Thinking about terrorism
JVL Introduction
Peter Beinart tackles head-on the important issue of terrorism and how it is used to justify oppression.
There are, he says, humane and inhumane ways to resist tyranny. The methods of resistance matter. But inhumane resistance doesn’t justify tyranny.
When it comes to Uyghurs in Xinjiang or Catholics in Northern Ireland or Black South Africans under apartheid or even Black Americans in the 1960s, most people will recognise that understanding violent resistance – relating it to the state oppression that fuels it – is not the same as justifying it.
“ [A]n honest moral accounting,” says Beinart, “ requires viewing inhumane resistance as connected to, not separate from, the inhumanity of state oppression.”
But not it would seem in the case of Israel-Palestine, where any instance of Hamas terrorism is used to dismiss the entire struggle of the Palestinian people.
This article was originally published by The Beinart Notebook on Mon 29 Nov 2021. Read the original here.
Visible and invisible violence
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For over 50 years there was systematic discrimination against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland. British governments of all political complexions knew full well what was going on but did nothing.
It was only when the Provisional IRA started using violence that anyone took notice and eventually we got the Good Friday agreement. Same story with the Palestinian Intifada.
I personally hate violence and I would have made a hopeless soldier (or terrorist) but the lesson of history over and over again is that violence gets results, peaceful protest doesn’t.
The uncomfortable truth is that Israeli Jews will only vote for an equitable peace with the Palestinians when life becomes uncomfortable. I truly wish it was otherwise.
But was Eliyahu Kay a civilian, Peter? In 2017-8, he volunteered as an IDF paratrooper, where he participated in missions over Gaza, killing an indeterminate number of Palestinian civilians. According, to Ha’Aretz, he lived in (Occupied) Jerusalem, and was therefore a settler. So far, there is no reason to think he did not end up in the reserves, again as a volunteer for the apartheid state he so dearly loved.
UN Resolution 37/43 (December 3, 1982) “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” In any event, it is absurd to pontificate to the oppressed about their bad manners when fighting for their freedom. Ever notice the pontificators are usually white?
The personal characteristics of individuals can incline them towards the actions they choose. Thus the angry pacifist …
White is a skin colour & nothing to be ashamed of. Being proud to be Black? An accident of birth, your skin colour has nothing to do with shame or pride, unless you are looking for a race war. Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream.
I thought this was an extremely poor, muddled, liberal piece of writing and not something I would associate with JVL at all. I’m not sure that Jews such as Joe Slovo, Andrew Feinstein et al would want to be associated with such facile remarks about the SACP, nor indeed with the anti-communist, CIA inspired campaign against the PRC centered around the so-called World Uyghuir Congress, a CIA/NED front if ever there was one.
As for Northern Ireland, it is really better to speak not of that about which you know less than nothing. “Protestants” did not subjugate “Catholics” – unless your reading of history is entirely Manichean, which this writer’s is in spades.
As for “soviet invasion of Afghanistan” – don’t get me started. This sort of drivel could only emanate from someone on the Clinton wing of the US Democrats.
I expect better of JVL.
A good point Sheldon, “all who take the sword will perish by the sword”.
I’m generally very sympathetic with the tone and content of this piece, maybe the choice of Eliyahu Kay as an example rather ironically emphasises the underlying message.