes: 14913

On 2024-06-06 3:27 p.m., NefeshBarYochai wrote:
> This question became seemingly ubiquitous following October 7. As
> Palestinians defied the imagination, breaking out of Gaza after over a
> decade and a half of living under total air, land, and sea blockade,
> many found themselves having to face this question.
> 
> Whether it be from Zionists using the violence we witnessed on that
> day as a means of creating story after story of atrocity propaganda —
> to force well-meaning allies into a corner or even those who genuinely
> considered themselves pro-Palestine who struggled with the reality of
> decolonial violence — the question of whether or not Palestinian armed
> resistance factions deserved support or criticism became a major point
> of contention. It was easy for many to support the cause of
> Palestinian liberation when they viewed Palestinians as perfect
> victims, but when Palestinians fought back, suddenly the question of
> solidarity became muddled.
> 
> Months later, after tens of thousands of Palestinians have been
> murdered by Israeli Occupation Forces in Gaza amid an ongoing
> genocide, and after thousands in the West Bank have found themselves
> imprisoned or under regular attack, sympathy for those resisting their
> own annihilation has grown, with the conversation becoming more clear
> than it was in the days proceeding October 7. As videos spread by
> resistance factions across Gaza and Lebanon find a regular and
> enthusiastic audience and chants in support of those putting their
> lives on the line take root in protests nationwide, it is clear many
> have grown to accept the necessity of armed struggle in the
> Palestinian context, though a true consensus has yet to be achieved.
> 
> To that end, the answer to the question “Do you condemn Hamas?,”
> particularly for those of us on the Left as we analyze the history of
> Palestine and why resistance occurs in a colonial context, should have
> always been clear.
> 
> A violent phenomenon
> 
> As Frantz Fanon’s oft-cited statement from Wretched of the Earth has
> made clear, national liberation, national reawakening, restoration of
> the nation to the Commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the
> latest expression — decolonization is always a violent event.
> Palestine is not an exception to this reality.
> 
> The colonization of Palestine by Zionists, like all colonialism
> throughout history, brought with it widespread and constant violence
> levied in all forms against the Palestinian people. This was by
> design, as the very nature of settler colonialism is a necessarily
> brutal one given the end goal of the wholesale elimination of the
> Indigenous population in all forms but nostalgia. This violence does
> not simply manifest itself through the military campaigns waged by
> Zionist settlers and the Israeli occupation army, but through every
> part of the colonial endeavor itself — an endeavor that can only be
> sustained through the suffering, exploitation, repression, and death
> of Palestinians and all else that the colony wishes to conquer.
> 
> Palestinians, whether in Occupied Palestine, in refugee camps in
> bordering nations, or in the diaspora around the world, are forced
> every single day to wrestle with the reality of this settler colonial
> violence. The very existence of the Zionist project poses an
> existential threat to the lives of millions, who have in some cruel
> twist of reality been deemed existential threats by the project for
> the simple reason that their existence undermines its legitimacy.
> 
> This violence does not occur without resistance. Throughout history,
> whether it be in Algeria, South Africa, Ireland, or Palestine,
> colonized people have risen up in the face of brutal violence to free
> themselves from the shackles of their own oppression. This resistance
> does not generally start as armed struggle, but through civil
> disobedience, protests, general strikes, and similar tactics. Yet when
> these tactics fail, as they often have, or when exceptional violence
> is waged against the people in response, armed struggle becomes a
> necessity.
> 
> The colonial power, its legitimacy owed solely to the force it
> undertakes to maintain its existence, creates the conditions for the
> resistance that will rise against it. The more violence and repression
> colonized people face, the more they resist. Violent resistance
> becomes mainstream out of sheer necessity given their material
> conditions. This creates a cycle of violence, one perpetuated first
> and foremost by the violence of the colonial entity itself.
> 
> Even before the official foundation of the Zionist project in 1948,
> this cycle was well established. The Balfour Declaration came into
> existence in 1917, signifying Britain’s official endorsement of
> Zionist aspirations. By 1929, a fifth of Palestinians found themselves
> landless. By the 1930s, many Palestinians found themselves unemployed
> and economically destitute, as Zionist capital, backed by favorable
> imperial British laws and treatment, began flowing ever more
> intensively into Palestine, according to Ghassan Kanafani’s seminal
> work on the 1936 Great Palestinian Revolt.
> 
> These factors spurred resistance of their own variety, including the
> Buraq Uprising of 1929, efforts by Palestinians to pool resources to
> purchase land, sporadic violence, as well as Palestinian notables
> lobbying for better treatment from their British overlords. This blend
> of violent and non-violent efforts would all be suppressed or
> ultimately met with limited success.
> 
> In 1936, when British forces murdered Syrian revolutionary figure
> Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Palestinian popular resentment turned
> into a general strike, and ultimately into popular revolt, which was
> put down brutally by Zionist and British forces by 1939. Only a few
> years later, Zionists would ethnically cleanse more than 750,000
> Palestinians from upwards of 530 cities, towns, and villages and kill
> thousands more in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or the
> “catastrophe”. These ethnic cleansing campaigns continue up to the
> modern day.
> 
> Palestinians would rise up as a result of the subjugation they faced,
> again through a combination of violent and non-violent struggle that
> would be met with even more violent oppression. When Palestinians
> waged cross-border raids into occupied territory, they were met with a
> Zionist invasion in Lebanon and massacres at Sabra and Shatila. When
> Palestinians rose up during the First and Second Intifadas, they were
> met with violent crackdowns, mass arrests, and widespread violence
> that would lead to the intensification of their own violent resistance
> efforts. When Palestinians in Gaza took to marching to the wall that
> surrounded them in the March of Great Return, hundreds were killed and
> thousands more injured by Israeli soldiers. The cycle of violence
> continued and intensified.
> 
> Fast forwarding to today, Palestinians continue to live in bantustans
> in the West Bank, and what could functionally be described as a
> concentration camp in Gaza, with Palestinians in the 1948 and 1967
> territories living under brutal apartheid management structures. They
> have resisted every step of the way, each time seeing thousands
> imprisoned, murdered, displaced, and millions utterly subjugated and
> exploited as the Zionist project continues toward the ultimate goal of
> eliminating them in all forms but nostalgia.
> 
> When armed struggle becomes material necessity
> 
> In the face of all of this violence, armed resistance organizations
> have risen up and established themselves amongst the people, whether
> they be Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas,
> or others. These groups, and the violence they employ, did not come to
> exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are the result of decades of brutal
> colonial violence, and the culmination of Palestinian efforts to
> liberate themselves from it.
> 
> The tactics they employ on the ground are the culmination of this same
> struggle. These groups chose to undergo operations they determined may
> advance their liberatory struggle. Many outside of Palestine, and even
> Palestinians themselves, may have disagreements with these tactics, or
> on a grander scale, disagreements with the core principles and
> ideologies of one or several of the groups deploying them. For those
> of us in the Western Left, however, removed from the reality of
> on-the-ground struggle, this cannot mean that we undermine the very
> legitimacy of armed struggle itself.
> 
> Hamas is a key example of this. Like them or not, the efforts they
> have waged and continue to wage have made more of a material impact
> toward the liberation of Palestine than anything any of us in the West
> will ever make. They are taking on the brutal violence of colonial
> power and waging a campaign of armed struggle that has, at the current
> moment, with coordination with other resistance factions, made the
> Zionist colony more of a pariah than it has ever been on a global
> stage and shattered the image of military invincibility and overall
> stability it has spent decades cultivating. Countless years of
> struggle have culminated in this flashpoint.
> 
> The path forward, as history has repeatedly shown, will be largely
> forged through the armed struggle of resistance factions on the
> ground. Their very survival depends on it, and it continues to
> challenge and erode the power of the Zionist entity itself.
> 
> Palestinian armed resistance has forced the Zionist project to wage an
> increasingly violent campaign that is sharpening contradictions in
> such a way as to lead to its continued unraveling. As the masses in
> the imperial core, specifically those of the United States, come to
> realize that their interests are at odds with the interests of the
> Zionist project and their government leaders who are sustaining the
> project’s ongoing genocide, the traditional support base the project
> relies on has eroded. In its place is an ever-increasing mass standing
> in firm support of Palestinians, rather than their colonizers.
> 
> In Palestine, the Palestinian struggle for liberation has developed
> what can be called a “Popular Cradle” of resistance — a state of unity
> and cohesion that has developed between the Palestinian armed
> resistance and broader Palestinian society. That “popular cradle,” as
========== REMAINDER OF ARTICLE TRUNCATED ==========