Aren’t inhabitants of every big city emotional about a new tube line? I remember when the 14 opened in Paris in the 90s and it was a big thing for people. And I can only imagine the joy when gula linjen opens in Stockholm (whenever that happens).

So my great aunt in Paris just sent me a screen capture of that post, complaining about the “masochism” of NY Jews, and telling me “my wokisme” will be the end of us all. And anyone fueling this dangerous nonsense is just a pyromaniac.

Also I just realised how many reposts with very personal stories that thing got, because it’s utterly bleeding insane.

Instead, they need to fight tooth and nail as long as a good majority of voters still find that kind of politics unacceptable and morally repugnant. Otherwise all they do is to weaken any belief in the necessity of goodwill in politics and society as a whole. And it might be too late afterwards.

The second is that it’s really important to just resist that normalisation before it happens. That’s why Labour’s slow response to the latest Tory radicalisation is so self defeating. It reeks of accepting tacitly that voters now want nastiness and they need to abide by the tide of history. 3/4

And that means two very different things to resist that new far-right energy (and normalisation). The first is that it’s very hard to regain voters who have normalised the idea of nastiness as a political value, as it implies accepting new trade-offs, including a dog-eat-dog view of politics. 2/4

I think most debates about historical analogies (or labels of mobilisation) get stuck in a pretty unhelpful circularity. Like it would actually be better to find an accurate label, but that would be novel, so less powerful. So instead people just get lost in a debate about “IS THIS REALLY X?!”

I mean ok. I just don’t even think of the “settlements are legal” as an actual argument, as “legal” is doing some heavy lifting for the reality of settlements (where law is suspended rather than anything else).

Oh definitely. I think that’s a pretty basic thing to oppose and resist, alongside the impunity of settlers, or the occupation itself? I think it’s pretty basic to demand resisting occupation, but always fear the apartheid debate might minimise the meaning of occupation.

And I guess it’s made more complicated by how any shape of “solutions” isn’t for us diaspora Jews to decide or interpret: it’s about the way Palestinians see their own future and how Israelis and Palestinians eventually agree to share that space.

I guess in a way it all comes down to whether one wants to use imperfect historical analogies for the sake of political mobilisation or find more accurate vocabulary that is bad enough, but doesn’t signal “this has already been proven evil” and therefore might lack the mobilisation potential?

As apartheid was essentially a system that differentiated citizenship in one state, and getting rid of apartheid implied equal citizenship within that same state.
So in a way, insisting on apartheid also means the solution would entail one polity between the river and the sea.

I think the main question about the use of “apartheid” rather than something like “segregation under occupation” is about future perspectives. If one interprets the situation as occupation that should be solved via Palestinian independence alongside an Israeli state, then apartheid doesn’t fit.

Ein „Stadtbild“ von gelebter Vielfalt war das einzige, was mir ein Gefühl von Sicherheit gab. Ich habe schnell gelernt, dass es gerade für Juden und Jüdinnen nicht gefährlicheres geben kann, als der merzische Traum von Reinheit und Säuberung des Stadtbildes. 2/2