Hamas also finally released an actual list with names of who they would release.
Those were the changes the made the deal. Israel did not change their position.
If you think you are right, then tell me: What did Hamas want that they didn't get before, than now because of Trump Israel agreed to? There's not a single thing, but I'll let you have a chance to find something.
As a dev, I hate jargon to dress up trivial products or when distressing things are watered down. Usually I keep my feelings to myself but in this case, allowing a genocide to be watered down would make me complicit.
P.S. I understand this will be downvoted. But HN karma is a small price to pay to call out the softening of a literal genocide. Imagine standing by when someone calls Germany’s genocide “punishments”.
I’m confused by this question, is 45,000 too little for you? To label genocide you need a large number of of deaths with the intent of destroying a people’s identity.
> What’s the civilian/military ratio ?
If you’re able to find this number, you’re likely able to find that depending on whom you ask the percentage of militants ranges from 10-40%.
And this says nothing about the millions displaced, the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and the policies to starve the population. Given the vast amount of attention given to this topic and the information around it, you need to be make a conscious effort to stay ignorant of it. And to be wilfully ignorant of a genocide is to be complicit in it.
I suggest starting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
In other news: Israel strikes Gaza within hours of ceasefire accord with Hamas, residents say
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-cease...
Noting that, ceasefires are wonderful things.
I remain convinced that HN is simply not the place to have a reasoned discussion about this conflict, and probably nowhere on the internet is.
Rest, and re-arm time.
A poll showed 60% of Israelis wanted a ceasefire but the 40% who want the war to continue are making a big noise. Violence was never going to take down a resistance group, we all knew this.
I don’t think there can be a future with Hamas in charge. Only a peace deal will will secure safety for both sides. But this negotiation between Hamas dismantling and a two-state solution is not the rhetoric coming out of Israel.
Only sanctions will gain a two-state solution and actual peace for Israel and Palestine.
And Gaza are still currently launching missiles at Israel.
Sources please?
IMO Iran is the winner (least damaged) out of all this. Their proxies are smashed, but the core strength is still the same.
Israel has blown all its international credibility. The International Court of Justice verdict will be very interesting. If it goes against Israel then BDS will (should) become the policy for all countries.
That is the point of BDS
After all it was scantions from the West that bought down the other apartheid regime in the 1990s
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/consequences-i... (from Nov) | https://www.understandingwar.org/publications?type%5B%5D=bac... (daily report history)
With other conflicts wrapping up, there are people expecting more attacks into Iran, especially by Israel. They are in a weakened state. Their missile attacks amounted to nothing. Much like Russia, they likely look better on paper than in practice. That being said, one nuke from them against Israel would be devastating, but also likely mean the end of the regime
I did. There was no reports on anything like that in the past few days. That's why I'm asking, what's there to LOL about? Or was the comment a joke that they can't fire or something? I'm confused
The comment claimed that missiles were still being launched from Gaza. Here's a google search to help you check for yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=Israel+hamas+"rockets"+"miss...
Either the news aren't mentioning some major attack or you are lying through your teeth.
Leaders in the middle east are also driven by their constituents, which still harbor a lot of resentment against Israel, but that will pass as well. I think this was the last chance of a significant insurgency to reorder powers in the middle east and Iran and its proxies lost a lot of influence.
Houthis have a strategic position and Yemen probably has one of the largest market for illegal weapons. But their capabilities are very limited and their raison d'être is a death cult with no future. At some point other Yemini forces will take charge.
For Israel it seems possible to strike through Iraq with some effort, and technically they are still at war after Iraq attacked Israel in . But that war is quite cold and there is some exchange at least with the Kurdish part of Iraq.
The only upside for them now is that those expenses suddenly became unnecessary, but it's not going to stop them from trying to do it all over again.
The Iranian proxies are not actually fully on Iran's teat, they have their own revenue stream and direct Iranian funding is now only a small part of it.
Being sanctioned organizations, they still need to launder money even if it is obtained legitimately in order to obscure their control of it. But being in the position they are, a billion dollars is not actually a huge sum compared to their assets and income streams. A conservative estimate would put total legitimate assets for Hezbollah over 10 billion dollars.
There was a time where this wasn't true, somewhere in the 1980s, but that time is long past. Iran's proxies have grown beyond directly being funded and they have largely established themselves in the social and economic fabric as an essentially governmental entity.
This is clear when you look at the US sanctioning various Lebanese businessmen and large companies in sectors from telecommunications to construction to pharmaceuticals as well as functionaries in it's government. It's not a question of selling weed.
They do have big income streams, but "legitimate" is way more than a stretch here. More like they use population for those streams, and anything else they can reach, "legitimate" or not.
Deciding that another country's laws do not matter and considering a foreign governmental entity to be criminal in its own country is just not a rational argument. Russia has a corrupt government, that doesn't change the fact the Russian government is largely self-sufficient draws its income from legitimate and productive activities.
At that point you're just making a circular argument that it's a fundamentally illegitimate organization. Well you can consider them to be, it doesn't change the fact that they have large revenue streams from productive activities that are legal within their jurisdiction, and as a result are far less reliant on Iranian funding than they used to be.
And to the point, it doesn't change the fact that Iran doesn't spend much money on their proxies anymore.
I just fear this will cause western media and politicians to and declare the crisis to be over (after it had began on Oct. 7, of course absolutely out of the blue and without any context...) and go back to pretending everything is back to normal. Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
We'll see where all of that goes.
I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
While I was in school, I studied with many Palestinians in my college of engineering. I wonder often what happened to them.
At the same time, within Israel, Intel is the largest civilian employer. The Pentium M is an Israeli rework of the Pentium Pro legacy, and Israel is key to Intel's gains over the past two decades.
I wish that everyone that I knew from the Middle East was fully involved in the advances of Intel.
Perhaps my lost schoolmates' absence was precisely what Intel lacked, but such cultural divides are not easily bridged.
This is a great pity.
Israel, as it it currently constituted (based on 1967 borders) is not a viable state if the West Bank is a hostile entity with a standing army, and funded to a similar extent as Hezbollah. The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
The Palestinian position seems to be "trust us that if you give us full, un-fettered independence, then we will not be a hostile entity" - but that's asking for Israel to place an enormous amount of trust in present and future Palestinian people and leaders, without any historical reasons to base this on, and highlighted by the worst case scenario of Hezbollah in the north, a foreign-controlled militia funded to the tune of 1 billion / year, and potential a hostile party in the West Bank (and Gaza) - effectively surrounding the country.
And it is more than just demilitarization. A demilitarized Palestine is not enough if, for example, Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
Hence we are where we are .. with Israel unable to disengage because doing so presents an existential risk to their nation.
This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea; "it's strategically important for us" isn't really sufficient justification for mass murder, and - on a purely geographic point - talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate.
And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
> Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
This is the side that's not really been raised enough in this whole discussion. If Israel's war is with Iran, why is that war not being carried out in Iran? Does this have something to do with the fact that Iran is 1000km away from having a land border with either Israel or Palestine?
It should be either be bilateral militarization (a miniaturized MAD if you will - similar with the Korean peninsula I guess), or bilateral demilitarization and extensive UN force deployment.
Should they?
That’s why the peace before 1967 was so important. But Israel ended it and was left with a mess that now all young people are drafted into service.
I don't agree, that's an optimistic view of things. Most Palestinians (Hamas for sure, Abbas as well) never agreed to give up on the 'Right of Return' so its not really independence in a 2 state solution that they're looking for, it's the abolishment of Israel.
They are able to do this in large part because Palestine is not a recognized state.
The longer they prevent Palestine from getting statehood, the more dunams of land they can steal.
There is a justifiable argument for Israel to occupy the west bank and/or the Gaza strip (whether one agrees or not is another matter that I will not get into). Settling it is another matter entirely, and this action is what causes so much grief.
But what Palestinian supporters continuously fail to grasp is that every time Israel has tried to give (and there were many attempts in the 1980s and 1990s), bad actors have caused violence. This violence was a huge cause in support shifting to right-wing parties in Israel.
The tragedy is that a plurality of Palestinians would otherwise love to have a peaceful (two state or otherwise) solution, but the "bad" ones are well funded by outsiders, in particular Iran. If a Gandhi/Martin Luther King/Nelson Mandela figure emerged, they'd almost certainly be killed by Hamas,Hezbollah,etc.
But at the end of the day, there's no way the extreme elements of either side will agree to a permanent and dignified peace, because even if it would work it would mean the end of either of them (and Israeli PM was assassinated by a far-right Jewish nationalist).
I'm sympathetic to both sides myself. I'm sympathetic to Israel's position, need for security, and the fact that hostility against them is a given. I'm also sympathetic to the fact that the Palestinian people were pushed off their land, often with violence to a level that can fit the definition of genocide, during Israel's independence and subsequent annexations.
But there will never be a true peace so long as the extremists on both sides have as much power as they do. I know most Iranians are fed up with their government. My Iranian colleagues all are commenting that even devoutly religious Iranians back home are getting fed up. A lot of this is a house of cards, so I guess we'll see.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Megiddo_%2815th_cent...
That's an incredible statement, as if the rest of the world is somehow different. The only thing special about these regions is that they've had complex states for longer, so of course state-based warfare would go back farther.
On another level, there absolutely have been periods of stability in regions of the middle east, for periods of time we would consider long.
The current conflict is a different beast. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the careless meddling of western powers in the aftermath. The Jewish diaspora, Zionism, and the Holocaust. The Sunni-Shia conflict.
I agree with you, although I certainly hope you and I are wrong. It would be nice to see people let go of past injustices on both sides long enough to have a lasting peace.
It’s hard to disagree. But Ireland was an impossible problem at one stage, and while it’s still far from resolved, it’s a hell of lot less violent.
I am not smart enough to have an opinion on the situation in Gaza that's much more complicated than "people dying is bad", but I struggle to understand how the continued annexation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, supported by the government and army, is anything other than clearly ethnic cleansing. If it had stopped ten years ago, and it was now a conversation about uprooting the established communities there, maybe then there's room for nuance and so on, but it didn't: it's ongoing.
As opposed to the neighboring states (and Hamas), which mostly have religiously tolerant, fully democratic governments that fully respect civil rights, and which of course have never openly stated that they want Israel to disappear from existence, not at all leaving it implicit that its millions of Jewish residents should be ethnically cleansed from the region.. Yes?
Break them down further and you can find the actual monsters--those self-interestedly seeking either their own aims, or, some random aim at any cost, even when the aim is impossible and its costs massive.
Who killed Rabin?
Israelis killed their own PM to prevent the Oslo Accords, the goal of the Oslo Accords was to provide a 2 state solution.
Don't rewrite history.
Democratic structures like fatah and hamas ?
Very few of the Fatah concessions ever led anywhere despite promises from Israel, leading many palestinians to think that Fatah was weak. Which other "strong" democratic options were there? PNI? Third Way? They were never serious options.
Now, the Fatah party has been incompetent and corrupt. I am not saying democracy would have sorted itself out in Palestine, but I am saying that if Israel would have wanted a democratic development in Palestine, it would not have dealt with Fatah in such bad faith.
Nor, I must add, would they have killed any palestinian (Gaza) leaders opening up to peace with Israel. Ahmed Yassin was killed just months after started proposing a long term truce on the condition of a Palestinian state in the west bank and gaza. his successor (al-Rantisi) suffered a similar fate after a similar proposal. Then Jabari in 2012. Then they killed Haniyeh who was the principal negotiator during all recent peace talks.
None of these men were innocent cute bunnies by any means, but Israel has been sending a clear message for many many years: negotiation will be done by force.
This refers (I imagine) to internal Israeli politics - a certain portion of the Israeli populace fears that Netanyahu is attempting to make Israel less democratic by various means. This was a topic that caused mass protests in Israel before October 7th, and continues in some form even now.
Yesterday they were called terrorists by the mainstream, tomorrow when they win they will be hailed as heroes and freedom fighters.
the zionists were also called terrorists by the UK in the beginning, especially when they bombed king david hotel
This is an intra-Israeli conflict that is (mostly) independent of the Israel-Palestine conflict (and also of the question how democratic a state is anyway that keeps ~50% of its inhabitants under permanent military rule). It falls more in line with the other shifts towards populist or authoritarian governments we have seen in the West. (Trump, Orban, Erdogan, etc)
It does have a unique Israeli flavor to it though, which does circle right back to Israel/Palestine: That the political force that's driving this authoritarian shift forward is closely associated with the settler movement and the most extreme voices regarding the Palestinians. This was also the case before the war - however, they took the war as opportunity to further erode civil rights, e.g. free speech and manipulate institutions such as the police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Natio...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-21/ty-article-ma...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-13/ty-article-ma...
It was pretty much like that before. They're just being a lot more open about wanting to wipe them out.
And what would Gaza have if it were independent?
The most religious/fundementalist of the the parties UTJ believes in land for peace and have said so many times over the years (but like the majority of the Israeli public, they wont mention it, let alone push for it, during wartime so as not to reward terrorism) and was fully behind all the ceasefire proposals in the past 18 months.
And it's certainly not authoritarian. Israel has full powers of protest, free speech, and in fact it's generally the press that have the strongest voice not the government.
And "that is actively at work undermining democratic structures" is also wrong. They are trying to reform Israel's supreme court system which many legal scholars agree badly needs reform as the justices are largely self-selected yet have the power to override legislation without referring to existing law (the so-called reasonableness test which no other country has).
Israel maintained a prerogative from early in the war to assassinate essentially every known journalist in Gaza, and they did it by bombing their homes and killing their families. West Bank and pro-Arab Israeli journalists were merely arrested and held without charge.
"Israeli State-sponsored Internet propaganda include the Hasbara, Hasbara Fellowships, Act.IL, and the Jewish Internet Defense Force. Supporters generally frame this "hasbara" as part of its fight towards improving their image abroad given continued Israeli human rights abuses, and also against anti-Israeli agitation and attempts to criticize it. There is substantive evidence that Israel heavily uses data-driven strategies, trolling and disinformation and manipulated media, as well as dedicating funds to state-sponsored media, for overt propaganda campaigns."[1]
"In June 2024, Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs was revealed to have paid $2 million to Israeli political consulting firm STOIC, to conduct a social media campaign, fueled by fake accounts and often employing misinformartion, targeting 128 American Congresspeople, with a focus on Democratic and African-American members of the House of Representatives. Websites were also created to provide young, progressive Americans with Gaza news with a pro-Israel spin. Among the objectives of the campaign was amplifying Israeli attacks on UNRWA staffers and driving a wedge between Palestinians and African-Americans to prevent solidarity between the two groups. "[2]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propa...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_in_the_Israel%E...
3. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-0...
His base and the people surrounding him have the habit of ostracizing anyone who doesn't fall in line behind him, rather than being guided by principle (Which is why Pence is no longer his VP pick, and why basically his whole cabinet is full of sycophants compared to last time).
Trump's whole shtick is to take whatever is happening, and spin it into "This was my whole plan all along", then take the credit for it. This is why you never see him give concrete policy proposals in interviews, and is also what will likely happen with the russia/ukraine war. Whatever happens is good, and was part of Trump's plan, and his base will fall in line or disappear politically.
This is the exact platform of at least one political party on either side.
Over and above any underlying cultural or historical conflict.
It's when misguided political parties gain power that puts that kind of thing on steroids.
Actually they don't want them to vanish completely. Just suffer enough. They are the reason the far right government is leading Israël.
But the Palestinians cant keep living under occupation. Everyone should continue to exert pressure for a free Palestine or the cycle will continue. The fundamental goal of the current Israeli government is to never have a Palestinian state, which will always be a major barrier unless sanctions are introduced.
Trump was interesting.. Im sure we’ll find out one day what it was all about. But if he really was the catalyst in this I will take back my words and eat humble pie. Someone has suggested the ceasefire is just a show, so we watch carefully.
Possibly. There does seem to be an uptick in previously unvoicable sentiment that was quickly squashed anywhere it showed on social media. I will say this. My parents went out of their way not to discuss some political events with their children ( communism - different rules apply and kids are dumb ), but in 90s, when similar 'war' raged and newshead was convincingly telling me, who to root for, my father unusually said 'you may want to check how Israel came into existence.' For the longest time, I did not. October surprise was a reason to get some of the dust removed from those books. It is not a good look. One could argue it is worse than US colonization of Indian lands.
I am sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, but the truth of the matter is that Israel has a valid claim too and military superiority to back it. If Palestine is to self govern, it and the rest of the nations around it need to convince Israel that they won’t try to wipe Israel off the map (or, alternatively, to succeed at it, which I’m sure many Western protesters would celebrate). Until then Israel will just dominate them instead.
If you think a 78 year old alone is capable of such feats of planning, you have more faith in the elderly than most. Read any of his speeches that are off the cuff and you will see that Trump has incredibly poor working memory, vocabulary, and attention. This is to be expected from an elderly individual, but not from a great strategist. These are the results of large groups of people working towards goals, not heroic individual feats.
Don't hold your breath, Isreal already announced a ceasefire in Lebanon in the past and didn't respect it.
> The timing of the release of the hostages gave rise to allegations that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the 1980 United States presidential election to thwart Carter from pulling off an "October surprise".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#October_Su...
So it could be a tactic to get Hamas to release whatever hostages are still alive, then get right back to the new status quo.
This actually makes perfect sense for Trump. He's only claimed to care about the Israeli hostages. I'm sure he feels great about taking credit for their return.
[1]: https://trendsinthenews.substack.com/p/gerald-celente-on-gaz...
* Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas political wing, was killed in Tehran
* Yahyah Sinwar, the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in Gaza
* Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, was killed in Beirut
* Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah's successor, was killed a week later
* Large swathes of Hezbollah's command and control were wiped out in the pager attack
* Bashar al-Assad, Iran's most important military client, fled Syria
The Al-Qassam Brigades are shattered. Mohammad Sinwar, its current leader, is reported by ISW not to have communications with most of its new recruits, who are scavenging improvised weapons from unexploded ordinance. Iran's "Axis of Resistance" lies in tatters, their foreign/military strategy, of which Hamas was a key component, now seems totally repudiated. Hamas has lost most of its remaining infrastructure, supply chains, and support.
They should have taken the deal when it was first offered.
I think this cease fire somehow legitimises, to the public eye, Netanyahu's strategy of intense attack.
It gives the message of "we won't stop until we get the hostages back" and gives the world a reminder of what this is all about, at least according to what he claims.
Again, just trying to observe the message
Bibi did not force the Palestinians into a ceasefire. He was the bottleneck behind it. Trump effectively threatened no more weapons. Which is why we have a ceasefire.
In every single example of human history without a single exception.
It'll take at least a few days to see if that stops.
“Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last-minute concessions,” [Netanyahu’s] Office said. The statement said that the cabinet will not convene until Hamas has accepted all the terms of the agreement.”
Source: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-hamas-rene...
Mirrors: https://archive.ph/9m170, https://web.archive.org/web/20250116121511/https://www.i24ne...
On Israel's side, Israel claimed Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement. I can't find any specifics.
It’s been growing smaller since 1973 (and never technically annexed any area it did temporarily take in a war)
Propaganda machine at work, I see.
Israel is clearing land in the West Bank to this day, even if they haven't "annexed" the land officially.
But hey, according to their own maps it's already part of Israel, so yeah, you're right:
Of course it "needs to be take longer" since lots of money was made by government contractors in this war and why would it need to end earlier if Biden was throwing money on Israel instead of reaching a ceasefire deal much earlier with the first deal.
All would have been avoid had it not been for Biden's weak leadership which was shown on display in-front of the world for the last 4 years.
There is no denying or spinning that.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-mediators-sea...
EDIT: Of course no-one can begin to answer this question, since the answer is there was no reason to prolong this war.
You do realize that this war happened under this existing president and since November, Trump will be the "new US President"? Both Hamas and Israel both also knew this.
Even with this existing president (Biden), only until he lost the election this deal was reached and it started under his term and he prolonged to fund and waste money on Israel in this war even when the first ceasefire deal was rejected with an excessive amount of lives lost.
So why wasn't this stopped earlier with the first deal? Why did Biden (the existing president) wait until the very end to reach a deal when the first was rejected?
Can you not answer the above instead of dodging the question(s)?
And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel, this war could have ended a lot sooner if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender. Instead the message got diluted with support for Palestinians, which Hamas interpreted as support for themselves.
Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
Edit: I got a very quick -4 mod on this, I assume because people don't like to realize Trump is doing more for both Israel and the Palestinians than Biden, and the Democrats lost the election partly because of their lack of support for Israel.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. *If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.*
Really major political developments often have a thread on HN.
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/with-epic-deal-...
This is not just Trump bragging and taking credit, search other sources.
This claim is not justified by the link you provide. What evidence do you have to support it?
Am I missing something or did they really only agree to _just_ a ceasefire?
I’m completely ignorant as to the public sentiment on this topic, no social media besides this site.
Given the sheer global size of one group vs the other tiny ethnical minority it’s no surprise who wins in a count of opinion votes. That applies in the UN, and it applies here. And is ironically the reason the ethnic minority must have self determination.
Must be those pesky chinese or russian bots. Or could it be something else entirely? A chosen group of bots perhaps?
> that aren’t dead in a thread before.
Give it some time. They start with the downvotes and when things quiet down some, then come the mass flagging of comments.
the ostracizing has been diluted so much that its become even counterproductive. everyone can laugh about something as benign as that, as the real frictions have been laid bare for all to see.
Unlike those highly motivated people, normal people don't spend time upvoting and vouching, so you end up with a tattered mess of a thread.
Any example of this that isn't Israel related?
Many people believe they need to add support to their cause at the expense of accuracy, so instead of elaborating or explaining why they just try to drown out discourse that doesnt automatically help them
But fortunately there is no need to debate your beliefs anymore, just go bet on them in the prediction markets
You get paid for being more correct that someone else, geopolitics is greater than sentiment
If you've never seen it, these videos from a banking conference in 2023 are "enlightening":
https://x.com/mtracey/status/1647811834039136258
Mitch McConnell's comments about Ukraine and it's natural resources also support this plan. If assets become to expensive to buy, just cause them to be distressed so you can buy them cheaply.
Pretty much all wars are banker's wars.
It takes both sides to agree to a better future.
Keep in mind:
Israel killed 100x more civilians than Palestine during this conflict, and more damage was done to Gaza than any European city during wwii. 90% of the population is displaced. 10% are casualties. Israel intentionally blew up all the civil infrastructure (hospitals, doctors, engineers) first.
There are > 17,000 children that have no adults to care for them any more. That’s 10 orphaned kids for every Israel civilian casualty in the middle of a famine with no support infrastructure.
Posting that video was Trump's way of telling Netanyahu that he will burn him by turning him into public enemy #1 with his base. That's how he got him to agree.
Netanyahu destroyed his reputation within the Democratic base and it did not concern him in the slightest. Because Israel stopped truly needing the approval of the US a long time ago.
And so the idea that he is suddenly worried about what the Trump base thinks has no basis in fact. Especially when the Trump base is not 1-1 with the Republican base i.e. the majority of the Congress still supports Israel.
There is no evidence of this.
Every single time Trump has blustered about doing something e.g. turning Canada into a 51st, buying Greenland the parties have been concerned but not particularly worried. Because he doesn't follow through.
So the idea that we should credit Trump for his words and ignore the months of diplomacy and pressure from not just the US but Middle Eastern countries is bizarre to me. Ceasefires are always far more complex and nuanced than they look from the outside.
> Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there
He thinks past a certain point it looks bad to the median American and isn’t ideological enough to push it past that.
Because you weren't listening to Trump. Throughout all of his campaigns he's been pretty clear he doesn't want to be paying for other country's defense/military spending.
It doesn't seem odd at all. Trump just went up against the mainstream Israeli-American power structure and won. He was very open that he supports Israel, but not this war. He ran on a premise that he would end the war before he took office. Appointing hard-line pro-Israel people is par for the course. It shows he supports Israel, but it makes those people beholden to him. In one of his books Trump talks about how he would give people he didn't like / wasn't sure about promotions. If they did a good job and impressed him great. If not he would fire them and felt that firing someone from a higher position was more meaningful and had a greater impact for the people below them.
Trump understands what American power is he doesn't really give the context that other world leaders are looking for, he just goes about it with the premise of comply, or we will make things difficult for you.
Trump basically tells Israel, you can do what you want, but you can't do it like this because it looks bad. The average person just doesn't like what they are seeing with regard to Palestine. Trump isn't ideological about Israel so he's not hellbent on the destruction of Palestine like so many. He gives the same attitude to most of our allies, in that you can be our friend, but you can't make us look bad.
It's not odd, considering that most pro-Israel figures (and most Israelis themselves) are not pro-Netanyahu.
Only Nixon could go to China [1].
To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has. Hezbollah has given way to a power-sharing government in Lebanon. Syria, miraculously, is a wild card--with major implications for Russia and Iran. Hamas has been downgraded from a threat to a nuisance. And not only is Iran on its back foot, we also got a free PR campaign for the efficacy of American weapons and worthlessness of post-Soviet Russian air defences.
Realpolitikally speaking, any more war is an expensive distraction. (Potent for a media-time savvy guy.) I'm sure Netanyahu could find something new to bomb in Gaza. But it's not a bad time for him to consolidate gains, politically and geopolitically, and possibly re-aim Washington's eye towards Iran.
(On a human level, it does seem Trump gets moved by images of war deaths. Maybe the carnage actually touched him.)
Idk, what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements. Only time will tell... We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too, and that was nowhere near as careless about human suffering as this latest flare up. And we lost all that progress extremely rapidly due to the hatred the local populace and neighboring countries had due to our actions. I think Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error.
Fifty thousand people are dead, many of whom were underage, and most of the universities and hospitals in Gaza are destroyed. Like the Iraq war or Tianamen Square, this is something people are going to keep bringing up for decades.
Syria is arguably the only good outcome, and it's not clear whether that was anything to do with Israel/US action at all?
LOL
Trump just wanted a deal - he loves being the "deal guy". Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration. Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
If you read between the lines it was clear Biden was also pushing hard to wrap it up before his term ends to add it to his legacy (that's how NYT spun it at least). But Trump also had his people negotiating there as well and enough of add a hard-line persuasive influence to force Bibi to show up in Doha last-minute on a weekend during Sabbath [1]. While Biden really didn't seem to have much influence there in the last yr.
But ultimately they both get to take credit.
The cease-fire ending will eventually need a conclusion during Trumps term as well.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-salty-envoy-may-forced-1549...
He's a private citizen. It isn't legal for him to engage in foreign diplomacy. Conveniently we have a feckless DoJ that won't hold people accountable.
Trump's a die hard Israel supporter but I think personally he feels disgust for Netanyahu, for reasons that arent too clear.
(As we all should - Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career)
What makes you think this causes Trump to think lesser of Netanyahu? Seems like the kind of person Trump fawns over as being "tough".
Oh, and like a sibling pointed out -- Trump wasn't mad at Netanyahu for being a racist, opportunistic genocidal maniac. He was mad that Netanyahu was the first to congratulate Biden on his election victory in 2020.
Responding by killing tens of thousands of civilians is on them a bit, too.
There likely are thousands upon thousands of hours of footage from October 7th from private/personal security cameras and also from the camera equipment on the attack helicopters and tanks.
Yet, despite all the footage that likely exists, a total of 46 minutes has been screened for the purpose of hasbara.
We could easily have an actual accounting of which of the 1200 were killed by Hamas and which were killed by the IDF if there was actual transparency and all the footage was released instead of selectively released to insinuate that 100% of the deaths were committed by Hamas.
Absent transparency, I'm inclined to place most of the 1200 deaths on IDF. There's more than enough footage of testimonials from IDF soldiers afterwards talking about how they engaged on October 7th to know for certain that they killed many of their own either due to the fog of war or due to the Hannibal Directive.
Personally, I would not be surprised if more than half of the 1200 were killed by the IDF given the ratio between how much footage has been shown relative to how much footage exists.
Absent transparency, the only fair thing to due is assume an intent to maximally deceive the public about what actually happened on October 7th.
In many ways, this is comparable to how the United States was misled about January 6th, 2021. A lot of the footage released in March 2023 contradicted much of the narrative that was spun in the weeks following Jan 6th, 2021. Even now, a lot of the footage still has yet to be released and we still have no idea how many undercover agents and other agent provocateurs were in the crowd that day.
This did not start on oct 7th. I too was ignorant about the situation in palestine but its obvious after just a bit of research that israel isn't a good faith actor here.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MknerYjob0w&t=37s&ab_channel...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoFjbnvkmQ0&ab_channel=Amnes...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYgwKhzHeGc&t=569s&ab_channe...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2unZIzIwp0&ab_channel=AlJaz...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMYEHhCkedo&ab_channel=TheGu...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhXIYns7ZeM&ab_channel=AlJaz...
PS: yes I know I'll be flagged for this but truth is important.
And never mind that Hamas is still the same old non compromising, cut throat, maximalist and some would say genocidal terrorist organization it has always been. You forgot to mention that. The PLO is only slightly better.
Israel doesn't want to annex Yehuda and Shomron (the place you call West Bank). This is a complete misunderstanding of the people in the West about Israeli politics. Israel wants to have nothing to do with Arab population. Never wanted it, and doesn't see it wanting it in the future. It's completely antithetical to what the absolute majority of Israeli population (and the politicians who represent it) want.
The reason why Israel holds that territory is that after one of the wars, Israel tried to use it as a bargaining chip to convince its Arab neighbors to recognize Israel as a country and to sign a peace treaty, once the territory is returned (so-called "land for peace" series of UN treaties). But, the Arab neighbors outsmarted Israel by abandoning their people in occupied territories, and, essentially, handing Israel an armed grenade that it now has no idea what to do with.
With respect to this problem, Israel has different approaches to its solution, that range from the "transfer" (the idea that Israel will force / subsidize the Arab population to migrate out of the occupied territories, this is the extreme right-wing position, assassinated "Gandhi" was one of the major proponents of it.) to the two-state solution on the far left, where Israel makes territorial concessions, esp. in Jerusalem and around.
But there's no political force that wants annexation (including the population), and nobody would realistically dare to vanquish / force to move the whole population of Gaza / Yehuda and Shomron. Of course, you could probably find some oddball idiot declaring "death to all Arabs" or similar, but they don't hold any real political power. But even these people wouldn't want annexation if it meant they have to put up with the people from annexed territories.
All true, very true. Of course the other bunch will slaughter you for drawing a cartoon.
I submit that you have a responsibility to be comprehensive when posting.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolutio...
You're confusing Al-Qaeda with Muslims.
At the end of April (iirc), Israel agreed to a set of terms; Qatar and Egypt then gave Hamas a different set of terms, which Israel hadn't agreed to. Note that stories about Hamas "accepting" a ceasefire date from May 6th. The terms today are the same as those of May 27th.
If it helps, it seems like it wouldn't be worth arguing, and easy to stipulate, that Hamas had accepted ceasefire terms prior to May 27th. You could say that the Qatar switcheroo never happened, and it was Israel being intransigent up to that point. That's not the reporting I read, but fine, ok. The only point my comment makes is that the terms they received on May 27th were ultimately the ones they ended up accepting. Given that: they should have accepted on May 27th.
It could be that they were holding out for international support that never came, and are now cutting their losses
This is the fourth or so deal that Hamas has accepted, the surprising thing is that Israel has accepted it too
If you can cite a source clearly stating Hamas accepted these terms, the May 27/today terms, I'd like to read it. Thanks in advance!
Later
I want to be clear: I'm not saying Hamas didn't offer alternate terms, many many times, over the last year. But you can't "take" a deal your counterparty refuses. What's important about the May 27 terms is that Hamas was forced to accept them anyways. As a descriptive statement, based on the facts of what happened: they should have taken that deal.
This is complete opposite of actual facts which is often the case with Israeli apologia. Hamas wanted a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal from Gaza. Israel wants a temporary ceasefire - which if one comprehends english - is not actually a ceasefire at all. Quoting Netanyahu (in June) : “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” which translates to "Return the hostages and we will kill you all at a time of our choosing". Even then Netanyahu never had any intention of pursuing a ceasefire deal to completion at the time because his cabinet members publicly threatened to withdraw from his coalition and collapse the government which would likely lead to Netanyahu's impending trial and incarceration.
You can think those terms are dreadfully unfair; that's fine, that has nothing to do with the argument I made.
It is a foregone conclusion that (the despots in charge of) Hamas aren't operating on the same trade-offs as you & I. Despite the toll, they'll consider it a victory if the IDF withdraws from all its positions.
Not taking the deal has indeed caused more mayhem, but on the flipside, Likud+ are being dragged through the mud, and for some, they were made to look every bit the "terrorists" they seem to hate with a vengeance.
Do you think that the Hamas' attacks aimed at civilians, such as Oct 7th, or indiscriminate launching of missiles it performed for decades, are not terror attacks?
Obviously if everything went unambigiously right for Israel, hamas would be offering an unconditional surrender not a ceasefire. If everything went well for Hamas they would be negotiating a very different deal.
Just curious. I do think they should have taken the deal.
Pager attack is a notable exception here, that was actually targeted badassery.
It goes on.
Whatever else Hamas is now, whatever improvised explosives they blow up in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, they are as a military force with a complex and carefully designed order of battle done, utterly broken. WSJ reports Al-Qassam isn't even communicating with the Hamas political branch. Of course they're going to recruit terrorists. There's no such thing as stopping that kind of activity.
weird to call killing people "targeted badassery"
Even if we grant that Israel offered this ceasefire deal in good faith in May, a bungled deal by Qatar/Egypt/Hamas does nothing to justify the ethnic cleansing they conducted in 2024.
I agree that most reporting, and most statements from US officials, put the blame squarely on Hamas for not having accepted a deal earlier.
But there is also at least some sense, definitely reported on in Israel, that this time Israel was far more serious about getting a deal done - ergo, in the past rounds of negotiations Israel was not pursuing a deal as seriously.
In particular, Ben Gvir (a right-wing extremist Israeli politician) a couple of days ago took credit for causing the previous ceasefire deals to not happen. This has been talked about a bunch in Israel.
I think you're right in thinking of it as Hamas should've called Israel's bluff and had a deal sooner, but let's also be realistic in understanding that they might've correctly seen Israel as not really trying to get a deal.
That's a pretty good summary of basically the last 100 years of that region's history lol
You cannot break the cycle of hatred with more hatred and violence.
What happened is that the image of Israel has been shattered in the globe.
The whole Iranian anti Israel coalition has been badly beaten!
Hezbollah barely exists anymore. The Assad regime is toppled. Iran itself has learned that Israel can attack them at will. The Houthis are still active, but too far away to do real damage.
Hamas itself still exists, but in a deeply degraded form. Their leaders are dead. Their armed forces have taken huge losses. Their amazing tunnel network is destroyed.
Israel will never again be invaded by surprise.
Hamas will probably start shooting rockets into Israel again, and kill the occasional civilian, but Israel is used to that and can deal with it.
I can't do anything about the US having an obscenely distorted view of terrorism but it'd be nice if I could at least turn a profit off it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/lucky-there-were-no-children-s...
Any future Hamas actions will inherently be less secure as their external help is now crippled.
Nanjing, well, Chinese sentiment is still very anti-Japan because of that and all the other atrocities. And proportionally to size/population, the destruction visited on Gaza in the past year and a quarter goes far beyond what Japan did in China.
Ok now a double honest question, why do zionists have unlimited justifications for committing a holocaust over the last 15 months+? And how many oceans of Palestinian children's blood does it take to wash away German guilt?
Indeed, life will probably continue getting worse for West Bank Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime, but there's no reason to believe they'll be literally exterminated.
The only thing left is allowing developers to build on the land and setting up checkpoints to keep the previous owners out.
If they try October 7 style attack again, Gaza will be wiped out.
US, UK, France, Germany, Italy in a joint message: https://it.usembassy.gov/joint-statement-on-israel/
Spain: https://www.politico.eu/article/pedro-sanchez-spain-humanita...
Italy, France, Germany ask for EU sanctions to force Hamas surrender: https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-france-germany-call-ad-h...
Secretary of State calls out other countries for not demanding Hamas to surrender: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/politics/blinken-israel-hamas...
You should expand your media diet.
The first one condemns the attacks two days after. The second one is "Humanitarian cease-fire", and condemning Hamas for attacks - Not a call to surrender. The third one is sanctions.
So I maintain what I said.
Looks more like the Iranian hostage situation when Carter lost against Reagan.
>if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender.
I guess you mean the entire western world. The rest doesn't care or doesn't Israel vs Hamas as good vs evil. Same with Russian vs Ukraine.
That's not true. Hamas agreed to:
* Allow Israel to patrol the Philadelphi corridor.
* Allow Israel troops to remain in a buffer zone
* Provided an actual list of hostages which they refused originally
* Agreed to a temporary ceasefire with hopes of negotiated a permanent one (they wanted the whole thing in one shot).
Israel on the other hand changed nothing except possible the specifics of who would be released (Israel will releases murderers, which earlier they did not want to do).
Trump started posting Jeffrey D Sachs videos on Truth Social and the chosen people got Hamas (which the chosen people also largely control, by the way) to accept the deal.
What a weird take. Without Biden's support of Israel this genocide would not have been possible. How do you mean it should have supported Israel more? Allow these psychopats to nuke Gaza?
And you think Hamas wanted to nuke Gaza? Do you mean Hamas wanted all this destruction of their country? What did they gain from that?
Biden should have told Hamas to surrender, he should have told Palestinians that their Hamas leadership is leading them to death and destruction, and if the Palestinians don't stop the US will get involved. Which is what Trump did, and now there's a ceasefire.
Hamas feeds off of Palestinians support, believing it's for them. They need to know that everyone wants them dead and destroyed. But that didn't happen till Trump. Biden was weak, and did very little helpful.
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
I'm not talking about monoliths on either side. I'm specifically referring to states in the region with authoritarian and even despotic governments with exactly the traits that the comment I originally responded to claims about Israel.
Weird, The IDF says it's indeed about kidnapped hostages: [1]
> the General Staff Directive for Contending with Kidnapping Attempts (also known as the "Hannibal" Directive) was initiated, meaning a number of actions necessary to locate and rescue kidnapped soldiers were put into effect.
Why would you even try to lie about its purpose when it's well known and documented?
[1] https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/military-advocate-general-s...
[2] Origin of Hannibal directive by Haaretz: http://archive.today/romMZ
Individual donations are a drop in a very big and leaky bucket.
The policies are heinous, possibly war crimes.
But Israel did also occupy Sinai and Gaza, and no longer does (well, it didn't until 7-oct-2023, at which point, Gaza opened a full fledged war which prompted Israel to re-occupy Gaza)
It still occupies the West Bank, and may or may not continue to do so, may or may not annex it. Prediction is very hard, especially about the future.
What? It's more likely to get you banned. Not only that, it gets minority and female college presidents fired. Something unthinkable prior to this "conflict".
All one can do is push back against the propaganda and censorship.
Some are being relocated inside the West Bank, which is horrible, heinous and possibly a war crime, but they remain within the (occupied since 1967) west bank.
There have been over 10 “ceasefires” that ended with Hamas firing rockets into Israel, in the last 20 years.
I dont doubt that Netanyahu wounded Trump's ego somehow, I just dont automatically believe a story that looks suspiciously like a plant.
No. He's getting the credit now. And he got it while maneuvering risk free.
The scare quotes are for Likud+ and/or the IDF.
Isreali and US right-wing leaders find a hostile Iran to be extremely politically convenient, and the military-industrial complex that they share with each other and with centrist parties just wants a reason to keep existing. People talk about a potential "War with Iran", but in reality we've given them maybe a dozen different diplomatic casus belli in the past decade, in part to deter them from political moderation.
> military-industrial complex that they share with each other and with centrist parties just wants a reason to keep existing.
This is so freakin' true. I feel like, if world peace ever reared its ugly head Americans would whine, "but jobs!" because of the hit it would give the military-industrial complex.
So the assertion that these parties hold "little power" is contradicted by their significant roles in the government. Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, was appointed to a newly created ministry position granting him authority over the state's police force. Ben-Gvir, a former follower of extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, has a history of incitement and inflammatory remarks towards Israel's Arab population. [1] Such appointments indicate that these parties have substantial influence within the coalition, as without them there is no coalition anymore. These parties have successfully advocated for policies aligning with their agendas. The coalition agreement with the Religious Zionist Party includes commitments to expand settlements in the West Bank and to work towards applying Israeli sovereignty over these territories.[6] Which contradicts what OP stated.
As to the claim that the government is merely "trying to reform Israel's supreme court system" overlooks the implications of these reforms. The proposed changes aim to shift power from the judiciary to the Knesset majority coalition, including an "override clause" that would allow the Knesset to overturn Supreme Court rulings with a simple majority vote.[2][3][4]
There are reports of increased government influence over media outlets, with certain channels promoting nationalistic agendas aligned with the Prime Minister's views.[5]
1. https://www.jta.org/2022/12/21/israel/whos-who-in-israels-ne...
2. https://www.cpreview.org/articles/2023/2/judicial-reform-in-...
3. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/ne...
4. https://www.american.edu/sis/news/20230106-four-ways-netanya...
5. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/20/netanyahus-med...
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-seventh_government_of_I...
The Egyptians were a major force in fomenting regional frictions with Israel. And the Levant remains a crossroad—it borders by land or sea the spheres of influence of the EU, Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Gulf monarchies, Egypt and America.
> convincing rulers in the Levant to ally themselves more closely with them at the expense of the Assyrians
Iran versus the West (and Gulf monarchies) in literally Syria.
The region isn’t pre-destined for chaos. But the geography and history make peace difficult. (There is always another person who can “legitimately” claim some land when you’re sited next to the cradle of civilisation.)
The Assyrians were constantly attacked by proxies helped out by Egypt (Elamites, Medes, Babylon).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-israelis-massively-...
Netanyahu isn't letting domestic opinion polls concern him let alone the Trump base.
It’s not like you haven wiped out Iran permanently (not advocating for this obviously, I’m Iranian!) or achieved anything of significance really, perhaps Iran has been slightly weakened, though even that remains to be seen depending on what happens with Syria, or have lost any major allies permanently.
You are naive if you think the infrastructure wont be rebuild with their allies and networks won’t be established, all it takes is time, funding and support which now they have plenty of thanks to Israelis actions.
This isn’t the same celebration you should be having like Russians have just marched in Berlin in WWII.
I suppose the good news is that bloodshed will stop (hopefully) for a few years and a stable long term solution can be figured out meanwhile.
I'm loathe to reveal too much about what I think about this situation personally, because it immediately poisons the rest of the thread, but my take on the situation is not as far from yours as you may think it is.
Palestinians might negotiate away the right of return at some future date, but any deal which denies them that right will be a human rights violation and thus court material to be reversed at an even later future. But regardless, what Israelis think is not of concern, and should not be a concern.
"Mexican Cession (1848): The most significant event was the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Mexico lost the war, and through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it was forced to cede a vast amount of territory to the United States. This territory included present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Texas had already declared independence from Mexico in 1836 and was annexed by the U.S. in 1845, a major cause of the war."
"Displacement and Dispossession: While the treaty promised to protect the property rights of Mexicans who stayed, in practice, many lost their land through legal maneuvering, fraud, or outright violence. This forced displacement would have driven some south to Mexico."
Whatever doesn't belong to Mexicans surely belongs to Indians.
Sounds like a good place to start. After that - Australia and Canada. Once that's done let's do Israel.
well always maybe pushing it twice so far it's like watching a NFL team lose the super bowl because of inability to defend this one play
Transactionally, I don't think so.
Strategically, we rendered irrelevant hundreds of billions of dollars of Iranian foreign spending worthless for $20bn [1]. We also communicated that we stand by our allies. I don't think that's worth tens of thousands of civilian deaths, but it is an important factor.
(Morally, I don't think an all-out war was necessary to decapitate Hamas--surgical strikes on the leaders, over time, should have been possible without reducing the enclave to rubble. That said, I don't know.)
> We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too
And then we left. Massive difference between supporting a force and building one.
> Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error
Possibly. Iran and Saudi Arabia (and to a lesser degree Qatar) have been the regional mischief makers, and they all seem somewhat spent. (Israel didn't create as much disruptive mischief, ironically.) I'm honestly not convinced the Palestinian people want war any more than the Lebanese or, frankly, Iranians.
[1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20...
No to mention the Syria and Iraq dimension, Syria's new leader has a history of being a hardline terrorist and the Iraqi's understandably aren't too happy about it after their dealings with Daesh in the past.
I guess its a win(for now), which is all you can really say when it comes to the Middle east.
What military over the past twenty years had this (or something similar) as an option and didn’t do it because it would be frowned upon?
The truth is nobody has been following the “known rules” since the 90s. Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Transnistrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Hong Kong, Crimea, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Gaza and soon Taiwan. The rules-based international order has been crumbling for years. The only governments still defending it are in Europe.
> they are used as justification for civilian attacks on the west by some unknown group
Who previously would have refrained?
No, you're right - they just wore them down.
To: "But you can't "take" a deal your counterparty refuses.", I meant that, several times there were articles saying a ceasefire was near, negotiated by a third party, and in those it has been Israel rejecting it for being permanent and not temporary.
Edit: only 22 of the 33 are estimated to be alive, the rest being dead bodies. Not sure what are the estimates for the other 65.
The first, chronologically, was US led sanctions in 2011 that froze government assets and prevented almost all import/export with the west. [1]
The 2nd was military conquest and occupation of 90% of Syria's oilfields since 2016/17, Which the government relied on for 40+% of the national budget. Without money, it struggled to pay and supply the army. [2]
The last was tying up Russisa, who was the regime's patron and military supporter, in combat in Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agains...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-led-coal...
Yes, Hezbollah was propping Assad up. They actively intervened in the civil war on his side and were responsible for several mass atrocities in Syria including blockading villages to starvation and mass executions. They have been involved since the very beginning of the conflict in 2011.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_involvement_in_the...
ok so let me get this straight.
Amnesty international, the guardian and the wallstreet journal are spreading malicious propaganda? is that what you're trying to say
and is the 20 thousand dead children from israel's brazen military campaign also malicious propaganda?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_International
https://nypost.com/2024/11/30/world-news/amnesty-internation...
Can it be?
Hamas were idiots for launching the October 7th attack. In part because they trashed any moral high ground they might have had by attacking both military and civilians. In part because they picked a fight they couldn't win. (Granted, they counted on regional support that number came.)
At what point does Israel prosecuting its own Vietnam in Gaza meet the same razor?
Haaretz: Netanyahu Hoped Hamas Would Reject the Cease-fire Offer. When It Didn't, He Turned to Sabotage https://archive.ph/8Mcbz
Haaretz: Report: Hamas Accepts Gaza Cease-fire Deal; Israeli Officials Reject Prospect of War Ending
It's also important to recognize that before they accepted the deal, Hamas was being presented as the last hold out, the implacable one.
The New York Times reported on April 29th, that Anthony Blinken said "the onus was now on Hamas... Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel.. And at the moment, the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas." (https://archive.ph/QjlSq)
The Washington post reported on April 29th, that Israeli officials seemed to be totally aware of the extra concession in the current negotiations. "The signs of optimism came after Israel presented terms to negotiators last week that 'broke new ground,' according to an Israeli official familiar with the deliberations." (https://archive.ph/o85Pk)
Many Israelis marched to protest Netanyahu's rejection of the ceasefire. BBC reports "Thousands of Israelis around the country have joined rallies calling for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the terms of a ceasefire deal that Hamas accepted on Monday." (https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/israel...)
The deal terms of the May 27th deal were part of the sabotage those multiple Haaretz articles discuss. Israel did not want a ceasefire.
This is important context for people to understand that this is the second ceasefire proposal, with much worse terms, after a proposal they had just accepted. Why would they accept, knowing that Israel may withdraw again and worsen the terms? It’s not rational. You can say whatever “should” have been in hindsight, but that doesn’t mean it actually “would” have happened anyways.
It's really hard to get out from under the fact that they ultimately had to accept the same terms they were offered 6 months ago.
> Israeli intelligence services have studied civilian casualty figures released by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza and concluded the figures were generally accurate, despite earlier public claims by U.S. and Israeli officials that the ministry’s statistics are manipulated.
Looking at photos of the area makes it pretty clear, too. You don’t raze that many buildings bloodlessly.
If anything, it may be an undercount. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna187100
Hamas hasn't admitted to a single combatant dying. Is that realistic?
Here is a longer list where I found this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Israeli_attacks_aga...
I'm not sure if this is evidence of Israel "not obeying a ceasefire".
It was a strange day, with a lot of moving parts. Some people died but nobody (Sicknick) was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher
Did some die due you friendly fire? Yes, we know that, but your take is pretty unhinged.
Taking hostages has practical benefits. Indiscriminate killing of folks that don't present a threat isn't practical.
Every single one of those combatants that left the fence that day had a limited amount of ammunition on them. Practically speaking, most US soldiers will patrol with about 7 magazines with 30 rounds in each magazine, plus two pistol magazines. Add another magazine in each firearm. A typical double stack magazine will be about 17 rounds, so we're talking about less than 300 rounds for a full load-out.
In the case of Hamas, they are using imprecise arms like AK-47s. They likely have no optics like red dots or scopes and are just using iron sights. Match grade AK-47s probably have 2 to 4 MOA of accuracy under ideal conditions with modern optics and meticulously handloaded ammunition using modern bullets.
Between poor accuracy and the need to occasionally lay down suppressive fire, 300 rounds isn't going to get you very far.
Unlike US warfighters, the Hamas warfighters also have no ability to call in close air support or be re-supplied. If you have a limited number of rounds and the only potential for "re-supply" comes from enemy combatants, the one thing you don't do is waste ammo on folks that aren't a threat like women, children, elderly. You prioritize fighting age men and in the case of the IDF, fighting age women as well.
RPGs are especially valuable and limited in supply and would likely be reserved for tanks, attack helicopters and vehicles that present threat. It's highly unlikely a reasonably trained fighting force with limited ammunition and explosives would waste them on non-threats. Not saying it didn't happen with any of those warfighters, but the majority would be more disciplined than that, especially coming from an environment plagued by scarcity. US soldiers pretty much have unlimited access to ammo and support and they aren't wasteful with ammo when there isn't a prospect of prompt resupply.
Honestly, I don't know how someone can see this take as unhinged unless they've been largely brainwashed into accept the narratives spun after October 7th.
When someone or some entity intentionally deceives you (which happened a lot with respect to October 7th. e.g. 40 beheaded babies), the only practical response is to assume maximum deceit so they are forced to present evidence to actually support their testimony about what they say happened.
No critical thinking person should accept the official Israeli government's accounting of what happened on October 7th at this point. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”
Anyways, the truth about what actually happened that day is far more knowable than we currently know. All that is needed is transparency. Release everything.
We've seen footage of Hamas fighters literally strolling Israeli villages and cities basically unopposed for hours, of course they could easily kill tons of people.
Seriously, just stop. If you find yourself in a position trying to defend a terrorist attack on civilians (on either sides) it means you lost the plot somewhere along the way.
And this is coming from someone who thinks that what has/is happening in Gaza is horrible and that is pro a 2 state solution.
So is leveling a country if you want to demonstrate consequences of an attack.
We should not argue like this, but this is the level you propose and demand with your justifications for terrorist attacks.
One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave. He has never been back to Palestine since then because another detainment or missed visa problem, etc. would derail his career.
Terrible.
Even in the current ceasefire terms, there's an explicit provision to have Israel agree to let the injured leave for treatment to neighbouring countries and be allowed to come back to the Strip.
Despite arguments to contrary, I can see why some claim it is an open-air prison.
That aspect of Gaza was in place long before Israel had anything to do with the strip.
Based on that, he must have obtained a special permit to leave Palestine and fly to the US for higher education, but this had to be approved by Israel or he could not leave Palestine or transit through Ben Gurion Airport (remember the Palestinian's international airport was bombed into rubble a decade ago or so). One year they denied him for some Kafkaesque reason, I presume. By the time he sorted it out he had to arrange with the school to take a leave and start again the next quarter
I guess its an improvement - not one thats remotely impressive.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/destruction-gaza-w...
I'm not trying to be pedantic here. I'm just not familiar with any historical event you are describing.
From what I've heard, and I'm not an expert, I wouldn't characterize any of the conquests of Babylon as a 'razing', And the eventual abandonment of the city was more a result of slow decline and changing geological conditions.
I do like to learn about the history of the area, so if it's just something I'm not familiar with, please point me in the right direction.
Certainly the organization of one side of this conflict into a state rather than militias naturally has tempered things since the early days where entire villages were being wiped out at random, but both sides are pretty openly engaged in terrorism to this day (targeting civilians for political reasons).
It's not past injustices. Israel is occupying, annexing and settling more land now. It's not some tit-for-tat between neighbours over past wrongs, it's one neighbour that is chasing away the other to take their house.
Are you saying that somehow there is a transitive property between Palestinians and Iraqis or Moroccans so that if a Moroccan steals a house then you can have your right revenge on a Palestinian? And why not on a Swede or a Thai?
Or are you saying that it was all right for Israelis to have their houses stolen then- since it is all right for them to steal houses now, it's just how it goes? I don't get it.
What do Palestinians have to do with Iraq, Egypt and Morocco?
"It's all complicated and people in this part of the world are unusually tribal/violent" has been used to explain away this conflict since its inception in the US, which we have no right to do as a primary stakeholder. We (US citizens) have a stake in Gaza because the situation would be completely different without our aid, both direct (i.e. massive shipments of weapons and offering the services of our military) & indirect (i.e. using our UNSC vote to block otherwise unanimous resolutions against Israel).
To bring it all back to the one absolutely-litigated conflict in the western canon for clarity, as we so often do: was WWII about "tribalism" and both sides being prone to violence, or was it about unjustified aggressors and justified responses? Despite the nuances of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think we would all immediately endorse the latter position. Why not in this case, too?
WWII involved a conflict to unconditional surrender. The equivalent for Israel and Palestine would be letting one state completely destroy the other and then rebuild it in its own image.
All of the above. One of the major powers on the winning side was the British Empire, which existed because of a global campaign of unprovoked invasions that was pretty much unprecedented. And there was Stalin, who may escape the "tribalism" label on the basis that his campaigns of political murder were so wild it is difficult to discern patterns.
If we assume for the sake of tradition and argument that the responses were justified it might have been one of the few times in a century that the British were involved in a justified response. A momentous conflict indeed! It must have been unsettling for them. And, in all seriousness, they weren't involved because it was justified. They were acting amorally and it is a coincidence they were on the justified side that time.
Litigate who's violating who is unlikely to happen. A lot of people thought Obama would bring some change but rather than litigating, more people got droned and one of the worse symbols of the wars did not get closed. Setting things straight will likely only happen in hindsight after everyone responsible are long dead, and even then people will resist it as a matter of personal identity.
I do not see lasting peace coming from litigating the past, and especially not from the US.
This is a common Zionist take saying that just because someone is not from the region, they cannot criticise Israel's mass slaughter of children. Also, this has very much to do with American politics, as the US is the main backer of the apartheid state.
A popular chant is "The children of Gaza is our children too." Israel has killed up to 5% of Gaza's population and injured ~15%, about half of whom are children. It's not tribalism to be disgusted by such carnage. I don't agree with the claim that we don't have a stake in this fight.
Yep, this is what it's about - a morals swinging contest to see who is purer. I mean, I would have assumed if there was in fact a genocide taking place in Gaza everyone would be happy there's at least a ceasefire but no - no one gives a s**, at least not on this thread. It's about shitting over Israel to feel morally superior more than anything else.
In case you are not aware, the exact opposite happened.
To be clear, we very much do want Gaza. We had homes there. and we have Jewish roots there going back long before the time of today’s Palestinian colonists.
Above all of that though, is that we want peace. And so if we have to be patient for a time when we can peacefully live in Gaza again, we will be patient.
In the meantime, the most important thing is the safe return of loved ones who were taken hostage on October 7th (and before!) and safety for those living in rocket’s range of Gaza.
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf
Google's Ngram viewer isn't working for the term "Ben Gurion Canal" for some reason, but it would show approximately when renewed interest started getting traction since the proposal was declassified in 1996.
I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 Evergreen fiasco was contributory to this renewed interest but this is pure speculation on my part.
As it stands, the track record of Gazans avoiding "oppression" by joining their co-religionists is being kicked out of Jordan for being a disruptive influence, and then playing the main role in turning Lebanon into a failed state. No wonder Egypt doesn't want them!
Given that many Gazans do migrate individually, it might even get worse with time - the more capable and less political a Gazan is, the more likely they would be to migrate away, leading to a vicious cycle on the margins
I have no idea.
The common criticism is that Netanyahu never really worked on a day-after plan, so while the IDF managed to take lots of territories and gain many military victories, there was no clear idea of what to do when the fighting stops, which allowed Hamas to re-take areas that were already taken, and to set themselves up for the future.
I think ideally what should have been done is setting up alternative leadership in Gaza, namely the PA with assistance from Saudi Arabia or something like that. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in back-channels, the PA was asked to take this kind of role and basically said "until Hamas is gone, it's too risky for us, please finish off Hamas first".
> At what point does Israel prosecuting its own Vietnam in Gaza meet the same razor?
I mean, people make these kinds of comparisons all the time and insinuate that Israel should stop fighting. But the Vietnam war lasted, what, twenty years? And it was far less important to the US's security than this war is to Israel. As Ezra Klein once said, if you look at the timeline of the US's reaction to 9/11 and map it onto Israel's reaction to October 7th, the US had still not even begun the Iraq war by this stage - it started more than two years after 9/11 iirc.
(I'm not saying that I think the war should continue, btw - I'm very much in favor of this current deal, and I highly suspect the war is dragging on for political reasons and not actual reasons of security, which is both harmful to Israel in various ways, and devastating to the civilians of Gaza, who deserve so much better than their current situation. Ideally Israel could take out Hamas which would be better for the people of Gaza themselves, but it's unclear if that's possible, and the price they are paying in the meantime is far too high!)
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-says-leader-...
edit: Even Israel’s own estimates are 2/3 civilian deaths. https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-milit...
I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained.
Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
That's the thing with militaries. You kind of have to overpower them in order to get rid of them.
The west bank has borders with Jordan and Israel.
Gaza has borders with Egypt and Israel.
Israel indeed never pulled from the West Bank, and sadly, it does let settlers live there. But it did not grow the taken area. And when Israel pulled from Gaza, it removed the settlers.
Gaza and the West Bank are distinct.
Israel never pulled back from the West Bank, but that part of the occupation is the same size as it was in 1967. The West Bank occupation did not grow smaller (nor did it grow larger - it's the same size). Sadly, Israel does let settlers settle there, but if an agreement is ever reached, they will likely be removed like those in Gaza.
Israel occupied Sinai in 1967 and had settlements there[0]. Then, following a peace agreement with Egypt, Israel pulled back in 1982, removing all the settlements and settlers, some by force.
Israel occupied Gaza in 1967 and had settlements in Gaza starting in 1968 or so, few at first, and then starting 1978 (iirc) a lot more than a few. In 2005 - which is 37 years ("decades") later, Israel pulled back, removed the settlers using threats of lethal force to do so. And it did, impact politics and votes - those who supported the move mostly thought, up until 7-oct-2023, that it was the right move. And those who opposed it, thought, up until 7-oct-2023, that it will explode in Israel's face at some point. (Whether you consider the latter vindicated or not depends on a lot of things and is not a trivial binary answer).
The "lethal force, politics and votes" requirement did not stop the Israeli government from removing settlers before. Will it stop them in the future? I have no idea.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_occupation_of_the_Sina...
In another comment I just made I raise a question about the makeup of the 251 hostages. I'm genuinely interested in knowing how many of them were civilian hostages and how many are IDF soldiers and therefore prisoners of war.
This same question applies to the hostages that Israel has taken as well. They are portrayed as prisoners/detainees, but other than the legitimate combatants, all others are effectively hostages as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_detentions_in_the_Israel%...
relevant illustration: https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/16w6g5l/...
Do you have a source for that?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31293196
You’re confusing Al-Qaeda with one third of Muslims living in a Western country.
> But 24% disagreed with the statement, while the rest replied "don't know" or refused to answer.
> Of those polled, 95% felt a loyalty to Britain, while 93% believed that Muslims in Britain should always obey British laws.
24%. 24% = 1/3. You seem like the kind of person who caused the McDonalds 1/3 pounder flop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0
But the better argument is that 24% of people saying "it could be justified" is that it actually could be justified.
Should I punch everyone who includes Nazi symbology in their art? No.
Should I punch a Nazi who repeatedly promotes his ideology through his art? Yes.
So it’s “only” one fourth that told that it may be justified - the rest up to one third didn’t confirm nor deny that it may be justified.
It’s also very reassuring that maybe they don’t find that violence is justified when you publish only one image of muhammad. Maybe you’re right and it’s repeated publication of muhammad images that deserves violence.
Here is a long-time offender: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/17/wikipedia...
Or maybe you meant that violence against anyone who does anything may be justified (?) because of some other thing that they may be doing.
e.g. the killing of Samuel Paty
also, i don't have any parasocial relationship with anybody in the military on either side of this issue, nor any military member anywhere in the entire universe.
What other country keeps literal children in military prisons without trial or contact with family?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VnzRQzUWAU&ab_channel=TheNe...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh83jIwZjyY&ab_channel=CNN
what other (free and democtratic) country backs up extreme right wing religous groups as they invade people's homes and displace the locals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLDYkX7l9A&ab_channel=BBCWo...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km-ciyqmAus&ab_channel=VICEN...
Are you going to argue that BBC, CNN AND Vice are not trustworthy organizations either? they are showing us video evidence. did they FAKE the entire city of gaza being razed to the ground?
The irony is that we know that israel pays idf soldiers to engage in pro israel rhetoric online and has "Hasbera" which is an actual astroturf "pr" policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_in_the_Israel%E...
regarding gaza - it's a war in high density area fighting terrorist in civilian clothes. mind to remind who started the war? based on casualties in Russo-Ukranian war 50k casualties is very well in line with expectations. Were there some crimes - sure, is it a organized genocide - sure thing not.
This was a proxy war with Iran
This take is incredibly callous. Suppose 8% of everyone you gets killed. This is a shockingly brutal thing to happen to a population. Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so people don't say "there's still Jews left so technically the Holocaust wasn't a genocide". The holocaust was a genocide, and this is a genocide (yes, "is", they're still dropping bombs on a population half of which is under 18). There's a reason the relevant cases haven't been thrown out of the ICJ and ICC.
But put yourself in the shoes of a hypothetical evil genocidal person. Assume 8% of Gaza was killed (though this figure is wrong). Having Gaza at it's 2020 population is negligible to them. They were hoping to murder everyone and reclaim their holy land or something and instead (purely from a population standpoint) they're basically just back to the status quo after the truce. Even most Nazis would say they ultimately failed in their genocidal ambitions and they killed two thirds of the Jews in Europe and 90% in Poland.
Second, 8% of Gaza hasn't been killed. By the Gaza health ministry's estimate, about 2% have been killed. Your source arrived at 8% literally by just quadrupling the number without any basis in data from Gaza. This is out of line with all the estimates from Gaza.
> Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so...
I'm aware and I didn't say anything factually wrong. Killing just part of a people doesn't legally exempt it from being genocide. But killing part of a people also doesn't imply genocide. Every war has killed part of a people. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars each killed far more people than the Gaza war, but neither is considered genocide.
If Israel were acting like the Nazis, there wouldn't be any Palestinians left in Gaza. They'd all be carpet bombed, shot on sight, or sent to forced labor camps. There's a world of difference between the two.
This is literally the "if the holocaust were a genocide, how come there's still jews" take. Please go and get a grip.
Israel actually built a lot of the civilian infrastructure, including the largest hospital in Gaza. It's pretty clear those places are being used as terrorist hideouts and to launch rocket attacks. Why is it acceptable to shoot rockets purely targeting civilians while breaking a cease fire agreement?
There is no absolute evidence that any of Hamas' hostages have been raped or tortured - according to released hostages, they were treated very well! AFAIK the only known instance of Hamas murdering a hostage was when a fighter lost it after Israel killed his entire family - all the other deaths have been a result of Israeli bombs (because if you want hostages back, you bomb them... right?!).
And as you doubtless know, many of the "peaceful civilians" are actually serving IDF members...
And as you also doubtless know, Palestinian hostages are routinely raped and tortured to death in Israeli dungeons - there is a wealth of evidence.
> It's pretty clear those places are being used as terrorist hideouts and to launch rocket attacks.
This is what Israeli Hasbara do - repeat unevidenced claims until people accept them as "truth". But it's lies, there isn't a shred of evidence that Hamas as used even a single hospital as a "terrorist hideout". You know who has repurposed Gazan hospitals for military ops? Israel - every accusation is a confession with them.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/26/middleeast/amit-soussana-...
What do you mean there is no proof? There are mountains of evidence.
> There is no absolute evidence that any of Hamas' hostages have been raped or tortured - according to released hostages, they were treated very well!
Hamas literally executed some: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/01/middleeast/israel-gaza-ww...
But yeah, other than that, treated very well!
No, this is not pretty clear. This is pure Israeli propaganda.
Keeping hostages is a war crime. A fair thing would be for Hamas to follow its obligations under international law and unconditionally release them (before anyone says, well israel did X which also isn't allowed, 2 wrongs don't make a right).
> more damage was done to Gaza than any European city during wwii
How are you quantifying this? I'd be surprised if Gaza has more damage than say Dresden.
> Their courts have no jurisdiction over them
Israel is the occupying power. International law requires that an occupying power provide law & order, so it does have the authority to persecute people who commit crimes (although they are required to keep the laws the same as they were pre-occupation, with some exceptions).
They are also allowed to keep prisoners of war (although i am not sure if hamas counts as that as they are a non-state group). They are allowed to persecute war crimes that enemy combatants commit (as long as they give a fair trial)
> have no issue calling anyone a terrorist.
The phrase "terrorist" doesn't really have much meaning under international law. Israel is free to call its enemies dirty names if it wants, there isn't any rule against calling your enemies mean names.
Maybe Israel could start by turning over everyone subject to an outstanding International Criminal Court warrant. (Starting with Netanyahu, of course.)
The point is that they are NOT starting with Israel proper first, where Arabs are and have been citizens for a long time. Palestinians have been elected to the Israeli parliament, and there is an Arab Justice on the Israeli Supreme Court.
Had Germany kept invading France 1946-1965, it would have been treated the same way. But the Germans chose another path.
Most Arab states generally don’t do that well economically even without any foreign power undermining their independence. Unless they have massive amounts of oil but often even then (Iraq/Iran)
starvation tactics
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-war-un-f...
Hamas chose to take all that steel and concrete, donated in the billions by the entire world, and build tunnels and rockets instead of universities and civilian infrastructure.
Yeah easy to do since almost all of them were exterminated. Why shouldn't all their old lands be brought back to them? Why do they have to settle in a few tiny reservoirs?
What about all Mexicans ? Plenty of them would like to move to the U.S, and as we saw some of them have legitimate territorial claims - why won't you allow them - are you pro apartheid? Because that's what the word means - separation. Let me guess - it's way easier to abolish other people's countries than your own for the sake of impossibly high morals right? It's way harder when you have actual skin in the game.
Point is human rights have been violated in multiple occasion throughout history, all around the world. We can talk about any of those all day, but it won‘t get us anywhere. Point is also that Israel is one of the current violator of human rights, and deserves to be called out as such, irregardless of other human rights violations throughout history. But the main point is Palestinians deserve to have their human rights, which they have been denied for 77 years, and are still being denied.
Peace between Israel and Lebanon is a necessity for both sides, and both sides suffered greatly over the many years of conflict. There is no real reason for there not to be peace between these two countries, except for latent animosity, mostly on the Lebanese side. I hope they can overcome it.
One of those things is not like the others.
Russia is the largest country on earth, whereas the distance from the West Bank to Tel-Aviv is like 5 miles.
This roughly like arguing that owning a personal nuke is no different from owning a firecracker. The scale of the threats are separated by several orders of magnitude.
>And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
Because the Palestinians rejected the 1948 borders, started a war, and then lost. Incidentally they also rejected the 1967 borders by starting a war in 1973 and losing that one too, but the consensus around those borders is at least a bit more solidified so people still pretend they're meaningful rather than null-and-void.
The Israeli F-35s can get through right now, but they have limited payload and have to rely on slightly dicey refueling arrangements. With Syria under Israeli air cover, they can run tankers right up to western Iran and strike anywhere in the country.
Repeated, unilateral Israeli aggression is the status quo in the region.
How many times have Ukranian terrorists murdered a bunch of Russian athletes at the Olympics? Or hijacked a 3rd nation plane carrying Russian tourists and then murdered them? How many bombings have Ukranian extremists carried out in Europe, targeting Russian tourists?
They are not the same arguments.
At all.
It would be silly to pretend that’s even remotely close to being an option for Hamas. For starters modern Islamic fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with democracy (amongst other reasons).
Expecting that organizations like Hamas could somehow magically change for the better is pure madness regardless of everything else.
you know it was radical jewish terrorist who murdered yitzhak rabin, who tried to make peace with palestinians?
it was mossad, who helped finance and support Hamas, so that moderate PLO could never make progress on unified palestinian state?
> yitzhak rabin
So you wouldn’t consider him a Zionist then?
Try reading the Hamas charter: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/hamas.asp Yes, it was later "updated" to make it more palatable for Western consumption.
some excerpts:
Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.
"Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."
Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts.
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.
No, it isn’t. Very few revolutions (i.e power inversions) have succeeded by indiscriminately killing the dominant side’s civilians. That frequency, moreover, goes down over time.
Russia also made a number of excuses to annex the territories, the USA also fabricated a web of lies to justify their illegal invasion into Iraq. Criminals often lie or justify their crimes in any number of ways. None of which makes their crimes right. There are no exceptions to international law for fighting terrorism.
Well, it does but only by the consent of the participant and participants can withdraw their consent at any time, arbitrarily.
It's like how international treaties become worthless the second one party decides they don't want to abide by them anymore.
So, any time someone mentions "international law" I kinda just smirk a little bit and make the "jerking off and then ejaculating" motion with my hand.
The actual smallest country on earth, Tuvalu, can tell the UN to eat a bag of dicks and ignore every single plea to obey "international law" and the only remedy is embargo, begging, or the cruise missile.
The rhetoric may be superficially similar, but facts on the ground aren't. The Russian state is not under an existential threat in the same way that Israel would be with Hezbollah in the north, and a similar entity in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is a tiny nation with a tiny population. Russian and Israel's security issues are simply not comparable.
>talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate
They are linked, and highlight the core problem to Israel - namely - disengagement does not work with a hostile entity.
Israel in 2005 disengaged from Gaza. It wasn't a full disengagement as Israel still exerted control over the airspace and territorial water, but it also wasn't nothing and it was an olive-branch and a big opportunity. Instead it resulted in a Hamas electoral victory, and rocket attacks, and a circle of retaliatory actions from Israel and Hamas. Imagine a world, where post-disengagement there were no attacks from Gaza, no preparation for war and smuggling of weapons into Gaza by Hamas - by this point, where would we be? Would Israel still maintain the same kind of blockade? I just don't think so. I truly believe it would be a model for permanent peace and Palestinian statehood.
>And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
I mentioned 1967 borders, because as best as I can gather, that is the current Palestinian position. Although it isn't clear exactly what the Palestinian position is as Palestinians do tend to maintain some level of ambiguity on this point.
> If Israel's war is with Iran, why is that war not being carried out in Iran?
It goes the other way actually - Iran is at war with Israel. Iran is using proxies, Hamas, and Hezbollah to strike at Israel.
The Hamas position (as best I can figure it) is the dissolution of the Israeli state entirely and Palestine restored. Whether you consider that the Palestinian position is open.
The Israeli position (as best I figure it) is to do whatever it takes to be unassailable - everything else is second order.
There are much more moderate positions throughout both sets of people, but I feel like they're the defining ones because they drive the violence (and subsequent retaliation)?
Open to arguments against
Not restored, as Palestine in what is today Israel's area was never an independent country.
Imagine a world where pre-disengagement there's no radicals on either side. Imagine a world where Israel works with people displaced in 1948-1967, and utilizing its overwhelming economic advantage finds acceptable solutions to defuse the problems, instead of supporting more land grabs.
The big gestures (like withdrawing from Gaza) are of course important, but we still must not mistake cause for effect, or the outliers for the baseline.
Because the Palestian cause is not about the welfare of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian cause is about establishing an Arab state to displaced the Jewish state.
To qualify Israel's actions as a genocide, lawyers don't have to show that Israel killed every Palestinian in Gaza, but they will have to prove they intended to. The ICC is not going to rule this a genocide.
As should be obvious, the "in part" wording of "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group" does not mean killing any part of a ethnic group can be genocide (e.g. killing 7 people of an ethnicity in an airstrike is not a genocide). The part must be an identifiable subgroup. For example, intent to kill all Palestinians in Gaza, rather than all Palestinians everywhere, would qualify as genocidal intent. There has to be intent to physical eradicate an identifiable group. Forcing people to leave is also not genocide (it's an ethnic cleansing). Other war crimes do not qualify as genocide.
And literally decades later the coronation of Nabopolassar founded the Neo-Babylonian empire, soon before the Assyrian empire that destroyed old Babylon crumbled. It remained a major settlement after the destruction, it just took them a few decades to rise again.
99% of historical accounts about the sacking and destruction of cities are exaggerated. Even Carthage grew as a settlement mere years after the Romans destroyed it (the whole “salting the land” thing is an 18/19th century invention).
> I destroyed the city and its houses, from foundation to parapet; I devastated and burned them. I razed the brick and earthenwork of the outer and inner wall of the city, of the temples, and of the ziggurat; and I dumped these into the Araḫtu canal. I dug canals through the midst of that city, I overwhelmed it with water, I made its very foundations disappear, and I destroyed it more completely than a devastating flood. So that it might be impossible in future days to recognize the site of that city and its temples, I utterly dissolved it with water and made it like inundated land.
However since he was punishing Babylon for rebelling one time too many, he had reason to exaggerate.
If you want to talk about occupying new land, this has been happening too in the recent months: As of today still in southern Lebanon and "prophylactically" in the eastern Golan heights and on Mount Hermon (not even talking about the previously annexed western Golan heights anymore).
Meanwhile, the settler movement is openly talking about settling Gaza, southern Lebanon and eventually "from the Nile to the Euphrates": https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-21/ty-article-ma...
One could discount them as a bunch of crackpots as they exist in every state, except that those guys have strong representation in the government and several Likud party members and government ministers were visiting their conference. They have power.
The settler movement are crockpots that have non trivial government representation. They also had representation in 1982 and 2005 and that did not stop the Israeli government from relocating those settlers back inside Israel using force, while retreating from Sinai and Gaza respectively.
Whether that will happen again when (if) a peace agreement is ever reached remains to be seen; it is not a certainty either way.
If they were inclined to punish Germany even harder than the first time it probably wouldn’t have worked out that well.
That's 1.51 tonnes/km2/year.
Gaza has an area of 365 square km. Israel dropped over 85,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on it over one year [0].
That's 232.88 tonnes/km2/year. Over 150x more.
Don't forget! Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world - about 50 times more densely populated than 1970 Vietnam. 50% of whom are children.
So, Israel dropped 150x the bombs per year on Gaza, an area 50x more densely populated. Proportionally, Israel's bombardment is 7,500 times worse than Vietnam, on an area that's fully half children.
This last year has delegitimized the West's claims to any moral high ground, ever, far, far more than we yet realize.
0 - https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241107-israel-dropped-ov...
If you compare heavily bombed WW2 targets, you see similar/higher bomb loads, like 4000 tons for Dresden over 3 days (<10 km^2), or ~18000 tons for the Leuna works (synthfuel refinery, <20 km^2, within 1 year).
Also, holy ** I thought it was bad and probably going to be maybe 10-25 times higher… based on the utter devastation I have seen in satellite imagery… but over 150 times more…
The proportionality math for population density is just… ghastly.
like the typical comment are things like before and after satellite image comparisons and taking it at face value the claimed target exists for the sake of arguing the point… and they would say things like “that building needed 1000 pounds max and that’s probably overkill, you would probably want to just use two 500 pound bombs one on the first pass, and one on the second if it was still standing, heck I’d probably have argued for three 250 pounders bombs with penetration aids and have flow the sortie in a staggered pass so after each drop the next pilot can confirm if the target is still standing and drop theirs if necessary, but using a 2000 pound bomb is nuts on a target that size, they have air superiority and significant ground control to ensure minimal SAM risk from MANPADS, if I had suggested a sortie like this when I was a [whatever their rank was/is], it would have severely hurt my career due to how recklessly wasteful I would have appeared”
And that kind of commentary came up a lot in certain circles. Not even arguing the validity of the targets like the whole “hidden bunker under every second building” stuff… just legitimately tactical assessment of construction typical of the region, the cumulative seismic and shock load damage from prior nearly weapon detonations, and the honest appraisal that it was extremely overkill to use bombs that size… it was morbidly educational in a way.
North Korea and North Vietnam (now just Vietnam) were also brutal against the other side. Both of them are running their own countries.
To go a bit more recent, the Taliban was behind a bunch of terrorist attacks. They now run Afghanistan.
To be fair, though, North Korea and Afghanistan have basically no allies in any sense due to their behavior. And the people who fought against North Vietnam and lost were just as savage as them. But Vietnam and China are happily traded with, and nobody outside of old folks in America think anything bad about Vietnam these days. If anything, a lot of people think it was unjustified to have ever fought against them.
Hell, Israel is a good source of terrorist groups becoming legitimate. Prime Minister Menachim Begin went from leading a terror outfit to elected Prime Minister
And, um, they absolutely largely are seen as terrorists.
before oct7 there was a somewhat broad consensus that Hamas are bad and are terrorists.
nowadays however, Hamas are hailed as resistance and freedom fighters. Only jewish hasbara still calls them terrorists, everyone else is sympathetic to Hamas, even Donald Trump, given his zionist position
No. About 20% of Americans support Hamas; 4% the October 7th attack [1]. It’s an extreme minority.
People are sympathetic to Palestinians. Not Hamas. The best way for the foreign pro-Palestinian movement to fuck this up for Palestine is to falsely equate Palestinians with Hamas.
Going back to the top point: Hamas hasn’t succeeded. Gaza’s occupation looks like it will be far more draconian than it was a few years ago, with the strip separated by security cordons all controlled by Israel.
> everyone else is sympathetic to Hamas, even Donald Trump
Trump's peace plan [2] is anathema to everything Hamas fought for. All the way to recognising anexations of currently-Palestinian territory.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/majority-in-u-s-say-i...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_peace_plan#Key_concepts_...
I’m sure that if you asked most people in Europe or the US they’d would agree. I’d bet on average more strongly than before the war.
I mean Israel is deeply flawed, oppressed and is committing war crimes. Can disagree about that.
Hamas on the other hand is objectively evil and should be destroyed. Arguing about what cost exactly is worth paying for that is reasonable disagreeing with the premise itself is wrong and immoral.
I don't think this is anywhere near a mainstream position.
Egypt has an airport just west of Gaza. They have a visa exclusive program for Palestinians. And that's not new.
So based on the story, if you presume Israel was Kafkaesque then you must also presume that Egypt was at least as Kafkaesque if he was unable to leave from there.
Or worse... he was unwilling.
And yet, the story is about Israel for some reason. I'd ask why, but I presume to know the answer. Again, this is a shrug towards bias.
This is all speculative in terms of how it relates to your friend. All this to make the point that bias and generalizing about things, and a desire to blame people one has been taught to hate, can be detrimental to one's success.
Yet another strawman.
I'm guessing you have no practical experience with firearms otherwise you'd argue the points I'm making.
> If you find yourself in a position trying to defend a terrorist attack on civilians (on either sides) it means you lost the plot somewhere along the way
I don't know how you arrived at the view that I'm defending a terrorist attack. I'm asking for an accurate account of what happened by the terrorists on both sides on October 7th.
Yes, if you have policies like the Hannibal Directive and the Dahiya Doctrine and your politicians actively advocate in defense of the rape of prisoners of war, you're as much as terrorist as Hamas. Let's not forget that the country was founded from the violence of the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah.
I'm happy to condemn terrorism by Hamas. Will you likewise condemn the terrorism committed by the IDF? I ask because "if you find yourself in a position trying to defend a terrorist attack on civilians (on either sides) it means you lost the plot somewhere along the way."
The point is you are going lengths to try and prove what exactly? That Hamas only killed 800 people and took another 200 hostage as opposed to 1200? Does it matter? And will you also do the same to investigate and see how many Gazans did Hamas kill with failed rockets and explosives?
What are you trying to achieve here?
I'll say it again, you lost the plot.
1195 people were killed on October 7th. My understanding is that 815 of these were civilians. This means that 380 were IDF. This is a ratio of 2.15 civilians killed for each combatant.
The IDF considers a 2:1 ratio "tremendously positive" [1].
Now this ratio largely depends on the belief that the Israeli civilians and IDF combatants were all killed by Hamas combatants.
If, however, the evidence (all the video footage) were to demonstrate that Hamas was far more measured and actually killed far fewer civilians, then it starts to look a lot less like terrorism and more like military action between two combative forces with unfortunate civilians caught in the crossfire in a combat zone.
For comparison, let's take Pearl Harbor. 2341 soldiers and 68 civilians were killed. Was it an act of war? Absolutely. Was it an act of terror? No. Pearl Harbor had a ratio of 0.03 civilians killed per combatant. None of what I'm saying is defense of Pearl Harbor. I'm just objectively describing what occurred for the sake of comparison to the conflict at hand.
I can't seem to find a breakdown of the 251 hostages that were taken on October 7th in terms of how many were civilians and how many were active duty or reserve IDF. Is it terrorism to take civilians hostage? Yes. Is it terrorism to take enemy combatants as prisoners of war? No. (That said, all POWs should be treated with dignity while in captivity. It's pretty clear that one side has treated their POWs with far more dignity than the other side in this conflict.)
October 7th didn't happen in a vacuum. This is an ongoing conflict spanning almost 80 years. How the Hamas combatants collectively conducted themselves on October 7th absolutely changes the framing on how to interpret what happened that day. If the majority of the civilian death were in fact caused by the Hannibal Directive, then it looks a lot more like a act of war than an act of terror. Not saying it can't be both. There's a spectrum here. But up until now, we've largely been led to believe one interpretation while a LOT of evidence that would provide a much clearer objective picture of what happened has been withheld.
Furthermore, Israel is a country with compulsory military service. This largely blurs the distinction between combatant and civilian. Citizens serve in the IDF at age 18 and you can be a reservist until 41 for soldiers and 46 for officers. Both men and women serve. The compulsory service pretty much creates a condition where every man and woman between 18 to 46 may be either active duty or a reservist. My guess is that approximately 34% of Israeli society is a potential combatant and that this ratio would be higher the closer you are to military bases, as was the case with the kibbutzim near the Gaza border.
> The point is you are going lengths to try and prove what exactly?
Anyways, I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm demanding that what folks claim happened on October 7th actually be proven using all the available evidence. The entire justification for relation and the initial acceptance of that retaliation by Israeli was largely based on what we have been led to believe happened on October 7th. What actually happened matters. US involvement in the conflict was predicated on the current belief of what happened. We've sacrificed our nation's national security and reputation on the international stage based on beliefs about what happened. Thank God we at least haven't sacrificed our warfighters in service of this conflict.
I've honestly been shocked that no one really demands all the evidence be presented before believing any of the claims made. Nothing about October 7th is black and white and the discussion would be a lot clearer if we actually had all the evidence of what actually happened that day and we weren't basing our opinions on what we've been lead to believe by propaganda and the intentional omission of evidence that most certainly exists. "Truth is the first casualty of war"
> And will you also do the same to investigate and see how many Gazans did Hamas kill with failed rockets and explosives?
Yes, totally support that. It's documented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...
Here's data on casualties on both sides: https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...
They are 100% dependent on Israel granting them their state. Take electricity for example. Before the current fighting, Gaza was on a rolling blackout schedule where each region only has electricity for a few hours each day. They have one diesel power plant (Israel enforces that all diesel is bought through Israel; it completely controls the supply), and the vast majority of the rest of their electricity needs were met by Israeli power lines (they also bought a little bit from Egypt).
Whatever economic activity they develop that is dependent on electricity (that is, nearly every modern economic activity) must be "granted" to them. Israel can (and has, and currently does) cut off electricity supply to Gaza at will, as a negotiating tactic or as punishment.
NI is free to leave the UK whenever they want to. Same applies to French Guiana.
They aren’t oppressed by anyone (not anymore.. anyway)
You mention Iran, but Iran is not Arabic, but Persian, and the Persian Safavid Empire was formidable from 1501 to 1722. Then Iran was a plaything of the British and Russian empires for many years, culminating in British-Russian occupation during World War II and the 1953 CIA/MI6-orchestrated coup that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the US-backed Shah, Iran has struggled under heavy economic sanctions orchestrated by the United States.
Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1534 to 1918, when Britain took over after WWI, maintaining substantial power over Iraq despite the latter's nominal independence in 1932. The British-established monarchy wasn't overthrown until 1958, after which the Soviets and the West exploited the instability to compete for influence.
I think you're underestimating just how pervasive Western colonialism was and is.
Same applies to pretty much every western country besides perhaps Switzerland and to a lesser extent Sweden.
Anyway I think you’re going back far too much. Countries like Algeria, Morocco, Tunis, Jordan and even Egypt or Syria were mostly left to their own devices since the ~50-70s (most instability in those countries that led to foreign intervention had internal causes).
Where are they now? Compare them with South Korea or Taiwain (which were both very poor and run by extremely oppressive regimes until the 80s). Same applies to much of Eastern Europe.
Still, I'm glad you asked. It's better to have perspective on these things.
For anyone who wants to visualize what 85,000 tonnes of bombs looks like, it's about 5.7x the nuke dropped over Hiroshima (Hiroshima is 2.5x bigger than Gaza, and was 16x less densely populated than modern Gaza in 1945).
This comparison also helps put Vietnam into perspective - 333x Little Boy over ten years.
I agree, you should see the way people are doing this under my very comment about my friend.
In the end, I am sure he knew more than most people about the options truly available to him. He was never biased or hating of anyone. Those who know him today would know
I’d have picked Warsaw. Completely destroyed while clearing out the ghetto after the uprising which was brutally suppressed. It has some grim parallels too.
Warsaw was closer, but only 85-90% of its buildings were destroyed by the Nazis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw
The statistic I heard was “more than any city in wwii”. I figured that Hiroshima (67%) years or Nagasaki (37%) were worse.
Gaza crossed 90% of all buildings in May, so I shouldn’t have qualified my statement with the word “European”.
Edit: I found one partial counterexample: The firebombing of Tokyo killed about 10x more people than Israel did during this conflict, but didn’t do nearly as much damage (as a percentage) to buildings: https://www.britannica.com/event/Bombing-of-Tokyo
https://www.cato.org/blog/51-strong-liberals-say-its-morally...
Your implication that Muslims are more accepting of political violence doesn't seem to bear out in the facts.
> Maybe you’re right and it’s repeated publication of muhammad images that deserves violence.
Thats not what I said.
> Or maybe you meant that violence against anyone who does anything may be justified (?) because of some other thing that they may be doing.
This is clearly the least charitable take one could take in response to my comment. "It's ok to punch Nazis" is not a take that usually gets this much pushback.
Edit: Actually, technically, I guess it does usually get this much push back (68%) but still the slippery slope argument is trash
I didn’t say anything about Muslims being more accepting of political (or religious?) violence than anyone else. I was just pointing out that there are many such Muslims which are not Al-Qaeda (which is just a few thousand people).
That’s true. What you said is
> But the better argument is that 24% of people saying "it could be justified" is that it actually could be justified.
and I don’t even know how to parse the sentence so I cannot really comment on it.
The study doesn't say 1/3 of muslims say "it's ok to kill someone who draws images of Muhammad". It says "acts of violence". A vague and immeasurable term. Does that mean a punch? does it mean a stab? Jihad? The poll doesn't care.
https://time.com/7207459/israeli-hostages-gaza-ceasefire/
You wrote in your comments that the hostages were treated well. This is absolutely not the case.
There are plenty of hostages, btw, who have openly discussed that they were raped repeatedly. I don't have the stomach to reread the hostage accounts but they are easy to find online.
That's fair, I think.
Dresden was horrific, and ought to be formally acknowledged as a war crime. Still, I don't think you can say it was worse than what is happening to Gaza, from any perspective except maybe in horror per day. They are similarly sized, but Gaza is more densely populated. If you had the terrible choice between nearly 4000 tons over 3 days, or 85,000+ tons over 14 months, I think I know what you would choose.
I would also point out that global awareness of what was happening in Dresden was many orders of magnitude lower than awareness of Gaza's bombing, and the military 'justification' far worse.
Leuna works was a key strategic target with a 13 square km area; I wouldn't see it as an appropriate comparison.
I honestly believe there is not enough honest consensus globally (or even within the US/EU) to declare this off-limits-- given the choice between strategic bombing (with large collateral damage) or breaking resistance one-MG-nest at-a-time by throwing your infantry at it, basically every modern nation would make the same decision I believe...
In my view, what makes the current situation particularly bad for Gaza/the Hamas side is that their goals are not limited to their own freedom and independence-- a lot of them want Israel/Jews gone in general, a position that deprives them of much international support and protection (especially western) that would otherwise be in fairly easy reach.
Basically, Hamas is a clear underdog/victim from a military power perspective, but they have made it very clear (October 7th) that if the positions were reversed, they would drop bombs immediately themselves. This costs them a lot of international sympathy; Israel would never have gotten away with this without the October attack.
The Oct 7th attack was terrible, but the Israeli response (both the initial response when many Israelis were killed as well as the hell wrought unto Gaza) has been downright evil. And they way Israel whipped people up into a frenzy with sick fantasies about "40 beheaded babies", "babies on washing lines", mass rapes etc was utterly despicable.
Idk, many people see the IRA insurgency as having had good outcomes for Ireland and Northern Ireland, so like they say, one mans terrorist is another's freedom fighter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Adams
It's not just that former Northern Ireland "terrorists" now hold positions of power, they are also being (potentially) awarded for hits they took during their struggle.
BTW, Israel has killed at least the equivalent of one Palestinian child every 30 minutes since October 7th. That is just mind-boggling evil at an industrial scale.
The new charter, published in 2017, is very different. But of course, you already know this.
No, as you said yourself it happened over a long period. And the reason? They probably realised they were getting played by Israel, who wanted them to be violent to "justify" their continuing genocide of the Palestinian people and theft of their lands.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231120-880-palestinian-c...
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ar/customary-ihl/v2/rule96
It very clearly fits the definition.
At the very least it would be nice to hear that hypocrisy runs deep for many many people without actual skin in the game whose ancestors have done the worst things imaginable. They have to give up on nothing, but can feel morally superior by helping 'end colonialism' by ending Israel.
As for Palestinian human rights - they can get the right of return to the Palestinian state without destroying the Jewish state. But no, that's not good enough, the only way to create 100% justice is to 100% eradicate Israel in your eyes and in most Palestinians eyes. This religious/ideological principle has brought tremendous suffering to the region with not much to show for it.
Whatever happens to a supposed Jewish state should not be a concern. Jewish residents of the area have their human rights as well, but what they don’t have a right to is a demographic majority, a racial supremacy, etc., and any policy which aims to maintain a jewish demographic majority or a racial supremacy is illegitimate.
That's a very one sided view of a war that included many massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population as well
I implied no such thing. I was referring only to Palestinians (the 'other bunch'). The vast majority of who will indeed slaughter you if they decide they are offended.
I'm bemused why anyone thought I was talking about Muslims in say Sarajevo or Indonesia. Identity-obsessed much?
Turn on Israeli TV and they're showing the IDF raping prisoners in Sde Teiman. Degenerate behavior from the self-described Jewish state. The US taxpayer is paying the bills for all this bloodshed.
The IDF and Likud does not have a policy of attacking civilians to achieve political or war goals.
They likely have some deranged and radicalized commanders who do this anyway, but it's not the organizational policy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231017165958/https://twitter.c...
Top-down messaging like that certainly doesn’t strengthen whatever ‘policy’ is
I am trying to respond in good faith, but it looks like Hamas is accepted across the world as a terrorist organization for specifically targeting civilians. And as much as I loathe the loss of civilian life at the hands of IDF, this is not a conventional war, and Hamas hiding within civilian populations and tunneling under hospitals is on Hamas and not on IDF. Like it happened in history a million times, Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.
So, that's why Hamas must cease to exist. Not Palestine itself, nor another government in Palestine - just Hamas. They could've stopped it, they didn't.
Let me know when IDF/Likud behave like this unprovoked (Yes, I know what's going on in West bank and its not remotely close to what Hamas did)
And then Israel would keep occupying more and more land, control their water, electricity, treat Palestinian people like sub-humans, occasionally shoot some children in the head, take palestinian hostages/prisoners without legal right (occasionally tortue and rape them).
What do you do then? Protest peacefully?
Actually attempting to attack legitimate military targets seems like a bare minimum we should demand of pretty much everyone.
Yes.
What has violence solved here? Thousands of people have died, and Palestinians are not treated better. I am no sure what peaceful protests would have done, but "nothing" is still way better than what we have now.
IDF is the military branch of an actual state. Likud is a political party. Neither advocate for indiscriminate killing of civilians (though some Likud politicians might, just like the US or any other nation has crazy politicians).
"Right to exist" is granted either through law or force. Hamas doesn't have law, doesn't exist within a functioning state, and is illegal by the laws of most nations. IDF isn't.
If you actually think there's a moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas, or that Hamas is somehow the moral group here, you really need to learn more. Stop consuming social media, stop reading things on the internet, go buy some books from a diverse array of sources, both pro-Israel and anti-Israel, and maybe you can gleam the truth out of there. It's not a guarantee, but it's your best shot.
I really think the TikTok age has amplified insanity where we actually have people asking, "Why does a military get to exist but not terrorists?".
For anyone who needs a reminder of how this war started (warning, extremely graphic / not suitable for life): https://www.hamas-massacre.net/
The blood of the Palestinian civilians that Hamas waged war from behind is absolutely on Hamas's hands.
(All of this assuming no outside intervention for 3rd-party nations or groups of nations, of course.)
Americans are the most propagandized people on the planet, even if they supported the resistance most of them wouldn't publicly admit that. American discourse, despite it's "freedom of speech" mantra, has a history of mccarthyist silencing to shut down debate, that's why certain ideas can't always be publicly expressed or one's affiliation revealed.
>Going back to the top point: Hamas hasn’t succeeded. Gaza’s occupation looks like it will be far more draconian than it was a few years ago, with the strip separated by security cordons all controlled by Israel.
Hamas has succeeded in their primary goal which was reminding the world that they still exist[1] and they won't let any normalization happen without a Palestinian state. They successfully derailed any normalization efforts. Another victory is that, for the first time ever, people, even ordinary americans, openly recognizing them as the resistance and showing support on social media where some of those tweets receive 150-250k+ likes, which was impossible before the genocide. In contrast to before where people always had to hide their support in order to prevent being accused with the common smears by zionists who wanted to shut down debate and suppress any information that would reveal that its the zionists who have a century long history of zionist-terrorism[2] and that the natives have a right to resist colonization without being demonized for it.
>Trump's peace plan [2] is anathema to everything Hamas fought for. All the way to recognising anexations of currently-Palestinian territory.
Trump waffles a lot to appease his donors, what his real opinion or plan is can be discovered by his actions in due time. Many israelis were disappointed by his ceasefire push and said that this deal was "forced upon israel".
Edit: the zionist brigade is quick, not even 10 seconds after posting this reply it already had a downvote lol.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-has-another-sinw...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
The article you linked to is pure propaganda - Hamas' charter changed a long, long time ago. OTOH, Israeli politicians literally say genocidal things on a near daily basis - it's a deeply sick society.
No, it's not "propaganda". It's factual reporting that happens to be inconvenient to Hamas apologists.
It's also corroborated by the atrocities against innocent civilians that these monsters gleefully filmed themselves committing on October 7th, such as attacking children with grenades.
Hamas' charter was changed recently when it was rewritten by a UColumbia grad. They still openly talk about destroying Israel and killing Jews. Learn Arabic, they don't use cover words there.
Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Thousands of Palestinians children are dead, and for every single one, Israel could have chosen not to kill them, and the decision to do so is on them.
- The "Israel should disband itself" reply: Give in to terrorists' demands, give them their country, and humbly negotiated for a freeing of the hostages without any military response. Hamas remains in charge as military dictatorship of Gaza.
- The military genius reply: I would have sent only special forces to Gaza to go after the Hamas leadership and free all hostages. No civilians would have been harmed and all collateral damage is avoided.
Neither of these are even remotely realistic. What was ordered and how events unfolded was more or less like any other country would have reacted. Two goals: #1 Destroy Hamas, #2 Free the hostages.
The problem right now with the hostage deal is that it leaves Hamas in charge. That's a huge problem.
So we've moved the goalpost from everyone supports Hamas to everyone secretly supports Hamas, they just won't say it, but I know it's the case regardless?
> Hamas has succeeded in their primary goal which was reminding the world that they still exist
Yes, when they went into this war and when they rejected the deal in May I'm sure they were thinking that the tens of thousands of lives lost and hundreds of thousands--if not millions--scarred for life, with the prospect of America recognising Israeli anexations in the West Bank on the horizon, was worth a few more hits on their Wikipedia page.
I suppose we can't know what Hamas' goals are right now. But Sinwar's goals were clear. And this war has been a total failure per his goals.
> what his real opinion or plan is can be discovered by his actions in due time
No. But his track record can be scrutinised. That said, if people believing the guy who recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, wants to reinstate "maximum pressure" on Iran and hangs out with this guy [1] thinks a self-governing Palestine is the way to go, and that results in a longer cease fire, sure. I'm all for it.
> Many israelis were disappointed by his ceasefire push and said that this deal was "forced upon israel"
I know some pretty forcefully pro-Israel Israelis. They're all in favour of this plan because it (a) returns hostages, (b) gives Israel a chance to recoup and pot some shots with the Houthis and (c) is a temporary cease-fire.
(Not saying some weren't disappointed. If he were still alive, Sinwar would probably reject it. But expecting zero crazies in any population is, well, crazy.)
> the zionist brigade is quick, not even 10 seconds after posting this reply it already had a downvote
One, it's an Israel-Palestine thread. Everyone is going to get downvoted.
Two, "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading" [2].
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250111-musk-calls-for-tr...
No I never claimed such a thing but I've just put your statistics in context and provided some explanation. You're shadowboxing with your antagonistic rhetoric.
>Yes, when they went into this war and when they rejected the deal in May I'm sure they were thinking that the tens of thousands of lives lost and hundreds of thousands--if not millions--scarred for life, with the prospect of America recognising Israeli anexations in the West Bank on the horizon, was worth a few more hits on their Wikipedia page.
Another needlessly quarrelsome and misguided framing. Most of the world is now aware and understands the Palestinian struggle and that's not just "a few more hits on their Wikipedia page" but e.g. Ireland, a european nation, among many others, joining South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel and Israel closing its dublin embassy. And there are many more substantial developments in that regard, so downplaying that in such a manner is just weird.
>No. But his track record can be scrutinised. That said, if people believing the guy who recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, wants to reinstate "maximum pressure" on Iran and hangs out with this guy [1] thinks a self-governing Palestine is the way to go, and that results in a longer cease fire, sure. I'm all for it.
Trump is a businessman in nature so he will act in a manner that is consistent with that and not upsetting his donor base too much, until something happens that disturbs that calculus. Trump is not ideologically driven, so if the price of supporting Israel fundamentally changes, due to unforeseen change, he will act adequately according to his own interests.
>I know some pretty forcefully pro-Israel Israelis. They're all in favour of this plan because it (a) returns hostages, (b) gives Israel a chance to recoup and pot some shots with the Houthis and (c) is a temporary cease-fire.
That could very well be, I am simply judging by the extreme infighting between hardcore zionists and the statements and sentiments of popular israeli news channels.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/world/europe/ireland-icj-...
You need to go deeper. The best article I've scene on the subject for some moral clarity is here:
https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-bright-line-between-good-...
That has nothing to do with why i don't think administrative detention constitutes hostage taking as defined by the geneva convention. Obviously if some hypothetical israeli court approved of hostage taking it would still not be ok.
It also heavily reeks of the insinuation that Hamas imposes sharia law which is not the case.
But really, how can you claim "arabs are more free" while Israeli settlers evict arabs from their homes at gunpoint with the aid of the IOF? While the IOF kidnaps and kills children indiscriminately?
It's not even true to say all Jews enjoy the same freedom under Israel. Ask the Beta Israelis.
> A hidden camera in a local health clinic recorded a Ethiopian woman being told by a nurse that this shot is given “primarily to Ethiopian women because they forget, they don’t understand, and it’s hard to explain to them, so it’s best that they receive a shot once every three months… basically they don’t understand anything.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ethiopian-women-claim-israel-f...
And every other example is anecdotal, and does not signify less rights for Arabs. You might as well say that black people have less rights than white in USA.
Lets break this down.
> How is the right of return has anything to do with Arabs IN Israel?
The original claim was that "arabs are more free under Israeli rule". Denying 750,000 people the right to return to the house they were forced out of under threat of death doesn't sound like "freedom" to me.
> The right of return is only for immigration rights, which is relevant only for non citizens.
Yeah the people kicked out in the Nakba are not citizens of Israel, so what is your point? I'm talking about the freedom of people terrorized out of their houses who are not recognized as citizens of the state of Israel. You nailed it bud. What are you misunderstanding?
This also explains why Israel has pursued genocide in Gaza. The Israeli project, in so far as it is a project to invert the population inequality between Jews and non-Jews in Palestine, is almost genocidal by definition. Once you maximize Jewish birth rates and incentivize Jewish immigration with birthright and similar policies, all that remains is to suppress Palestinian Arab birth rates and incentivize Palestinian Arab emmigration and yes, kill Palestinian Arabs--all that remains is genocide.
But no, it was all really a legitimate military operation.
Again, you lost the plot. Atrocities have been committed by both sides, I'm not sure what are you trying to accomplish here.
Where's the footage from the AH-64 Apache helicopters that engaged? Did the helicopters distinguish between Hamas combatants and festival goers? How can they distinguish between the two since Hamas combatants don't really possess uniforms beyond the green headbands that make positive identification of enemy combatants very difficult during a firefight?
RPGs are a precious commodity for any fighting force, but especially one as supply constrained as Hamas. I find it incredibly hard to believe that any combatant force would use so many of them to inflict this level of anti-material damage to this many non-military vehicles at a music festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1T51_iroHo
> Again, you lost the plot.
I'm not interested in a plot. I'm interested in hard evidence that provides and objective view of what actually happened. The little evidence we have from the festival does not support damage commensurate with what an insurgent force with small arms and a limited number of RPGs has the capacity to inflict.
I'm sorry, there's just no denying that Hamas committed atrocities, there's enough footage to show that they well pretty well armed and were shooting and killing people indiscriminately and had enough explosives to "casually" throw them.
And if what you are trying to claim is true then where is the footage from Hamas that shows that? There's no doubt that they had footage from the events, so where is it?
Hamas has all the incentives to show that it didn't commit war crimes, and yet we've seen nothing from them, which should raise an even larger suspicion.
Technically a war crime, but of the variety that happens in every war and has basically never been punished. Anywhere. It’s horrible. But that’s war. There is no such thing as a clean or just war, it’s always going to be horrible, the aim is literally to kill each other.
It seems once every ten years we find a war and zoom in closely and realise that war is horrible. The lucky ones this time were Ukraine and Palestine. The unlucky ones, basically everyone in Southeast Asia and Africa.
Was the holocaust just war? Was the Warsaw ghetto uprising a war against Germany? It takes 2 armies to have a war, not a colonized people locked up in an open air prison fighting against a sophisticated army, armed by one of the world's superpower, in flip flops while the colonizing army can't even bother to focus on the fighters and so just drops 2000 pound bunker bombs on entire families over and over again for 15 months straight.
South Africa has compiled dozens of pages documenting explicitly genocidal intent from high ranking israeli officials for its ICC case.
"UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war"
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...
Whataboutism?
Both sides might be wrong and commit horrible acts at the same time.
However Israel can potentially change its policies (even if that’s unlikely).
Hamas OTH is just objectively evil. The fact that they have a fraction of the resources that Israel has does not change that.
> israeli atrocities are much
I guess a matter of preference. Would you rather be raped and tortured for months or die quickly after a bomb hits you?
But if that's the standard you're using, then it's a documented fact that Israel rapes and tortures detainees, often to death. There is video evidence and hundreds of testimonies. The Israeli gov even debated on why it's OK to rape detainees, and when the police tried to step in and do something, Israeli citizens rioted - in favour of the rapists! Absolutely sick.
Israeli bulldozer drivers have bragged about driving over hundreds of Palestinians, both dead and alive. Israeli drones deliberately target children. Israel routinely designated areas as "safe", then bombs them. Israel has deliberately prevented humanitarian aid from reaching civilians. Israel routinely targets civilian infrastructure, including water storage facilities. Israel has destroyed almost every mosque in Gaza, just for fun. Israeli politicians spout the most vile genocidal BS on a daily basis. Israel has recently stolen yet more land in Lebanon and Syria. - and of course, Israel is still breaking the ceasefire in Lebanon, and even targeted UN peacekeepers. And of course, just before the Gaza ceasefire deal Israel went absolutely nuts bombing Gaza (even more than usual), just for the lolz. Oh, and Israel has weaponised antisemitism to silence critics of its genocidal, apartheid regime, and appears to have captured several western governments.
Israel is objectively an evil, apartheid regime, determined to spread islamophobia
How much of that is due to prejudice and how much is due to Muslims generally not joining the military is a question I can't answer.
So whatever it has done, it cannot possibly be worse than pre-war
“Terrorist” groups Irgun, Haganah, Lehi all became part of Israeli government and army post 1948. Israel has mandatory military service for its citizens.
Irgun and Lehi were both offshoots which can be categorized as terror organizations, however they were very small, with a few hundred members and never reached the size or level of support of any Palestinian organization
While the Haganah formed most of the IDF leadership, the new country civilian leadership was based on the Jewish Agency which predated the Haganah and had completely civilian leadership.
There are many other differences between Hamas and these organizations, but in general this is an invalid comparison
There are certainly many angry Palestinians before and after but this is foreign meddling through and through. Hamas would not exist in this form and have done the things that it did otherwise.
Hamas is not a rational actor. Their stated goal is to destroy Israel and kill every Jew. That's it. There is no scenario in which they are going to stop hating Israel. They don't care if every Palestinian also gets killed, if they get to destroy Israel it's worth it to them.
It feels like almost ever day that I see a video of a Palestinian's home in the West Bank being demolished or a Palestinian family being harassed by armed settlers
Israel would have created multiple generations of emboldened anger and hate against themselves if they failed to respond to the massacre and mass kidnapping.
I'm not comparing Israel or Palestine to Nazi, it's just a bitter fact that war always create anger and hate. Something had to be done though?
Will we (and/or Israel) do the same for Gaza? What about Lebanon and Syria?
We certainly failed at this in Iraq and Afghanistan, did we learn any lessons? Will the incoming US Administration fumble this opportunity?
As Stephen Kotkin likes to say "You can win the war and lose the peace. You can also lose the war and win the peace"
What comes after the war is as important, maybe more so, than the war itself
> And if what you are trying to claim is true then where is the footage from Hamas that shows that?
Who do you think released the footage from the Hamas combatants? They were using GoPros and other cameras with local recording and when the militants were killed, the IDF took possession of the recording devices. How many devices were being used? How many minutes of footage were there from these devices? What aren't the contents of these devices released unedited in their entirety. To date all we have is basically a selectively edited 46 minute video released by the Israeli government that compiles everything they want us to see from October 7th and nothing they don't want us to see.
Between the myriad lies that have been debunked (40 beheaded babies, baby in an oven, rapes, etc.), every one should be demanding more primary unedited evidence of what happened so we can actually pass judgement based on evidence. A link to a video of testimonies from people that almost certainly served in the IDF at some point and possibly could still be reservists, is something that should be taken with a grain of salt. These interviews also came out in the days following the festival after such folks had been questioned about what happened and possibly prepped about what they should and should not say to the media.
In that 7 to 8 minute video, there's like 1 maybe 2 minutes of video showing actual actions of Hamas operatives. You have video of them shooting at something in the distance (at who is unknown). You have video of them shooting at cars driving towards them where you don't know who was inside and who was shot. You have video of them throwing grenades in a car and them being tossed out by the occupant of the car. You have video of someone being taken prisoner with zip ties. All of these are very short clips taken from longer footage and selective edited/disclosed. Where's the rest of the footage? What does the rest of the footage show?
Furthermore, the conceal carry license rate in Israel is estimated at 10%. This even exceeds the rate of 8.4% for the US. Approximately 6 to 7% of Americans served in the armed forces. 69% of Israeli men served in the IDF and 56% of women (2019 figures).
In the US, in the event a violent event involving firefights, there's a pretty good chance that a non-trivial portion of Americans of fighting age represent an armed threat or a potential threat with military training (e.g. initially unarmed but could pick up a rifle from a slain combatant and then present a threat). That likelihood is far greater in Israel than in the US.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto lamented that “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass” when explaining why Japan would not consider trying to invade the US in WWII. That same sentiment applies to Israel and makes identifying friend or foe or non-combatant very difficult.
Compulsory military service is a double-edged sword. There are the obvious benefits for national defense, but it also creates a liability for all individuals of fighting age in the event of an armed conflict. Trying to judge an armed conflict in a country or region from a lens of a country of region where most folks are unarmed and have no small arms training is a fools errand. For example, if you're in California, you're from a region where 0.31% of the population has a conceal carry license. I would suspect that those with military experience and/or small arms training is similarly low.
It's pretty much impossible to judge how an armed conflict unfolded in a place with a wildly different reality in these respects. Just using the United States as an example, if an armed conflict were to occur some place like the Idaho panhandle, it would be very different than an armed conflict in San Francisco. Or pick any two places in the US with wildly different rates of conceal carry permits, firearm ownership, military service and small arms training.
With all this in mind, the firefight videos I've seen are not really out of line with what I'd expect in any region with very high rates of conceal carry permits, firearm ownership, military service and small arms training.
> Hamas has all the incentives to show that it didn't commit war crimes, and yet we've seen nothing from them, which should raise an even larger suspicion.
Assume for a moment that they didn't commit war crimes (I don't actually believe this, but the hypothetical matters here). How do you demonstrate something that didn't happen? Selective video footage disclosure can only show things that did happen, not things that didn't happen. Only with holistic mass disclosure of all available video evidence existence can you actually start to infer what likely didn't happen.
What you could ask that is totally reasonable is why they haven't released footage showing what the IDF did that day? Did any of the Hamas combatants recording GoPro footage make it back with footage that shows the actions of the IDF. I think this is reasonable question to ask.
The biggest issue I see here is survivorship bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias). Those Hamas combatants most likely to have been engaged in gunfire with IDF soldiers, tanks and helicopters would have been the most likely to have been KIA, and their footage captured. The footage most likely to capture the actions of the IDF that day are the most likely to be in the possession of the IDF following the end of the armed conflicts that day. Those Hamas combatants that fled back to Gaza once they had a hostage before engaging with enemy combatants would have footage from that day showing their actions but not the actions of the IDF if they didn't exchange gunfire. What I want to know is what the IDF did that day. We can be certain the footage exists and we aren't being shown it. I understand why its being omitted, but everyone should be naturally skeptical of claims without that evidence.
Anyways, my main point is that we should be demanding all the raw unedited footage from October 7th from both sides. Without that, all we have is propaganda from both sides because we can't judge what happened holistically. We can only judge based on what we've been very selectively shown, which certainly isn't anything approximating the truth of what happened that day.
> They still openly talk about destroying Israel and killing Jews
No, they really don't? Meanwhile, Israeli politicians talk daily of committing war crimes and genocide, but somehow that's fine because it's against Arabs?
> they lived peacefully alongside Christians in Gaza
Christians are .13% of Gaza. Come on. If the Christians had any real power, they'd crush them just like they want to crush the Jews. They'd make it totally unworkable just like in Lebanon.
> No, they really don't? Meanwhile, Israeli politicians talk daily of committing war crimes and genocide, but somehow that's fine because it's against Arabs?
The far-right who does so, no that's not ok. But the IDF does not act in such a way.
Like if they randomly started grabbing people up in order to trade them, it would very clearly meet the definition, but it doesn't seem like that is what happened.
Also more generally, they hold hostages to compel Palestinians to obey and not resist.
If true, (and the person was not a combatant) that would certainly count as taking a hostage, provided that was the primary reason they detained said person. However if they detained someone primarily for some other purpose and then traded them later, that is a different story.
> Also more generally, they hold hostages to compel Palestinians to obey and not resist.
If you mean they detained someone who was doing some action or intending to do some action in order to compel other people not to do similar things, that probably doesn't count.
If you mean they detained some random person that wasn't involved at all in order to compel someone else to do or not do something, that probably would count.
If they want credit for the ones not dropped, they need to take responsibility for the ones they did. Not really that hard!
This is important because "it's all on Hamas's hands" is really just a refusal to engage with the ethical questions at all. Folks could (and clearly would!) say that, whether one child is killed, or a million. It's just a question of when it becomes untenable to brush the question away.
The idea that "this is more or less like any other country would have reacted" is the same trap; this makes Israel no worse or better than any other country, and conveniently means we don't have to ask ourselves about the morality of it all.
> If you're Natanyahu on October 8, 2023, and the reports of the Hamas massacres on civilians come in, there is almost no leeway for reacting in a way differently than how the Israeli government and the IDF reacted.
Any lack of political leeway to react differently is squarely within Israel's ethical score card. I.e. "Israel as an entity is not responsible for its choices because the entities constituent parts forced those choices" is reductive.
> The problem right now with the hostage deal is that it leaves Hamas in charge. That's a huge problem.
That this is the current outcome is maybe an indication that your framework of the three possible options (what Israel did + two strawmen) is lacking.
Do you think Palestine has a future under a Hamas government? If you do, you're supporting Hamas. If you don't, you need to come up with a plan to oust Hamas. Sadly, any realistic option would involve high collateral damage because Gaza is a densely populated area and the Al Aqsa brigades were comprised of about 40k prepared fighters with extensive tunnel systems.
I'm tired of hearing terrorist apologists coming up with vague "in between" replies that ultimately fall into one of the categories I've mentioned. If you can't even state how you would have dealt with the October 7 attacks, you should shut up.
I pointed out Palestine because Israel is in a dominant position, so it is unlikely that they would want to protest, peacefully or not. But it would be nice to see more "peace-and-love" movements like in the 60s that opposed the Vietnam war, among other things.
Really? A nation destroyed for a protest letter from Ireland? A trade union wouldn't even settle for this.
> there are many more substantial developments in that regard, so downplaying that in such a manner is just weird
I'm weighing it the way we do history. Goals were set. None were achieved. To the extent we can measure them, the goals are further away than before.
When push came to shove, nobody came for Palestine. Hezbollah and the Houthis came closest, but the former folded and the latter was contained. Hamas' closest regional ally, Iran, left them out to dry. Same for the Arab monarchies and America's adversaries, Russia and China. Sinwar was counting on a regional conflagration; it never came. Before the war that wasn't apparent.
They trended on Twitter and college campuses, and I guess got a thumbs up from Ireland. But to the degree South Africa got the ICC in the ring, it largely served to (a) underline that both sides committed war crimes and (b) undermine the ICC's authority (note: not legitimacy) as a court versus think tank.
> until something happens that disturbs that calculus
Sure. Based on current patterns, the trajectory is towards a cease fire and hardened occupation with some recognition for annexations.
That could change--things can always change. But in a world where the rules-based international order is crumbling, now is a bad time to have only norms to fall back on.
It has symbolic meaning to which Israel responded with closing its embassy. You can downplay it however you want, but these are significant developments that will be discussed in lectures and history books.
>I'm weighing it the way we do history. Goals were set. None were achieved. To the extent we can measure them, the goals are further away than before.
Hamas had the goal of derailing normalization and they achieved that. An unexpected bonus was the reconquest of Syria which made the dictators of the Arab world also tremble in fear that their continued betrayal in form of normalization efforts with israel, contrary to the will of the people, could lead to their own demise as well.
>When push came to shove, nobody came for Palestine. Hezbollah and the Houthis came closest, but the former folded and the latter was maintained.
Another desperate attempt at downplaying the efforts of the resistance. Both Hezbollah and especially the Houthis did support Palestine, within their means, at significant cost to their own population. Since Israel's main solution to everything is just to ruthlessly bomb civilians and civilian infrastructure which even a congressman, Thomas Massie, has called out Israel for: https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1849165384571560052
An american congressman openly calling out Israel and receiving 111K likes - unimaginable before the Genocide, that's significant.
>Their closest regional ally, Iran, left them out to dry. Same for the Arab monarchies and America's adversaries, Russia and China. Sinwar was counting on a regional conflagration, and it never came. Before the war that wasn't apparent.
This is just the rhetoric of a person who thinks that geopolitics is checkers when it's actually chess. Iran obviously tried to avoid direct confrontation with Israel to prevent a war with the US so it primarily fights Israel via its proxies so the actions of the proxies are also the actions of Iran.
>Sinwar was counting on a regional conflagration, and it never came. Before the war that wasn't apparent.
What evidence do you have for that claim? I've seen video footage of Sinwar stating that they will derail normalization, which they achieved, and "exposing all the normalizers" which they also achieved. The world has seen Israel's true face, without a mask, and it's ugly.
>They trended on Twitter and college campuses, and I guess got a thumbs up from Ireland. But to the degree South Africa got the ICC in the ring, it largely served to (a) underline that both sides committed war crimes and (b) undermine the ICC's authority (note: not legitimacy) as a court versus think tank.
These attempts at downplaying the cultural impact of the past 15 months is just outright strange. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu which many people thought would never happen. The reaction to this decision then exposed America and many of its european allies as frauds who claimed to care about "international law" but never actually did because they refused to comply so they can protect their war-criminal ally. this has proven that the whole "international law" charade was always just an imperial and colonial tool to impose western will on the global south. These events are crucial and will be discussed and lectured about in universities across the world.
>Sure. Based on current patterns, the trajectory is towards a cease fire and hardened occupation with some recognition for annexations.
Well the israeli historian and political scientist Ilan Pappe thinks that "This is the last phase of Zionism", he has his opinion and you have yours, we shall see.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/14/israeli-historian-i...
>That could change--things can always change. But in a world where the rules-based international order is crumbling, now is a bad time to have only norms to fall back on.
The "rules-based international order" died the moment the crusaders of "international law" have given impunity to their colonial outpost to commit genocide with impunity and then proven that they will ignore ICC rulings when the outcome is not in their favor. If I were Russia or China, I would be extremely happy about that because the next time America or Europe lectures them about morality or international law, they can just laugh it off.
I don't think that's good news for Palestine however - it just means that, in certain contexts, the maxim of "might makes right" is much more openly acknowledged, which favours Israel because they're a nuclear power. You'd have to get Iran (or some even bigger power) involved for the balance to shift and the war clearly showed that this wasn't happening (fwiw, I think Russia and China don't care one bit about Palestine, they just like it if the conflict is ongoing and creates division in the West).
We don't know what history books are gonna write 100 or 200 years into the future and even if we did, it will be irrelevant. We don't today condone the way in which Caesar slaughtered the Gauls, but they still lost the war. In any case, I don't think the war, or history books, will care about Twitter likes in some far-off country.
If one party wants control on the ground and the other will settle for footnotes in history books, maybe we have something Israel and Palestine agree on.
> Both Hezbollah and especially the Houthis did support Palestine, within their means, at significant cost to their own population
Both non-state actors. And Hezbollah backed down after being decimated. The Houthis are still going, but part of the ceasefire is giving oxygen to Israel to focus on long-range operations.
> it primarily fights Israel via its proxies so the actions of the proxies are also the actions of Iran
Yes. The proxies are neutered. Iran is strategically weaker than it’s been in decades. Hamas has gone from being a threat to a charity case, from fighting for things to trading lives for textbook references.
> they will derail normalization, which they achieved, and "exposing all the normalizers" which they also achieved
How? Part of the ceasefire is continued normalisation. If normalisation is rejected the ceasefire ceases and we go back to war.
> I were Russia or China, I would be extremely happy about that because the next time America or Europe lectures them about morality or international law, they can just laugh it off
Versus before? The last time the lectures worked was in the 90s. For anyone.
Tactically speaking, I’m halfway convinced the folks who came up with Defund The Police and think everyone supports Mangione have architected the pro-Palestinian movement in the West. It started as a solid expression of sympathy. But it’s developed into another project of name calling, genericising terms like genocide (if everyone is committing genocide, it’s not something you can punish), and labelling barely-symbolic wins as monumental historical reconfigurations. (An Al Jazeera op-ed predicts Israel’s downfall. Next thing you know, Mika Brzezinski will be predicting a Democrat resurgence and the Daily Caller a GOP single government.)
All this has done is polarise and strengthen opposition to the Palestinian cause by falsely making it seem the Palestinians are as nutty as the pro-Palestinian protesters. (Meanwhile, on the center left, it looks disturbingly like people who have no knowledge of the ground truth again trying to draw borders in the Middle East from abroad.)
Going into a discussion to lecture never works; if there is no curiosity or capacity to question, it’s not an exercise in activism. It’s a child running away to the end of the block, taking satisfaction in the imagined panic and regrets of their parents who likely never noticed their absence in the first place. The current state of rhetoric from both sides points to one outcome: an increasingly-irrelevant Gaza and lots of dead for people to write sympathetic history books about.
Also, how does that compare with Israeli schoolchildren singing about destroying Gaza?
https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/11/20/israeli-children-sing...
What sort of military solutions and violence, if any, should be employed to root out that sort of extremism?
> Nassur and Saraa have a disagreement about what the "expulsion" of the "Jews or Zionists" means. Saraa adopts the argument that they should be "chased away" and that "we don't want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land." Nassur, on the other hand, endorses the view that they should be "erased" and that "we want to slaughter them so they will be expelled from our land." Saraa eventually concedes, and the two compromised that "we will expel them from our land using all means, and if they don't want to go peacefully, by words or talking, we'll have to do it by slaughter."
No, it's not problematic at all.
All three groups at times participated in violent activities targeting the British, Arabs, and even at times other Jews.
Haganah was proscribed by the British mandate and was an unlawful, underground militia. Lehi had 100s of members but Irgun had 4000-8000.
You yourself admit that Lehi and Irgun could be categorized as "terrorist" and Haganah engaged in what you describe as "something in between guerilla warfare and terror attacks".
The British certainly thought of all three as "terrorist" groups, which is why they targeted them with military and police action - https://israeled.org/british-round-up-resistance-fighters/
Hamas would also not describe themselves as "terrorist", they also describe themselves as a "resistance" movement.
Haganah both planned and executed the "Plan Dalet", which killed and forcibly expelled the vast majority of non-Jews from their lands - they actually did what people accuse Hamas of wanting to do.
Regarding Plan Dalet, saying that most of the non-jews were killed or forcibly expelled is simply not true, not chronologically or factually.
Fact is that most of the Palestinians in 1948 fled on their own accords, while forced expulsions happened they were rare and were done for military reasons, mostly preparing for the imminent attack of five regular armies, as happened by the other side as well (e.g. kfar etzion)
While Israel proper has a sizable Palestinian population that is larger than the population of the Gaza strip
> Regarding Plan Dalet, saying that most of the non-jews were killed or forcibly expelled is simply not true, not chronologically or factually.
Right wing Israeli historian Benny Morris writes:
> the bulk of the Palestinian refugees—some 250,000 to 300,000- went into exile during those weeks between early April and mid-June 1948, with the major precipitant being Jewish (Haganah/1ZL/IDF) military attacks or the fear of such attacks
> In conformity with Tochnit Dalet (Plan D), the Haganah master plan, formulated in early March 1948, for securing the Jewish state areas in preparation for the expected declaration of statehood and the prospective Arab invasion, the Haganah cleared various areas completely of Arab villages
In his paper “A new historiography”.
His estimates of expulsions are on the low end compared to other Israeli New Historians. And of course much lower than Arab historians are estimates as well, but I have a sinking feeling that citing Arab historians wouldn’t be productive in this particular exchange.
Well there's a line.
> it's a documented fact that Israel rapes and tortures detainees, often to death
The fact that there are evil people on both sides (as well as people on both sides who are both not evil and have very valid arguments) seems to befuddle us. And by the way, you can take a stand on the war as a whole while conceding that neither party in this has behaved well, though both have behaved somewhat in step with the precedent of warring states and Middle Eastern insurgents, respectively.
I only see evil from one side - Israel. The absolute depths of horror they have unleashed on the Palestinian people is unfathomable.
> with the precedent of warring states and Middle Eastern insurgents, respectively.
Ah, so it's their own fault for being Arabs! No, and Israel is invariably the cause for war in the Middle East. And Hamas are not "insurgents" either.
If you're not seeing evil where an ICC prosecutor sees war crimes, you're probably biased. (That's totally fine if practical for you. And the ICC could be wrong. About everything. But it's a flag.)
> it's their own fault for being Arabs
What? I said Hamas are following the precedent of Middle Eastern insurgents. Tactically. Strategically. In their aims and the source of their weapons.
Hamas have been atrocious, both in the October 7 attack and in how easily they dismiss the destruction of Gaza, but no more so than e.g. Hezbollah. (Less so than ISIS or FARC.)
> Hamas are not "insurgents" either
Israel controls Gaza. Hamas are fighting Israel and hiding among civilians. That's insurgency. La Résistance were insurgents.
Then by (your own admission) you are a rather horrible (i.e. extreme/fundamentalist) person. If you purposefully decide to ignore or even justify atrocities committed by one side.
At least you have enough self-awareness to admit that which I guess is something…
Do you realize how contradictory you sound? It's one thing to say Israel is eviler. It's quite another thing to say Hamas isn't evil at all.
The only conclusion I can come to is that you are antisemitic or (willfully, there is no excuse for speaking as if you know and not knowing the first thing, not now, not with so much information easily available) blind.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/tamar-torpiashvili-9-an-angel-...
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/cousins-amin-jawad-malek-and-m...
[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/yazan-abu-jama-5-bedouin-famil...
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/dana-48-carmel-15-bachar-mothe...
[5] https://www.timesofisrael.com/lianne-noiya-yahel-sharabi-48-...
[6] https://www.timesofisrael.com/refael-fahimi-63-netanel-maska...
[7] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ayala-73-liel-yannai-hetzroni-...
[8] https://www.timesofisrael.com/lior-tarshansky-15-maccabi-hai...
[9] https://www.timesofisrael.com/terrorists-murdered-entire-you...
[10] https://www.timesofisrael.com/yaniv-zohar-54-news-photograph...
[11] https://www.timesofisrael.com/carmela-80-noya-dan-12-savta-w...
[12] https://www.timesofisrael.com/four-members-of-even-family-sl...
[13] https://www.timesofisrael.com/four-members-of-even-family-sl...
[14] https://www.timesofisrael.com/kapshitter-family-murdered-on-...
[15] https://www.timesofisrael.com/itay-etti-and-sagi-zak-53-50-1...
[16] https://www.timesofisrael.com/mai-zuhair-13-faizah-abu-sabee...
[17] https://www.timesofisrael.com/yona-ohad-mila-cohen-73-43-10-...
Not a fan of creating caste systems of victimhood. But in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, how many German civilians were killed?
And I never said "just" war. I said it's war. Russia is killing children [1]. We've killed children [2]. There are multiple live conflicts in which children are being targeted and killed [3]. This isn't okay. My point is we haven't found a way to do modern war without this sort of collateral damage.
> a colonized people locked up in an open air prison fighting against a sophisticated army, armed by one of the world's superpower
Hamas is armed by Iran. Not a superpower, but certainly a capable regional power.
Apartheid. Gandhi. Hell, M. L. K. It's a lot harder to claim the moral ground when both sides are committing war crimes.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/08/europe/ukraine-russian-strike...
[2] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/27...
[2] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/least-21-children-repo...
You’re saying that if they had the capacity to bomb Berlin and other German cities they would have decided not to do that?
No, I'm saying if they had the capacity to bomb Berlin--and did--the moral case wouldn't be so clear cut.
I'm also saying that if they had the capacity to bomb Berlin, they would have been well advised to focus first on strategic military or final solution targets.
You mean like the 25000 Nazi civilians which the UK and US brutally murdered in Dresden? The civilians were the explicit target of the Allied bombings. Or do you mean like the Palestinian civilians, women and children, whom Zionists brutally murdered in the Nakba and Tantura with its mass graves to establish their apartheid state?
>And I never said "just" war. I said it's war. Russia is killing children [1]. We've killed children [2]. There are multiple live conflicts in which children are being targeted and killed [3]. This isn't okay. My point is we haven't found a way to do modern war without this sort of collateral damage.
It's not collateral damage, Israel intentionally targets civilians, they are not collateral damage, they are the target: "The Biden administration has quietly continued to supply arms to Israel. Last week, however, President Joe Biden publicly acknowledged that Israel was losing international legitimacy for what he called its “indiscriminate bombing."[1], "Israel/OPT: New evidence of unlawful Israeli attacks in Gaza causing mass civilian casualties amid real risk of genocide"[2] "Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza"[3]
This is only a fraction of the clear evidence proving that Israel targets civilians intentionally and most of these are from months ago. Since then, Israel has become even more brazen in their targeted murder of civilians and entire families[3] and extermination of entire bloodlines.
>Hamas is armed by Iran. Not a superpower, but certainly a capable regional power.
That's a laughable comparison and I should have not even dignified it with a response. There is a world of difference between receiving a bunch of shitty rpgs and receiving $100+ Billion dollars, F-35 fighter jets and 2000 pound bunker buster bombs that wipe out entire families.
>Apartheid. Gandhi. Hell, M. L. K. It's a lot harder to claim the moral ground when both sides are committing war crimes.
Both siding an almost century old brutal colonial occupation and a 15 Month long Genocide is extremely absurd. Jews who took revenge on Nazi civilians were not judged by it because people with common sense knew the full context and trying to "both sides" that would have been seen as absurd and as Nazi apologia. The Gaza prison break was the first time in Palestinian history where Israel has tasted a fraction of its own medicine and they couldn't handle that and whipped themselves into a genocidal frenzy and by that shown the world their real face without its diplomatic hasbara mask.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israels-military-campaign...
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/israel-opt-ne...
[3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evide...
Not the Holocaust or Warsaw Uprising?
And there is recognition that strategic (conventional) bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel.
> only a fraction of the clear evidence proving that Israel targets civilians intentionally
"Indiscriminate bombing," "mass civilian casualties," "risk of genocide" (emphasis mine), and "wip[ing] out entire families" are not evidence of "target[ing] civilians intentionally." And as I said, even if they are, that's something every great power has done when it went to war in the last half century.
Again, that doesn't make it okay. It just makes it deeply precedented. You (and I) have a problem with war per se.
> a world of difference between receiving a bunch of shitty rpgs and receiving $100+ Billion dollars
Hamas has received something like $20bn of aid from Iran. That's roughly what the U.S. has provided Israel in the last few years. Of course Israel is a superior fighting force to Hamas. But Hamas wasn't defenceless. (It was still allegedly firing rockets this week.)
There are a set of evil-slash-stupid people in this story. Hamas' leadership is among them. If you're going to cite South Africa and the ICC, you can't clip out the parts that you don't like without either compromising yourself or the source (the ICC).
> Both siding an almost century old brutal colonial occupation and a 15 Month long Genocide is extremely absurd
Excusing one side's war crimes undermines the argument. Like, one of Netanyahu's racists could construct a similar argument about the millenia-old persecution of the Jews and Hamas' explicit aim of not only destroying Israel but exterminating Jews. If war crimes being criminal depends so deeply on context, they're no longer open-and-shut cases that can be judged from afar.
> Jews who took revenge on Nazi civilians were not judged by it
There was no armed-resistance equivalent to Hamas among the Jews.
A better example might be found among the Native Americans. (Or La Résistance.) Even there, the practical lesson is attacking civilians at best doesn't work. (At worst, it galvanises the population against you.)
Reading his seminal work 1948 puts your quote as somewhat out of context:
Plan D has given rise over the decades to a minor historiographic controversy, with Palestinian and pro-Palestinian historians charging that it was the Haganah’s master plan for the expulsion of the country’s Arabs. But a cursory examination of the actual text leads to a different conclusion
If you are interested in Benny Morris, you will probably be interested to read in the same book about the Palestinian and Arab armies expulsion of Jewish settlements as early as 1929, and in multiple places in the war (Etzion Bloc, Yad Mordechai, Nitzanim, Masada, etc), where they cleansed the Jewish population from the future Arab state. This followed multiple declarations of intent by the Grand Mufti and other Arab leaders of cleansing the Jewish state.
Furthermore, you might be interested in the forced expulsion of around 700,000 Jews from Arab countries following the war, a similar number to the number of Palestinian refugees created by the war. These were settled in Israel, while the Palestinians were kept in city-sized refugee camps as non-civilians in Arab states for 70+ years.
Generally, based on some information you have omitted or seemed to misunderstand, I have the feeling that most of your knowledge on this subject is based on reading post-digested sources in Wikipedia, which is nowadays an extremely biased source on this subject, and very much deviates from even basic facts.
The pro-Palestine movement has a much longer (and varied) history, but the main links between parts of the (especially radical) left and the movement were established in the cold war, see e.g. the German RAF going to PLO terrorist camps or the famous 1976 hijacking of a passenger plane by pro-Palestine activists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entebbe_raid
That wasn't always the case, though, one of the first countries to recognise Israel was the USSR.
In any case it's weird whenever somebody pretends that what's going on now is in any sort of way a completely novel development, these fault lines have existed for decades.
Hezbollah was not decimated, the IDF simply bypassed fighting hezbollah entirely by going straight for lebanon's civilian population in its typical zionist-terrorism approach [https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1849165384571560052] to inflict an unacceptable cost on civilians and put pressure on hezbollah to stop fighting. What are such tactics called again? ter·ror·ism /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine - "The logic is to harm the civilian population so much that they will then turn against the militants, forcing the enemy to sue for peace"
>Yes. The proxies are neutered. Iran is strategically weaker than it’s been in decades. Hamas has gone from being a threat to a charity case, from fighting for things to trading lives for textbook references.
The proxies have not been neutered, that's just your zionist fantasy. they still possess large arms arsenals and are a real threat. If they had been neutered, Israel wouldn't have any reason to make compromises but they did in accepting the ceasefire. The only new problem for Hezbollah is the now defunct supply route from Iran through Syria, but they didn't even meaningfully deplete their current arsenal so they have enough time to find solutions for that. On the other hand, Hezbollah's new problem is also part of Israel's new problem, which is Syria, but that's a topic for another day.
>Versus before? The last time the lectures worked was in the 90s. For anyone.
People are quick to forget, Gaza is a fresh reminder for a new generation that "international law" is just a big charade.
>Tactically speaking, I’m halfway convinced the folks who came up with Defund The Police and think everyone supports Mangione have architected the pro-Palestinian movement in the West. It started as a solid expression of sympathy. But it’s developed into another project of name calling, genericising terms like genocide (if everyone is committing genocide, it’s not something you can punish),
Some incoherent rant that's essentially genocide denial in disguise, I shouldn't have even dignified this with a response.
>All this has done is polarise and strengthen opposition to the Palestinian cause by falsely making it seem the Palestinians are as nutty as the pro-Palestinian protesters. (Meanwhile, on the center left, it looks disturbingly like people who have no knowledge of the ground truth again trying to draw borders in the Middle East from abroad.)
None of that is true, that's just your distorted zionist perception of reality speaking. The pro-Palestinian protestors are sane and normal, it's genocidal Zionists like you who are the nutty one's trying to mislead people with weaselly rhetoric just to justify a genocide.
"UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war 14 November 2024" [https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...]
>Going into a discussion to lecture never works; if there is no curiosity or capacity to question, it’s not an exercise in activism. It’s a child running away to the end of the block, taking satisfaction in the imagined panic and regrets of their parents who likely never noticed their absence in the first place. The current state of rhetoric from both sides points to one outcome: an increasingly-irrelevant Gaza and lots of dead for people to write sympathetic history books about.
Gaza's relevancy is at a historic high, otherwise we wouldn't be still talking about it. And your "if there is no curiosity or capacity to question" reminds me of Neo-Nazis who use such rhetoric to soften people up before they engage in blatant genocide denial, so it makes sense that zionists like you would use the exact same rhetoric to justify or deny an ongoing livestreamed genocide.
"Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza" [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...]
It would be fine if the US & UK would at least start acknowledging Israel as the biggest terrorist organization in the region which makes proscribed terrorists organizations look civilized in comparison: IDF said bombed apartments were Hezbollah base - but most killed were civilians [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrn0nwn0eqo]
That way we would come full circle since the precursor to the IDF is already historically recognized as a terrorist organization by both the US and the UK:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
For many of those dead, we will however simply never know if they were slain by Hamas or the IDF[0] (as so many were), as Israel would not allow an investigation - an evil act, made doubly evil by the fabrication of all manner of vile attrocity porn (40 beheaded babies, babies on washing lines, mass rapes etc) to gain consent for a genocidal response.
So yes, of course those deaths are terrible, but history didn't start on October 7th, you have to look at the decades of land theft, dehumanisation, torture, rape, murder and bombing at the hands of Israelis. Israel's response was to act like Israel: more murder, more torture, more rape - and on a truly unfathomable scale. Israel has wrought a holocaust upon Gaza, and the West Bank hasn't been spared either.
And no, criticising an apartheid state publicly undertaking the most foul atrocities imaginable - at industrial scale, mind - does not an antisemite make.
[0] https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hun...
Electronic Intifada as a source: The EI is...quite the source. It has argued Hamas is akin to the ANC of South Africa,[1] quietly ignoring that the ANC did and does not do many of the horrific atrocities Hamas commits against its own citizens[2] (let alone Israeli citizens), glorifying Hassan Nasrallah[3], declaring without evidence that Israel is not a nation that is deeply traumatized (the majority of its citizens having been genocided for 2,000+ years) and also evidently not knowing the first thing about epigenetics[4], advocating against posters that simply state that people have been kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza and declaring such a thing to have 'genocidal sentiment'[5], defending and glorifying October 7 at least five times[6] and even referring to Hamas soldiers killed because...um...they were soldiers attacking civilians as martyrs[7], arguing Zionism--a Jewish idea from the start--is rooted in antisemitism, showing a drastic misunderstanding of what that implies (that a Jewish state is needed because the world simply cannot be trusted with Jewish safety)[8], do something effectively equivalent to asking the general US population what counts as transphobia or racism or Islamophobia, rather than the trans, Black, and Muslim communities respectively[9]. But I will humor them.
>["all" of Israel being built on land Palestinians were expelled from in 1948]
This claim is easily and demonstratably falsifiable. Much of Israel was owned by Jews in 1945[10]. And much of the rest of it was 'public and other' land, no more Palestinian than Jewish (and the public land could be transferred to the Jewish country by the UN or Britain, of course).
>[genocide claim]
This is a genuine question that I have asked people many times and never gotten an answer to - is this genocide or simply the high (and horrific) death toll that comes with urban warfare? Gaza, after all, has a population density higher than New York City. It would be difficult for even the most humanitarian army imaginable to wage war in New York City without many civilian casualties. Among urban warfare in similarly-dense areas, or projected death tolls for those (I'm sure the US government has done some report on the projected civilian deaths from a war in NYC), is Gaza exceptional?
Of course, there is much more to a genocide than the death toll -- but that is what outlets like EI tend to lean into, although a death toll does not a genocide make.[11]
>[rape as a lie]
This is a disgusting claim. The rapes have been corroborated by the UN (as the Electronic Intifada has noted). Furthermore, much evidence cannot be gotten, because the witnesses are dead, and the bodies themselves, one hopes, quietly buried. There was massive rape, and Hamas at least seems to have been lax about punishing it, if not encouraging it top-down.
They treat deaths by Hamas of fleeing fighters as somehow Israel's fault because Hamas was waiting for Israeli soldiers. By this logic, most if not all of the adult male Palestinian deaths in Gaza are actually Hamas's fault; Hamas, after all, is little-distinguished from the civilian population.
[The baby]
Their defense is that...er. They were trying to kill adult civilians? That's not a good defense.
[Hannibal Directive and civilian deaths]
Haaretz has published a thorough investigation of the deaths here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-18/ty-article-st.... (If you can't read it, they accept email accounts generated with email services like Temp-mail or 10minutemail.) Very few of the deaths are attributable to the IDF, simply because the IDF was occupied defending its own bases and responding.
> history didn't start on October 7th
For hominids in that region, it appears to have started about 1.5 million years ago (https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_1988_num_14_2_4455), although they didn't have writing. Some of the earlier historical records we have (historical here construed to mean non-Biblical) are interesting because they appear to affirm a Hebraic presence three thousand years ago[12]. Other historical records confirm Rome's forced exile of Jews, the discriminatory policies Jews suffered under, the 1948 attacks by everyone around, and the 1948-67 failure of Jordan and Egypt to set up independent Palestinian states in the West Bank (including Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter, which Jews were expelled from and prohibited from entering to pray at the Western Wall, the holiest still-standing site; but that's another story) and Gaza respectively. There is a long history, and starting the clock in 1967 isn't accurate either.
[1] https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-west-wrong-about-...
[2] eg 44 (!) summary executions (https://www.btselem.org/inter_palestinian_violations/death_p...), torture (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestin...), summary punishment and more torture (https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/10/03/abusive-system/failure...), prison terms for exposing corruption (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/gaza-journali...), et cetera, et cetera.
[3] https://electronicintifada.net/content/hasan-nasrallah-died-.... For reference, Hezbollah is widely despised by Lebanese as well.
[4] https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-holocaust-tra...
[5] https://electronicintifada.net/content/kidnapped-posters-ser...
[6] https://electronicintifada.net/content/what-did-7-october-ac..., https://electronicintifada.net/content/myth-israels-invincib..., https://electronicintifada.net/content/just-another-battle-o..., https://electronicintifada.net/content/hamas-fighters-gaza-s.... See also citation 7.
[7] https://electronicintifada.net/content/tearing-down-gazas-ir...
[8] https://electronicintifada.net/content/anti-semitic-roots-zi...
[9] https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/c...
[10] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Palestin...
[11] Genocide requires intent. To take two examples - suppose Australia decides to attack Nauru, a small island nation of about 1,100 people. They embark on a campaign to systematically exterminate every Nauruan for some inexplicable reason, and succeed. This is a clear-cut case of genocide. But suppose on the way, Australia acquires a nuclear bomb and plans to detonate it over Nauru, ensuring no survivors. Unfortunately, the plane gets derailed, and the confused pilot accidentally detonates it over Singapore, killing 100,000 Singaporeans. While this killed many more people than Nauru, it was not a genocide itself; it was an accident (and an attempted genocide of Nauruans). The proportion of the population is also iffy. If Australia's plan was a small land invasion (which killed 2 Nauruans before being repelled) and then, if that failed, dropping five nukes on the island, but all five went off track and dropped on poor Singapore, killing 1,000,000 Singaporeans, despite the fact that that killed many more Singaporeans both in absolute numbers and proportionally than Nauruans, it could still be described as an attempted genocide of Nauruans and not one of Singaporeans.
[12] https://web.archive.org/web/20160304045731/http://prophetess...
And what of similar problematic propaganda on the Israeli side?
Why single out that part and avoid mentioning the massacres of Palestinian women and children in the Nakba and Tanatura by Israel's founders to establish an apartheid state on top of the mass graves of Palestinians?
>And there is recognition that strategic (conventional) bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel.
If the bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel, why did America go onto commit the "the single greatest acts of terrorism in human history" by dropping 2(!!!) atomic bombs on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? [https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2015/08/hiroshima-and-nag...]
And if "there is recognition that strategic (conventional) bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel" then why did israeli officials reference the bombing of civilians in Dresden as their model for Gaza before they started the genocide and "dropped 70000 tons of bombs on Gaza Strip since last October, exceeding World War II bombings in Dresden, Hamburg, London combined" and "hit Gaza Strip with the equivalent of two nuclear bombs" https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5908/Israel-hits-Gaza-...
>Hamas has received something like $20bn of aid from Iran. That's roughly what the U.S. has provided Israel in the last few years.
That's a figure which you most certainly made up and did not even bother providing any sources for. Any data about that is unreliable anyway because Iran doesn't disclose any figures regarding that while America does, so that is a dishonest argument to make anyway. Any reliable sources quote estimated figures ranging from 20-100 million which is a far cry from $20bn: "Historically (1990-2000), Iranian funding to Hamas ranged from $20-100 million per year" - These are still guesses and US being Israel's ally has also an interest in inflating the numbers to justify its overspending and absurd funding of Israel.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_support_for_Hamas]
The United States has provided Israel with over $160 billion in bilateral assistance since its founding in 1948, whatever the Palestinian resistance receives pales in comparison because its limited to what can be smuggled into Gaza. Israel has an actual army with tanks and receives fighter jets from the US to exterminate the civilian population of Gaza because they can't reach guerrilla fighter in tunnels like in Vietnam.
> Of course Israel is a superior fighting force to Hamas. But Hamas wasn't defenceless. (It was still allegedly firing rockets this week.)
That's exactly the point, Hamas isnt an army with tanks and fighter jets but they arent completely defenseless, they, like the Vietcong, have tunnels and since Israel can't reach them, Israel instead murders civilians to put pressure on hamas. What do you call it again when an army kills civilians in pursuit of political aims? ter·ror·ism /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evide...]
[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/israel-opt-ne...]
>> Both siding an almost century old brutal colonial occupation and a 15 Month long Genocide is extremely absurd >Excusing one side's war crimes undermines the argument.
It doesnt undermine anything, Jews have committed warcrimes against Germans civilians who had once been Nazis as retribution, but when talking about the Holocaust someone says "both sides committed Warcrimes" it would be seen as Nazi apologia. You are clearly trying your best to "both sides" a century of brutal occupation and now genocide, but it still won't change the fact that the israelis are the colonizers and the Palestinians the resistance with the right to defend themselves against colonization.
>Like, one of Netanyahu's racists could construct a similar argument about the millenia-old persecution of the Jews and Hamas' explicit aim of not only destroying Israel but exterminating Jews. If war crimes being criminal depends so deeply on context, they're no longer open-and-shut cases that can be judged from afar.
This is straight up nonsense and israeli propaganda. Zionists already bend over backwards and invent the most absurd narratives to justify their century old occupation of Palestine akin to "actually our Palestinian slaves are oppressing us from the concentration camp we locked them up in and are disturbing our colonial project, so we're the real victims here". Even the Nazis used a similar narrative to justify their persecution of jews by claiming that Jews actually declared war on Germany first. [The Jewish "Declaration of War" against the Nazis - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4614991]. If a jewish prisoner in Dachau had written in his diary that he will kill all Nazi Germans if he can escape the concentration camp would you accept the narrative of a Nazi claiming "See? The Jews wanted to also genocide us, so the holocaust was justified actually" Of course you wouldn't. You're regurgitating all these zionist narratives because you're clearly a zionist who ignored mountains of evidence of the past 15 Months so you can prevent any cognitive dissonance and uphold your unmaintainable zionist worldview, but it will collapse under the weight of the evidence which you tried to ignore, downplay or subconsciously suppress.
>There was no armed-resistance equivalent to Hamas among the Jews.
Wrong. The Jewish Combat Organization: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Jewish Military Union: Żydowski Związek Wojskowy. Not that it matters anyway, if the jews had chosen not to fight back against their oppressors that would have been their choice. the jews suffered under the Nazis for about 12 years, while the Palestinians suffered under zionist terrorism and colonization and now genocide for more than a century now.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...]
>A better example might be found among the Native Americans. (Or La Résistance.) Even there, the practical lesson is attacking civilians at best doesn't work. (At worst, it galvanises the population against you.)
If it really doesnt work Israel shouldn't have done it for 15 months straight.
Isn’t it notable that this is a hypothetical? Jews aren’t killing Germans. Native Americans aren’t bombing Americans, Indians aren’t bombing England…there is simply a choice that has been made in the way some groups have prosecuted past persecution that is relevant to present treatment. Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement.
Israel and Palestine is a fucked situation because both sides have hardlined the other as terrorists or genociders. Both side reject the other’s label, and on somewhat credible grounds. As long as those hard lines exist, the people can’t coëxist. (There are people in this thread complaining about millennia-old transgressions. Like, so the Mongolians owe the Turks reparations?!)
And practically speaking, that sort of points—long term—to a single path for the region. (It’s notable, too, that nobody is willing to accept Palestinians as refugees. Both out of security concerns and because the nutter wing would label helping people as facilitating genocide.)
It's notable that your Zionist sensibilities don't ever allow you to reflect properly on a hypothetical which was suited to your israeli propaganda regarding the inversion of victimhood. Many Jews who escaped the Nazi concentration camp had a natural and immense hatred towards Germans in general and they also acted upon it by killing Germans who had previously been Nazis as retribution.
It's also notable that you intentionally twist and misrepresent any given situation to make dishonest and misleading arguments. Like "Native Americans aren’t bombing Americans" but they did do that during their ongoing oppression and genocide, but now it's over for them because the American colonial project succeeded and made a comeback impossible for them. The Palestinians are still being genocided, we're witnessing their active colonization, so for you to compare post-colonial indians to an ongoing colonization of Palestinians is so asinine that it's indicative of bad faith.
>Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement.
Don't be ridiculous, people could have forgotten something that only happened in the past, but the zionist colonial project has never in its century long presence in Palestine ever stopped murdering, ethnically-cleansing, stealing more land and now genociding Palestinians. It's like you going to Dachau and telling a jew in the camp that "Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement" during their ongoing genocide.
Furthermore, the difference between Palestinians and other groups who have been successfully colonized and diminished is that Palestinians are part of a religion with almost 2 Billion members in a region surrounded by nations of that faith. That's why colonial powers invest huge amounts of money into regional dictators, who against the will of the population, help protect the colonial outpost from being kicked out. The dictators, however, will not be able to hold onto power forever.
>Israel and Palestine is a fucked situation because both sides have hardlined the other as terrorists or genociders. Both side reject the other’s label, and on somewhat credible grounds.
"Germany and Jewry in 1940 is a fucked situation because both sides have hardlined the other as terrorists or genociders. Both side reject the other’s label, and on somewhat credible grounds." [The Jewish "Declaration of War" against the Nazis - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4614991]
Again miss me with your Zionist/Nazi apologia, the Palestinians have been subjected to brutal occupation, ethnic-cleansing and genocide for a century and they have every right to armed resistance. Your "both sides" zionist trash argument is toothless and a disgusting attempt at inversion of victimhood. Israel has been founded on the mass graves of Palestinian women and children by Zionists who even US and UK classified as Jewish-Zionist terrorists: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
If you don't want people to develop a genocidal hatred towards you then dont build an apartheid state on the mass graves of their women and children, then commit genocide and pretend that you're actually the victim while you're genociding them. Anyone with a sound mind and a proper education will see through that zionist gaslighting.
>It’s notable, too, that nobody is willing to accept Palestinians as refugees.
You mean notable like the Jewish refugees who nobody was willing to accept? British support for the Zionist project was even motivated by british antisemitism.
And even the US established a quota system, Immigration Act of 1921, which limited annual immigration from Eastern European countries with large Jewish populations. These restrictions remained in place during the 1930s and 1940s, significantly limiting Jewish refugee admission during the Holocaust era. Interesting behavior for Israel's great "ally" America.
Consider how you may be hurting your cause.
Labelling everyone who disagrees with (or merely doesn’t understand what you’re saying) you a Zionist or genocide sympathiser is satisfying. It’s easy. But it also makes it virtually impossible to distinguish, from a glance, which side is more extreme, the pro-Palestinian side in the West or the Ben-Gvir gang. (I make the former distinction because, again from a distance, the people I know in e.g. Lebanon are much more balanced than what I hear in New York.)
Because if both sides are absolutists on from the river to the sea or whatever, there isn’t a discussion. There is no room to compromise. As Clausewitz said, there is necessity for politics by other means. Those other means are deadly.
And yes, I’m saying that the uncompromising rhetoric being pushed by people thousands of miles away from the conflict is driving up death tolls. Sykes and Picot didn’t kill these people. But they caused the circumstances that lead to their deaths. A lot of foreign activism around this issue is repeating the mistake of drawing boundaries—rhetorical and geographic—from afar, considering only the views of one side or, worse, their own assumptions about what one side should believe.
> Many Jews who escaped the Nazi concentration camp had a natural and immense hatred towards Germans in general and they also acted upon it by killing Germans who had previously been Nazis as retribution
And they were wrong. Understandable. But wrong.
If that had turned into a political movement it would have destroyed sympathy for their cause. (In the same way Israeli extremism is sapping support for Israel today.)
> like you going to Dachau and telling a jew in the camp that "Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement" during their ongoing genocide
If you can’t see the difference between an unarmed concentration camp and a foreign-armed militant group lobbing rockets, sure.
> they did do that during their ongoing oppression and genocide
Which tribes? Because the ones who hit settlers got wiped out more frequently than those who bid for time.
> like the Jewish refugees who nobody was willing to accept
Yes.
That's not what's happening and you are consistently misrepresenting the facts and the situation. The initial suspicion of you being a zionist has been confirmed by your consistently bad faith rhetoric trying to justify, deny or downplay the genocide. In some of your other conversations with other people you tried to downplay the death count of children to which they provided the evidence that you're wrong and you ignored it.
"Gaza death toll 40% higher than official number, Lancet study finds" - [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/10/gaza-death-tol...]
> But it also makes it virtually impossible to distinguish, from a glance, which side is more extreme, the pro-Palestinian side in the West or the Ben-Gvir gang.
If you have difficulty deciding which side is more "extreme" after 15 months of continuous genocide, then don't be surprised when you are correctly identified as a zionist. The people defending themselves against a century of brutal colonization and genocide on the other hand have every right to be "extreme" and such smears don't have the silencing and demonization power they used to once have.
"UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war" https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...
>Because if both sides are absolutists on from the river to the sea or whatever, there isn’t a discussion. There is no room to compromise. As Clausewitz said, there is necessity for politics by other means. Those other means are deadly.
"Both sides". If you think that after 15 months of genocide there will ever be permanent "compromise" then you're simply naive. If I were Palestinian I would never stop fighting the genocidal colonizers who subjected the Palestinian people to a century of suffering, vilification and genocide. And it seems that resistance won't either: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-has-another-sinw...
>> Many Jews who escaped the Nazi concentration camp had a natural and immense hatred towards Germans in general and they also acted upon it by killing Germans who had previously been Nazis as retribution
>And they were wrong. Understandable. But wrong.
They weren't wrong and you also admit that it's "understandable" so it's clear that most people sympathize with them in that regard and don't classify it as wrong. that's why there are dozens of hollywood movies and shows of jews taking revenge on Nazis which have become popular blockbusters.
>If that had turned into a political movement it would have destroyed sympathy for their cause. (In the same way Israeli extremism is sapping support for Israel today.)
But it did turn into a movement: Zionism. Zionists weaponized the holocaust to turn zionism from an unpopular movement [as can be seen in pre-zionist jewish culture: Oy, Ir Narishe Tsionistn - Oh, You Foolish Little Zionists (Yiddish Anti-Zionist Song) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQMRwk8WDd4] into a more appealing one. The problem is that the twisted ideology of Zionism made the Palestinians pay for the crimes of Nazi-Germany. Zionists even collaborated with Nazis and sabotaged jewish boycott efforts of Nazi-Germany so they can garner support for the colonization of Palestine. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement]
>If you can’t see the difference between an unarmed concentration camp and a foreign-armed militant group lobbing rockets, sure.
Again you completely strip the context to which that statement was attached to so you can make snide and asinine statements. I already corrected you regarding your false claim that jews supposedly never fought back against their oppressors but you clearly don't care to remember because it would ruin the validity of your vapid response. [e.g. Jewish Combat Organization: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Jewish Military Union: Żydowski Związek Wojskowy]
>> they did do that during their ongoing oppression and genocide >Which tribes? Because the ones who hit settlers got wiped out more frequently than those who bid for time.
Apache Nations, Lakota/Dakota, Seminole Nation (which never officially surrendered!) but it doesn't matter which tribes specifically resisted colonization, what matters is that you made a false claim and I corrected you on that. "Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized. That is what the Arabs of Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of Palestine into the Land of Israel." -Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall.
Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews. [2] Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism, Ashkenazi Jews are firmly within the Middle Eastern/Levantine clade and are more closely related to Palestinians than they are any European group. [3]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews_in_Israel
You're reading things OP didn't even write; and addressing a historical assertion with present-day facts.
OP posits that European settlers coming in during the Ottoman era (establishing Hebrew-only areas & businesses, only to later demand a Jewish State, in opposition to the local majority [0]) is what kickstarted the current conflict. It isn't a 1000 year old feud.
Mizrahis, save for Yemenis, migrated en masse after the conflict was irreversibly set in motion by Imperial Britain & various Arab states.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-r...
It should be noted in context that in 1856 the Ottomans, after their war with Prussia, actively invited all peoples - not only Muslims - to come and settle the sparsely populated Holy Land specifically in order to collect more taxes. Jews and Arabs happily took up the offer. The last Jerusalem census to show a Muslim majority in that city was 1876, and the 50 years preceding it were neck and neck for Jews and Arabs majority.
This isn't true, and the link you posted in support of it contradicts it in the third sentence. 'less than a third of Israeli Jews' excludes Jews who migrated to Israel from the Soviet Union, or from the post-Soviet Union countries. In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s.
any idea where the millions of Jews from around the middle east disappeared to around the same time?
And no matter where Jewish people are from, they are that privileged ethnicity. The Arabs in Israel get token rights (but you and I both know if they were a demographic threat in Israel those rights would be revoked). And the Arabs in Palestine get no rights in Israel but are fully controlled and blockaded by Israel. That's the ultimate source of the conflict. It's not thousands of years old, and it is partly about race (if you consider Jewish a race, as the nation of Israel does).
That's just false. The Arab minority in Israel has right to vote, the right to establish political parties, freedom of expression, freedom of association, free press, religious autonomy, separate educational systems, legal rights, etc.
Yes there are differences, but claiming that Arab israelis only receive "token rights" is a far cry from the truth. Of course this doesn't mean theres' no racism, but that's a different issue.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom
It's unsurprising that many wouldn't want to reintegrate with that society after what they experienced, even if they managed to avoid the camps (and especially if they didn't).
Blaming this on "the Zionists" is like saying America wasn't at fault for seizing the property of Japanese-Americans during WW2 and forcing them into internment camps — it was Japan's fault for attacking Pearl Harbor, whipping Americans into an unavoidable frenzy that can't be condemned. Only it's more absurd, because Israel didn't start the war with those countries — they invaded Israel in 1948 simply for existing!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Syria
Palestinians have a legitimate historical claim and so do Israelis. They’re exactly that, historical. If both sides can’t let those be history, it’s either eternal conflict or the elimination of one of them.
What? They should just go back to Poland! /s
That's not to say that Israel (like all countries in North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand) isn't a form of settler colonialism [1], sometimes openly and consciously so, but it is different from European colonialism (and in some respects it can be different for the worse, at least compared to some specific European colonies).
So yes, some things are simple, but your comparisons to things that were quite different actually shows how other things are not so simple. But it is precisely because history is often complex and almost never easily generalisable that I hate using it either as moral justification or condemnation of present events. I don't think that the fact both Arabs and Jews came to the Levant through migration and conquest (even according to both culture's own national mythology) has any bearing on present moral responsibility. In the end, as you say, ethnocentric nationalism is just wrong.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judais...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism
Also, Jews were expelled from surrounding nations when Israel was founded, even more than Palestinians were driven from what now is Israel. There never was any compensation or talk about their right to return and these are not Jews with European ancestry.
Frankly, I think not a single statement of yours is true.
Whose colony is Israel? Do you even understand what this word means?
You are just parroting some propaganda lines that you don't understand. The propaganda lines that were specifically constructed to appeal to emotions (by referencing European colonialism that started with exploring Africa and India with subsequent conquest, which did result in many bad things, but has nothing to do with what happened in Israel beyond some superficial similarity).
Colonialism was bad because the colonial powers took freedoms away from the local population, siphoned their wealth to the country-colonizer while devastating the colony's inhabitants. Israel did nothing of sorts. It never wanted to have anything to do with the local population. In fact, one of the major sources of conflict was that Jewish population that came to replace the Turks who owned the land worked by the locals didn't want the locals to work that land anymore. And the landless peasants thus became unemployed / unemployable.
So, Arabs living in Israel used to be servants to the Turks, but once Jews replaced the Turks, and "freed" the Arabs, the later discovered themselves to be useless and without means of sustaining themselves. Not a good spot to be in, but hey, at least now they were "free" (I do use this ironically, I don't think they wanted that kind of freedom). Arabs, of course, thought about former Turkish land as their own (because they used to work it), but it's no more theirs than it is Jewish or whoever else inhabited that area historically.
Bottom line, claiming land based on some historical past that was cancelled by more recent historical events is a road to nowhere. And if you try to follow it, Jews probably have a better claim to that territory than Arabs, who invaded and occupied that territory later.
But, more importantly, today, the conflict isn't even about the land at all. All major players would be willing to make territorial concessions, if the core of the problem was addressed. And people are at the core of the problem, not the land. Something needs to be done with the Arabs inhabiting the occupied territories: they need to get some kind of a political status with an eye to permanency. Either completely abandon the program of building an independent state and join some other country, or the opposite. But neither seems likely. And so the conflict will go on for as long as this issue isn't solved.
- the empires that governed the land before '48 and how that affects consent
- the lack of options for Jews facing persecution, pograms and a holocaust given immigration policies of nations around the world
- the many Jews in Israel formerly from middle-eastern nations
- the complication to the birth-right citizenship argument that all Jews have Israeli ancestry (albeit very distant, in many cases)
- the UN Partition Plan for Palestine
The problem with the conflict is that both sides are right. It's not the Palestinians' fault that their land was least bad refuge for Jews, but it probably was.
Also - even if this take was true , what's your end game - all states based on past colonialism need to be abolished ? Or is that the right solution only for Israel. E.g if Mexico starts bombing the U.S to get back Mexico, parts of Texas etc, we should all support them right?
Well, actually, it is.
There were 1200 years of war, conquest, slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid up until the caliphate was defeated and broken up in 1920/1924. For 1200 years, non-muslims lived under apartheid (Dhimmi). Up until that point, Islamic supremacism was as firmly established as white supremacism was in America.
I suppose if America (which itself was built on war, conquest, slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and apartheid) was defeated in WWI, broken up into various nations, and some land was made available to the Native Americans to build their own sovereign nation, you would be against that ? After all, at that time, Native Americans accounted for only .25% of the population. Since there were so few of them it would make no sense for them to have their own nation.
Wars have consequences. Many ethnic groups lost their lands due to the expansion of the caliphate over 1200 years. The caliphate was then defeated, and things have changed.
"... ethno-centric racism are never good".
While in no way saying that this supports the idea that "ethno-centric racism" is good, you should read the constitutions of the 22 Arab countries in the Arab League. They have, as their basic principals that they are Arab/Muslim countries, and have Islam/Sharia as their law. So, are all of these countries also illegitimate ? Or, just Israel ? Or maybe America should change its constitution to declare that America is a white European country based on Christian law ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
And Nakba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon%E2%80%93Hussein_corres...
Basically, the region was double promised to both sides during WWI, Arabs in the region being promised it first. This crucial detail is somehow often left out of any discussion regarding the Balfour Declaration even though it preceded it.
No, absolutely not.
If I try to use ancient religions to justify violently forcing a claim to your house and land, then you're entirely within your right to defend yourself by any means necessary. That's not a thing any more. This might help you understand: [0]
And, many Jewish people decry Zionism as a perversion.
The background behind the current conflict goes something like this:
Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived in Palestine during the Ottoman era. Jews discovered Europe was pretty hostile, Zionism was born. Many move to Palestine, buy land and settle down. The Ottomans lose WWI, lose Palestine to the British. The British Empire started fracturing, they realised they couldn't hold it together, they decide they'll leave Palestine and create a plan to partition it. The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends. The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them. They lose. The Jews gain more territory. The Arab parts of Palestine get annexed into Jordan and Egypt.
Then, when all the Arab states fought Israel again, Jordan loses the west bank, Egypt loses Gaza and all of Sinai (!!). Israel gave Sinai back for peace, eventually both Egypt and Jordan renounced their claim on Gaza and the West Bank. And that's how we ended up here, more or less.
Now, as for the colonialism part, Jews have always lived in the area. Even during the Ottoman Era. In fact, Zionism started during the Ottoman Era. Also relatively few people lived in Palestine, less than a million total in 1922. And the Jews who did move to Israel after it's establishment, largely moved there as a result of persecution by Arabs (plenty of Jews lived all over the middle east).
This type of claims only shows lack of understanding of history as a science. It is actually impossible right now to make claims about this with any significant degree of confidence.
The vast vast majority of Jews in Israel now are Ashkenazi. Ashkenazis are from Khazaria and converted to Judaism between 740 and 920 AD. Even from this population, there is a bottleneck around 600 to 800 years ago where the population was down to 350 individuals [1].
By and large very very few Jews in Palestine/Israel are able to claim Levantine/Semitic genetic ancestry.
Many Palestinians and other Levantine people in Palestine who now practice Islam are far more likely have to have ancestors that were once Jewish that actually lived in historical kingdom of Israel prior to 70 AD when Titus and Vespasian crushed a revolt there.
The ancestors of these folks that today practice Islam in Palestine likely converted to Islam sometime after 637 AD when Arabs started to settle in Palestine.
It's pretty commonly accepted all over the world since basically forever that ownership is bequeathed from parents to children. This means that those who are Islamic today but whose genetic ancestors practiced Judaism in the past and lived in the historical kingdom of Israel have far greater claim to the land than folks who have no genetic ancestry to the Kingdom of Israel and instead have ancestry with no genetic relationship that converted to Judaism about 1105 to 1285 years ago.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-descend-from-35...
Broadly speaking, any philosophy that rests on an oldest-claims-first metric are guaranteed to cause violence.
Information degrades the further we go back; you’re prioritising the wishy-washiest sources of truth. And the nature of human migration and interbreeding means the further you go back, the less likely you are to find genetic ancestors of the people who currently control the land. The people alive on the land you want them off. People with guns.
(The theory is also fundamentally based on the notion that racial migration is wrong. Immigrants to America have less claim than white Americans, who have less claim than natives, except for all the natives who were conquered each other because they moved around too.)
Wrong, Mizrahi are the majority.
> Ashkenazis are from Khazaria
I don't know hope you did it, but wrong again, DNA studies show Ashkenazim have a large Canaanite DNA component. The other part is largely Italian due to admixture within the Roman Empire which forcibly annexed Judea.
That's simply untrue.
https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/2018/07/Ethnic...
Probably not worth reading your comment past this sentence.
You’re confusing something…
They are from Eastern Europe through the way of Germany and probably Italy (where they likely did quite a bit of mixing with the local before becoming mostly genetically isolated) prior to that.
Genetic studies have found no substantive evidence of a Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews.
Countries were established and fought for in blood all thorough history, and the winners kept their land. End of story.
Unless we are talking about some remote village, every single country was funded on blood and violence, and after a certain point it just makes no sense to track it.
However, you are correct in that many historians describe the population was added to, and never replaced. Supporting the DNA links.
From this I would conclude that the Palestinians are indigenous through the pre-colonial link. Most Jews in Israel are not indigenous but they share cultural links and lets not forget the wars they won in 1948 and 1967.
What is bizarre, is the ban on genetic testing for Palestinians and this pseudo-history in Israel that Palestinians never existed. Something distorted is being taught in Israel at many levels.
(Note that I say antisemitic, and not in a manner that involves conflation with Zionism: going against the overwhelming majority of generic evidence to make a claim about a Jewish ethnic group that doesn’t even majority reside in Israel reeks of a blood-and-boden anger against Jews because of who they are.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi...
Where's the issue ? I thought you Woke people wanted to see more diversity and empowerment of minority groups in the world
The Arabians never had the resources or population to engage in settler colonialism you are thinking of. Even if they wanted to (and perhaps they did), they just couldn't go around replacing anyone. So from the start the conception of Arab is about peoples slowly becoming Arab, not being replaced by arriving Arabs, in large part.
1. jews as a minority have lived in the lands of Filistine and Jerusalem peacefully and coexisted just fine for millennia, before the zionist project.
2. the fact that small minority of jews lived there does not give an excuse to ethnically cleanse the local population of arabs.
3. the claim that modern european jews from Rhine and pale of settlement (AshkeNazi) have any connection to ancient Israelites from 2000+ years ago is laughable. Most genetic analysis proved that it is Palestinians, Jordanian Christians are native to the land, not european settlers from Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, Ukraine with last names like Mileikowsky (Bibi's actual name), Mabovitch (golda's name) etc.
4. Filistine and Jerusalem did not have a problem with antisemitism and jew hate, UNTIL european settlers showed up. Antisemitism is purely european concept imported into Middle East.
5. All studies have shown that Israel/zionism is a colonial settler project created by Brits to secure Suez Canal from the ottomans. Later it would become American "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the middle east to bomb and murder oil rich countries in the middle east
Read about the granada massacre.
(Also, why spell it “AshkeNazi”? That seems inflammatory with no connection to reality, since the root is Ashkenaz.)
So true on a theoretical basis, and at the same time both sides are wrong for fighting on that same basis.
Leaving the only sensible participants those who are committed to complete non-violence for a few generations, no-one else could possibly have beneficial actionable input without making things worse.
>the empires that governed the land before '48 and how that affects consent
You have my upvote but I consider this a fairly weak argument from all sides.
After WWII there were only three kinds of people remaining on my home planet:
1. Those that won WWII.
2. Those that lost WWII.
3. Those that were saved by the ones that won WWII.
Everyone else was killed.
Sure, it's a fresh start, but pretty gloomy when you think about it.
The winners rightly would be expected to take the lead from that point on, drawing lines of co-operation highly focused on preventing any more worldwide conflict in any predictable way. Definitely for the foreseeable future at the time, and it has proven to work more effectively than any other peace initiative in human history. Relative to the overall threat.
Anyone who was saved by the winners of WWII and was not completely delighted with the outcome has certainly never had legitimate grounds for complaint considering the alternative. How quickly some people can forget.
Then again religious hatred and/or superstition can misguide some otherwise intelligent people from just about anywhere, and this is nothing new since cave men were all there was.
Of course it's been quite a while since prehistoric times, so too late now, nothing that happened before WWII will ever be a reason for further conflict ever. They'd have to be a complete moron.
Looks like the world had settled into its most peaceful time by about 1950.
Realistically the only major war that remained was a cold one after that, and regardless of whether you were unappreciatively saved by the winners of WWII, or happened to be disgruntled losers, the only way to change it was to start WWIII. At one time everybody knew that.
Which "everyone" also knew would take one hell of a suicidal maniac, but if it happened it would probably be dealt with along the lines of how Kamikaze tactics were proven to be overcome when the scale reached world-threatening proportions.
It was already the 20th century with worldwide communication and everything, and the century was only halfway along. Naturally with such a worldwide war brought to conclusion without complete destruction everywhere, previous conflict up until that time had been made as equally prehistoric as in 19,500 BC ever since.
How could people forget so easily? Who would possibly be suicidal enough to let that kind of bloodthirsty hatred rule again?
When zionism came about, Palestinian arabs were not in power and could not determine policy.
Zionist jews spend years wrangling (sometimes violently) promises and concessions from the British, and finally from the UN, who, at the time, seemed like the legitimate bodies to grant them.
In retrospect, 'what business did the Ottomans or British have to allow foreign zionists to take over Palestine?' but that's with the benefit of hindsight.
Not that either side is evil... it's a complicated conflict.
You know that would have been great. But who are the native Americans in your example? Majority of Zionists that established Israel and their groups arrived by ships from Europe. Wouldn't that more resemble England and Spain colonization expeditions in your example? Weird.. like the story almost matches exactly to the how colonies were established
Such an ironic example to give voluntarily.
Let's take a look at the background of Israel's founding fathers and where did they came from:
- David Ben-Gurion - Poland
- Aharon Zisling - Belarus
- David Remez - Russia
- Pinchas Rosen - Germany
- Moshe Sharett - Ukraine
- Haim-Moshe Shapira - Belarus
- Yehuda Leib Maimon - Moldova
- Mordechai Bentov - Russia
- ...
Case in point, most weren't natives who lived there under "apartheid" but actually left Europe looking for a new land, backed by... England and the US (Sorry Spain, not this time).
If you're struggling to use the real events in history and have to resort to a "hypothesis", it's a sign something is off and you're twisting history a bit too much. At least make sure it's not ironic, next time.
It's unsurprising that many wouldn't want to reintegrate with that society after what they experienced, even if they managed to avoid the camps (and especially if they didn't).
It is ridiculous to just throw them into the same category with the English and Spanish colonists searching for riches in the New World.
This is not something that happened thousands of years ago, it ended 100 years ago, and is directly relevant to what is going on today.
The fact that some of the founders of Israel were the descendants of those who fled their native lands due to oppression does not change anything, any more than Palestinians who are born in different countries would no longer have ties to their homeland in the Middle East.
And yes, I firmly believe that the Palestinians have a right to a country of their own, but not at the cost of eliminating Israel and imposing sharia law
> The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them.
I assume you're talking about the "Arab Invasion" of 1948? So, that would be after the Nakba started. In fact, Deir Yassin occured only a month before Israel was founded.
You're very obviously leaving out facts not in an attempt to be succinct but to obscure the actual history.
It's simply the most complex sociopolitical issue on Earth today, if not ever in human history, it can't be "summed up" in some hot take.
There is a lot to say about this part, but just one point: the plan included the establishment of a Palestinian state which Israel has blocked since its inception. So no, they did not abide by the plan. The plan has never been implemented.
It's wrong to reduce Zionism as solely a reaction to european hostility, such narrative simplifies the origins of Zionism by framing it purely as a reaction to European anti-Semitism, ignoring other cultural, religious, and political factors. Zionism also emerged from a broader context of national self-determination movements in Europe. Those European Zionists were also quite racist and did describe the native population of Palestine with the hebrew N-word "kushim" which had to be ethnically cleansed:
"Neither Zangwill nor Weizmann intended these demographic assessments in a literal fashion. They did not mean that there were no people in Palestine, but that there were no people worth considering within the framework of the notions of European supremacy that then held sway. In this connection, a comment by Weizmann to Arthur Ruppin, the head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency, is particularly revealing. When asked by Ruppin about the Palestinian Arabs, Weizmann replied: "The British told us that there are there some hundred thousands negroes [Kushim] and for those there is no value.” quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
>The Ottomans lose WWI, lose Palestine to the British.
Palestine was occupied by the British, which even the Zionists themselves classified as such. That's why Zionists also bombed the King-David Hotel full of British officers whom they regarded as occupiers of Palestine: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
>The British Empire started fracturing, they realised they couldn't hold it together, they decide they'll leave Palestine and create a plan to partition it.
That's is just historic revisionism, the British left due to "the sophistication of Zionist terrorists" -https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
> The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends. The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them.
That is brazen zionist propaganda that reframes the zionist colonial project as some poor damsel in distress that was just innocently trying to take over Palestine when the natives just tried to attack the poor jews for no reason. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy56Q1a0Flc]
David Ben-Gurion has also recorded in his writings that the partition was just a starting point and that they would ultimately expand anyway. Most explicitly, he states: "My assumption (which is why I am a fervent proponent of a state, even though it is now linked to partition) is that a Jewish state on only part of the land is not the end but the beginning." -https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2013/04/06/the-ben-gurio...
>Then, when all the Arab states fought Israel again, Jordan loses the west bank, Egypt loses Gaza and all of Sinai (!!). Israel gave Sinai back for peace, eventually both Egypt and Jordan renounced their claim on Gaza and the West Bank. And that's how we ended up here, more or less.
Again a reductive and zionist summary that is ahistoric and misleading. A more detailed and substantiated account is provided here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy56Q1a0Flc
>Now, as for the colonialism part, Jews have always lived in the area.
After the initial Crusader conquest, many Jews who survived the massacres either fled or were expelled. In 1187, Saladin, the Muslim leader of the Ayyubid dynasty, recaptured Jerusalem. He allowed Jews and Muslims to return to the city. This marked a significant restoration of the Jewish community in Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land. Either way, your narrative tries to deny that Zionism is a colonial project but that attempt is in vain, since there is simply too much evidence for that. Zionists also made no secret that it was a colonial project until colonialism became a bad word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonization_...
> And the Jews who did move to Israel after it's establishment, largely moved there as a result of persecution by Arabs
Another blatant attempt at rewriting of history that omits crucial parts to paint a false narrative. While there was a portion of hostility towards jews as a reaction to the crimes committed by jews in Palestine the main driver were a multitude of reasons such as:
Organized efforts, such as Aliyah Bet, focused on helping Jews immigrate to Israel, often in defiance of British immigration restrictions during the Mandate period.
Zionist organizations conducted educational campaigns to foster a sense of identity and urgency about moving to Israel, emphasizing the need for a national homeland.
In countries like Iraq and Yemen, Zionist emissaries used social and economic pressures to encourage Jews to leave for Israel. This included highlighting the dangers of staying in increasingly hostile environments and emphasizing the opportunities in Israel.
In Iraq, a series of false-flag bombings targeted Jewish sites. Researchers and historians have proven that these attacks were false flag operations carried out by Zionist agents to create a sense of urgency and fear, prompting Jews to emigrate.
The infamous "Lavon Affair" in 1954 involved a failed Israeli covert operation intending to destabilize Egypt by planting bombs in Egyptian, American, and British-owned targets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
Operations like "Magic Carpet" (Yemen) and "Ezra and Nehemiah" (Iraq) were launched to bring Jewish communities to Israel. These operations were often portrayed as rescue missions from adverse conditions while the real reason was that they were needed to help with the colonization of Palestine.
>persecution by Arabs
Finally, the zionist attempt to rewrite history regarding the relationship of Muslims with Jews is also dishonest and deceptive. Anyone with basic education in history will see through it:
"David Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University),”How Islam Saved the Jews”
By the early seventh century Judaism was in crisis. In the Mediterranean basin it was battered by legal, social, and religious pressure, weak in numbers and culturally almost non-existent. It was also largely cut off from the Jewry of the Persian empire, in Babylon, present-day Iraq. The future seemed clear: extinction in the west, decline to obscurity in the east. Salvation came from Arabia. Islam conquered the entire Persian empire and most of the Mediterranean world. Uniting virtually all the world’s Jews in a single state, it gave them legal and religious respectability, economic and social freedoms, and linguistic and cultural conditions that made possible a major renaissance of Judaism and the Jews. The significance of Islam for Jewry has been interpreted very variously since the middle ages and is a source of controversy to this day."
https://middleeast.stanford.edu/events/david-wasserstein-how...
Non-Muslims were taxed more so of course they were welcomed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
1. Kicking millions of Palestinians out of their homes and villages and building illegal settlements
2. Massacres committed with no accountability (soldiers posing and documenting it, not fog of war)
Both of these practices are STILL ONGOING and have been for almost a century.
Then regular civilians come from all over the world to live in those illegal settlements and justify it or claim they have nothing to do with the atrocities when they're a major support for it and why the suffering continues.
Many more problems were results of Israel being built on ethno-religious foundations:
3. Giving refuge to pedophiles (wanted by US and INTERPOL) because they're Jewish? WTF? [1]
4. The recent rape and sexual harassment of prisoners [2]. Israeli protestors went to the streets and even rioted to defend the soldiers accused of it and were proud of their actions. Tell me how should I feel when I see them doing that?
5. The attack on World Central Kitchen convoy? [3] Killing 7 aid workers in multiple clearly marked vehicles on a coordinated mission with the IDF. What came of it? They just laid off a couple of people like the commander Nochi Mandel who oversaw the attack. The same commander signed an open letter to block humanitarian aid. So what is the punishment for killing 7 innocent aid workers? You move to the private sector it seems with higher pay grade.
Fuck me! Any group that commit such crimes and act proud with no shame are lunatics and should be held accountable but this doesn't seem to happen in Israel. Even the citizens seem to take pride in it. [4]
My problem isn't with specific group. I'm referring to Israel as a state. I don't care about the religion of its people or what land they live on as long it's lawful and they're no committing war crimes. I'd feel the same about crimes in Ukraine, Afghanistan, or Africa.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jewish-american-pedophiles-...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2024/08/09/israel-prison-sde-teiman...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68727828
[4] https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-militants-riot-over-in...
"First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity...
Had Islam not come along, the conflict with Persia would have continued. The separation between western Judaism, that of Christendom, and Babylonian Judaism, that of Mesopotamia, would have intensified. Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance in many areas. And Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.
But this was all prevented by the rise of Islam. The Islamic conquests of the seventh century changed the world, and did so with dramatic, wide-ranging and permanent effect for the Jews." - https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/so-what-did-the-muslims-do-f...
Only some founders were foreigners? Do you want the full list? Literally none, 0%, were "native", born in the region or anywhere near it, here's the full list of people who signed it and where they came from:
- David Ben-Gurion (Poland)
- Daniel Auster (Ukraine)
- Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Ukraine)
- Mordechai Bentov (Poland)
- Eliyahu Berligne (Belarus)
- Fritz Bernstein (Germany)
- Rachel Cohen-Kagan (Ukraine)
- Eliyahu Dobkin (Belarus)
- Yehuda Leib Fishman (Moldova)
- Wolf Gold (Poland)
- Meir Grabovsky (Moldova)
- Avraham Granovsky (Moldova)
- Yitzhak Gruenbaum (Poland)
- Kalman Kahana (Poland)
- Eliezer Kaplan (Belarus)
- Avraham Katznelson (Belarus)
- Saadia Kobashi (Yemen)
- Moshe Kolodny (Belarus)
- Yitzhak-Meir Levin (Poland)
- Meir David Loewenstein (Denmark)
- Zvi Luria (Poland)
- Golda Meyerson (Ukraine)
- Nahum Nir (Poland)
- David-Zvi Pinkas (Hungary)
- Felix Rosenblueth (aka Pinchas Rosen) (Germany)
- David Remez (Belarus)
- Berl Repetur (Ukraine)
- Zvi Segal (Poland)
- Mordechai Shatner (Ukraine)
- Ben-Zion Sternberg (Ukraine)
- Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit (Morocco)
- Haim-Moshe Shapira (Belarus)
- Moshe Shertok (Ukraine)
- Herzl Vardi (Lithuania)
- Meir Vilner (Lithuania)
- Zerach Warhaftig (Belarus)
- Aharon Zisling (Belarus)
37 signatories, and not a single one were from that land or had any clear links to it whatsoever. You act like it was to protect the locals but not a single one was present? How much clearer do you want to it to be? It was a land grab from the very beginning
I think a change from 96% to 67% in 76 years is a catastrophe for culture indigenous to a region, and it's not a surprise that the Nakba followed such a rapid change without assimilation. The rate should be one where outsiders coming into a society become part of that society instead of splintering the society.
In chemistry terms, it's the difference between a solution, emulsions, suspensions and mixtures. In my mind, the goal should be cultural "solutions". If the rate of change is such that you end up with enclaves that resist mixing, then that leads to decline of trust and civic engagement. You end up with a society that is highly political and fragmented and liable to balkanize and potentially engage in armed civil conflict.
The DEIsraelis are doing a genocide.
Do you see the problem now?
What? Palestinians don't claim the land based on a promise by God. They claim it because they hold the legal documents going back for centuries. Even those expelled in 1948, still have the fucking keys covered with their grandparents blood after the Nakba ethnic cleansing.
You know what? let's forget about legal documents, about who is native to the land by DNA, since it's you know "complicated", right?
1. Zionists today (not a story in the past) continue to put outposts in Palestinians farms to snatch more and more land.
2. Israeli troops and settlers killed 171 Palestinian children in the west bank (an area smaller than Delaware) in 2024 alone [1].
3. They continue building illegal settlements on Palestinians land that's illegal even by US admission.
4. Israel is taking advantage of the power vacuum in Syria and advancing deeper inside Syria borders while taking more and more cities. It's literally provoking and asking for another war where they will claim they were victims.
5. The blood of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza is still fresh [2] and more crimes in the past with no one held accountable, soldiers are literally posing and filming their war crimes with no accountability. Many humanitarian orgs believe the number of those killed is actually undercounted as many are still undocumented.
They celebrates killing babies (who they claim will be terrorists of course) so soldiers are praised and incentivized to annex entire blood line like savages.
Here's a challenge for you: Emit labels like "Palestinians" and "Israelis" and ask someone with no prejudice, hearing it for the first time, "who is in the wrong?" If you are honest and not manipulative you'll get your answer.
But nah let's stick to the theory that the entire world is against us and respond to any other theory that it's "complicated" while continue committing war crimes openly admitted by our soldiers ever since Israel was established.[3]
Do you agree that everyone who was involved in war crimes to be held responsible, no matter what ethnicity, religion, or passport they hold? That is the core of the problem, Israeli have done more terrible things than the side they claim as terrorists.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/west-bank-chil...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestini...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Population_transf... [2] https://websites.umich.edu/~gocek/Work/ja/Gocek.Muge.ja.popu...
There must be some principled position where you can argue when it does and or does not make sense. In the case of this conflict, we're talking about a conflict where a few folks that directly experienced it are still alive and that many folks whose parents experienced it are still alive.
The Nakba is more recent than the Holocaust by a few years. Should it get the same treatment? Countries like Germany are still paying reparations.
In the US, we constantly have discussions about the institution of slavery in the US that ended in 1865. Jim Crow laws are more recent injustice however and only ended in 1865.
The Ukraine likewise had the Holodomor. There's actually a fascinating video of Abe Foxman of the ADL speaking with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, telling him that it would be unproductive to talk about "your genocide, our genocide", but at the end of the day that's what we have here and it only seems fair to give comparable treatment for comparable catastrophes.
Speaking of catastrophe, I've always found it somewhat ironic that the word Nakba and the word Shoah (the original vernacular used to describe the Holocaust before it was replaced in the late 60s) both have the same meaning. Nakba is Arabic for catastrophe and Shoah is the Yiddish word for catastrophe.
I'm not saying where that line should or should not be, but it only seems fair that if we're going to draw a line that victims of different but comparable injustices should be given comparable treatment.
> The theory is also fundamentally based on the notion that racial migration is wrong.
There are no human races, though, at least not ones based on phenotypical traits. Genetic analysis can reveal indications of regions and ethnic origins but these are barely linked to phenotypical traits and cannot be inferred from the latter. Linguistic communities are the bearers of a shared culture, not anything related to the bogus and outdated concept of "human races." It's also worth pointing out that the claim that "racial migration is wrong" does not follow from any of the other considerations, nor is it needed to support them in any way. I suppose you meant to say the opposite, that the view that racial migration is wrong cannot be morally justified because historical justifications are wrong? Otherwise I don't get the final remark.
Race is a social construct. That doesn’t mean it isn’t real. The constructs of “Israeli” and “Palestinian” are as real and deadly as the geographical boundaries they each draw.
> suppose you meant to say the opposite, that the view that racial migration is wrong cannot be morally justified because historical justifications are wrong
If one’s ancestors define legitimate claims to where one can live, then one cannot legitimately live where one’s ancestors were not. In a weird way, the historical returners do a full swing to the xenophobic anti-immigrant types. (There are people who I’ve heard seriously argue that accepting Palestinian refugees is literally genocide.)
Exactly. Otherwise, anyone could claim anything since we all share the same ancestry, going back to the same primates or something[0]. We should focus on the issues at hand and work to avoid making the situation worse. Forcing all Israelites or Palestinians to leave is not a feasible solution. The problem needs to be addressed through peaceful negotiations and immediate support for those in need.
[0]: Dumbed down on purpose.
1. ICC and ICJ's accusations of genocide by israel
2. israeli government led by Kahanite leaders like bezalel smotrich and ben gvir. Kahanism was recognized by USA and EU as a terrorist organization with fascist ideology and is named after terrorist meir kahane
3. public announcements by israeli leaders and journalists about "Israel needs Lebensraum"[a], dreams of conquering greater israel from Nile to Euphrates[b] stealing land from 6 other countries
There are way too many similarities between nazi germany and the zionist regime
a. https://archive.ph/NGnNv#selection-1153.44-1153.113
b. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241120-smotrich-has-conf...
(It’s almost impossible to engage with this comment, because of how ridiculous it is: for one, the majority of Ashkenazi Jews don’t even live in Israel. For another, intentionally using an ethnic identity as a stand-in for Nazism is cartoonishly offensive.)
The ICC has not accused Israel (or any Israeli leader) of criminal genocide. They have accused them of some other things, many serious,but not genocide.
The ICJ hasn't ruled on the south africa case, so i think its wrong to say they have accused Israel. South Africa has accused, the ICJ is in the process of deciding if their accusation has merit but hasn't ruled yet.
Also, the comment's "main thrust" was in response to the claim that the area is 'just always like that', for 'thousands of years', which is categorically untrue; a deliberate thought-terminating lie. Israel's terror campaign and colonialist brutality of the last 80 years is something quite new and different, based as it is on brutal British and American colonial strategies.
Not saying that this justifies anything, but the bloodshed for the past 100 years needs to be put into context of 1200 years of systemic oppression.
And yes, 100 years. The modern middle east should be looked at from 1920/1924 when the caliphate, one of the worlds largest, most powerful, and most impactful empires, was finally defeated. 1948 was just one of the significant events since that time.
'what business did the Ottomans or British have to allow foreign zionists to take over Palestine?'
That's the kind of thing I think people should be able to disregard altogether.
Not just because it's ancient history of the Middle East, but the whole world went through so much.
After all that, it was not supposed to matter any more what happened before.
Almost all the lucky survivors could move forward and there was maximum worldwide consensus that non-violence was the way to go.
Even some of the absolute losers of the war moved forward non-violently to a better outcome than any other way.
The Hatfields & McCoys were never going to stop feuding either, until they declared multi-generational peace, that's the amount of time it takes for co-existence to eventually give way to constructive interaction, rather than destructive interaction.
>'what business did the Ottomans or British have to allow foreign zionists to take over Palestine?'
Exactly what I mean, doesn't matter what anybody anywhere did before the war.
It was only after the war when the British came out on the winning side, that made them an arbiter of these kind of things. If the Germans would have won it surely would have been much worse, with an entire political party focused primarily on spreading hatred and oppression as a growth tactic.
No traditional business or inherent right to govern was responsible for British decisions that were capable of shaping destiny.
The Crown just happened to already be there actually keeping the peace before the war, until the British empire was threatened across the entire world, and peace completely lost on the planet. I like to keep in mind that you could have spent the war years in isolated communities on a number of continents and had no knowledge whatsoever that a war had even taken place. You were still saved by the ones that won WWII, there's no getting around it.
Even though the British had gotten there in the first place because of their own misguided war-like efforts of conquest, that didn't give them legitimate rights to anything.
Their empire was actively reversing all kinds of war-like tendencies like never before, along with every other person no matter what their religion or culture, that a peaceful world was suitable for. And withdrawing from an occupation that was quite painful itself.
You know, reversing like the Hatfields & McCoys. Remember if a hateful violent culture develops, and generations go by without resolution it never really matters any more what they are fighting for. Nope. Never. Really. Matters. And it can get a lot worse when the population grows with each generation because pretty soon there are not enough mountains for everybody.
Things were pretty simple with only 3 kinds of people for a while, but since prehistoric times there's often been some violence-prone contingent that would not be compatible with world peace without major change in attitude & behavior.
The world-wide window of opportunity for complete non-violence that opened after the war will never close until WWIII.
It's what you do with it that matters until then.
For those few that failed to quit shooting you could say that it's like the war never ended for them so they're stuck in a historical impasse. But the day the war ended it pushed any continuing conflicts right into the "prehistoric" category along with all the ancient stuff that would best be non-glorified if not completely forgotten because that's what's proven to work so well.
Once it was proven that almost the entire world could become deathly hateful of their adversaries, then stop shooting and rapidly turn it around for unprecedented co-operation, then anybody can do it, and those who failed to heed the example have only worsened their own outcomes.
Just like my hillbilly ancestors did for so many generations. Nobody who actually had academic schools could have taught the lessons of WWII until it was over anyway. Even those with academic traditions going back millennia, if they didn't stop teaching anything that could lead to violence after that, then they have failed worse than the most illiterate hillbilly. Lots of those mountain dwellers didn't even get schools until the 20th century.
The feuding parties were as hateful and uneducated as people can get. You don't want to be like them any more, you want to learn how not to be like them so you don't get stuck in permanent hate. If that means forgetting the past, maybe that's the only way to learn sometimes. To some extent it could have been easier to declare peace without very much tradition of formal indoctrination.
The most effective teaching could turn out to be teaching how to forget.
The first thing that always needs to be done is to stop shooting, who knew?
>it's a complicated conflict.
It stays complicated, even after the shooting stops.
But even a hillbilly can do it.
If we view the conflict from such a high level, I also have a take. My take is basically 'utilitarian': nobody anywhere in the world has a right to live anywhere outside of what other people accept (or other people tolerate, at least).
From my point of view, it's a waste of time to argue over who has a 'right' to the land based on birth-right, history, religion, etc; both sides make sound arguments to those ends.
What matters, in my view, is only what arrangement will placate all the parties involved (jews, muslims, and other).
I need to tell Israeli professor of history Sholomo Sand from Tel-Aviv University that he is a white supremacist antisemite for pushing his Khazarian theory and bringing all the receipts in his book
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/d...
Sholomo Sand is not a geneticist nor was his hypothesis based on genetics. The fact that he's a Israeli history professor doesn't mean much here. The man didn't want to be a Jew, religiously or ethnically, and found the most complete way to accomplish it.
Also jewish DNA is closest to northeastern anatolian component that is being suppressed as non politically convenient
Eran's analysis backed up Sand's theory of jewish nation based on DNA
Its of course also true that Jews and other minority would have had lots of issue in Arab country with Arab nationalism on the rise. But Zionism clearly played a large role as well.
It was attack by various Zionist groups that result in Britain no longer wanting to control the area because they knew in any resulting deal and/or struggle they had a good chance of coming out ahead, and they were right.
Sorry to disappoint, but I don't, both sides can be a morally wrong.
Zionism is colonialist and bad and was always going to lead to multiple forms of response and that is not surprising.
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/d...
Citation needed.
> You literally have to be Jewish to buy land
False.
> They don't have a right to own land in 90% of the country.
False. It's true only to 13% of the land which is owned by JNF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Land_ownershi...
In the case of the ILA, you can buy it if you have full citizenship, but not if you are an Arab with a residence permit but not full citizenship. You can however buy land if you are Jewish and not a citizen. I find this somewhat racist still. Moreover, according to the above source from Human Rights Watch, Arabs still are de facto prevented from leasing 80% of the land. So my figure is not that far off. You also didn't dispute the fact that they have been evicted and contained. Which is also mentioned here.
They have also been steadily changing the rights of Arab Israelis over the course of 2024, as if their collective punishment of Palestinians needs to extend even to their own citizens, just in case: https://www.ft.com/content/3d57cf7c-a097-4e86-8f39-0f7720508...
Edit: archive link here https://archive.is/gvke5
I cannot find a source about the exact incident I was citing about arson perpetuated on Arab Israelis. It was a long time ago I read about that. So I will concede that seeing as I think my other points hold strongly. There are several incidents of arson and increased unpoliced violence in East Jeruselam and the West Bank though. I find this as clear evidence that the war crimes going on in Gaza are not just about retaliation to Hamas, but are part of a larger racist issue, since Palestinians in the West Bank logically do not deserve punishment for things Hamas did, but are being killed at far higher rates since this war. I say higher because children were always being killed every week in the West Bank, increasingly so in 2023.
Aren't the rights only subject to them being an ethnic minority in Israel? According to nation-state law, they could not be allowed to retain those rights if they became the ethnic majority
Keep things the same with Palestinians as wards of the state: Iran and others fund Hamas to continue the conflict.
Palestinians get an armed state: in 5 years Palestinians attack Israel and are utterly wiped out by complete military defeat and carpet bombing
Palestinians get an unarmed state.: lol like they have now? Smuggled arms, terrorism, eventual war, carpet bombing.
The essential geopolitical issue is that the Palestinians have never functionally accepted being defeated. So they never moved on and accepted peace in defeat like literally thousands of other ethnic groups historically in the history of ethnic conflict in the world.
Granted their only source of economic support is being funded to not accept peace by Iran and the Arab world for 70 years. That's four generations of Palestinians only existing to be thorns in the side of Israel and as useful fools.
At this point there is no good outcome for Palestinians. All roads lead to devastating military defeat politically. The economic basis of their existence (oil money) is rapidly fading. Old allies are now aligned with Israel (Sunni Arabs), impotent (Russia/Syria), or regionally deflated (Iran). Global warming is worsening. And they have increased their population 10 fold over 70 years with ZERO agricultural or economic ability to support themselves. Their political leadership is corrupt and paid to be militaristic and have authoritarian control. The West wont give them headline prominence anymore. The US is becoming insular, and we are entering an era of conflict and a fall in international diplomatic idealism
If you are a Palestinian and have any way to get out, get the effing hell out of there.
I could grant the Palestinians every moral high ground and argument. It won't change anything geopolitically and the Palestinians are utterly screwed.
Their only (impossible) chance is to reject Hamas, live in whisper quiet peace with Israel, develop tourism or some other economic basis to support their population.
And we all know reading that paragraph how impossible that is.
The Palestinians don't have to "accept defeat" if the Israelis can "accept ethnic equality". The same way the IRA and the PA (who renounced violence as an overture to Israel) never "accepted defeat" either.
There are Palestinians that will get along with Israel. Newsflash, there are a ton of Palestinians living in Israel peacefully. 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab.
The Palestinians need to lay down arms for a looooong time before kumbaya peace is on the table. Stop with the bullshit that West bank and Gaza just want peace. Gaza continued to politically elect Hamas.
Likewise Israeli right wingers are in charge of Israel, like if the southern states had a lock on the US government.
Peace was closest when Yassir Arafat walked away from an agreement that included a Palestinian state. He was probably paid to do by the Iranians, Arafat died worth hundreds of millions.
Finally,the Palestinians dug their own mass graves by increasing population by a factor of ten when they had no economy and lived off of world relief and Arab oil money.
That's why they will never make peace. They only way they get money to live is to fight Israel. If they don't fight Israel, the aid dries up and they starve. If they fight Israel, Israel unleashes military force and blockaded and they starve.
Geopolitically the Israeli right wing have won. The world doesn't care about mortality. The UN will probably even stop passing their paper resolutions, because the world has way bigger issues like Russia NATO Ukraine, China Taiwan, and Trump vs everyone, brewing trade wars, and the fact that Israel is allied with Sunni Arabs, and Iran lost all its proxies.
The Palestinians are losing their funders, losing practical military access, lost Egypt a long time ago.
Global warming will be kicking into gear, so that means widespread population movements and other issues that will take all aid from the Palestinians.
That's why it's so critical for the Palestinians to find a way to some sort of peaceful state with an economic basis. That is the very narrow historic window for their survival. There is no Israeli kumbaya moment. There is no UN intervention force.
The fact you say "they don't have to accept defeat" is utterly nuts. And it's why that brief path to some survival by the Palestinians in Gaza is virtually impossible.
The West bank has a slightly better chance.
even if you decide to trust the religious book, you should know that jewish exile is a G-d's punishment for sins and a gift - so that jewish people can be a light to other nations and build a better world for everyone
Iraqi jews did not even want to migrate to Israel and leave Iraq. Mossad had to organize several bombings and false flags to scare the Iraqi jews and force them to migrate[1]
in other arab states, Ben Gurion paid money to encourage jews to immigrate and settle Filistine. Moroccan king begged jewish community to stay and not to immigrate
You're being presented with perfectly valid arguments, clearly proving that your point is false, and still insisting on ignoring them because they don't agree with your narrative.
You're in bad faith.
Antisemitism is purely european concept, and some might argue that expulsion of jewish people from Europe to Middle East was the original Final Solution by Hitler (before he decided to just kill everyone).
So all that Zionists have achieved is just realized the dreams of Adolf Hitler
What is still fair to say is that many Jews in Israel do not actually have a continued occupation of that land going back thousands of years as was claimed by the person I was originally responding to.
4% in 1872 is a very low number. Absent the mass immigration that diluted the local population and a Nakba that expulsed many, that 4% population there in 1872 would still be about 4% of the population today give or take a few percentage points assuming the fertility rate of that 4% and the 96% percent that were not Jewish were comparable.
Many of the Jews that are in Israel today are of European descent (i.e. no thousands of years of continued occupation of Palestine) and many of the Jews that are in Israel today that are of Arabic descent are there due to Zionist terrorism from the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah prior to 1948 and the mass migration from around the Arab-Israeli war. For example, Avi Shlaim from Oxford University has given numerous interviews on the terrorism committed by Zionists in Iraq to coerce the Middle Eastern Jewish populations to concentrate in Palestine as part of the Zionist project.
What is indisputable is that the claim of a continued presence of Israel/Palestine by Jews going back thousands of years really only applies to a very small percent of Jews in Israel. The reality is that that number is most certainly dwarfed by the quantity of Palestinians in Israel/Palestine that can claim to have "lived there for thousands and thousands of years" per the person I was replying to.
Where?
I think blood-and-boden arguments for territory are bad, full stop. Israeli Jews shouldn't use them to justify continuing to displace Palestinian Arabs, and Palestinian Arabs shouldn't use them to justify displacing the millions of Jews who live there now.
To the best of my knowledge, the overwhelming scientific consensus considers Ashkenazi Jews descendants of Levantine ethnic groups, with both Southern European (Roman period) and Northern European (medieval onwards) admixtures. Some people use this to make irredentist arguments, which leads to ridiculous (and antisemitic) responses like the Khazar hypothesis. But the solution is to observe that irredentism is wrong full stop, not to attempt the erasure of Ashkenazi ethnic identity.
Can't think of any particular sources off the top of my head. It shows up from time to time in different places.
> I think blood-and-boden arguments for territory are bad, full stop.
I generally agree. I generally argue for reciprocity and even handedness. If someone else claims a certain argument as legitimate, then it's fair to use that same argument for counterclaims. In this case, the person I was replying to was making the "blood-and-boden argument", which means it is fair to apply that same argument to the counterclaim for those against whom they feel entitled to the same territory.
Me? I have no dog in this fight as my ancestry is so far removed that I can't claim it. My take is that if you go back in your ancestry and you can't point to a single named ancestor in your family tree (unbroken. you have to know everyone between you and that person), then you really can't claim connection to a place as you can't physically place a specific ancestor in a specific community (town, city, village), much less a controlling interest or other form of ownership. I've researched my family tree back to about the 1500s. That's about as far back as 99% of people can claim because written records largely dry up in the 1500s, with the exception of some folks with ties to nobility.
In your opinion, what is a good argument for territory?
> To the best of my knowledge, the overwhelming scientific consensus considers Ashkenazi Jews descendants of Levantine ethnic groups.
A question I have there is how far back to do you have to go to reach that ancestry. Pretty much all Europeans have paternal and maternal haploproups whose origin is in the Middle East. In fact, I would reckon that the only individuals in Europe today that don't claim ancestry to the Middle East would be folks whose ancestors migrated directly from Africa to Europe. Almost everyone else from Europe is going to be able to claim the Middle East. https://vimeo.com/50531435
> But the solution is to observe that irredentism is wrong full stop, not to attempt the erasure of Ashkenazi ethnic identity.
Makes sense. I'm going to incorporate that into my understanding here. Thanks for the corrections.
As a followup, I just did some googling and it looks like Ashkenazi Canaanite ancestry likely originated around 1000 BC.
According to Wikipedia, it looks like the Northern Kingdom of Israel was established around 900 BC and the Kingdom of Judah existed around 850 BC.
Correct me if I'm making a logical error here, but this would suggest that Ashkenazis likely originate from a voluntary diaspora and not a involuntary diaspora (like in 70 AD), if they share genetic ancestry to the region from around or just before the Kingdom of Israel and Judah were established (unless they were expelled by their own. i.e. the equivalent of different denominations and ideological schisms).
That all said, I'm still with you that blood-and-boden arguments are bad, but if folks are going to make that claim it's still worth asking questions about whether that claim is any stronger than the blood-and-boden arguments presented by others.
If I had one, I would be a moderately successful philosopher instead of a moderately successful software engineer :-)
I don't think there's a good "just" definition for control of territory: claims of original or ancestral ownership are hard to verify (and subject to this kind of hell-in-a-cell irredentism), while "working" definitions uniformly favor the most ruthless or powerful party.
Instead of arguing for rightful possession on lines of originality or power, I often think counterfactually: who would, all things being equal, be the ideal stewards of a piece of land? Under that framing the answer is almost always a secular, liberal democracy where national ties are more significant than ethnic or religious ones.
Very few of those exist, and the ones that do are strikingly imperfect.
> A question I have there is how far back to do you have to go to reach that ancestry.
It really depends on what you mean by "reach." As noted above, the Ashkenazim had a significant population bottleneck event, and are genetically distinguishable from other peoples living in Central and Northern Europe. Whether that makes them "closer" to Levantine ancestry or not depends on your perspective: you could argue that they admixed relatively little given their isolation from their original ethnic group, or you could argue that the admixture that occurred was proportionately significant.
> Correct me if I'm making a logical error here, but this would suggest that Ashkenazis likely originate from a voluntary diaspora and not a involuntary diaspora (like in 70 AD), if they share genetic ancestry to the region from around or just before the Kingdom of Israel and Judah were established (unless they were expelled by their own. i.e. the equivalent of different denominations and ideological schisms).
I don't know if it's a logical error or not, but it's an incomplete picture:
* The Jews that became Ashkenazim left the Levant in multiple waves, for multiple reasons (anthropologists will say things like "push and pull factors," which really just means "some were pushed out by hardships, and others were pulled away by opportunities, etc.").
* The likely ancestry of Ashkenazim dates back to ~900-1000BC, but this doesn't itself represent a date range for when they left the Levant. To make it intuitive: there's no distinction between someone living in the Levant in 300 BC with that ancestry and someone living outside the Levant with that same ancestry: they'd look the same in terms of the genetic record.
* Historical records aren't very detailed for the period, but a significant record of Jewish Levant-Europe migration comes from the decades following the Bar Kokhba revolt. Josephus (who is Jewish, but is writing as a Roman citizen) records around 100,000 enslaved on just one occasion among several[1]. These slaves were likely transported further into the empire for labor in both Greece and Italy, which in turn is a likely explanation for the Southern European genetic component within the Ashkenazim.
TL;DR: There's more than one factor that explains the flight of Jews from the Levant. However, our strongest historical record for large scale migration strongly suggests that the bulk of what became the Ashenazim arrived in Southern Europe in the first and second centuries, and then moved further into Central and Northern Europe during the Late Empire and Early Medieval periods. That migration was in turn primarily caused by "push" factors (mass enslavement and murder following the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt), followed by subsequent "pull" factors (subsequent normalization of Jewish status in the Roman empire, stable lives outside of a post-temple Levant, etc.).
[1]: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2850/2850-h/2850-h.htm#link6...
They were actually all of those things... Do you not know what the Nat Turner Rebellion was?
> Newsflash, there are a ton of Palestinians living in Israel peacefully. 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab.
No one ever answers this follow up. What would happen if those Arabs were a demographic threat to the Jewish majority of Israel? Would they still retain their voting rights past 50%? Be honest.
> Stop with the bullshit that West bank and Gaza just want peace.
I never said that. I said that when Israelis decide that ethnic hierarchy is wrong and commit to ending it, this conflict can end.
> Peace was closest when Yassir Arafat walked away from an agreement that included a Palestinian state. He was probably paid to do by the Iranians, Arafat died worth hundreds of millions.
Oh so we just throw out lies now? My comment could have been a lot shorter. What happened to Arafat's counterpart, btw?
> Finally,the Palestinians dug their own mass graves by increasing population by a factor of ten when they had no economy
Advocacy of collective punishment. Nice!
> They only way they get money to live is to fight Israel. If they don't fight Israel, the aid dries up and they starve. If they fight Israel, Israel unleashes military force and blockaded and they starve.
Well, like I said earlier, they could get money if Israelis decided to collectively end the policies of ethnic hierarchy... You know Gaza had an international airport, it had a luxury hotel. It was building an economy. Constant war makes that hard. And as long as millions of people in Palestine don't have citizenship in any country, much less in the country that controls their lives, strife is inevitable.
> There is no Israeli kumbaya moment.
I don't agree. The people of Israel have a collective consciousness that will prevail. Ultimately, whites decided to end slavery in the US. Ultimately whites decided to end apartheid in South Africa. Ultimately Israelis will decide to end their ethnic hierarchy as well. It doesn't have to happen, but I believe it will.
> The fact you say "they don't have to accept defeat" is utterly nuts.
It's not nuts. It's a factual statement. The IRA did not admit defeat even after its prominent members were all jailed. The ANC did not admit defeat even after its prominently members were jailed. History shows they don't have to admit defeat. Many here might say it would be better for them and the Palestinians. But there's understandable mistrust of both sides that making a step forward is difficult. The last time steps forward were made, the PA renounced violence only to have more and more of the West Bank stolen. Rabin welcomed talks towards Palestinian statehood only to get a bullet in return. We went from the highs of Oslo to the lows of the Second Intifada. That kind of backstabbing makes it hard for one side to back down, but there is agency on both sides. The US decided to end racial hierarchy, and it was painful, but worth it in the long run. I firmly believe Israel can do the same.
50% Arab voting rights: let me get this straight, you admit Israel will never allow Arabs to gain majority voting, an ethnic racial hierarchy, but are arguing that Israel... Can stop apply a racial hierarchy for West bank and Gaza? So you're admitting that your "just do this" is impossible.
The IRA (I'm assuming you mean the Irish) were white vs white, and Christian. Palestinian "problem" is both ethnic and religious divide.
South Africa was probably related to the death of imperialism and the fall of British empire in particular. The whites were way outnumbered and required implicit world support to maintain that long term. The whites either relented or eventually would get the guillotine. Blacks had implicit power in numbers and surrounding countries. That's a totally different power dynamic.
Palestinian population problem isn't laying blame. It's the facts of the situation to highlight how precarious and vulnerable they are, and how little actual power they have. They can't sustain their population without aid, and that aid is implicitly dependent on them being a thorn in Israels side. No thorn, no food. So peace no food, war ... Blockade no food.
I respect your idealism, but I'm in my fifties (not Israeli, Arab, or religious, I have no skin in this game) and ... Look, the Palestinians have worked the moral argument for 74 years. During a time when geopolitics was reasonably quiet between the cold war and the post cold war unipower system. When there was still attempts at the UN, court of international justice, and other idealism internationally.
That era is coming to an end worldwide. Free trade is ending, America is turning insular/isolationist, global warming is in the rise, China is saber rattling, Xi is nuts, Russia is threatening NATO, the EU and NATO are fraying, right wing nationalism is on the rise.
The world is going to abandon the Palestinians. Egypt won't save them, Israel sure as hell won't. You call for impossible idealism, and I call for impossible realism.
> let me get this straight, you admit Israel will never allow Arabs to gain majority voting, an ethnic racial hierarchy, but are arguing that Israel... Can stop apply a racial hierarchy for West bank and Gaza?
No, you admit that Israel would never allow Arabs to gain majority voting. That proves it is an ethnic hierarchy. Rights are not equal for each population. One ethnicity has the power and the other can never have it. That is what's wrong, and what I say should end. The Americans ended racial hierarchy. The Europeans ended racial hierarchy. The South Africans ended racial hierarchy. Israel must, and will end it as well.
> The whites were way outnumbered and required implicit world support to maintain that long term.
Just like Israel
> The world is going to abandon the Palestinians.
No it won't. Dictatorships like Egypt and Saudi might. But the people will never forget them. Even the Israelis have not forgotten them. Israelis themselves are some of the most vocal about their plight. And it's that spark that will lead them to freedom. You don't have faith in the people. You don't believe the people make change possible. I do. Call it idealistic, but every ethnic hierarchy has ended except this one. I think I'm just following the stats.
But they aren't. The initial claim was about Arabs in israel (aka israeli arabs), not Palestinians in the west bank / east Jerusalem which is a different topic.
Now don't get me wrong, i'm not gonna protect Israel's treatment to it's arab population, but let's get some facts straight. In terms of human rights you're still better off being arab israeli than being an arab citizen in most of the arab countries.
Anyway, saying "there's human rights violations but other countries have more human rights violations" is stupid and doesn't prove the point that Zionists are trying to make, that they are the victims in this situation and are not racists with an intent to genocide. Go say to black Americans in 20th century fighting for full civil rights "well at least you're not still in Africa, you'd probably be starving so you should really be grateful for this wonderful fair country". Those are two seperate issues.
> Most of what I provided was specifically about Arab Israeli citizens
Palestinians in the west bank are not citizens. So again, Israeli arabs have much more than "token rights", they have all the rights i listed before.
There are also a lot of people much smarter than us saying that the core parts of the Palestinian narrative are true (Nakba, land theft, apartheid and occupation, and yes, genocide, not talking about the religious Islamist stuff). E.g. the heads if pretty much all UN orgs and aid agencies.
Anyway, I'll go back to being overly emotional by citing sources while the other side cites zero sources but is 'reasonable' because of their aesthetic of conservatism.
Edit: Also in terms of why do I think other people think differently, there are a lot of reasons. One is the genuine trauma of the holocaust. I totally understand why Jewish people felt like they could no longer conscience living anywhere other than a Jewish state after hundreds of years of pogroms leading to the holocaust. I also understand why they see anyone who is against them as antisemetic. There's lots of overlap between antisemitism and antizionism even if they are definitely not equivalent. I also understand that many people are scared of the instability in the region that be caused by the loss of a friendly westernised state and the possible formation of yet another total disaster of an Arab government. I also understand that it is not the choice of people who are grandchildren of settlers to have been born there and it is naive of me to dismiss the trauma of living in such a war torn place even from the more privileged side. None of these things makes it right to ethnically cleanse a people. That's the bottom line. And until we get Israel to admit that, we can't move forward, because the Palestinians cannot be gaslit out of their day to day experience of brutal military occupation and racist apartheid. They cannot be gaslit out of believing in the corpses around them.
Of course I don't believe we just dispose of Israelis for the sins of their forefathers. I believe they either need to give up a lot of land or they need to concede to having a multi ethnic state. Maybe the first one and then a plan towards the second so that neither side feels contained. This is easier said than done but it is what has to be done. Just like how South Africans had to forgive each other and the Irish and the English had to forgive each other, just on a more extreme scale. It's obviously a crazy thing to have to do, but you know what's worse? Continuing with a system that necessitates genocide.
I find it quite insulting that you see someone having the pro-Palestinian view and you think "oh yeah you're probably all for genociding the Israeli's to get your way"
Nat Turner was not financed to the tune of billions of dollars (inflation adjustment necessary) and employed by France to foment and continue fighting. He was not financed to torpedo any real resolution of slavery because it would mean the personal money train ends. Nat Turner did not have a Mafia authoritarian government oppressing a couple million people of his own kind.
The slaves didn't want collectively to fight and kill and jihad on their white masters. They just wanted freedom. They got reconstruction and segregation.
Slavery was only resolved with the bloody civil war. A civil war that America has the luxury of engaging in because it has no geopolitical enemies on its borders.
Does Israel want to kill a couple million of its people to resolve this in a civil war internally? When a dozen enemies would leap at the chance to attack them when they are weakened?
Look, you are dealing with more hatred, more barriers, more meddling external powers, more dangerous enemies.
Every ethnic hierarchy has ended? Us is still ethnically split along the echoes of slavery. The native Americans would also like to point out their situation. Russia is still the Rus at the core and subordinate ethnic stans, just like 1000 years ago. China is an ethnic hierarchy with the Han at the top. Turkey can't wait to reestablish a caliphate. South Africa has worse divisions than the US post apartheid.
The US native American population is basically the Palestinians. That is your analogue. Confined to reservations and poor. I don't want to hold them up as a model of "living as defeated people" but they exist, they have freedom to move in the US, and they aren't viewed by Americans as terrorists and periodically blown up. They have some economic determinism (casinos). That is the model the Palestinians need.
I don't think you are blinded by emotions but "high" on them btw. I do not negate the fact that you are an intelligent, reasoning being. And it's fine, we all get emotional about things. I understand how appearing reasonable is part of the aesthetics of conservatism but I still wouldn't trust someone who seem engaged in overtly motivated reasoning to get to the truth of something, and I am speaking of both sides here. If you don't show me your own doubts, I will doubt you.
Edit:
You show a lot of understanding and I think that's a prerequisite for any serious conversation but you also see how it is not very practical for any online conversation to have a wall of "I understand that..."
> I find it quite insulting that you see someone having the pro-Palestinian view and you think "oh yeah you're probably all for genociding the Israeli's to get your way"
Well you see the problem, like any dispute in any relationship, it's an endless chain of "I feel insulted that..." unless you have a strict framework for discussion where everyone feels heard. Of course I don't see pro-Palestinians as having genocidal intent (and I take offence that you think I do :). I was one and I did not, but I also understand that an israeli person would be concerned about violent reprisals and wouldn't trust high on reighteouness pro-palestinians who would absolve themselves saying "Well they reap what they sow". That's why peace is hard, it takes a saint-like dedication to dialogue and gandhi-like refusal of revenge.