Add new comment

It's terrible that Palestinians are subject to the fighting of all these nationalist groups. But it is also incredibly naive to believe that the grassroots, anti-nationalist struggles by anarchists and apolitical street fighters in the region compare at all with the massive, massive organizational forces fighting over the territory. Without being honest about the forces anarchist struggle is up against in Israel-Palestine, then we can easily throw our voices behind organizations that have in the past and now currently co-opt grassroots resistance for nationalist causes. Is that something we want to be contributing to?

I think we anarchists can be better than repeating the narratives of the lesser-of-two nationalist evils. We can construct our own narrative about what it means to us, as anarchists, to oppose nationalism and nation-states. We can highlight how nationalism creates war. Proudhon already was making this criticism of nationalism and its consequences when nationalism was just barely becoming a popular ideology in Europe. Anarchists have been involved in the region before the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Let's build off all of that anarchist struggle from our collective anarchist past.