Well, yes, killing a noncombatant is bad, no question about it.

I think there are plenty of “noncombatants” that can be killed without it being bad. How about concentration camp guards? Or the wardens? How about a President guilty of war crimes and genocide? What about the person that shuts off the water supply to a vulnerable population, killing thousands? I will shed no tears for those people if those they oppressed rise up against them with decisive violence.

Or for one more controversial: what level of violence is acceptable against settlers? Their comfort and security on stolen land is the material basis for the settler project. Making them unsafe undermines this more thoroughly than most other violence. Several groups of native Americans recognized this while their people were genocided and it did have the intended impact right up until the genocidal US government deployed overwhelming forces. When the oppressor seeks genocide, what should really be off-limits? Why the tut-tutting of the oppressed when they face such inhumanity and existential threats?

There are other ways to accomplish the goal, from peaceful ways to simply killing actual combatants instead.

If there is a peaceful way, the Palestinians have already tried it. They tried it in a very obvious way just a few years ago with the Great March of Return. Did it work? What did Israel do in response? What impact did this have on the freedom fighters in the resistance?

Why are you trying to dictate the terms of others’ freedom when they face genocide and occupation? Does your country materially support the occupation? Focus on disrupting that instead.

I know you’re more of a revolutionary, so that kinda undermines your whole thing, but oh well.

Generally speaking it is a bad idea for liberals to guess what socialists want or think. I have yet to meet one that has guessed correctly with any consistency.

Sure, but things like the riots, particularly around race, contributed to a great deal of backlash, and were not exactly the cause of things like the Civil Rights Act.

First, peaceful marches got very similar backlash. Dr. King was criticized with the exact same milquetoast, “we agree with his ideas but not his methods” treatment by liberals and he was majority unpopular among white people for his entire life.

Second, violent actions, as defined by critics, formed the basis for much of the civil rights fight and forwarded it. The seizure and destruction of property, the vigilante justice against lynchers, the hounding of segregationist bosses, and riots were all highly influential. Thr best-organized groups carried rifles. Dr. King has been appropriated by liberals, particularly white liberals, in order to tell an ahistorical story about the importance of nonviooent resistance, that liberty can have its cake and eat it too, to be free of the blrmish of violence while securing its goals. Of course, they tend to stop telling the story when King began to focus on capitalism and its use of structural marginalization to induce poverty on black people and was killed shortly after. Nobody can seriously argue that the civil rights movement simply succeeded, no one can go to the black ghettos and say this with a straight face. It was mollified with partial legalization reforms while the major engine of oppression chugged right along, ensuring continued racialized poverty, policing, and society at large.

In fact, I’d challenge you to provide historical cases of a leader caving to that sort of violence while they still had their military and police forces to protect them.

Every revolution and, most closely ties to the topic of this post, the victory of the ANC guerillas over the apartheid South African government.

Yes, martyrdom is common, assassination is unquestionably a thing that happens in history. If you’re saying his assassination was some conspiracy to preserve capitalism I’d like to see some actual evidence of that, though, from a respected historian.

It is well-known that black civil rights leaders were frequently assassinated and that the FBI led the charge in harassing and threatening them and certainly did not stop at Dr. King. Fred Hampton is a well-known example. Though government employees were hardly the only ones killing and they often worked with civilian assets or simply sat back and let white supremacists do the job. The interest of the state in doing so was to undermine the civil rights movement itself and to wrap it up in its red scare tactics, both in the service of capitalism, namely racialized capitalism. Though it is not only the state with such interests - businesses, particularly those owned by racist whites, have every incentive to support these violences, and had often been the sponsors of lynchings.

Re: Dr. King specifically, his family has always maintained that he was killed in a conspiratorial manner. There is doubt about this narrative, but it is useful to follow the logic and constellation of government infiltrators of King’s organization and connections to organized crime. But even withiut that, the original confession of the officially accused and convicted was by someone looking to get paid a racist bounty that had been placed on King’s head.

Almost always fails, though? It’s relatively rarely attempted in any seriousness, but let’s see… Vietnam War

Was ended primarily by the Vietnamese, namely by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The US domestic side, which was not entirely nonviolent, just limited the capacity to wage war and was dramatically secondary.

Women’s Suffrage

Notoriously involved violence.

Civil Rights Act

Already discussed. Incomplete and not separable from violent struggle.

Prohibition

Which part of it? Teatotalers were often violent leading up to it and the period of prohibition was characterized by violent organized crime. Prohibition was itself ended mostly because capitalists wanted to make money legally again and to crowd out the mob. The primary sponsors of repealing prohibition were the Rockefelllers and du Pont brothers, including various “grassroots” organizations. The whole thingis hardly a peaceful people’s campaign against an oppressor.

First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter

And yet you used a tired Zionist talking point that amounts to, “what if the people we are oppressing do the same things to us if we stop the oppression?” It was also used for apartheid South Africa, incidentally. And we can see that the oppressed are far more humane than these ethnic supremacists.

But maybe you are anti-Zionist and just picked up this question from others.

I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned

The outcomes I mentioned are incompatible with a two-state solution. A two-state solution is bantustans and it was “agreed” to by compradors. It is not a serious proposal, which is why Israel/the US has never attempted to implement it and has instead further oppressed and fragmented Palestinians.

A two-state solution means no right of return, the continuation of the Israeli apartheid ethnostate, and the status quo for Gaza and The West Bank. There can be no state under occupation, with its orchards and homes stolen, with its towns disjointed, with a comprador government installed by Western interests. That is neither sovereignty nor justice and it would not be tolerated by the oppressed.

However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal.

Define atrocities. Israel will simply shoot and torture peaceful movements. It already has done so many times. Only armed resistance can defeat such an oppressor.

Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.

Just as the West labels all Palestinians freedom fighters, they will label actions far lesser than what Israel does on a daily basis “war crimes” when it suits them, just like the ICC seems to basically only go after black African war criminals (Bush and Cheney weren’t tried at the Hague, hmm). Guerilla warfare against an oppressor will not be clean, this is impossible. Intelligence will fail and targets will be colocated, e.g. the IDF has part of its headquarters by a shopping mall. And individuals will do terrible and violent things. Also, Israelis and the West, including the US president, will simply lie, like with the “beheaded babies” narrative. So you will have to prepare yourself to question these narratives and accept a world where the freedom fighters will be accused of war crimes by the usual sources.

Though, if we are speaking of international law, occupied people are allowed to resist their occupiers by any means they deem fit.

Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.

I use this platform for chatting and agitation. This convo is in the agitation category, of course. Generally speaking it is important to shout down pro-genocide narratives, whether it is Zionist propaganda or Dems trying to get their voters to tolerate genocide.

I think the latter is entirely unnecessary. The US and its co-sponsor lackeys could do plenty by simply withdrawing support. The Zionist project is 90% dependent on constant material aid from Western powers to prop up its regime and would be forced to concede to the larger and more committed Palestian liberation movement without it. If they were to do anything active that was helpful, it would be to denuclearize Israel first.

Both of this things would require significant changes, though. Israel is propped up because it’s violence against its neighbors is useful for US domination of the region. But we can work for this in pieces by blocking arms exports, disrupting supply chains, and builsing leverage to demand that countries spend domestically instead of supporting genocide. Ironically in EU countries it is far-right electoral groups that have more steam for the latter due to the fact that liberals have made themselves the warmongers focused on increased militarization, but of course we cannot trust those right wingers to follow through.

Hell yeah normalize punching Nazis. Of course do so when you won’t lose the fight.

Oppressed people are not generally warmongers. They are not whipped up into a frenzy of domination like Americans, Germans, or Nazis. Instead, they fight because they must either flee or resist, and they opt to resist.

One example is that for all the hand-wringing about Hamas, Israel is clearly far more bloodthirsty and accepting of civilian deaths, given how much they target children and hospitals. All the tut-tutting of Hamas comes from pro-Israeli propaganda that hopes the audience will forget these things and instead think about how much more “pure” the resistance should allegedly be. It is directed at those who reside in countries materially abettibg the occupation and genocide so that they do not demand better.

Your entire logic is that a side that kills a noncombatant it is bad. This simplistic logic would, necessarily, lead to the absurdities I listed.

Re: the Civil rights movements, they were not, overall, peaceful. There has been a whitewashing of them due to the (decades later) popularity of Dr. King and his compatriots, but the civil right movement spanned decades and included violent resistance.

While they’re not as dramatic, peaceful reform movements have a reasonably high success rate, contrasted against all the uprisings and revolts which have been mercilessly crushed throughout history.

They have nearly always failed and have instead been used to demonstrate the necessity of armed resistance. You’ll note that Dr. King was killed when he focused on what he viewed as the more encompassing injustice of poverty imposed on black people by capitalism.

I’ve seen many people in this post say the best solution is a two state system.

That is not a solution, it is bantustans.

You’re saying that’s not what you would prefer, and that Israel should be wiped out?

The “state” of Israel should be destroyed thoroughly. The “state” of Israel is premised on ethnosuoremacist genocidal apartheid and colonization. Remove those things and the “state” of Israel will fundamentally no longer exist, both because injustice will have been addressed and also because a very large number of Israeli settlers will simply leave, as they only care about living in an ethnostate that serves them. Something similar happened with Boers.

I don’t have a particular opinion on your view because my knowledge of what Israel and Hamas has done is admittedly limited, but I would lean towards the idea that you’re justifying Israel’s reaction and statements that the reason they are taking the action they are is because of, well, ideas like yours.

Israel’s political leadership have always understood their project as ethnosupremacist, of requiring stealing land from the natives, as requiring oppression of the larger population of Palestinians who will not tolerate these conditions. They correctly understand that this project will end if those conditions are addressed, if justice is done. That is not a reason to accept their justification, as no ethnkstate deserves to exist or “defend itself” against those it oppresses.

I think, from what I’ve learned over the past week of exploring this situation, that a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable. I seem to have an innately negative reaction to what you suggest here.

A two-state solution is bantustans and not even taken seriously by the “Israelis” or their American sponsors. It is just a nice-sounding “compromise” they hold in front of liberals like a carrot so that they will accept their continued slow (or now fast) genocide and displacement of Palestinians. “Israel” prefers its slow and steady expulsion of Palestinians into smaller and smaller concentration camps, like districts from South Africa. Those could never be considered a “state” under any circumstances and “Israel” would never accept them as such, even in such a diajointed condition.

Justice requires an end to the ethnostate itself.

The end of apartheid, the end of ethnosupremacy at both the state and societal level, land back for displaced Palestinians. But most importantly, self-determination for the people of Palestine. They decide what they need or want once they are in a position to liberate themselves, not you and not me.

The side you are carrying water for is an ethnosupremacy at apartheid settler colonial occupation. You don’t get to hand wring about what you think the oppressed will do to their opprrssors.

The Warsaw Uprising was an open air prison/ghetto break with a wide number of participants, both organized and not. Those facing violence by the people seeking to fight their genociders were not just those in the military. It was anyone in the way or supporting them, per individuals’ wonts.

In addition, Hamas et al (Hamas was not the only organized group participating 10/7) did also focus on military targets while also taking hostages from a wider set. It is important to note that kibbutzim, little settler colonies, are often militarized and fired on them and others.

Like I said, you need to shed this idea that you are entitled to an opinion, and to share it, having done no investigation.

Maybe try looking at it from the point of view of the individual people living there (and having been born there for generations) instead of whatever strategic/historical layer you’re on.

Which people and where? What do they think? Have you ever actually interacted with Israelis, Palestinians? Israelis are extremely racist and support their settler colonial project and the genocide.

The state of Israel exists and won’t be going away, that’s a fact.

Apartheid South Africa went away.

Also what happened to thinking about the individual people? You didn’t talk about them.

You can hate the injustice if you want but it would still be better if they’d finally make peace and just live in the present instead of murdering each other over the past. But neither leadership is willing to do that.

You cannot live in peace under constant occupation, displacement, and genocide. “Just make peace” is a childish idealism that means you don’t know anything about this topic.

But neither leadership is willing to do that.

One is a gemoxidal racist occupier and the other is an occupation resistance group. Don’t give me this both sides bullshit.

Okay, now you can continue scolding me. Don’t forget to link this to Russia’s attack on Ukraine!

You should do the actual self-reflection required here. There is a genocide on. If you are going to share thoughts on this topic that defends the genociders in any way you better have spent at least a few houra educating yourself. Clearly you have not, and still have no humility about it.

According to OP’s logic that makes The Union bad guys, end of thought.

The US Empire barely cares about blowback, they subscribe for a maximalist foreign policy pressure ethos. Like in Domino Theory, they abhor independence lest it coherently spread, and act swiftly and decisively against it like playing whack-a-mole. The ethos doesn’t have to deliver perfect results free of blowback, it just needs to be good enough for the interests it serves. Regarsing Iran, this is why it is co stantly threatened and sanctiobed by the US and its cronies. The blowback was too successful so they are still just doing a maximum pressure campaign and constantly threatening war. They take a similar approach against Syria and Yemen. They took a similar approach against Iraq and likely will again.

When speaking of material interest and the US state, using “our” can be ambiguous. I am not of the ruling class of the US, and certainly nowhere near the great financiers and imperialists whose interests are the real ones served by empire. So I would never say this serves “our” interests using this kind of logic. Are you of that class? Often actions are taken against the interests of the non-ruling classes and in favor of the ruling class.

One can make an argument that the citizen US working class is a beneficiary of imperialism, paying far below what they should for imports and having wages propped up by the petrodollar, buy this is challenging to rationalize with the idea that it is simply in their interest to, say, keep Iran subservient to US empire. The public are ignorant to these things and there is no mechanistic connection between their actions and these outcomes except the propaganda appaeatus that manufactures their consent, which is really a top-down monopoly on information that still does not inform them of how this might be in their interest. And even then, it is arguable whether this is more generally in their interest. Undermining the petrodollar might lead to their yolk being removed.

Israel is a racist genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate. All good people wish for the destruction of such a thing just like all good people wished for the destruction of the apartheid South African ethnostate. If Hamas wishes this, they should be commended for it, don’t you think? And anyone who disagrees called out for the racial supremacist that they are?

The attempt to “both sides” a genocuidal apartheid settler colonial ethnostate currently doing a genocide vs. the indigenous and regional people opposing them is disgusting. If you don’t put in any work yo understand this topic, you do not need to have an opinion, let alone share it. Though it is important to be politically educated, so you should do the reading so that you can be helpful rather than counterproductive.

And re: people alive remembering how it “started”, much of the leadership of the resistance are literal refugees driven from their homes in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. And of course it does not take much work to inform yourself of the origins of Zionism in 1800s Europe and the antisemitism a collaborating Zionist movement that built ethnocentric colonies in Palestine and eventually formed organized terrorist groups to force conflicts with the indigenous population and receive military backing from the British.

That’s your own mess lol

Which part of genocidal racist settler colonists is legitimate to you?

Undermining of independent states in the middle east is in the material interest of the US empire. They just disagree internally about how to best go about doing this. A regional war is not directly against US ruling interests unless they think they would lose that fight or if it would shut down the Strait of Hormuz for a long time. The US has not exactly reined in its Israeli attack dog in any meaningful way, which us what they could do and would do if they wanted descalation.

It’s not in the interests of the wider civilian population of the planet, or even just those in the US, but those things barely register for empire.

“Why won’t you accept our proposal of Bantustans, you ingrates!? You deserve genocide for this”

Mandatory Palestine was long before 1948. Zionist settlers were doing terrorism on the indigenous Palestinians for decades by 1948. And with British support.

Shooting back is not only good, but necessary for survival.

Folks throughout these threads would’ve been wringing their hands over occupier civilians killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, acting like they just can’t tell who’s right or wrong.

By that logic every single fight has been between bad guys. Abolitionists vs. slavers? Sorry buddy, they both killed noncombatants, they’re both just bad guys. Nazis doing genocide vs. partisabs? Sorry buddy, they’re both just bad guys.

There are no perfect fights, perfect armies, perfect struggles for liberation. You will have to accept what it takes to fight oppression or force yourself to a mealy-mouthed sidelines from which you declare everyone that isn’t passive is always a villain.