In a secret location due to right-wing attacks in previous years, bereaved families recognized each other’s grief and called for a shared future.
In a secret location due to right-wing attacks in previous years, bereaved families recognized each other’s grief and called for a shared future.
Got me. You’re right. I concede the point.
What I should have said is “they feel they’re doing the right thing within their reality we from the outside we should not judge them”.
For most of the other points, I’m not sure I have anything to add, it’s becoming belaboured at this point.
On the Trump analogy I think you’re wrong. On two counts.
First: For the sake of argument only I’m going to call the Palestinians engaging with what you call liberal Zionists “defeatists”. I’m not saying i see them as such but let’s use this word to caricature them. So: defeatists are nowhere near the same thing as collaborationists. Even if we agree that Abbas is acting as the long arm of Netanyahu, that’s not the same as the defeatists who see a human connection in grief and want to chant kumbaya with Israelis who oppose the genocide and the apartheid. That’s nowhere near the same. It’s a world of difference between active collaboration with a genocidal apartheid regime and the hosting of common events with people who also oppose that regime. Just like Palestinians are not a monolith, so aren’t Israelis.
Second: Yes, Trumpists get a say on a discussion about democracy. I’m not American, so I’ll extrapolate to my own contexts. Yes, far right nationalists, stupid as they are, are my co-citizens. So long as they’re not trying to do a coup, yes, they do belong in a discussion about democracy. I can’t flick my magic wand and make millions of right wingers disappear, so finding a way to have a discussion about the rules of the democratic game is absolutely important. I’m not saying anyone should be conceding any arguments to them. I do believe in the cordon sanitaire approach, and more crucially I believe in populist policies to “drain the swamp” on which the fascists feed. But you can’t mute and block your way out of proto-fascism.
Anyway, thanks for introducing me to Ghassan Kanafani, I didn’t know, holy shit.