Here, Beau discusses the recently arisen possibility that major world powers might end up formally recognising Palestine as a state as a way of applying pressure on Israel, which would likely speed up the end of the current wave of the Middle Eastern conflict, and could improve Palestine's chances of becoming a real, functional, state.
One of the side effects of this happening would be, the massacre that heralded the current wave of the conflict would effectively, retroactively, become the beginning of a successful Palestinian revolution. Yay! We get to see the gossamer-thin line between terrorists and freedom fighters merely by living through interesting times!
Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but I'm also being serious. #HHOS and all that. Most revolutions have, throughout history, in fact, been quite violent affairs, and whether they will retroactively be seen as good or evil depends, in large part, only on whether the violence will have succeeded in changing the regime. Histories get written by the victors and all that.
And the historians who write most angrily about failed revolutions tend to be the ones who support people who made a peaceful change of power impossible in the first place.
This can open a whole can of writhing ethics conundrums for people who don't believe in having nuances in their principles (and, I suppose, don't remember what the previous revolutions were like — even though a whole bunch, peaceful and otherwise, successful and otherwise, have happened within relatively recent past). Can one support Palestinian statehood while condemning the massacre that will possibly have made the statehood possible? Can one support the Israelis' right to elect their rulers while condemning the massacre that the elected rulers then undertook?
Ain't no situational ethics like international relations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y310oJHLDzk