Go on then, as we seem to be doing contrarian takes on this thread how about this?
The Falklands War was the UK defending the indigenous inhabitants of the Falklands from colonial aggression.
The British inhabitants of the Falklands are the first human beings to ever inhabit the the Falkland islands, they are the indigenous inhabitants. Whereas Argentinians are overwhelmingly the descendants of colonial European settlers who displaced the indigenous population.
Wrong. The French got there first.
I’ll never “foreground” anyone’s voice but my own (what a contemptible piece of language, that). Nor will I ever pretend to speak for anyone else, so you can just stop assuming that’s what I’m doing.
I did a bit of searching for examples I’d previously seen where they seemed confused/regretful/et., and I couldn’t find them. So it is, at best, rare. I withdraw the statement.
I still think, personally, that they are deeply confused, but not about the specific understanding that the people they support mostly want them dead.
It’s still not clear to me what queers have in common with Palestinians aside from being oppressed. Others in this thread seem to think that oppression is always based on more fundamental ideas. So what are they in this case? On what point, other than oppression itself, are queers aligned with Palestinians?
Well, that would exclude Palestinians as being oppressed since the violence has hardly been one-sided.
It would also exclude a lot of other groups. Does only physical violence count?
Then name a few groups where the opposite is true. A group that’s weak and powerless, suffers because of it, but the broad progressive response is “Yeah, but they’re awful. They deserved it”.
Do you think that, on balance, views by progressives of Israel and Palestine are approximately equally negative?
…I don’t understand this at all.
What part of “I don’t want to see innocent people slaughtered” do you not understand? I don’t see how anyone could need more clarity on this.
Or the fact that queer people in Palestine exist. And that those queer people are being bombed and shot at and starved.
Here’s video of an openly queer person not getting killed by Palestinians.
Because the reality is “the people they support mostly want them dead” simply isn’t a correct statement. I’m sure some people do. Just like how in America there are also people who also wish they were dead, as there are people like that all over the world.
The Palestinian people are, in the opinion of most genocide scholars, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and most human rights organisations, are being genocided. I don’t struggle at all to understand why anyone would align with the Palestinians right now. It seems to be the humane thing to do.
Queer people largely aren’t as ignorant of what is happening on the ground as you seem to imagine. They know exactly what is happening. And like any community they talk to each other.
If you were confused, I hope that clears things up.
No. You’ve outlined the general progressive argument. I asked specifically about Queers for Palestine; why they specifically would choose to align in that way and draw a parallel between the two groups.
That there are some queer people there is not really an argument unless they were somehow overrepresented or differentially targeted or the like. But any unequal treatment seems to come entirely from Hamas and other Palestinians.
The byline of the article you linked to is:
The struggles of all marginalized communities are interconnected
Which is just another way of saying that the details are irrelevant; only oppression matters.
…what are you still not understanding?
There are queer people in Palestine. They are being bombed and sniped and starved and genocided. Queers for Palestine want that to stop.
Of course it is!
How could it not be?
Why would this matter?
Why would they only care about “unequal” treatment? Do you think Queers for Palestine draw a line here? If you take the wording literally, it isn’t just about “unequal treatment.” Its about treatment. And keeping them alive is certainly a thing that queers for Palestine want to happen.
It means exactly what it says.
It doesn’t say “details are irrelevant.”
And did you miss the queer person not getting murdered by Palestinians? Are you going to withdraw that? Because it’s a pretty ugly stereotype.
Because there are queers everywhere. It doesn’t tell you anything about this specific instance. Again: what makes this specifically about queers instead of being a generic progressive argument?
No, that’s ridiculous, because I can find all kinds of stories about Palestinians being imprisoned or tortured or put to death for being gay. Finding exceptions or that aid workers get different treatment than natives hardly contradicts that.
Then name something other than oppression itself. The person that made the statement sure couldn’t. The irony here is that “intersectionality” argues against the claim being made. Obviously, the life experience of a gay Palestinian is so different than a gay NYCer that they might as well be on different planets. Even the notion of “low-income” doesn’t mean remotely the same thing in the two cases–“low-income” for an NYCer is “fabulously wealthy” for a Palestinian.
The problem is that you see the groups as Palestinians and Israelis. Those are not the relevant groups. Palestinians are not oppressed: almost all Hamas terrorists who carried out the attacks were Palestinians, and those individuals were not oppressed in the sense of one-sided violence.
But the babies attacked on October 7, and the babies bombed in the years since, are oppressed.
This is true (not that it’s a problem, but that is how I view things). I think it’s a war, and wars involve nations. It’s sad that German and Japanese children died from US bombs in WW2, but… that’s the way it goes.
Also the coworker of mine that’s still being held hostage and the two family members of coworkers that were murdered on Oct 7.
…yes.
And?
It’s a statement of solidarity.
It doesn’t need to be any more than that. Its saying we stand with the queer people and innocents in Gaza, and we will do all that we can to prevent your exterminiation.
Not it isn’t.
Because you said this:
They don’t “mostly want them dead.” You didn’t draw a line between the actions of both Hamas and the Palestinian authority. And yes, torture and killing isn’t confined to just the authorities.
But saying that Palestinians “mostly want them dead” ignores the reality of what it’s like to live under repressive regimes. Its reductive.
Rain addressed this in the video. Their team was made up of local LGBTQ people. They all survived. And they talk about all the other LGBTQ Palestinians they found everywhere they went. The people that are killing most queer people at the moment?
Bolding mine.
It’s exactly the same message that Rain said in the video, in the interview. Yes: the struggle is important. But the Palestinians are being exterminated. And stopping that is more important than anything else right now.
Did you read the interview? Or just stop after that sentence?
They sure could. And they did.
There is no “irony”, and I don’t think you understand what “intersectionality” means.
What on earth does this have to do with anything?
Solidarity with what? Oppression?
No, I just thought that was important since that’s where they picked the byline from. There are other important elements, like:
And then you have people who’ve never met another queer person at all in Gaza.
You have people who are very aware that they don’t identify as queer as their first identity, even if they do identify as queer, their first identity is Palestinian
Gee, why could this possibly be? Do the Israelis have anti-queer missiles? Or is the threat more from their neighbors?
Sorry if you haven’t been following the thread, but the topic of intersectionality and its relationship to progressivism has come up multiple times. Maybe try reading from the beginning. Or heck, read your own link since the speaker brings up “intersection”.
No, but their population is on track to become 100% solidly anti-LGBTQ by 2200 or so:
Well, I ain’t gonna say that Israel’s perfect in LGBT rights. But if I was some flavor of LGBT, there’s no other place in the Middle East I’d rather be. Maybe my opinion would differ in 2200, though I doubt it.
…with queer people. In Palestine.
It was important.
But there was a whole-ass article there as well. And this was addressed in the text.
The threat right now, undeniably, is from the IDF. It isn’t just missiles. It’s the siege. The destruction of the healthcare system. The forced “evacuations.” The destruction of nearly all of the housing. Did you know that Palestinians in Gaza have been banned by Israel from fishing? From swimming?
Are you seriously arguing queer Palestinians are more at threat from their neighbours than they are from the people that, in the eyes of almost every humanitarian organisation on the planet, is committing genocide?
This isn’t even a debate. I think you are failing to understand what the word “genocide” means, and how putting a stop to that outweighs everything else right now.
And none of this has anything to do with “Queers for Palestine.” Queer people don’t just live in NYC. It was completely irrelevant to the discussion we were having.
Is “common humanity” not enough?
Yes. I grew up being told that it’s wrong to discriminate against people for characteristics like race and sex. That we should treat everyone as individuals and aim to give each person an equal opportunity in life.
But in 2020, the progressive position became that discrimination was good if it helped ensure equal outcomes between groups. Instead of equality, the goal became equity, and fairness to individuals was subordinate to that.
The policies that resulted from this view were something that I just couldn’t support. “Positive discrimination” and levelling down in education. As well as the way people were given deference or not in progressive groups according to their immutable characteristics. It wasn’t eliminating hierarchy, it was simply reversing it.
These policies are so obviously unfair and unjust, and in the case of education are harming children, particularly disadvantaged ones, for little benefit to anyone else.
I understand modern progressives have a different idea of what fairness is and believe they are doing the right thing, even though I disagree. But I don’t think many progressives have that same understanding of liberals and conservatives.
It’s enough to oppose the current war, for sure, as well as the long term ill-treatment of Palestinians.
I guess the real question is why form “Queers for Palestine” in the first place? Anyone can join or start an organisation to push for Palestinian rights and/or support the Palestinian cause, whether they’re queer or not. What’s the reason for having a specific identity based one when the two causes have nothing particular in common?
Can you point out the nation of Palestine on a map for me? TIA!