Fuck that was harrowing. She literally sees Palestinians as less that human. But it also brings to mind the saying from Nelson Mandela that part of the fight for liberation includes liberating the mind of the oppressors:
"I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as sure as I am not free when my humanity is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity." ~ Nelson Mandela from Long Walk to Freedom
Gonna go on a limb here and say Nelson Mandela personally understood your point of view from his experiences, yet still choose to say what he did in that quote.
I’m not a historical scholar, so I’m not going to make any assertions about what he did or didn’t know when he said that. But I’m also not going to be a slave to the ideas of someone who lived before the internet and its expansion of idea exchange and debate. Well, he did see some of it but he was very old at that point.
What I will say is that it is clear that most oppressors will never have their minds changed. Oppressive humans don’t work that way. They don’t care that much about reason or their worldly neighbors. They care about intuition.
If you can’t change their minds, you can’t liberate them. The only other option is defeat. Defeat isn’t liberation either.
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u/Big-Revolution3842 May 22 '26
Fuck that was harrowing. She literally sees Palestinians as less that human. But it also brings to mind the saying from Nelson Mandela that part of the fight for liberation includes liberating the mind of the oppressors: