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Not putting too fine a point on it, but Gandhi's non-violent resistance worked in the India of his time, because the British wanted both the labor and the natur

Not putting too fine a point on it, but Gandhi's non-violent resistance worked in the India of his time, because the British wanted both the labor and the natural resources, and killing all the former would simply have cost them. In Gaza and Ukraine right now, the colonial powers simply want the territory, and are largely indifferent or are openly hostile to the continued physical existence of the people who live there.

wslh 2y ago
Please develop your idea about Israel being a colonial power.
- talldayo 2y ago
  In rough chronological arrangement: - The Balfour declaration, announced by a colonial power without permission or proofreading from the natives or landowners - The consequential Arab-Israeli war - Operation Cast Thy Bread and the introduction of ethnically targeted chemical warfare funded by the government - The 70 collective civilian casualties from Qibya being raided by IDF - The 400 collective civilian casualties from Rafah and Khan Yunis being raided by IDF - Israel's routine violations of the 1949 Armistice Agreements throughout the 1950s - The Six Day War's extended annexations and territorial reparations - The passing of the Golan Heights law and the consequential defense of it despite international outcry - The decades-long occupation of Lebanon and (entirely accidental) formation of Hezbollah - The Ibrahim al-Maqadma Mosque bombing and other effects of "Dahieh Doctrine" as applied to civilian populations - The "Blue Line" and subsequent disagreements concerning it crossing territory Israel does not possess - The continued government support of the illegal and internationally disavowed settlement of northern Israel Unfortunately, my family has lived too close to this conflict for a comfortable accounting. Israel' history is colonial, from the moment they were issued land by Britain (anyone remember the Raj?), to the modern day where they deploy the IDF to defend illegal settlements. Except for the US and Israel's own objections, those settled areas are unanimously not acknowledged as Israeli territory by the UN and EU. Therefore, Israel is a colonial power. You can argue that they're one of the good colonizers if you want, but you'll need some pretty convincing evidence to justify 70 years of nationalism-fueled bloodshed concerning territories that were never part of their nation in the first place. Most Americans with internet access have started to realize that they can only support this occupation because it inherently necessitates Israel relying on American imported weapons. It's becoming a second "Pakistan situation" very quickly, and politicians are starting to realize it.
  - wslh 2y ago
    I think you forgot thousands of history years before that. Who are the natives? If someone attacked my family in October 7th and much previous to that I will return fire without hesitation, like any nation in the world. Surprisingly you haven't mentioned the "recent" Oslo Accords. Do you think that Israel (colonial or not) should exist?
    - talldayo 2y ago
      Nothing you just said refutes the current colonial status of the Israeli state and their active defense of internationally abhorred occupations. My intention isn't to defame anyone with emotional candor, but rather to shine a light on the intractable fact that the Golan Heights are an illegally occupied colony, defended by Israeli conscripts and shielded from controversy with the threat of American soft-power. You asked how exactly Israel is a colony, and I provided a complete and internationally agreed-upon accounting of why that is considered the case. If you feel justified in killing people that intrude upon Israel without the intention of living there peacefully, then you know precisely how the natives felt when they were targeted and attacked by national defense forces at a time when Israel hardly existed. It's by no fault of today's Israelis that they live in such a terrible place. However, it is their decision to deny their sins (the occupations) and the world will judge them in accordance with those choices. Israel can still redeem itself by rejecting the nationalist notion of perpetually occupying territory they do not legally possess. It is a necessary precondition to meaningful liberal development of the Levant - the status quo is a nightmare scenario.
      - wslh 2y ago
        It takes two to tango: a two state solution was always supported by Israelis and Jewish people around the world.
        talldayo 2y ago
        I don't disagree. But two wrongs don't add up to one right, so nobody is really looking at the current situation as a net-positive. Israel is a colonial state that currently has a long way to go in renouncing the territory they do not rightfully own. It's the majority opinion, not an extremist or misconstrued take. Nobody ever had to "develop the idea" because it has been said by every single country that is not Israel or the United States.
throw310822 2y ago
In Gaza and Palestine any peaceful resistance is surely useless, as there is a complete ethnic divide between the colonizers and the colonized and there is no place for the colonized in the future plans for the land. Any non-violent resistance will be met with enough violence to drive the people away (and to create a justification for driving the people away). In Ukraine, since the point is controlling the land and not replacing the original population, non-violent resistance would not have stopped Russia but would have saved the Ukrainians most if not all the suffering and bloodshed.
- dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
  > In Ukraine, since the point is controlling the land and not replacing the original population, non-violent resistance would not have stopped Russia but would have saved the Ukrainians most if not all the suffering and bloodshed. Bucha would like to have a word with you.
  - throw310822 2y ago
    There's been a Bucha every week- if not every day- for more than a year in Gaza. Not disputing the atrocities of Bucha but an episode (a war crime at that) is not enough to call a war genocidal.
- fifilura 2y ago
  [flagged]
- 7bit 2y ago
  It would not have saved them in any way. Putin would have thrown all Ukrainians in Gulags just as he does with critics of his own Nationality. He would have forced the people out of Ukraine to replace them with Russian Nationalists to establish the region as pro Russian and enforce stability. It would have been a similar situation for Ukrainians as it is today for the People in Gaza and Westbank.
- dog436zkj3p7 2y ago
  I completely disagree. Ukrainian war effort is primarily driven by the desire of majority of Ukrainian population to keep their independence and align with the western democratic sphere. It is, effectively, a drawn out war for independence dragging out for over 2 decades, which only became "hot" with the Russian invasions 10 and 3 years ago, the latter of which was aimed at outright annexation of the entire Ukrainian state. Majority of European countries in existence today are nation states, many not even of a few decades old, created through the will of their populations to shed blood for their independence. One would have to be shockingly ignorant to conclude that people wouldn't fight for for their state since they would "keep living largely the same lives as before", when recent wars in the Balkans closely mirror the Ukrainian conflict and yet resulted in 7 independent states, many of which received paltry, or no foreign support during their struggle for independence. Such mentality might've been prevalent in the middle ages, but has certainly been erased by 1848. Remember that the Russian aggression effectively started a decade ago after several successive country-wide popular uprisings in Ukraine which, despite violent crackdowns, strived for and put the country on the path towards democracy, westernization and reduction of oligarchic and Russian influence. Without wide popular support, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and a large proportion of the population involved in the war effort would be just as, if not more, likely to turn on their own government. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what the Russians expected on the eve of their invasion, when the Ukrainian state was supposed to fold as a stack of cards and the Ukrainian people were supposed to accept their "liberators" without a hitch. Instead, Russia was instantly bogged down and pushed back by a determined popular resistance and a massive popular mobilization and the Ukrainian people are determined to keep fighting even after massive destruction of their infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of casualties. Of course, the reasons for the foreign involvement in the war have much more ominous undertones and, especially in the case of the US, geopolitics are a major factor. However, one would have to be extremely misguided to pretend that motivations of the amorphous US political apparatus reflect the motivations of the Ukrainian (or even American) people in any way.
throw0101b 2y ago
> Not putting too fine a point on it, but Gandhi's non-violent resistance worked in the India of his time, because the British wanted both the labor and the natural resources, and killing all the former would simply have cost them. Also worked in Poland with Solidarity against the Communists. Also worked in the Philippines with People Power: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Revolution Etc: > They focused on cases of “nonviolent mass mobilization featuring at least one thousand observed participants seeking maximalist (country level) goals [such as the overthrow of a government or territorial independence, (see p.13] from 1900 to 2006 [now updated to 2019]. We did not count smaller campaigns, or reform movements” (p. xx). It took them two years to put the data set together, but it was well worth it – after analyzing those data, in 2011 they published their results in their highly acclaimed book, Why Civil Resistance Works, which received the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Prize of the American Political Science Association. Chenoweth and Stephan found that “[m]ore than half of the campaigns that relied primarily on nonviolent resistance succeeded, whereas only about a quarter of the violent ones did” (p. xx). * https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/chronicle/review-of-civil-resistance-what-everyone-needs-to-know/ https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/chronicle/review-of-civi...
tim333 2y ago
The British have mostly been fairly easy going about letting go of their colonies. Wikipedia has a list of 65 countries that have gained independence from the United Kingdom and I can only think of a couple where much warfare went on (the US and Ireland). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_gained_independence_from_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_ga...
- runarberg 2y ago
  Since the mid 1960s the UK has been largely on board with decolonization efforts (with some exceptions including the Chagos islands), but this ignores a large number or colonial warfare they fought to keep their colonies in the 1950s, and the very early 1960s. For example it is not untrue to say that Yemen successfully fought the UK to gain independence (at least South Yemen). In Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) calls for independence (by ANC, NAC, etc.) was met with crackdown by the white Rhodesian army (who ruled south Rhodesia post independence with apartheid). In Kenya the Mau Mau rebellion was brutally suppressed by the British Army, with over 35000 insurgents killed by British colonial forces. The Mau Mau lost, and Kenya peacefully gained independence a few years later. Even though most former British colonies got their independence by voting in a pro-independence government who negotiated for independence between the mid 1960s and the 1980s, which the British peacefully accepted (with rare exceptions), the years prior, any independence prospects were definitely met with various tactics to prevent their success, including violent and armed colonial warfare.
__rito__ 2y ago
The British left India because it was hard to keep and maintain. And a large deciding factor was the Naval Mutiny of 1946. And the battle brought to India through Subhash Bose with Japanese aid was also a huge factor. They just decided India couldn’t be ruled anymore.
thomassmith65 2y ago
It's not exactly convincing to argue that violent resistance has served Palestinians particularly well in that conflict.

wslh 2y ago

Please develop your idea about Israel being a colonial power.

talldayo 2y ago
In rough chronological arrangement: - The Balfour declaration, announced by a colonial power without permission or proofreading from the natives or landowners - The consequential Arab-Israeli war - Operation Cast Thy Bread and the introduction of ethnically targeted chemical warfare funded by the government - The 70 collective civilian casualties from Qibya being raided by IDF - The 400 collective civilian casualties from Rafah and Khan Yunis being raided by IDF - Israel's routine violations of the 1949 Armistice Agreements throughout the 1950s - The Six Day War's extended annexations and territorial reparations - The passing of the Golan Heights law and the consequential defense of it despite international outcry - The decades-long occupation of Lebanon and (entirely accidental) formation of Hezbollah - The Ibrahim al-Maqadma Mosque bombing and other effects of "Dahieh Doctrine" as applied to civilian populations - The "Blue Line" and subsequent disagreements concerning it crossing territory Israel does not possess - The continued government support of the illegal and internationally disavowed settlement of northern Israel Unfortunately, my family has lived too close to this conflict for a comfortable accounting. Israel' history is colonial, from the moment they were issued land by Britain (anyone remember the Raj?), to the modern day where they deploy the IDF to defend illegal settlements. Except for the US and Israel's own objections, those settled areas are unanimously not acknowledged as Israeli territory by the UN and EU. Therefore, Israel is a colonial power. You can argue that they're one of the good colonizers if you want, but you'll need some pretty convincing evidence to justify 70 years of nationalism-fueled bloodshed concerning territories that were never part of their nation in the first place. Most Americans with internet access have started to realize that they can only support this occupation because it inherently necessitates Israel relying on American imported weapons. It's becoming a second "Pakistan situation" very quickly, and politicians are starting to realize it.
- wslh 2y ago
  I think you forgot thousands of history years before that. Who are the natives? If someone attacked my family in October 7th and much previous to that I will return fire without hesitation, like any nation in the world. Surprisingly you haven't mentioned the "recent" Oslo Accords. Do you think that Israel (colonial or not) should exist?
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Nothing you just said refutes the current colonial status of the Israeli state and their active defense of internationally abhorred occupations. My intention isn't to defame anyone with emotional candor, but rather to shine a light on the intractable fact that the Golan Heights are an illegally occupied colony, defended by Israeli conscripts and shielded from controversy with the threat of American soft-power. You asked how exactly Israel is a colony, and I provided a complete and internationally agreed-upon accounting of why that is considered the case. If you feel justified in killing people that intrude upon Israel without the intention of living there peacefully, then you know precisely how the natives felt when they were targeted and attacked by national defense forces at a time when Israel hardly existed. It's by no fault of today's Israelis that they live in such a terrible place. However, it is their decision to deny their sins (the occupations) and the world will judge them in accordance with those choices. Israel can still redeem itself by rejecting the nationalist notion of perpetually occupying territory they do not legally possess. It is a necessary precondition to meaningful liberal development of the Levant - the status quo is a nightmare scenario.
    - wslh 2y ago
      It takes two to tango: a two state solution was always supported by Israelis and Jewish people around the world.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        I don't disagree. But two wrongs don't add up to one right, so nobody is really looking at the current situation as a net-positive. Israel is a colonial state that currently has a long way to go in renouncing the territory they do not rightfully own. It's the majority opinion, not an extremist or misconstrued take. Nobody ever had to "develop the idea" because it has been said by every single country that is not Israel or the United States.

throw310822 2y ago

In Gaza and Palestine any peaceful resistance is surely useless, as there is a complete ethnic divide between the colonizers and the colonized and there is no place for the colonized in the future plans for the land. Any non-violent resistance will be met with enough violence to drive the people away (and to create a justification for driving the people away). In Ukraine, since the point is controlling the land and not replacing the original population, non-violent resistance would not have stopped Russia but would have saved the Ukrainians most if not all the suffering and bloodshed.

dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
> In Ukraine, since the point is controlling the land and not replacing the original population, non-violent resistance would not have stopped Russia but would have saved the Ukrainians most if not all the suffering and bloodshed. Bucha would like to have a word with you.
- throw310822 2y ago
  There's been a Bucha every week- if not every day- for more than a year in Gaza. Not disputing the atrocities of Bucha but an episode (a war crime at that) is not enough to call a war genocidal.
fifilura 2y ago
[flagged]
7bit 2y ago
It would not have saved them in any way. Putin would have thrown all Ukrainians in Gulags just as he does with critics of his own Nationality. He would have forced the people out of Ukraine to replace them with Russian Nationalists to establish the region as pro Russian and enforce stability. It would have been a similar situation for Ukrainians as it is today for the People in Gaza and Westbank.
dog436zkj3p7 2y ago
I completely disagree. Ukrainian war effort is primarily driven by the desire of majority of Ukrainian population to keep their independence and align with the western democratic sphere. It is, effectively, a drawn out war for independence dragging out for over 2 decades, which only became "hot" with the Russian invasions 10 and 3 years ago, the latter of which was aimed at outright annexation of the entire Ukrainian state. Majority of European countries in existence today are nation states, many not even of a few decades old, created through the will of their populations to shed blood for their independence. One would have to be shockingly ignorant to conclude that people wouldn't fight for for their state since they would "keep living largely the same lives as before", when recent wars in the Balkans closely mirror the Ukrainian conflict and yet resulted in 7 independent states, many of which received paltry, or no foreign support during their struggle for independence. Such mentality might've been prevalent in the middle ages, but has certainly been erased by 1848. Remember that the Russian aggression effectively started a decade ago after several successive country-wide popular uprisings in Ukraine which, despite violent crackdowns, strived for and put the country on the path towards democracy, westernization and reduction of oligarchic and Russian influence. Without wide popular support, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and a large proportion of the population involved in the war effort would be just as, if not more, likely to turn on their own government. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what the Russians expected on the eve of their invasion, when the Ukrainian state was supposed to fold as a stack of cards and the Ukrainian people were supposed to accept their "liberators" without a hitch. Instead, Russia was instantly bogged down and pushed back by a determined popular resistance and a massive popular mobilization and the Ukrainian people are determined to keep fighting even after massive destruction of their infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of casualties. Of course, the reasons for the foreign involvement in the war have much more ominous undertones and, especially in the case of the US, geopolitics are a major factor. However, one would have to be extremely misguided to pretend that motivations of the amorphous US political apparatus reflect the motivations of the Ukrainian (or even American) people in any way.

throw0101b 2y ago

> Not putting too fine a point on it, but Gandhi's non-violent resistance worked in the India of his time, because the British wanted both the labor and the natural resources, and killing all the former would simply have cost them. Also worked in Poland with Solidarity against the Communists. Also worked in the Philippines with People Power: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Revolution Etc: > They focused on cases of “nonviolent mass mobilization featuring at least one thousand observed participants seeking maximalist (country level) goals [such as the overthrow of a government or territorial independence, (see p.13] from 1900 to 2006 [now updated to 2019]. We did not count smaller campaigns, or reform movements” (p. xx). It took them two years to put the data set together, but it was well worth it – after analyzing those data, in 2011 they published their results in their highly acclaimed book, Why Civil Resistance Works, which received the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Prize of the American Political Science Association. Chenoweth and Stephan found that “[m]ore than half of the campaigns that relied primarily on nonviolent resistance succeeded, whereas only about a quarter of the violent ones did” (p. xx). * https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/chronicle/review-of-civil-resistance-what-everyone-needs-to-know/ https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/chronicle/review-of-civi...

tim333 2y ago

The British have mostly been fairly easy going about letting go of their colonies. Wikipedia has a list of 65 countries that have gained independence from the United Kingdom and I can only think of a couple where much warfare went on (the US and Ireland). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_gained_independence_from_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_ga...

runarberg 2y ago
Since the mid 1960s the UK has been largely on board with decolonization efforts (with some exceptions including the Chagos islands), but this ignores a large number or colonial warfare they fought to keep their colonies in the 1950s, and the very early 1960s. For example it is not untrue to say that Yemen successfully fought the UK to gain independence (at least South Yemen). In Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) calls for independence (by ANC, NAC, etc.) was met with crackdown by the white Rhodesian army (who ruled south Rhodesia post independence with apartheid). In Kenya the Mau Mau rebellion was brutally suppressed by the British Army, with over 35000 insurgents killed by British colonial forces. The Mau Mau lost, and Kenya peacefully gained independence a few years later. Even though most former British colonies got their independence by voting in a pro-independence government who negotiated for independence between the mid 1960s and the 1980s, which the British peacefully accepted (with rare exceptions), the years prior, any independence prospects were definitely met with various tactics to prevent their success, including violent and armed colonial warfare.

__rito__ 2y ago

The British left India because it was hard to keep and maintain. And a large deciding factor was the Naval Mutiny of 1946. And the battle brought to India through Subhash Bose with Japanese aid was also a huge factor. They just decided India couldn’t be ruled anymore.

thomassmith65 2y ago

It's not exactly convincing to argue that violent resistance has served Palestinians particularly well in that conflict.