The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization is simply a question of relative strength.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
For the starving people of Gaza, who have lived their entire lives in what amounts to the world’s largest concentration camp, the time for “changed behaviour” from Israel is long passed, if it was ever there to begin with.
Great, we can keep being perpetually blood feuding with eachother for all eternity, great solution, once we’ve exiled and eradicated all hateful people the remainder will live in peace and prosperity forever.
(It’s not like that thinking isn’t basically how we got here or anything)
Great, we can keep being perpetually blood feuding with eachother for all eternity, great solution, once we’ve exiled and eradicated all hateful people the remainder will live in peace and prosperity forever.
This is not Fanon’s point, nor is it mine. The Wretched of The Earth Is a seminal text on colonialism for good reason. In it, Fanon is grappling with what it means for the colonized to violently resist.
The settler state is already violent. We just don’t usually conceive of state violence as such. Fanon is correct in the same way that the way to deal with a schoolyard bully is to stand up and confront him. Not appeal to his better angels.
(It’s not like that thinking isn’t basically how we got here or anything)
This misunderstands the situation. This isn’t some ancient conflict where both sides are equivalent. The Israeli state is the aggressor here, and that aggression has a clear beginning, with at least the Nakbah.
The land itself is the thing being fought over. Not some nebulous blood feud. The land, the capacity to live on it, work on it, cultivate it, to have history on that land. These are things being denied to the native Palestinians by the Israeli state.
The solution here is the right of return for all displaced Palestinians, restoration of their civil liberties, language rights, etc. So they might be able govern themselves, as they see fit.
For a colonized people the most essential value, because it is the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity -The Wretched of The Earth
What we are asking for is not violence, what we are asking for is a free Palestine for all its citizens, regardless of religion. We want the religious ethno-supremacist state built on our stolen land to become free.
We aren’t asking for blood, and we aren’t asking to exile or eradicate anyone.
(It’s not like that thinking isn’t basically how we got here or anything)
You’re blaming two years of genocide on a single act of violent resistance. How we got here is 500 of our villages destroyed, many massacres against our people, 700 thousand of us expelled from our ancestral homelands, and 77 years of oppression and shooting our kids while calling us animals and snakes.
History will reflect October 7 as the Gaza ghetto uprising that it was, violent resistance to 75 years of dehumanizing us and colonizing our land, and 16 years of military siege on our people in Gaza.
Imagine telling Jews in WW2 they should have died peacefully because resisting violently is how we got here.
For the starving people of Gaza, who have lived their entire lives in what amounts to the world’s largest concentration camp, the time for “changed behaviour” from Israel is long passed, if it was ever there to begin with.
Well clearly their form of fighting against Israel is going well for them.
I don’t think infants are the ones deciding the method of resistance lol
Great, we can keep being perpetually blood feuding with eachother for all eternity, great solution, once we’ve exiled and eradicated all hateful people the remainder will live in peace and prosperity forever.
(It’s not like that thinking isn’t basically how we got here or anything)
This is not Fanon’s point, nor is it mine. The Wretched of The Earth Is a seminal text on colonialism for good reason. In it, Fanon is grappling with what it means for the colonized to violently resist.
The settler state is already violent. We just don’t usually conceive of state violence as such. Fanon is correct in the same way that the way to deal with a schoolyard bully is to stand up and confront him. Not appeal to his better angels.
This misunderstands the situation. This isn’t some ancient conflict where both sides are equivalent. The Israeli state is the aggressor here, and that aggression has a clear beginning, with at least the Nakbah.
The land itself is the thing being fought over. Not some nebulous blood feud. The land, the capacity to live on it, work on it, cultivate it, to have history on that land. These are things being denied to the native Palestinians by the Israeli state.
The solution here is the right of return for all displaced Palestinians, restoration of their civil liberties, language rights, etc. So they might be able govern themselves, as they see fit.
For a colonized people the most essential value, because it is the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity -The Wretched of The Earth
What we are asking for is not violence, what we are asking for is a free Palestine for all its citizens, regardless of religion. We want the religious ethno-supremacist state built on our stolen land to become free.
We aren’t asking for blood, and we aren’t asking to exile or eradicate anyone.
You’re blaming two years of genocide on a single act of violent resistance. How we got here is 500 of our villages destroyed, many massacres against our people, 700 thousand of us expelled from our ancestral homelands, and 77 years of oppression and shooting our kids while calling us animals and snakes.
History will reflect October 7 as the Gaza ghetto uprising that it was, violent resistance to 75 years of dehumanizing us and colonizing our land, and 16 years of military siege on our people in Gaza.
Imagine telling Jews in WW2 they should have died peacefully because resisting violently is how we got here.