Another blatant reversal of reality. You are deliberately twisting my words. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is the direct, inevitable consequence of your century of colonial violence is not "removing agency." It is the ultimate respect for their agency. It treats them as human beings who refuse to be objects of your ethnic cleansing. The real colonial mindset is your demand that they must politely submit to their own extermination.
And your question about choosing "peaceful leadership" is nauseatingly cynical as it is ironic. You are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state whose own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, admitted on record that his strategy was to fund Hamas precisely to ensure Palestinians would never have a unified leadership capable of negotiating for a state.[1] You assassinate their diplomats, jail their leaders, and prop up Hamas, and then you have the audacity to blame them for how they resist your genocidal colonization campaign.
Don't you dare project your colonial project's inherent, documented racism onto others. Your rhetoric is nothing but manipulative deflection and projection.
After having your cherry-picked "facts" dismantled, your last resort is to feign intellectual superiority and pretend to be above the conversation. It's not a "childish" story of good versus evil. It's an analysis of cause and effect, which you are desperately trying to whitewash.
You claim you "struggle to see the connection" between the Irgun and the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. Let me make it simple for you, since you find reality so "complex." The Irgun's philosophy was to use terrorism against a civilian population to achieve a political goal. The Dahiya Doctrine is the state-sanctioned military policy of using disproportionate force against a civilian population to achieve a political goal.
It's the same ideology. It just evolved from primitive bombs to a state-funded air force. Your refusal to see this direct, documented line is not a sign of intellectual curiosity, but a Zionist's attempt at upholding an impossible cognitive dissonance.
I would suggest you read about the context of events you're trying strip off its context. It didn't happen in a vacuum. It was a brutal outburst in the context of a British-backed colonial project that was openly planning to take over Palestine. At that point, Zionist colonialism was also in full force and the worst fears of the natives who resisted your colonialism were proven correct. It's like saying "I would suggest reading about the 1939 Bydgoszcz massacre in Poland against the German settlers" without providing any context as to why there were so many settlers there to begin with.
The Nakba was the foundational event of the state of Israel and the source of the refugee crisis. That is the subject, and your desperate attempt to derail the conversation with that false equivalence was predictable.
You call his analysis "shallow," but you are the one cherry-picking isolated facts from a deep and bloody history of Zionist terrorism. Let's look at the supposedly "complex" reality you're trying to whitewash.
You mention Begin's peace with Egypt. That was not about "peace" but a cynical, strategic move that took the biggest Arab army off the board so Zionists could invade Lebanon and accelerate the violent colonization of the West Bank.
Then you mention the Likud removing settlements from Gaza. That was Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to turn Gaza into an open-air prison and, in the documented words of his own top advisor, "freeze the peace process indefinitely."[0]
These are not rejections of the Irgun's ideology. They are its most cunning applications.
And your claim that the Dahiya Doctrine is "anachronistic" is nonsense, even Biden had the honesty to admit it when he recognized it.[1] It is the modern, state-sanctioned culmination of the Irgun's terrorist philosophy of collective punishment. Their ideology didn't vanish, it just became Israeli state policy. The only complexity in that is your attempt to whitewash it. It's a straight line, and you are deliberately trying to obscure it.
That is such an intellectually dishonest attempt to flip the script, accusing him of the very colonial racism your entire project is built on.
You are dishonestly confusing explaining the context of oppression with denying agency. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is a direct response to a century of your violence is the ultimate sign of respecting their agency. It is treating them as human beings who fight back. Demanding they politely submit to their own ethnic-cleansing and extermination is what treats them like objects.
And let's be clear about who is actually echoing colonial propaganda. The ideology that sees natives as less than human is yours. It's the ideology of Weizmann, who called the Palestinians "kushim" of "no value." Don't you dare project your project's inherent, documented racism onto others while you are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state.
You're trying to change the subject to a 1948 popularity contest because you can't refute the fact that the Irgun's extremist terrorist ideology won and became Israel's "state" policy. You resort to mocking the analysis with academic jargon because you're terrified of admitting that you're defending a colonial project that is currently in its final phase of exterminating the natives it couldn't get rid of in 1948.
Your last question is an amusing piece of Zionist projection. "Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem?" - That's rich, coming from an apologist of a colonial project founded by terrorists, led by terrorists, and whose state terrorism has culminated in genocide. The very group you're pointing at was propped up with cash by your own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, as a deliberate strategy to divide Palestinians. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
The core problem Palestinians have is a Zionist occupation problem. What they also have is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against a foreign military occupier. Zionism, from the King David Hotel to the Dahiya Doctrine, is the one with the "terrorist problem." You just call it your "state" https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
People seem shocked when people deny genocides that happened more than 100 years ago when we have ongoing genocides in the very PRESENT that are being denied although we have undeniable evidence in high quality footage. It's also quite bizarre when some, rightly so, demand Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, but don't have much to say about Turkey's refusal (among other nations which somewhat economically depend on China) to acknowledge China's genocide of the Uyghurs or God forbid Israel's genocide of the Palestinians.
Anyone who denies one genocide loses any credibility and right to ask others to acknowledge their 'favorite' genocide they like to mention when it suits their interests.
Most of the time the defense will be based upon a false understanding of what really constitutes "genocide". "B-But the population numbers are increasing" - Which might or might not be true, but that's besides the point:
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups." - Lemkin
And your question about choosing "peaceful leadership" is nauseatingly cynical as it is ironic. You are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state whose own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, admitted on record that his strategy was to fund Hamas precisely to ensure Palestinians would never have a unified leadership capable of negotiating for a state.[1] You assassinate their diplomats, jail their leaders, and prop up Hamas, and then you have the audacity to blame them for how they resist your genocidal colonization campaign. Don't you dare project your colonial project's inherent, documented racism onto others. Your rhetoric is nothing but manipulative deflection and projection.
[1] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...