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Vince Fakhoury Horn's avatar

This article, by Palestinian writer Hamze Awawde, does a lot to flesh out the contemporary historical details regarding the "peace industry" and how it has failed Palestinians:

"I’ve written before about the long, slow rot of the peace-industrial complex—how a noble cause mutated into a donor-pleasing economy that sold fake hope and ultimately radicalized the extremes. I spent twenty years inside that machinery. I helped build it. But understanding that structural rot requires understanding how the machinery was wired in the first place. When the paradigm finally shattered, the industry didn’t disappear. It ran a PR campaign."

https://hamzeawawde.substack.com/p/the-good-palestinian-playbook-how

Daniel Montgomery's avatar

Thank you for writing this! Too much emphasis on individual salvation leaves us with a nice, neat fit with a neoliberal capitalist-and-colonialist-compatible worldview. What's the difference between this and spiritual bypass? I don't believe we can afford that anymore, whether we're talking about genocide, ecological issues or economic inequality.

Vince Fakhoury Horn's avatar

Yeah, I think one difference is that spiritual bypassing is a phenomena that's explained within the frame of individualism, whereas what you've said breaks out of that frame to include the cultures and systems which shape us as individuals.

Daniel Montgomery's avatar

Yes, that seems like a useful distinction.

Gwen in Denver's avatar

Rock on, Courageous One!