I agree with what you mostly said however, making assumptions on your part is simply naive. I never said there aren’t people who don’t wish not to be defined by so called irrelevant external attributes but most people don’t and that’s how it is and if it were practical you won’t be seeing people being defined by nationalities, religions or any ideology for longer than you wish to acknowledge. Before advising me to volunteer you must remember that you have no clue whether I have or I haven’t so that is sanctimonious drivel at best. Yes, freedom from living somebody else’s desires and expectations is indeed desirable and how it should be but not to be free from self identifications . Freedom to associate oneself with an ideology or religion by choice should be just as desirable as the freedom to be free from it otherwise its just as restrictive.

Not only is it impractical in my opinion but unnatural as well. People have always identified themselves based on political, religious, ethnic and national denominations and it’s simply naive to think everyone is alienating themselves based on their political ideologies or religious or national affiliations. It only breeds violence when all such forms of personal identifications and dearly held beliefs override our common humanity and for most they don’t.

rosross,

I agree wholeheartedly. However, its just as much an American occupation as it is an Israeli one. South African racial bigotry was not deemed intolerable by the US government on its own but by considerable pressure from the public did they jump in the bandwagon. Israel won’t do anything without facing flak for its structural apartheid from its key supporters which in this case is primarily the US. The American people are not informed enough about the issue to take a united stand so it could translate into political action. Bigotry is bigotry but a privileged class won’t give up on its privilege on its own unless it’s forced to relinquish it from those empowering them.

How have the Arabs betrayed their resistance? By resorting to rhetorical violence and blind terrorism? Palestinian struggle has always largely been unarmed and nonviolent and its impractical for people to expect that there won’t be pockets of resistance within the Palestinians who won’t opt for an armed resistance. Presuming this would be naive at best. Almost every colonized people in history have had conducted various forms of struggle and when he refers to Gandhi and his strategy he clearly is unaware that there were more than a couple of heroes that struggled under the British raj by committing acts of terrorism and violence and were more committed and concerned for their people than Gandhi ever was. Their names might not be recognized by the western world due to its blatant hypocrisy but they were just as significant in the larger scheme of events. Secondly, the British presence in the sub continent is not comparable to the Israeli occupation for various reasons and to pretend what worked there would work in Palestine is not accurate in my opinion. I admit non violent resistance has a potential to work but Israelis aren’t going anywhere they are settlers and they have a long term stake in the land they have occupied so it might be humiliating if a few states even go as far as support BDS or issue strong statements to cease building illegal settlements but as long as the American green light doesn’t switch off, nothing really hurts them enough to evacuate. That’s why they invest so much on forming the American public opinion favorable to Israel. Most Americans think Israel and Palestine are two forces at war with armies of their own while others think its a conflict that’s going on for centuries so unless they have a core understanding of the power imbalance and the role they inadvertently play in perpetuating the violence, nothing would really change. I find it morally inexcusable to tell the Palestinians on how to conduct their resistance when they are the ones who get jailed for simply attending a nonviolent protest and even lose their families for not quitting. I also find it excessively self righteous for people to complain they don’t have good representatives because they don’t know the leaders of these marches and protests as well as the political prisoners and their respective struggles. People like myself sitting outside can easily tell them to not throw stones but in their shoes we would be doing a lot more than that.

You care about Afghans? Get real. You only care about the rotten state of your military hierarchy and the impunity with which they can function and how its finally began to adversely affect your country. That’s all you care about. This whole “children are bound to get killed” jargon is mouthed to satisfy your cognitive dissonance. Why then criticize Israel if children are bound to get killed every one must come to terms with it and offer their kids to be slaughtered. I wonder when would Americans believe this for themselves as well just as they think others are obliged to sacrifice their children for their bloodthirsty imperial self interests.

The article rightly provides the parallel American usage of the term “terrorist” and the hysteria surrounding it. Terrorism in the modern context( in application) refers to Muslims committing acts of violence against non Muslims for political and religious purposes. It’s interesting to note that even an act of violence committed against soldiers be they American or Israelis, constitutes terrorism by default because the term is no longer sought to distinguish between combatants and civilians but focuses entirely on the perpetrator. I have never seen any “white American” who has engaged in school shootings to be referred to as a terrorist nor are people who commit hate crimes against Muslims to be identified as such. Then there is this fluid identity of those that are referred to as terrorists so we have the likes of Nelson Mandela being called a terrorist by Dick Cheney and co among many others and there are those allies-turned-terrorists who had deep connections with Washington but were there to merely serve as political pawns once as heroes and then as terrorists. Israeli- American interests converge when it comes to preserving this definition of terrorism. Israelis have always called the Palestinians or “Arabs” as they used to refer to them, as terrorists as a people to delegitimize any substantial source of resistance and the Americans have done the same as well when it comes to defining “the other” they have been at war with. Any such label maneuvered by governments to lump an entire segment of society in the desired category should be challenged or as David Cameron described in the UN that even those harboring dissenting views to the established political narrative of their state are no better than breeding grounds for terrorists. So there is a deliberate effort on the part of world governments to be the ones defining terrorism as they see fit and their’s is the one forming the public discourse.

Your comment is spot on except Iraq isn’t an appropriate instance even though it was sold to the American public as such. Iraq was a fairly secular country where dress codes weren’t defined and imposed by the regime despite all its massive failings. Not that a woman’s clothes determine how liberated she is but even by the dubious standards of the western imperialist powers they were indeed liberated but since that was done without the charitable generosity that the US is ever willing to display they had to be liberated of their freedoms.

Israel needs to do ten times worse than this to cause a dent in the facade of Israeli American bromance. They should humiliate Americans because unfortunately in my personal experience American people are too politically self absorbed to bother about the acts of their own state and only start caring when they feel the pinch. Their attitude to their own senseless wars of aggression was the same as Israel’s until they started feeling the effects in their own state be it to the economy or security.

By that standard he even forgot to mention Iran, India and China. I wonder why they never make it in the discourse surrounding Afghanistan.

Jordan has been a US puppet long before the current king came into power. It’s not just the US aid that keeps the Jordanian royal family from ever doing something substantial for the Palestinians but the fact that their power depends on the US. They almost parrot the script they are handed because they have to keep the puppeteer on their side to simply exist. The King and the Queen aren’t doing a lot for their own people and spend most of the aid on their lavish lifestyles while their people rot in poverty why would they bother about the Palestinians? The Jordanians learned a very significant lesson in 1967 and that was that they can’t defeat Israel militarily so they might as well start sucking up to it which is the policy of most Arab states to this day.