I’m kind of surprised the headline makes it clear that the pro-Palestinian side was the one being attacked.
1 Like
Now I’m confused. Surely “white” and “brown” are inherently skin-tone related, there has to be a less confusing way of making the point.
Israeli Jews are quite mixed. Lots of Jews from countries like Iraq and some from Africa and there is discrimination and conflict within those group. An Israeli whose ancestry all came from Western Europe before WW2, one whose ancestors were Eastern European Holocaust refugees, one whose ancestors are from Yemen, and then the many many who are a mix of those things may all have different feelings about being called white both in terms of skin color and any privilege or discrimination their ancestors experience or they continue to experience now in Israeli society.
Skin-tone-related, but not solely about skin tone.
You are just missing information about who actually lives in Israel as oppose to who you think does. Which was my original point and you seem to also think all israelis/jews look and come from a certain background.
Also i think you might be not totally well educated in the history of the conflict as you could be.
Your point about what opression means is pretty obvious unless youre speaking to a bunch of republicans or something.
I agree. Which is why I wouldn’t use those terms myself, because it runs into this problem.
The point I’m making is that there those who do use those terms are referencing a power differential linked to race, and there’s some truth in that characterisation, even though it’s rough and inaccurate.
In the US “oppression” is very different for Jews than it is for people normally called Black or Brown. People will hire Jews, rent to, or work for Jews, but you don’t have search too hard to find someone who wants to put you in an oven.
4 Likes
I dont get your point though. There is truth to the fact that Israeli occupies the land of what hopefully will be future state of Palestine.
Brown and White people is a dumb, lazy and wrong way to portray the conflict. Just dont do it instead of justifying a shallow and wrong way to speak about it that isnt helping anyone.
Can we bring back “swarthy” as an adjective or is that not cool?
I can play “Jews or Arabs” game here and I can’t imagine Americans doing any better than 50%
2 Likes
Okay. Let me come at this from another angle, because it seems we are talking past each other.
How should someone who is is critical of right wing Israelis political views talk about ideas of racial supremecy and racial hierarchy in this context? And what language could be better used to draw parallels to other racial and colonial political conflicts?
If you view Israel as a colonialist project, “right wing” has nothing to do with it. The Zionist project was mostly headed by socialists.
The Tutsi genocide isn’t portrayed as White vs Brown. You are being naive if you think this classification is just a way to make a point about Israel opressing Palestinians. It’s a tool meant to delegitimize Israel as a colonial project. Now that’s a fair view point, but it’s not just a random language choice.
1 Like
Israelis vs. Palestinians is not a racial conflict, and there is no need to try to make it one in order to make it more comprehensible.
1 Like
You can throw in people of Hispanic origin and it wouldn’t help me at all.
Okay. So split it out
What language could be used to discuss these ideas in a way that would allow you to disagree with the argument but not object to the language used?
You’re really unable to discuss them without saying one group is White and the other is Brown? I find it really hard to answer that because why would you use those terms when they are incorrect and offensive?
In my eyes it’s a reginoal, territorial conflict where one side is more powerful, richer and enjoys far larger international support and abuses these strengths to keep a favorable status quo.
If you want to say Israeli is a colonialist force just say so. Not sure what’s holding you back linguistically. You can say that Settlers and “Greater Israel” ideology has a lot of racial supremecy to it. Settlers belive they have rights to that land by virtue of being born to a specific race that was promised this land by God herself.
Not sure at what point i need to use colors to make my point, whatever side that is. And again, you ignore the important not-so-dog-whistle here. It’s very easy to describe the conflict without using White or Brown. There’s a reason it’s being used. For some it’s ignorance, for other it serves a very specific goal.
5 Likes
i mostly understand why the state of NY doesn’t give a shit about these college protests… but if i were the dem establishment in somewhere like wisconsin, barely holding on in a completely gerrymandered state. where i maybe won the governor’s election by about the same amount of votes as the student population of the univesity, i’d maybe be on the phone to the state colleges saying “let’s at least pretend to show we care here…”
That assumes swing voters are net supportive of college student encampments. I’m skeptical.
Swing voters are supportive of the perception of order and of strong opposition to disorder.
swing votes wouldn’t even hear about it… how much have we heard about the Brown protest.
wisconsin leads the nation in youth turnout, losing them to save a few percentage points on your war profiteering investments seems ridiculous.