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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

Hm...might be downvoted for this, but here we go anyway lol

I disagree strongly. A statist revolution against apartheid is what is impossible, and history proves this to be true.

Hamas and Fatah have utterly failed in their praxis, it is antiauthoritarians on both sides of the wall that have had any success, BDS being the most prominent example. Hamas shooting impotent rockets has in fact only made the situation worse for average palestinian people in material terms, has failed to lift the blockade, and it's pretty plain for anyone to see that. BDS, on the contrary, actually has provided a way towards liberation that, while certainly not successful yet, has seen success in gathering international pressure on Israel while not resulting in the short-term escalation of military occupation & violence like the rocket attacks by palestinian statists has.

Ultimately, the two-state solution is desired by both Hamas/Fatah and the Israeli government, because it preserves both of their power. A single multiethnic state is not desired by either party, even though it would result in the destruction of the white Israeli ethnostate due to the way it would completely change the electoral balance of parliament. A "no state solution" would similarly be highly undesirable by these parties, because it would require a massive egalitarian restructuring of civil society on both sides of the wall.

At the end of the day, Hamas & Fatah are organizations with their own self-interests that frequently diverge from both the will and the interests of the people who they claim to represent. Seeing them as homogenous with their constituents, just because the Israeli state is their antagonist, is ahistorical and not good analysis, if not out and out noble savage rhetoric. Palestinians get all of the negative aspects of living under multiple governments, but none of the usual benefits of statehood-- in my opinion, it is wrong to support those governments which so oppress them, and I refuse to do so, for basically the same reasons I refuse to support the apartheid state.

There are also palestinian anarchists who have started becoming more visible, talking openly about their ideas and perspectives in the last eight years or so. I think anarchists should focus on uplifting their voices, not those of statist functionaries, because by ignoring these APOC voices we are contributing to their marginalization in palestine and beyond. Here are some of them talking about their perspectives:

https://anarchiststudies.org/2013/07/19/palestinian-anarchists-in-conversation-recalibrating-anarchism-in-a-colonized-country/

As a Palestinian anarchist I look forward to going back to the roots of the First Intifada. It did not come from a political decision. It came against the will of the PLO.

I don't think that just because someone is not from the region/nationality/group/etc that their opinion is automatically invalid. I see this line of reasoning used often by authoritarian-leaning people of color, and it has predictably toxic effects on organizing. I have even seen first-hand this behavior enacted by confirmed informants who were sent in to sabotage organizing spaces that I have been part of in the past, and it has always worked very well due to the fact that white activist types have exactly zero spine for publicly disagreeing literally at all with any POC. It comes not from a desire to "be a good ally", but rather a selfish fear of losing social capital. This cowardice stifles any kind of real discussion and destroys radical projects, not to mention being pretty transparently rooted in the racist conception of POC as intellectually homogenous with each other. Here is an critique of this behavior (in another context) which explains what I am referring to better than I could (from Taking Sides, edited by Cindy Milstein):

I frequently hear from anti-authoritarian “white allies” that they are working with authoritarian or nonpartisan community groups, sometimes on projects they don’t believe in, because the most important thing is that they follow the leadership of people of color. The unspoken assertion is that there are no anti-authoritarian people of color—or none who are worth working with. Choosing to follow authoritarian people of color in this way invisibilizes all the anarchist or unaligned people of color who would be your comrades in the fight against hierarchical power. Obviously, there is at least as broad a range of political ideologies in communities of color as there are in white communities.

idk, I just want to support APOC, especially when it is unpopular. I totally get that white anarchists in Israel, Europe, the US, that they have too much space in the movement abroad for palestinian liberation. However despite that I really don't think the answer is to elevate and promote statists. To the contrary, I will stand by my assertion that anarchists should be listening to APOC anarchists who are in the situation, and signal boosting their message wherever possible. Obviously, it is not really a white anarchist's role to focus heavily on critiquing the palestinian incipient state-- it's far from the most important or relevant thing we could offer, given that we can achieve much more by elevating the voices of palestinian anarchists and dismantling the subsidization of the Israeli state. However, erasing all reference to anarchist goals in palestine seems highly undesirable, and I oppose this insofar as the sidebar is concerned.

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