[Marxism] Hamas is hoping for an IDF ground operation

[S. Artesian]

No, I don't think it's a fucking game and I sure do know what a death 
grapple is like. You certainly are an expert at avoiding concrete answers to 
concrete questions and waving the bloody shirt in response.

Nobody has argued that the Palestinian people need our approval, but you 
collapse everything, Hamas, nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism into an 
immediate, and permanent identity, with Palestinian people, and then you 
toss in the old shibboleths about " those living in imperial centers," --  
guilty liberalism are the words that spring to my mind-- wrapping the 
package up with the bow of - well, more guilty liberalism.

Nobody is criticizing the Palestinians for not doing more.  Just as nobody 
criticized the victims of Guernica.  But, since now you bring up the Spanish 
Civil War, after you stated my raising it was disingenuous in the extreme--  
if Guernica was only an event at the culmination of a process-- that saw a 
retreat from revolutionary transformation, including removal of the officer 
corps from their commands, radical reorganization of agricultural labor, 
etc.-- IF that, then criticism of the Spanis Popular Front govt. for how 
Guernica could occur MUST be made.

If in fact program and policy of the organizations of an oppressed class, an 
oppressed people have nothing to do with the course of the struggle, asssume 
no responsibility for the course of that struggle-- then, well, then 
uncritical support is all that is required-- of you.  But if that's the 
case, then no programs, actions, policies matter; class has nothing to do 
with anything, and well-- we have more guilty liberalism where all that 
counts is expressing solidarity with those who suffer, and will continue to 
suffer since there is no program, policy, action, organization that can 
produce anything that matters.  That's some solidarity.

I said "disposable labor supply."  That's what the Palestinians were to the 
Israelis-- disposable.

I also said "defend all Palestinians"  but that, of course, doesn't matter, 
because it doesn't come with just the right amount of, well, guilty 
liberalism.

Certainly we draw people with our practice-- that's what defend all 
Palestinians means-- that's what opposition to two-states, and support of 
the right of return means.

Bearing moral witness against barbarism is a noble gesture.  But there are 
those in imperial centers, non-imperial centers, imperial peripheries, 
non-imperial peripheries, with keyboards and armchairs, without keyboard and 
armchairs, who think there is, must be, a way to overthrow the terms of 
barbarism rather than just witness them.

Always a pleasure, never a chore.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Jscotlive at aol.com>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2009 5:34 PM
Subject: [Marxism] Hamas is hoping for an IDF ground operation