Members of Kibbutz Hanita near Israel’s northern border are demanding $11 million from Ballet Vision, the Chinese fund that controls 80% of the Hanita Lenses plant, accusing it of refusing to exercise an option to purchase the kibbutz’s remaining shares, according to a lawsuit filed in Tel Aviv District Court.
In a response letter attached to the lawsuit, the Chinese fund said that since the outbreak of the war in Israel, Beijing has classified Israel as a “high-risk area” and imposed a ban on any new Chinese investments in the country, making it impossible to carry out the option.
According to the lawsuit, in 2021 the kibbutz sold 74% of Hanita Lenses, which manufactures intraocular lenses for medical use, to Ballet Vision for $35 million. Of that sum, $25 million was paid to kibbutz members, with an additional $10 million injected into the company.
A lot of what you say is reasonable discourse that can be seen as defending a political ideology that you feel strongly contributes to a better world. There’s nothing wrong with that and I commend you.
But then you say this
and you collapse into the “I’m about to start smashing skulls in the name of my ideology, and I’ll do so until I’ve inadvertently built an empire”.
So you and your ideological bedmates have decided that you have the moral clarity to decide who gets attacked in the name of anti-imperialism. The world has certainly never heard that angle before, I’m sure you’ll be the first.
There are 3 major problems with your line of logic.
For starters, not all intervention means millitary violence. There can be economic intervention, such as sanctions, trade embargoes, or even supplying resistance groups. In fact, the PRC already does some of this, in supporting the Palestinian resistance. My emotional desire for more support in this regard doesn’t rest on the PLA invading Israel.
With respect to argument 2, international violence is not inherently imperialist. Imperialism is a relationship by which one country economically plunders the resources and surplus value created by other countries. This can be maintained with violence, installing compradors, etc. The PRC isn’t imperialist, and aiding Palestine against Israel would not resort in the creation of new colonies for China.
With respect to argument 3, you verge into idealism. The idea that Marxism-Leninism isn’t a genuinely anti-imperialist framework needs to be contested based on its merits as an ideology, not based on the idea that flawed ideologies exist. You treat anti-imperialism as something inherently unknowable, ie within the realm of the supernatural, intentionally or not. The truth is that nothing in the universe is truly unknowable, no matter how difficult it is to learn, and treating certain ideas as beyond knowledge just pushes them into the realm of the supernatural.
All of your arguments are in service of saying the PLA would be evil to provide more direct support to the resistance and take a stronger anti-Zionist stance than they already are, via phrasemongering on your part and linguistic gymnastics.
Yes fighting on the side of the exploited against their exploiter is morally just in all instances. It’s easy for you to talk shit from your cushy position in the imperial core. I hope you reflect in the future on the immense privilege you have thanks to the mass immiseration of the global south and do better.
So you’re not different from your opposition. For sure you’ve got the right answer, and your might will prove it.
It’s not about me, it’s about the principle you’re espousing. Also you don’t know anything about me, and presuming you do does nothing for your position.
Edit - Are you also asserting China is not or will never be imperialist? How naive can you possibly be?
What part of fighting on the side of the exploited against their exploiters is always just did you not get?
Might doesn’t prove anything. Violence is unfortunately the only language that colonialist and imperialists understand as has already been proven by history.
In your mind was it wrong to use violence on the Nazis? You seem awfully pro status quo which is built on the rape, murder pillaging and mass exploitation of Billions for the comfort of a few millions and the mass excesses of a few thousand.
Edit: what no material, class, dialectical, historical or any analysis beyond vibes does to someone. Pure brain worms.
There’s nothing wrong with fighting to protect people it’s the part where you decide you and your friends get to decide who is right and who is wrong.
As I said before, you don’t know anything about me, so don’t presume that you do so that you can justify your righteous indignationand buttress poorly formed beliefs. My family has a long history of military involvement, my grandfather fought from Normandy to Germany and suffered greatly for it. Two of his brothers fought and one didn’t come back. My maternal grandmother was Osterbeiter and met my maternal grandfather in a German work camp. All of my family hated Nazis with a passion their entire lives, and half of them also hated Soviets. Don’t talk to me like I don’t understand fighting for what you believe, and don’t tell me I don’t understand suffering.
Military excursions in the name of ideology, particularly when they are done by a superpower, very quickly become imperialism. Thinking China is immune to that is immensely naive.
More vibes based analysis from one so wise. Fighting the Nazis was good but fighting the order set up by the imperial power the Nazis modelled themselves after is bad. You are a privileged liberal who only cares about what directly affects you and don’t care about the rest of us. The global south is being exploited on a scale that would give Hitler wet dreams and your response to people supporting them fighting back is “you’re just as bad as the exploiters if you fight back”. It’s infantile and plainly ridiculous. Grow up. Do some reading, go visit the global south and talk to people and witness the exploitation you are inherently ok with as you condemn resistance.
Long history of imperial conquest but also fought the Nazis so all the rest of it is ok.
You clearly don’t know what this word means.
We don’t decide anything. It has already been decided when they supported genocide imperialism and colonialism. No one forced them to.
Connect this. How is a country materially supporting anti-fascism and anti-imperialism a road to imperialism? Tie it directly to Marxism-Leninism in particular. Focusing on vague generalities while ignoring specifics that are inconvenient to your argument is poor logic.
Why? Connect the argument, address the claims directly.
Why do you suppose Marxist-Leninist ideology somehow immunizes a nation against imperialist desires or a general desire to increase ones power, which are both arguably part of human nature and certainly part of the nature of a nation-state?
What is it about any ideology that might make it immune to that?
Any unchecked ideology will eventually try to assert itself unilaterally. As your previous comments have made clear.
Your argument is still idealist, not materialist, and thus relies on supernatural explanation. Appealing to the idea of a universal human spirit that trends towards imperialism and increasing power is a supernatural explanation for why imperialism exists, and why power structures are formed. Same with the idea thay any “unchecked” ideology will “assert itself unilaterally,” which itself could be a good thing!
Imperialism is caused by capitalist expansion, capital expands outward and seeks foreign markets to plunder in order to fight the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. This isn’t because of “human nature” or any other vague and supernatural explanation, but because of material processes of economics.
If your arguments are restrained to the realm of the supernatural, we can’t take them seriously.
Your assertions here are that using violence against fascists is bad purely because we cannot know whether fascism is correct or anti-fascism is. As for China being imperialist or not, your argument is that by opposing fascism they will inevitably become imperialist.
These are logical absurdities based in idealism.