This is absolutely delusional from Blinken, Biden's pick for Sec of State. The normalization agreements are the end of the land-for-peace paradigm, and therefore the end of any little leverage the Arab side had. This makes them the end of Palestinian statehood and the 2SS.
The end of the 2SS is the end of liberal Zionism, because the only alternative to a 2SS under current conditions is a one-state apartheid reality (in other words, the undeclared status quo).
Liberal Zionism requires a *real* Palestinian state, and Palestinians will not accept any less regardless how much you try to crush them into accepting it. Ideologues can stop being ideologues, we cannot stop being Palestinian.
I don't know if @ABlinken checks his mentions, but I hope he sees these tweets. Whether he does or he doesn't, I belong to a group of Palestinians whose priority is centering their people, not the White House.
May I also remind @ABlinken that the countries that normalized with Israel are all deep Trump allies and may have committed crimes by backing him financially in 2016 when he was candidate Trump.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Loujain Al Hathloul, the Nobel-nominated Saudi women's rights activist, stands trial tomorrow. Here's a very important thread ahead of that. Please read & share.
Loujain is an influential, brave Saudi women's rights activist who was arrested in 2018 along with other Saudi women's rights activists. She was accused of a bunch of trumped up charges, most seriously treason. These charges have absolutely no basis. theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…
Loujain and the other women were tortured by beatings, electrocution, waterboarding, and sexual harassment. MBS's right-hand man, Saud Al Qahtani, was present during her torture. She was asked to sign forced confessions. We do not know if she did. theguardian.com/global-develop…
White Evangelicals
Right-wing Israelis
Gulf counter-revolutionary princes
Quite the alliance.
United in their commitment to stopping history in its tracks.
Exactly this. The Israeli right thinks they can shepherd this alliance of convenience towards their goals, but what they can't see is that it'll burn them worst.
The worst thing that happened to the MENA over the last 200 years was colonialism, and the absolute worst effect of colonialism was the ideology of the ethnic nation-state and the various nationalisms that it produced. We have been bleeding for over 100 years.
The majorities are afraid of the minorities and think that suppressing them is the best way to avoid their "separatism". Meanwhile the minorities are afraid of the majorities and think that keeping them living under a boot is the best way to avoid their hegemony.
The result is over a century of nationalisms and counter-nationalisms, of hatred and counter-hatred, of ethnic cleansing and genocide, of creating hierarchies for human worth among children of the same region who had lived side by side since the beginning of written history
As a rule, radicalized people who can find a powerful actor to act out violence on their behalf will invest in that powerful actor rather than commit the violence themselves. The Hindutva and the CCCP run governments, if you're partisan to their ideology you invest in them.
Meanwhile, there is no Islamist government equivalent among Sunni Islam (people point at Erdogan but so far he's more a cynical Turkish politician than a pan-Islamist militant populist). For this reason if you're an Islamist extremist you have to take matters into your own hands.
This false idea that Muslims are uniquely radicalizable and uniquely violent is an idea that is also popular among Arab autocrats who want the world to treat Muslims as especially dangerous, as part of a narrative to deny us political agency. These narratives are not innocent.
The root cause of violent extremism is not that an ideology exists. The question to ask is *why* someone would find that ideology convincing. The reasons for that are virtually always personal, not ideological. Pressured communities are full of potential customers.
Also, even in the lack of an ideology, potential customers can simply concoct their own ideology that answers their needs, of simply concoct an elaborate conspiracy theory that skips ideology altogether. Look at QAnon for example.
The "breeding grounds" of violent extremism are not ideologies - they're disenfranchisement, alienation, crises of identity & purpose, anger, feeling like you don't belong and don't matter, etc. Once someone feels like that, they'll seek out an ideology that suits them.
Hey @EmmanuelMacron, this Libyan activist made a video criticizing your sometime ally in Libya. She just got shot dead in cold blood. Wanna tell us about why we're in crisis, you neocolonialist piece of shit?