Moved this here because I watched the rest of the video and he gets shitty at the end.
How do we get people like Norm to stop being credulous about flawed science and fucking bigotry.
His larger point with the video is more interesting but it gets lost in anti-trans shit at the end
while we’re criticising Norm it’s worth noting he is also a zionist, he does not seriously question Israel’s right to exist and still advocates for the so-called 2 state solution iirc?
I believe his stated position is closer to “we are not in a place where getting rid of israel entirely is remotely feasible and I don’t talk in hypotheticals” and that was like 10 years ago, idk if he’s addressed it head on recently. Now, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t advocate for the long dead 2 state solution or that he’s not wrong here, I think he is, but just adding a little more detail. He leans a bit heavily on international law in a way that I don’t think recognizes just how weak international law is.
He addressed it pretty head on in another interview. His thinking is, he’s an academic who is trying to study and explain exactly what international law says should happen, and what the law says is that Israel is a legitimate state, but it also says that all the actions that Israel is engaged in constitute a genocide and should therefore be sanctioned. This is his main disagreement with BDS, where he claims that BDS wishes to simultaneously condemn Israel on a legal basis, yet also go against international law by claiming that Israel is an illegitimate state.
Obviously this line of thinking is very problematic and assumes that international law is 1. correct and 2. static. People have the right to say that the international law isn’t working and was established on an unjust premise of justifying the creation of an ethnostate because of the Holocaust. That doesn’t mean that it becomes hypocritical to use the same international law to criticize the Zionist project’s illegal actions, it just means that there are multiple dimensions (moral and legal) to the transgressions of the Zionist entity. I think Norm understands this point to some extent and limiting his scope to always siding with the law is more just a way to stay grounded and always having an undeniable basis for his arguments, even if they’re not fully there morally.
This is a much better explanation than I could have given, thank you comrade
As long as the Palestinian parties are for the 2 state solution, we should likely be for it. Unless we have parties with clear positions and strategies for how to use support for something else to their benefit, I see no reason to publically disagree with them. Of course I think the correct moral position is 1 Palestine from the river to the sea, but being morally correct and being effective in assisting a real struggle sometimes are different.
yeah, i understand pure anti-zionism, no israel is kinda simultaneously a quixotic and utopian position. what you said is fair. but i don’t think it’s wrong to identify 2 state solution as essentially, technically zionist.
This. Palestinian parties accept it because Israel has made itself too powerful to destroy entirely, not because the conquest of 48 was more legitimate than the conquest of 67. They have to be politically realistic while we here can recognize that any Israel at all is an affront to the people who lived there before
What does your “recognition” do? I’m talking about meaningful positions. Is that a party which is taking actions working with Palestinian parties and a cooperative strategy which includes having a different position on this? It could be, and I’d find that super cool and interesting. Otherwise, my point is just that anarchic calls or recognitions aren’t as useful as just repeating exactly what Palestinian Liberation groups are saying. It has no extra positive effect except to make us feel good.
I’m an individual, my personal thoughts are meaningless, as is my position on the bear site. I could post resistance positions verbatim and it wouldn’t have an extra positive effect. I’m simply saying that just because the resistance accepts Israel’s existence doesn’t mean that I have to
It’s zionist as a concept in a vacuum for sure. But as a strategy on the path towards liberation, the step transforms into an anti-zionist position. We’re agreeing here for the most part, I believe, but I want to encourage people to see the process as part of the concept itself, not as something totally separate. So 2-staters who do it to preserve Israel are of course wrong and terrible. 2-staters who are supporting palestinians sovereignty and their own path to complete liberation are not at all zionist due to that position. I’ve never read Finkelstein, and so going off of only some videos, I would place him in the 2nd category more than the first. Though I think he is blind to how struggles interrelate and such, of course, because of all his other positions.