theacharnian comments on When lunatics start talking about expelling all Israelis 'Back to Europe' instead of integrating them in a one-state solution

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

Nothing is "viable" if you just extrapolate the present, except I guess genocide.

To take a step back, moral ambition and political courage are necessary. If Ireland could reach a Good Friday Agreement, if South Africa could overcome apartheid, so can Palestine/Israel.

A plurinational democratic state with equal rights for all, with a truth and reconciliation process, and with strong international support is the only way the middle east can ever reach peace.

And if we are putting on big boy pants and imagining a better world, why not envision the Mediterranean Union becoming a force for democratization and stabilization allowing the free movement of people throughout the region.

When realism is dystopian, fuck realism and pick utopia. Otherwise, why even live?

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[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Yes but for as brutal as South Africa could be they weren't in the throes of active genocide. The overwhelming majority of their people weren't okay with the extermination of entire races. Or at least they didn't say so out loud, proudly. Expecting them to live in harmony with the people whose blood they are braying for seems foolhardy to me. Expecting those whose children have been murdered in mass in front of them to just politely join hands with the people who celebrated the murder of their children with Glee seems again, foolhardy.

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[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago*

I'm not expecting harmony immediately, I'm advocating for a political project with outside pressure to get to it eventually. Israelis like to talk about deradicalization of the Palestinians, but Israeli society itself needs to be deradicalized.

There is nothing cosmically exceptional about this conflict compared to other conflicts. If Bosnia and Herzegovina can be a society for Bosniak, Serbs and Croats and if Rwanda can find reconciliation after a genocide, so can Palestinians and Israelis.

This: "Why Rwanda is held up as a model for reconciliation, 26 years after genocide" | CBC Radio https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/why-rwanda-is-held-up-as-a-model-for-reconciliation-26-years-after-genocide-1.5842139

If we can't imagine this horizon and if we don't have the courage to work for it, what are we even doing? If all we can imagine is death and hatred, we are creating a self fulfilling prophecy and precluding ever going beyond it. We need moral courage and ambition, that's all I'm saying.

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