TOTW: Free Palestine

Of the many causes I embraced as a young activist, solidarity with Palestinians fighting Israel is one of the few that’s stuck with me over the years. I went to the West Bank, I stood in the tear gas and helped report about the brutality, home demolitions, checkpoints, the whole deal, but what was painfully clear both in the moment and when I got home was that I felt powerless to stop it.

Unrelenting years later, there are bombs falling in Gaza again, complemented by lynchings and mass arrests in the rest of Palestine. We have no party to validate our support among Palestinians, we seek no revolutionary movement to get behind, we don’t dupe ourselves that the majority of Palestinians would embrace our politics, and yet bombs are falling, and Palestinians are being tortured and fighting against that torture.

If we can’t sate ourselves with marches and writing to government officials, if most of us can’t make it into Palestine ourselves, what can we do? History suggests airplane hijackings and embassy occupations aren’t gonna cut it. So what’s left? Find allies in the struggle and do what we can together? Say fuck it and let the liberals handle it? Say fuck it and kidnap an ambassador anyway? “Do the work” of grinding years of engaging our loved ones and neighbors to try and shift people’s views on what’s going in an attempt to undermine support for the Zionist project?

What can we do?

There are 58 Comments

that Colonial Pipeline hack sets a good precedent of a big action with a big impact (and think of what they can do next with the money they got) but few people can pull that off. will 2021 the big year of randos hacking armies? during Myanmar's coup they have cut out most of the internet there in some areas. what if someone cut out Israel's internet? there's so many things going on around the world and activists can't make a dent in any single issue. you got western volunteers taking bullets for Rojava, maybe a similar marketing ploy will get a small crew of international philanthropic mercenaries.

" during Myanmar's coup they have cut out most of the internet there in some areas. what if someone cut out Israel's internet?"

Because you are an idiot!

Outside of your cave, this what dictatorships have always done during coups. They cut down communications so to block dissenters from communicating and sharing infos.

Cutting down the internet in Israel could perhaps be a tactic if the goal of Hamas was to really fight Israel. That is not their goal. This is why they thrown stupid missiles at civilian targets instead, so to test the Iron Dome system and give Bibi a reason to bombombomb the West Bank once again.

Middle-East Insurgencies 101, follow the class offered by the CIA in top universities.

"that Colonial Pipeline hack sets a good precedent of a big action with a big impact..."

you think that because you don't understand what happened with CP. It was not an internet attack: someone uploaded the ransomware within the network.

All companies with sensitive information or infrastructure do not connect to the internet. You can't use a single virus to destroy the whole internet, because the internet is dependent on a lot of different types of hardware. I see neo-liberalism as a formidable opponent because there's just crazy infrastructure everywheres d00d.

You speak as if it's important to to destroy Isreal's internet, as opposed to --- THE WORLD WIDE WEB! Bombs are typically not computer operated. But hey! You could sneak into to Isreal's parliament and place a time bomb under netanyahu's chair outside of office hours.

It is possible to fuck with infrastructure using ransomware and viruses. You remember stuxnet? The NSA programmed a virus suited for a certain controller which made its way into an Iranian nuclear power facility.

I'm still sad that my fellow german countrymen are seen as the ultimate authoritarians...i'll take care of THE PEOPLE'S SPOOK after i finish my slander lawsuit against Alexander Reed Ross! We'll see who the real agent is....

....COMRADE!

Towards the destruction of the german ideology!!!! DIE!!!!

....Wait, wait wait...sorry, i guess that sounded a little to violent. I'll settle for a duel in order to defend my --

my honor.

This is kinda an individual issue: clearly Israeli nationalists are being huge hypocrites, and acting like nazis.

I think it's fine if people want to keep learning about the situation without actually getting involved, that way if this conflict comes knocking on your door then it becomes easier to respond.

I feel like the us has completely failed in this regard, no word play here...the politicians have been pretty bad actors.

"History suggests airplane hijackings and embassy occupations aren’t gonna cut it."

Okay... so the plane hijackings weren't only full deadly violence imposed on random people (of a level that ITS didn't even come close to) but in the case of PFLP, HIzbullah and other militant groups was literally antisemite violence as it targeted Jewish passengers, or planes carrying a good number of Jews.

So sorry it didn't work as much as you would have liked, so to bring your ethnically-determined Nation-State of Adolf Hitler lovers.

“Do the work” of grinding years of engaging our loved ones and neighbors to try and shift people’s views on what’s going in an attempt to undermine support for the Zionist project?"

what would even make me think that the zionist project relies on the support of normal people at all? it's a military project: exists and perpetuates itself through extreme use of force, as we can clearly see.

BDS has been around for a very long time and is probably one of the better case studies in the limits of the "moralsuasion" type of liberal and lefty politics. finger wagging, "awareness raising" and relatively effective economic boycotts that still don't change much.

I could agree with the last part, tho you left aside the huge problem of how this is a single-issue struggle that also helped giving credibility and social capital to extremist regressive groups within Muslim milieus, and avoiding any deep criticism of what Muslim-led regimes like the Saudi, Iranian and Turkish regimes have been doing... Like while BDS was busy, the people of Yemen were being slaughtered and the Kurds were bombed.

I didn't "leave it aside", I'm just not writing a whole book today? I was already rejecting their politics wholesale.

Anarchists should challenge nationalism while maintaining at least verbal solidarity with Jews and Palestinian Arabs. But to do this, anarchists also need to examine the multiple forms of nationalism involved in the Arab World at large and Palestine throughout its late-Ottoman Empire history up until today. We shouldn’t accept any nationalist frameworks; not the Zionist frameworks, not the PLO and the Arab League’s, not Fatah nor Hamas. What should anarchists say the slogan “Free Palestine” means? Does it mean the liberation of the State of Palestine from de facto Israeli control? Or does it mean the liberation of Palestine as a region from nationalist interests near and far? Can we imagine a free Palestine, as in an anarchist Palestine?

Stop trying to assimilate and incorporate every struggle into your anarcho-narrative machinery. It’s not about you.

For fuck sake. Fatah is part of the Socialist International. The situation in Palestine is far from a local, indigenous struggle. There are anarchists in Palestine. I guess erasing your comrades there is cool because... Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood represents the Palestinian people more? What is your angle? Are you just more comfortable with a noble savage narrative for Palestinian Arabs?

Yes bro totally. Palestine is like 97% left anarchists dontcha know?.

The struggle is broadly anti colonial and religious.

Irks me when people project their secular humanist politics onto people they’ve never met.

I don’t understand why anarchists are so fucking dense on this issue. Read the membership list of the PLO. See anything that stands out? The fact that many of the members are secular humanist in orientation certainly stands out to me. And that includes the largest member, Fatah. But for some reason, you think it’s ok to assume that Palestinians can’t also create secular political organizations even though they’re religious? Get the fuck out of here with that condescending bullshit. There are anarchists, socialists, communists, social democrats, liberals, jihadists, and all sorts of other political groups among Palestinians.

You are irked by your own projections.

"Palestine is like 97% left anarchists dontcha know?"

Unless that was some bad sarcasm, no, I didn't. The dominant political groups in Palestine are at least as regressive and authoritarian as your grand daddy.

It's true that we shouldn't impose "shoulds" on everyone, but yes fuck nationalism. Many people in the us dont even give a shit llest they be trumpites, but the nationalist framework is just creep and people comply to it anyway: "we can't have open boarders", who says? I can't figure out any better solution than no boarders.

I hope you're not talking about skateborders because I have an affinity with the skaters of Gaza. I feel sorry for any normal people who become collateral damage in a conflict zone especially skateborders. I agree that they should no comply though. Go to the beach it might be safer there.

Skate Culture in Gaza
https://youtu.be/ZamReWh5TDs

There's a hip-hop and vogueing culture in Alestine also dude.

We really are in an interregnum between paradigms. You have ethnic nationalists and religious fanatics sharing space with progressives and radicals. I wish we could fast forward to a time when these antagonisms are resolved.

In the view of PFLP and Fatah, "liberation of Palestine" always meant the same, I think. It's throwing all the Jews into the sea and retaking the entirety of the land now known as Israel. Hamas wants a smaller Palestine that is autonomous from Israel yet as a Nation-State.

Nothing of what these parties want (on either side of the conflict) is supportable from an anarchist perspective. The more interesting stuff going on in there was non-political, like the rave subculture and queer movement (repressed by the Palestinian police, btw).

Of course there is no anarchist outcome from a nationalist conflict. but that doesn't mean an anarchist can't have solidarity with people that have been subjected to aparteid by the most hypocritical nation-state in history. It might not even be an anarchist project (oh no, the dogmatics growl), but show me one anarchist that has only ever acted anarchistically. Support what you feel like supporting and stop imposing your moral purism on others.

Yes, anarchists can and should have solidarity with people and it is clearly in an anarchists interest to oppose nation-states in their most authoritarian forms as well as in their least. But there is no reason to be aggressively ignorant about the ideological and political formations that are at play in any given conflict, especially if you plan to provide material or ideological aid to groups espousing said ideological and political formations. It seems many English-speaking anarchists don’t want to investigate beyond some vague humanistic feeling for oppressed people. There are numerous groups that are members of the PLO alone and numerous others beyond the PLO. There is a real question of choosing which ones to show solidarity with, if you are going to move beyond said vague humanistic feeling. Stop pretending like supporting nationalists is the only option. It isn’t. Anarchists Against the Wall were visible for a long time and I assume are still organizing in some capacity. Support your comrades in Palestine! Not their political enemies. If you can understand why Zionism is hypocritical, then you can understand why Arab nationalism can be hypocritical as well.

" If you can understand why Zionism is hypocritical, then you can understand why Arab nationalism can be hypocritical as well."

duh! all nationalism is anti-freedom. but why do you think i don't understand arab nationalism?

I’m not really sure if either of us are really talking to each other here.

Cheers!

I am sure you can see from even a quick glance at this list that there are some distinctions worth noting when it comes to anarchist support for a “Free Palestine”:

Present members include
Fatah – largest faction, secular, left-wing nationalist.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – second largest, radical left militant and communist
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – third largest, communist
Palestinian People's Party (PPP) – socialist[100]
Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF, Abu Abbas faction) – minor left-wing faction
Arab Liberation Front (ALF) – minor faction, aligned to the Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party
As-Sa'iqa – Syrian-controlled Ba'athist faction
Palestinian Democratic Union (Fida) – minor democratic socialist, two-state solution, non militant faction
Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF, Samir Ghawsha faction) – minor socialist faction
Palestinian Arab Front (PAF) – minor pro-Fatah, former Iraqi Ba'athist faction
Former member groups of the PLO include

Use a little bit of critical support pleaaassseee

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organization

Do you think this is some kind of fucking joke? Does a hurricane use critical support?

Agreed, the main structure of Palestinian Weltansschauung was fashioned during the Cold War and was heavily funded and armed with Soviet propaganda, anti-colonialist rhetoric and communist violence.

You're bad at history. The Nazi and Post-War Nazi collaboration with the Palestinian nationalists has lasted 'til the '80s. Skorzeny was behind the formation of the PFLP, and there's literally a founder of the Al Taqwa Bank who was a known Neonazi figure and a pro-Islamist. If there is such a thing as a "Red-Brown Alliance", Palestine is the place where it got very real.

as an anarchist, yes I don't support any state, but I am not Palestinian and I do not live in that land, I also do not support forcing any "solution"

one thing that pisses me off about international anarchists, especially those that live in the United States, is they would rather hold useless marches and protests about everyone else except for the colonized people that they continue to benefit from themselves.

Thing: if you want to help someone, then do it.

I guess the major problem for anarchists in rich countries is how to better be a capitalist.

Yes, Solidarity is just another empty slogan that anarchists use with nothing behind it. marches, protests, solidarity. it looks good on camera, it makes you feel like you are the furthest left, the most progressive

do something when no one is looking, when the cameras are off when you don't get social media credibility

That was one hell of a flame bait to have a TOTW bluntly positioning for another Nation-State (and one that is ethnically-determined), asking anarchists what we could do in order to oppose the made-up antagonist known as "ZIONISM". The criticism thrown at Rojava was legit, so why "Palestine" doesn't get the same treatment?

Jews?

"Islam is the religion of the oppressed"?

Like some other commenter asked above (and I know that the Lefty politician who posted this thread is not going to answer, but I'll ask again regardless), what is the meaning of "free Palestine" behind the slogan?

I look at the entirety of the Palestinian movement's political groups, and it's always one or another version of a State-building, may it be in accord with the 1967 map with Hamas, or with the complete overthrow of Israel and chasing of Jews into the sea.

Groups like PFLP an Fatah have committed acts of terror against Jews worldwide, not just against the State of Israel. They've been attacking civilians, in synagogues and on airliners. These insuirgent groups are celebrated as freedom fighters by the BDS idiots in Western countries. There's literally posters of Layla Khaled and other Palestinian insurgent imagery at the BDS affiliated group at a university I know.

I don't care how these groups are supposedly "socialist" or "communist", even if that's true. They're for a notion of State power, they are for having a police and for going after the marginals and those they consider criminal. They are Red fascists, regardless of their support for actual historical fascists like the Nazis.

"What can we do?"

FUCK OFF from this site. lol

the world of both jews and independent women. It's very disturbing. In a lot of the refugee camps there are females who have these horror stories of how ISIS constantly rapes women who are being held captive by them.

Maybe we should revert to Islamic law about how the wives are an un-assailable property of their husbands.

LOL. JUST FUCKING KIDDING.

"for a notion of state power" is pretty different from currently using a massive military apparatus to enforce brutal apartheid and/or genocide, don't you think? are we not bothering with nuance today?

I mean, I agree with you that anarchists should never let that stuff slip their minds but lots of indigenous sovereignty struggles carry these same contradictions.

I prefer to focus on local stuff just because I find "solidarity" becomes more meaningless, the more abstract it is.

The US empire's violent policies neither stand as justification for groups like Daesh, even less to support them. In Palestine they are actually giving more justification for Bibi's regime than anything else. Kinda like when they *cough* fucking *cough* shoot missiles at civilian targets *cough* fucking knowing how counter-effective that is...

You know like playing the other bad guy's bogeymen, so the other bad guy's got a good reason to bomb the hell out of your neighborhood. Binaries are shit 'til they become profitable to some people. And then some morons in the West think we should benevolently fight within these.

This is called "instrumentalization". And it's literally what the text of this TOTW is doing. Which is the reason why I'd like Thecollective to remove this authoritarian dog shit.

Anarchists are many different things, but surely not meant to be the volunteer (or paid?) black ops of any statist political faction. Black bloc, perhaps, but even the BB ain't anarchist by default.

are you even trying to have a discussion? cuz it's weird to open with an insult if you're trying to have a discussion.

maybe you're just a super abrasive person? :)

however i don't think anybody on this site is really taking this seriously, i think this traumatized person who was trying to help the Palestinians in vain is asking us what should we do, and then we just keep talking about getting rid all of these combative groups.

Leftists: islamic fundamentalists are not revolutionary heroes, they're not socialists, they're not communists. The isreali state is not a peace fighter de-escalating a bad situation:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/israel-palestine-conflict-wh...

Lumpy was pointing this out, however, the BDS are not doing anything except moving money around for local businesses in a totally counter-productive manner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions#Economic

Face it: Isreal is not africa! The comparisons are bogus: nobody appears to be helping the oppressed except maybe some peaceful muslims that are being extremely marginalized right now.

TAOISM! BE LIKE WATER! PEACE! DON'T ACT ON THE WORLD STAGE! THE ACTIVIST FREEDOM FIGHTERS ARE TEARING US APART!

IF I was delusional enough to convince myself that my opinions matter at all, about any of this, then it's a simple matter of doing some basic math about military capacity and figuring out who's the one punching down. that would at least be a grounded perspective that I could reconcile with anarchist thinking. anything else would be pretty vile imo.

Dear 09:14,

Usually when quotation marks are used like in your outburst, "Islam is the religion of the oppressed" it refers to something that a previous person said. Putting quotes around ridiculous things you pull out of your sad little brain to make a sad little point on a website filled with people who disagree with you and think you're a sad little troll is not what quotation marks are for.

Take your meds and go back to the chans, son.

Hey look, everybody! The zionist internet damage control bootlickers have arrived! Yummy state sponsored outreach to defend their apartheid state atrocities! Surely it will work on our beloved anews!

concerned anarchos support victims of state (or proto state) violence, and oppose those who benefit from state (or proto-state ) violence.

anarchos have the most difficult task here: campaingn against accumulated hate among victims of state (or proto state) violence in bopth sides. This is the first step, as we don't want people's relationships mediated or ruled by the economy, by the state or bby the military forces of any kind.

In any case, i can agree that Israel state is currently the biggest violator of natural order in the territories where it has the monopoly of force. This does not mean Hamas or Fatah (or whatever politicla movements that pretend to represent palestinian people) are against violation of this natural order. Totally the opposite, if they succeed, they would become the same as the current Israel state, on what concerns the spontaneous order....

So, let's not side with any of these movements, nor supporting their flags. Lets side with common people, with the victims of political violence and propaganda (be it the state or a proto-state movement)

Anarchist need to be thoroughly ultra to post-left on the Palestine issue as far as I'm concerned. Anything less then this is preferential nationalism and statism something that has plagued radical thought since the Turd international. Anti-Israel should NOT mean Pro-Palestine.

The only concrete libertarian solution I see is a radical multi-regional solution that is not shaped by geopolitical heavyweights.

My best answer to “what can we do?” is one that I’m not entirely comfortable with, but it’s the only one I have for the question “what can I do?”, expanded to include others I see as like-me. It’s basically - challenge, rebel in the face of and seek to undermine abusive, repressive and totalitarianism narratives and apparatus where I am, to intensify anarchy here and allow for the intensification of anarchy to spread psycho-geographically. It’s not a means or a design for a means of saving Palestinians, but I believe that challenges to the machine “here” creates problems for the machine “there”. How this happens would differ between individuals and geographies, and would likely include conversations about Palestine (at the very least), while not necessarily being directly about the situation in a linear sense.

So... do anarchy where you are and hopefully it will spread to where you are not? Maybe a magazine called: Inspire! No wait.

Plop plop clip clop
I’m a pooping horse!

If you really want to apply a general broad definition of "anarchist" one could say that they were around during the Neanderthal / Sapien convergence couldn't one huh?!

Look my other response to you was apparently lacking the substance the collective expects from its peanut gallery, so I will spell it out plainly. You obviously didn’t read this essay or look into the author’s other work on anarchism in this period and region because the definition of anarchism the author is using isn’t what you are implying. It isn’t some essay that is just saying “oh look here is anarchism but it wasn’t called that.” No. This essay is about the influence of pretty well established anarchists in name and in substance. If you prefer video that covers similar content by this author, here: https://www.academia.edu/29783516/Anarchy_in_the_Empire_Levantines_and_M...

Long story short I think you are doing a genuine disservice by trying to dismiss this research. That’s sort of like calling you an asshole, but it’s nicer.

Do you think it’s a disservice that hurricanes don’t read essays? On the Delta research will not save your ass, motherfucker!

A question to ask is where will the radical adjacent minority come from in a world societal technological cybernetic age? The lower level of anarchism/anarchy that followed this one mostly cucked itself to preferential nationalist struggles the notable exceptions being the anarchist/anarchy stuff that came out of the ultra to post-left pipeline. Outside of that the 'silver age' of anarchism isn't even worth a medal in comparison to its golden age counterpart. Anti-repressive existence is nice and all but anarchy needs to be more then this. Part of the problem of course is that anarchism fell apart as a living dialect during the inner wars period. It still hasn't entirely recovered.

On the one hand, nationalism is an awful ideology, and segues into racism pretty easily. The idea of the nation is built on alienation from the body and nature, and dominance of the "higher" over the "lower". On the other hand, people oppressed because of their "race", "nationality" and so on will rally to nationalism pretty easily. People subjected to other people's nationalisms are oppressed, that's why nationalism's shit. And struggles agains oppression are a good thing, even when their politics aren't perfect. The ISM stuff IMO was completely justified, standing up to state violence in a way which literally saved lives.

The public opinion research on the conflict suggests that most Israelis are in favour of peace, but unwilling to support the concessions it would require; a majority think the Palestinians want to kill them all or drive them out of Palestine. Similar research on the Palestinian side shows most Palestinians do not want to do this, but they similarly expect (with more reason IMO) that the Israelis want to wipe them out or drive them out. I don't believe there's an equivalence, even though the blockages are similar on each side. Because of these perceptions, Israel has been pushing a narrative that siding with the Palestinians is anti-Semitic, and I've met people in the activist milieu who have fallen for this. It's no reason not to support Palestine, but I do think some Jewish people have legitimate worries about eventual Palestinian or Arab state victory and about backlash against Jews elsewhere. Anarchists need to be clear that we aren't in favour of ethnically cleansing Jews or carrying out a second Holocaust. But ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is a current, pressing issue. Kinda like how idpol-trained pigs murdering random white people would be bad in principle, but fascistically-trained pigs murdering random black people is a current, pressing issue.

We potentially have our own solution to propose (not just in Palestine). Every community has its own bolos, people decide if they're mixed or separate, but they all get equal land, or enough that they're self-sufficient. Disband the armies, each bolo has its own self-defence capacity. Grassroots peacebuilding/conflict resolution to redress grievances. Immigrants welcome, and nobody ethnically cleanses anybody else. Aim for a balance of forces in alliances among individual communities such as to make it difficult for a militarily dominant coalition to emerge. Practically, this means we're for Palestinians resisting occupation, villagers fighting house demolitions etc. We're not for nation-states, nationalism, ethnically cleansing Jews or anyone else, or attacks targeting civilians/non-oppressors. Doesn't mean we have to buy into the counterinsurgency duty to condemn either; of course people who respond unjustly to unjust oppressions are not monsters and should not be punished or demonised, at most they are POWs, and the spirit of insurgence against oppression is a great good even when it is misdirected. (Same general principle applies to global Islamists, school shooters and even some fascists IMO). In animist cosmology, justice is the restoration of cosmic balance; this happens when the initial imbalance is redressed, not when each of the knock-on aggressions is counterbalanced with equal or greater sadism. Sometimes this means siding with the oppressed, sometimes it means building a new harmony that didn't exist before.

Sadly most nationalist/religious/ethnic conflicts involve a certain amount of fascistic rhetoric on all sides. But in the series of nationalist/religious/ethnic conflicts, Palestine is anomalous because the west still sides so heavily with Israel. Elsewhere the western states and bodies like the UN have encouraged a standard pacted peace model. This normally involves power-sharing and federalism: each community de facto self-governs "its" areas, armed groups are integrated into "security services" which are reconstructed with ethnic parity (or turn into political parties), central power is so arranged that groups have to share it, ex-combatants are demobilised and some attempts made to rehabilitate them, then everyone's meant to get on with neoliberal money-making - intractable issues like the Irish border or the right to secede are put on the backburner. You'll find variants of this in Lebanon, Rwanda, Burundi, Bosnia, Kosovo, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, etc. Of course, a statist solution never brings peace and justice; in these cases the fly in the ointment is usually that neoliberalism doesn't create enough stable livelihoods for the disaffected youths. Either they start/join new insurgencies or turn to violent crime which needs a similar skill-set. Also, the last thing we want is a "neutral" police force acting on behalf of a cross-ethnic elite, doing to everyone what before was only done to outgroups. Anarchist SSR: police and army abolition, dispersed self-defence; anarchist DDR: land reform/occupation plus worthwhile lives for everyone - including the kinds of joy that aren't available in an army.

Another section of blindness the Leftist, English-speaking discourse around Palestinians seems to have is a blindness to the status of Palestinian refugees in Arab countries, especially Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Anarchist analysis would be powerful in supporting Palestinian struggles outside of Israeli occupied territories.

In general, I think Israel-Palestine is actually a region where an anarchist, anti-nationalist analysis is extremely powerful in sorting out the difference between support for nationalist political entities (Zionist, Hamas, etc.) and the people who are brutalized by their wars against each other. We anarchists should remember that when nationalists go to war with each other, civilian casualties pile up... and for what, for who? For whose dreams? For what power hungry fucking bastards that want to control ever more land for their sick fantasies?

In this case -that I agree with- the enemy to fight wouldn't be "ZIONISM!" or "Islamo-fascist terrorism", but simple the conflict as a whole, as the situation entirely created by nationalists on both sides. People have ways to avoid/ignore/counter the indoctrination and polarization, as it is rare that people cannot escape these territorializations.

Poor people in the Middle-East and Africa have been radicalized and made into violent insurgents by what amounts to be mafias. I got experience of knowing a young dude in Greece who's been into one of the insurgent groups of Syria. He was recruited as a young child and shown how to kill at early age, but a wealthy family. He was airlifted from the Lybian "insurrection" against Ghaddafi to the conflict in Syria. I'm pretty sure it's the same deal with Hamas, Hizbullah and PFLP. People who fell prey of awful hierarchies, basically. The guy was still being harassed by this family while living in Greece.

This is why I can't go with the "anti-imperialism" takeaway snack anymore. An opposition group or even movement ain't legit just by opposing the bigger badder guys, and they might end up just being players for the latter.

Anarchist could use some more criticism against those ideological binaries, as they are toxic and often paper-thin covers for nasty shit going on underneath.

anarchists still should not support small hierarchies just because they're fighting the big hierarchies. This is one of the thing that's wierd about noam chomsky, he praised hugo chavez because he was a "socialist"...the thing i like about anarchism is that anarchists see all forms of governance as a potential failure.

Well, apparently israel/palestine stopped bombing each other *rolls eyes*...we'll see how long this one lasts. It's sad that the israeli military and hamas/hezbollah/whatever have been fighting each other my whole life over the same stupid thing.

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