• nroth@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I don’t know of any cases of imperialism recently, though I see what appear to be conflicts incorrectly framed as such.

    For example, many say this about the Israeli/Arab conflict. However, this conflict is thousands of years old. The Israelis solidly lost a war to keep their land in the BC era, then after WWII, leaders decided to undo the loss, again by force. Predictably, the Arabs, having lived there for thousands of years now (since they were Babylonians!) were not happy. It is not simple.

    The Israeli return may have been orchestrated by the imperial powers, but I would argue this is not imperialism or even a bad thing. Consider the colonial invasion of the Americas. That was clearly imperialism because my ancestors had never lived there, and had no claim to the land. We just wanted it. At best, we thought we could make better use of it than the natives. That was not the case with Israel, whose ancestors largely were the natives.

    Of course, persecuting Palestinians is wrong. Imagine if thousands of years from now, the American Indians, supported by the international community, forced Americans to adopt their customs and religion or leave. That would not be right either, even though maybe they should have their land back!

    We need to share in these cases, and are unfortunately bad at sharing.

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    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      The Israelis solidly lost a war to keep their land in the BC era, then after WWII, leaders decided to undo the loss, again by force.

      [snip]

      That was clearly imperialism because my ancestors had never lived there, and had no claim to the land. We just wanted it. At best, we thought we could make better use of it than the natives. That was not the case with Israel, whose ancestors largely were the natives.

      Absolutely fucking unhinged.

      You can’t get kicked out of a land 2000 years ago and claim you’re still the natives. Israel has 0 claim to the land aside from their religious mythos, and the “christians” are supporting this for similar reasons since their mythos suggests that the second coming is after Israel holds the land.

      AT BEST this is imperialism using religion as the excuse (you know, fairly standard imperialism). But claiming it’s not imperialism is still carrying water for a genocidal ethnostate trying to handwave away the fact they’re stealing land and slaughtering natives while still trying to play the victim.