Former President Barack Obama cautioned against ignoring the complexities of the Israel-Hamas war, warning that “all of us are complicit.”

“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree,” he said in an excerpted interview with Pod Save America released Saturday.

  • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    There’s something I need you to explain for me… have you or have you not noticed that all of Israel’s enablers - all the countries that have proven so fond of the idea of Israel including England, where antisemitic Christians invented Zionism - are literally countries with deep histories of white supremacism, colonialism and… drumroll, please… antisemitism?

    Arabs were against Israel and also against having Britain & France controlling colonial assets in their countries. The USSR saw them as valuable allies in dismantling colonial empires to make way for expanding Soviet influence. Western alignment with Israel didn’t fully materialize except with the context of the Cold War. It really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with ideological concerns beyond the surface level. It’s realpolitik. The USSR was even pro-Zionist for a hot minute when they thought the kibbutzim were going to take off.

    Also, this…

    England, where antisemitic Christians invented Zionism

    … is fucking stupid. Jews have been returning to Zion for as long as there has been a diaspora.

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      is fucking stupid.

      …and here you manage to prove just one thing - that the only thing “complicating” any of this is the batshit fairy tale pro-Israeli propaganda that has been regurgitated for you for decades now. Even Israeli historians demolishes your absurd alt-history.

      Want a choice quote from Israeli historian Anita Shapira?

      “The idea of the Jews returning to their ancient homeland as the first step to world redemption seems to have originated among a specific group of evangelical English Protestants that flourished in England in the 1840s; they passed this notion on to Jewish circles.”

      Jews have been returning

      Are you talking about Palestine? You know… the place that has always had large Jewish communities all throughout the middle-ages right up to 1949?

      Is that the place you are referring to?

      • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Christian Zionism

        And where exactly do you think the Christian Zionists got their ideas?

        Could it be Maimonides?

        The days of the Messiah, however, is the time when rulership will return to Israel and that they will go back to the land of Israel and that this king will be very great, and the seat of his rulership will be in Zion (Jerusalem). His fame will grow and his mention will be among all of the nations, [even] more than King Shlomo. And all of the peoples will make peace with him and all of the lands will serve him, due to his great righteousness and due to the wonders that will come about though him. And anyone that comes against him, God, may He be elevated, will deliver into his hand. And all of the [relevant] verses in Scripture testify to his success and our success with him. And nothing about existence will change from what it is now, except that rulership will return to Israel.

        Maimonides advocated that wise men, those who understood the words of the sages, would naturally establish this “rulership” in Israel. Of course he was commenting on the Mishnah which dates back to the second or third century CE. The Christian Zionists’ reason for wishing for the Jews to return to Israel is to bring about the end/messianic times. This prophecy first appeared in Judaism.

        If you want to get into the specifics of practical & poltical Zionism of the late 19th century, sure it was inspired by European nationalism. But if that’s all it takes for something to be white supremacy, then I guess all the various forms of Arab and African nationalism are white supremacy, too. The political, financial, and logistical methods employed by modern Zionists in the establishment of Israel were reflections of the time in which it took place. Had the Holocaust not occurred, the aliyot of the late 19th and early 20th century likely would have fizzled out without significantly effecting the balance of power in the region, like all the aliyot prior.

        Are you talking about Palestine? You know… the place that has always had large Jewish communities all throughout the middle-ages right up to 1949?

        Yes, lol. Keep up. The Jewish population waxed & waned over the centuries due to waves of expulsion and emigration, and aliyot.

        Anyway, modern Zionism doesn’t need to be smeared as “white supremacy”; it stands on its own as a terrible idea, that in its full realization requires violence against and the displacement & expulsion of the Palestinian people.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Could it be Maimonides?

          No. There is a lot of “return” mythologies you can name that is present in a lot of diaspora communities, but that doesn’t mean you see Rastafarians perpetrating settler-colonialism in Ethiopia or the Irish making the case for violently retaking Dublin from… the Irish. You could, if you wanted, make a case for Liberia - but once again, Liberia is a result of a white supremacist urge to get rid of a hated other by displacing said “other” “back where they came from…” which, now that we’re talking about it, most certainly does have parallels with Christian Zionism’s core antisemitism.

          then I guess all the various forms of Arab and African nationalism are white supremacy, too.

          And who were Arab and African nationalists supposed to be white supremacist to? Whiteness defines itself by that which it is not… African nationalism is still, to this very day, beset by the racialized politics enforced onto it by white supremacist empires - Rwanda is merely one case of many - but the idea that sub-Saharan Africans have universally embraced the kind of comprehensive racialized caste system that European “race science” has normalized is ludicrous.

          Anyway, modern Zionism doesn’t need to be smeared as “white supremacy”

          Maybe you need to tell the Israelis that.