4 Targets Attacked for Palestine: BRB Part 4

4 Targets Attacked for Palestine: BRB Part 4

Four Offerings

Heartbroken, raging, yet tenderly hopeful, we began a series of actions across multiple Bay Area cities in unconditional solidarity with Palestine. We attacked four targets, one financial, one military, one corporate, and one tech:
1.) Under the surveillace of Transamerica building security across the street, we smashed the windows of HSBC for maintaining business relations with more than a dozen companies selling weapons and technology to the Israeli military.
2.) With personnel still inside, we smashed the windows of a US military recruitment office because the US is Israel's primary source of military support.
3.) We smashed the windows of a Starbucks for their repression of pro-Palestine unionized workers.
4.) Sneaking past their security, we drenched 8 Cruise cars with red paint for being a subsidiary of General Motors, which has offices in Israel and is invested in Mobileye, an Isreali self-driving car surveillance technology company.

These attacks are also a continuation of our ongoing revenge for Banko Brown, in solidarity with Sean "Tucan" Monterrosa and Tortuguita, and in response to the call from Filipino/a/x comrades asking anarchists in the US to memorialize Jennifer "Ganda" Laude.

As Muslims

In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful

As our brothers, our sisters, all our spiritual siblings in Gaza hold their families close and await martyrdom we refuse to stand idly by for any longer. We will take our cues from the brave and fluid Palestinian resistance groups. Rigid, liberal, American advocacy orgs that seek to control and mediate revolutionary rage will not facilitate the actions that are needed right now. If the October 7th offensive taught us anything it is that courage, ingenuity, commitment to attack, and organizing across political tendencies is how we will win.

We refuse to blindly walk the same permitted march routes, we refuse to chant the same hollow chants and scroll past the videos of dying children. "Long Live the Intifada" means bringing it to life in our own cities, right now. International Solidarity means devouring Amerikkka from the inside.

The Palestinian resistance knows what must be done and what is at stake. We must show through action that we also know. For every increase in repression in Palestine there must be a corresponding repercussion for the settler state/s. Our enemies must be made to bleed for every bomb, every bullet, and every martyr. We must show the United States that if they are going to escalate against the resistance in Palestine then there is another resistance that will escalate against them domestically. We must articulate our revolutionary politics through languages that are indigenous to us. As our brothers the Lion's Den said, "The talking after 11:00 [on the first night of the offensive] is only for takbeers and bullets".

We are the fiercest lovers of our people, we are the vengeful colonized and the hungry dispossessed, we are that which was stolen which must steal itself back, we are rejectors of the secular, servants of Allah who bow to nothing but Him, and we are all committed to the attack.

All praise is due to God. Prayers and peace upon Muhammad PBUH.

As Jews

Tikkum Olam, the core Jewish practice of "healing the world" recognizes that true aid, true justice happens when we work to dismantle the distinction between the helped and the helper. It is time to wake up. It is time to heal ourselves and the world. We must militantly oppose genocide and occupation, we must act.

Let Palestine liberate us. We are not liberating them. Their liberation is in their own competent hands and if we are mindful and militant, just maybe we can be inspired enough by the courageous actions of our Palestinian siblings to liberate ourselves.

As we discuss in the Mishna, each life is as valuable as the universe in its totality. To this end we have the ethical responsibility to break not only any one of our 613 commandments to save a life, but any state laws or societal conventions. The time is now, every moment we wait a brilliant, powerful soul is extinguished. We must have the agency and courage to ask ourselves, what is it that I can do now?

The Struggle Ahead

As always, these struggles will be led by colonized peoples. It is disgusting that many Western radicals are responding to colonial genocide with shaky half-solidarities. Secular anarchism and its embedded Islamophobia has resulted in lazy critiques of individual factions within the united front (which includes the anarchist and communist groups) of the Palestinian people's fight for existence.

Perspectives limited by rigid, ideological dogmatism will struggle to navigate the complex political landscapes, contradictions, and existential questions amplified by growing, global challenges to Western hegemony as it enters its inevitable death spiral. Many comrades will continuously find themselves in political alignment with the interests of the West and whiteness.

We colonized people should not give in to mistrust, but these fence-riding responses to Palestine show us we will be abandoned by some comrades when solidarity is most vital. Not everyone will join us in destroying the Western world and ending its ceaseless atrocities that echo across generations. This betrayal will be hurtful, but we must push ahead regardless. We will have to define what non-Western anarchy looks like for ourselves, and our anti-colonial and anti-imperialist ancestors will guide us. We know what time it is, and we will win.

A Call

We call everyone to get organized for attack. Anarchists, communists, Muslims, Jews, all radicals in the US: there is a genocide happening, and an active decolonial struggle which is the only thing slowing that genocide. Now is the time to take seriously the task of disruptions and attacks from within the belly of the beast. If your above-ground organization limits the tactics at your disposal, work outside of it. Targets are plentiful and all around us. The capitalist is motivated by capitalist logic, we must make it prohibitively expensive for them to wage genocide and occupation. Everything short of attack and material disruption of systems complicit in Zionism is a betrayal of solidarity.

Fuck Israel, Zionism, America, the West, and the local counter-insurgent radlibs.

The collapse of Western hegemony is on the horizon, and we welcome it. We see decolonial revolutionary holy war, and we celebrate it.

Palestine will be free. Banko Brown forever. Tucan forever. Tortuguita forever. Ganda forever. Martyrs never die.

Muslims, Jews, queers, trans, and spiritual comrades, for anarchy, for communism, all for the attack.

- BRB // Bay Rage Brigade // Be Right Back

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/11/04/18860042.php

There are 75 Comments

"Secular anarchism and its embedded Islamophobia has resulted in lazy critiques of individual factions within the united front"

Hahaha! Is this fucking Daesh?

Imagine... imagine... "anarchists" fighting for dog-shit religious nationalism based on ressentiment and ALLAH!

Fucking awesome. Beware though the nihilist liberals will hate the anti-sectarian stuff at the end

" If the October 7th offensive taught us anything it is that courage, ingenuity, commitment to attack, and organizing across political tendencies is how we will win."

wha?

An alt-right or Mexican cartel hangliding attack on a Bay Area rave the writers of this manifesto were at could use much of the same rhetoric to justify their holy war as well.

This has gotta be a sick joke.

This shows just how the US can't be a good starting place for anarchist insurgency as that's such a sick, fucked up, violent society filled with psychotic crazies.

any violent insurgency in the US is going to be a river of blood, yes
but also! the status quo in the US requires a river of blood?

either way, the blood gods are thirsty! MURIKA, that's why!

My god, this gets more confused and frightening as it progresses. In short, they want a holy war against secular (christian?) capitalism?

This contains deep misunderstandings about what capitalism is, ignorance to the dangers of nationalism, weird glorification weird "united fronts," the jaw-dropping notion of using religion to create a "revolution" (what could go wrong?!!), the disregarding of Islam as a colonizing force, no distinction between governing bodies and those they govern, the erasure of anti-islamic anarchists from the muslim world (and diaspora), and so much more!

Please take a deep breath before you do something really stupid, or create a movement of monsters. If you"push ahead regardless" and "win," I am afraid you will not create a different world, but an equally terrible one.

Maybe just break some bank windows and say BRB?

Because this ain't an anticapialist communique, but nationalist, anti-Israel, and also stupidly anti-secular drivel. Title literally sez it's "for Palestine".

Of course this batshit insurrecto drivel can be used in the same way Qanon was used to throw dirt at antitech attacks already carried by anarchos... if they'd just be attacking a criminal bank like HSBC without such a contrived, partisan communique that wouldn't be an issue.

Also btw, no gods no masters. just sayin'...

Also add a roll of 2d10 +1 to Level of Stupid at this new level, stupid.

So sad your J6 insurrection failed! Better luck with that phony-anarcho shit?

Why exactly are you on this website? Like, what is the reason please explain.

Coz I'm anarchist and this website is named "anarchistnews.org" and know (at least most of) the admins to be anarchists doing content for anarchists and anarcho-curious.

Your turn... to explain wtf are you doing *here* posting and/or standing by this nationalist horseshit. Can't wait!

Wonderful actions. Thank you for the communique. Just as importantly thank you for showing what anarchy looks and feels like to the American anarchists on here. It won’t be white. It wont be very inviting to their privileged minds and experiences. It won’t be for them. Solidarity means attack.

"Wonderful" actions?! The kind of casual pro-homicidal rhetoric embedded in this worthless communique has nothing in common with any anarchist vision or project I've ever learned about in history. Collective self-management and community autonomy are the hallmarks of anarchism, not some bloodthirsty exterminationist fantasy. GTFO

PLEASE LISTEN, MY FORM OF ANARCHY IS THE MOST CORRECT. MY FORM OF ANARCHY IS DEFINITELY NOT DERIVED BY AN OBVIOUS TO EVERYONE ELSE BUT ME PATHOLOGY THAT EXISTS WITHIN MY LOBES.

They're not an anarchist, bruh. They have no form of anarchy. Just sayin!

Here’s a big problem: when Jews decolonize, they still understand their homeland as Israel. What changes is the understanding of how to administer that homeland. So this project of decolonizing Palestine doesn’t fit with the narrative that Jews from Europe are settler-colonial invaders into an Arab region. This understanding - as I keep saying - is batshit. Geography is part of the reason.

Besides the fact that not all Israeli Jews are from Europe, Europe itself isn’t that far. The Arabian Peninsula is closer at some points, the Iberian Peninsula is further. But the whole geopolitical significance of the Levant is exactly that it is between so many different regions.

The other problem is just how many times both Jews and Palestinians have been colonized. Which colonial experience is to be negated through decolonization? Just the European?

What the fuck is wrong with just being against Israel as a state and not adding all this sloppy research into Zionism and other bullshit on top of it? What is wrong with being for Palestinian resistance without pretending Muslim religion is the defining facet of Palestinian identity?

short answer, it's equivocating the zionist military state, which is 100% a settler colonial project, with the jewish identity on a personal level. it's mistaking the structural arguments for the individuals getting chewed up in the big machines.

a profoundly insane thing to do and yet millions of people do it every day because identity is one hell of a drug!

what are you giving an answer to?

Also this thing about Israel being a Zionist state is a half-truth. Israel is an outcome of Zionism. It uses Zionism as an official ideology. But obviously the generic idea of Zionism is simply that Jews should have an established homeland in the region.

Not a perfect comparison, but this would be like saying all Christianity can be understood through the states that made it their official religion. It’s an oversimplification. The point I would make in that case is that getting rid of those Christian states won’t get rid of Christianity. Just like getting rid of Israel doesn’t get rid of general Zionism for Jews.

uh ... your entire post? the implied question therein?

i don't give af about "the generic idea of zionism", rhetoric and good intentions don't matter, outcomes matter. this is materialist analysis, which is the only appropriate way to understand something as awful as the situation in gaza right now

i cheerfully throw christianity and all its infinite crimes and hideous abominations of settler colonial state projects on the same pyre btw. of course none of these things are or were ever justifiable? isn't that intrinsic to the anarchist position?

you DO identify as an anarchist, yes? we aren't down with states. no exceptions.

the original sales pitch of zionism doesn't change any of that in the slightest

If the problem of Zionism is that it is supposedly settler-colonial because it came from European Jews (not just because it created a nation state), then the problem still exists without the nation state because Jews will still consider this their homeland and therefor, according to this framework of settler-colonialism, will still be interested in living there as “settlers” with “colonies”.

And part of the materialist analysis is that the Levant is a highly contested region for physical reasons that go beyond any Jewish or Arab cultural beliefs. So I am saying that “decolonizing” doesn’t actually solve the problem because it doesn’t address the fundamental issue that Jews don’t see themselves as foreigners. The whole point of calling something settler-colonial is to focus on the foreign character of the settlers and emphasize the rights of the indigenous to a territory. So whether or not Israel existe, you still have this problem of at least two people of similar world population sizes that think of themselves as indigenous to the region. Anarchism could be pitched as a way to decentralize and solve the administrative problem this causes but motherfuckers aren’t saying that. They are saying that Jews from Europe are foreigners: white euro-settlers who displaced the true indigenous people. So they are saying that whatever kind of state those indigenous people want is fine because it is their self-determination.

I am not really all that interested in figuring out what exactly "Israel is" but along this line doesn't Chomsky say that Israel is a settler / colonial state? I remember seeing something about that. What is his reasoning?

it would be better to ask, how could someone possibly reason that chomsky was wrong about that?

israel was founded by military conquest, most of those military resources came from somewhere outside that region. that's how military conquest works. therefore, it's a settler colonial state project, much like every other one throughout history.

Chomsky also believes in the myth that Ashkenazim are Khazarian converts to Judaism.

Anyway, when you see how the issue is debated a lot of people claim Zionism itself, even before 1948 and the Nakba, is settler-colonial. It is the fact of its origins in Europe that they claim makes it so. So if the problem was there before Israel was a state then it will be there if it didn’t exist. If people were merely saying the state as a political institution is the problem, ok that’s another story and post-48 would be when we would begin the debate. They are specifically talking about Zionism with or without a state. That this ideology, even in its generic or most left wing forms is settler-colonial.

Targeting only Zionism would be hypocritical, as if other countries didn't have bloody histories. So that's the whole mythological narrative scam.

If you're still brandishing the Chumpsky in 2023, after his support to his close pal Jeffrey Epstein... on top of supporting Holocaust deniers a few decades ago in the name of "free speech", as well as all his liberal talk about Legitimate Authority and voting Democrat, then I suggest you pause for a moment and rethink your shit, dude. Chomsky is not anarchist and neither an anarchist thinker.

holy shit calm down. You are clearly the same poster with some sort of personal/psychological axe to grind on all these articles related to whats happening in any way.

I brought up Chomsky cause he has said a lot about this subject over the years not because he is or isn't a lib now. You come across like a total nutjob.

Okay you brought up Cumpsky but so what? My point is that he's irrelevant if not a toxic reference when it comes to anarchism... and also the Israel-Palestine question. Find someone better at least, like Freddy Perlman who was very critical of Israel even in ways I got some issues with.

I stated very clearly what I was asking. Was not trying to prove any specific stance on what israel is because i do not have one and really don't care to. Idk if Chomp is relevant to anarchism or not in this case. He is relevant to the specific discussion.

What I do care about is; potential inroads for the anarchist movement during this time, the possibility of ww3 and if things are different on the ground than 2003 and the potential to fracture the Democratic Party. In case you wanted to know.

About WW3 according to John Mearsheimer, the US suddenly finds itself in big geopolotical doo-doo. https://iv.datura.network/watch?v=62FCVJycwSA

Which confirms my theory that both Russia and the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran axis have been playing as henchmen for China...

But what inroads can anarchists have in this? How about stuff that can draw people together despite their indoctrinations? Love fests n other hippie shit? Sure could be way better than rallying to the ethno-national schemes of statist butchers. The ceasefire protests are fine in my book, too, and once in a while a lot of pacifist mobilizing can a better job than, hums, random mass-murders...

Yeah I mean, I have always thought mass war was an option for the "world powers" given the stagnation of market capitalism. Sucks but it looks like that is where this is headed. I really do question if people in many places wouldn't legitimately rise up. Sounds silly to say but the world is a lot different than 2003.

Sure, hippie shit, cultural events. Anything of that sort makes a ton of sense in and out of the context really.

In terms of other points, the potential fracturing of the Democrats and mass disillusionment with them and liberalism itself should be a big deal to us and really the entirety of the left. It is a real chance to cast off the liberalism that has plagued anarchism for a long time.

I also think the potential of disruptive mass protest could reignite something more organized (in a positive way) in USA anarchy. But it just really depends on the conditions and also what is happening elsewhere.

One other thing, I think we need to really throw off or seriously re examine a lot of the critiques of 1999-2005. IMO we threw basically all sorts of positive shit out with the trash probably because we kind of hated ourselves at the time.

Yeaaa.. those newspaper boxes in the street could defo make some fancy drink tables these days, and serve as relics of the good ol' days when Dubya was in charge and we could get laid by liberals before the big exposure. So sad how they were wasted just like all these shop glasses we murdered, and just went down the trash... :-(

Casually admitting you slept with liberals...

We need to move past newspaper boxes in the street but shit was A LOT cooler back then even with like a 1/100th the amount of people

a problem that exists only inside people's minds, can't drop high powered ordinance on to densely populated areas

zionist military forces do that. therefore, i'm only interested in material reality. still with me?

separate the identity stuff from the real world and there is no problem in analyzing.

anarchists also don't need to resolve problems of state administration for statists because we don't believe in states...

Yes I kinda agree on that, I think. Maybe I’ll reread it and be like wait no I don’t but for now I do.

heh! i appreciate most of your content dandy, put another way, i even like ya! in a parasocial kind of way

but tbc, i'm not really offering any opinions here, not yet. i'm kind of just stating facts?
plus my usual dark sense of humour

"what the fuck is wrong etc"

I think most people generally agree with that last paragraph but for whatever reason put their spin on things. There's also the fact that what is happening right now on multiple levels lends itself to short soundbites more than detailed analysis. Nobody wants to really belabor the forced expulsion of a million people and potential(or desire) for WW3.

The reason I think Zionism warrants a certain amount of attack at this point is because of its palingenetic ideological structure. When you get right down to it it does eventually downstream into something like fascism because of the more pathogenic ultranationalist(I'm using Roger Griffin's definition of fascism which is better then the many term abuser definitions) strains that become more prevailing then the more generic humanist informed strains(someone like Bernie Sanders for example).

Like you(presumably) I'm fed up with anti-zionist discourse that has its roots in the new(now old) left and its retarded selective nationalism. I can't stand the concept of 'colonial settler state' or terms like 'decolonize' due to the embedded statism that exists within the ideas of most of those who use those terms. That assholy land, as you rightfully point out, was a complex clusterfuck with a fate largely determined by world war winners. I also do not consider myself Pro-Palestine for obvious anti-state reasons.

I still think a sophisticated non-new left attack on zionism is needed. It's not quite the same as Xianity as it is a fresh turd cut of palingenetic ideology as opposed to something with a religious theological context.

The specific modification that Zionists made to Jewish thought were: rejecting the spiritualism of the Reform movement, rejecting the ossification of Orthodoxy, various attempts to introduce materialism - which I am reading a book on now called “Jewish Materialism” (thanks libgen), and the affirmation that Jews are a nationality that like other nationalities should strive for a state in the land of their origin. Some territorialist groups like the often referenced Jewish Colonisation Association eventually focused mainly on Palestine, but established homes elsewhere. Other Jewish groups, like the Bundists, committed entirely to revolution in the diaspora under the assumption (and what an assumption it turned out to be) that socialist revolution would liberate them in the countries they resided in. But a lot of Jews were “General Zionists” and were the audience for competing Zionist parties. There was something like 20+ different political parties in the Yishuv (pre-State Israel) and their range of ideas was pretty big. David Ben-Gurion, for example, was a Labor Zionist, but he was on the Right of the Paole Zion split that saw its Left become communist parties.

So if you want to make a unitary critique, the main commonality among Zionists was the idea of a national homeland. And of course if that is the object of critique then it’s going to either apply to all nationalist groups or some excuse has to be found for rejecting Jewish nationalism specifically while being OK with other national groups developing a nationalist political ideology. That second option is wha lot of people do - by reducing Jewishness to religion, making up myths like Khazarian conversion, pretending that Ashkenazim residence in Palestine is modern or foreign, etc. - and that is why anti-Zionism is considered so antisemitic. When anarchists hear this argument about the antisemitism that tends to come with anti-Zionism, a lot of them conveniently forget that most people understand national self-determination as inherently state-building. So when they hear the criticism that their anti-Zionism is antisemitic, they assume this can’t be true because Zionists often describe self-determination in statist language. In other words, they don’t hear the argument in good faith and instead hear an absurdity about Jewish national self-determination being inexplicably bound up with statism. Neither the Zionist, nor the anarchist in this case is willing to recognize that the State doesn’t need to be the inevitable outcome of national self-determination so one side thinks they are merely anti-Statist and the other thinks this anti-Statism is a double standard Jews are held to that other national groups aren’t. And it doesn’t help that this is sometimes the case!

If you listen to a modern Labor Zionist like Shlomo Avineri, their case for a Jewish State is based on the failure of multinational states. But others will be sincere Civic Nationalists that are of the new Israeli left. This Civic Nationalism is often what American socialists expect from Israeli Jews, just as they expect from America. Very few sincerely believe in land back to tribes.

It’s a shitshow of confusion Sir. Almost makes one think people just want the old empires back instead of dealing with the National Question earnestly.

I can appreciate your desire for nuance on this topic CyberDandy, but I can't keep up. What exactly is your point here? Other than this situation is a confusing mess and shouldn't be oversimplified. Is it some kind of defense of self-determination? If so, to what end? A national homeland with borders? A diasporic settlement without borders? I've reread your comment and it's unclear to me.

thank you for taking my call

Ok maybe if I make this more abstract it will be easier to understand…

A lot of political or social questions run into ontological problems, which anarchists have a history of dealing with in novel ways. With Proudhon, the ontological question was The Property Question, for example. Karl Marx took up the ontological problem of Capital, for a non-anarchist example. My project (as CyberDandy) has been to focus on ontological problems from an existential-phenomenological and anarchist perspective. So when I talk about Zionism or The National Question, what I’m talking about is the ontological problems in answering them.

Here’s ChatGPT explaining what’s going on here:

The ontological problem of the national question primarily revolves around the nature and definition of a nation or nationality. This is a complex issue in philosophy, particularly in political and social philosophy, because it involves understanding what fundamentally constitutes a nation.

1. **Definition of a Nation**: One challenge is how to define a nation. Is it defined by shared cultural characteristics, language, history, territory, or a combination of these factors? Different philosophers and political theorists offer varying criteria.

2. **Subjectivity and Identity**: The concept of a nation is often subjective and fluid. National identity can change over time, influenced by historical, cultural, and political factors. This subjectivity makes it challenging to pin down an ontological essence of what a nation is.

3. **Nationalism and Sovereignty**: Another aspect is how the concept of a nation relates to nationalism and the quest for sovereignty. The desire for self-determination can conflict with the existing geopolitical order, raising questions about the legitimacy and moral grounds of national independence movements.

4. **Ethnicity vs. Civic Nationhood**: There's also the debate between ethnic nationalism (where nationhood is defined by ethnic, linguistic, or cultural commonalities) and civic nationalism (based on shared values, civic engagement, and legal frameworks within a state).

5. **Globalization and Transnational Identities**: In the context of increasing globalization, the concept of a nation faces challenges from transnational identities and supranational entities like the European Union. This raises questions about the relevance and adaptability of the nation-state concept.

6. **Intersecting Identities**: The overlapping of national identity with other identities (like race, religion, and class) complicates the understanding of what constitutes a nation, as these intersections create diverse experiences and perspectives within the same national group.

The ontological problem, therefore, lies in these complexities and the struggle to find a universal, objective definition of what a nation is, amid a plethora of subjective, historical, and cultural variations.

OK - so if you can understand all the above, then you can also understand why the discourse around Zionism is so fucked up. As a form of Nationalism, Zionism proposes answers to the Ontological Problem of Nationalism. The primary answer it proposes is that Jews are a nation or nationality. Ontologically, this makes Jews a being for-itself: a nation that can determine its own projects. However, the question of National Sovereignty is a question of being for-others. National Sovereignty is realized through the recognition of nations by one another. Ultimately, that mutual recognition legitimizes the formation of a national state, a nation-state.

Jews technically can answer the National Question in the affirmative, understanding themselves as a being for-itself through nationality, without realizing that understanding politically through a nation-state in the Levant. But the problem there is historical. Since Jews have been denied national self-determination for such a long time, it’s a bet against history repeating itself to seek the realization of themselves as a nationality within the sovereign territory of another nation. And it really doesn’t help the bet against history that the Bundists and many Jewish communists and anarchists have been murdered by nationalists. So Zionists make a pretty reasonable argument at the basic ontological and historical level.

As an anarchist, I reject that on principle. But unlike ignorant or antisemitic anti-Zionists, I don’t pretend like this issue goes away if sovereignty is denied to Jews again or their ontological claims to being a nationality (a people as being for-itself) are undermined. I don’t agree with SirEnzige that this has something to do with metaphysics of a soul. A lot of Zionists were Spinozists, monists. Others were Marxist materialists (like Ber Borochov).

Anyway, the point about antisemitism and anti-Zionism I was making is that the way someone understands the Ontological Problem of the National Question indicates whether or not they’re holding a double-standard about Jews compared to other nationalities. Obviously if Jews are a nation and their right to national self-determination is recognized, then Zionism and its realization in Israel is how they already did self-determine as a nation. So you can argue for a better form of national self-determination without being antisemitic. You can argue against the ontological reality of nations in general without being antisemitic. But when you start questioning the specific ontological reality of Jews as a nationality, you’re getting into antisemitic waters because now you have to make a solid case that Jews are different from other nationalities. When anarchists try to make that case, it’s especially suspicious because anarchists often recognize other nationalities as legitimate, even multiethnic ones.

Anyway, that was a lot of text.

"Ok maybe if I make this more abstract it will be easier to understand…"

^ literally never how that works. the exact opposite!

i'm saying this with affection dandy but i think anon may be right and you're twisting yourself in to knots on this one, which is understandable, given the current events

yeah... Sartre for whatever reason writes beginning from the abstract and ending with the concrete. I never found it helpful. I'm in some knots on all this, but there's a lot of threads that I'm dealing with.

FWIW CyberDandy you're making more than enough sense for me, both before and after increasing your level of abstraction. You know, people are different and stuff.

Thanks. That’s why I focus on videos where I am talking to someone else and don’t work on elaborate writing projects.

"i'm saying this with affection dandy"
Kiss now!

Oh boy, you are over intellectualising are basic condition.
. "The concept of a nation is often subjective and fluid."
"Nation" is a fixed static social blueprint brainwashed into the human mind from an early age, it is not ontologically derived.

Why are you quoting what ChatGPT wrote? What does “not ontologically derived” mean? I’m not using the term “ontology” in the sense of Heidegger’s distinction between ontic and ontological. I’m using it in the basic sense of describing what something is.

Nevertheless, that doesn't alter your description of how the concept of "nation" is individually acquired. It is an imposition upon the individual's free will to be told how to arrange their whole existence and behavior, nay, their whole being.

"Jews technically can answer the National Question in the affirmative, understanding themselves as a being for-itself through nationality, without realizing that understanding politically through a nation-state in the Levant."
Why are you quoting Netanyahu?

ChatGPT is google’s A.I. software and the part of my comment that you quoted was output from it describing “The Ontological Problem of the National Question”. It wasn’t something that I wrote myself.

I haven’t been talking about how the idea of a nation is acquired. I don’t really want to either, unless you give me a reason to…

What part of that sounds like Netanyahu to you? That sentence basically just says that Jews can form a national identity without trying to create a Jewish state. Netanyahu thinks the opposite. He thinks that being anti-Zionist is antisemitic because Jews should have the right to their own state.

> "Jews can form a national identity without trying to create a Jewish state"

Is this something you're agreeing with? Again, I'm confused at what is your belief vs ChatGPT (idk why you dragged an AI bot's wall of text into this when I asked what YOU thought). I'm wondering with all this theory gobbledygook if you've justified some nonsensical stance on what a nation "is" - and maybe it's a stance that makes a lot of sense if I read the right books and squint properly. But idk how Ontological Questions With Title Casing Do Anything To Bring Clarity To This Complex Clusterfuck.

Plain language helps me understand the complex shit, ya know? I'm simple like that.

I see you touched on this below in another thread.

and that only at best, at the limit of generosity. it's like watching a person combing through the various positions of the "founding fathers" looking for some version of the united states that would have been just or at least not genocidal or whatever. you're assuming that the jews are a nation according to the concept of nation that emerged among the zionists in the late 19th century and early 20th up to 1948: the state of israel. establishment by the sword. settler-colonialism, which entails ethnic cleansing as a matter of policy. whatever else it could have been, it was not. there is no more a just zionism than there is a just manifest destiny. if (some) jewish people want to reimagine themselves as a nation tied to physically living in the levant but distinct from the project of the israeli state, the burden is on them to develop and explicate that for themselves in a way that isnt just perpetually reopening the question of whether the state of israel has some special right to exist, or some special relationship to judaism writ large that all jews must respect. but i think what you are doing is instead to muddy the waters between what is israel and what is jewish, culturally or historically or even nationally, which as far as i can tell is one of the core strategies of zionism as a political project. on my view anti-semitism and anti-zionism are distinct, but many anti-semites use anti-zionism as a cover, precisely because of the idea that jews are "obviously a nation" and that zionism is the word for that idea. zionism is the word for the political project of the colonial entity called israel which is currently attempting to renew itself via the same kind of ethnic cleansing and genocide that it was created by. what is it that you're trying to recover

“you're assuming that the jews are a nation according to the concept of nation that emerged among the zionists in the late 19th century and early 20th up to 1948”

No, I’m questioning nationality itself. Not sure how you’re missing that?

“i think what you are doing is instead to muddy the waters between what is israel and what is jewish, culturally or historically or even nationally, which as far as i can tell is one of the core strategies of zionism as a political project.”

Sounds a bit paranoid to me. You’re basically just accusing me of the trope that when there is a clear moral problem with what Israel does or has done, Zionists will say “it’s more complicated”. The truth of “it’s more complicated” is that of course it’s more complicated. The lie of “it’s more complicated” is that anything about the complexity of the situation justifies Israel.

I’m the one making distinctions between various forms of Jewishness, Zionism, and the goals of Zionists. Not because I’m trying to “recover” something, but because I think that applying the settler-colonial framework to this time period is at best a pretty big stretch. I don’t think what Zionists were doing in Palestine before 1948 and what the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, etc. empires were doing in the Americas belong in the same category. Not just because of the historical facts, but also because of the ideological diversity of Zionists.

Furthermore, I think that adopting the settler-colonial framework often becomes a substitution for understanding the problems of nationalism, even when nationalism isn’t colonial. I think that the variety of nationalisms that were created by both Jews and Arabs is something that needs to be understood to conceptually grasp why the transition from Ottoman rule to the UN Partition Plan and Israel’s declaration as a sovereign state was so problematic in the Arab world. It wasn’t just because Palestinian Arabs were displaced by Labor Zionists buying land and laying off tenant farmers. It’s because Jewish and Arab nationalist groups were competing with each other to become the new rulers of Palestine and other post-Ottoman regions of the Middle-East. Nationalism is the problem, over and over again.

The controversial question about how indigenous or not Jews are to Palestine is secondary, in my opinion. As I have said elsewhere, nationalism doesn’t need to be foreign to lead to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

“on my view anti-semitism and anti-zionism are distinct, but many anti-semites use anti-zionism as a cover, precisely because of the idea that jews are "obviously a nation" and that zionism is the word for that idea.”

I agree with this, but I think using anti-zionism as a cover isn’t the ONLY way that anti-zionism can be antisemitic. I think it is also antisemitic if it takes the form of a criticism of nationalism being selectively applied to Jews. I realize that we call Jewish nationalism “Zionism” because that is what Jews and some others call it, but it’s still nationalism. I think that this sometimes gets in the way of applying the criticisms to other nationalisms. At that point, I think it’s getting close to being antisemitism. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Zionists use this phenomenon to play a game of accusing their critics of antisemitism. Like maybe… y’know if you didn’t give your nationalism some special fucking name then it wouldn’t be so easy to think its a special form of nationalism?

“zionism is the word for the political project of the colonial entity called israel which is currently attempting to renew itself via the same kind of ethnic cleansing and genocide that it was created by.”

What do you mean it is “the word” for this? Why is that the word for it? Israel isn’t merely the pure embodiment of some kind of monolithic Zionist ideology. I tend to think Israel calling itself Zionist is a way to cover up what it really is, which right now I think is fascist. Do you think Israel really gives a flying fuck about anything but its own national interests? You think the Israeli government cares about diaspora Jews, “galut” as they call us?

“what is it that you're trying to recover”

I’m looking for lessons anarchists can learn about our own situations. I think the history of the Kehilla is kind of interesting. I think the Jewish National Fund and such organizations is interesting as a strategy for funding Kibbutz. I think that as a settler in the United States, there’s a lot to learn about what not to do. I think there’s a lot to learn about the pressure on oppressed people to become nationalists and fight for room in the global state system. And to be fair, I do look at the history of colonial America in a similar way. I think about the constitutional convention and such things. The First International I treat with similar interest…

Here’s what I still don’t understand: does Jewish decolonization of themselves lead back to Palestine or doesn’t it? This is where you probably think I’m advocating for the idea of Jews as a nation, but nationalities don’t merely share history, they also share aspirations. So in asking this, I’m not asking about aspirations. I’m asking where in the world would Jews not be considered settlers, based on Jewish history?

there's a fair bit here that i consider pretty vile and feeding into assumptions about what a diaspora is that i reject entirely but what do you call it when some wealthy brooklyn or south african family takes it on themselves to leave the place they were born and go and physically occupy a palestinian family's home under cover of the israeli military and police? what is the name for the system of thought that leads a person to think that's a just or reasonable or sensible thing to do? what is this mysterious aspect of the israeli state project that leads to people doing these things? the decolonization of palestine is the end of the project of its clearance, control and exploitation by a state that has defined itself no other way than that clearance, control and exploitation. i have no idea what you're talking about when you say "jewish decolonization of themselves leading back to palestine," but it stretches belief to think you're not granting the israeli state the essentially jewish identity it craves. you simply are; i think that is a catastrophic error. "settler" in the colonial context does not mean "going to live somewhere" and certainly not being forced to live somewhere. it means seizing land, clearing land, creating a pale, and defending against the consequences of that by seizing and clearing more land indefinitely. if you think "settler" means "living somewhere other than you were born" or i cannot imagine what else than i dont know what to say to you besides revisit your basics

“what do you call it when some wealthy brooklyn or south african family takes it on themselves to leave the place they were born and go and physically occupy a palestinian family's home under cover of the israeli military and police? what is the name for the system of thought that leads a person to think that's a just or reasonable or sensible thing to do? what is this mysterious aspect of the israeli state project that leads to people doing these things?”

You’re shifting the timeline. I didn’t say that Israel wasn’t settler-colonial. I’ve been saying that before 1948, the settler-colonial framework is an oversimplification and sometimes poor replacement for a nationalism framework. Obviously the State of Israel practices settler-colonialism in territories that are recognized by the world as Palestinian. I don’t know what’s in the heads of the people who steal Palestinian homes in the West Bank, but IIRC they’re usually ultra-Orthodox Jews of I don’t know which ethnicity. And there isn’t a contradiction between me saying that Israel uses Zionism to justify this shit and also saying that Zionism from 1882-1948 wasn’t monolithic and wasn’t (always) settler-colonial in attitude; that it is better to understand it as a nationalist movement with potential settler-colonial attitudes than as an inevitably settler-colonial project by European Jews to displace, ethnically cleanse, genocide Arabs in Palestine.

“i have no idea what you're talking about when you say "jewish decolonization of themselves leading back to palestine," but it stretches belief to think you're not granting the israeli state the essentially jewish identity it craves. you simply are; i think that is a catastrophic error.”

Jews have been colonized numerous times throughout history. Part of decolonization is understanding the consequences that colonization has on those who have been colonized. Another part of it is understanding how one participates in colonial systems; how as an American settler, one has privileges derived from a colonial system that the native tribes did not have. How one potentially continues to perpetuate that colonial system in one’s everyday life. A striving to do better with that in mind, which sometimes includes solidarity with indigenous resistance, support for land-back reforms, and such things. So this whole aspect of understanding ones own positionality in relation to colonization is obviously going to result in different self-understanding depending on different positions. I’m asking you, what does it look like when Jews go through such a process of self-reflection? What is your answer? I don’t care if Israel benefits from it or not, you should be able to give me some kind of answer to this if you’re an advocate of decolonization.

“"settler" in the colonial context does not mean "going to live somewhere" and certainly not being forced to live somewhere. it means seizing land, clearing land, creating a pale, and defending against the consequences of that by seizing and clearing more land indefinitely. if you think "settler" means "living somewhere other than you were born" or i cannot imagine what else than i dont know what to say to you besides revisit your basics”

Right. So I’m saying that when you look at the difference between calling Zionists “nationalists” and calling Zionists “settler-colonialists”, the difference can’t be the ethnic cleansing and genocide since both do that, it can’t be state-formation since both do that, it can’t be mere expansionism since both do that, it can’t be ethnic hierarchies since both do that. The most substantial remaining difference between the two frameworks is that nationalists aren’t considered foreigners to the place they do their nation-building whereas settler-colonialists are foreign by definition. Across the Arab world, nationalists built nation-states after the Ottoman Empire. They’re not considered settler-colonial no matter how much sponsorship they had from Western or Soviet powers. The Ba’athists aren’t considered settler-colonial even though they committed ethnic cleansing, they’re considered nationalists.

What makes the State of Israel settler-colonial and pre-state Zionism not - in my opinion - is that under the Ottoman Empire, political administration of territories had nothing to do with the Israel/Palestine map the British introduced later. However, after those borders were defined for Israel and potentially for Palestine, Israel repeatedly violated them with settlements. The problem before 1948 was that the late-Ottoman Empire reformed their system of land property and titles. Before the reforms, there was hardly any private property in land. The titles were often given to large Arab (not Palestinian) landholders that used the land for tenant farming. This property system was adopted by and made worse by the British, who didn’t correct any of the fucked up land registrations. This allowed Zionist organizations an opportunity to buy that land. It also allowed non-Zionists to buy land. The British had colonial interests in Palestine and probably expected the Zionists to be the force to make good on those interests. I think that makes the case for Zionists before `48 potentially settler-colonial, but again I think it’s clear that the Zionists were far more concerned with nationalism than with displacing, cleansing, etc. Palestinian Arabs. And the fact that there was already a Jewish population there (the Old Yishuv) makes the situation more questionable to me as settler-colonialism. At the very least, comparing this to what colonial empires actually did just seems like a lot of pretty big differences.

I’m sorry you find this so vile, but I just don’t see how a process beginning in 1882, orchestrated by a handful of organizations that raised funds via donations from the Jewish world and some wealthy philanthropists, purchasing land not only in Ottoman Palestine but in other places too, and seeking to create their nationalist institutions with that land …how that fucking compares with the VOC, the Conquistidors, the Virginia Company, and so on.

you're holding water for a genocidal project for no reason at all that i can find. historically flawed but on paper legitimate land tranfers, geopolitical handwaving, best intentions of (some, the most reasonable of course) early adopters, ideological diversity and voices in congress who were decent (flawed of course) but tragically overridden to genocidal ends...yes sounds very different and unique and impossibly complicated. the comparison is on full display to everyone right now, albeit executed with different technologies. your "pre-state zionism" is an idealistic delusion that you are snatching out of history to justify a question that serves no one but israel to ask. zionism means the support of the israeli state project as an essentially jewish one and i support my friends and acquaintances who are rightfully thinking about how to distinguish themselves, their faith, their sense of history and their experience of community from that kind of abuse of all of it

Well that’s some buzzword vomit so chunky with deflection that it’s surprising you could barf it all out.

If you don’t want to discuss anything besides the present situation and why it’s morally atrocious then why are you bothering with me? Every anarchist agrees with you about what’s happening right now, including me. I’m sorry I failed to help you understand why people probably think you’re an antisemite. Oh well.

"I’m asking where in the world would Jews not be considered settlers"

this is precisely the point, Cyber Dandy! the fact is that for those on the Left, Jews are troublesome because we consider ourselves to be both universal and tribal, while Leftists can only conceive of "citizens" as unitary. for those on the Right, Jews are troublesome because we consider ourselves attached to specific duties and principles outlined primarily in the Prophets: taking care of "widows and orphans" and those who are less fortunate (remember that the white supremacist in Pittsburgh was fueled by rage at the synagogue being a hub for HIAS). for Christian Europeans, Jews don't belong in Europe; for Christian and Muslim near easterners, Jews don't belong in the near east; for non-Jews just about anywhere, Jews don't belong there either. that's why no matter what its apologists declare, the pro-Palestine (state) slogan "From the River to the Sea..." sounds precisely like total expulsion or extermination.

the fact that zionists took the persistence of Jew-hatred as a given meant that zionism was a kind of inversion of antisemitic assumptions about belonging and Othering. the state-building and colonizing of the zionist mainstream was inevitable given its origins in the matrix of late 19th century European nationalism and colonialism. the ethnic cleansing of Arabs was not inevitable, but became Yishuv policy after WWII, IDF policy during 48, and continues today.

the challenge for anti-zionists is to answer the question: If Jews don't have a right to exist with some kind of political sovereignty in Palestine, where are they supposed to go? I've yet to hear any coherent response to that.

Anarchists and anarchs(many of whom are anti-zionist) don't do political sovereignty due to its inherent statist governmentalist logic. There are also plenty of anti-zionists who are 1-staters who would say that that area should be a respected home for jews as well as christians, muslims and other religions.

Also, everyone should be able to go and live everywhere in the Woody Guthrie sense.

thats because thats a completely bad faith question, especially with whats going on right now

nobody has to hand you a map with directions to a new zion before they can criticize ongoing war crimes

I'm not sure there's a consensus among the Paleswine activist crowd on the place Jews in the Middle-East, but there are some discomforting Venn diagrams in there. Where in a same Palestine demo you'll be having people who want Jews to be erdaicated from the Middle-East, along with others thinking Jews deserve their place, but at the expense of tolerating a Palestinian state. Anything I'm reading from Electronic Intifada is quite a problematic, brutish nationalist cringefest about some non-existent nation's sovereignty having been violated by a European Zionist invasion... I'd like to read what's their opinion of the Nazis and what they did.

Yeah, I love hearing the moronic phrase "historic Palestine," as if there was ever such a thing. It was the Roman ethnic cleansers who named the region "Syria Palestina" after the "Bar Kokhba Revolt" was suppressed. The Romans were so furious that it had taken three years and too many resources to finally end the revolt that they renamed the area after the Philistines, the traditional enemies of the Jews. During the Muslim conquests the area was never referred to as "Palestine," nor did the European crusaders call it that. The Ottomans didn't call it Palestine either. The British revived the name after Churchill changed the boundaries on a map, lopping off the western third of Transjordan, creating the provinces of Palestine and Jordan. The name Palestine was created and revived by European imperialists.

Everything about the palestinian movement is the creation of imperialist powers, but librads still call their national aspirations "decolonialization"

“ Is it some kind of defense of self-determination? If so, to what end? A national homeland with borders? A diasporic settlement without borders? I've reread your comment and it's unclear to me.”

I don’t advocate for national self-determination, period. I think that national consciousness, nationalism, nation-states, etc. are bad. If I thought that the point of life was to repeat the past, then I wouldn’t be an existentialist. For me, the point of life is to use the past creatively, with others, to do something better/different/new. Jews and Palestinian Arabs should be coming together and deciding how to move forward with a more tolerable, if not altogether better solution. That includes those living in diaspora. The past shouldn’t be denied to either group and neither should the future. As anarchists, I think we should be pitching the idea that a “more tolerable, if not altogether better solution” is an anarchist solution: decentralized, freely associated federations, etc. etc. We should be calling for a revolution in Israel/Palestine that overthrows the State, abolishes private property, etc. But a hollow revolution is just as bad as a hollow civic nationalism. The content is just as important as the form, the culture as important as the formal structure and organization of society.

As far as where settlements should happen… that’s a collective decision. I think the most practical answer is that they should happen where you already live, if possible. For Jews that wasn’t possible for a long time. Again, that’s the past. It took the overthrow of two empires (Ottoman and British) to make Israel possible. It will take a lot to make anarchist society possible. So in the mean time, it’s a lot of trial and error compromising with states and their economic policies.

Will a ton of Jews accept a non-Zionist and anarchist project? I don’t know, will any group of people who think of themselves as a nationality? Is anarchism something destined to live in the liminal spaces where the global nation-state system isn’t dominating the shit out of people with nationalist ideologies? I don’t know, lol.

Thank you for posting this communique. Solidarity with all those trying their best to at least do something. Fuck all the armchairs debating their white colonial histories while being complicit (directly and indirectly) in ethnic cleaning and genocide.

About half of the Middle-East and the whole of North Africa with the exception of Egypt has been colonized by Arabs for ages... How is White colonialism such a central problem is beyond me. And I wonder if the Japanese also count as "White"... as they got quite a terrible record of atrocities and violent politics within their imperial conquests and still got quite a fascistic, xenophobic society.

But more importantly, your Palestine is the direct result of White colonialism, not its antagonism. The British were (are still?) quite pedantic, repulsive people, I know. Doesn't take away the historical fact they were behind Jihadism and Pan⁻Arab/Palestinian nationalism. Beforehand, the ponly time when Palestine existed as a political entity was... as a province of the Roman Empire. Pretty sure Ancient Rome were a White Euro empire.

"How is White colonialism such a central problem" Because it's primary objective was genocidal and not assimilation as was the Arab intention.

The arab colonizers were far more succesful their with ethnic cleansing and genocide, but hey, at least they had good intentions!

I mean, what he's demonizing white colonialism for is just another pre-20th century Leviathan historical Tuesday. Genocide and assimilation inform each other.

no, 10.31, thank YOU for the requisite binary reference to people who try to talk to each other and therefore by definition don't do anything else. you even used armchair jargon to make it easy for us.

there is no substantial distinction between third worldist maoism and idpol based anti-imperialism. these alleged anarchists are just parroting maoist talking points without bothering to notice that subaltern nationalism is always about building a (stronger) state. nothing anarchist about that.

Add new comment