John Pilger, Palestine Is Still The Issue

Politics
#1

From 2002

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(2002 edition) In a series of extraordinary interviews with both Palestinians and Israelis, John Pilger weaves together the issue of Palestine. He speaks to the families of suicide bombers and their victims; he sees the humiliation of Palestinians imposed on them at myriad checkpoints and with a permit system not dissimilar to apartheid South Africa’s infamous pass laws. He goes into the refugee camps and meets children who, he says, “no longer dream like other children, or if they do, it is about death.”

RIP John Pilger

#2

I notice that we haven’t much discussed the situation in Gaza much at the forum. Or much of anything else in any depth.

We simply post memes and jokes for the most part. What’s happened?

#3

I dunno, this one is especially polarizing. While I agree the state of Israel has the right to exist and defend itself, especialliy against the awful attack a few months ago, I don’t believe they have the right to do anything they want in response. Also considering the decades of broken agreements and dehumanization that Israel has done to the Palestinians.

It’s similar to the US post-9/11, we had to do something, anything, to not show weakness, and any rational minds pointing out that Iraq was uninvolved, bla bla, were called traitorous and siding with the enemy.

One thing we don’t discuss enough on the national stage is the root causes of many of these things, which includes millenia of tribal warfare, and the West drawing lines in the middle east without regard to who was on what side of the lines and who was displaced by them. Because as much as we bitch about the ME and central and south America, we don’t want to evoke our part in breaking those regions because woke bullshit.

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#4

I agree with that whole-heartedly.

I watch talks or lectures several Jewish and/or Israeli historians addressing the root causes of the conflict. The ones I’ve watched most often are Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe and even Gabor Mate has chimed in.

Finkelstein for example, doesn’t justify what Hamas has done, but makes a comparison to the Nat Turner rebellion and massacre in Virginia during slavery. He says that we can understand people acting out violently when they are being oppressed.

I still feel sympathy for those individuals that were slaughtered, raped and kidnapped. They are human beings and no one deserves that treatment regardless of the circumstances.

However, yes, I define this as a European problem imposed on the ME. Not only for the drawing of lines, but the Holocaust and pogroms before that. Religious and/or ethnic intolerance in Europe is a root cause of this problem that we see now.

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