Can someone living in Israel help me understand what is going on right now?
What does the political climate look like in Israel? Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this?
Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
I know that the media is all over the place and it's hard to figure out what is going on as an outsider.
Either way, I hope that this situation gets resolved. I don't think that it's good for anyone and is costing a lot of money and lives.
“Despite the desperate humanitarian crisis, a survey conducted in May by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University found that 64.5 percent of the Israeli public was not at all, or not very, concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
“About three-quarters of Israeli
Jews thought that Israel's military planning should not take into account the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, or should do so only minimally, according to another recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem.”
The banality of evil on full display. These very same people will claim in the future that they were misled or did not understand the gravity of crimes being committed in Gaza and the West Bank.
Yes. The minimum rules we all must agree on have to be the basic human rights. And that means we can’t take all the civilians in Gaza hostage for Hamas. These are humans with hopes and dreams and friends and family, like you and like Israelis.
That Israel in particular would so easily forget about this is horrible.
> Why is that? What are we misunderstanding about their perspective that causes the expectation to be off?
There's a perfect explanation for this in Ten Steps of Genocide, which is taught by many Holocaust museums.
Instead of recognizing Palestinian humanity, Israelites (not all, but enough to gain control of their government) have allowed themselves to discriminate, dehumanize, and persecute them.
Granted, not doing so in a situation as fraught with hostility & danger as Israel's would have taken tremendous levels of moral courage, but if there's one ethnic group that we expected to be aware of the slippery slope of genocide, it's the jews.
There are ~2m Palestinians in Israel, making up about 21% percent of the population of Israel and Palestinians in Israel have had the right to vote since 1949.
According to my research, there are 10 Palestinians in the Knesset.
> According to my research, there are 10 Palestinians in the Knesset.
That's great, but it doesn't contradict my claim. After all, I didn't say "all Israelis". I said "enough Israelis to gain control of their government".
I said: "Instead of recognizing Palestinian humanity, Israelites (not all, but enough to gain control of their government) have allowed themselves to discriminate, dehumanize, and persecute them."
"Israelites dehumanize Palestinians" is an over-simplification of my statement.
So now when the targeted population is actually increasing, we can still call it a "genocide". And when there is no actual concentration camp we can say there is a "moral concentration camp". Stop getting your news from Al Jazeera, FFS.
> So now when the targeted population is actually increasing, we can still call it a "genocide".
Please show me where the targeted population is "increasing" over the last two years? is it because people from other areas are being forced to relocate and you guys call that a population increase?
Where should i get my news from? last I checked, 100+ journalists came out with a written statement about how higher ups at the BBC were preventing news critical of Israel from being broadcast on air. The concentration camp thing has been corroborated by several news sources including some from within Israel itself. Even CNN nowadays is starting to be critical of the genocide.
Do you have any standards at all for what the word genocide means? You want to get into the muck about whether the population has increased or decreased by some fractional or single digit percentages? All this demonstrates is that you want to twist the meaning of words to support whatever interpretation of events is in vogue with your tribe.
but I mean, you guys also call amnesty international, the ICC, the BBC and reality itself antisemetic so believe whatever you want. the only "tribe" I'm in is the one where indiscriminate killing of innocent people is wrong.
Where do you think these data are coming from? You think the UN and Amnesty International have census takers going tunnel to tunnel in Gaza?
Why don't you reveal your standard for what a "genocide" is without discrediting the actual ongoing genocides in other places? Israel has got to be the most incompetent prosecutor of genocide in history.
I imagined that, if nothing else, they'd have an interest in the next generation of Gazans not growing up with even more hatred towards Israel than the previous one. Which is kind of hard given the cruelty they are currently subjected to.
That is unless the plan is that there won't be a next generation of Gazans.
Yes, I'd expect that from compassionate human beings. Such beings can hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time: the hostages situation is incredibly tragic, and the suffering inflicted unto innocent people who had nothing to do with the hostage taking is also immensely tragic and inhuman.
Using the hostages as justification for collective punishment is exactly what Netanyahu's government want, it becomes easy to justify the abhorrent treatment of millions of people, repeating this is just ceding power to the worst elements of his government (Ben Gvir, etc.).
The hostages should be returned by Hamas, that shouldn't cost millions of people their families, homes, lives, it's collective punishment, it's genocide.
The settlers been at this for a long, long time. It was hard for me to understand their perspective as well, because surely they most be seeing what they do as something good, like everyone else. There is a BBC documentary that goes into more depth, but a short snippet of the documentary can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU which includes a short interview with Daniella Weiss, a Orthodox Zionist who founded a organization focusing on creating these civilian colonies for Israelis.
As far as I can tell, from talking with Israelis both living in Israel and outside, there really isn't one majority thinking a certain way, it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing.
Possibly because smart people with expertise, usually hard-won through years of focus and study, make the common fallacy that they are experts in unrelated areas, even if they haven't put in the effort to become experts.
Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.
Really well said. I would even go further and say that the "smart people with expertise" even disagree on matters like this and are operating on imperfect, vague information. Knowing that, it seems even more ridiculous to ask passersby about their opinion on this. Of course you can have an opinion, but keep in mind you're likely operating in 99% fog. Just my two cents.
In a landmark 20 year study, Professor Philip Tetlock showed that even the average expert was only slightly better at predicting the future than random guesswork. Tetlock’s latest project, an unprecedented government funded forecasting tournament involving over a million individual predictions has since shown that there are, however, some people with real demonstrable foresight.
It is absolutely normal and acceptable to talk about topics you don’t know about. If you are wrong, someone will tell you. If you are smart, you will learn from it better and faster than trying to study the topic yourself, because people who are familiar with the subject may know things you don’t know you need to know.
And of course sometimes being deeply involved makes experts less objective and outsider perspective may bring some fresh air to the conversation.
> why would you speak about a topic you know little about?
I have knowledge about adjacent topics. I add the caveat in case someone has a source that substantiates or refutes my hypothesis because I’m more interested in learning
I think it’s extremely common to be opinionated about things we don’t know much about. I don’t even know if that’s good or bad, I do find it interesting.
That's kind of how most things seem to be. People go about their lives and even if they have strong opinions about something like that, they probably aren't going to do much about it.
It makes sense to extrapolate based on what we know. In the US, the media and advocacy groups manufacture controversy and outrage. He's testing the possibility that maybe the same pattern applies there too.
If you want to avoid anything with bias, you better disconnect your router because literally every person is biased one way or another. When viewing documentaries it's important to know that, including BBC ones, so you can have that in mind, not avoid watching the documentaries at all.
Apparently martin82's comment was too subtle for you so here it is more explicitly. The BBC has a long history of antisemitic and anti-Israel bias. This is not a secret.
"‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’ According to a survey commissioned by Penn State, more than 80 per cent of Israeli Jews now support the expulsion of Gazans. Compassion for Palestinians is taboo except among a fringe of radical activists. When Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, posted a tweet celebrating a recent prisoner exchange, he was denounced for seeming to equate the predicament of jailed Palestinians and Jewish hostages: ‘Your presence pollutes the Knesset,’ a colleague told him."
> "‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’
I have such a hard time understanding how such statements can find an accepting audience in this day and age; in Israel of all places.
Replace "Israeli stand-up comedian" with "some Nazi propagandist in the 30s/40s" and "Gazans" with "Jews", and I'm sure it would be a perfectly accurate historical quote.
Fully agreed, this Gil Kopatz could as well write articles in Der Stürmer. The same rhetoric was used by the Nazis. For instance, they compared Jews to rats:
Caption: “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish once more.” (December 1927)
There is a real war going on between israel and hamas.
On all levels, including information war. Information war is the only one where hamas is currently winning.
That is why you are already heavily biased based on the tone of your questions. About 90%+ of what you see on mainstream media is either a straightforward lie or carefully designed, massaged and distorted truth (for example hamas counts as casualties everyone, including fully armed terrorists killed in action). Another example is fake news about “starvation” where they post standalone photos of children with generic disorders as a proof. Im just scratching the surface.
This information war is mainly sponsored by quatar and iran with 2 longterm goals in mind 1) destabilizing and undermining USA influence in middle east and worldwide 2) destroying israel and killing as many jews as possible (literally, they don’t hide it if you check anything besides bbc and english al-jazeera)
That is what really going on. That is the brutal truth. Unfortunately it’s not an exaggeration.
And unfortunately it is nothing new. Way before founding modern Israel there has been a long history of regular pogroms and massacres in that region. This doesn’t excuse current Israel from some mistakes and poor judgements, but it paints a very different picture that doesn’t fit sugarcoated antisemitic victim narrative that all main media sponsored by botomless pit of oil qatar money shoves up all naive western listeners.
What do you mean the political climate? The current government is based on a majority. Although some parties in the opposition are trying to undermine the government actions, they are mostly hold exact or very similar views on the issues. When the opposition were in charge with Bennett as the PM, there was no major change in the state/security issues, the main arguments are more on "internal" affairs. ?
After Oct 7, you'll find very little people interested on what is happening in Gaze. You can also see that the Palestinians in the West Bank are not interested in what's happening in Gaza. Almost zero disturbances or protests about it, even in cities like Ramahllah which enjoys a complete autonomy.
Israeli here, can't directly answer your question since I've lived in the US for 99% of my adult life, but I consider myself pro-Israel and resent the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed. I see the key problem as people removing context: Context for why the current situation could easily be different if Hamas acted/acts differently, and context for why there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years.
The problem here though is what will ever give Israel confidence that Oct 7 will never happen again? We know that going after terrorists for years and killing them just creates more terrorists (Iraq, Afghanistan). The young children who do not end up dying of starvation will be men in 20 years, still in Gaza with no options to leave and resent Israel who they will consider to be effectively their jailer. The situation is just untenable. I don't like to think that the result of Oct 7 is a more open Gaza but I don't really know what other options Israel has.
Hamas obviously started this but Israel won the war a long time ago. The world deserves an end. The longer it goes on the more Hamas will actually have achieved some kind of lasting positive image of Gaza which is rooted in their actions on Oct 7th and that would be an incredibly bad outcome for all.
> what will ever give Israel confidence that Oct 7 will never happen again?
No Hamas in power? Seems like that would give pretty good confidence.
This reminds me of alternate history stories where Japan refused to surrender. The US demanded unconditional surrender in WW2. What would have happened if the axis refused. What would have made the allies confident that the war was over without German and Japanese unconditional surrender.
It seems like Hamas is not surrendering and Israel is demanding that. If Hamas surrendered and left power, would that appease Israel?
At least 189 Palestinians were killed between 30 March and 31 December 2018.[28]: 6 [29][30] An independent United Nations commission said that at least 29 out of the 189 killed were militants.[5] Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition.[31] According to Robert Mardini, head of Middle East for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), more than 13,000 Palestinians were wounded as of 19 June 2018. The majority were wounded severely, with some 1,400 struck by three to five bullets.[32] No Israelis were physically harmed from 30 March to 12 May, until one Israeli soldier was reported as slightly wounded on 14 May,[9] the day the protests peaked. The same day, 59 or 60 Palestinians were shot dead at twelve clash points along the border fence.[33]
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yea, seems like it was the israelis who weren't peaceful. sorry if we're all starting to see a pattern.
edit: yes, 29 militants out of 189 killed and 130000 wounded. even at the most sympathetic take, Israelis come out looking like a bunch of sociopaths.
29 killed militants in peaceful march of return ? you seems to be contradicting yourself.
you also seems to skipped the beginning of article. for example, day 1 of peaceful march of return:
Hundreds of young Palestinians, however, ignored warnings by the organizers and the Israeli military to avoid the border zone.[74] Some began throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, to which Israel responded by declaring the Gaza border zone a closed military zone and opening fire at them.[55] The events of the day were some of the most violent in recent years.[75] In one incident, two Palestinian gunmen approached the fence, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, and exchanged fire with IDF soldiers. They were killed and their bodies were recovered by the IDF.
you need to improve your vibe quoting. article talks about 13,000 wounded, not 130,000. iirc, been impacted by tear gas is also "wounded".
but back to the point.
- do you still claim that it was "peaceful march of return" ?
- where do you think the "return" part of the march were leading and what would have happened there ? (just in case, in UN report on Oct 7 documented that in most of places civilians followed armed members of hamas/pij/pflp/etc and engaged in looting, killing (famously thai workers that their heads were chopped off by unarmed civilians with help of hoe) and kidnapping (later sold to hamas/etc)
As you can see it does not include "impacted by tear gas", but a thousand palestinians were harmed by having tear gas canisters shot at them. More than six thousand were maimed by gun fire, and as the numbers show, it was deliberate policy to harm rather than kill.
In comparison, as a measure of the supposed militancy from the palestinians, five israelis were injured and none were killed.
Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their land and homes. That's what the march was about.
so they tried to breach border en masse, while having armed people among them and got shot only in knees ? sounds like a good outcome for them.
israeli citizens didn't have such a good outcome at oct 7 when great march of return succeeded to breach border.
and you seems to be angry that they were harmed and not killed. i am confused here.
now, you surely know that between 1945 and 1950 about 12m to 14.6m ethnic germans were ethnically cleansed (500k to 2.5m dead in process) from eastern europe and some land annexed.
do you support their right to march back and reclaim their land and homes ?
> and got shot only in knees ? sounds like a good outcome for them.
please go on
> do you support their right to march back and reclaim their land and homes ?
considering that they were kicked out by violence in 1948,
likud terrorists mass killed entire villages of Palestinians in order to force the rest to flee.
Israelis then forced them to live in an apartheid state
I certainly do support their right of return. Israel has committed multiple oct 7 level atrocities against Palestinians over the last few decades while sweeping them under the rug.
edit: are the descendants of those germans being systematically oppressed with no rights and living under military occupation? if not, whats stopping them from returning currently?
I.e. the allies forcing germans in the east to go west and leave the nazi colonial project behind. It was arguably atrocious. It is also irrelevant since the territories involved reside within the EU and there is nothing in the way for these people or their descendants relocating back to Poland or whatever.
Which I suspect will be quite popular in the future, given that Poland's economy is doing rather well and Germany's is likely to not do rather well.
not colonial project, but 12m ethnic germans that lived in german territories that were annexed or in other areas in europe (because they lived there for centuries).
>>>
During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Reichsdeutsche (German citizens) and Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans living outside the Nazi state) fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg (Neumark) and Pomerania (Farther Pomerania), which were annexed by Provisional Government of National Unity of Poland and by the Soviet Union.
<<<<
will you support them marching back to reclaim their lands and homes, while been peacefully armed (like palestinians) with molotov cocktails, ak47 and grenades ? do you support their right of return ?
"right of return" is not about freedom of movement. it's about regaining possession over land, houses and other properties. something that current poland government is very against.
so, do you support right of return for 12m of germans and there descendants, restoration of their property rights and dismantling of colonial polish state on occupied lands ?
They held peaceful demonstrations by the border and got systematically mutilated for it. This is evidence that peaceful struggle is not an option when it comes to ending israeli crimes.
What's your skin in this game? Why are you defending a deeply criminal state?
Hundreds of young Palestinians, however, ignored warnings by the organizers and the Israeli military to avoid the border zone.[74] Some began throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, to which Israel responded by declaring the Gaza border zone a closed military zone and opening fire at them.[55] The events of the day were some of the most violent in recent years.[75] In one incident, two Palestinian gunmen approached the fence, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, and exchanged fire with IDF soldiers. They were killed and their bodies were recovered by the IDF.
Yes, that is quite peaceful given the circumstances and that thirty thousand people participated. The IDF should have retreated and the israeli government have ended the occupations and started dismantling its colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, then entered negotiations about return and reparations.
well, in this case, idf reaction was quite peaceful given the circumstances and that thirty thousand people participated and tried to overrun the border while been armed
That you can write this, with a complete lack of awareness of how people who aren't brainwashed by zionist propaganda perceive what you're saying, is mind blowing honestly.
I don't see why the result of a Hamas surrender wouldn't be a new organization with the same goals and methods. A surrender by itself is just a formality. But what is the real plan here? What would realistically come after that and how scary/brutal would it be?
Realistically, I think the plan is just reoccupation of Gaza. The military presence would make it harder for Hamas-like organizations to organize and assemble rockets etc. It might be something like pre-2005 Gaza.
So who will be in power? You've got to remember that Hamas was democratically elected back in 2006, and its main rival Fatah isn't exactly pro-Israel either. Given the circumstances, I don't think there could possibly be a democratically elected government in Gaza which is pro-Israel or even neutral-Israel. Your only option is a puppet dictatorship government installed by Israel - but that's not really going to improve the situation, is it?
Besides, you've got to remember that a country is more than its government. What's going to stop its citizens from independently creating their own underground Hamas 2.0 terror group? What's going to stop the kids currently growing up and seeing their parents die due to Israeli actions from wanting revenge?
The situation is too far gone. Either Israel is going to learn how to live with the possibility of an attack (which is going to decrease over time as generations grow up who don't inherently hate Israel with every bone in their body for what it has done to them), or Israel is going to have to kill every single person in Gaza to make sure there's nobody left who could hate them. They should probably continue with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt - because they all could attack Israel, after all...
France still has to live with the risk of Germany invading. It's fairly unlikely by now, but that risk exists. Germany has invaded multiple times in the not-too-distant past and done some pretty atrocious things while there. Germany still has a pretty large military, and I would be quite surprised if they didn't have some kind of invasion plan lying around in a drawer somewhere. Yet somehow, I don't think the average French citizen in 2025 loses any sleep over it. If they can live with the risk, why does Israel require absolutes?
> , I don't think the average French citizen in 2025 loses any sleep over it. If they can live with the risk, why does Israel require absolutes?
No, we do not lose sleep about that. We have also been at war with England, Italy and Spain a lot. Especially England. We keep a close eye on them still that the Hastings battle is not forgotten.
But on the serious side, these concerns are so remote compared with the situation in Israel and Palestine. We do not have any territory claims with Germany. They have their land, we have ours. If you ask a random person in France about territoires we should get back, they would be really confused. The ones historically inclined would consider the 7th and 8th century and Charlemagne's lands.
I guess that this topic in the mind of Israelis and Palestinians is much, much more prevalent.
In fairness here, germany and france have been at peace for something like 80 years, most of that a fairly friendly peace. The people who remember a time when Germany was the enemy are basically dead by now. 80 years buys a lot of by-gones
Hell, maybe Germany and Israel make a good comparison here. The jews who lived in mandatory palestine during WW2 were certainly afraid of Germany (and rightfully so), but i don't think Israel loses much sleep over the modern state of Germany.
Yes, I totally agree. I wanted to make it clear that the analogy for France-Germany simply does not fly.
Our countries have been at war for two millennia (whatever "country" meant across the ages), like the rest of Europe. Then, after WWII, a tremendous effort was made to mend the relationship, and the really good idea was to involve the youth.
When I was a teenager in the 80s, those who had German as a foreign language (sometimes as the first foreign language, before English) had exchanges with peers in Germany (they were coming to us and living with us for a week, and then we were going to them). It was great.
30 years later, my son had the same exchange and I could look at the kids' behaviour more closely. They (the French and the Germans kids) decided to have a football match. I was sure that it would be a Germany vs France one. Not at all: they mixed up, with teams composed of pairs (local and foreign). It was a-ma-zing.
France no longer has to live with the risk of of a conventional invasion by Germany because France has nuclear weapons now and Germany does not. If a terrorist group was using German territory as a base to launch attacks against France and the German government refused to stop them then I'm pretty sure that France would retaliate kinetically, even if that meant some collateral damage. The USA did this in 2001 when Al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base; France even assisted with that war.
Geography also matters. Israel is tiny compared to France. Israel has zero strategic depth and population centers could be overrun in a matter of hours if defenses failed. This tends to push their strategic planning towards absolutism. And to be clear I'm not trying to justify Israeli actions, just pointing out the strategic calculus at work and the difficulty of negotiating an agreement acceptable to both sides.
Yes, but those nuclear weapons are only a deterrent against other nation states. They aren't effective against Palestinian terrorist organizations, so they don't factor into the question of whether Israel should be willing to accept some significant ongoing risk of terrorist attacks.
Hamas and Fatah are not comparable in their militancy (or, for that matter, their democratic legitimacy; that a plurality of Gazans are not old enough ever to have voted is not an accident on Hamas' part).
France no longer has to live with the risk of an invasion by Germany *because* the Allies stopped the cycle of violence by deciding to reconstruct Germany rather than erase her off the map.
That’s the reason why.
As abundantly mentioned already, the Palestinian survivors will remember and have their revenge someday.
…unless the plan is: “there will be no survivors”.
Have you noticed how shocking the above “plan” is? Events seem to closely align with it. A literal final solution. Equally shocking is how little people care about actual genocide, and - consequently - how normalized this is in practice.
The international community lets Israel get away with far too much.
We don’t know this. There are several wealthy nations that have produced many terrorists and several poor nations that have produced none. The most famous terrorist in history was a wealthy man from a wealthy nation.
>what will ever give Israel confidence that Oct 7 will never happen again
Why are you asking "what will give the genocidal state confidence", and not bothering for a single second about what will give the hundred of thousands of permanently traumatised, hurt and dead Palestinians confidence that their genocidal neighbours will not do it again ?
>still in Gaza with no options to leave and resent Israel who they will consider to be effectively their jailer.
Which, yes, is the reason for October 7. Seems like oppressing a people (that already doesn't particularly like you for various reasons) has consequences. Unfortunately, these consequences land on civilians. Breeding the conditions for Hamas (and soon enough Hamas 2 provided the Gazan population isn't dead from famine within the next few months)
> I don't like to think that the result of Oct 7 is a more open Gaza but I don't really know what other options Israel has.
Why do you not enjoy the idea of giving a group independence and ownership over the land that has been theirs for centuries ?
>Hamas obviously started this but Israel won the war a long time ago.
Opening history books would tend to show that it started over 70 years ago with the forced resettlement of Palestinians already living within the protectorate (land already stolen from them), the colonization of Gaza, Golan heights, the nakba and the repeated offensives on Gaza and Cisjordania as well as the assassinations of multiple political leaders (both Palestinian and Israeli), but I guess the Israeli propaganda that Oct 7 started it all has taken root.
>The world deserves an end.
Your feelings about seeing this ongoing conflict doesn't really matter. Palestinians deserve an end to this suffering. The Israelis not supporting the ongoing genocide deserve an end to the conflict. The world has nothing to do with this.
>The longer it goes on the more Hamas will actually have achieved some kind of lasting positive image of Gaza which is rooted in their actions on Oct 7th and that would be an incredibly bad outcome for all.
You do realize that Hamas is getting a positive image despite being literal terrorists embezzling money and food from the Gaza population and establishing a dictatorship because the "only democracy in the middle east" is committing a genocide, right ? Genocide supported by the vast majority of the Israeli government, as well as the Knesset ?
This situation ends in two ways: either the Palestinians disappear, or Israel disappears. With their recent actions, they've ensured that a two state solution is impossible. Of course, the likelihood of Israel being destroyed is almost nil, so the only way this happens is a single state where both arabs and jews live equally and freely (and most likely under HEAVY international peacekeeping missions), but the ethnostate proponents are slightly iffy about this proposition.
> This situation ends in two ways: either the Palestinians disappear, or Israel disappears.
See this is the problem, that kind of thought is why Israel is comfortable allowing the people of Gaza to suffer indefinitely. Hamas and the people of Gaza have zero power in this situation. They can either bend over backwards and appease Israel to try to regain some trust and maybe at some point Israel will slowly loosen restrictions over them. Or Hamas and the people of Gaza can be defiant, say there is no room for both countries and then the obvious choice is for Israel to persecute them indefinitely because what else are they going to do? They are winning and they have that option right now.
Look I am not saying Israel has not done things here that appear from my perspective to be too much but Hamas brought this on Gaza. They murdered innocent people in their homes in a disgusting sneak attack and for that they have brought suffering on their people.
Bend over backwards to a country that tortured them and is committing a genocide against them? Would you have asked the Jews to bend over backwards to Nazi Germany to appease them?
You're not interested in discussing in good faith, pretending that this is only because of October 7. Hope you sleep soundly while tens of thousands of children die at the hand of a genocidal state.
Not the original commentor, but outrage aside, what choices are there? Sometimes a problem isn't solved despite a solution existing. But in this case it's not clear to me that any real "solution" exists?
For Palestine: Either defiant resistance until extermination (or victory whatever it means) or bowing to a group one hates with every fiber of your being? No? Other alternatives? Alternatives they would be willing to accept? How do you even get concensus on such charged matters?
A lot of Palestinians are non-negotiable about wanting all Israelis gone from the region. And a lot of Israeli's may be willing to accept terrible solutions - terrible for the Palestinians. Some say genocide. But how do you choose between genocide or tolerating ongoing attacks?
Other solutions: Outside intervention.
Outside world intervenes, but how and at what cost?
And for how long, and will it really be effective? And effective for which side? Is there a way to intervene without tipping the balance in favour of one side over the other? How to intervene in the most fair way to all sides? And is the cost and risk even worth it - unlikely?
I don't see how.
I don't see any solutions.
I have not heard of any viable solutions acceptable to majorities of populations on both sides, or even acceptable to most impartial outsiders.
Problem is not solved, because it is unsolvable. So it will end badly? Or continue as is for decades more.
I pasted this into Gemini trying to find solutions, the best I can come up with is a two state solution, involving land swaps to clear up the border, and then an international peace keeping force seperating them.
Exploring this solution reveals problems on both sides with proposed land swaps, suggesting basically that outsiders will have to ram a compromise solution down the throats of both sides - which to me sounds rather terrible.
> Would you have asked the Jews to bend over backwards to Nazi Germany to appease them?
The holocaust did not happen because Jews were sneaking into Berlin and murdering innocent people in their homes. When the current conflict begins in that way then the group who started it needs to beg for forgiveness, especially when that is their only card. Hamas is no match for Israel militarily and have no cards to play here. Their only options is to continue to make their people suffer and hope that somehow that leads to outside powers interjecting and changing their situation for the better. The best way to resolve this is to beg for forgiveness and internally remove Hamas from power. Hamas is the problem here, I'd like to think the average citizen of Gaza could find a way to live in peace with Israel if given the choice.
you speak as if the bad part of the holocaust was the excuse, rather than the ethnic cleansing and genocide
by this logic, if only the nazis had provided an excuse acceptable to germans, like israel has provided one acceptable to israelis, the ethnic cleansing and genocide would have been ok
oh wait, they did, and it was the same excuses: 'the preservation of our ethnicity is more important than them'; 'they’re subhuman'; 'we must wipe them out for the good of our society'; etc; etc
>the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed
Israeli soldiers, politicians, and many civilians are portraying themselves this way. Soldiers post videos sniping a child in the head calling it a "legendary video", politicians say Palestinians should starve, civilians block aid trucks.
Do you resent the way they are portrayed or do you mean you resent what a lot of Israelis are doing?
I often don't endorse the behavior of Israeli settlers. I'm responding to the question of what Israelis think about the news in general, a question to which I wanted to contribute the context of Israel's precarious existential security as a sovereign Jewish state.
It's the "Jewish" in Jewish state that lies at the root of the conflict, isn't it? There aren't many options to maintain a dominant ethnic identity in a democracy when the land the nation was founded on was already inhabited by people who don't share in that identity. The only option is to either cede that ethnic identity or to engage in mass displacement and disenfranchisement.
It's exceedingly subtle the way ethno-nationalism gets smuggled into the phrase "as a sovereign Jewish state," but it is no less terrible and ugly than the ethno-nationalism in other parts of the world and eras in history.
There are currently about 40 countries that have a higher Muslim percentage than Israel's Jewish percentage. Many of them much higher. Many of them kicked out all their Jews in recent history.
Just as a confirmation, how many of those muslim countries are actively in the process of murdering, starving, dehumanising and destroying every single building the jews living in an open air prison ?
Cool, but none of them were parked in an open air prison and starved. And even if they were, whataboutism doesn't give Israelis the right to commit genocide.
Conflating the Jews with Israel as a whole also makes every single Jew in the world worse off and in danger. I would not advise vomiting out Bibi's propaganda unless you want to see how terrible the consequences can really get
When Hitler asked the King of Moroco to hand over all the jews living there , the King replied that there wrre only Morocans living in Moroco, and he wasn't handing any of them over.
Also many muslims voluntered and fought the Nazi's from all over the world, as indivuals and as soldiers in colonial army's.
As to jews bieng kicked out, no thats not true, and to this day there is an ongoing effort to get jews to emigrate out of the US or wherever in an attempt to bolster the demographics of there ethnostate......which is currently facing the largest out migration,ever.....
My argument is that people seem to get very worked up when the Jews do something, but basically nobody cares about other similar or even worse things done by other people. I suspect this is most likely because of antisemitism (not that every anti-Israel person is an antisemite, but that the movement would not have become so prominent without a large core of dedicated antisemites).
people in the west are getting "worked up" about it because our governments and our tax dollars are financing and facilitating these crimes! my government is not financing whatever iran is doing. i dont have any theoretical power over that. but my government, which is supposed to represent me, is a major actor in israel's crimes and i want my government to stop doing it
Edit: To elaborate, because there was another comment comparing this to Assad in Syria:
I think the difference is that Assad already belonged to the "enemy" is of the West (rightly so) and was immediately hit with sanctions.
What is special about Israel is that the government and, as it seems, large parts of the population, are displaying the same mentality - but unlike with Assad, no one is putting on the brakes here or threatening sanctions. On the contrary, our governments are protecting and enabling Israel in its behavior.
I think the aggression specifically towards Israel stems from the feeling of being on the wrong side this time.
It doesn't have to be antisemitism, but just a regular double standard.
Israel is modern invention by educated people who themselves have a long history of displacement and oppression. The bottom line is people expect them to "do better" compared to Syria, Myanmar, or China for that matter.
In that sense you could say it's actually racism towards all those other countries because the world just expects them to be violent, genocidal, and uncivilized anyway.
Check your facts, most of those Jews left due to a) Israeli terrorism (bombing synagogues), b) Israeli policies (Magic Carpet), c) Israel-endorsed or Israel-caused racism that obviously wasn't there before because those populations were living there (including Palestine) peacefully for centuries.
Jews were kicked out of all the Arab nations they lived in, were persecuted in Europe, and you think that they shouldn’t get a sovereign country for themselves? Should the Kurds get one? Tibetans? Catalonias? Scottish?
No one is entitled to displace people from their homes or deny people equal rights on the basis of their race, religion, or ethnicity for any reason. There is no exception for people seeking refuge from oppression.
Jews have and had the right to seek refuge from oppression. No one has the right to perpetuate oppression.
And no, I don't believe ethnonationalism is a panacea for anyone. The world would not be a better place if we could only subdivide into a multitude of homogenous little nations. I am grateful for the cultural diversity of my country. Countries like Japan that strive to protect their racial homogeneity will pay a steep cost.
There are two lines of logic that disrupt this reasoning. One is israel as an independent state hasn’t existed for thousands of years. The other is Jews do have refuge and safe harbors in the form of western countries. Plenty of Jews living quite comfortably with no threat of war protected by the largest military on the planet in west LA.
So really these people have no reason to be elevated among similarly displaced people who did have a sovereign nation within much more recent timelines, and they aren’t without safe harbor or communities in safer nations that guarantee their rights.
So if the state of Israel does not exist for the safety of Jewish people as logic has plainly laid out, why does it exist? Easy. Military foothold. This is a modern day crusader state. A beachhead. An airbase. A missile platform. A hidden nuclear arsenal. A prolific defense industry with very little red tape binding it. These are the true foundations of Israel today. Everything else is a fig leaf poorly hiding this when you apply rational logic to the emotional justifications that people use. And everything Israel does makes perfect rational sense in light of its true purpose.
>and you think that they shouldn’t get a sovereign country for themselves?
That's a really easy question: no.
Plenty of people don't have sovereign countries for themselves. Some of them persecuted, some of them integrated by force into other countries. Countries are not owed. They simply are. Tibet is being wholly integrated and controlled by China. Catalonia is somewhat asking for it, native americans are being relegated as second class citizens, and aboriginals in Australia are being left to die. Romanis do not have a country based around their culture.
Jews should absolutely be protected, in whichever country they are. That does not make the world owe them a country. Countries are not owed, they just are. As it stands, Israel is, but as a result of what they have done, not because it was owed to them.
The Scottish have a nation called Scotland. It's not entirely sovereign - yet - but it's clearly heading in that direction, and it has already diverged significantly from England on many fundamental policies.
But even when it does become sovereign, I'm finding it hard to imagine that Scotland would annex Northumberland - which used to be Scotland in the distant past - and rape, murder, and starve the English people living there.
There is no excuse for the kind of barbarisms that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. Not ethnonationalism, not history, not the holocaust, not October 7.
And from an obvious common sense point of view, living in an embattled fortress territory is an eccentric definition of "safe."
It's an outbreak of collective psychopathy and deserves to be labelled as such. The people in charge are basically insane. Extremist ethnonationalism always is, whatever the nationality or background.
The Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, or Scottish don't need to ethnically cleanse the land to get their own nation. That's the difference. This is not hard to understand. Most people do not object to the concept of a Jewish state, they object to the ethnic cleansing.
So where can a Jewish state be established without removing the local population?
And regarding some history on the establishment of Israel, after the UN partition resolution the Arabs started a civil war, where Arabs fled from Jewish territories, and Jews fled from Arab territories (Bethlehem and Hebron for example). So you could say that 2 ethno states were established.
lawlessone says: "...since most of them were killed.
Not sure how the colonization of America justifies other colonization's.
Unless you think everyone is owed a 1 free genocide pass?"
Most of them died from disease. Far more of them died from disease than died from say, hand to hand combat or warfare on the plains.
The American Indians were toast as soon as the first coughing European stepped ashore. The native Americans had no immunity to the stew of diseases that had been brewing in Europe and Asia for centuries, so the Indians simply died. Once an Indian had a disease (s)he could spread it to other indians (s)he met. The flame front of infection raged ahead of the white man across the continent. The "mountain men" encountered regions where entire societies were struck down: bodies everywhere, tools, lodging, structures left intact but virtually no one was around (and many the infected likely fled to more remote lands, worsening the spread).
One estimate is that 61 million people lived in the Americas prior to European contact. Between 1492 and 1600 about 50 million native Americans died of disease.
"Killed?" Yes but rarely intentionally. "Genocide?" No.
You're skipping over the whole "manifest destiny" bit, where the remaining natives were systematically hunted down and destroyed. Trail of Tears ring any bells?
And note this was perpetrated by The United States, not the "American colonists". This was happening in the 1800s, a good 300 years after the initial disease front came through.
If the United States had respected the native populations the American West would look very different today. Compare with current Central and South America for example (which were certainly still victims of both disease and genocide, but it was less thorough due to differences in colonizers and geography).
What are you talking about? the original commenter rejected the idea of a Jewish state because ethno states are bad. I made a counter claim.
I’d be happy to live next to a Palestinian country, if it will recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and be a peaceful neighbor. Unfortunately, they reject the idea of 2 states, or they want 2 states where 1 is Palestinian, and the other is paletwith a Jewish minority.
Are you talking about native Americans? Germans that used to live in Poland? Jews that used to live in Syria? Israelis that lived in Sinai before it was returned to Egypt? Mexicans that lived Texas? Australian aboriginals? Inuits in Canada? How about the one million afghans Iran just expelled?
If you’re not happy, that’s on you. Time moves on, you need to accept the existence of the Israeli state.
> If you’re not happy, that’s on you. Time moves on, you need to accept the existence of the Israeli state.
Fair enough, but what happens when the US (inevitably) decide that they're not going to support Israel anymore. Bibi has basically turned support of Israel into a culture war argument, and without consistent US support, I'm not sure Israel will survive in it's current form.
Mind you, climate change could make the whole Middle East uninhabitable before then, so it's possible that the Israeli state will last until then.
And lets be clear, I don't think most people have an issue with the existence of an Israeli state, but what's been happening in Judea and Samaria for the past twenty or so years and Gaza currently is deeply, deeply wrong and reminds me of my favourite phrase, "the only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns from history". One would think that the Jewish people would have learned better lessons from their persecution, but apparently they learnt different lessons than I expected.
Well, Israel successfully won several wars without the US support in its early years. And right now the Israeli weapons manufacturers are booming, look at deals with the romania and Germany.
Its great that most people don’t have problem with our existence, but our neighbors do. That’s why we have wars.
And comparing it to the holocaust is quite different, in the entire Jewish history we never seeked to destroy anyone, we were always targeted because of antisemitism. The Palestinians? They are taught in schools that we are the devil.
Mmmm, maybe you should read the Bible? Lots of violence committed by the Israelis there.
> comparing it to the holocaust is quite different
Sorry, it's mostly the same (and incredibly similar to Irish history between Catholics and Protestants). Both sides dehumanise each other, and that leads to violence and suffering. How often does Israeli media cover the bombing of Gaza? Like, a lot of the footage didn't appear on most Western media until 12months + into the conflict.
One could also make the argument that what's happening in the West bank/Gaza is basically ghettoization, which was something that happened to the Jews a lot in Western Europe. It's profoundly depressing that all the Jewish people have learned is to inflict this kind of suffering on other people.
And the current plans to basically force all of the Gazans out is again, incredibly similar to historical pogroms and treatment meted out to the Jewish people.
No, because of their own behaviour. Israel might well lose the support of the USA and Europe, and if that happened the continued existence of their state would be far from certain.
I think the USA is unlikely to shift for as long as it's one single democratic nation, owing to internal political demographics. Same reasons it hasn't shifted on Cuba. But the USA keeps surprising me by failing to implode despite what all the politicians have been saying about each other, and by the anti-government language often used to justify gun ownership, so if I was in a position to influence Israel, I would be suggesting a diversification of international support.
I suspect most Israelis think differently. Even if "the arabs in the region are bad at fighting" they still outnumber the Israeli population by something like 20 to 40 times, depending on how you count. About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective.
EDIT: There are a couple of axes that helped me get a broader perspective:
1. Whether one supports Israel's continued existence
2. Whether one believes Israel's continued existence is guaranteed
Having started about midway between yes and no on 1, and at yes on 2, it was extremely enlightening to reinterpret my observations from the point of view of yes on 1 and no on 2. All Israeli behaviour that I had previously found incomprehensible finally made sense.
> About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective.
During a surprise attack.
The conflict that was started by Oct 7, according to Wikipedia, has seen 81,526+ dead on the Palestinian and associated side*, vs. 2,053 on the Israeli side.
That said, from the point of view of your edit: the ratio is irrelevant when someone's convinced they're facing an existential threat. Given Oct 7 was proportionally worse for Israel than 9/11 was for the USA, and the USA didn't seem to stop justifying everything through that lens for about a decade afterwards… it's going to suck for everyone that Israel thinks is so much as looking at them funny. (That isn't a joke even if it sounds like one: the people who see Israel as their home and their safe-space are collectively likely to be hyper-vigilant, to their own cost, in this kind of way, for a long time).
* With the footnote that '"Indirect" deaths may be multiple times higher' and 'In addition to direct deaths, armed conflicts result in indirect deaths "attributable to the conflict". Mortality due to indirect deaths could be due to a variety of causes, such as infectious diseases.[27] Indirect deaths range from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths in recent conflicts.[28] In Gaza, estimated 51,000 natural deaths, natural death rate has gone up from 3.5/1000 to 22/1000 (late June 2024)[29]'
Yes indeed, I'm talking about the surprise attack phase. (Israel has experienced a surprise attack before that has put its continued existence in question: the Yom Kippur war.) And in fact, looking at
In any case, Israel is surrounded by a hostile population of hundreds of millions (yes, still hostile despite the cold peace treaty it has with Egypt and the lukewarm one it has with Jordan), and it itself numbers about 10 million. So it is outnumbered by double figures to one.
I certainly don't see Israel's continued existence as guaranteed despite "nukes" and despite "American support" and despite having the "nth most powerful army in the world". And that point of view has helped me to understand the conflict like no other explanation.
Hamas was a direct reaction to sharon removing settlers and occupations from the ghaza strip. Hamas os the ultimate answer of trading land for peace. Hamas also has in its charta that they do not want a 2 state solution and they must murder all the jews.
> there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years
How can the same country that prides itself in their intel/spying prowess, and has demonstrated sophisticated capabilities and attacks, claim it will be helpless if they don't absolutely disappear another group of people and take their territory?
I seriously doubt the Oct 7 attack caught Israel by surprise, given the scale of it and the level of compromise Israel had on Hamas. Given the disproportionate response Israel was prepared to employ, it was a perfect casus belli to appropriate even more land, as it is happening right now.
Agreed - the apathy and simultaneous granting of an individual's power to e.g. the state or the movement + abandonment of agency is the literal killer here.
Maybe not locking people up in the world's largest open-air prison for an entire generation and constantly kicking their teeth in would help. Just a thought.
"Give me liberty or give me death" as you say in America, I believe. Or does that only apply to the white man?
Oct 7 happened as a result of the Israeli occupation. If there’s occupation, there will be resistance.
Instead Israel could become a democratic state with equal rights for all citizens.
Which context has been stripped from the narrative in your opinion? Maybe you’ll say Israel is the original Jewish homeland and therefore the occupation is justified?
> Maybe you’ll say Israel is the original Jewish homeland and therefore the occupation is justified?
Being raised evangelical, I was taught the land belonged to the Jews since God judged the original inhabitants, and was given to them forever. Those who taught me see modern Israel as righting ancient wrongs and Palestine as occupying Jewish land. They've even visited the West Bank through a food effort with a Christian missionary.
Having left the church, it's much clearer to me that Arabs and Jews have both lived there for thousands of years. Both have a right to exist and the capacity to live peacefully together. Sadly those with guns, reductive beliefs, or (sometimes understandable) grudges just won't stop. I'm ashamed the US is supporting these cycles of violence, especially evangelical Christianity.
> Having left the church, it's much clearer to me that Arabs and Jews have both lived there for thousands of years
Yes, and there was a lot of mixing and slow but gradual conversion to the dominant socio-cultural muslim group that happened over more than a millenium. After the muslim conquest of Levant in about 630 AD, caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem some time later during his reign. We do not have data on how many jews decided to return there, rather than keep living in civilizational centres across the region and in Europe.
What we do know is that the jewish population of Palestine at the time that the British government initiated the process of handing over Palestine to jews in return for Lord Rothschild's money that they needed to keep fighting WW1 [2], was only about 7%. Subsequent immigration of mostly European jews into Palestine, resulted in about 30% jewish population by the time Western powers decided to declare an independent Jewish-dominated state of Israel on top of Palestine in 1947.
> Both have a right to exist and the capacity to live peacefully together
Brutal occupation has no right to exist. The supremacist state has to go. Apartheid South Africa had to go, and now South Africa is a better country. Nazi Germany had to go, and now Germany is a better country. Imperial colonial Japan had to go, and now both itself and its former colonized territories are better countries. Supremacist ethno-nationalist Israel that occupies natives of the land it was established upon with despicable brutality has to go. In the resulting state that comes after it, yes, people of any religion and ethnicity need to be able to live together in peace. After reparations have been made, the right of return has been honored, most of the stolen land has been given back, and apartheid has been dismantled.
Do you mean the land reform so that the minority white descendants of colonists don't still control 90% of the land even 30 years after the apartheid was officially ended?
If not, can you share links to proof that there is something more serious going on, that would deserve to be called genocide against the white population?
I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that, though I admit I'm not up-to-date on Israeli affairs. Don't the overwhelming majority of outsiders want a two-state solution, or failing that a more secular Israeli administration?
Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace. We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government, and there are simple ways to fix it if the willpower exists.
> I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that
i live in Canada, literally half a world away. Every street light pole seems to have some sort of "Ceasefire now" sticker on it. I also see similar sentiment in online threads on the topic. I think there is a significant group of people who want Israel to commit to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
> We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government
When people talk about this topic, they are usually referring to the conflict with Palestine.
People are arguing for an unconditional ceasefire because innocent people and children are literally starving to death.
Many of the people arguing for ceasefire probably wouldn’t be so animated about it if that wasn’t the case, i.e. if Israel was conducting a legal war with targeted strikes. That isn’t the case.
I don’t think it’s okay for a bunch of humans to be rallied in the middle of a desert like that. Forget the fact that they are shooting into the crowd, we’ll talk about that later. Let’s just start with not creating a ghetto in the desert and calling it a humanitarian effort.
I have not even seen movie scenes like that, maybe the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan where the Americans were trying to hide on the beach.
You're responing to me as if my comment disagreed, but i didn't say anything about the "why", just that their exists people who advocate for an unconditional ceasefire. Which i'm sure you'd agree with.
because an end to the ethnic cleansing is more important than waiting for surrender, if that's even possible given hamas' disrupted command structure and israel's constant creation of new terrorists
a ceasefire provides room for diplomacy that might lead to concessions from both sides for their atrocities, and thus might lead to peace and equality
we have seen in the west bank what surrender without a ceasefire or sustainable peace looks like, and it is very bad (see this article for an example)
> a ceasefire provides room for diplomacy that might lead to concessions from both sides for their atrocities, and thus might lead to peace and equality
We've had something like 100 years of failed diplomacy at this point. I don't know the solution to this conflict, but i can understand why both sides suspect further diplomacy won't lead anywhere unless something fundamental changes.
> Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace.
The subtext to this conflict is that every avenue leading towards a lasting peace also opens the Netanyahu regime to prosecution.
Israel isn't an ex-Soviet satellite with a dictator propped up by a cold war giant, but their actions become predictable if you think of the state as Netanyahustan.
Yeah, basically the only reason they didn't keep the ceasefire is because Netanyahu would have been pushed out of power (and could therefore be tried for corruption more effectively).
But ultimately, the current government is what a (small) majority of Israelis want, which is the most depressing part of this entire conflict.
IDF service is mandatory and there appears to be no resistance to this, which supports the point above.
But reading between the lines there are not many plausible end states. Its a choice between a return to a status quo where Israel has defended borders. Or a removal of Palestinians from the territory. I think most people in the international community would prefer the former even when they don't come out and say it. And that may reasonably be safer and better for Israeli civilians.
> I see the key problem as people removing context
this is also the main problem with your post; your context goes back to Oct 7, whereas it should go back to 1948 (or earlier).
You cannot drive people from their land into a barren reservation, oppress them for decades, and expect them to not resist or fight back. It's the same colonization tactics that were used on the Native Americans, who launched their Intifadas and occasionally also committed the type of horrible atrocities as Hamas did on Oct 7. You can't justify Oct 7, but the reality is human nature is such that unless you remove the conditions which caused Oct 7 in the first place -- then it will repeat, maybe not Hamas, maybe not in this generation, but the next generation, as we've already seen.
The Israeli government is trying to "solve" the Palestinian problem the same way that the US government "solved" the Native American problem -- kill enough of them, make deals and then break them (this is the Israeli settler problem), and move them far enough away from their original lands, for long enough, that you finally and completely break their spirit and ability to resist. And if that means bombing and starving tens of thousands of women and children, so be it. And the Israeli God-given "right" to the Palestinian land, because it's the "holy land" from 2000 years ago, is very much like the God-given "manifest destiny" that US colonizers invoked to "settle" the West. It was genocide then and it's genocide now.
Yup - granting power to the state -- from a democratic citizen to the state -- is risky and here it permits a corrupt anti-life (e.g. genocide) state to operate unchallenged.
As it was with the USA, this is a foundational tragedy of Israel.
The innate xenophobic "kill the THEM!" human quality appears to be alive and well, across the world today.
settler attacks against West Bank Palestinians were not caused by Hamas, but by the settlers religious belief that the land is promised to them. That is a key part of the context as well. And in that vein, what options to Palestinians have to defend against violent settlers and displacement?
I am very much of the opinion that Hamas should not be allowed to continued to exist for Israel's benefit and for Palestine's, but there is a lot of space in between "just stop fighting" and "genocide", and Israel is way closer to one side of that than I would prefer.
Aside from a vocal minority, the impression I get around from conversations with and reading other Australians is that the Australian people largely agree with your position.
It's possible to be critical of both Hamas and Israel, while recognizing that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is evil and a war crime.
Just war principles are important to observe.
The Nazis were a thuggish and murderous regime with plenty of complicity from the German populace, but the firebombing of Dresden was evil, as were the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Targeting civilians is evil.
If we accept that these are evil, and we ought to, then we must accept that what Israel is doing is unacceptable. Bibi should be punished.
You can target Hamas, and you should, but just war does not allow for the means Israel has used.
Isn’t the greater context that most of these people (Palestinians) had their ancestral homes stolen by “settlers”? I would vote for a pretty extreme government if someone came and stole my house.
Also, the situation on the ground seems pretty clear cut. You can literally watch videos of brutal war crimes committed by Israel on Reddit. Everyone has direct proof.
Can you be more specific why you think so? I don't think what the commenter you are responding to said would meet the definition of collective punishment under international law.
Israel is directly causing a mass starvation event in Gaza. Innocent children and women are dying every single day, and if nothing is done soon, scores more will in the near future.
The commenter’s position is that the situation in Gaza is justifiable because Israel had to take action against Hamas.
This is textbook collective punishment: causing suffering to a massive number of people due to the actions of a minority.
> Israel is directly causing a mass starvation event in Gaza. Innocent children and women are dying every single day, and if nothing is done soon, scores more will in the near future.
Asuming all that is true, the person you are responding to never said they supported the policies that lead to that or that state of affairs.
It is possible to imagine that someone could both believe that Israel's continued military operation is neccessary and that changes could be made to relieve the humanitarian situation. I dont know if the person you are responding to actually believes that, but based on their comments there is no reason to think they dont.
Edit:
I would also add that the war crime of collective punishment has a specific intent requirement. The perpetrator has to specificly intend to punish the group for an act. Even if the person you were responding to supported all the things you mentioned, unless they supported it as a punishment for oct 7, instead of out of a belief (for example) that it would allow Israel to defeat hamas, then it would not be collective punishment. It would be other war crimes but not collective punishment. See https://opiniojuris.org/2023/10/24/a-short-history-of-the-wa... for a summary of what collective punishment is.
P.s. not so fun fact, the ICC lacks juridsiction over collective punishment, and given they are the main legal body investigating this conflict, we probably arent going to see any investigations into collective punishment
When you speak to someone from MAGA, can’t you tell when they are being amicable but still obviously support all the crazy MAGA stuff? They call this a dark trait that sociopaths have, an unusual propensity to use amicability and charm to appear perceptively reasonable. Good examples of this are Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan, where often they just seem like well meaning balanced people. It’s manipulative behavior. If you want to see a masterclass on it, check out Steve Bannon’s podcast.
So, while there are people that can present an allegedly reasonable take, the reality is that it’s just a polite smile in front of underlying beliefs and emotions. People in tech should be well acquainted with this type of abuse because we see it all the time in leadership and general corporate nonsense.
Having a back and forth conversation over time is truly violating to one’s self with such people. It’s almost like they think you are stupid. I think given the state of affairs, it’s fine to be more obtuse and blunt with such people so as to draw a red line where they are not allowed to run their manipulation. Genocide is a pretty clear red line.
In short, don’t worry about being so polite. Genocide apologists are running game with the mental gymnastics.
When you start to dehumanize the other - believe everything they say is just a front for their true evil beliefs, regardless of if you have any evidence of that or especially if your evidence is race, religion or national origin of the speaker - That is the road to facism, and something I disagree with in the strongest possible sense.
I'm having a hard time being nice. What are people supposed to think? We're supposed to walk away from stuff like that and go "yeah there's two sides to this, we should reserve judgement"? There's no two sides to this. Israel over-corrected after Oct 7, the same way America did after 9/11. They destroyed a city, and then funneled it's citizens into a ghetto in the south. Those. Are. The. Facts. I just provided you the definition of ethnic cleansing.
Also, labeling a human as manipulative is not de-humanizing. Manipulation is a property of a human. It's just a matter of how egregious it is, but you won't escape it. Five year olds will manipulate. You've done it, I've done it. Me and you are doing it right now, but we try to do it in good faith and limit it to just persuasion in discussion. It's a spectrum. Some people are using the ability to justify a genocide.
There's a form of normalization that occurs with egregious manipulation (serious manipulation is abuse, so we normalize abuse). For example, it is becoming normalized to discuss two sides to a genocide.
There is the genocide on one side, and then the normalization of "well, what is a self-respecting nation that wants to defend itself supposed to do otherwise?". The whole construct is part of the manipulation. I'll give another example, Rogan normalizes a lot of heavy right-wing opinions around, well, normal discussion. It'll be embedded inside of a discussion about pop culture. This is a very very troubling form of it. It almost makes you think it's "normal" to entertain the absurd extremes. If you were to confront either of them about this normalization, they'd stay consistent and give you a normal response:
> yeah there's two sides to this, we should reserve judgement"?
Of course not, for starters there is significantly more than 2 sides of this multifaceted conflict.
You should not reserve judgemdnt. You should still listen and try and understand everyone's perspective before coming to your judgement, otherwise what is the point?
> There's no two sides to this. Israel over-corrected after Oct 7, the same way America did after 9/11
While 9/11 might be a good comparison for how a society can become radicalized after an attack, i dont think its a good comparison in general. The geopolitical situation is totally different. The scale of the attack is different. There was no hostages taken, no sexual violence, etc. They are very different situations. First and foremost because there was basically no possible way for al-qaeda to do a second attack, you can only really fly a plane into a tower once; after that pilots got reenforced cockpit doors. In comparison Hamas is right next door, and does potentially have the capability to do a second attack. That doesn't necessarily mean i think everything Israel does is justified, but self-defense claims should be evaluated in that context.
I think Israel has a reasonable argument for self defense here. That is not a blank cheque, there are limits to what self-defense allows, but it does seem pretty clear that some military action would be justified self defense here given the circumstances.
Vs say usa in iraq which was pretty preposterous as they didnt have anything to do with 9/11.
> I just provided you the definition of ethnic cleansing.
To nitpick here, ethnic cleansing isn't a war crime/crime against humanity. The crime is called "forced displacement". Ethnic cleansing started as a euphamism by war criminals who thought it sounded less bad, but it kind of stuck because it actually sounds worse. That said, i think its better to talk about forced displacement because that has an actual definition, is mentioned in the Geneva convention, etc
> Also, labeling a human as manipulative is not de-humanizing
It depends why you label then that. If you label based on people's words or actions, then of course it is not. If you label them as manipulative based on their membership in a group instead of the person's own actions, i would say it is dehumanizing.
> There is the genocide on one side, and then the normalization of "well, what is a self-respecting nation that wants to defend itself supposed to do otherwise?"
The people who say Israel is defending itself generally dispute the characterization of Israel's actions as a genocide. The vast majority believe (or at least claim to) that genocide is not acceptable in self-defense (im sure you can find some crazies who say otherwise of course).
Quite frankly, this isn't a totally crazy position, things are still a bit up in the air on this. The ICC when it charged israeli leaders with various crimes did not charge them with genocide. The ICJ hasn't ruled yet. Its not like there is a consensus among experts on this topic.
Playing this corny HN-brained faux-debate game when Israel is blocking hundreds of aid trucks from entering Gaza and letting children starve to death is in really bad taste.
It's not "faux". I mean it genuinely. It's one thing to claim that Israel should ensure food security (that's my point of view). It's quite another to claim "collective punishment", and that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
By the way, there are hundreds of trucks on the Gaza side of the border, the opposite of blocked, let through by Israel, but the UN refuses to collect them and distribute them: https://x.com/Ostrov_A/article/1950577195153580306
It's impressive how thoroughly Hamas has won the information war when they have made it so heart-wrenchingly emotive that presenting any alternative view point is "bad taste" (at best, it can also be much worse).
The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?
All these international crimes do have various requirements. Collective punishment in particular has more intent requirements than many other war crimes. Death and destruction in and of itself is not sufficient.
> The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?
Let's put Netanyahu in front of the ICC and let the lawyers figure it out.
Edit: That isn't tongue in cheek, I think it is one of the few ways to difuse the cauldron of violence that keeps brewing hotter and hotter. A broad international coalition to hold the leadership on both sides responsible for their war crimes.
The ICC lacks juridsiction over the war crime of collective punishment, so that would be an easy win for Netanyahu. To charge him with collective punishment either the united nations security council would have to create an ad-hoc tribunal, a domestic israeli court could charge him, or some other national court under the principle of universal juridsiction could bring charges. The ICC cannot.
More generally though I agree. I'm a big supporter of the ICC and generally believe it to be a fair court. I'd like to see those accused stand trial, present their defense, and let justice be done no matter which way it leads.
I'm still not sure what you mean. Are you saying that when children are unintentionally killed in war that is "punishment"? Were the children killed by NATO troops in Afghanistan "punished"? For that matter, do you think Oct 7 was Palestine "punishing" Israel?
> A blatant lie.
Interesting. How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?
Oops, I killed 17,000 kids, totally an accident, my bad, so I'm just gonna keep doing the same thing, but I said it was an accident so that's totally cool right?
You realize that's more than a order of magnitude more than the total number of people killed on October 7th? If October 7th was justification for this war, what Isreal has done in response justifies so much more. (To be clear, I don't believe in collective punishment so neither is justified.)
> How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?
I start by looking at the sources reputations, then look at the amount of context that they include that contradicts their implicit or explicit view point. From there the process gets more complicated if necessary.
In this case you have blog source that clearly elides relevant context against a news article that presents the position of both sides coming from one of the more trustworthy news organizations. I don't necessarily trust the AP to be unbiased or not spread propaganda but in comparison to that blog, it is pretty easy to guess which is more reliable.
There seem to be a few strands getting entangled here. If you look earlier in the thread you'll see I'm asking for justification of the claim of "collective punishment". So far I haven't seen any, and indeed I haven't seen any direct responses to that request at all.
An observer following the thread (and maybe this applies to you too) might think "But what I am seeing as so egregious, why does it matter if it's technically 'collective punishment' or not? That's just nitpicking, splitting hairs, and a really awful thing to engage in when such suffering is occurring". Well then, if someone has such a strong argument that it easy for them to make it without leaving hairs that can be split, without leaving anything that could technically be nitpicked then let them make that argument. But so far I haven't found that argument. The arguments that I have found so far have loose ends, and when I pull on the loose ends I find invariably that the whole argument unravels.
So, the number of fatalities is not really relevant to this particular thread of discussion, but if you want to have a discussion on that topic, maybe we can check up front whether we have a reasonable basis for such a discussion: Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't.
I don't see any other reason to kill 17,000 kids like that except as collective punishment or genocide. You seem pretty clear that it was neither so I'll leave it up to you to provide another reasonable explanation for why Isreal would want to intentionally kill that many kids.
1. "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people:
Was that because the allies were "collectively punishing" or "committing genocide" on Germans? I don't think so, and I don't see any reason that civilian deaths in Gaza imply that either.
2. Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation?
3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise.
4. As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in.
5. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
> "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people:
To be fair, I think the allies commited a bunch of war crimes they were never charged with during WWII, and firebombing is high up that list as is dropping nuclear bombs on cities.
That said, WWII was an actual war and Germany (and the axis in general) lost fewer people than their enemies.
This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.
> Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation?
These numbers are pretty much universally acknowledged as more likely to be too low than too high (including by Isreal.)
Here's a study not done by a Palestinian organization that says that the official Palestinian estimate is 40% too low.
> 3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise.
I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."
> As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in.
Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.
> Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)
However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.
At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.
> This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.
Right, so we come back to my original question, which I asked in order to determine whether we have a basis for a discussion: "Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't."
In any case, whilst we're looking at multipliers, what do you think of the Battle of Mosul?
By a variety of accounts the US, UK, France and Turkey participated in a battle that killed maybe 10 or 20 times as many of the opposing side than were killed on their side. According to some estimates they killed 40,000 civilians, more than 20x as many as the number of military that were killed on their side. Was that an "occupation and a slaughter"?
So I'm not sure we really have a basis for discussion. We simply differ on fundamental moral principles. However, I will respond to your points.
> I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."
Themselves? I'm saying Hamas is killing civilians, be it directly, by deliberately putting them in harms way or by stealing aid, not that civilians are killing themselves. Unless you're saying that the civilians are Hamas, which I don't think you are. And I certainly believe that Israel has responsibility to minimize civilian casualties and the responsibility to ensure aid flows freely, but until the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the release of all hostages I believe that Hamas holds all the moral responsibility for what happens to its people.
> Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.
This seems very unclear to me. If they had wanted to avoid risk to their soldiers they wouldn't have sent any in, they would have conducted only bombing operations. In fact, one reason to send soldiers in would be for the exact opposite reason: so they could minimize civilian harm.
Why do you think soldiers are on the ground at all, if they want to avoid risks to their soldiers?
> Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)
It doesn't matter who recognises them. Before Oct 7th they had the monopoly on violence within Gaza. They are the de facto state. Civilian wellbeing is ultimately their responsibility, like German civilian wellbeing was the German government's responsibility in WW2.
Furthermore, normally in times of war, third countries allow civilians to flee to safety. Why won't Egypt? Why won't other countries take in refugees via Egypt? Why do they insist that civilians must stay in harm's way?
Above, in response to my claim that Hamas is responsible for Palestinian civilian deaths, you wrote sarcastically "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault." so it seems you do believe, to some degree, that they are Hamas's people.
> However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.
You're in good company. It is very common to believe that "might makes wrong".
> At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.
Ah OK, so you're not basing claims of genocide on the legal standard, just a difference in death toll and wealth/power imbalance. You're welcome to do that, of course. You can use words however you want, but that doesn't match the legal standard within international law.
The death toll is appalling. Hamas should be receive the utmost pressure to unconditionally surrender and release the hostages. Egypt should receive the utmost pressure to allow civilians to flee so that Israel can finish off Hamas and destroy the terror infrastructure they have built in Gaza. And by the way, I don't know what's happening there because I'm not there. All I know is what I see in front of me: arguments that don't seem to hold water, and an alternative perspective which is barely seeing the light of day.
A totalitarian ideology throwing its own future into the furnace, not for a tomorrow (all the fertilizer was ammunition, they had sentenced themselves to starvation) but for the hope of killing all your enemies one last time.
How can one venture this deep into defending this regressive madness is beyond me. I hope you heal from whatever hatred is devouring you.
but thats the thing. it IS good for the settlers and it IS something that israel is actively promoting in its own self interest. this settler stuff isnt a mistake or an oversight
Yes, it's broadly supported. Besides widely publicised polls by universities and corporations outside of Israel you can look at IDI polls here, https://en.idi.org.il/tags-en/1465.
The why takes more explanation. I'd suggest you dig through https://xcancel.com/ireallyhateyou/, this person is an israeli with background in leftist activism that recently went into exile. They collect and translate a lot of material from israeli television and other media, and also translate and explain a lot of historical material, both more mainstream like background information on contemporary israeli politicians and the occasional look at punk and leftist activism in Israel during the nineties and -00s.
It's also a good idea to spend time going through the material collected by Younis Tirawi, https://xcancel.com/ytirawi. It shows what IDF personnel believes to be appropriate behaviour that will positively impress their civilian israeli peers, i.e. what they consider to be the political climate.
Diaspora jews are quite heterogenous and splintered. Many support Israel, and many don't. One 'poll' is the democratic mayor primary in New York, where Zohran Mamdani was quite popular among jewish constituents. Adding to this, many jewish institutions are in some sense captured or founded by zionists, and funded because they are loyal to the zionist cause. This includes many summer camps and similar activities for jewish youth. Since 2023 I expect more diaspora jews to have lost sympathy with the zionist movement than it has gained, but it's not something I have polling numbers to support. On the other hand, basically every recurring large protest against Israel has a jewish contingent.
At the moment we're past immediate resolution, because the entire population in the Gaza strip has been permanently, irrevocably harmed by starvation. It would also take a lot of violence to force the israeli society to back down and stop what it's doing to its neighbours, and then likely generations of enforced stabilisation and education to sow seeds of democracy, neither of which Israel's occidental backers are willing to consider. Then there's the questions of colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are illegal and must be dissolved, which in turn would require distinct amounts of force both to achieve and then to keep it from turning into a civil war within Israel when the so called settlers are relocated there.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, one should keep in mind that this is mainly a christian project, most adherents to zionism are christians.
I was born in Ukraine and moved to Israel (made "aliyah") in 1999. I moved to the Netherlands for work in 2021.
I'm not an Israeli by Israeli standards :) And will never be. But, of course, I'm a citizen, I can read and speak Hebrew well.
Politically, you can say, I came full circle. As many newcomers I was fed a very simplified and one-sided story of Israeli-Arab relationship. The first time I ever cast my vote in elections I voted Shinuj (they are farther right than Likud). In general, immigrants from the former Soviet Union tend to vote right and be pro-settlers.
For non-political reasons I ended up in military jail, where I met some "prisoners of consciousness" who, while didn't convince me to switch my political position entirely, exposed me to the leftist ideas delivered by the leftists. It's very important to see such ideas through the eyes of supporters because the other side virtually always misrepresents them to score points.
I didn't care about elections for a while, but, eventually, when I finally decided to vote, I voted Meretz.
I don't think I will vote in the next elections. Or, maybe, out of habit, I'll vote Democrats (former Labor and Meretz together)... but, really, I don't see a good candidate.
Anyways, what made me depart from the liberal camp is the European liberals. Pathologically bad decisions, or, even more often, the complete lack of any decisions. Gullible and zealous about issues they don't understand... I just don't want to associate myself with people like that. And I see how Israeli liberals parrot the European liberal's believing they know better.
* * *
So... to try to give some sort of a breakdown on who in Israel stands with settlers and why:
* Working class hates Arabs. It's plain and simple: working class often has to work in mixed environments. Construction, hospitality, agriculture. And there Arabs are just danger. You have to look over your shoulder all the time to make sure Mahmud isn't in a bad mood today and didn't bring a knife to work, and isn't going to cut you. I worked in a chain restaurant where a line cook brought a bomb one day to work and killed a bunch of people, himself included. Any Israeli who worked blue collar jobs probably has a story like that. These people don't care about the technicalities or long-term consequences of illegal settlements. Whoever harms Arabs, they are voting for that guy.
* Healthcare holds a special place in white collar jobs because there are a lot of Arabs working in it. But these are not the brutes who come to work with knives and bombs. Also, doctors Jewish doctors are exposed to Arab patients and the other way around... this creates a more friendly atmosphere. You will also find that doctors in Israel are probably the most leftist of any occupation.
* White collar jobs in general want to see Israel copying Europe. People in these jobs tend to want the rule of law, equality, secularism, inclusivity. They see settlers as either crazy or brutish and don't want to associate with them. Even if they may hold right-wing views, they want the implementation to be lawful and non-violent if possible.
* Black-kipah orthodox Jews only care about themselves. For better or for worse. They only wake up when politicians directly address their interests. If settlers go berserk on Arabs or Arabs eviscerate the settlers: they don't care.
* Knitted-kipah orthodox Jews are the settlers (not all of them, but probably a majority). They believe Israel should be restored in some sort of historical borders... as per usual, those borders aren't very certain, but they would quite certainly encompass a place called Judea and a city called Jerusalem. They believe they are doing a favor to the Jewish community by fighting "invaders" (Arabs).
* Israeli Arabs... are a mixed bag. You can find literal jihadists and those who hate other Arabs on the other side of the fence more than settlers do. It's very clanish and way too involved to try to parse it.
* The owners class, the rich people, they despise settlers. See them as an inconvenience / a bunch of lunatics. They don't care about Arabs either.
* Immigrants, especially fresh, tend to overwhelmingly support settlers because they misunderstand their status and genuinely believe the settlers are doing what the country isn't allowed to do due to some political scheming going on.
Basically nothing portrayed by the main stream media / international press on this issue is accurately represented. Most of it is either wildly ignorant or actively hostile (or both).
The Free Press, Call Me Back (podcast), and Breaking Israeli History (podcast) do a good job. Also we will dance again and October 8 (films). I'd also recommend Douglas Murray's On Democracies and Death Cults to get some perspective if you're curious, generally people don't bother on online discussion forums on this topic because it's not productive, but for earnestly curious friends I make the case below. From my perspective, Jews outside of Israel have become more united because the nature of a lot of the western response after 10/7 ironically shows why Jews need a state and an army to protect themselves.
I’m all for high minded debate, but a lot of the anti-Israel protesting isn’t that, the people celebrating or excusing 10/7 on 10/8 before Israel responded, the guy that recently executed two young people leaving a jewish event in DC and then screamed “Free Palestine”, the guy that murdered an old woman at a hostage march in boulder, the “death, death to the IDF” shouted from the stage in Glastonbury to a cheering crowd, the “river to the sea” and “intifada” chants/harassing of jews on college campuses, the repeated negative press narrowly focused on Israel from BBC, Guardian, NYT, the ‘genocide’ claims and other false blood libels, people marching waving islamic republic of Iran and Hezbollah flags in NYC, smashing up jewish owned businesses, etc. - these people are not motivated by some idea of nuanced democratic values or a ‘two state solution’, they’re motivated by old Jewish hatred under a new name. Islamism blended with lefty socialism united in their support of “anti-zionism” i.e. the destruction of Israel.
Many of these media orgs have been hollowed out by an activist ideology that doesn’t understand the history it’s swimming in and doesn’t pursue truth as much as push a political agenda. What ‘genocide’ provides aid to the people they’re supposedly trying to kill? Hamas is driven by a theologically motivated Jihad against the Jews with explicit genocidal intent, The Islamic Republic of Iran (distinct from its people) wants to destroy Israel and then the west and uses terrorism for this purpose and may have used a nuke if not for recent events. It is necessary to use lethal force to defend against this kind of threat. Anyone that cares about a positive future for Palestinians should recognize there is no possibility of such a future while Hamas remains in power.
Europe has largely been protected by the US providing its security and deterrence after WWII. Israel is on the front lines and can’t ignore the reality on the ground, their survival depends on it. You can fight this earlier or wait until the cost is higher to fight it later. Other Arab countries understand these problems, it’s why the UAE has banned the Muslim brotherhood and other extremist organizations, it’s why Saudi is leaning closer towards normalization with Israel and both are allied against Iran. They understand the risks of Islamic terror because they have to deal with it - it forces an accurate understanding. Something Europe (and anti-Israel protestors in the west) don’t grasp, but given Europe’s poor policy on this issue they likely will continue to experience more of first hand.
What Hamas did is joyfully murder, rape, and torture a bunch of lefty kibbutzniks (the kind bringing gaza kids to Israeli hospitals) and music festival kids, took hostages that they’re still holding, while filming it, laughing about it and celebrating it. They have an explicitly genocidal charter interested in killing all the Jews. There is no compatibility between the west and those interested in Islamic Jihad. Every third house in gaza has weapons in it (often hidden in kids rooms), Hamas uses hospitals and other civilian areas to try to maximize civilian casualties despite Israel’s effort to minimize them. They also kill civilians that go against them and have been launching rockets into Israel for years.
That action requires a military response to achieve political goals: return the hostages and destroy hamas / remove them from power. That is unavoidable without civilian deaths (always a tragedy in war), but the fault for this lies squarely with Hamas for starting the war. Few wars have moral grounding as clear as the war started because of 10/7. On October 8th people in the west were celebrating the invasion and killing carried about by Hamas, some mixture of ignorance and useful idiots (primarily on the political left) along with explicitly pro-hamas support. This was popular in American universities and across Europe before Israel had even responded chanting things like “globalize the intifada”. This is, at best, total moral confusion.
Also notice the attention placed on this conflict, but conspicuously absent from others. Why aren’t students protesting Bashar al-Assad? Or the civilian deaths in the conflict in Yemen? Or in Sudan? Why only the one Jewish state that was brutally attacked by a terrorist group that’s still holding its citizens hostage? This isn’t just an issue with Hamas either, it’s more complicated - many Palestinian civilians participated in the kidnapping, looting, and violence on 10/7. They helped harbor hostages. They would have lynched the hostages being returned if Hamas wasn’t preventing that and they of course elected Hamas to power in the first place. The population itself is radicalized with a deep hatred of Jews.
Enormous amounts of foreign aid (hundreds of millions) has flowed into gaza of the last couple of decades. Enough to make the Hamas leaders billionaires whose families can live large in Qatar while supporting their investment of tunnels to support their terrorism. A lot of it is backed by Iran, but a lot of this aid is from western nations to organizations that worked directly with and supported Hamas (UNRWA). This money could have been used to build something after Israel’s "land for peace" withdrawal in 2005, instead it was used for terror. It’s more instructive to look at what motivates the groups today rather than litigate divergent historical narratives (i.e. Nakba was five Arab states attacking Israel and the ‘catastrophe’ was that they lost, the security checkpoints exist because of suicide bombing during the intifadas, etc.). If Hamas surrendered and returned the hostages it would end the fighting they started. If Israel laid down their weapons they’d all be killed. Palestinians have no interest in two states which they’ve repeatedly rejected, they’re interested in killing all the Jews, the destruction of Israel, and more broadly the destruction of the west (as Iran’s proxy). Meanwhile in Israel, Arabs and Jews live together peacefully as Israeli citizens.
Ideally it’d be possible to engage in war with perfect individual targeting and no civilian casualties. Israel does this as much as possible (Hezbollah pager attack was very narrowly targeted, targeted strikes on individuals in specific apartments, other civilian warning strategies), but it’s not perfect and civilian deaths are unavoidable, especially in dense urban conflict zones. The IDF has a better record on this than any other modern western army (including US when we took Mosul against ISIS). I see war as a means to achieve a specific political result when diplomacy is not possible (or after you’ve been attacked). In this case: remove Hamas from power and return the hostages. In the broader conflict: remove the threat from Hezbollah and Iran. I think it’s necessary to achieve these goals in order to achieve any lasting peace.
Some ideologies and enemies require total military defeat. If western civilization is not willing to do this despite its real costs, then power is ceded to enemies that don’t have the same moral concerns, or in this case, explicitly want to maximize civilian death and terror as they did on 10/7 and it'll just happen again. My view is Israel would like to live in peace with its neighbors if that’s a real option (and historically has tried many times), but it’s not. Israel's neighbors (driven by a particular theological view of Islam from the Muslim Brotherhood) are not interested in peaceful coexistence. Israel should not make concessions to an enemy still plotting to destroy them.
If we’re lucky an outcome of this conflict could be normalization with KSA / an extension of the Abraham accords and deeper partnership with other Arab countries in the region - maybe even a shift in some of the public’s ideology if people recognize that trying to destroy Israel/kill Jews leads to ruin (though this is hard with radicalization in the culture/schools, etc.) - it’s a generational project that will take time, but it’s not impossible. Currently, because the goals have not been achieved (Hamas still holds hostages, still wants to remain in power, still will not surrender) the war continues and sadly civilians continue to pay some of the cost. The allies (mostly US) fully administered Japan after WWII for 7 years, Japan lost their sovereignty during that time. An outcome of starting a war and losing it is you may lose your sovereignty and land. It’s possible to defeat evil ideologies, it happened in WWII with both Japan and Germany.
I think it’s very challenging to know what’s true given all the bad actors (UN, Hamas, Pallywood - they film fake videos to (effectively) manipulate western sentiment) and their repeated lying. I think that the GHF has weakened Hamas by removing their control over the aid which has threatened them, and lastly I’m personally not sure what responsibility there is to provide aid at all while hostages remain held in Gaza (this is a more controversial view) - that said, Israel has provided and continues to provide enormous amounts of civilian aid and works to move civilians outside of the areas of fighting despite this being a thankless task. War can be a moral act, the west exercising its power to defend its values against an evil ideology is an important and necessary thing.
We would consider someone fucking uneducated if in 2025 they tried to justify the Iraq/Afghanistan war. The same will be true for everything you wrote as time goes on.
Hamas leaves traps in the buildings with explosives when they leave an area to kill Israelis. The IDF has to detonate these traps to make an area safe, this is the cause of most of the destruction. John Spencer talks about the details if you're genuinely curious.
BS. The IDF soldiers themselves post videos of them going into buildings, pillaging what they can find (literally taking exercise equipment, jewelry, clothing, breaking open safes), then wiring it with explosives.
If the buildings were booby trapped they wouldn't be walking around casually inside. If there were enemy combatants they wouldn't be walking around inside. The buildings by definition have no military value and have been cleared, but they are blown up anyway. These are self documented war crimes.
I think a lot of this is hard for an external observer to discern. Are the Palestinians really thar bad? Is IDF really bombing indiscriminately? Ultimately a lot of this is down to information external observers don't have, and people's convictions are at risk of aligning with their sympathies. It is definitely true of me. I don't know if Israel really needs to destroy Hamas to be safe, and what is sufficient to do that.
However, there are two aspects of this conflict where Israel is IMO monumentally and unarguably in the wrong.
One is the settler program. It is wholly inconsistent with a desire to live peacefully alongside even savage enemies. If they are so bad, put up fences and put guns on them - as Israel is doing. But the settlement program, with displacements of Palestinian civilians, bulldozing of Palestinian villages, rendering arable land inhospitable, unchecked settler violence, is clearly just a land grab, and against any semblance of desiring a peaceful coexistence. It often gets dismissed as a fringe movement, but election after election, democratic Israeli governments show varying, but always positive amounts of support.
The other is use of famine against civilians. There is no conceivable military goal in sight other than indiscriminate death and misery onto truly random people, half of them below the median age of 19 not even being politically active. It is not an accident either, Ben Gvir and/or Smotrich talk about it openly.
To be clear, Hamas and co are also guilty of horrendous crimes. Thing is, vast majority of reasonable people accept that and point it out. Israel clearly accepts that too, but perceives the mere whiff of criticism as rabid discrimination.
And the two don't cancel out. It's not about restraint, or higher standard, or any uneven field. Any instance of terrorism and genocide is horrendous, unnecessary and unacceptable. They don't serve military or diplomatic deals. They are there to hurt just because you can, and somehow it pleases some basic human instinct.
Anti-Israeli crime is awful and I condemn it. I don't support Hamas, heckling of Jews around the world, the 7th Oct attacks were awful. I mean it. And Israel's actions are also awful and inhumane.
I generally don’t think your understanding of the settler issue is accurate, but I’m also not an expert on those details.
In general Jews living in west bank communities they created seems fine, I don’t think it’s acceptable for Palestinians to ban Jews. Arabs and Jews live in peace alongside each other as equals in Israel. I think Israel does police the violence on their own side.
That land is secured by Israel as the result of previous wars, it’s complicated. The result of losing a war you start can be losing sovereignty. 2005 Gaza withdrawal suggests giving up that control as a gesture for peace is a serious mistake.
With the aid, Israel has and continues to give tons of aid which Hamas steals to fund themselves. This is not a trivial problem to solve, GHF is an attempt. The press has since the start lied repeatedly about this. My personal view is it’s not clear to me that giving aid to the enemy is the responsibility of the people that were attacked, especially when your people are still held hostage. But that’s irrelevant because despite my view (and some others in the gov) they have given tons of aid.
The world generally is morally confused on this broadly and thinks because Hamas is weak, that must mean they’re good or it’s some sort of economic issue. They do not understand Islamic Jihad and the nature of this ideology. They look at it with a western lens and make a serious error.
The truth is those of us in the west are all living in Israel, just some of us haven’t realized it yet.
The West Bank settlement is a clear sign of bad faith, because the only credible chance of peaceful coexistence, the Oslo Accords, earmarked the West Bank exclusively for Palestinians, or more strictly, their state. Sure, I would be delighted if either side of the border Jews and Arabs lived peacefully alongside. But that is not what is happening there.
Settlers, aided by army and militias of unknown status (armed settlers? reservists? real army?) expropriate Palestinian land, destroy their property, threaten and shoot locals. The area, which was supposed to be a core of a Palestinian state, is criss-crossed with Jewish-only roads, settlements, farms, military checkpoints or closed military areas. The settlers enjoy rights their Palestinian neighbours don't have. This is not about some kind of "Palestine for Palestinians" chauvinism, this is a systematic eradication of a people in what was supposed to be reserved land.
Israel simply cannot with a straight face claim that it wanted a peaceful coexistence when it was de facto policy from the get go to make the two state solution impossible.
As for aid... it is not that Israel is somehow being forced to feed its enemies. There are plenty of organisations trying to send the aid in, and Israel is actively stopping them. Israel kicked out reputable aid organisations, with decades of experience in delivering aid even surrounded by hostile warlords, replaced them with some no-name military contractors, and now regularly shoots people queuing for the little food there is. More people have now been shot queing for food than have died on 7th Oct.
I don't think many people are confused as to what Hamas is. Some, sure, are, but most see it as an awful terrorist organisation. Criticism of Israel doesn't stem from people thinking Hamas is good, but from Israel acting murderously in bad faith, in ways incompatible with peaceful goals, while demanding unlimited patience and sympathy from the world.
> Oslo Accords, earmarked the West Bank exclusively for Palestinians, or more strictly, their state
The two Oslo agreements themselves don't contain this sort of earmarking. There was a sort of informal understanding that Oslo would be a stepping stone toward a real Palestinian state, and that hasn't happened, but it would be hard to put most of the blame on Israel. Arafat walked away from a very serious statehood offer in 2000, for example.
From your comments it sounds like you might have been misled by some questionable sources, which would be understandable considering even top UN officials have spread rather blatant disinformation about Israel [1]. E.g. you also mention a famine against civilians, when we're actually about three orders of magnitude short of the number of starvations required to declare a famine.
From my research, well, Palestine may have had various shots at statehood, each time below their expectations. It's a negotiation and balance of power which they didn't have. It's hard to argue with power.
But Israel claims far, far more than "we're more powerful so its our way or the highway". Israel asserts they are in a universally morally superior position, thay it went out of its way to accomodate the Palestinians. And I think this is blatantly untrue. The Palestinians were kicked off their land 70 years ago, for complex reasons, and every year continue to be pushed further by Israel. Theres many ccontradictory things happening in Israel, but this one IMO is a clear indication that Israel is acting in bad faith.
As to your source, let's unpick this. Your link states that a UN representative erroneously claimed 14,000 children will die within 48 hours, due to malnutrition. Instead, he should have said over 12 months. Sure, thats a big difference, but either is beastly - while achieving 0 military or diplomatic effect.
Other sources I follow include the B'tselem institute, who recently called the Israeli governments actions clearly genocidal.
In addition to ~12 months turning into "48 hours", "children aged between six months and five years" turned in "babies", and "acute malnutrition" turned into "death".
When top UN officials are pushing blatant disinformation like this with no consequences, it's hard to know who to trust for unbiased information.
> B'tselem institute, who recently called the Israeli governments actions clearly genocidal
Considering that it's B'tselem, there was never really a possibility of them reaching a different position. I don't think they've ever pushed back on anti-Israeli propaganda, such as the UN statement above.
You're not convincing me. It's also not like you are attacking pivotal issues. You point out that some of what is said about Israel is not right, and clearly that is true. You point at one fact I didn't even rely on. Calling it "blatantly disinformation" isnt right either - it was one statement, quickly corrected.
In any case, "it's not 14,000 babies dead in 48 hours, it is only 14,000 with severe malnutrition over 12 months" isnt an argument I'd like to rely on when my judgment day comes.
There won't be peace when one side has an explicit goal to kill all the Jews, the other side is Jews that don't want to be killed and neither is willing to compromise.
You can ignore that underlying moral framing, but it's the basis of the conflict and it's why Israel has a morally superior position.
The Palestinians have over and over again said they don't want two states, they want to destroy Israel and kill Jews - the idea they want two states only exists in the minds of western leftists, it's a failure to understand Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood.
They didn't correct it though; when BBC inquired about it their response was a somewhat evasive "We are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies ..."
I did separately point out a couple misstatements in your comments. My point with the UN thing was just that I wouldn't blame anyone for getting a few things wrong, when sources we expect to be credible are actually spreading disinformation.
> isnt an argument I'd like to rely on when my judgment day comes.
I don't believe there's any justification for spreading disinformation like Fletcher's, or any situation where it's wrong to correct it, no matter what humanitarian agenda is involved.
> Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this?
If you are asking specifically about the Hilltop Youth, I believe most people understand them to be somewhere between extremists and jewish terrorists and do not support their actions. The government (well, Ben-Gvir) can continue to support them (within limits of plausible deniability) as long as they are in power and elections aren't until late next year.
If you are asking about Israeli Jews and the ongoing war, I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory. Everyone (in the mainstream) has either served in the IDF or has family there and so they know first-hand that claims that the IDF is participating in a genocide are absurd. If you're telling me my (in this case fictional) cousing Omri is participating in a genocide, I can very easily ignore that because I know he is a good kid that wouldn't do that, and I can call him up and ask him. Or maybe I'll ask my (fictional) coworker Daniel, the poor guy has been called into reserve duty for over 300 days since the war started.
They've also probably seen at least one of the many lies going around about the war. The documentary that the BBC tried to fake. The UN lying about the amount of aid going into Gaza (at the time when the american temporary pier plan was ongoing, the UN published numbers of trucks that they personally supervised going into Gaza. Conveniently, they had no one present to supervise in one of three checkpoints and "missed" about 1/3rd of the aid going in). UNWRA personnel participating in the OCT-7 attack. UNIFIL providing cover for Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israeli homes (including some Druze children which really shocked people around the country). Some blatant foreign media nonesense I've seen is showing footage of Israeli soccer fans being beaten and recontextualising it as if they are the ones doing the beating. Footage of an Israeli survivor of a terrorist attack (speaking Hebrew, in Israeli media!) being subtitled to describe her as a Palestinian survivor of an Israeli terror attack. Footage of Assad slaughtering his Syrian population broadcast as if it is a slaughter by the IDF, etc. Foreign media has proven itself to Israelis as liars, so they have no reason to listen to them.
They also see it as the #1 priority to return the hostages and see any call to stop the war before they are returned as ridiculous and evil (Though I do believe a majority support a deal of "everyone for everyone and a stop to the war").
In this light, even though many people believe the war could have already ended (with an aforementioned "everyone for everyone" deal) and Netanyahu is cruelly extending the war for his own personal interests, they also understand that any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas, both for starting the conflict, and for their use of civilians as human shields, their use of civilian infrastructure (schools, mosques, hospitals) as war resources and use of their children as soldiers. They may also be familiar with the data, which last time both sides published semi-reliable information (or equally unreliable information), showed that when compared to other historical conflicts, civilian casualties were actually a smaller part of overall casualties. And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war as the IDF is already doing their duty to fight as ethically as is reasonably possible.
While we're there, we also frequently see news of Israelis and Jews being attacked around the world with no one really giving a shit about it. If the UK shows me that they don't give a shit about the lives of Jews/Israelis in the UK, I'm definitely not going to care what the UK government thinks about the ongoing war.
> Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
If you are in Israel and know of Jews residing elsewhere, they are probably former Israelis, which don't neccesarily represent non-Israeli Jews in those countries. Those I've spoken to have spoken about a sharp rise in antisemitism. Some fear for their lives. From the news and other media I know some Jews feel like Israel is going too far, but they get their opinions from e.g. the BBC, so you can't really take them as well-informed opinions.
- Incidentally, one former UN employee I know has spoken about ingrained and casual antisemitism in the UN much earlier than OCT-7 (of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" kind), so I'd consider any opinion or intervention by the UN as deceitful and unwelcome.
>any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas
They started the war, but Israel should be expected to behave at a higher standard than terrorists. They are causing the starvation and death that is not needed to protect Israel's interests. The deaths are now on them.
>And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war
I don't believe that one minute.
Your own defense ministers have said there is no military value in continuing the war, and there is no getting the hostages back without a deal with Hamas. This war continues because of far-right bloodlust from the Israeli government, and Bibi's desire to stay in power and out of jail.
Aid could get in, and the starvation could stop, if it was the will of the Israeli government. Hamas is militarily FUBAR, and Oct7 only happened because of the decisions made by Bibi to move IDF to the West Bank and ignore warnings from intelligence. Oct7 will not happen again, even if the fighting stopped this instant.
Instead, they want to see Palestine starve so they can take over Gaza.
> I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory.
That's pretty irrelevant when they don't put you in front of a firing squad for draft dodging, isn't it? If it is possible to refuse - either by draft dodging or by complying poorly enough that it basically becomes sabotage - the fact that you chose not to do so means you are complicit.
To bring this argument to the extreme: would you murder your own father if there was a $10 fine on not doing so? It's the law, after all! You're just following the law, so you cannot possibly be held accountable for your actions, right?
We have numerous first-hand reports from doctors of young children showing up at Gazan hospitals with gun shot injuries to the head. We have seen well-marked aid convoys blown up. Grutesque living skeleton children haunt our social media feeds. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared a genocide over a year and a half ago. A reply to OP's question that doesn't engage with these realities is, at best, deeply unserious.
> Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared a genocide over a year and a half ago
Isn't that the point? They declared a genocide before Israel had even seriously responded to the attack. (Year and a half ago is Dec 2023, the attempted genocide by Palestinians was Oct 7, 2023.)
If you read the section of South Africa's Application Instituting Proceedings in the International Court of Justice entitled Expressions of Genocidal Intent against the Palestinian People by Israeli State Officials
and Others, you'll find a compelling case that genocidal intent was clearly expressed. There are over seven pages of quotes and citations of Israeli leaders expressing that intent.
Yeah, that's right. That's why there are no rapists, because our (fictional) cousins would tell us about everyone they raped, but they haven't, so rape does not exist. Everything is fine. BBC is lying. No journalists are allowed in Gaza, because they would only use the opportunity to lie more. Everyone is against us.
...
It makes no sense. Yes, antisemitism exists. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Check the ADL's own website, if you remove anti-zionism events (such as protests or watermelon stickers lol) then antisemitism isn't up, it's flat. Don't fall for the "surge in antisemitism" crap, it's pushed by the ADL and friends to make it seem like Jews are at risk right now, too. But they're not, they're fine, the only people seeing a spike in terrorism directed at them are Palestinians and anyone that looks like them. In fact, one of the antisemitism acts the ADL claims is when an Israeli got shot in Florida... by an Israeli who thought he was an Arab!
people here don't understand and don't care about difference between 700k settlers, 500 hilltop youth idiots and where from they came.
trying to explain it, will get you downvoted and flagged. because people find it inconvenient when facts don't correlate with carefully cultivated media picture that they been consuming
Doesn't this conveniently leave out that settlers being initially nonviolent is still illegal and meeting armed resistance should have been/is expected when you do a crime like this?
This has been happening regularly over the course of decades on the West Bank but no-one is willing to call it "Terrorism" and therefore respond appropriately.
Israeli jewish settlers murdered, on average, one Palestinian civilian per day in the west bank, for the entire year leading up to oct 11. The attacks on Palestinian civilians in the west bank have only accelerated, since then.
if you will read the article, you will see that it talks about IDF and settlers. PA in fact called in IDF to suppress hamas and pij in areas that PA tried to clear out but failed.
Articles like this on purpose blur lines of what happening and meant to generate outrage. Once I traced back article that talked about 48 (or something) palestinians killed by settlers by going through listed sources in the article. when I got to original article (twice removed), I discovered that it talked about 47 killed by IDF and 1 killed in clashes between settlers and palestinians
The PA is a puppet government of Israel. The last elections for PA leadership were in 2006. I don't think the distinction between settlers and the IDF is as salient to most outside observers as you think it is.
so, when israel on pa requests going to mop up hamas, because otherwise it about to be overthrown, and IDF kills 999 hamas/pij/lions of whatever members, it's essentially "settler violence". do i get it right ?
and about "puppet". the very funny part is that people that demand for PA to have controls over west bank/gaza as sovereign, don't realize that it physically unable to do so without Israeli support. And Israeli support makes local population regards PA as Israeli puppet. The was major reason for Israel refusing to get into 2007 gaza purge of PA
I would put it this way: in my eyes, the violent subjugation of Palestinians is brutal colonialism whether conducted by loosely organized vigilantes or officially state-sanctioned actors.
Of course the PA could not maintain power without Israeli support. They don't represent Palestinian interests.
If Israel allowed elections, I could answer you, and Israel would have a negotiating partner. But I don't think Israel has any interest in negotiating.
The fact that countries halfway around the world are using basic recognition as a coercive tool to shape their democratic expression is exactly why Hamas has any following.
The word “terrorist” is strictly a political designation, one that allows for dehumanizing and condemning one’s enemies. Israel’s pager attack on Lebanon has all of the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, but the west won’t call it as it is because it’s inconvenient. It was inconvenient to acknowledge that Israel is conducting a full on genocide, so not until very recently did major western news orgs start using the dreaded G word.
A lot of what the US did during Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc, could have been considered terrorism.
Terrorism as a label is a very convenient way to justify committing atrocities, under the name of squashing terrorism.
I remember hearing a radio talk show in which someone said they were against the Iraq war and the response from the pundit was "so you don't want to fight against terrorism?"
When people's actions get reduced to a single label it becomes increasingly easier to hate them.
It's even worse than that. Israel's minister of the security services is ideologically aligned with the terrorists, and has openly supported their causes all his life. A quite unprecedented situation, I think!
> After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
I think there is a common belief that Israel was "given" the land beyond the Jordan because they were God's chosen people based on their merits.
Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings. Repeatedly. From Judges through 2 Kings, Israel repeatedly loses divine protection precisely because of its own wickedness. Being “chosen” meant bearing covenantal responsibility, not enjoying a blank moral check.
Deuteronomy 20:15-18 is more appropriate to the current conflict, as it relates to how the Jews should fight wars in the land of Israel. It commands the utter destruction of the inhabitants of the land, not sparing any that breathe (not just those who “pisseth-on-the-wall”)
Discussions about modern Israel/Palestine are full of shibboleths that reveal where people are drawing their information:
In the Hebrew the word in 20:16 for inheritance is “Nachala”. Worth Googling: Nachala is also the name of a present‑day Israeli settler movement led by Daniella Weiss, whose own literature says it’s “continuing the biblical mandate to settle the land.”
In other words, the same term that the Torah uses for a gift that can be forfeited is now used as branding for a modern political project—illustrating how ancient vocabulary still shapes today’s arguments about the land.
For an example from the Palestinian side: you do not have a full understanding of Hamas if you do not know about the Hadith about the Gharqad tree. Hamas charter writers alluded to this story; many Palestinians learn it young, while most Israelis have never heard of it.
Recognizing these code‑words doesn’t require agreeing with the theology behind them. It simply keeps us from talking past each other—and, one hopes, from letting someone else’s apocalyptic script dictate who lives and dies. I think we all agree that the other-sides’ eschatology is a dumb reason to die.
> “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
When you separate yourself by [insert tribalist rhetoric], it breeds violence
This may sound superficially true, but it is confusing cause and effect. It's more likely to be the other way around: people seeking violence need to separate themselves from their target. That does not automatically mean that every self-classification carries an implication of violence.
For those that don't know the Old Testament/Torah it might be worthwhile to point out that what you refer to as "moral failings" is not the same as what modern people think are "moral failings". Uncleanliness (gay sex, touching menstruating women, eating pork, yadda, yadda) and worshiping other Gods are "moral failings", raping, pillaging, and exterminating enemies most definitely are not.
Yes. The moral failing of Saul (1 Samuel 15) is precisely not following the command to exterminate Amalek, but rather sparing Agag, and taking spoils when he was commanded to kill everything that breathes.
> The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings.
Plus the general idea that humans in general are morally flawed, sinful, etc. But, "Good news!" If you follow the one true god, that'll all be sorted out. Following the classic marketing strategy of creating a need, and then filling it.
People are being murdered thousands of years later because of the ancient Judea equivalent of 'Harry Potter', and the batshit insane people who still believe it in earnest.
Being dismissive of the Bible is not as cool as you think it is: those who do not study the Bible are doomed to repeat it.
I understand the instinct to treat Bronze‑Age literature like fanciful fiction: engineers are wired to put "myth" in one bucket and "hard data" in another. But for better or worse, the Bible isn't just an ancient novel. It's the source code for a huge fraction of the world's legal systems, ethics, holidays, and political claims, including the one we are discussing. Dismissing it as "Harry Potter" misses the point:
If we're serious about reducing violence, we need to debug the real code people are running in their heads, not the straw‑man version.
Software engineers are notorious for bikeshedding and pointlessly subjective "holy wars." Any belief in higher capacity for reason than their fellow man is sheer hubris.
No, they're being murdered thousands of years later because of the long history of bad blood between the two groups. The religious documents are just a pretext.
> Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
As written by a member of "the least bad people". If you're going to have a historical look at events then, you need to take sources with a grain of salt.
No, it's been the norm for Israel since its inception. To mention just a couple of examples, ben-Gurion was a founder of Haganah, of which Rabin, infamous for his "break-their-bones" policy, was a member.
we're precedenting it in the united states. our government is deeply ideologically aligned with the people committing the vast majority of domestic terrorism in this country.
The vast majority of the government are full-time employees without any express political allegiance aside from whatever they happen to personally believe. I doubt they are "deeply ideologically aligned with...domestic terrorism" and most of them would probably physically assault you for suggesting they agreed with domestic terrorists in person.
I agree, but hackernews is evidently taking his side because any time I try to reply I get told I'm posting too often, even when its been hours since my last post.
Government employees don't have their own political alliances? Have you seen the american government anytime in the past 10 years? That's a very strange argument considering it's a commonly discussed issue in the current american political climate.
Usually but not actually. Northern Ireland is a good example where if people are well-off enough, you can diffuse tensions. Many thanks to Brexit for stirring this up more recently, and having different US tariffs across the border will be interesting, but it's still a valid data point.
The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
These days though, there is no unclaimed land or unpopulated place to move in to. Practically speaking anyway. No one would want to move into the Yucatan jungles or Boreal Siberia even if the host countries invited them in to settle land.
> The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
That is the same situation that exists today. Might makes right is the only rule of nature. Treaties are just hopes that someone will help with defending your borders.
See Russia expanding its borders into what was previously recognized as Ukraine.
Right. But before you could “run away” if you were willing to. Today you don’t have places to run to without running into other people willing to defend their places.
In the past you had lots and lots of peoples who just got erased as modern concepts of fairness and justice didn’t work the same way. See the warring states period.
The last major landmass to be settled I believe is Madagascar, only settled ~1500 years ago, with only scattered, remote islands remaining unsettled past that point. Madagascar itself is an island, albeit one of the largest in the world, so enough to constitute 'major landmass' in my book; discount all island groups entirely, and the unsettled lands haven't existed for over 10,000 years.
What that means is that all of the "run[ning] away" you are talking about is still violently displacing native peoples. So for example, when the Boers flee the Cape Colony to the Transvaal, they aren't moving to virgin, empty land, but rather land inhabited by native Africans (Zulu, I think), who needed to be dispossessed of their land. And such dispossession tends to require violence.
Pop density before the 1870s was generally low in most places with a few exceptions.
After all there was no "industry" it was 95% + agrarian, pescatarian, pastoral. Many populations had a preference for coastal, riparian settlements and mountainous areas were less favored... but were where displaced peoples could move to. People clumped, they were not evenly distributed so any region would have unsettled areas --just like today you have vast areas in Alaska that are not populated -even Wyoming. There are towns here and there but most areas of those states are not "populated" though they are under local, state and federal control. Government did not work that way back a few hundred years ago.
The Zulu only relatively recently moved into ZA (around the same time as Europeans maybe a bit before --the Khoisan are the native peoples of ZA).
People also moved (were displaced) for other reasons beside war: drought, depletion of game, disease, pests, tribal splits, insufficient carrying capacity, ecological pressures, etc.
Maybe. I don’t know that there was a place to run to a few hundred years ago. That was when Native Americans were pushed out (in North and South), Aborigines in Australia, etc.
When China expanded in the 1600 and 1700s the non Han ran to uninhabited Southeast Asia. One example are the Hmong who moved to mountains of SEA from interior China. Also lots of internal movement in Africa.
The perpetrator, Yinon Levy, has sanctions put on him by a few countries. The current regime in the White House lifted the US sanction a while ago.
Arguably it's worse than what is usually meant by terrorism, i.e. civilians or paramilitaries attacking a state by actions against civilians, since it's a state exterminating stateless civilians.
If you want to see someone refer to acts of the Hilltop Youth as Jewish Terrorism and condemn it, you need only switch to channel 12 (Israeli channel, that is).
It's important to note that a big part of Israeli society opposes the JahuNatan government, the illegal settlers and war crimes in Gaza. Even after the Hamas attack on Kibbutzim near Gaza in '23.
Quite important not to become part of the problem when you discuss this case. And the problem is that such a heated subject is prone to make people ideologically possessed and tribal. To a point where they become emotionally blinded and are unable to listen to people that don't share/fully support their beliefs.
Given Israeli education, support for settlers, the immigration policy which allows anyone with Jewish heritage to claim land there (regardless of any connection to the area, and of any outstanding arrest warrants) and Israelis using their kids to stop aid trucks and so on, there's a lot needed to show the majority what is actually humane and acceptable.
It's interesting to contrast comments like this in this thread, with the amount of hatred and abuse heaped upon Russians on the day of Russia's invasion - not just the Russian state, but a big chunk of comments that made it clear that they held all Russians responsible for it and would like to see their lives destroyed. And had relatively little pushback against them.
I agree with the sentiment of your second paragraph, but I wish that thought applied in general, and not just to some special case countries. Especially considering the widely differing levels of democratic power people have in these different countries.
The Russian war on Ukraine is a WILDLY different case. There was no border dispute of any kind between these countries, no terror, no threats, just the Russian desire to own Ukraine.
> There was no border dispute of any kind between these countries
That is such a perfect representation of the level of public discourse around this, that I can only thank you for providing a sample. It's not even hard to learn about the Donetsk region's conflicts and the destruction there long before the invasion, but flooding the media and Internet with convenient narratives like "just the Russian desire to own Ukraine" has worked and continues to work very effectively on the general public (likely even more than the censorship does).
And all of this is quite orthogonal to the main fact here, which is that it makes very little sense to blame the population living under an authoritarian government and want them destroyed for that government's actions, and then turn around and give people in a democratic country a pass on their government's actions.
> It's not even hard to learn about the Donetsk region's conflicts and the destruction there long before the invasion, but flooding the media and Internet with convenient narratives like "just the Russian desire to own Ukraine" has worked and continues to work very effectively on the general public (likely even more than the censorship does).
There was none. The conflict in Donetsk was entirely manufactured during the initial stages of the 2014 invasion. When the European Court of Human Rights reviewed a case concerning the downed Malaysian airliner, the Russian side argued that Russia was not involved, claiming that it was the work of "Donetsk rebels". The court found that there was no genuine separatist movement and no rebels of any kind, only unmarked troops operating under direct Russian control from the start.
If anything, the media has been flooded with misrepresentations that promote a "generic ethnic conflict" narrative to mask a straightforward and unprovoked invasion of one country by another country. And the reasons indeed do boil down to one single person, his unchecked power, and unhealthy obsessions - as has been the case with many dictators throughout the history.
Netanyahu is the longest serving Israeli prime minister in history serving a combined 17 years. And he is tipped to win again next election. He very much embodies the will of the Israeli public.
If you listen to their “liberal opposition” leaders like the likes of Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz they sound just as unhinged as Netanyahu himself [1]
Every poll conducted on Israeli public opinion on the conflict would make have made Nazi officials blush. Majority of Israelis support ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza [2].
Seeing the facts as they are is not being “emotionally blinded”. When genocidal psychopaths scream at the top of their lungs they want to commit genocide and actively work towards that goal, with the results right in front of our eyes, we compelled to believe them.
I'm glad this is being discussed on HN instead of getting flagged. If we're intellectually curious, then we need to be curious about phenomena that defy explanation and events that may define the future course of our civiliazation. I think what's happening in Gaza/Palestine/Israel counts as both. It certainly defies explanation in my mind.
To me, simply labeling somone as "evil" not feels like a premature termination of the chain of causality, but also circular reasoning (Why does X do evil things? Because X is evil. Why is X evil? Because X does evil things). There has to be more to it than that.
Bunch of racist Israeli hooligans that were thrown into the Amsterdam Canals got more outrage from the international media and diplomats than a livestreamed cold blooded murder by a terrorist.
This is everything you need to know about the world we live in. Palestinian lives simply do not matter.
While we should absolutely be covering on-going civil wars and genocides across the world -- I personally listen to French news sources in order to understand what's going on across Africa -- the fact is that the US has provided Israel with over $300 billion since it's founding. For Sudan, that number is somewhere around $5 billion. So many of us here in the US are rightfully watching and questioning why our taxes are funding a genocide.
> USA continues to ignore the plight of Palestinians and continues to fund and arm the regime that kills them
False monolith. To the extent there is a single foreign policy issue dominating the American public consciousness, it’s Gaza.
Palestinian lives are not being ignored. There isn’t universal compassion for them. But the average American has more developed views on this topic than for any comparable conflict around the world.
How do you square this view with the current situation? The US has poured resources and weapons into Israel. Gaza is levelled, tens of thousands of Gaza’s people are dead.
The US might care about Gaza, but it cares a lot more about Israel.
You can argue that American citizens aren't unaware, but the politicians are born and bred to ignore this catastrophe. We have laws to stop them from caring.
And yet far less attention than those in Ukraine got even at a time when the destruction and killing there was less than 1% of what Palestine has gone through. Within one week of the first attack, Ukraine got more mainstream support, on-air time, and geopolitical response, than Palestine got over a year of suffering through civilian murders and other clear war crimes.
Speaking out about this issue in any way that smells "pro-Palestinian" has cost people their jobs, and sometimes even their residency and "freedom" in western countries, and is accompanied by smears and accusations of anti-Semitism against people who clearly are not.
I've lost friends of 15 years for remarking on my horror about bombings and civilian deaths. Nothing more.
I can't even begin to understand a mentality which cannot see the absolute asymmetry of power at work here.
The daily protests happen because they're necessary. And they're clearly not enough.
The problem comes when they only focus on Hamas, and ignore Israel's kidnapping and detention of 10k Palestinians without being charged. AKA, "hostages".
> Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with Iran and Turkey being home to the largest remaining Jewish populations, followed by Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. This was due to Zionist recruitment, religious beliefs, economic reasons, widespread persecution, antisemitism, political instability and curbing of human rights in Muslim-majority countries.
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Muslim," they say. Where then, should the Jews be allowed to live? Only in Brooklyn?
> Until the 1960s, approximately one million Jews lived in Iran and other Arab countries having arrived in the region more than 2,000 years before. Nowadays, it is estimated that only around 15,000 remain, as the majority of the Jewish population in Muslim lands were forced to flee their homes
> The introduction of nationalist ideologies (including Zionism and Arab nationalism), the impact of colonial policies, and the establishment of modern nation-states altered the status and dynamics of Jewish communities in Muslim-majority countries.
From your source.
It's important to note that in a place like Algeria the French colonists granted Jewish populations citizenship to France, yet denied it to the Arab and Berber populations. [1] This fractured relations between the Sephardic population and the rest of the local population, which is exactly what the French wanted.
I'm not going to say relations were perfect before, or deny that Jewish populations weren't second class citizens, but there was a long history of being neighbors and having cities like Constantine be a place of refuge after the Spanish expulsion of Jews from Andalusia. I mean, in places like Mogador in Morocco, Jewish populations were explicitly invited by the king to settle and set up trading businesses [2].
The founding of Israel completely changed this and fractured relations that went back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. [3]
Judging by the British Raj, choosing to inhabit a former British colony probably wasn't a super informed decision. If you attended history class, you know what happened the moment Britian left.
Violence begets violence, if Israeli settlers want to fight to displace other people then they will die in that process. Thankfully for Jews, there are other states they can choose to inhabit that are both secular and respect international law. These are, statistically, safer places for Jewish individuals to live than a state that instructs their army on how to commit fratricide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
The film could not find a U.S. distributor after being picked up for distribution in 24 countries and winning the Oscar, a situation that has been compared to soft censorship.
Once Gaza and the West Bank are taken care of, will Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria be next?
Israel very much depends on being the dominant power in the region. If they lose US support, things could get ugly indeed. And they are losing support rapidly now.
Why should Israel allow themselves to be attacked by Syria and Lebanon? Did you miss what Lebanon did to people in northern Israel? Seems like you think Jews should just sacrifice themselves for some reason.
Hezbollah declared war on Israel, unprovoked, on October 8th through to late 2024, by launching constant missile attacks on civilian areas, notwithstanding their violation of UNSC Resolution 1701. Israel is justified under international law to invade South Lebanon and completely decimate Hezbollah unless it offers an unconditional surrender.
I am more sympathetic to your views regarding Syria, however. That is a less justifiable war with nebulous preventive/preemptive motivations, which is somewhat coherent on a pure self-interested security basis but is likely validly unjust under different frames of reference (morality, modern global norms and taboos, and international law).
Given that Jordan & Israel have relatively good relations (I say "relative", the entire region is a mess), why would they be next?
If anything, currently it looks like Israel's relations with its nearby neighbours (excluding Palestine. Syria is bit unclear also) are improving while its relationship with the broader world is sinking like a stone.
What are they currently doing then? They're already supporting the "settlers" so territorial expansion is already in progress. They haven't expanded beyond that right now, but judging by their current actions, it seems to me they're already on that route, and only small parts of the world is currently trying to stop them.
In ideal world international peacekeeping forces would be deployed in Gaza. The peace and two state solution could only be enforced by imposing severe sanctions on Israel including possibility of aerial NATO strikes like in the former Yugoslavia.
Is two-state solution possible? Just look at the map of the territories under palestinian control, they're bantustans. Israel/Palestine is factually one state, which simply doesn't accept half of its population as citizens.
You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. So support for 2-state is just a form of delaying the inevitable.
I am now firm believer in one-state solution as the most fair one. Peter Beinart has some good arguments in its favor.
And I think it would be a poetic justice for all the racist settlers (or islamists) to have the people they hate as their neighbors.
>You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out.
The Arab world overwhelmingly rejected the UN Partition Plan in principle, which led directly to the 1948 Palestine war and the first Arab-Israeli war. Likewise, the signing of the Oslo Accords (and the rejection of those accords by Hamas, PIJ and other factions within the PLO) led directly to the Second Intifada. Most of the Arab world has now conceded that Israel isn't going anywhere and huge steps have been made in normalising Arab-Israeli relations, but Palestinian politics is still dominated by a fundamentally futile anti-Zionist absolutism.
A credible option of full statehood and international recognition has been on the table for nearly eighty years, but Palestinians have consistently failed to establish a workable consensus on taking up that option. The PLO's intransigence has alienated most of their allies in the region, primarily because they instigated civil wars in both Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975).
A one-state solution is no solution at all while there remain extremists on both sides who are simply unwilling to coexist; unless Israel can reign in the religious right and the Palestinians can establish a political consensus in favour of coexistence, it's a straightforward path to war. There's no "poetic justice" in making people who hate each other live together, just an inevitable perpetuation of bloodshed.
The political debates about land rights are intractably complex, but the fundamental realpolitik question is about how much the Palestinians are willing to suffer for the principle of "from the river to the sea". Israel is militarily dominant and is likely to remain so regardless of how much international pressure is brought to bear. In simple practical terms, the ball is in the Palestinian court and it is for them to decide whether to seriously engage in a two (or three) state solution with international support, or whether to continue pursuing an unwinnable conflict. A post-Netanyahu Israel is highly likely to support a serious two-state solution, but simply isn't going to accept a one-state solution; even if you believe a one-state solution to be the only just outcome, it isn't a workable outcome.
The UN partition plan was a plan to take a huge chunk of Palestine and hand it to foreign settlers. Of course, Palestinians did not love it.
Israel has never made a prolonged effort to build the mutual trust necessary to reach a negotiated settlement. During the Oslo Accords, the Israeli settler population nearly doubled.
One only need observe how Palestinian territory has shrunk decade after decade ever since 1948 to see that it is not merely Palestinian intransigence that has prevented peace.
Clearly then there are other values being pursued here other than peace first and foremost. But if you don't have power, you do need to suck up your pride if you want to move forward at all.
Israel never really accepted two state solution either (US has been vetoing against it, and together with Israel they still threaten any politician who seriously floats the idea of Palestinian state). There is other evidence as well, but I don't think blaming either party is constructive.
So if neither party accepts the partition, the only conclusion is they will have to learn to live together on the same territory. It's not rocket science, everywhere else in the world this is possible.
I also think we passed the window for a two state solution.
Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse. Having them hate each other with centuries of history and territory claims is even worse still. Then giving them both, let alone one, access to the global arms market is asking for never ending wars of annihilation.
If you could design a situation that was maximally terrible for neighboring states, the two state solution would be it.
Based on what? The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best. It is true that there are many differing groups of people living in that area, but they were often simply under the dominion of one imperial power or another. This pat caricature is the equivalent of shrugging one's shoulders and saying "well that's how it's always been."
> The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best.
The modern model of statehood (which is probably what you are referring to) -- sometimes referred to as the "nation-state" model, but it is not actually particularly centered on the coextensiveness of the nations and states, and certainly orthogonal to states being ethnonationalist -- is at least ~300 years old (its often attributed to being ~400 years old and originating in the two peace settlements collectively known as the "Peace of Westphalia", but that's not really accurate.) OTOH, the concept of nations (which are basically the coextension of an ethnic community and a land) is much older.
But, in any case, it has not been the case at all that the history of the Levant is one of two local adjacent coexistent ethnonationalist polities, whether or not they look like modern states. That's just a simply false claim made upthread which needs no reference to the history of models of nations or states to rebut; before 1948, for a very long time, the Levant was more often either under one (multinational, imperial) polity or split between a couple of adjacent ones (often in the process of transitioning from unified control of one to the other), whether it was the British Empire, or the Ottoman Empire, a series of different Arab-led empires, the Eastern Roman Empire, the (pre-split) Roman Empire, various Greek-derived empires, the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, etc.
I was actually thinking of the idea of nationalism itself, which really got off the ground in the 1800s after the Napoleonic Wars. Though yeah, I miswrote the "concept of nations."
During the times there was an external security guarantor, conflict would by definition go down (assuming the external power was sufficiently potent and stable). So you can't say that both chaos and dominion were happening simultaneously at all times.
> One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
And one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani.
> you can't say that both chaos and dominion were happening simultaneously at all times
Nobody said this.
> one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani
Well, yes. It’s a nexus of navigable waterways. It has taken millennia of negotiating, atrocity and—ultimately—an external security guarantor twinned with mutual forgiveness to attain, for a short period, peace.
It is unclear to me that Palestinians represent an “ethnonationalist” block. My understanding is that the definition of “Jewish” for the purposes of immigration to Israel is a somewhat precise combination of genealogical or religious criteria. But I don’t know of an equivalent definition for Palestinian. Can someone educate me on this? In the absence of such a definition, it seems that the primary conflict is whether Palestine should be specifically designated as a home for all “Jews” or merely as a home for the people that currently live there.
Again - I’d love further education about legal definitions.
Any ethnonationalist definition is inherently subjective and thus inherently fuzzy. It’s an exercise that derives from a time when some thought one could scientifically classify races.
My point was that AFAIK, Palestinians would include Jews in the potential citizens of a Palestine. So that the conflict is not between two ethnonationalist groups.
There certainly is rhetoric around the ethnic origin of some Israeli citizens being Northern European rather than middle eastern, so perhaps the original claim has some validity.
I guess I meant it as more of a longer term solution.
In that, given a few years/decades of a two state solution, you'd have a partition occur, whether by force as was in India/Pakistan, or by more natural processes over time.
Honestly, I could see a partition occur as a condition for a two state solution. One side for the muslims, one for the jews.
I guess I should amend my comment to say theocratic ethno-nationalist / ethno-religious states, but I am likely messing up my greek/Plato (?) here. Suffice to say, the state of Palestine would have a super majority of muslim Palestinian citizen voters (currently-ish 87%, ~6M people total, though hard to define really), and the state of Israel would have a slight majority of jewish citizen voters (currently 48% jewish, 48% arab, ~14M people total, but Israeli Arab enfranchisement is a thing). Though 'steady state' numbers would likely shift the voting blocs towards the representative religions due to some partitioning as I described. Just FYI, there are about 6.3M jews and 4.5M muslims in the US currently.
The total numbers of jews and palestinians that would be 'in theatre' is hard to determine, but think about 8M jews and about 9M palestinians for guestimations.
So, I think I'm on pretty stable ground calling the likely resultant two state solution an ethno-religious solution. Other commenters are right in that the definition of 'nation' is a bit difficult with these two groups.
Look either way, the two state solution is like, maximally bad. Having these two people with their histories and hatreds literally sharing walls is just crazy as it stands. Then giving them both access to the global arms market, let alone just Israel, is so crazy.
And no, I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell to do. No one does.
The only reason the Palestinians are considered "ethno-nationalist" is that they are opposing a facist, genocidal, actually ethno-nationalist state that has spread its propaganda that any disagreement on any grounds is anti-semitism.
It's ridiculous and I know the moment I see someone dig into their bag of slander with that they are not arguing in good faith.
Hey, I know this a rando internet commenter here, but what do you think is the solution then? To me, adding more money and guns into this conflict sounds like a really bad idea. But I'm not there and I'm just a fool as a result. I'm honestly asking and not just trolling, really. I'd love your perspective.
Ideally? Palestinian accepting the existence of Israel, foregoing their demands for the right to return and East Jerusalem, and then we can peacefully coexist.
Realistically? Maintaining strong border security, erect more walls, prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel, legally or illegally, control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
Regarding the hostages? Besiege Gaza until they are returned.
I'll preface that my knowledge of the situation is 'bad'. In that, I think I'm likely not qualified to give informed opinions on it. Okay, that out of the way...
> Ideally? Palestinian accepting the existence of Israel, foregoing their demands for the right to return and East Jerusalem, and then we can peacefully coexist.
Right to return is a tricky one here. It's been very long that they have been 'out' of their homes/locations. So much so that it's difficult to say whose it is now. Which, yeah, that's not good. I come at this from a Native American perspective. In that, my ancestors took land away and had land taken away from them. I can feel that pain still in the family and that listlessness and hurt in me to a (absurdly) small degree.
From what I know, the sticking point of all sticking points is the Temple Mount. Each side wants it to the exclusion of the other. And from what I can see, each side is willing to mortgage their children's and grandchildren's lives on that point. Literally, this is the hill they are willing to die on, and sacrifice their progeny on too, endlessly (ancient allusions come flying out here without much effort).
I used to think that someone could 'Kind David' that land and just nuke it or something. But no, they would fight over the glowing green hole too, like the irradiated wasteland in Fallout 4. To an outsider, it's hopeless, I don't think that either side is willing to ever peacefully relent on the Temple Mount, let alone all the other land.
> Realistically? Maintaining strong border security, erect more walls, prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel, legally or illegally, control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
I don't see how treating the Palestinians poorly is going to make things better. Their incentives are badly aligned with Israel's if they are treated in such a way. I don't think that trying to forcibly make them a separate entity is going to get them to do what Israel needs. To me, the best way to get Palestinians to stop the violence is to have them 'grow' their way out of it. In that, they are so busy thriving that they no longer care about the past issues. This, I admit, is a very American perspective, and a western American one at that. I know that my idea here is a longer term one, and right now the short term is very critical. But, for me, it's a matter of incentives. If Israel can somehow make it so that the conditions exist that Palestine is more interested in something other than the destruction of Israel, then all the better. I have no feasible way to accomplish this though. I can only say to look at places and times where such things did occur. My terribly brief survey of this says that it's a matter of poverty and growing out of the 'hole' was the solution when it did occur. Still, I know that the deep and long hatreds overshadow it all.
My solution is a glib one. The participants just need to stop being who they are. These ways don't seem to work well. My automatic reaction is that they all just need to do the hard work of true forgiveness. But, again, that's not who the participants are. That is a Christian method for Muslims and Jews; it's not going to happen.
I guess my main disagreement is that the proposed solutions don't deal with the longer term, just the shorter one, and they don't accept the agency and feelings of the Palestinians and their incentives.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss and learn more. Please tell me where I am wrong and missing out on things. Also, sorry for delays in response and I think we're in quite different time zones and schedules.
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an israeli as he was working toward a two state solution. Yasser Arafat recognized the right of Israel to exist in 1988 was assassinated. (sorry, "died of mysterious causes for no reasons and toxicology report said it was all good no biggie we don't know what Mossad uses anyways.). Israel spent the last 40 years systematically destroying any hope at giving palestinians any chance to ever want to "accept" Israel
>foregoing their demands for the right to return
Promised by God 3000 years ago for me but not for thee. Israel exiled millions of Palestinians from the land they were inhabiting.
>and East Jerusalem
Holy land for all three major abrahamic religions, but I guess it's israeli now. And muslims are banned. Cool cool. Now onto the cool stuff:
>Maintaining strong border security
Which ones, the ones that already existed where IDF soldiers shot children for fun ?
>erect more walls
Build a better prison ?
>prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel
Let's see. Walls on land. Naval blockade. Yep, building a better prison. And since the IDF is, day after day pushing palestinians into whatever city is left. Khan Yunis is gone, Rafah is gone, Gaza City is gone, Jabalyia is gone, Beit Hanoun is gone. Five of the seven major cities of Gaza are rubble, and palestinians are forced to move to ever smaller encampments with no food, water or health care, while Israel is systematically stopping any attempts at sending aid.
>control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
You already do, and you miserably failed at it. What next, nuke Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt because they might have tunnels ?
>Besiege Gaza until they are returned.
Not only have you ensured that a vast majority of hostages will never be returned by flattening Gaza and burying a vast majority of them, that's something called collective punishment.
Let's tally it up. Collective punishment. Ethnically cleansing a land (which is what the Nakba was). "God given right". Systematic and intentional starving, dehumanization and imprisonment of a group. Military occupation. Concentration camps.
I can't wait until the US government cuts Israel off from the weapons teet and tells them to fight their genocidal wars of aggression with their own money instead of the American taxpayer's money.
Right, the government which I voted for in 2021 in a democratic and free election, composed of entirely secular Jewish parties, and included an Arabic party as part of the coalition, that’s an example for a theocratic government.
Honestly, I wouldn't ask Israelis or Palestinians for their opinion. I think the OSN should mandate and using peace forces:
- Establish a new, transitional government of Israel/Palestine, nominated by the UN
- Give citizenship to every Israeli and Palestinian for the whole territory
- Mandate a 50/50 ethnic quotas system in the military, police, judiciary and all government institutions, and minimum 30% ethnic quotas in every other employer
- Create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, modeled after JAR; it would figure out what reparations are needed to each citizen
- Mandate both hebrew and arabic as official languages, and teach every kid both in school
- Once things would settle down, after 1-2 years, run a new elections but with constitutional provisions (5-10 years) against dismantling the quotas
Heck, even US could do this unilaterally (just like British did), if they wanted to pursue human rights.
What a silly, unrealistic idea. No other country or coalition is going to launch a violent ground invasion of Israel and Palestine in order to impose peace terms on them. Protecting human rights in other countries is not our responsibility. They'll have to solve their own disputes one way or another.
No ground invasion is needed, not even serious economic sanctions for non-compliance. Just a simple phone call from American president, that Israelis are now free to fend themselves from "hostile Arabs", without US military aid (there's a precedent btw). After all, it's Israel's own responsibility to protect human rights, isn't it?
If the United States launched a land war on Israel and Palestine, Russia and China. It would be an opportunity to bog down the United States in the Middle East for another generation.
I haven't confirmed the numbers, but I saw an estimate of 75% of Israeli military funding came from foreign aid (primarily the US) and those numbers did not include the US sitting in the Mediterranean with ships intercepting rockets.
If they had to cut down their military to 25% they would collapse from outside attacks. Israel would probably figure out the funding so it wouldn't drop by that much though.
Which "hostile arabs"? Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States want military cooperation with Israel to counter Iran. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc are too busy with their own affairs and have no desire to fight a unnecessarily destructive war.
Would it be nice if people could get along and not require militarised borders to keep them from killing each other? Sure. This was essentially the colonial assumption when the Middle East (and Africa’s) modern borders were drawn—that local preferences could be overcome by force of will.
In reality, where you draw borders on a map matters less than the people on the ground’s identities and guns.
Besides, Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. A Palestinian state would be Lebanon x 1000, never ending war and no respect for borders. The real problem is Europe and America's funding and insane levels of political and diplomatic support for Israel, to the point that we are willing to gut international law and even our own citizen's civil rights to prop up the zionist invasion.
They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Look at my proposal above. War didn't happen in postapartheid JAR, despite everybody saying it would. What would people fight for, after all? They are all citizens of the same (biethnic) country, that's the perspective the world "leaders" should bring to the table.
> They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Okay, so in your opinion, there is exactly one state that is currently engaged in a civil war. How would world leaders telling them "You are actually one country engaged in a civil war" stop that war?
The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. The muslim arab majority would not accept a jewish minority living within them, they consider them foreign colonialists that need to be purged (and you may have heard of one or two groups currently leading those muslim arabs that have that exact official position).
> You need to bring some argument.
When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre (picked as an example because of the "humour" of having to disambiguate it from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks ) no one thinks going back to that is viable.
> The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority.
In the modern world, if you accept universal human rights, every minority in the world has to accept that it's a minority, and every majority in the world has to learn to accept the minority. In addition, everyone is a minority is some sense and somewhere - depends on your worldview.
What you're saying is a very condescending (and frankly antisemitic) claim - that Israelis (or Jews) are somehow "special" in being so stupid to never accept this. Of course they can accept it, just like everybody else in the world learns to accept there are other ethnicities and races. Americans, for example, learned to accept it. Likewise, all Jews outside Israel have accepted being a minority. It's not really a problem that racists make it out to be (at the end of the day, people individual differences and conflicts trump most group differences).
> When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm
That's why modern biethnic countries have laws and other systems that prevent that - see my comment above. A good example is Belgium. The point is, you can change the perception from 2-states to functioning 1-state without having to give up anything related to each ethnicity's cultural heritage. Has been done many times in history.
But South African apartheid, as well as American Jim Crow laws, were about people who didn't think they occupied different countries, and didn't think they should. It was about changing how the law saw people within the same country, with everyone agreeing they should be in the same state, under the same government.
Israel/Palestine seems to be two groups of people who really do not want to live together, and would prefer to be rid of the other side.
In an ideal world none of the past 70 years of conflicts that led to this unrecoverable resentfulness would have happened. Unfortunately the only peaceful solution I can imagine is for Israel to let Gazans move to other Arab-world countries, let Israel annexate Gaza, and then imposing strict border controls and watches such that if Israel attempts any ethnic cleansing or illegal occupation they get severly sanctioned.
This is a problem for the neighbouring countries, isn't it? They don't want to deal with a bunch of new people any more than any other country does.
> let Israel annexate Gaza
This is just admitting that might makes right
> and then imposing strict border controls... severly sanctioned
You would need people to actually believe this
Even so, this plan does not address the fact that both parties really really want to live on the same land. You might as well ask the Israelis why they aren't content to resettle some other place, they wouldn't accept it anymore than the Palestinians would.
This would be about the 5th time your approach has been tried. Every time the result has been the same: Israel happily accepts your gift of land, expands, and conducts the same attacks against the next bit of land, violating all peace treaties. Why do you expect different results this time?
Why not the reverse? Israel is clearly the aggressor here, not Palestine. The only path to sustainable peace is to do to Israel what the world did to Germany after WW2: a complete destruction of the fascist Tel Aviv regime and the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for top Israeli officials.
This happened in the West Bank, not Gaza. But if you are talking about peacekeeping forces in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, I think there's a good argument for it.
Like the peacekeeping troops sent into South Lebanon after UNSC Resolution 1701? Oh, you didn't know about that one? Maybe there's a reason Israel does not trust diplomacy anymore.
To the extent there is consensus among today’s superpower and regional powers, it’s that international peacekeepers don’t work. At best they delay while incubating a conflict.
Peacekeeping worked in the former Yugoslavia and many other places. It's more like these days it seems like the international aspect is lacking; the consensus of the so-called world community has really been in shambles for the past two decades. I think the one time where unanimous cooperation existed was against Somali piracy in the early '10s.
> there are studies that show (by looking at past conflicts) that peacekeeping does work
They work for the people whose peace they're keeping. Their benefit to the benefactors is less clear. It's why they're becoming increasingly uncommon [1].
There is no solution. It's an intractable problem. Violent conflicts between ethnic / sectarian / tribal groups have been a constant in that region for millennia. The only periods of (relative) peace have come when an external hegemon comes in and conquers everyone, and none of the current superpowers have any interest in doing that. Everyone will keep wringing their hands and nothing will really change. It's terrible but that's the reality.
UN peace keepers were assigned to southern Lebanon after the 2006 war. They didnt do anything as Hezbollah remilitarized heavily. Israel cannot trust external peacekeepers.
west gives tens of billions of dollars to russia every year for oil/gas.
and with this money russia builds bombs. or buys bombs from iran and north korea
Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza, but Hamas has rejected it. If I may quote Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, "We stress our people's rejection of the presence of any non-Palestinian actors on our land." [https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2024/04/02/hamas-says-no-to-i...]. They only accept aid organizations.
>Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza
This is a bit misleading.
Israel proposed that it maintain absolute and total military control of Gaza, but that a "peacekeeping force" from three Arab nations, bizarrely to be controlled by the US, would "secure food distribution".
Israel has absolutely zero intention of handing over control of Gaza, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to vilify and delegitimize every international organization at every turn.
An actual peacekeeping force as described above would be about keeping Israel in check as much as ensuring Hamas doesn't re-appear.
> Israel has absolutely zero intention of handing over control of Gaza,
The charter for Hamas for years called for the total destruction of Israel. That's been recently removed, but their actions haven't changed.
Why would any nation allow such a government to be their neighbor? The best that anyone could hope for would be a North / South Korea or CCP/KMT divide, but those only work because both sides share a common identity.
Israeli administration of Gaza preceded Hamas' foundation. Its administration of the West Bank is characterized by regular IDF incursions into its settlements where homes are demolished, residents are kidnapped and tortured without cause, and armed, escorted settlers are let loose to assault the same residents and loot their businesses. Hamas' founders were all born either in settlements that have been forcefully depopulated by Israel or in refugee camps that still exist today because they keep getting filled up by people who lived in those settlements. I imagine most people would be miffed by this set of circumstances.
Israel is trying to destroy Gaza and its people - look at any recent photos.
There is some equivalence in the aims, and one group has begun to get close - Israel.
None of the countries with the actual capacity for aggressive outside intervention have any interest in doing so. For better or worse it's just not a priority. People in the Israel / Palestine region will have to find a solution to their own problems, or (more likely) just continue the horrifying and pointless cycle of violence.
The countries with capacity for outside intervention are intervening - to support Israel. Without constant outside support, Israel would fall by this time next month. It would not longer be a country.
Nah. Israel is a nuclear power. They have a right to exist and won't just quietly disappear. If they feel that they're facing an existential threat then they'll use those weapons. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, just that it would be the most likely outcome. The current situation is bad for everyone involved but it could get even worse.
It has a series of Basic Laws that serve that function (they are expressly a solution to the failure initially to pass a Constitution and are intended to be compiled once complete into a Constitution), but while some of them are problematic on grounds that touch on the Israel-Palestine conflict, I don't think any of them call for the destruction of Palestine (which isn't to say that most Israeli leaders since Israeli occupied the West Bank and Gaza haven't done something like that, but that's a different issue than the Basic Laws doing it.)
> Which miltary body other than any linked to one of the conflict parties did Israel propose to do the peacekeeping?
Hamas didn’t counter with a preferred peacekeeping composition, they rejected peacekeeping to retain their monopoly on violence (and Gaza’s resources).
To the extent there are evils in this story, they’re the leadership of Hamas and Likud.
I didn't claim Isreal set forth a realistic peace keeping plan, you did. And you failed to bring the receipts.
What you say here is the equivalent of Russia proposing to Ukraine that the war could be ended if they install the Russian National Guard as peace keepers in their country and then saying: "But Ukraine didn't make a counterproposal".
Yes, because that kind of proposal is an insult to the intelligence of everybody who has to read it. And your point about Hamas means you're waving the flag for one of the war parties here and thus have an entirely untrustworthy position anyways.
Let me clarify: If a party to any war proposes a peacekeeping force that is already fighting in the war, it is not a credible peace offer, period. A credible peace offer involves a peace keeping force that is seen as neutral enough by both sides of the conflict.
> If a party to any war proposes a peacekeeping force that is already fighting in the war, it is not a credible peace offer
This is fair. My point is Hamas has shown zero interest in an international peacekeeping force in Gaza. A lack of enthusiasm possibly only matched by the nations that would have to provide said force.
Zionism didn't become nazism by fighting against it, there is a deep history of zionism collaborating with the Nazi regime. Both shared an ethno-nationalist worldview from the start and the objective of moving the Jewish people out of Germany.
The original European Jews who founded Israel were even opposed to the German Nazis transferring thousands of Jewish children to other countries to save their lives.
These Zionist Jews thought it would be better for their state building project if these children were all murdered than if the children were sent anywhere except to Palestine.
But, some of the collaboration wasn't really the Zionist Jews' entire fault. E.g., the machine tools the Zionist Jews used to create weaponry to murder Palestinian civilians and ethnically cleans Palestine were all German made, and purchased from the Nazi regime, but this was because the Nazis only allowed the rich jews to leave with German made products, not with cash. So, when the minority of Jews fled to Israel/Palestine instead of to the United States (vast majority went to the US), they were instructed to purchase machine tools from the Germans to bring with them.
Good old German industrial lobbying with opponent with their fingers in a vise. I'm wondering in case of a conflict who will be better off, me with stock portfolio at "broker GmbH" or others with real estate within the range of Russian rockets and drones.
They have been settling the only territory that actually stopped the armed struggle against Israel. The West Bank has literally kicked out Hamas, stopped fighting for years, and given up their arms for the most part. And Israel has been relentlessly colonizing them since then, as a show of good faith I guess. The Palestinians there have absolutely 0 recourse, and will eventually lose all of their home land.
But I'm sure they wouldn't have done the same to Gaza if they would've just done the right thing by kicking off Hamas, and stopping any armed resistance !
I mean they didn't literally kill every single arab in Gaza yet so they are very progressive. They'd rather just slowly settle your land and kill you if you resist, as opposed to Hamas who would've done the same but faster. Let's not forget that they have killed tens of thousands of Muslims, but at least they could've killed even more!
Actually hamas, pij and other organizations are alive and kicking in West Bank. There are areas that PA doesn't control because of them. Last year PA tried to deal with them, failed and called in Israel in order to take out hamas. PA in West Bank exists only because Israeli military supports it.
Also there is non stop attempts (some successful and some not) to execute terror attacks from West Bank. It just never appears in Western media
Still, as you said they are also hunted down and are marginal in the West Bank. It did nothing to stop Israel from settling as they pleased.
And the Fatah also stopped armed resistance on their own, and fought off Hamas. So while the PA might only exist now because Israel props them up, that wasn't the case 20 years ago, not to the same extent.
The West Bank Palestinians there went for a more pacifist route and in return, got the biggest wave of unbridled settlements in the past 60 years. And they have lost any mean to even scare the settlers off. The settlers know that they are almost entirely defenseless, relatively speaking.
a) not marginal. they are powerful enough to create "no-go zones" for PA and to attempt executing terror acts in Israel
b) i'll suggest you to take a look how many new settlements israel build in last 20 years or so. it may surprise you
c) Fatah didn't stop armed resistance. It military wings got wiped by Israel in second intifada. And it didn't fought off Hamas. It lost to Hamas in Gaza and survived in west bank because Israel is present there
d) west bank palestinians didn't went a more pacifist route [-1]. it's just western media doesn't cover palestinian violence in west bank. as i previously suggested, check out how many new settlements were build in last 20 years.
I'm not sure why you say that it would surprise me. How many settlements do you think is okay? And more importantly, how many projected settlements are okay, in your opinion?
No, Fatah did absolutely stop armed resistance. Getting wiped by Israel hasn't been a reason for Palestinians to stop fighting or laying down the arms before. Fatah stopped fighting, in part due to Israel's military victory, sure. But also because they chose to not further entrench themselves in insurgency. Hamas has been knocked out almost into oblivion, and still manages to fight, and according to what you said, they are even gaining ground in the West Bank.
And yeah, no go zones means that the PA doesn't go there because they are against Hamas, and afaik they don't fight Israel either. Sounds like they did chose the pacific route w.r.t Israel ?
Also, any terror attacks in the West Bank itself against Israelis is by definition an attack against settlers. Rockets aren't getting thrown from there, incursions into Israel are very rare, etc. And even those aren't done by organized groups (like the Fatah used to be), except for Hamas, and again Hamas is seen as an enemy by the Palestinian authorities there. The Fatah did win in the West Bank 20 years ago, against Hamas.
I'm not sure how you are arguing against my original point though. The West Bank authorities and the majority of the people living there aren't engaging in armed resistance against Israel. Groups who do are being treated as criminals and they work with Israel to fight them off. Israel in return keeps expanding their settlements (the scale doesn't matter, that's exactly what they have been doing, and Israel had been vocally pushing for the largest expansion in settlements ever, months before October 2023).
- learning basic facts facilitates fact based discussions. you avoid going and learning facts that may not correspond to your worldview
- fatah was beaten down. it doesn't say "stopped". it says "lost". hamas wasn't knocked down into oblivion and they were always more popular than fatah
- no go zones means that PA doesn't go there because Hamas/PIJ will kill them there.
- rockets not thrown from there not because due to generosity of local population but because of work of shin bit. in fact since oct 7th there been significant increase in arms smuggling from jordan to west bank to a point that IDF is unable to prevent or monitor it. including heavier weapons. this is probably for cultivation of famously fertile west bank soil, according to you ?
- recent polling on elections: But if new legislative elections were held today with the participation of all political forces that participated in the 2006 elections, 62% say they will participate in them, and among the participants in the elections 43% say they will vote for Hamas, 28% for Fatah, 8% for third parties, and 19% have not yet decided. In the Gaza Strip, vote for Hamas among voters participating in the elections stands at 49% , and vote for Fatah among voters participating in the elections stands at 30% . In the West Bank, vote for Hamas stands at 38% and Fatah among voters participating in elections stands at 27%
- link that i posted above more certainly show that population engages in armed and not armed but violent resistance and attacks israeli population and constantly attempts to perform terror acts in Israel. and you still didn't tell me how much exactly israel expanded it settlements. you just claim that it did without any factual backing.
There shouldn't be any "israeli population" in the West Bank. To a large extent it is armed and commonly also in uniform, without being in IDF service.
From 1999 to 2018 colonial population in the West Bank grew from ~177000 to ~430000 or so. Since the current israeli government took power they've massively accelerated colonial efforts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and also moved away from military administration in a blatant rejection of international law. I.e. before the response from Hamas in October 2023.
Hamas are popular because they've achieved results, and are perceived as relatively moderate and flexible in politics. Their main competitor, PIJ, disavows parliamentary politics entirely as long as the occupation is in place, considering it a waste of resources and naive pandering to foreign governments that they have no faith in.
This excludes a few hundreds of thousands in East Jerusalem.
According to international law all of these people must be relocated to israeli territory. If I have understood it correctly the UN GA has given Israel a deadline for this in September.
Not sure why you were downvoted. Though it's a disgustingly poor excuse to say "at least we're not as bad as the Nazis" in justifying your own country's crimes against humanity, it also gives a bit of perspective when people do actually compare the modern Israeli state's violence with the savagery of the political system that provoked its formation.
Boy did this get downvoted. Truly folks, if any of you really believe the modern Israeli state to be in any way comparable to Nazi Germany, I suggest you go read a fucking history book or two in detail. I'm not defending Israel here either. The Netenyahoo (and he is a murderous, corrupt yahoo indeed) government has long since crossed the lines of defensibility, even for someone who has generally been a strong proponent of Israel's right to national defense, and an opponent of giving the Palestinian political organizations way too many moral free passes.
June 13: A previous version of this story named the two Palestinian men who were sent back home. Their names were removed after concerns were raised for their safety.
Why comply with the idea of calling a colonialist a "settler"? It's a deliberate propaganda word choice that for some reason caught on outside Israel. Let's stop, please?
Odeh Mohammad Khalil al-Hathalin, 31, was murdered by Yinon Levi, durring the same attack, an excavator brought to destroy homes was used to strike other unarmed palisinians.
There is video that also documents the murderer ,Yinon Levi, directing soldiers to arrest his victims family, which they did.
David Ben Avraham, a 63-year-old Israeli Jew, was asked his name, then immediately shot dead for being of Palestinian ethnicity and having a Jewish name, because he was a Jew.
The Isreali man really should not have been there, but I have to recognise a couple of things.
1) I don't know what anyone is saying except, ironically, plea's of someone near the camera man asking the Israeli man to "Shoot me".
2) I do not know what lead up to this confrontation
3) I have been in a circumstance before where a large group of people are acting frantic and in a threatening way and it's genuinely terrifying, so much so that you will act irrationally - this might be something others on this platform might not be familiar with.
The circumstance could have been avoided by Israel not having any settlers in the west bank, for sure, and it's a tragic situation.
However, I'm sitting here, in Sweden, behind a computer on a site about entrepreneurialism and technology.
I can't possibly say anything on the subject that's meaningful, none of us can. Why is it here?
If anything being armed in that situation is incredibly stupid, because you'll still panic and now you're acting irrationally with a deadly weapon. The weapon can be used (as this example) or taken off you.
I speak from experience, I got mobbed upon by a local gang, thought it would be smart to arm myself with a prop sword in order to stop them advancing.
It didn't stop them, and in fact the sword was taken off me (because it was a prop, and I wouldn't have used it even if it wasn't to be honest) - and they proceeded to smash it over my head sending me to hospital.
All of this is only obvious with a clear head, and in hindsight. Being in that situation as a human being is just.. awful. I don't recommend it.
EDIT: I'm getting flagged a lot from emotional people; I think this is part of why I really dislike this topic, we know nothing except how we feel and refuse to look at things objectively - and we're not even qualified to do that anyway. So everything becomes pornography to confirm our biases and to drown out anyone who doesn't immediately call for the end of Israel.
The settler was in someone else's land, and actively participated in displacing the people that were "terrifying" them. An easy way would've been to just leave. It's not even controversial, almost every country on earth recognizes that the settlements are illegal.
If a Russian soldier in Ukrainian territory shot some civilian in the face, I guess you'd also have put yourself in their shoes and given them the benefit of the doubt? I mean, they were terrified!
As you ask why this is here. Copied from the guidelines of this site: “What to submit? On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. (…) anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” So it’s fair to say that this site is about more than entrepreneurship and tech.
Perhaps we need to make some mapbox visualizations about the devastation in Gaza. Then we'll be on theme, but the topic is not going to change. Maybe someone should make a game about it and put it on Steam. Maybe it'll get banned. Then we can have the PERFECT discussion on HN, as so many want:
- About tech
- About a current event
- About censorship
Genocide by itself, that's just not good enough apparently. That's very weird because there's tons of serious discussion on HN about history. This place cares a lot about history. Whatever is happening right now is just real-time history.
I am in full support of Israel's actions in Gaza, but think Israel is completely out of line and breaking the law with their settlers actions in the West Bank.
As a Norwegian, it is absolutely baffling how someone can seriously utter the words "I am in full support of Israel's actions in Gaza". Is the media coverage that different in USA than in Europe? How is it possible?
I try very hard to find credible primary and secondary sources of what's true on the ground. For Gaza, but also for Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, I am basically a nerd about conflict zones. From all of my research, I believe the IDF gets a bad rap but is no worse in Gaza than any Western army would be in the same situation. And indeed we can see that in dug in cities like the coalition forces vs ISIS in Mosul, civilian casulaties happened at quite similar rates to Gaza.
The United States occupation of Iraq was like a trip to an amusement park compared to Gaza. Please don't compare the IDF to the US military. At least the US military and its soldiers had RoE that they respected. Any breaking of those rules did not get ignored like they do in the IDF.
As someone from the USA what I see from media coverage is genocide in Gaza. They would have to be truly ignorant and intentionally uninformed to say something like that or be in favor of genocide.
did you ever consider that media coverage is very selective and biased ?
i remember half an year ago, during ceasefire when gaza was swamped in aid and food was rotting on the streets, laura coates at prime time said that "hundreds of gazans die from starvation daily". never happened. not even dozens.
or when at abby phillips show yesterday, somebody tried to say that presenting images of children with genetic diseases as image of children who are dying from starvation is manipulative, abby phillips stopped this person and said that it's not important.
you must have seen numerous mentions that 500 trucks of food to gaza is minimum (and actually needed even more), because it's the number of trucks that were entering gaza before war ? but did you see even once mention that 500 is total number of trucks that included construction materials, animal feed, etc.. etc.. and maximum of trucks of food that entered gaza in 1 day before war was 72(82?)
I am guessing that no-one ever gets convicted for this murder. One small part of state condoned ethnic cleansing (if we are being generous) / genocide (if we are being less generous).
> I am guessing that no-one ever gets convicted for this murder.
He was arrested by Israeli police for questioning, but was later released on house arrest while an investigation continued.
About a dozen Israeli soldiers raided the mourning tent, pushing those attending out while keeping a thumb on the pin of a stun grenade. Soldiers declared the area a closed military zone and said only residents of the village could be present. They arrested two activists and threw stun grenades at journalists who were too slow to leave.
Was there ever a single serious arrest and conviction of anybody on Israel side in past 2 decades, be it civilians or IDF? Serious question, it doesn't seems so in similar attacks (and they are not that rare and will probably escalate)
A few, for example Meir Ettinger, an hilltop youth leader has served some time in jail.
The idea for Israel was to have its national criminal jurisdictions prosecute just enough to not be seen as failing by the ICC and meet its 'complementarity' criterion [0]. Even spying on ICC staff to see who it was investigating.
At least that's how it used to be, now they just threaten the ICC.
Not only our countries but the state of Israel itself, it's ongoing for decades, it has only further eroded Israel's security (who could've guessed that allowing your citizens to displace, and/or kill, people who already lived there would have consequences?).
The documentary "Checkpoint" is more than 20 years old by now, the treatment of West Bank's Palestinians has been fucked up for even longer than that, and Netanyahu's government only made it worse.
I wish to see in my lifetime Israel having to reckon with the fact they've become the monster, justifying their actions after the immense suffering their ancestors went through during the Holocaust is impossible...
Edit: according to Yuval Abraham[0], the killer instructed soldiers to arrest the other 4 family members of Awdah Hathaleen which are still in jail, while the murderer was released under house arrest, fucking insane.
Since I'm past the window to edit my comment, here's another example of the abhorrent behaviour from Israeli forces[0] which has been all too common for decades, not very different from Amon Göth, and just check the article's date (2018).
Out in the real world - how much "our countries take action" stuff actually happens when regular & systematic violence is occurring somewhere?
When it does happen, how often does well-intended foreign intervention actually "fix" things - vs. turning into a yet another "park our troops there 'till we finally run out of patience" occupation?
My read is that the many powerful factions which favor (overtly or not) the ongoing violent mess in/around Israel have (generally) very good understandings of the situation and its dynamics. And the benefits & costs - for them - of encouraging it to continue indefinitely. Vs. the opposing side is dominated by sincere but all-too-simple "make horrible things stop happening!!!" emotions.
I don't think anyone is realistically expecting western countries to intervene to stop the genocide. But we are expecting our countries to stop helping the genocide. That's the difference.
It is essential to pay attention to the timeline of events, to not distort the sequence and progression of events. First Hamas rejected the two-state solution. Israel has later, in effect, accepted their rejection.
Your argument is subtly biased in that you equivocating two different levels of entities: one of them is a political/militant/terrorist organisation and another is a state.
If we're dealing with the first level we should compare Hamas and Likud (+coalition); if we're dealing with the second level, we should compare Palestine and Israel. Elevating Hamas to represent the entirety of Palestine in the conflict is twisting the logic.
nothing makes more unsympathetic to the Israeli side than talking to zionists themselves. I had a guy threaten to doxx me to employer in instagram because I said that Israel is committing a genocide and that killing children is unjustifiable. I reported it to instagram, a clear case of malicious verbal intent and yet they decided it wasn't against community guidelines.
Hamas to this day still has hostages. People were still butchered and raped by Hamas. The meme that Palestinians are blameless is just not accurate. Not defending either side, just saying this is like the Soviets and the Nazis on the Eastern Front.
Last night I went to bed late and my wife had trouble sleeping. She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide that they will plannedly un-live whole other nation and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
We're both from the country where most of the planned un-living of the First Holocaust were performed. We recently discussed how in a street poll, half of Polish population couldn't solve a simple math task, a simple language task and one more simple task, placing Poland in the second last position from all the countries taking place. (For comparison, in Norway and Holland only 9%). And how it was likely a consequence of genetic holocaust performed on Poles by both German and Russian nazis during the 2WW. That systematic destruction of elites can behead a country for years to come.
I tried to calm her down, show her that it's just her Instagram bubble that makes her think so. That such things like planned un-living don't happen anymore in the civilized world where we are living, that last time something like that was about to happen, there was a UN action in the Balkans. Or that through the common effort we've managed to halt Russia's advance when they once again attempted to conquer Europe.
But now in the morning the next day I have my own doubts. That people have to use special language to talk about the Holy Land situation to avoid censorship on Youtube or other websites. That this thread got pulled down 30 minutes after posting (even though I was positively surprised when it was reinstated another 30 min later). That just like during the First Holocaust, even though the nations of civilized world are being informed about what's happening, people are ignoring the subject and not beliving that it actually happen.
Why use this word, "un-live" multiple times? How does one confront or at all protest grotesque things if they can't so much as mention them without absurd, childish euphemisms? Kill, it's about killing, or maybe more accurately: exterminating, butchering, slaughtering, murdering. There, better to properly, crudely name things that are by nature crude and barbaric.
I think you are right to have doubts. Europe was sincere when it said Russia must not be allowed to unilaterally invade and occupy other countries. Because that is the starting point to what you said, the unilateral murder or expulsion of whole peoples and nations.
If we look backwards in time, we come from a very violent history, but politics and technology has continuously reshaped how it happens. For example wars post industrialism were much more murderous than ever before.
The long arch view(?) seems to be that the post-WWII era has ended and something new is coming around the corner. It looks like an era of bigger empires but without the single superpower.
Good thing you removed all the double plus ungood badthink from your post citizen, your corporate owners thank you and remind you to reward yourself with a cool, refreshing Pepsi-Cola!
Content creators use that language to avoid being de-monetized. Note, no platform actually censors "kill", "suicide", etc, but they do remove monetization. I have no idea why other people use it. It's not like you can monetize comments. I guess it just shows how much cultural pull "new media" have.
> We're both from the country where most of the planned un-living of the First Holocaust were performed. We recently discussed how in a street poll, half of Polish population couldn't solve a simple math task, a simple language task and one more simple task, placing Poland in the second last position from all the countries taking place. (For comparison, in Norway and Holland only 9%). And how it was likely a consequence of genetic holocaust performed on Poles by both German and Russian nazis during the 2WW. That systematic destruction of elites can behead a country for years to come.
Objecting to the Holocaust because it eugenicized the wrong way is a thing I guess.
Out of curiosity, are you referring to this "action" in the Balkans, where the UN soldiers basically stood up watching and doing absolutely nothing while 8k civilians where executed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre
Nope, while I'm aware of Srebrenica (still have a history podcast on that in my backlog) I meant other actions like arms bans, two air campaign (Deliberate Force and Allied Force) that have prevented even more atrocities.
I've read up a little more about it now, didn't know it was that complex. (Pretty much 3 or more wars in the 10y period). Since I read up on it now, I noticed some connections to planned un-living of the current second holocaust in The Strip. Just like in Gaza, there were ~140k ppl killed and millions displaced.
That is precisely the point. OP cites "UN action in the Balkans" to soothe his wife, whereas UN's inaction led to the first legally recognized genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.
> She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide [...] and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
>> She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide that they will plannedly un-live whole other nation and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
> You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
Being upset at the world and unwilling to engage in diplomacy is, thankfully, not a valid justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
> What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
The ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians is definitely sadder than what preceded it.
By NY Times "retraction," I assume you are referring to this statement:
> Children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation. Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.
I hardly think that constitutes a retraction, nor do "pre-existing conditions" make the image of a starving child any less chilling, for me, personally.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250730090607/https://www.latim...
Can someone living in Israel help me understand what is going on right now?
What does the political climate look like in Israel? Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this?
Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
I know that the media is all over the place and it's hard to figure out what is going on as an outsider.
Either way, I hope that this situation gets resolved. I don't think that it's good for anyone and is costing a lot of money and lives.
To quote the NYTimes:
“Despite the desperate humanitarian crisis, a survey conducted in May by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University found that 64.5 percent of the Israeli public was not at all, or not very, concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
“About three-quarters of Israeli Jews thought that Israel's military planning should not take into account the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, or should do so only minimally, according to another recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-d...
The banality of evil on full display. These very same people will claim in the future that they were misled or did not understand the gravity of crimes being committed in Gaza and the West Bank.
That is horrific and much worse than I thought it was.
[flagged]
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Yes. The minimum rules we all must agree on have to be the basic human rights. And that means we can’t take all the civilians in Gaza hostage for Hamas. These are humans with hopes and dreams and friends and family, like you and like Israelis.
That Israel in particular would so easily forget about this is horrible.
If the above mentioned surveys are to believed, then a not insignificant fraction of Israelis care less than you expect them to.
Why is that? What are we misunderstanding about their perspective that causes the expectation to be off?
> Why is that? What are we misunderstanding about their perspective that causes the expectation to be off?
There's a perfect explanation for this in Ten Steps of Genocide, which is taught by many Holocaust museums.
Instead of recognizing Palestinian humanity, Israelites (not all, but enough to gain control of their government) have allowed themselves to discriminate, dehumanize, and persecute them.
Granted, not doing so in a situation as fraught with hostility & danger as Israel's would have taken tremendous levels of moral courage, but if there's one ethnic group that we expected to be aware of the slippery slope of genocide, it's the jews.
> Israelites
The demonym for someone from Israel is Israeli.
> Instead of recognizing Palestinian humanity
There are ~2m Palestinians in Israel, making up about 21% percent of the population of Israel and Palestinians in Israel have had the right to vote since 1949.
According to my research, there are 10 Palestinians in the Knesset.
So I don't know that your claim is accurate.
> According to my research, there are 10 Palestinians in the Knesset.
That's great, but it doesn't contradict my claim. After all, I didn't say "all Israelis". I said "enough Israelis to gain control of their government".
You said that Israelites dehumanize Palestinians.
Improve your reading comprehension.
I said: "Instead of recognizing Palestinian humanity, Israelites (not all, but enough to gain control of their government) have allowed themselves to discriminate, dehumanize, and persecute them."
"Israelites dehumanize Palestinians" is an over-simplification of my statement.
And that is exactly why global opinion is souring on Israel.
Gazans are not being put onto railroad cars and shipped off to camps to be systematically exterminated in gas chambers.
right now , the israeli government is building a "moral concentration camp" for them in gaza atm where gazan will forced to go to or be shot on sight.
can you understand how that isn't any better than what the nazis did?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/16/israel-presses-ahea...
So now when the targeted population is actually increasing, we can still call it a "genocide". And when there is no actual concentration camp we can say there is a "moral concentration camp". Stop getting your news from Al Jazeera, FFS.
> So now when the targeted population is actually increasing, we can still call it a "genocide".
Please show me where the targeted population is "increasing" over the last two years? is it because people from other areas are being forced to relocate and you guys call that a population increase?
Where should i get my news from? last I checked, 100+ journalists came out with a written statement about how higher ups at the BBC were preventing news critical of Israel from being broadcast on air. The concentration camp thing has been corroborated by several news sources including some from within Israel itself. Even CNN nowadays is starting to be critical of the genocide.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/02/more-than-400-...
What other areas?
Do you have any standards at all for what the word genocide means? You want to get into the muck about whether the population has increased or decreased by some fractional or single digit percentages? All this demonstrates is that you want to twist the meaning of words to support whatever interpretation of events is in vogue with your tribe.
well it turns out that it in fact, has not grown since the war began
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...
but I mean, you guys also call amnesty international, the ICC, the BBC and reality itself antisemetic so believe whatever you want. the only "tribe" I'm in is the one where indiscriminate killing of innocent people is wrong.
Where do you think these data are coming from? You think the UN and Amnesty International have census takers going tunnel to tunnel in Gaza?
Why don't you reveal your standard for what a "genocide" is without discrediting the actual ongoing genocides in other places? Israel has got to be the most incompetent prosecutor of genocide in history.
They made their home a concentration camp, no need for railroad cars this time...
... They are starved and slaughtered in place instead.
I imagined that, if nothing else, they'd have an interest in the next generation of Gazans not growing up with even more hatred towards Israel than the previous one. Which is kind of hard given the cruelty they are currently subjected to.
That is unless the plan is that there won't be a next generation of Gazans.
I think you've guessed their plan.
> You expect Israeli's to a give a fuck about Gazans?
Um, yes? Like you think the children being starved are all Hamas? You think the doctors and filmmakers and what have you are all terrorists?
Don't become worse than the thing you claim to fight.
Yes, I'd expect that from compassionate human beings. Such beings can hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time: the hostages situation is incredibly tragic, and the suffering inflicted unto innocent people who had nothing to do with the hostage taking is also immensely tragic and inhuman.
Using the hostages as justification for collective punishment is exactly what Netanyahu's government want, it becomes easy to justify the abhorrent treatment of millions of people, repeating this is just ceding power to the worst elements of his government (Ben Gvir, etc.).
The hostages should be returned by Hamas, that shouldn't cost millions of people their families, homes, lives, it's collective punishment, it's genocide.
It is this attitude that allows this genocide to start and continue.
If only the Western democracies were subjected to similar genocides, we would have the solution to our TFR problem.
The settlers been at this for a long, long time. It was hard for me to understand their perspective as well, because surely they most be seeing what they do as something good, like everyone else. There is a BBC documentary that goes into more depth, but a short snippet of the documentary can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU which includes a short interview with Daniella Weiss, a Orthodox Zionist who founded a organization focusing on creating these civilian colonies for Israelis.
As far as I can tell, from talking with Israelis both living in Israel and outside, there really isn't one majority thinking a certain way, it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing.
> it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing
Speaking out of my ass here. But I’d guess most people don’t care. A minority cheers. A minority protests. Most go on with their lives.
No offense, but why would you speak about a topic you know little about?
Possibly because smart people with expertise, usually hard-won through years of focus and study, make the common fallacy that they are experts in unrelated areas, even if they haven't put in the effort to become experts.
Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.
Really well said. I would even go further and say that the "smart people with expertise" even disagree on matters like this and are operating on imperfect, vague information. Knowing that, it seems even more ridiculous to ask passersby about their opinion on this. Of course you can have an opinion, but keep in mind you're likely operating in 99% fog. Just my two cents.
I love Tetlock's "Super Forecasting" Basically experts only do slightly better than random on predicting in their area of expertise.
What does Tetlock say about the utility of expert forecasting?
There are superforecasters, but they're not the pundits you see on TV. Superforecasting is a great book, see if your library has it.
From: https://ig.ft.com/sites/business-book-award/books/2015/longl...
In a landmark 20 year study, Professor Philip Tetlock showed that even the average expert was only slightly better at predicting the future than random guesswork. Tetlock’s latest project, an unprecedented government funded forecasting tournament involving over a million individual predictions has since shown that there are, however, some people with real demonstrable foresight.
It is absolutely normal and acceptable to talk about topics you don’t know about. If you are wrong, someone will tell you. If you are smart, you will learn from it better and faster than trying to study the topic yourself, because people who are familiar with the subject may know things you don’t know you need to know.
And of course sometimes being deeply involved makes experts less objective and outsider perspective may bring some fresh air to the conversation.
> why would you speak about a topic you know little about?
I have knowledge about adjacent topics. I add the caveat in case someone has a source that substantiates or refutes my hypothesis because I’m more interested in learning
Ok, thanks for answering.
I think it’s extremely common to be opinionated about things we don’t know much about. I don’t even know if that’s good or bad, I do find it interesting.
That's kind of how most things seem to be. People go about their lives and even if they have strong opinions about something like that, they probably aren't going to do much about it.
It makes sense to extrapolate based on what we know. In the US, the media and advocacy groups manufacture controversy and outrage. He's testing the possibility that maybe the same pattern applies there too.
the BBC is not unbiased in this (or anything), so I would ignore any "documentary" aired by them.
If you want to avoid anything with bias, you better disconnect your router because literally every person is biased one way or another. When viewing documentaries it's important to know that, including BBC ones, so you can have that in mind, not avoid watching the documentaries at all.
Who is unbiased in this case? You have to acknowledge that all parties have agendas.
Apparently martin82's comment was too subtle for you so here it is more explicitly. The BBC has a long history of antisemitic and anti-Israel bias. This is not a secret.
This might help:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world...
https://archive.ph/2025.07.19-181407/https://www.lrb.co.uk/t...
Thank you, this is what I wanted to know:
"‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’ According to a survey commissioned by Penn State, more than 80 per cent of Israeli Jews now support the expulsion of Gazans. Compassion for Palestinians is taboo except among a fringe of radical activists. When Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, posted a tweet celebrating a recent prisoner exchange, he was denounced for seeming to equate the predicament of jailed Palestinians and Jewish hostages: ‘Your presence pollutes the Knesset,’ a colleague told him."
> "‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’
I have such a hard time understanding how such statements can find an accepting audience in this day and age; in Israel of all places.
Replace "Israeli stand-up comedian" with "some Nazi propagandist in the 30s/40s" and "Gazans" with "Jews", and I'm sure it would be a perfectly accurate historical quote.
Fully agreed, this Gil Kopatz could as well write articles in Der Stürmer. The same rhetoric was used by the Nazis. For instance, they compared Jews to rats:
Caption: “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish once more.” (December 1927)
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/images...
> in Israel of all places
The trauma propagates itself. To break the circle is extraordinary, normal is to continue in it.
Damn, that was a really good (if grim) article/read. Thank you for posting that.
Thank you for sharing this article. This was so well written.
There is a real war going on between israel and hamas.
On all levels, including information war. Information war is the only one where hamas is currently winning.
That is why you are already heavily biased based on the tone of your questions. About 90%+ of what you see on mainstream media is either a straightforward lie or carefully designed, massaged and distorted truth (for example hamas counts as casualties everyone, including fully armed terrorists killed in action). Another example is fake news about “starvation” where they post standalone photos of children with generic disorders as a proof. Im just scratching the surface.
This information war is mainly sponsored by quatar and iran with 2 longterm goals in mind 1) destabilizing and undermining USA influence in middle east and worldwide 2) destroying israel and killing as many jews as possible (literally, they don’t hide it if you check anything besides bbc and english al-jazeera)
That is what really going on. That is the brutal truth. Unfortunately it’s not an exaggeration.
And unfortunately it is nothing new. Way before founding modern Israel there has been a long history of regular pogroms and massacres in that region. This doesn’t excuse current Israel from some mistakes and poor judgements, but it paints a very different picture that doesn’t fit sugarcoated antisemitic victim narrative that all main media sponsored by botomless pit of oil qatar money shoves up all naive western listeners.
What do you mean the political climate? The current government is based on a majority. Although some parties in the opposition are trying to undermine the government actions, they are mostly hold exact or very similar views on the issues. When the opposition were in charge with Bennett as the PM, there was no major change in the state/security issues, the main arguments are more on "internal" affairs. ? After Oct 7, you'll find very little people interested on what is happening in Gaze. You can also see that the Palestinians in the West Bank are not interested in what's happening in Gaza. Almost zero disturbances or protests about it, even in cities like Ramahllah which enjoys a complete autonomy.
I mean you cloud just browse Israeli newspapers online. Examples like https://www.haaretz.com/ and https://www.jpost.com/ both in English.
Israeli here, can't directly answer your question since I've lived in the US for 99% of my adult life, but I consider myself pro-Israel and resent the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed. I see the key problem as people removing context: Context for why the current situation could easily be different if Hamas acted/acts differently, and context for why there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years.
The problem here though is what will ever give Israel confidence that Oct 7 will never happen again? We know that going after terrorists for years and killing them just creates more terrorists (Iraq, Afghanistan). The young children who do not end up dying of starvation will be men in 20 years, still in Gaza with no options to leave and resent Israel who they will consider to be effectively their jailer. The situation is just untenable. I don't like to think that the result of Oct 7 is a more open Gaza but I don't really know what other options Israel has.
Hamas obviously started this but Israel won the war a long time ago. The world deserves an end. The longer it goes on the more Hamas will actually have achieved some kind of lasting positive image of Gaza which is rooted in their actions on Oct 7th and that would be an incredibly bad outcome for all.
> what will ever give Israel confidence that Oct 7 will never happen again?
No Hamas in power? Seems like that would give pretty good confidence.
This reminds me of alternate history stories where Japan refused to surrender. The US demanded unconditional surrender in WW2. What would have happened if the axis refused. What would have made the allies confident that the war was over without German and Japanese unconditional surrender.
It seems like Hamas is not surrendering and Israel is demanding that. If Hamas surrendered and left power, would that appease Israel?
Hamas isn' in control of the west bank. That hasn't gone so well for the Palestinians either.
Google "Great March of Return" if you want to learn about what happenned when palestinians tried to protest peacefully.
if you will read wikipage of great march of return, it will tell you that from first day it wasn't peaceful
well.. straight from the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
```
At least 189 Palestinians were killed between 30 March and 31 December 2018.[28]: 6 [29][30] An independent United Nations commission said that at least 29 out of the 189 killed were militants.[5] Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition.[31] According to Robert Mardini, head of Middle East for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), more than 13,000 Palestinians were wounded as of 19 June 2018. The majority were wounded severely, with some 1,400 struck by three to five bullets.[32] No Israelis were physically harmed from 30 March to 12 May, until one Israeli soldier was reported as slightly wounded on 14 May,[9] the day the protests peaked. The same day, 59 or 60 Palestinians were shot dead at twelve clash points along the border fence.[33]
```
yea, seems like it was the israelis who weren't peaceful. sorry if we're all starting to see a pattern.
edit: yes, 29 militants out of 189 killed and 130000 wounded. even at the most sympathetic take, Israelis come out looking like a bunch of sociopaths.
29 killed militants in peaceful march of return ? you seems to be contradicting yourself.
you also seems to skipped the beginning of article. for example, day 1 of peaceful march of return:
Hundreds of young Palestinians, however, ignored warnings by the organizers and the Israeli military to avoid the border zone.[74] Some began throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, to which Israel responded by declaring the Gaza border zone a closed military zone and opening fire at them.[55] The events of the day were some of the most violent in recent years.[75] In one incident, two Palestinian gunmen approached the fence, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, and exchanged fire with IDF soldiers. They were killed and their bodies were recovered by the IDF.
you need to improve your vibe quoting. article talks about 13,000 wounded, not 130,000. iirc, been impacted by tear gas is also "wounded".
but back to the point.
- do you still claim that it was "peaceful march of return" ?
- where do you think the "return" part of the march were leading and what would have happened there ? (just in case, in UN report on Oct 7 documented that in most of places civilians followed armed members of hamas/pij/pflp/etc and engaged in looting, killing (famously thai workers that their heads were chopped off by unarmed civilians with help of hoe) and kidnapping (later sold to hamas/etc)
Afterwards IDF soldiers bragged in the media about deliberately mutilating peaceful protestors.
Here's a clarifying table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
As you can see it does not include "impacted by tear gas", but a thousand palestinians were harmed by having tear gas canisters shot at them. More than six thousand were maimed by gun fire, and as the numbers show, it was deliberate policy to harm rather than kill.
In comparison, as a measure of the supposed militancy from the palestinians, five israelis were injured and none were killed.
Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their land and homes. That's what the march was about.
so they tried to breach border en masse, while having armed people among them and got shot only in knees ? sounds like a good outcome for them.
israeli citizens didn't have such a good outcome at oct 7 when great march of return succeeded to breach border.
and you seems to be angry that they were harmed and not killed. i am confused here.
now, you surely know that between 1945 and 1950 about 12m to 14.6m ethnic germans were ethnically cleansed (500k to 2.5m dead in process) from eastern europe and some land annexed.
do you support their right to march back and reclaim their land and homes ?
> and got shot only in knees ? sounds like a good outcome for them.
please go on
> do you support their right to march back and reclaim their land and homes ?
considering that they were kicked out by violence in 1948, likud terrorists mass killed entire villages of Palestinians in order to force the rest to flee.
Israelis then forced them to live in an apartheid state
I certainly do support their right of return. Israel has committed multiple oct 7 level atrocities against Palestinians over the last few decades while sweeping them under the rug.
edit: are the descendants of those germans being systematically oppressed with no rights and living under military occupation? if not, whats stopping them from returning currently?
I am taking about right of return for 12m displaced Germans.
Do you support it and them marching to reclaim their land and homes?
They're referring to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germ...
I.e. the allies forcing germans in the east to go west and leave the nazi colonial project behind. It was arguably atrocious. It is also irrelevant since the territories involved reside within the EU and there is nothing in the way for these people or their descendants relocating back to Poland or whatever.
Which I suspect will be quite popular in the future, given that Poland's economy is doing rather well and Germany's is likely to not do rather well.
not colonial project, but 12m ethnic germans that lived in german territories that were annexed or in other areas in europe (because they lived there for centuries).
>>>
During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Reichsdeutsche (German citizens) and Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans living outside the Nazi state) fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg (Neumark) and Pomerania (Farther Pomerania), which were annexed by Provisional Government of National Unity of Poland and by the Soviet Union.
<<<<
will you support them marching back to reclaim their lands and homes, while been peacefully armed (like palestinians) with molotov cocktails, ak47 and grenades ? do you support their right of return ?
No one is stopping them from returning, it's within the EU, they have full freedom of movement.
"right of return" is not about freedom of movement. it's about regaining possession over land, houses and other properties. something that current poland government is very against.
so, do you support right of return for 12m of germans and there descendants, restoration of their property rights and dismantling of colonial polish state on occupied lands ?
They held peaceful demonstrations by the border and got systematically mutilated for it. This is evidence that peaceful struggle is not an option when it comes to ending israeli crimes.
What's your skin in this game? Why are you defending a deeply criminal state?
day 1 of peaceful march of return:
Hundreds of young Palestinians, however, ignored warnings by the organizers and the Israeli military to avoid the border zone.[74] Some began throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, to which Israel responded by declaring the Gaza border zone a closed military zone and opening fire at them.[55] The events of the day were some of the most violent in recent years.[75] In one incident, two Palestinian gunmen approached the fence, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, and exchanged fire with IDF soldiers. They were killed and their bodies were recovered by the IDF.
Yes, that is quite peaceful given the circumstances and that thirty thousand people participated. The IDF should have retreated and the israeli government have ended the occupations and started dismantling its colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, then entered negotiations about return and reparations.
To get a feel for how the IDF perceives the Gaza strip border one can watch https://xcancel.com/Timesofgaza/status/1950748519796797515#m or some of the material collected by https://xcancel.com/ytirawi.
well, in this case, idf reaction was quite peaceful given the circumstances and that thirty thousand people participated and tried to overrun the border while been armed
That you can write this, with a complete lack of awareness of how people who aren't brainwashed by zionist propaganda perceive what you're saying, is mind blowing honestly.
please some consistency. if you consider armed attempt to overrun border as peaceful, then armed response is equally peaceful.
what border?
according to who?
I don't see why the result of a Hamas surrender wouldn't be a new organization with the same goals and methods. A surrender by itself is just a formality. But what is the real plan here? What would realistically come after that and how scary/brutal would it be?
Realistically, I think the plan is just reoccupation of Gaza. The military presence would make it harder for Hamas-like organizations to organize and assemble rockets etc. It might be something like pre-2005 Gaza.
And you think the children who's entire families were obliterated will simply forget that, only because Hamas was defeated?
So who will be in power? You've got to remember that Hamas was democratically elected back in 2006, and its main rival Fatah isn't exactly pro-Israel either. Given the circumstances, I don't think there could possibly be a democratically elected government in Gaza which is pro-Israel or even neutral-Israel. Your only option is a puppet dictatorship government installed by Israel - but that's not really going to improve the situation, is it?
Besides, you've got to remember that a country is more than its government. What's going to stop its citizens from independently creating their own underground Hamas 2.0 terror group? What's going to stop the kids currently growing up and seeing their parents die due to Israeli actions from wanting revenge?
The situation is too far gone. Either Israel is going to learn how to live with the possibility of an attack (which is going to decrease over time as generations grow up who don't inherently hate Israel with every bone in their body for what it has done to them), or Israel is going to have to kill every single person in Gaza to make sure there's nobody left who could hate them. They should probably continue with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt - because they all could attack Israel, after all...
France still has to live with the risk of Germany invading. It's fairly unlikely by now, but that risk exists. Germany has invaded multiple times in the not-too-distant past and done some pretty atrocious things while there. Germany still has a pretty large military, and I would be quite surprised if they didn't have some kind of invasion plan lying around in a drawer somewhere. Yet somehow, I don't think the average French citizen in 2025 loses any sleep over it. If they can live with the risk, why does Israel require absolutes?
> , I don't think the average French citizen in 2025 loses any sleep over it. If they can live with the risk, why does Israel require absolutes?
No, we do not lose sleep about that. We have also been at war with England, Italy and Spain a lot. Especially England. We keep a close eye on them still that the Hastings battle is not forgotten.
But on the serious side, these concerns are so remote compared with the situation in Israel and Palestine. We do not have any territory claims with Germany. They have their land, we have ours. If you ask a random person in France about territoires we should get back, they would be really confused. The ones historically inclined would consider the 7th and 8th century and Charlemagne's lands.
I guess that this topic in the mind of Israelis and Palestinians is much, much more prevalent.
In fairness here, germany and france have been at peace for something like 80 years, most of that a fairly friendly peace. The people who remember a time when Germany was the enemy are basically dead by now. 80 years buys a lot of by-gones
Hell, maybe Germany and Israel make a good comparison here. The jews who lived in mandatory palestine during WW2 were certainly afraid of Germany (and rightfully so), but i don't think Israel loses much sleep over the modern state of Germany.
Yes, I totally agree. I wanted to make it clear that the analogy for France-Germany simply does not fly.
Our countries have been at war for two millennia (whatever "country" meant across the ages), like the rest of Europe. Then, after WWII, a tremendous effort was made to mend the relationship, and the really good idea was to involve the youth.
When I was a teenager in the 80s, those who had German as a foreign language (sometimes as the first foreign language, before English) had exchanges with peers in Germany (they were coming to us and living with us for a week, and then we were going to them). It was great.
30 years later, my son had the same exchange and I could look at the kids' behaviour more closely. They (the French and the Germans kids) decided to have a football match. I was sure that it would be a Germany vs France one. Not at all: they mixed up, with teams composed of pairs (local and foreign). It was a-ma-zing.
France no longer has to live with the risk of of a conventional invasion by Germany because France has nuclear weapons now and Germany does not. If a terrorist group was using German territory as a base to launch attacks against France and the German government refused to stop them then I'm pretty sure that France would retaliate kinetically, even if that meant some collateral damage. The USA did this in 2001 when Al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base; France even assisted with that war.
Geography also matters. Israel is tiny compared to France. Israel has zero strategic depth and population centers could be overrun in a matter of hours if defenses failed. This tends to push their strategic planning towards absolutism. And to be clear I'm not trying to justify Israeli actions, just pointing out the strategic calculus at work and the difficulty of negotiating an agreement acceptable to both sides.
Israel also has nuclear weapons...
Yes, but those nuclear weapons are only a deterrent against other nation states. They aren't effective against Palestinian terrorist organizations, so they don't factor into the question of whether Israel should be willing to accept some significant ongoing risk of terrorist attacks.
Hamas and Fatah are not comparable in their militancy (or, for that matter, their democratic legitimacy; that a plurality of Gazans are not old enough ever to have voted is not an accident on Hamas' part).
France no longer has to live with the risk of an invasion by Germany *because* the Allies stopped the cycle of violence by deciding to reconstruct Germany rather than erase her off the map.
That’s the reason why.
As abundantly mentioned already, the Palestinian survivors will remember and have their revenge someday.
…unless the plan is: “there will be no survivors”.
Have you noticed how shocking the above “plan” is? Events seem to closely align with it. A literal final solution. Equally shocking is how little people care about actual genocide, and - consequently - how normalized this is in practice.
The international community lets Israel get away with far too much.
We don’t know this. There are several wealthy nations that have produced many terrorists and several poor nations that have produced none. The most famous terrorist in history was a wealthy man from a wealthy nation.
Whom do you refer to as "the most famous terrorist in history"?
Considering that they mention his family wealth, I can only assume that they mean Osama bin Laden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
Yep that is who I meant.
Why do that? If you mean to say something, go ahead and say it.
I knew with reasonable certainty who they were alluding to, so I didn’t read it as them being vague to be honest, more literary.
>what will ever give Israel confidence that Oct 7 will never happen again
Why are you asking "what will give the genocidal state confidence", and not bothering for a single second about what will give the hundred of thousands of permanently traumatised, hurt and dead Palestinians confidence that their genocidal neighbours will not do it again ?
>still in Gaza with no options to leave and resent Israel who they will consider to be effectively their jailer.
Which, yes, is the reason for October 7. Seems like oppressing a people (that already doesn't particularly like you for various reasons) has consequences. Unfortunately, these consequences land on civilians. Breeding the conditions for Hamas (and soon enough Hamas 2 provided the Gazan population isn't dead from famine within the next few months)
> I don't like to think that the result of Oct 7 is a more open Gaza but I don't really know what other options Israel has.
Why do you not enjoy the idea of giving a group independence and ownership over the land that has been theirs for centuries ?
>Hamas obviously started this but Israel won the war a long time ago.
Opening history books would tend to show that it started over 70 years ago with the forced resettlement of Palestinians already living within the protectorate (land already stolen from them), the colonization of Gaza, Golan heights, the nakba and the repeated offensives on Gaza and Cisjordania as well as the assassinations of multiple political leaders (both Palestinian and Israeli), but I guess the Israeli propaganda that Oct 7 started it all has taken root.
>The world deserves an end.
Your feelings about seeing this ongoing conflict doesn't really matter. Palestinians deserve an end to this suffering. The Israelis not supporting the ongoing genocide deserve an end to the conflict. The world has nothing to do with this.
>The longer it goes on the more Hamas will actually have achieved some kind of lasting positive image of Gaza which is rooted in their actions on Oct 7th and that would be an incredibly bad outcome for all.
You do realize that Hamas is getting a positive image despite being literal terrorists embezzling money and food from the Gaza population and establishing a dictatorship because the "only democracy in the middle east" is committing a genocide, right ? Genocide supported by the vast majority of the Israeli government, as well as the Knesset ?
This situation ends in two ways: either the Palestinians disappear, or Israel disappears. With their recent actions, they've ensured that a two state solution is impossible. Of course, the likelihood of Israel being destroyed is almost nil, so the only way this happens is a single state where both arabs and jews live equally and freely (and most likely under HEAVY international peacekeeping missions), but the ethnostate proponents are slightly iffy about this proposition.
> This situation ends in two ways: either the Palestinians disappear, or Israel disappears.
See this is the problem, that kind of thought is why Israel is comfortable allowing the people of Gaza to suffer indefinitely. Hamas and the people of Gaza have zero power in this situation. They can either bend over backwards and appease Israel to try to regain some trust and maybe at some point Israel will slowly loosen restrictions over them. Or Hamas and the people of Gaza can be defiant, say there is no room for both countries and then the obvious choice is for Israel to persecute them indefinitely because what else are they going to do? They are winning and they have that option right now.
Look I am not saying Israel has not done things here that appear from my perspective to be too much but Hamas brought this on Gaza. They murdered innocent people in their homes in a disgusting sneak attack and for that they have brought suffering on their people.
Bend over backwards to a country that tortured them and is committing a genocide against them? Would you have asked the Jews to bend over backwards to Nazi Germany to appease them?
You're not interested in discussing in good faith, pretending that this is only because of October 7. Hope you sleep soundly while tens of thousands of children die at the hand of a genocidal state.
Not the original commentor, but outrage aside, what choices are there? Sometimes a problem isn't solved despite a solution existing. But in this case it's not clear to me that any real "solution" exists?
For Palestine: Either defiant resistance until extermination (or victory whatever it means) or bowing to a group one hates with every fiber of your being? No? Other alternatives? Alternatives they would be willing to accept? How do you even get concensus on such charged matters?
A lot of Palestinians are non-negotiable about wanting all Israelis gone from the region. And a lot of Israeli's may be willing to accept terrible solutions - terrible for the Palestinians. Some say genocide. But how do you choose between genocide or tolerating ongoing attacks?
Other solutions: Outside intervention. Outside world intervenes, but how and at what cost?
And for how long, and will it really be effective? And effective for which side? Is there a way to intervene without tipping the balance in favour of one side over the other? How to intervene in the most fair way to all sides? And is the cost and risk even worth it - unlikely?
I don't see how. I don't see any solutions. I have not heard of any viable solutions acceptable to majorities of populations on both sides, or even acceptable to most impartial outsiders.
Problem is not solved, because it is unsolvable. So it will end badly? Or continue as is for decades more.
I pasted this into Gemini trying to find solutions, the best I can come up with is a two state solution, involving land swaps to clear up the border, and then an international peace keeping force seperating them.
Exploring this solution reveals problems on both sides with proposed land swaps, suggesting basically that outsiders will have to ram a compromise solution down the throats of both sides - which to me sounds rather terrible.
> Would you have asked the Jews to bend over backwards to Nazi Germany to appease them?
The holocaust did not happen because Jews were sneaking into Berlin and murdering innocent people in their homes. When the current conflict begins in that way then the group who started it needs to beg for forgiveness, especially when that is their only card. Hamas is no match for Israel militarily and have no cards to play here. Their only options is to continue to make their people suffer and hope that somehow that leads to outside powers interjecting and changing their situation for the better. The best way to resolve this is to beg for forgiveness and internally remove Hamas from power. Hamas is the problem here, I'd like to think the average citizen of Gaza could find a way to live in peace with Israel if given the choice.
you speak as if the bad part of the holocaust was the excuse, rather than the ethnic cleansing and genocide
by this logic, if only the nazis had provided an excuse acceptable to germans, like israel has provided one acceptable to israelis, the ethnic cleansing and genocide would have been ok
oh wait, they did, and it was the same excuses: 'the preservation of our ethnicity is more important than them'; 'they’re subhuman'; 'we must wipe them out for the good of our society'; etc; etc
so much for 'never again'
>the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed
Israeli soldiers, politicians, and many civilians are portraying themselves this way. Soldiers post videos sniping a child in the head calling it a "legendary video", politicians say Palestinians should starve, civilians block aid trucks.
Do you resent the way they are portrayed or do you mean you resent what a lot of Israelis are doing?
Especially the politicians. Some of the things said on record in the Knesset could have been uttered in the NSDAP, if you switch Palestinian for Jew.
It’s disgusting, and most importantly not at all a matter of propaganda.
This happened in the occupied West Bank. What would you like Hamas to do differently there?
I often don't endorse the behavior of Israeli settlers. I'm responding to the question of what Israelis think about the news in general, a question to which I wanted to contribute the context of Israel's precarious existential security as a sovereign Jewish state.
It's the "Jewish" in Jewish state that lies at the root of the conflict, isn't it? There aren't many options to maintain a dominant ethnic identity in a democracy when the land the nation was founded on was already inhabited by people who don't share in that identity. The only option is to either cede that ethnic identity or to engage in mass displacement and disenfranchisement.
It's exceedingly subtle the way ethno-nationalism gets smuggled into the phrase "as a sovereign Jewish state," but it is no less terrible and ugly than the ethno-nationalism in other parts of the world and eras in history.
There are currently about 40 countries that have a higher Muslim percentage than Israel's Jewish percentage. Many of them much higher. Many of them kicked out all their Jews in recent history.
Just as a confirmation, how many of those muslim countries are actively in the process of murdering, starving, dehumanising and destroying every single building the jews living in an open air prison ?
They all already completed that over the past 75 years, there aren't any Jews left in those countries anymore.
they left willingly. Iran still has jews and a grand Rabbi. Many Jews moved to israel for economic reasons.
They did not leave willingly.
Cool, but none of them were parked in an open air prison and starved. And even if they were, whataboutism doesn't give Israelis the right to commit genocide.
Conflating the Jews with Israel as a whole also makes every single Jew in the world worse off and in danger. I would not advise vomiting out Bibi's propaganda unless you want to see how terrible the consequences can really get
When Hitler asked the King of Moroco to hand over all the jews living there , the King replied that there wrre only Morocans living in Moroco, and he wasn't handing any of them over. Also many muslims voluntered and fought the Nazi's from all over the world, as indivuals and as soldiers in colonial army's. As to jews bieng kicked out, no thats not true, and to this day there is an ongoing effort to get jews to emigrate out of the US or wherever in an attempt to bolster the demographics of there ethnostate......which is currently facing the largest out migration,ever.....
What exactly is your argument here? Jews were kicked out of Muslim countries, therefore, Jews can treat Palestinians like subhumans?
My argument is that people seem to get very worked up when the Jews do something, but basically nobody cares about other similar or even worse things done by other people. I suspect this is most likely because of antisemitism (not that every anti-Israel person is an antisemite, but that the movement would not have become so prominent without a large core of dedicated antisemites).
people in the west are getting "worked up" about it because our governments and our tax dollars are financing and facilitating these crimes! my government is not financing whatever iran is doing. i dont have any theoretical power over that. but my government, which is supposed to represent me, is a major actor in israel's crimes and i want my government to stop doing it
What I don't really understand, as an outsider, aren't the arabs semitic too? Why doesn't the word antisemitism include the hatred toward the arabs?
Yeah, that's just whataboutism.
Edit: To elaborate, because there was another comment comparing this to Assad in Syria:
I think the difference is that Assad already belonged to the "enemy" is of the West (rightly so) and was immediately hit with sanctions.
What is special about Israel is that the government and, as it seems, large parts of the population, are displaying the same mentality - but unlike with Assad, no one is putting on the brakes here or threatening sanctions. On the contrary, our governments are protecting and enabling Israel in its behavior.
I think the aggression specifically towards Israel stems from the feeling of being on the wrong side this time.
It doesn't have to be antisemitism, but just a regular double standard.
Israel is modern invention by educated people who themselves have a long history of displacement and oppression. The bottom line is people expect them to "do better" compared to Syria, Myanmar, or China for that matter.
In that sense you could say it's actually racism towards all those other countries because the world just expects them to be violent, genocidal, and uncivilized anyway.
Check your facts, most of those Jews left due to a) Israeli terrorism (bombing synagogues), b) Israeli policies (Magic Carpet), c) Israel-endorsed or Israel-caused racism that obviously wasn't there before because those populations were living there (including Palestine) peacefully for centuries.
Jews were kicked out of all the Arab nations they lived in, were persecuted in Europe, and you think that they shouldn’t get a sovereign country for themselves? Should the Kurds get one? Tibetans? Catalonias? Scottish?
No one is entitled to displace people from their homes or deny people equal rights on the basis of their race, religion, or ethnicity for any reason. There is no exception for people seeking refuge from oppression.
Jews have and had the right to seek refuge from oppression. No one has the right to perpetuate oppression.
And no, I don't believe ethnonationalism is a panacea for anyone. The world would not be a better place if we could only subdivide into a multitude of homogenous little nations. I am grateful for the cultural diversity of my country. Countries like Japan that strive to protect their racial homogeneity will pay a steep cost.
There are two lines of logic that disrupt this reasoning. One is israel as an independent state hasn’t existed for thousands of years. The other is Jews do have refuge and safe harbors in the form of western countries. Plenty of Jews living quite comfortably with no threat of war protected by the largest military on the planet in west LA.
So really these people have no reason to be elevated among similarly displaced people who did have a sovereign nation within much more recent timelines, and they aren’t without safe harbor or communities in safer nations that guarantee their rights.
So if the state of Israel does not exist for the safety of Jewish people as logic has plainly laid out, why does it exist? Easy. Military foothold. This is a modern day crusader state. A beachhead. An airbase. A missile platform. A hidden nuclear arsenal. A prolific defense industry with very little red tape binding it. These are the true foundations of Israel today. Everything else is a fig leaf poorly hiding this when you apply rational logic to the emotional justifications that people use. And everything Israel does makes perfect rational sense in light of its true purpose.
>and you think that they shouldn’t get a sovereign country for themselves?
That's a really easy question: no.
Plenty of people don't have sovereign countries for themselves. Some of them persecuted, some of them integrated by force into other countries. Countries are not owed. They simply are. Tibet is being wholly integrated and controlled by China. Catalonia is somewhat asking for it, native americans are being relegated as second class citizens, and aboriginals in Australia are being left to die. Romanis do not have a country based around their culture.
Jews should absolutely be protected, in whichever country they are. That does not make the world owe them a country. Countries are not owed, they just are. As it stands, Israel is, but as a result of what they have done, not because it was owed to them.
Countries are not owed, they are either won, or given, in every instance of every county in history. Which is exactly how Israel came to be.
No one is questioning the existence of Bulgaria as a separate entity from turkey, when they declared independence after the Russo Turkish war.
> No one is questioning the existence of Bulgaria as a separate entity from turkey, when they declared independence after the Russo Turkish war.
We would be if they were actively exterminating Turks living in their territory simply because they aren't Bulgarians.
And where the Turks are actively trying to eradicate the entire Bulgarian people? Because that’s the Palestinians modus operandi
The Scottish have a nation called Scotland. It's not entirely sovereign - yet - but it's clearly heading in that direction, and it has already diverged significantly from England on many fundamental policies.
But even when it does become sovereign, I'm finding it hard to imagine that Scotland would annex Northumberland - which used to be Scotland in the distant past - and rape, murder, and starve the English people living there.
There is no excuse for the kind of barbarisms that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. Not ethnonationalism, not history, not the holocaust, not October 7.
And from an obvious common sense point of view, living in an embattled fortress territory is an eccentric definition of "safe."
It's an outbreak of collective psychopathy and deserves to be labelled as such. The people in charge are basically insane. Extremist ethnonationalism always is, whatever the nationality or background.
The Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, or Scottish don't need to ethnically cleanse the land to get their own nation. That's the difference. This is not hard to understand. Most people do not object to the concept of a Jewish state, they object to the ethnic cleansing.
So where can a Jewish state be established without removing the local population?
And regarding some history on the establishment of Israel, after the UN partition resolution the Arabs started a civil war, where Arabs fled from Jewish territories, and Jews fled from Arab territories (Bethlehem and Hebron for example). So you could say that 2 ethno states were established.
Native Americans?
Is there a movement for native Americans sovereignty?
I wouldn't call it a "movement" but rather a limited legal framework based on agreements.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_Unit...
There should be. But presumably its harder since most of them were killed.
Not sure how the colonization of America justifies other colonization's.
Unless you think everyone is owed a 1 free genocide pass?
lawlessone says: "...since most of them were killed.
Not sure how the colonization of America justifies other colonization's.
Unless you think everyone is owed a 1 free genocide pass?"
Most of them died from disease. Far more of them died from disease than died from say, hand to hand combat or warfare on the plains.
The American Indians were toast as soon as the first coughing European stepped ashore. The native Americans had no immunity to the stew of diseases that had been brewing in Europe and Asia for centuries, so the Indians simply died. Once an Indian had a disease (s)he could spread it to other indians (s)he met. The flame front of infection raged ahead of the white man across the continent. The "mountain men" encountered regions where entire societies were struck down: bodies everywhere, tools, lodging, structures left intact but virtually no one was around (and many the infected likely fled to more remote lands, worsening the spread).
One estimate is that 61 million people lived in the Americas prior to European contact. Between 1492 and 1600 about 50 million native Americans died of disease.
"Killed?" Yes but rarely intentionally. "Genocide?" No.
You're skipping over the whole "manifest destiny" bit, where the remaining natives were systematically hunted down and destroyed. Trail of Tears ring any bells?
And note this was perpetrated by The United States, not the "American colonists". This was happening in the 1800s, a good 300 years after the initial disease front came through.
If the United States had respected the native populations the American West would look very different today. Compare with current Central and South America for example (which were certainly still victims of both disease and genocide, but it was less thorough due to differences in colonizers and geography).
What are you talking about? the original commenter rejected the idea of a Jewish state because ethno states are bad. I made a counter claim. I’d be happy to live next to a Palestinian country, if it will recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and be a peaceful neighbor. Unfortunately, they reject the idea of 2 states, or they want 2 states where 1 is Palestinian, and the other is paletwith a Jewish minority.
>I’d be happy to live next to a Palestinian country, if it will recognize Israel as a Jewish state,
Not sure i'd be happy to live next to a neighbor illegally occupying my former house.
Are you talking about native Americans? Germans that used to live in Poland? Jews that used to live in Syria? Israelis that lived in Sinai before it was returned to Egypt? Mexicans that lived Texas? Australian aboriginals? Inuits in Canada? How about the one million afghans Iran just expelled?
If you’re not happy, that’s on you. Time moves on, you need to accept the existence of the Israeli state.
> If you’re not happy, that’s on you. Time moves on, you need to accept the existence of the Israeli state.
Fair enough, but what happens when the US (inevitably) decide that they're not going to support Israel anymore. Bibi has basically turned support of Israel into a culture war argument, and without consistent US support, I'm not sure Israel will survive in it's current form.
Mind you, climate change could make the whole Middle East uninhabitable before then, so it's possible that the Israeli state will last until then.
And lets be clear, I don't think most people have an issue with the existence of an Israeli state, but what's been happening in Judea and Samaria for the past twenty or so years and Gaza currently is deeply, deeply wrong and reminds me of my favourite phrase, "the only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns from history". One would think that the Jewish people would have learned better lessons from their persecution, but apparently they learnt different lessons than I expected.
Well, Israel successfully won several wars without the US support in its early years. And right now the Israeli weapons manufacturers are booming, look at deals with the romania and Germany.
Its great that most people don’t have problem with our existence, but our neighbors do. That’s why we have wars.
And comparing it to the holocaust is quite different, in the entire Jewish history we never seeked to destroy anyone, we were always targeted because of antisemitism. The Palestinians? They are taught in schools that we are the devil.
> we never seeked to destroy anyone
Mmmm, maybe you should read the Bible? Lots of violence committed by the Israelis there.
> comparing it to the holocaust is quite different
Sorry, it's mostly the same (and incredibly similar to Irish history between Catholics and Protestants). Both sides dehumanise each other, and that leads to violence and suffering. How often does Israeli media cover the bombing of Gaza? Like, a lot of the footage didn't appear on most Western media until 12months + into the conflict.
One could also make the argument that what's happening in the West bank/Gaza is basically ghettoization, which was something that happened to the Jews a lot in Western Europe. It's profoundly depressing that all the Jewish people have learned is to inflict this kind of suffering on other people.
And the current plans to basically force all of the Gazans out is again, incredibly similar to historical pogroms and treatment meted out to the Jewish people.
"Precarious" strikes me as a misleading way to describe a nuclear-armed state (and the only nuclear-armed state in its region).
Do you believe Israel's continued existence is assured?
No, because of their own behaviour. Israel might well lose the support of the USA and Europe, and if that happened the continued existence of their state would be far from certain.
Europe is certainly shifting.
I think the USA is unlikely to shift for as long as it's one single democratic nation, owing to internal political demographics. Same reasons it hasn't shifted on Cuba. But the USA keeps surprising me by failing to implode despite what all the politicians have been saying about each other, and by the anti-government language often used to justify gun ownership, so if I was in a position to influence Israel, I would be suggesting a diversification of international support.
Do you think Israel is acting against its own survival?
Even without nukes it would be because the arabs in the region are bad at fighting.
But with nukes it for sure is because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
I suspect most Israelis think differently. Even if "the arabs in the region are bad at fighting" they still outnumber the Israeli population by something like 20 to 40 times, depending on how you count. About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective.
EDIT: There are a couple of axes that helped me get a broader perspective:
1. Whether one supports Israel's continued existence 2. Whether one believes Israel's continued existence is guaranteed
Having started about midway between yes and no on 1, and at yes on 2, it was extremely enlightening to reinterpret my observations from the point of view of yes on 1 and no on 2. All Israeli behaviour that I had previously found incomprehensible finally made sense.
> About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective.
During a surprise attack.
The conflict that was started by Oct 7, according to Wikipedia, has seen 81,526+ dead on the Palestinian and associated side*, vs. 2,053 on the Israeli side.
That said, from the point of view of your edit: the ratio is irrelevant when someone's convinced they're facing an existential threat. Given Oct 7 was proportionally worse for Israel than 9/11 was for the USA, and the USA didn't seem to stop justifying everything through that lens for about a decade afterwards… it's going to suck for everyone that Israel thinks is so much as looking at them funny. (That isn't a joke even if it sounds like one: the people who see Israel as their home and their safe-space are collectively likely to be hyper-vigilant, to their own cost, in this kind of way, for a long time).
* With the footnote that '"Indirect" deaths may be multiple times higher' and 'In addition to direct deaths, armed conflicts result in indirect deaths "attributable to the conflict". Mortality due to indirect deaths could be due to a variety of causes, such as infectious diseases.[27] Indirect deaths range from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths in recent conflicts.[28] In Gaza, estimated 51,000 natural deaths, natural death rate has gone up from 3.5/1000 to 22/1000 (late June 2024)[29]'
> During a surprise attack.
Yes indeed, I'm talking about the surprise attack phase. (Israel has experienced a surprise attack before that has put its continued existence in question: the Yom Kippur war.) And in fact, looking at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks
it seems as though the ratio was closer to 3:2.
In any case, Israel is surrounded by a hostile population of hundreds of millions (yes, still hostile despite the cold peace treaty it has with Egypt and the lukewarm one it has with Jordan), and it itself numbers about 10 million. So it is outnumbered by double figures to one.
I certainly don't see Israel's continued existence as guaranteed despite "nukes" and despite "American support" and despite having the "nth most powerful army in the world". And that point of view has helped me to understand the conflict like no other explanation.
I think a better explanation is looking at it like Christopher Columbus outnumbered by the native americans.
>often don't endorse
So you do not condemn the behavior of the illegal settlements?
Hamas was a direct reaction to sharon removing settlers and occupations from the ghaza strip. Hamas os the ultimate answer of trading land for peace. Hamas also has in its charta that they do not want a 2 state solution and they must murder all the jews.
> there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years
How can the same country that prides itself in their intel/spying prowess, and has demonstrated sophisticated capabilities and attacks, claim it will be helpless if they don't absolutely disappear another group of people and take their territory?
I seriously doubt the Oct 7 attack caught Israel by surprise, given the scale of it and the level of compromise Israel had on Hamas. Given the disproportionate response Israel was prepared to employ, it was a perfect casus belli to appropriate even more land, as it is happening right now.
Agreed - the apathy and simultaneous granting of an individual's power to e.g. the state or the movement + abandonment of agency is the literal killer here.
Maybe not locking people up in the world's largest open-air prison for an entire generation and constantly kicking their teeth in would help. Just a thought.
"Give me liberty or give me death" as you say in America, I believe. Or does that only apply to the white man?
Oct 7 happened as a result of the Israeli occupation. If there’s occupation, there will be resistance.
Instead Israel could become a democratic state with equal rights for all citizens.
Which context has been stripped from the narrative in your opinion? Maybe you’ll say Israel is the original Jewish homeland and therefore the occupation is justified?
> Maybe you’ll say Israel is the original Jewish homeland and therefore the occupation is justified?
Being raised evangelical, I was taught the land belonged to the Jews since God judged the original inhabitants, and was given to them forever. Those who taught me see modern Israel as righting ancient wrongs and Palestine as occupying Jewish land. They've even visited the West Bank through a food effort with a Christian missionary.
Having left the church, it's much clearer to me that Arabs and Jews have both lived there for thousands of years. Both have a right to exist and the capacity to live peacefully together. Sadly those with guns, reductive beliefs, or (sometimes understandable) grudges just won't stop. I'm ashamed the US is supporting these cycles of violence, especially evangelical Christianity.
> Having left the church, it's much clearer to me that Arabs and Jews have both lived there for thousands of years
Yes, and there was a lot of mixing and slow but gradual conversion to the dominant socio-cultural muslim group that happened over more than a millenium. After the muslim conquest of Levant in about 630 AD, caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem some time later during his reign. We do not have data on how many jews decided to return there, rather than keep living in civilizational centres across the region and in Europe.
What we do know is that the jewish population of Palestine at the time that the British government initiated the process of handing over Palestine to jews in return for Lord Rothschild's money that they needed to keep fighting WW1 [2], was only about 7%. Subsequent immigration of mostly European jews into Palestine, resulted in about 30% jewish population by the time Western powers decided to declare an independent Jewish-dominated state of Israel on top of Palestine in 1947.
> Both have a right to exist and the capacity to live peacefully together
Brutal occupation has no right to exist. The supremacist state has to go. Apartheid South Africa had to go, and now South Africa is a better country. Nazi Germany had to go, and now Germany is a better country. Imperial colonial Japan had to go, and now both itself and its former colonized territories are better countries. Supremacist ethno-nationalist Israel that occupies natives of the land it was established upon with despicable brutality has to go. In the resulting state that comes after it, yes, people of any religion and ethnicity need to be able to live together in peace. After reparations have been made, the right of return has been honored, most of the stolen land has been given back, and apartheid has been dismantled.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
South Africa is currently performing a reverse genocide against the White population. It's a war zone. Saying that it's better is quite short sighted.
Do you mean the land reform so that the minority white descendants of colonists don't still control 90% of the land even 30 years after the apartheid was officially ended?
If not, can you share links to proof that there is something more serious going on, that would deserve to be called genocide against the white population?
This might better be called reverse colonization, which is justice.
>see the key problem as people removing context
ok when is it contextually ok to starve children?
> why there is no "just stop fighting" option
I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that, though I admit I'm not up-to-date on Israeli affairs. Don't the overwhelming majority of outsiders want a two-state solution, or failing that a more secular Israeli administration?
Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace. We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government, and there are simple ways to fix it if the willpower exists.
> > why there is no "just stop fighting" option
> I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that
i live in Canada, literally half a world away. Every street light pole seems to have some sort of "Ceasefire now" sticker on it. I also see similar sentiment in online threads on the topic. I think there is a significant group of people who want Israel to commit to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
> We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government
When people talk about this topic, they are usually referring to the conflict with Palestine.
People are arguing for an unconditional ceasefire because innocent people and children are literally starving to death.
Many of the people arguing for ceasefire probably wouldn’t be so animated about it if that wasn’t the case, i.e. if Israel was conducting a legal war with targeted strikes. That isn’t the case.
Also:
https://youtube.com/shorts/MuPfkxQns1k
I don’t think it’s okay for a bunch of humans to be rallied in the middle of a desert like that. Forget the fact that they are shooting into the crowd, we’ll talk about that later. Let’s just start with not creating a ghetto in the desert and calling it a humanitarian effort.
I have not even seen movie scenes like that, maybe the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan where the Americans were trying to hide on the beach.
You're responing to me as if my comment disagreed, but i didn't say anything about the "why", just that their exists people who advocate for an unconditional ceasefire. Which i'm sure you'd agree with.
Why are they calling for a ceasefire instead of for Hamas to surrender?
First, maybe they still keep a sliver of hope that the Israeli state will be at least marginally morally superior to a terrorist organization.
Second, many do call for Hamas to surrender.
because an end to the ethnic cleansing is more important than waiting for surrender, if that's even possible given hamas' disrupted command structure and israel's constant creation of new terrorists
a ceasefire provides room for diplomacy that might lead to concessions from both sides for their atrocities, and thus might lead to peace and equality
we have seen in the west bank what surrender without a ceasefire or sustainable peace looks like, and it is very bad (see this article for an example)
> a ceasefire provides room for diplomacy that might lead to concessions from both sides for their atrocities, and thus might lead to peace and equality
We've had something like 100 years of failed diplomacy at this point. I don't know the solution to this conflict, but i can understand why both sides suspect further diplomacy won't lead anywhere unless something fundamental changes.
I feel the same way, but that status quo is superior to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
> Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace.
The subtext to this conflict is that every avenue leading towards a lasting peace also opens the Netanyahu regime to prosecution.
Israel isn't an ex-Soviet satellite with a dictator propped up by a cold war giant, but their actions become predictable if you think of the state as Netanyahustan.
Yeah, basically the only reason they didn't keep the ceasefire is because Netanyahu would have been pushed out of power (and could therefore be tried for corruption more effectively).
But ultimately, the current government is what a (small) majority of Israelis want, which is the most depressing part of this entire conflict.
IDF service is mandatory and there appears to be no resistance to this, which supports the point above.
But reading between the lines there are not many plausible end states. Its a choice between a return to a status quo where Israel has defended borders. Or a removal of Palestinians from the territory. I think most people in the international community would prefer the former even when they don't come out and say it. And that may reasonably be safer and better for Israeli civilians.
There is always possibility of foreign intervention with security guarantees for Israel. Apparently this is already on the table now.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250729-qatar-saudi-e...
> I see the key problem as people removing context
this is also the main problem with your post; your context goes back to Oct 7, whereas it should go back to 1948 (or earlier).
You cannot drive people from their land into a barren reservation, oppress them for decades, and expect them to not resist or fight back. It's the same colonization tactics that were used on the Native Americans, who launched their Intifadas and occasionally also committed the type of horrible atrocities as Hamas did on Oct 7. You can't justify Oct 7, but the reality is human nature is such that unless you remove the conditions which caused Oct 7 in the first place -- then it will repeat, maybe not Hamas, maybe not in this generation, but the next generation, as we've already seen.
The Israeli government is trying to "solve" the Palestinian problem the same way that the US government "solved" the Native American problem -- kill enough of them, make deals and then break them (this is the Israeli settler problem), and move them far enough away from their original lands, for long enough, that you finally and completely break their spirit and ability to resist. And if that means bombing and starving tens of thousands of women and children, so be it. And the Israeli God-given "right" to the Palestinian land, because it's the "holy land" from 2000 years ago, is very much like the God-given "manifest destiny" that US colonizers invoked to "settle" the West. It was genocide then and it's genocide now.
Yup - granting power to the state -- from a democratic citizen to the state -- is risky and here it permits a corrupt anti-life (e.g. genocide) state to operate unchallenged.
As it was with the USA, this is a foundational tragedy of Israel.
The innate xenophobic "kill the THEM!" human quality appears to be alive and well, across the world today.
settler attacks against West Bank Palestinians were not caused by Hamas, but by the settlers religious belief that the land is promised to them. That is a key part of the context as well. And in that vein, what options to Palestinians have to defend against violent settlers and displacement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Price_tag_attack_...
Being pro-Israel, what's your take on quotes from figures such as Smotrich and Ben-gvir?
majority of israeli population finds them despicable. in polling for next election smotrich party disappears and ben-gvir party shrinks
I am very much of the opinion that Hamas should not be allowed to continued to exist for Israel's benefit and for Palestine's, but there is a lot of space in between "just stop fighting" and "genocide", and Israel is way closer to one side of that than I would prefer.
Do you feel apolitical, or that you must be apolitical? As if you have no say in how things turn out?
This grants power while losing agency. And it is more, and more common, e.g. in the United States with its "Deep State" myth of the Q-Anon sect.
In terms of civilian deaths, Oct 7 is the least important event in this entire fuckup. Or do you think Palestinian lives matter less?
What is the context? A bunch of religious crazies decide to build a colony on the sovereign territory of another state.
Now unless you ascribe to that religion or believe that your tribe can do no wrong it all seems simple.
What state? The Ottoman Empire? The British Empire? In either case, foreign colonial states?
The sovereign state of Jordan, for example?
Are we talking about the West Bank now? Jordan relinquished any claim they may have had to the territory.
Australian here.
Aside from a vocal minority, the impression I get around from conversations with and reading other Australians is that the Australian people largely agree with your position.
Unlike the Palestinians, you can simply move to the US though.
It's possible to be critical of both Hamas and Israel, while recognizing that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is evil and a war crime.
Just war principles are important to observe.
The Nazis were a thuggish and murderous regime with plenty of complicity from the German populace, but the firebombing of Dresden was evil, as were the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Targeting civilians is evil.
If we accept that these are evil, and we ought to, then we must accept that what Israel is doing is unacceptable. Bibi should be punished.
You can target Hamas, and you should, but just war does not allow for the means Israel has used.
Isn’t the greater context that most of these people (Palestinians) had their ancestral homes stolen by “settlers”? I would vote for a pretty extreme government if someone came and stole my house.
Also, the situation on the ground seems pretty clear cut. You can literally watch videos of brutal war crimes committed by Israel on Reddit. Everyone has direct proof.
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Can you be more specific why you think so? I don't think what the commenter you are responding to said would meet the definition of collective punishment under international law.
Israel is directly causing a mass starvation event in Gaza. Innocent children and women are dying every single day, and if nothing is done soon, scores more will in the near future.
The commenter’s position is that the situation in Gaza is justifiable because Israel had to take action against Hamas.
This is textbook collective punishment: causing suffering to a massive number of people due to the actions of a minority.
> Israel is directly causing a mass starvation event in Gaza. Innocent children and women are dying every single day, and if nothing is done soon, scores more will in the near future.
Asuming all that is true, the person you are responding to never said they supported the policies that lead to that or that state of affairs.
It is possible to imagine that someone could both believe that Israel's continued military operation is neccessary and that changes could be made to relieve the humanitarian situation. I dont know if the person you are responding to actually believes that, but based on their comments there is no reason to think they dont.
Edit:
I would also add that the war crime of collective punishment has a specific intent requirement. The perpetrator has to specificly intend to punish the group for an act. Even if the person you were responding to supported all the things you mentioned, unless they supported it as a punishment for oct 7, instead of out of a belief (for example) that it would allow Israel to defeat hamas, then it would not be collective punishment. It would be other war crimes but not collective punishment. See https://opiniojuris.org/2023/10/24/a-short-history-of-the-wa... for a summary of what collective punishment is.
P.s. not so fun fact, the ICC lacks juridsiction over collective punishment, and given they are the main legal body investigating this conflict, we probably arent going to see any investigations into collective punishment
When you speak to someone from MAGA, can’t you tell when they are being amicable but still obviously support all the crazy MAGA stuff? They call this a dark trait that sociopaths have, an unusual propensity to use amicability and charm to appear perceptively reasonable. Good examples of this are Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan, where often they just seem like well meaning balanced people. It’s manipulative behavior. If you want to see a masterclass on it, check out Steve Bannon’s podcast.
So, while there are people that can present an allegedly reasonable take, the reality is that it’s just a polite smile in front of underlying beliefs and emotions. People in tech should be well acquainted with this type of abuse because we see it all the time in leadership and general corporate nonsense.
Having a back and forth conversation over time is truly violating to one’s self with such people. It’s almost like they think you are stupid. I think given the state of affairs, it’s fine to be more obtuse and blunt with such people so as to draw a red line where they are not allowed to run their manipulation. Genocide is a pretty clear red line.
In short, don’t worry about being so polite. Genocide apologists are running game with the mental gymnastics.
When you start to dehumanize the other - believe everything they say is just a front for their true evil beliefs, regardless of if you have any evidence of that or especially if your evidence is race, religion or national origin of the speaker - That is the road to facism, and something I disagree with in the strongest possible sense.
Yeah, I get you. It's just ...
https://youtube.com/shorts/MuPfkxQns1k
I'm having a hard time being nice. What are people supposed to think? We're supposed to walk away from stuff like that and go "yeah there's two sides to this, we should reserve judgement"? There's no two sides to this. Israel over-corrected after Oct 7, the same way America did after 9/11. They destroyed a city, and then funneled it's citizens into a ghetto in the south. Those. Are. The. Facts. I just provided you the definition of ethnic cleansing.
Also, labeling a human as manipulative is not de-humanizing. Manipulation is a property of a human. It's just a matter of how egregious it is, but you won't escape it. Five year olds will manipulate. You've done it, I've done it. Me and you are doing it right now, but we try to do it in good faith and limit it to just persuasion in discussion. It's a spectrum. Some people are using the ability to justify a genocide.
There's a form of normalization that occurs with egregious manipulation (serious manipulation is abuse, so we normalize abuse). For example, it is becoming normalized to discuss two sides to a genocide.
There is the genocide on one side, and then the normalization of "well, what is a self-respecting nation that wants to defend itself supposed to do otherwise?". The whole construct is part of the manipulation. I'll give another example, Rogan normalizes a lot of heavy right-wing opinions around, well, normal discussion. It'll be embedded inside of a discussion about pop culture. This is a very very troubling form of it. It almost makes you think it's "normal" to entertain the absurd extremes. If you were to confront either of them about this normalization, they'd stay consistent and give you a normal response:
Rogan: Hey, I'm just a comedian!
Israel: Hey, just defending ourselves!
As if the rest of us are literally retarded.
> yeah there's two sides to this, we should reserve judgement"?
Of course not, for starters there is significantly more than 2 sides of this multifaceted conflict.
You should not reserve judgemdnt. You should still listen and try and understand everyone's perspective before coming to your judgement, otherwise what is the point?
> There's no two sides to this. Israel over-corrected after Oct 7, the same way America did after 9/11
While 9/11 might be a good comparison for how a society can become radicalized after an attack, i dont think its a good comparison in general. The geopolitical situation is totally different. The scale of the attack is different. There was no hostages taken, no sexual violence, etc. They are very different situations. First and foremost because there was basically no possible way for al-qaeda to do a second attack, you can only really fly a plane into a tower once; after that pilots got reenforced cockpit doors. In comparison Hamas is right next door, and does potentially have the capability to do a second attack. That doesn't necessarily mean i think everything Israel does is justified, but self-defense claims should be evaluated in that context.
I think Israel has a reasonable argument for self defense here. That is not a blank cheque, there are limits to what self-defense allows, but it does seem pretty clear that some military action would be justified self defense here given the circumstances.
Vs say usa in iraq which was pretty preposterous as they didnt have anything to do with 9/11.
> I just provided you the definition of ethnic cleansing.
To nitpick here, ethnic cleansing isn't a war crime/crime against humanity. The crime is called "forced displacement". Ethnic cleansing started as a euphamism by war criminals who thought it sounded less bad, but it kind of stuck because it actually sounds worse. That said, i think its better to talk about forced displacement because that has an actual definition, is mentioned in the Geneva convention, etc
> Also, labeling a human as manipulative is not de-humanizing
It depends why you label then that. If you label based on people's words or actions, then of course it is not. If you label them as manipulative based on their membership in a group instead of the person's own actions, i would say it is dehumanizing.
> There is the genocide on one side, and then the normalization of "well, what is a self-respecting nation that wants to defend itself supposed to do otherwise?"
The people who say Israel is defending itself generally dispute the characterization of Israel's actions as a genocide. The vast majority believe (or at least claim to) that genocide is not acceptable in self-defense (im sure you can find some crazies who say otherwise of course).
Quite frankly, this isn't a totally crazy position, things are still a bit up in the air on this. The ICC when it charged israeli leaders with various crimes did not charge them with genocide. The ICJ hasn't ruled yet. Its not like there is a consensus among experts on this topic.
It's indeed collective. Are you certain it's a punishment?
Playing this corny HN-brained faux-debate game when Israel is blocking hundreds of aid trucks from entering Gaza and letting children starve to death is in really bad taste.
It's not "faux". I mean it genuinely. It's one thing to claim that Israel should ensure food security (that's my point of view). It's quite another to claim "collective punishment", and that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
By the way, there are hundreds of trucks on the Gaza side of the border, the opposite of blocked, let through by Israel, but the UN refuses to collect them and distribute them: https://x.com/Ostrov_A/article/1950577195153580306
It's impressive how thoroughly Hamas has won the information war when they have made it so heart-wrenchingly emotive that presenting any alternative view point is "bad taste" (at best, it can also be much worse).
> It's quite another to claim "collective punishment", and that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
17,000 kids killed directly by Isreal.
> the UN refuses to collect them and distribute them
A blatant lie.
Actual news coverage of that border crossing:
https://apnews.com/article/aid-gaza-hunger-united-nations-e7...
> 17,000 kids killed directly by Isreal.
The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?
All these international crimes do have various requirements. Collective punishment in particular has more intent requirements than many other war crimes. Death and destruction in and of itself is not sufficient.
> The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?
Let's put Netanyahu in front of the ICC and let the lawyers figure it out.
Edit: That isn't tongue in cheek, I think it is one of the few ways to difuse the cauldron of violence that keeps brewing hotter and hotter. A broad international coalition to hold the leadership on both sides responsible for their war crimes.
The ICC lacks juridsiction over the war crime of collective punishment, so that would be an easy win for Netanyahu. To charge him with collective punishment either the united nations security council would have to create an ad-hoc tribunal, a domestic israeli court could charge him, or some other national court under the principle of universal juridsiction could bring charges. The ICC cannot.
More generally though I agree. I'm a big supporter of the ICC and generally believe it to be a fair court. I'd like to see those accused stand trial, present their defense, and let justice be done no matter which way it leads.
I'm still not sure what you mean. Are you saying that when children are unintentionally killed in war that is "punishment"? Were the children killed by NATO troops in Afghanistan "punished"? For that matter, do you think Oct 7 was Palestine "punishing" Israel?
> A blatant lie.
Interesting. How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?
> when children are unintentionally killed
Oops, I killed 17,000 kids, totally an accident, my bad, so I'm just gonna keep doing the same thing, but I said it was an accident so that's totally cool right?
You realize that's more than a order of magnitude more than the total number of people killed on October 7th? If October 7th was justification for this war, what Isreal has done in response justifies so much more. (To be clear, I don't believe in collective punishment so neither is justified.)
> How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?
I start by looking at the sources reputations, then look at the amount of context that they include that contradicts their implicit or explicit view point. From there the process gets more complicated if necessary.
In this case you have blog source that clearly elides relevant context against a news article that presents the position of both sides coming from one of the more trustworthy news organizations. I don't necessarily trust the AP to be unbiased or not spread propaganda but in comparison to that blog, it is pretty easy to guess which is more reliable.
There seem to be a few strands getting entangled here. If you look earlier in the thread you'll see I'm asking for justification of the claim of "collective punishment". So far I haven't seen any, and indeed I haven't seen any direct responses to that request at all.
An observer following the thread (and maybe this applies to you too) might think "But what I am seeing as so egregious, why does it matter if it's technically 'collective punishment' or not? That's just nitpicking, splitting hairs, and a really awful thing to engage in when such suffering is occurring". Well then, if someone has such a strong argument that it easy for them to make it without leaving hairs that can be split, without leaving anything that could technically be nitpicked then let them make that argument. But so far I haven't found that argument. The arguments that I have found so far have loose ends, and when I pull on the loose ends I find invariably that the whole argument unravels.
So, the number of fatalities is not really relevant to this particular thread of discussion, but if you want to have a discussion on that topic, maybe we can check up front whether we have a reasonable basis for such a discussion: Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't.
I don't see any other reason to kill 17,000 kids like that except as collective punishment or genocide. You seem pretty clear that it was neither so I'll leave it up to you to provide another reasonable explanation for why Isreal would want to intentionally kill that many kids.
A few thoughts:
1. "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Was that because the allies were "collectively punishing" or "committing genocide" on Germans? I don't think so, and I don't see any reason that civilian deaths in Gaza imply that either.
2. Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation?
3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise.
4. As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in.
5. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
> "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people:
To be fair, I think the allies commited a bunch of war crimes they were never charged with during WWII, and firebombing is high up that list as is dropping nuclear bombs on cities.
That said, WWII was an actual war and Germany (and the axis in general) lost fewer people than their enemies.
This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.
> Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation?
These numbers are pretty much universally acknowledged as more likely to be too low than too high (including by Isreal.)
Here's a study not done by a Palestinian organization that says that the official Palestinian estimate is 40% too low.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v...
> 3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise.
I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."
> As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in.
Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.
> Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)
However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.
At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.
> This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.
Right, so we come back to my original question, which I asked in order to determine whether we have a basis for a discussion: "Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't."
In any case, whilst we're looking at multipliers, what do you think of the Battle of Mosul?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%93...
By a variety of accounts the US, UK, France and Turkey participated in a battle that killed maybe 10 or 20 times as many of the opposing side than were killed on their side. According to some estimates they killed 40,000 civilians, more than 20x as many as the number of military that were killed on their side. Was that an "occupation and a slaughter"?
So I'm not sure we really have a basis for discussion. We simply differ on fundamental moral principles. However, I will respond to your points.
> I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."
Themselves? I'm saying Hamas is killing civilians, be it directly, by deliberately putting them in harms way or by stealing aid, not that civilians are killing themselves. Unless you're saying that the civilians are Hamas, which I don't think you are. And I certainly believe that Israel has responsibility to minimize civilian casualties and the responsibility to ensure aid flows freely, but until the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the release of all hostages I believe that Hamas holds all the moral responsibility for what happens to its people.
> Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.
This seems very unclear to me. If they had wanted to avoid risk to their soldiers they wouldn't have sent any in, they would have conducted only bombing operations. In fact, one reason to send soldiers in would be for the exact opposite reason: so they could minimize civilian harm.
Why do you think soldiers are on the ground at all, if they want to avoid risks to their soldiers?
> Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)
It doesn't matter who recognises them. Before Oct 7th they had the monopoly on violence within Gaza. They are the de facto state. Civilian wellbeing is ultimately their responsibility, like German civilian wellbeing was the German government's responsibility in WW2.
Furthermore, normally in times of war, third countries allow civilians to flee to safety. Why won't Egypt? Why won't other countries take in refugees via Egypt? Why do they insist that civilians must stay in harm's way?
Above, in response to my claim that Hamas is responsible for Palestinian civilian deaths, you wrote sarcastically "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault." so it seems you do believe, to some degree, that they are Hamas's people.
> However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.
You're in good company. It is very common to believe that "might makes wrong".
> At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.
Ah OK, so you're not basing claims of genocide on the legal standard, just a difference in death toll and wealth/power imbalance. You're welcome to do that, of course. You can use words however you want, but that doesn't match the legal standard within international law.
The death toll is appalling. Hamas should be receive the utmost pressure to unconditionally surrender and release the hostages. Egypt should receive the utmost pressure to allow civilians to flee so that Israel can finish off Hamas and destroy the terror infrastructure they have built in Gaza. And by the way, I don't know what's happening there because I'm not there. All I know is what I see in front of me: arguments that don't seem to hold water, and an alternative perspective which is barely seeing the light of day.
>Are you certain it's a punishment?
I don't think people enjoy starving.
Can you please finish the argument? I don't think you can be saying that all starvation is punishment.
They do not have the luxury to hallucinate neighbours who just want to life like the west. They just see reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vH2H6oIo4
yeah i guess we need to kill more kids
I guess thats thats what american soldiers on the way to berlin had to say - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm
A totalitarian ideology throwing its own future into the furnace, not for a tomorrow (all the fertilizer was ammunition, they had sentenced themselves to starvation) but for the hope of killing all your enemies one last time.
How can one venture this deep into defending this regressive madness is beyond me. I hope you heal from whatever hatred is devouring you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter
WonderWhy made a good video about the political situation in Israel about 2 years ago: <https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA>
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725768
but thats the thing. it IS good for the settlers and it IS something that israel is actively promoting in its own self interest. this settler stuff isnt a mistake or an oversight
Yes, it's broadly supported. Besides widely publicised polls by universities and corporations outside of Israel you can look at IDI polls here, https://en.idi.org.il/tags-en/1465.
The why takes more explanation. I'd suggest you dig through https://xcancel.com/ireallyhateyou/, this person is an israeli with background in leftist activism that recently went into exile. They collect and translate a lot of material from israeli television and other media, and also translate and explain a lot of historical material, both more mainstream like background information on contemporary israeli politicians and the occasional look at punk and leftist activism in Israel during the nineties and -00s.
It's also a good idea to spend time going through the material collected by Younis Tirawi, https://xcancel.com/ytirawi. It shows what IDF personnel believes to be appropriate behaviour that will positively impress their civilian israeli peers, i.e. what they consider to be the political climate.
Diaspora jews are quite heterogenous and splintered. Many support Israel, and many don't. One 'poll' is the democratic mayor primary in New York, where Zohran Mamdani was quite popular among jewish constituents. Adding to this, many jewish institutions are in some sense captured or founded by zionists, and funded because they are loyal to the zionist cause. This includes many summer camps and similar activities for jewish youth. Since 2023 I expect more diaspora jews to have lost sympathy with the zionist movement than it has gained, but it's not something I have polling numbers to support. On the other hand, basically every recurring large protest against Israel has a jewish contingent.
At the moment we're past immediate resolution, because the entire population in the Gaza strip has been permanently, irrevocably harmed by starvation. It would also take a lot of violence to force the israeli society to back down and stop what it's doing to its neighbours, and then likely generations of enforced stabilisation and education to sow seeds of democracy, neither of which Israel's occidental backers are willing to consider. Then there's the questions of colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are illegal and must be dissolved, which in turn would require distinct amounts of force both to achieve and then to keep it from turning into a civil war within Israel when the so called settlers are relocated there.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, one should keep in mind that this is mainly a christian project, most adherents to zionism are christians.
I was born in Ukraine and moved to Israel (made "aliyah") in 1999. I moved to the Netherlands for work in 2021.
I'm not an Israeli by Israeli standards :) And will never be. But, of course, I'm a citizen, I can read and speak Hebrew well.
Politically, you can say, I came full circle. As many newcomers I was fed a very simplified and one-sided story of Israeli-Arab relationship. The first time I ever cast my vote in elections I voted Shinuj (they are farther right than Likud). In general, immigrants from the former Soviet Union tend to vote right and be pro-settlers.
For non-political reasons I ended up in military jail, where I met some "prisoners of consciousness" who, while didn't convince me to switch my political position entirely, exposed me to the leftist ideas delivered by the leftists. It's very important to see such ideas through the eyes of supporters because the other side virtually always misrepresents them to score points.
I didn't care about elections for a while, but, eventually, when I finally decided to vote, I voted Meretz.
I don't think I will vote in the next elections. Or, maybe, out of habit, I'll vote Democrats (former Labor and Meretz together)... but, really, I don't see a good candidate.
Anyways, what made me depart from the liberal camp is the European liberals. Pathologically bad decisions, or, even more often, the complete lack of any decisions. Gullible and zealous about issues they don't understand... I just don't want to associate myself with people like that. And I see how Israeli liberals parrot the European liberal's believing they know better.
* * *
So... to try to give some sort of a breakdown on who in Israel stands with settlers and why:
* Working class hates Arabs. It's plain and simple: working class often has to work in mixed environments. Construction, hospitality, agriculture. And there Arabs are just danger. You have to look over your shoulder all the time to make sure Mahmud isn't in a bad mood today and didn't bring a knife to work, and isn't going to cut you. I worked in a chain restaurant where a line cook brought a bomb one day to work and killed a bunch of people, himself included. Any Israeli who worked blue collar jobs probably has a story like that. These people don't care about the technicalities or long-term consequences of illegal settlements. Whoever harms Arabs, they are voting for that guy.
* Healthcare holds a special place in white collar jobs because there are a lot of Arabs working in it. But these are not the brutes who come to work with knives and bombs. Also, doctors Jewish doctors are exposed to Arab patients and the other way around... this creates a more friendly atmosphere. You will also find that doctors in Israel are probably the most leftist of any occupation.
* White collar jobs in general want to see Israel copying Europe. People in these jobs tend to want the rule of law, equality, secularism, inclusivity. They see settlers as either crazy or brutish and don't want to associate with them. Even if they may hold right-wing views, they want the implementation to be lawful and non-violent if possible.
* Black-kipah orthodox Jews only care about themselves. For better or for worse. They only wake up when politicians directly address their interests. If settlers go berserk on Arabs or Arabs eviscerate the settlers: they don't care.
* Knitted-kipah orthodox Jews are the settlers (not all of them, but probably a majority). They believe Israel should be restored in some sort of historical borders... as per usual, those borders aren't very certain, but they would quite certainly encompass a place called Judea and a city called Jerusalem. They believe they are doing a favor to the Jewish community by fighting "invaders" (Arabs).
* Israeli Arabs... are a mixed bag. You can find literal jihadists and those who hate other Arabs on the other side of the fence more than settlers do. It's very clanish and way too involved to try to parse it.
* The owners class, the rich people, they despise settlers. See them as an inconvenience / a bunch of lunatics. They don't care about Arabs either.
* Immigrants, especially fresh, tend to overwhelmingly support settlers because they misunderstand their status and genuinely believe the settlers are doing what the country isn't allowed to do due to some political scheming going on.
Basically nothing portrayed by the main stream media / international press on this issue is accurately represented. Most of it is either wildly ignorant or actively hostile (or both).
The Free Press, Call Me Back (podcast), and Breaking Israeli History (podcast) do a good job. Also we will dance again and October 8 (films). I'd also recommend Douglas Murray's On Democracies and Death Cults to get some perspective if you're curious, generally people don't bother on online discussion forums on this topic because it's not productive, but for earnestly curious friends I make the case below. From my perspective, Jews outside of Israel have become more united because the nature of a lot of the western response after 10/7 ironically shows why Jews need a state and an army to protect themselves.
I’m all for high minded debate, but a lot of the anti-Israel protesting isn’t that, the people celebrating or excusing 10/7 on 10/8 before Israel responded, the guy that recently executed two young people leaving a jewish event in DC and then screamed “Free Palestine”, the guy that murdered an old woman at a hostage march in boulder, the “death, death to the IDF” shouted from the stage in Glastonbury to a cheering crowd, the “river to the sea” and “intifada” chants/harassing of jews on college campuses, the repeated negative press narrowly focused on Israel from BBC, Guardian, NYT, the ‘genocide’ claims and other false blood libels, people marching waving islamic republic of Iran and Hezbollah flags in NYC, smashing up jewish owned businesses, etc. - these people are not motivated by some idea of nuanced democratic values or a ‘two state solution’, they’re motivated by old Jewish hatred under a new name. Islamism blended with lefty socialism united in their support of “anti-zionism” i.e. the destruction of Israel.
Many of these media orgs have been hollowed out by an activist ideology that doesn’t understand the history it’s swimming in and doesn’t pursue truth as much as push a political agenda. What ‘genocide’ provides aid to the people they’re supposedly trying to kill? Hamas is driven by a theologically motivated Jihad against the Jews with explicit genocidal intent, The Islamic Republic of Iran (distinct from its people) wants to destroy Israel and then the west and uses terrorism for this purpose and may have used a nuke if not for recent events. It is necessary to use lethal force to defend against this kind of threat. Anyone that cares about a positive future for Palestinians should recognize there is no possibility of such a future while Hamas remains in power.
Europe has largely been protected by the US providing its security and deterrence after WWII. Israel is on the front lines and can’t ignore the reality on the ground, their survival depends on it. You can fight this earlier or wait until the cost is higher to fight it later. Other Arab countries understand these problems, it’s why the UAE has banned the Muslim brotherhood and other extremist organizations, it’s why Saudi is leaning closer towards normalization with Israel and both are allied against Iran. They understand the risks of Islamic terror because they have to deal with it - it forces an accurate understanding. Something Europe (and anti-Israel protestors in the west) don’t grasp, but given Europe’s poor policy on this issue they likely will continue to experience more of first hand.
What Hamas did is joyfully murder, rape, and torture a bunch of lefty kibbutzniks (the kind bringing gaza kids to Israeli hospitals) and music festival kids, took hostages that they’re still holding, while filming it, laughing about it and celebrating it. They have an explicitly genocidal charter interested in killing all the Jews. There is no compatibility between the west and those interested in Islamic Jihad. Every third house in gaza has weapons in it (often hidden in kids rooms), Hamas uses hospitals and other civilian areas to try to maximize civilian casualties despite Israel’s effort to minimize them. They also kill civilians that go against them and have been launching rockets into Israel for years.
That action requires a military response to achieve political goals: return the hostages and destroy hamas / remove them from power. That is unavoidable without civilian deaths (always a tragedy in war), but the fault for this lies squarely with Hamas for starting the war. Few wars have moral grounding as clear as the war started because of 10/7. On October 8th people in the west were celebrating the invasion and killing carried about by Hamas, some mixture of ignorance and useful idiots (primarily on the political left) along with explicitly pro-hamas support. This was popular in American universities and across Europe before Israel had even responded chanting things like “globalize the intifada”. This is, at best, total moral confusion.
Also notice the attention placed on this conflict, but conspicuously absent from others. Why aren’t students protesting Bashar al-Assad? Or the civilian deaths in the conflict in Yemen? Or in Sudan? Why only the one Jewish state that was brutally attacked by a terrorist group that’s still holding its citizens hostage? This isn’t just an issue with Hamas either, it’s more complicated - many Palestinian civilians participated in the kidnapping, looting, and violence on 10/7. They helped harbor hostages. They would have lynched the hostages being returned if Hamas wasn’t preventing that and they of course elected Hamas to power in the first place. The population itself is radicalized with a deep hatred of Jews.
Enormous amounts of foreign aid (hundreds of millions) has flowed into gaza of the last couple of decades. Enough to make the Hamas leaders billionaires whose families can live large in Qatar while supporting their investment of tunnels to support their terrorism. A lot of it is backed by Iran, but a lot of this aid is from western nations to organizations that worked directly with and supported Hamas (UNRWA). This money could have been used to build something after Israel’s "land for peace" withdrawal in 2005, instead it was used for terror. It’s more instructive to look at what motivates the groups today rather than litigate divergent historical narratives (i.e. Nakba was five Arab states attacking Israel and the ‘catastrophe’ was that they lost, the security checkpoints exist because of suicide bombing during the intifadas, etc.). If Hamas surrendered and returned the hostages it would end the fighting they started. If Israel laid down their weapons they’d all be killed. Palestinians have no interest in two states which they’ve repeatedly rejected, they’re interested in killing all the Jews, the destruction of Israel, and more broadly the destruction of the west (as Iran’s proxy). Meanwhile in Israel, Arabs and Jews live together peacefully as Israeli citizens.
Ideally it’d be possible to engage in war with perfect individual targeting and no civilian casualties. Israel does this as much as possible (Hezbollah pager attack was very narrowly targeted, targeted strikes on individuals in specific apartments, other civilian warning strategies), but it’s not perfect and civilian deaths are unavoidable, especially in dense urban conflict zones. The IDF has a better record on this than any other modern western army (including US when we took Mosul against ISIS). I see war as a means to achieve a specific political result when diplomacy is not possible (or after you’ve been attacked). In this case: remove Hamas from power and return the hostages. In the broader conflict: remove the threat from Hezbollah and Iran. I think it’s necessary to achieve these goals in order to achieve any lasting peace.
Some ideologies and enemies require total military defeat. If western civilization is not willing to do this despite its real costs, then power is ceded to enemies that don’t have the same moral concerns, or in this case, explicitly want to maximize civilian death and terror as they did on 10/7 and it'll just happen again. My view is Israel would like to live in peace with its neighbors if that’s a real option (and historically has tried many times), but it’s not. Israel's neighbors (driven by a particular theological view of Islam from the Muslim Brotherhood) are not interested in peaceful coexistence. Israel should not make concessions to an enemy still plotting to destroy them.
If we’re lucky an outcome of this conflict could be normalization with KSA / an extension of the Abraham accords and deeper partnership with other Arab countries in the region - maybe even a shift in some of the public’s ideology if people recognize that trying to destroy Israel/kill Jews leads to ruin (though this is hard with radicalization in the culture/schools, etc.) - it’s a generational project that will take time, but it’s not impossible. Currently, because the goals have not been achieved (Hamas still holds hostages, still wants to remain in power, still will not surrender) the war continues and sadly civilians continue to pay some of the cost. The allies (mostly US) fully administered Japan after WWII for 7 years, Japan lost their sovereignty during that time. An outcome of starting a war and losing it is you may lose your sovereignty and land. It’s possible to defeat evil ideologies, it happened in WWII with both Japan and Germany.
I think it’s very challenging to know what’s true given all the bad actors (UN, Hamas, Pallywood - they film fake videos to (effectively) manipulate western sentiment) and their repeated lying. I think that the GHF has weakened Hamas by removing their control over the aid which has threatened them, and lastly I’m personally not sure what responsibility there is to provide aid at all while hostages remain held in Gaza (this is a more controversial view) - that said, Israel has provided and continues to provide enormous amounts of civilian aid and works to move civilians outside of the areas of fighting despite this being a thankless task. War can be a moral act, the west exercising its power to defend its values against an evil ideology is an important and necessary thing.
Okay, you figured it out. Explain this one to me:
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-destruction...
We would consider someone fucking uneducated if in 2025 they tried to justify the Iraq/Afghanistan war. The same will be true for everything you wrote as time goes on.
Hamas leaves traps in the buildings with explosives when they leave an area to kill Israelis. The IDF has to detonate these traps to make an area safe, this is the cause of most of the destruction. John Spencer talks about the details if you're genuinely curious.
BS. The IDF soldiers themselves post videos of them going into buildings, pillaging what they can find (literally taking exercise equipment, jewelry, clothing, breaking open safes), then wiring it with explosives.
If the buildings were booby trapped they wouldn't be walking around casually inside. If there were enemy combatants they wouldn't be walking around inside. The buildings by definition have no military value and have been cleared, but they are blown up anyway. These are self documented war crimes.
I think a lot of this is hard for an external observer to discern. Are the Palestinians really thar bad? Is IDF really bombing indiscriminately? Ultimately a lot of this is down to information external observers don't have, and people's convictions are at risk of aligning with their sympathies. It is definitely true of me. I don't know if Israel really needs to destroy Hamas to be safe, and what is sufficient to do that.
However, there are two aspects of this conflict where Israel is IMO monumentally and unarguably in the wrong.
One is the settler program. It is wholly inconsistent with a desire to live peacefully alongside even savage enemies. If they are so bad, put up fences and put guns on them - as Israel is doing. But the settlement program, with displacements of Palestinian civilians, bulldozing of Palestinian villages, rendering arable land inhospitable, unchecked settler violence, is clearly just a land grab, and against any semblance of desiring a peaceful coexistence. It often gets dismissed as a fringe movement, but election after election, democratic Israeli governments show varying, but always positive amounts of support.
The other is use of famine against civilians. There is no conceivable military goal in sight other than indiscriminate death and misery onto truly random people, half of them below the median age of 19 not even being politically active. It is not an accident either, Ben Gvir and/or Smotrich talk about it openly.
To be clear, Hamas and co are also guilty of horrendous crimes. Thing is, vast majority of reasonable people accept that and point it out. Israel clearly accepts that too, but perceives the mere whiff of criticism as rabid discrimination.
And the two don't cancel out. It's not about restraint, or higher standard, or any uneven field. Any instance of terrorism and genocide is horrendous, unnecessary and unacceptable. They don't serve military or diplomatic deals. They are there to hurt just because you can, and somehow it pleases some basic human instinct.
Anti-Israeli crime is awful and I condemn it. I don't support Hamas, heckling of Jews around the world, the 7th Oct attacks were awful. I mean it. And Israel's actions are also awful and inhumane.
I generally don’t think your understanding of the settler issue is accurate, but I’m also not an expert on those details.
In general Jews living in west bank communities they created seems fine, I don’t think it’s acceptable for Palestinians to ban Jews. Arabs and Jews live in peace alongside each other as equals in Israel. I think Israel does police the violence on their own side.
That land is secured by Israel as the result of previous wars, it’s complicated. The result of losing a war you start can be losing sovereignty. 2005 Gaza withdrawal suggests giving up that control as a gesture for peace is a serious mistake.
With the aid, Israel has and continues to give tons of aid which Hamas steals to fund themselves. This is not a trivial problem to solve, GHF is an attempt. The press has since the start lied repeatedly about this. My personal view is it’s not clear to me that giving aid to the enemy is the responsibility of the people that were attacked, especially when your people are still held hostage. But that’s irrelevant because despite my view (and some others in the gov) they have given tons of aid.
The world generally is morally confused on this broadly and thinks because Hamas is weak, that must mean they’re good or it’s some sort of economic issue. They do not understand Islamic Jihad and the nature of this ideology. They look at it with a western lens and make a serious error.
The truth is those of us in the west are all living in Israel, just some of us haven’t realized it yet.
The West Bank settlement is a clear sign of bad faith, because the only credible chance of peaceful coexistence, the Oslo Accords, earmarked the West Bank exclusively for Palestinians, or more strictly, their state. Sure, I would be delighted if either side of the border Jews and Arabs lived peacefully alongside. But that is not what is happening there.
Settlers, aided by army and militias of unknown status (armed settlers? reservists? real army?) expropriate Palestinian land, destroy their property, threaten and shoot locals. The area, which was supposed to be a core of a Palestinian state, is criss-crossed with Jewish-only roads, settlements, farms, military checkpoints or closed military areas. The settlers enjoy rights their Palestinian neighbours don't have. This is not about some kind of "Palestine for Palestinians" chauvinism, this is a systematic eradication of a people in what was supposed to be reserved land.
Israel simply cannot with a straight face claim that it wanted a peaceful coexistence when it was de facto policy from the get go to make the two state solution impossible.
As for aid... it is not that Israel is somehow being forced to feed its enemies. There are plenty of organisations trying to send the aid in, and Israel is actively stopping them. Israel kicked out reputable aid organisations, with decades of experience in delivering aid even surrounded by hostile warlords, replaced them with some no-name military contractors, and now regularly shoots people queuing for the little food there is. More people have now been shot queing for food than have died on 7th Oct.
I don't think many people are confused as to what Hamas is. Some, sure, are, but most see it as an awful terrorist organisation. Criticism of Israel doesn't stem from people thinking Hamas is good, but from Israel acting murderously in bad faith, in ways incompatible with peaceful goals, while demanding unlimited patience and sympathy from the world.
> Oslo Accords, earmarked the West Bank exclusively for Palestinians, or more strictly, their state
The two Oslo agreements themselves don't contain this sort of earmarking. There was a sort of informal understanding that Oslo would be a stepping stone toward a real Palestinian state, and that hasn't happened, but it would be hard to put most of the blame on Israel. Arafat walked away from a very serious statehood offer in 2000, for example.
From your comments it sounds like you might have been misled by some questionable sources, which would be understandable considering even top UN officials have spread rather blatant disinformation about Israel [1]. E.g. you also mention a famine against civilians, when we're actually about three orders of magnitude short of the number of starvations required to declare a famine.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/debunked-un-off...
From my research, well, Palestine may have had various shots at statehood, each time below their expectations. It's a negotiation and balance of power which they didn't have. It's hard to argue with power.
But Israel claims far, far more than "we're more powerful so its our way or the highway". Israel asserts they are in a universally morally superior position, thay it went out of its way to accomodate the Palestinians. And I think this is blatantly untrue. The Palestinians were kicked off their land 70 years ago, for complex reasons, and every year continue to be pushed further by Israel. Theres many ccontradictory things happening in Israel, but this one IMO is a clear indication that Israel is acting in bad faith.
As to your source, let's unpick this. Your link states that a UN representative erroneously claimed 14,000 children will die within 48 hours, due to malnutrition. Instead, he should have said over 12 months. Sure, thats a big difference, but either is beastly - while achieving 0 military or diplomatic effect.
Other sources I follow include the B'tselem institute, who recently called the Israeli governments actions clearly genocidal.
> Instead, he should have said over 12 months.
In addition to ~12 months turning into "48 hours", "children aged between six months and five years" turned in "babies", and "acute malnutrition" turned into "death".
When top UN officials are pushing blatant disinformation like this with no consequences, it's hard to know who to trust for unbiased information.
> B'tselem institute, who recently called the Israeli governments actions clearly genocidal
Considering that it's B'tselem, there was never really a possibility of them reaching a different position. I don't think they've ever pushed back on anti-Israeli propaganda, such as the UN statement above.
You're not convincing me. It's also not like you are attacking pivotal issues. You point out that some of what is said about Israel is not right, and clearly that is true. You point at one fact I didn't even rely on. Calling it "blatantly disinformation" isnt right either - it was one statement, quickly corrected.
In any case, "it's not 14,000 babies dead in 48 hours, it is only 14,000 with severe malnutrition over 12 months" isnt an argument I'd like to rely on when my judgment day comes.
There won't be peace when one side has an explicit goal to kill all the Jews, the other side is Jews that don't want to be killed and neither is willing to compromise.
You can ignore that underlying moral framing, but it's the basis of the conflict and it's why Israel has a morally superior position.
The Palestinians have over and over again said they don't want two states, they want to destroy Israel and kill Jews - the idea they want two states only exists in the minds of western leftists, it's a failure to understand Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood.
They didn't correct it though; when BBC inquired about it their response was a somewhat evasive "We are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies ..."
I did separately point out a couple misstatements in your comments. My point with the UN thing was just that I wouldn't blame anyone for getting a few things wrong, when sources we expect to be credible are actually spreading disinformation.
> isnt an argument I'd like to rely on when my judgment day comes.
I don't believe there's any justification for spreading disinformation like Fletcher's, or any situation where it's wrong to correct it, no matter what humanitarian agenda is involved.
> Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this?
If you are asking specifically about the Hilltop Youth, I believe most people understand them to be somewhere between extremists and jewish terrorists and do not support their actions. The government (well, Ben-Gvir) can continue to support them (within limits of plausible deniability) as long as they are in power and elections aren't until late next year.
If you are asking about Israeli Jews and the ongoing war, I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory. Everyone (in the mainstream) has either served in the IDF or has family there and so they know first-hand that claims that the IDF is participating in a genocide are absurd. If you're telling me my (in this case fictional) cousing Omri is participating in a genocide, I can very easily ignore that because I know he is a good kid that wouldn't do that, and I can call him up and ask him. Or maybe I'll ask my (fictional) coworker Daniel, the poor guy has been called into reserve duty for over 300 days since the war started.
They've also probably seen at least one of the many lies going around about the war. The documentary that the BBC tried to fake. The UN lying about the amount of aid going into Gaza (at the time when the american temporary pier plan was ongoing, the UN published numbers of trucks that they personally supervised going into Gaza. Conveniently, they had no one present to supervise in one of three checkpoints and "missed" about 1/3rd of the aid going in). UNWRA personnel participating in the OCT-7 attack. UNIFIL providing cover for Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israeli homes (including some Druze children which really shocked people around the country). Some blatant foreign media nonesense I've seen is showing footage of Israeli soccer fans being beaten and recontextualising it as if they are the ones doing the beating. Footage of an Israeli survivor of a terrorist attack (speaking Hebrew, in Israeli media!) being subtitled to describe her as a Palestinian survivor of an Israeli terror attack. Footage of Assad slaughtering his Syrian population broadcast as if it is a slaughter by the IDF, etc. Foreign media has proven itself to Israelis as liars, so they have no reason to listen to them.
They also see it as the #1 priority to return the hostages and see any call to stop the war before they are returned as ridiculous and evil (Though I do believe a majority support a deal of "everyone for everyone and a stop to the war").
In this light, even though many people believe the war could have already ended (with an aforementioned "everyone for everyone" deal) and Netanyahu is cruelly extending the war for his own personal interests, they also understand that any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas, both for starting the conflict, and for their use of civilians as human shields, their use of civilian infrastructure (schools, mosques, hospitals) as war resources and use of their children as soldiers. They may also be familiar with the data, which last time both sides published semi-reliable information (or equally unreliable information), showed that when compared to other historical conflicts, civilian casualties were actually a smaller part of overall casualties. And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war as the IDF is already doing their duty to fight as ethically as is reasonably possible.
While we're there, we also frequently see news of Israelis and Jews being attacked around the world with no one really giving a shit about it. If the UK shows me that they don't give a shit about the lives of Jews/Israelis in the UK, I'm definitely not going to care what the UK government thinks about the ongoing war.
> Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
If you are in Israel and know of Jews residing elsewhere, they are probably former Israelis, which don't neccesarily represent non-Israeli Jews in those countries. Those I've spoken to have spoken about a sharp rise in antisemitism. Some fear for their lives. From the news and other media I know some Jews feel like Israel is going too far, but they get their opinions from e.g. the BBC, so you can't really take them as well-informed opinions.
- Incidentally, one former UN employee I know has spoken about ingrained and casual antisemitism in the UN much earlier than OCT-7 (of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" kind), so I'd consider any opinion or intervention by the UN as deceitful and unwelcome.
>any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas
They started the war, but Israel should be expected to behave at a higher standard than terrorists. They are causing the starvation and death that is not needed to protect Israel's interests. The deaths are now on them.
>And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war
I don't believe that one minute.
Your own defense ministers have said there is no military value in continuing the war, and there is no getting the hostages back without a deal with Hamas. This war continues because of far-right bloodlust from the Israeli government, and Bibi's desire to stay in power and out of jail.
Aid could get in, and the starvation could stop, if it was the will of the Israeli government. Hamas is militarily FUBAR, and Oct7 only happened because of the decisions made by Bibi to move IDF to the West Bank and ignore warnings from intelligence. Oct7 will not happen again, even if the fighting stopped this instant.
Instead, they want to see Palestine starve so they can take over Gaza.
Great summary of recent status: https://crooked.com/podcast/tbd-2/
> I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory.
That's pretty irrelevant when they don't put you in front of a firing squad for draft dodging, isn't it? If it is possible to refuse - either by draft dodging or by complying poorly enough that it basically becomes sabotage - the fact that you chose not to do so means you are complicit.
To bring this argument to the extreme: would you murder your own father if there was a $10 fine on not doing so? It's the law, after all! You're just following the law, so you cannot possibly be held accountable for your actions, right?
We have numerous first-hand reports from doctors of young children showing up at Gazan hospitals with gun shot injuries to the head. We have seen well-marked aid convoys blown up. Grutesque living skeleton children haunt our social media feeds. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared a genocide over a year and a half ago. A reply to OP's question that doesn't engage with these realities is, at best, deeply unserious.
> Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared a genocide over a year and a half ago
Isn't that the point? They declared a genocide before Israel had even seriously responded to the attack. (Year and a half ago is Dec 2023, the attempted genocide by Palestinians was Oct 7, 2023.)
A genocide doesn't start after you kill X% of the population. It happens when you intend to, and boy do they look like they intended this all along
I believe Israel is committing war crimes but yours is the same argument that Israelis make. That genocide is about intent, which isn't there.
If you read the section of South Africa's Application Instituting Proceedings in the International Court of Justice entitled Expressions of Genocidal Intent against the Palestinian People by Israeli State Officials and Others, you'll find a compelling case that genocidal intent was clearly expressed. There are over seven pages of quotes and citations of Israeli leaders expressing that intent.
The section begins halfway down page 59.
0. https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
Edit: The application was submitted on December 28, 2023.
israels has been doing a slow genocide and kettling them since 48
Yeah, that's right. That's why there are no rapists, because our (fictional) cousins would tell us about everyone they raped, but they haven't, so rape does not exist. Everything is fine. BBC is lying. No journalists are allowed in Gaza, because they would only use the opportunity to lie more. Everyone is against us.
...
It makes no sense. Yes, antisemitism exists. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Check the ADL's own website, if you remove anti-zionism events (such as protests or watermelon stickers lol) then antisemitism isn't up, it's flat. Don't fall for the "surge in antisemitism" crap, it's pushed by the ADL and friends to make it seem like Jews are at risk right now, too. But they're not, they're fine, the only people seeing a spike in terrorism directed at them are Palestinians and anyone that looks like them. In fact, one of the antisemitism acts the ADL claims is when an Israeli got shot in Florida... by an Israeli who thought he was an Arab!
people here don't understand and don't care about difference between 700k settlers, 500 hilltop youth idiots and where from they came.
trying to explain it, will get you downvoted and flagged. because people find it inconvenient when facts don't correlate with carefully cultivated media picture that they been consuming
edit: just in case somebody cares
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articl...
https://www.jns.org/over-6300-terror-attacks-against-jews-in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Price_tag_attack_...
Doesn't this conveniently leave out that settlers being initially nonviolent is still illegal and meeting armed resistance should have been/is expected when you do a crime like this?
ok so 700k peaceful land thieves and 500 violent ones..
This has been happening regularly over the course of decades on the West Bank but no-one is willing to call it "Terrorism" and therefore respond appropriately.
Well, France just took a stance and officially qualified this as terrorism [1] for the first time.
[1] https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/dossiers-pays/israel-terri...
Israeli jewish settlers murdered, on average, one Palestinian civilian per day in the west bank, for the entire year leading up to oct 11. The attacks on Palestinian civilians in the west bank have only accelerated, since then.
Israel is a terrorist organization, not a state.
Do you perhaps have sources of those claims at hand?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/1/israel-has-killed-10...
if you will read the article, you will see that it talks about IDF and settlers. PA in fact called in IDF to suppress hamas and pij in areas that PA tried to clear out but failed.
Articles like this on purpose blur lines of what happening and meant to generate outrage. Once I traced back article that talked about 48 (or something) palestinians killed by settlers by going through listed sources in the article. when I got to original article (twice removed), I discovered that it talked about 47 killed by IDF and 1 killed in clashes between settlers and palestinians
The PA is a puppet government of Israel. The last elections for PA leadership were in 2006. I don't think the distinction between settlers and the IDF is as salient to most outside observers as you think it is.
so, when israel on pa requests going to mop up hamas, because otherwise it about to be overthrown, and IDF kills 999 hamas/pij/lions of whatever members, it's essentially "settler violence". do i get it right ?
and about "puppet". the very funny part is that people that demand for PA to have controls over west bank/gaza as sovereign, don't realize that it physically unable to do so without Israeli support. And Israeli support makes local population regards PA as Israeli puppet. The was major reason for Israel refusing to get into 2007 gaza purge of PA
I would put it this way: in my eyes, the violent subjugation of Palestinians is brutal colonialism whether conducted by loosely organized vigilantes or officially state-sanctioned actors.
Of course the PA could not maintain power without Israeli support. They don't represent Palestinian interests.
and who represents palestinian interests those days ?
If Israel allowed elections, I could answer you, and Israel would have a negotiating partner. But I don't think Israel has any interest in negotiating.
PA is the one that postpones elections, as polls over the years show Hamas winning. Just like in elections that happened in 2005 that USA pushed for
Has nothing to do with Israel.
PS. canada just said that will recognize palestine if it will hold elections (without hamas)
The fact that countries halfway around the world are using basic recognition as a coercive tool to shape their democratic expression is exactly why Hamas has any following.
"we would like you to have democratic elections but we would like you to remove highest polling party from democratic process".
to be honest, reasons for hamas having following are many, and I doubt that this is the major one
I meant it as part of a broader pattern not the singular issue.
The word “terrorist” is strictly a political designation, one that allows for dehumanizing and condemning one’s enemies. Israel’s pager attack on Lebanon has all of the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, but the west won’t call it as it is because it’s inconvenient. It was inconvenient to acknowledge that Israel is conducting a full on genocide, so not until very recently did major western news orgs start using the dreaded G word.
A lot of what the US did during Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc, could have been considered terrorism.
Terrorism as a label is a very convenient way to justify committing atrocities, under the name of squashing terrorism.
I remember hearing a radio talk show in which someone said they were against the Iraq war and the response from the pundit was "so you don't want to fight against terrorism?"
When people's actions get reduced to a single label it becomes increasingly easier to hate them.
It's even worse than that. Israel's minister of the security services is ideologically aligned with the terrorists, and has openly supported their causes all his life. A quite unprecedented situation, I think!
I guess if they are viewed as an occupying force, it’s much less unprecedented. In fact it’s exactly how you’d expect an occupation to act.
This isn't an occupation, it's an ethnic cleansing.
Deuteronomy 9:4
> After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
I think there is a common belief that Israel was "given" the land beyond the Jordan because they were God's chosen people based on their merits.
Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
Israel seems wicked to me now.
The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings. Repeatedly. From Judges through 2 Kings, Israel repeatedly loses divine protection precisely because of its own wickedness. Being “chosen” meant bearing covenantal responsibility, not enjoying a blank moral check.
Deuteronomy 20:15-18 is more appropriate to the current conflict, as it relates to how the Jews should fight wars in the land of Israel. It commands the utter destruction of the inhabitants of the land, not sparing any that breathe (not just those who “pisseth-on-the-wall”)
Discussions about modern Israel/Palestine are full of shibboleths that reveal where people are drawing their information:
In the Hebrew the word in 20:16 for inheritance is “Nachala”. Worth Googling: Nachala is also the name of a present‑day Israeli settler movement led by Daniella Weiss, whose own literature says it’s “continuing the biblical mandate to settle the land.” In other words, the same term that the Torah uses for a gift that can be forfeited is now used as branding for a modern political project—illustrating how ancient vocabulary still shapes today’s arguments about the land.
For an example from the Palestinian side: you do not have a full understanding of Hamas if you do not know about the Hadith about the Gharqad tree. Hamas charter writers alluded to this story; many Palestinians learn it young, while most Israelis have never heard of it.
Recognizing these code‑words doesn’t require agreeing with the theology behind them. It simply keeps us from talking past each other—and, one hopes, from letting someone else’s apocalyptic script dictate who lives and dies. I think we all agree that the other-sides’ eschatology is a dumb reason to die.
This continues to be relevant:
> “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti
When you separate yourself by [insert tribalist rhetoric], it breeds violence
This may sound superficially true, but it is confusing cause and effect. It's more likely to be the other way around: people seeking violence need to separate themselves from their target. That does not automatically mean that every self-classification carries an implication of violence.
For those that don't know the Old Testament/Torah it might be worthwhile to point out that what you refer to as "moral failings" is not the same as what modern people think are "moral failings". Uncleanliness (gay sex, touching menstruating women, eating pork, yadda, yadda) and worshiping other Gods are "moral failings", raping, pillaging, and exterminating enemies most definitely are not.
Yes. The moral failing of Saul (1 Samuel 15) is precisely not following the command to exterminate Amalek, but rather sparing Agag, and taking spoils when he was commanded to kill everything that breathes.
> The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings.
Plus the general idea that humans in general are morally flawed, sinful, etc. But, "Good news!" If you follow the one true god, that'll all be sorted out. Following the classic marketing strategy of creating a need, and then filling it.
We have come a long way from that kind of thinking. Now we have "follow the one True President".
Keep in mind this was written by man.
People are being murdered thousands of years later because of the ancient Judea equivalent of 'Harry Potter', and the batshit insane people who still believe it in earnest.
Being dismissive of the Bible is not as cool as you think it is: those who do not study the Bible are doomed to repeat it.
I understand the instinct to treat Bronze‑Age literature like fanciful fiction: engineers are wired to put "myth" in one bucket and "hard data" in another. But for better or worse, the Bible isn't just an ancient novel. It's the source code for a huge fraction of the world's legal systems, ethics, holidays, and political claims, including the one we are discussing. Dismissing it as "Harry Potter" misses the point:
If we're serious about reducing violence, we need to debug the real code people are running in their heads, not the straw‑man version.
Software engineers are notorious for bikeshedding and pointlessly subjective "holy wars." Any belief in higher capacity for reason than their fellow man is sheer hubris.
No, they're being murdered thousands of years later because of the long history of bad blood between the two groups. The religious documents are just a pretext.
> Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
As written by a member of "the least bad people". If you're going to have a historical look at events then, you need to take sources with a grain of salt.
No, it's been the norm for Israel since its inception. To mention just a couple of examples, ben-Gurion was a founder of Haganah, of which Rabin, infamous for his "break-their-bones" policy, was a member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-their-bones_policy
we're precedenting it in the united states. our government is deeply ideologically aligned with the people committing the vast majority of domestic terrorism in this country.
The vast majority of the government are full-time employees without any express political allegiance aside from whatever they happen to personally believe. I doubt they are "deeply ideologically aligned with...domestic terrorism" and most of them would probably physically assault you for suggesting they agreed with domestic terrorists in person.
> most of them would probably physically assault you for suggesting they agreed with domestic terrorists
Poe's law working overtime here.
I agree, but hackernews is evidently taking his side because any time I try to reply I get told I'm posting too often, even when its been hours since my last post.
Government employees don't have their own political alliances? Have you seen the american government anytime in the past 10 years? That's a very strange argument considering it's a commonly discussed issue in the current american political climate.
There is a lot of precedent for one tribe eliminating another tribe to gain land. The only way a conflict over land ends is if one side wins.
Usually but not actually. Northern Ireland is a good example where if people are well-off enough, you can diffuse tensions. Many thanks to Brexit for stirring this up more recently, and having different US tariffs across the border will be interesting, but it's still a valid data point.
The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
These days though, there is no unclaimed land or unpopulated place to move in to. Practically speaking anyway. No one would want to move into the Yucatan jungles or Boreal Siberia even if the host countries invited them in to settle land.
> The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
That is the same situation that exists today. Might makes right is the only rule of nature. Treaties are just hopes that someone will help with defending your borders.
See Russia expanding its borders into what was previously recognized as Ukraine.
Right. But before you could “run away” if you were willing to. Today you don’t have places to run to without running into other people willing to defend their places.
In the past you had lots and lots of peoples who just got erased as modern concepts of fairness and justice didn’t work the same way. See the warring states period.
The last major landmass to be settled I believe is Madagascar, only settled ~1500 years ago, with only scattered, remote islands remaining unsettled past that point. Madagascar itself is an island, albeit one of the largest in the world, so enough to constitute 'major landmass' in my book; discount all island groups entirely, and the unsettled lands haven't existed for over 10,000 years.
What that means is that all of the "run[ning] away" you are talking about is still violently displacing native peoples. So for example, when the Boers flee the Cape Colony to the Transvaal, they aren't moving to virgin, empty land, but rather land inhabited by native Africans (Zulu, I think), who needed to be dispossessed of their land. And such dispossession tends to require violence.
Tangential to your main point (with which I agree) but New Zealand was only settled ~700 years ago.
Pop density before the 1870s was generally low in most places with a few exceptions.
After all there was no "industry" it was 95% + agrarian, pescatarian, pastoral. Many populations had a preference for coastal, riparian settlements and mountainous areas were less favored... but were where displaced peoples could move to. People clumped, they were not evenly distributed so any region would have unsettled areas --just like today you have vast areas in Alaska that are not populated -even Wyoming. There are towns here and there but most areas of those states are not "populated" though they are under local, state and federal control. Government did not work that way back a few hundred years ago.
The Zulu only relatively recently moved into ZA (around the same time as Europeans maybe a bit before --the Khoisan are the native peoples of ZA).
There are people who, for various reasons, didn't need to displace the original inhabitants, e.g. the Hutterites.
People also moved (were displaced) for other reasons beside war: drought, depletion of game, disease, pests, tribal splits, insufficient carrying capacity, ecological pressures, etc.
Not to many places. Even a thousand years ago most places were occupied - other than a few places like New Zealand.
The Western Roman Empire was invaded by people who were fleeing other invaders.
Maybe. I don’t know that there was a place to run to a few hundred years ago. That was when Native Americans were pushed out (in North and South), Aborigines in Australia, etc.
When China expanded in the 1600 and 1700s the non Han ran to uninhabited Southeast Asia. One example are the Hmong who moved to mountains of SEA from interior China. Also lots of internal movement in Africa.
Someone from the first world claiming might makes right? Convenient.
Is that not how the universe works?
The perpetrator, Yinon Levy, has sanctions put on him by a few countries. The current regime in the White House lifted the US sanction a while ago.
Arguably it's worse than what is usually meant by terrorism, i.e. civilians or paramilitaries attacking a state by actions against civilians, since it's a state exterminating stateless civilians.
Yes, much more akin to loyalist paramilitaries backed by the British army in Northern Ireland, only on an industrial scale.
They lifted the sanctions on him and put sanctions on Francesca Albanese.
If you want to see someone refer to acts of the Hilltop Youth as Jewish Terrorism and condemn it, you need only switch to channel 12 (Israeli channel, that is).
Israeli public figures call for ‘crippling sanctions’ on Israel over Gaza starvation
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/letter-sanctio...
It's important to note that a big part of Israeli society opposes the JahuNatan government, the illegal settlers and war crimes in Gaza. Even after the Hamas attack on Kibbutzim near Gaza in '23.
Quite important not to become part of the problem when you discuss this case. And the problem is that such a heated subject is prone to make people ideologically possessed and tribal. To a point where they become emotionally blinded and are unable to listen to people that don't share/fully support their beliefs.
I agree there is a significant number opposed, given the protest sizes in Tel Aviv, but it is far from the majority.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-israelis-support...
Given Israeli education, support for settlers, the immigration policy which allows anyone with Jewish heritage to claim land there (regardless of any connection to the area, and of any outstanding arrest warrants) and Israelis using their kids to stop aid trucks and so on, there's a lot needed to show the majority what is actually humane and acceptable.
It's interesting to contrast comments like this in this thread, with the amount of hatred and abuse heaped upon Russians on the day of Russia's invasion - not just the Russian state, but a big chunk of comments that made it clear that they held all Russians responsible for it and would like to see their lives destroyed. And had relatively little pushback against them.
I agree with the sentiment of your second paragraph, but I wish that thought applied in general, and not just to some special case countries. Especially considering the widely differing levels of democratic power people have in these different countries.
The Russian war on Ukraine is a WILDLY different case. There was no border dispute of any kind between these countries, no terror, no threats, just the Russian desire to own Ukraine.
Your point is pretty moot.
> There was no border dispute of any kind between these countries
That is such a perfect representation of the level of public discourse around this, that I can only thank you for providing a sample. It's not even hard to learn about the Donetsk region's conflicts and the destruction there long before the invasion, but flooding the media and Internet with convenient narratives like "just the Russian desire to own Ukraine" has worked and continues to work very effectively on the general public (likely even more than the censorship does).
And all of this is quite orthogonal to the main fact here, which is that it makes very little sense to blame the population living under an authoritarian government and want them destroyed for that government's actions, and then turn around and give people in a democratic country a pass on their government's actions.
> It's not even hard to learn about the Donetsk region's conflicts and the destruction there long before the invasion, but flooding the media and Internet with convenient narratives like "just the Russian desire to own Ukraine" has worked and continues to work very effectively on the general public (likely even more than the censorship does).
There was none. The conflict in Donetsk was entirely manufactured during the initial stages of the 2014 invasion. When the European Court of Human Rights reviewed a case concerning the downed Malaysian airliner, the Russian side argued that Russia was not involved, claiming that it was the work of "Donetsk rebels". The court found that there was no genuine separatist movement and no rebels of any kind, only unmarked troops operating under direct Russian control from the start.
If anything, the media has been flooded with misrepresentations that promote a "generic ethnic conflict" narrative to mask a straightforward and unprovoked invasion of one country by another country. And the reasons indeed do boil down to one single person, his unchecked power, and unhealthy obsessions - as has been the case with many dictators throughout the history.
Netanyahu is the longest serving Israeli prime minister in history serving a combined 17 years. And he is tipped to win again next election. He very much embodies the will of the Israeli public.
If you listen to their “liberal opposition” leaders like the likes of Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz they sound just as unhinged as Netanyahu himself [1]
Every poll conducted on Israeli public opinion on the conflict would make have made Nazi officials blush. Majority of Israelis support ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza [2].
Seeing the facts as they are is not being “emotionally blinded”. When genocidal psychopaths scream at the top of their lungs they want to commit genocide and actively work towards that goal, with the results right in front of our eyes, we compelled to believe them.
[1] https://x.com/ghostofbph/status/1948720978378309847?s=46
[2] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article/.p...
Except that's not the case at all. That one poll is extremely dodgy. Here's are other polls:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-70-of-israelis-support-se... https://en.idi.org.il/articles/58648 https://en.idi.org.il/articles/59019 https://en.idi.org.il/articles/59940 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/art... https://www.inss.org.il/publication/survey-april-2025/
But I'm pretty sure you are only interested in sources that confirm what you already believe.
You have no idea how far gone things are for you to be sprouting this weak hasbara.
They may oppose the current arrangement of the government but they don't disagree with the occupation and ethnic cleansing.
> Eurasia Poll: 82% of Israelis want to expel Palestinians from Gaza; 47% want to kill every man, woman, child
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/05/30/poll-israelis-exp...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725768
I'm glad this is being discussed on HN instead of getting flagged. If we're intellectually curious, then we need to be curious about phenomena that defy explanation and events that may define the future course of our civiliazation. I think what's happening in Gaza/Palestine/Israel counts as both. It certainly defies explanation in my mind.
To me, simply labeling somone as "evil" not feels like a premature termination of the chain of causality, but also circular reasoning (Why does X do evil things? Because X is evil. Why is X evil? Because X does evil things). There has to be more to it than that.
> Why does X do evil things?
What is happening is definitely "evil" in its purest form, but there are many contributing explanations that don't rely on circular reasoning.
- long-term geopolitical goals of "the West" in the middle east
- a culture defined by a noxious combination of victim complex + ethnoreligious superiority
- a society pampered by foreign financial and military aid (not having to stand on its own)
- a long history of regional violence
Your middle two points apply to the Palestinians more than the Israelis IMHO.
Do you believe people living in Gaza are “pampered”?
That's not a very "humble" opinion, and it's far from the facts.
For the record, A previous story of this got flagged into oblivion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721604
Bunch of racist Israeli hooligans that were thrown into the Amsterdam Canals got more outrage from the international media and diplomats than a livestreamed cold blooded murder by a terrorist.
This is everything you need to know about the world we live in. Palestinian lives simply do not matter.
> Palestinian lives simply do not matter
Lives in Palestine get far more attention than Burma, West Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan [1].
The basic truth is lives far removed from us tend to be forgettable.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...
[flagged]
Let‘s not call people „animals“ in this negative sense. Dehumanization is at the root of these problems.
So take Yemen where American weapons to Saudi Arabia has been used to kill people in Yemen.
People have protested the US bombing Yemen
https://x.com/davidmryder/status/1746049132027150672
The duration (mostly over already) and death toll are less as well.
It's whataboutism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
While we should absolutely be covering on-going civil wars and genocides across the world -- I personally listen to French news sources in order to understand what's going on across Africa -- the fact is that the US has provided Israel with over $300 billion since it's founding. For Sudan, that number is somewhere around $5 billion. So many of us here in the US are rightfully watching and questioning why our taxes are funding a genocide.
> many of us here in the US are rightfully watching and questioning why our taxes are funding a genocide
This is fair. Claiming Palestinians are being ignored is not.
Depends on how you define "ignored". Maybe you mean "heard" while the only thing that counts in this matter is if they are being "helped".
>Claiming Palestinians are being ignored is not.
False. USA continues to ignore the plight of Palestinians and continues to fund and arm the regime that kills them
> USA continues to ignore the plight of Palestinians and continues to fund and arm the regime that kills them
False monolith. To the extent there is a single foreign policy issue dominating the American public consciousness, it’s Gaza.
Palestinian lives are not being ignored. There isn’t universal compassion for them. But the average American has more developed views on this topic than for any comparable conflict around the world.
> Palestinian lives are not being ignored.
How do you square this view with the current situation? The US has poured resources and weapons into Israel. Gaza is levelled, tens of thousands of Gaza’s people are dead.
The US might care about Gaza, but it cares a lot more about Israel.
> Palestinian lives are not being ignored.
In many US states it is criminalized to support Palestinian statehood past a certain point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
You can argue that American citizens aren't unaware, but the politicians are born and bred to ignore this catastrophe. We have laws to stop them from caring.
Laws against boycotting Israel is not related to supporting a Palestinian state. They are two completely different issues.
The last genocide aided and abetted by America was probably the genocide of native americans.
If ignorance was not an issue, how come that money went to israel for all this time?
How are these related?
I supported arming Ukraine. That didn’t rely on ignorance of Russia.
And yet far less attention than those in Ukraine got even at a time when the destruction and killing there was less than 1% of what Palestine has gone through. Within one week of the first attack, Ukraine got more mainstream support, on-air time, and geopolitical response, than Palestine got over a year of suffering through civilian murders and other clear war crimes.
that is evident, the puzzling thing for average people is why
In London there are pretty much daily pro Palestinian protests, not much for the other side.
Speaking out about this issue in any way that smells "pro-Palestinian" has cost people their jobs, and sometimes even their residency and "freedom" in western countries, and is accompanied by smears and accusations of anti-Semitism against people who clearly are not.
I've lost friends of 15 years for remarking on my horror about bombings and civilian deaths. Nothing more.
I can't even begin to understand a mentality which cannot see the absolute asymmetry of power at work here.
The daily protests happen because they're necessary. And they're clearly not enough.
not sure what would other side protest for? faster genocide?
How about unconditional release of the hostages?
could it be because advocating for the live-streamed genocide is not popular as one might think ?
You people would have been calling the US's war with Germany and Japan in WWII a genocide as well if there was social media.
Why would the other side need to protest?
Maybe some people don't agree with Hamas massacre of civilians and the continued kidnapping of civilians (including children)?
Nobody should agree with that.
The problem comes when they only focus on Hamas, and ignore Israel's kidnapping and detention of 10k Palestinians without being charged. AKA, "hostages".
I saw some protests by the other side saying they'd like their hostages back.
Tell me, where are Jews supposed to go if not to their historic homeland?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Mu...
> Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with Iran and Turkey being home to the largest remaining Jewish populations, followed by Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. This was due to Zionist recruitment, religious beliefs, economic reasons, widespread persecution, antisemitism, political instability and curbing of human rights in Muslim-majority countries.
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Muslim," they say. Where then, should the Jews be allowed to live? Only in Brooklyn?
> Until the 1960s, approximately one million Jews lived in Iran and other Arab countries having arrived in the region more than 2,000 years before. Nowadays, it is estimated that only around 15,000 remain, as the majority of the Jewish population in Muslim lands were forced to flee their homes
https://sephardicu.com/history/jewish-population-in-10-islam...
Hamas could surrender at any time. They're to blame for everything.
> The introduction of nationalist ideologies (including Zionism and Arab nationalism), the impact of colonial policies, and the establishment of modern nation-states altered the status and dynamics of Jewish communities in Muslim-majority countries.
From your source.
It's important to note that in a place like Algeria the French colonists granted Jewish populations citizenship to France, yet denied it to the Arab and Berber populations. [1] This fractured relations between the Sephardic population and the rest of the local population, which is exactly what the French wanted.
I'm not going to say relations were perfect before, or deny that Jewish populations weren't second class citizens, but there was a long history of being neighbors and having cities like Constantine be a place of refuge after the Spanish expulsion of Jews from Andalusia. I mean, in places like Mogador in Morocco, Jewish populations were explicitly invited by the king to settle and set up trading businesses [2].
The founding of Israel completely changed this and fractured relations that went back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9mieux_Decree
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essaouira#Jewish_presence
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghrebi_Jews
Judging by the British Raj, choosing to inhabit a former British colony probably wasn't a super informed decision. If you attended history class, you know what happened the moment Britian left.
Violence begets violence, if Israeli settlers want to fight to displace other people then they will die in that process. Thankfully for Jews, there are other states they can choose to inhabit that are both secular and respect international law. These are, statistically, safer places for Jewish individuals to live than a state that instructs their army on how to commit fratricide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
Impressive that it managed to win an Oscar all things considered.
Most likely cause is the Academy voters not watching the movies they vote for
Once Gaza and the West Bank are taken care of, will Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria be next?
Israel very much depends on being the dominant power in the region. If they lose US support, things could get ugly indeed. And they are losing support rapidly now.
They've already attacked Syria and Lebanon multiple times already. There's no doubt that they're already planning for new wars once this one is over.
I wonder why Israel is attacking Lebanon. It's a real mystery.
Israel is attacking Lebanon because Israel is a country led by religious lunatics.
Why should Israel allow themselves to be attacked by Syria and Lebanon? Did you miss what Lebanon did to people in northern Israel? Seems like you think Jews should just sacrifice themselves for some reason.
The fascist regime in Tel Aviv has been attacking almost every other country in the region. Israel is a country led by religious fanatics.
You're avoiding the question. Why is Israel expected to sacrifice itself when it's attacked?
> Why is Israel expected to sacrifice itself when it's attacked?
Because that's what the inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine did for the Israelis?
Israel is an invader. People have a right to defend themselves from Israeli agression.
Hezbollah declared war on Israel, unprovoked, on October 8th through to late 2024, by launching constant missile attacks on civilian areas, notwithstanding their violation of UNSC Resolution 1701. Israel is justified under international law to invade South Lebanon and completely decimate Hezbollah unless it offers an unconditional surrender.
I am more sympathetic to your views regarding Syria, however. That is a less justifiable war with nebulous preventive/preemptive motivations, which is somewhat coherent on a pure self-interested security basis but is likely validly unjust under different frames of reference (morality, modern global norms and taboos, and international law).
Given that Jordan & Israel have relatively good relations (I say "relative", the entire region is a mess), why would they be next?
If anything, currently it looks like Israel's relations with its nearby neighbours (excluding Palestine. Syria is bit unclear also) are improving while its relationship with the broader world is sinking like a stone.
Have they not taken a bite of Syria - sorry, "established a buffer zone" - recently?
I think if Israel went the lebensraum route, it would be WW3 for real.
What are they currently doing then? They're already supporting the "settlers" so territorial expansion is already in progress. They haven't expanded beyond that right now, but judging by their current actions, it seems to me they're already on that route, and only small parts of the world is currently trying to stop them.
Nah, the world would let it happen.
Or more accurately, the world would let the US let it happen. And the US would probably fund it.
And the world would feel so, so sorry as they paved over the mass graves and built AI data centers and luxury hotels in what used to be Gaza.
Israel has been on that route for decades now.
You think Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria are candidates to be the "dominant power in the region?"
Israel bombs Syria and Lebanon on a daily basis. There is an Israeli puppet dictator in power in Jordan.
If US looks away for even half a year the whole region will turn into one massive sand storm.
Also involved with NOL and also killed by a settler: Odeh Muhammad Hadalin
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/29/headlines/palestinian...
It's the same person, different Romanization of the name. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/middle-east/pales...
> Odeh Muhammad Hadalin’s name was sometimes spelt as Awdah Muhammad Hathaleen.
In ideal world international peacekeeping forces would be deployed in Gaza. The peace and two state solution could only be enforced by imposing severe sanctions on Israel including possibility of aerial NATO strikes like in the former Yugoslavia.
Is two-state solution possible? Just look at the map of the territories under palestinian control, they're bantustans. Israel/Palestine is factually one state, which simply doesn't accept half of its population as citizens.
You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. So support for 2-state is just a form of delaying the inevitable.
I am now firm believer in one-state solution as the most fair one. Peter Beinart has some good arguments in its favor.
And I think it would be a poetic justice for all the racist settlers (or islamists) to have the people they hate as their neighbors.
>You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out.
The Arab world overwhelmingly rejected the UN Partition Plan in principle, which led directly to the 1948 Palestine war and the first Arab-Israeli war. Likewise, the signing of the Oslo Accords (and the rejection of those accords by Hamas, PIJ and other factions within the PLO) led directly to the Second Intifada. Most of the Arab world has now conceded that Israel isn't going anywhere and huge steps have been made in normalising Arab-Israeli relations, but Palestinian politics is still dominated by a fundamentally futile anti-Zionist absolutism.
A credible option of full statehood and international recognition has been on the table for nearly eighty years, but Palestinians have consistently failed to establish a workable consensus on taking up that option. The PLO's intransigence has alienated most of their allies in the region, primarily because they instigated civil wars in both Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975).
A one-state solution is no solution at all while there remain extremists on both sides who are simply unwilling to coexist; unless Israel can reign in the religious right and the Palestinians can establish a political consensus in favour of coexistence, it's a straightforward path to war. There's no "poetic justice" in making people who hate each other live together, just an inevitable perpetuation of bloodshed.
The political debates about land rights are intractably complex, but the fundamental realpolitik question is about how much the Palestinians are willing to suffer for the principle of "from the river to the sea". Israel is militarily dominant and is likely to remain so regardless of how much international pressure is brought to bear. In simple practical terms, the ball is in the Palestinian court and it is for them to decide whether to seriously engage in a two (or three) state solution with international support, or whether to continue pursuing an unwinnable conflict. A post-Netanyahu Israel is highly likely to support a serious two-state solution, but simply isn't going to accept a one-state solution; even if you believe a one-state solution to be the only just outcome, it isn't a workable outcome.
The UN partition plan was a plan to take a huge chunk of Palestine and hand it to foreign settlers. Of course, Palestinians did not love it.
Israel has never made a prolonged effort to build the mutual trust necessary to reach a negotiated settlement. During the Oslo Accords, the Israeli settler population nearly doubled.
One only need observe how Palestinian territory has shrunk decade after decade ever since 1948 to see that it is not merely Palestinian intransigence that has prevented peace.
Clearly then there are other values being pursued here other than peace first and foremost. But if you don't have power, you do need to suck up your pride if you want to move forward at all.
> UN partition plan was a plan to take a huge chunk of Palestine and hand it to foreign settlers. Of course, Palestinians did not love it
Any party loving a deal has never been a precondition of international relations or, frankly, negotiations as a whole.
Correct.
Israel never really accepted two state solution either (US has been vetoing against it, and together with Israel they still threaten any politician who seriously floats the idea of Palestinian state). There is other evidence as well, but I don't think blaming either party is constructive.
So if neither party accepts the partition, the only conclusion is they will have to learn to live together on the same territory. It's not rocket science, everywhere else in the world this is possible.
At the moment, the two sides only agree on wishing the other dead. So even in the ideal world it is a very remote possibility.
I also think we passed the window for a two state solution.
Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse. Having them hate each other with centuries of history and territory claims is even worse still. Then giving them both, let alone one, access to the global arms market is asking for never ending wars of annihilation.
If you could design a situation that was maximally terrible for neighboring states, the two state solution would be it.
> Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse
This is the history of the Levant going back millennia.
Based on what? The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best. It is true that there are many differing groups of people living in that area, but they were often simply under the dominion of one imperial power or another. This pat caricature is the equivalent of shrugging one's shoulders and saying "well that's how it's always been."
> The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best.
The modern model of statehood (which is probably what you are referring to) -- sometimes referred to as the "nation-state" model, but it is not actually particularly centered on the coextensiveness of the nations and states, and certainly orthogonal to states being ethnonationalist -- is at least ~300 years old (its often attributed to being ~400 years old and originating in the two peace settlements collectively known as the "Peace of Westphalia", but that's not really accurate.) OTOH, the concept of nations (which are basically the coextension of an ethnic community and a land) is much older.
But, in any case, it has not been the case at all that the history of the Levant is one of two local adjacent coexistent ethnonationalist polities, whether or not they look like modern states. That's just a simply false claim made upthread which needs no reference to the history of models of nations or states to rebut; before 1948, for a very long time, the Levant was more often either under one (multinational, imperial) polity or split between a couple of adjacent ones (often in the process of transitioning from unified control of one to the other), whether it was the British Empire, or the Ottoman Empire, a series of different Arab-led empires, the Eastern Roman Empire, the (pre-split) Roman Empire, various Greek-derived empires, the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, etc.
I was actually thinking of the idea of nationalism itself, which really got off the ground in the 1800s after the Napoleonic Wars. Though yeah, I miswrote the "concept of nations."
> concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best
Concept of nation states. Nations and states, separately, are an older concept.
> they were often simply under the dominion of one imperial power or another
For millennia. Often because inter-ethnic conflicts required an external security guarantor to keep a lid on the chaos.
One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
During the times there was an external security guarantor, conflict would by definition go down (assuming the external power was sufficiently potent and stable). So you can't say that both chaos and dominion were happening simultaneously at all times.
> One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
And one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani.
> you can't say that both chaos and dominion were happening simultaneously at all times
Nobody said this.
> one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani
Well, yes. It’s a nexus of navigable waterways. It has taken millennia of negotiating, atrocity and—ultimately—an external security guarantor twinned with mutual forgiveness to attain, for a short period, peace.
It is unclear to me that Palestinians represent an “ethnonationalist” block. My understanding is that the definition of “Jewish” for the purposes of immigration to Israel is a somewhat precise combination of genealogical or religious criteria. But I don’t know of an equivalent definition for Palestinian. Can someone educate me on this? In the absence of such a definition, it seems that the primary conflict is whether Palestine should be specifically designated as a home for all “Jews” or merely as a home for the people that currently live there.
Again - I’d love further education about legal definitions.
Any ethnonationalist definition is inherently subjective and thus inherently fuzzy. It’s an exercise that derives from a time when some thought one could scientifically classify races.
My point was that AFAIK, Palestinians would include Jews in the potential citizens of a Palestine. So that the conflict is not between two ethnonationalist groups.
There certainly is rhetoric around the ethnic origin of some Israeli citizens being Northern European rather than middle eastern, so perhaps the original claim has some validity.
I guess I meant it as more of a longer term solution.
In that, given a few years/decades of a two state solution, you'd have a partition occur, whether by force as was in India/Pakistan, or by more natural processes over time.
Honestly, I could see a partition occur as a condition for a two state solution. One side for the muslims, one for the jews.
I guess I should amend my comment to say theocratic ethno-nationalist / ethno-religious states, but I am likely messing up my greek/Plato (?) here. Suffice to say, the state of Palestine would have a super majority of muslim Palestinian citizen voters (currently-ish 87%, ~6M people total, though hard to define really), and the state of Israel would have a slight majority of jewish citizen voters (currently 48% jewish, 48% arab, ~14M people total, but Israeli Arab enfranchisement is a thing). Though 'steady state' numbers would likely shift the voting blocs towards the representative religions due to some partitioning as I described. Just FYI, there are about 6.3M jews and 4.5M muslims in the US currently.
The total numbers of jews and palestinians that would be 'in theatre' is hard to determine, but think about 8M jews and about 9M palestinians for guestimations.
So, I think I'm on pretty stable ground calling the likely resultant two state solution an ethno-religious solution. Other commenters are right in that the definition of 'nation' is a bit difficult with these two groups.
Look either way, the two state solution is like, maximally bad. Having these two people with their histories and hatreds literally sharing walls is just crazy as it stands. Then giving them both access to the global arms market, let alone just Israel, is so crazy.
And no, I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell to do. No one does.
The only reason the Palestinians are considered "ethno-nationalist" is that they are opposing a facist, genocidal, actually ethno-nationalist state that has spread its propaganda that any disagreement on any grounds is anti-semitism.
It's ridiculous and I know the moment I see someone dig into their bag of slander with that they are not arguing in good faith.
JIDF out in force again.
Palestinian are not ethno nationalists, they are a theocracy. And as a secular Israeli I would really not like to live under one.
Hey, I know this a rando internet commenter here, but what do you think is the solution then? To me, adding more money and guns into this conflict sounds like a really bad idea. But I'm not there and I'm just a fool as a result. I'm honestly asking and not just trolling, really. I'd love your perspective.
Ideally? Palestinian accepting the existence of Israel, foregoing their demands for the right to return and East Jerusalem, and then we can peacefully coexist.
Realistically? Maintaining strong border security, erect more walls, prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel, legally or illegally, control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
Regarding the hostages? Besiege Gaza until they are returned.
Thanks for the perspective here. I may have disagreements with you, but I appreciate the view
Might I inquire on the disagreement? A civil discussion is always interesting
Sure.
I'll preface that my knowledge of the situation is 'bad'. In that, I think I'm likely not qualified to give informed opinions on it. Okay, that out of the way...
> Ideally? Palestinian accepting the existence of Israel, foregoing their demands for the right to return and East Jerusalem, and then we can peacefully coexist.
Right to return is a tricky one here. It's been very long that they have been 'out' of their homes/locations. So much so that it's difficult to say whose it is now. Which, yeah, that's not good. I come at this from a Native American perspective. In that, my ancestors took land away and had land taken away from them. I can feel that pain still in the family and that listlessness and hurt in me to a (absurdly) small degree.
From what I know, the sticking point of all sticking points is the Temple Mount. Each side wants it to the exclusion of the other. And from what I can see, each side is willing to mortgage their children's and grandchildren's lives on that point. Literally, this is the hill they are willing to die on, and sacrifice their progeny on too, endlessly (ancient allusions come flying out here without much effort).
I used to think that someone could 'Kind David' that land and just nuke it or something. But no, they would fight over the glowing green hole too, like the irradiated wasteland in Fallout 4. To an outsider, it's hopeless, I don't think that either side is willing to ever peacefully relent on the Temple Mount, let alone all the other land.
> Realistically? Maintaining strong border security, erect more walls, prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel, legally or illegally, control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
I don't see how treating the Palestinians poorly is going to make things better. Their incentives are badly aligned with Israel's if they are treated in such a way. I don't think that trying to forcibly make them a separate entity is going to get them to do what Israel needs. To me, the best way to get Palestinians to stop the violence is to have them 'grow' their way out of it. In that, they are so busy thriving that they no longer care about the past issues. This, I admit, is a very American perspective, and a western American one at that. I know that my idea here is a longer term one, and right now the short term is very critical. But, for me, it's a matter of incentives. If Israel can somehow make it so that the conditions exist that Palestine is more interested in something other than the destruction of Israel, then all the better. I have no feasible way to accomplish this though. I can only say to look at places and times where such things did occur. My terribly brief survey of this says that it's a matter of poverty and growing out of the 'hole' was the solution when it did occur. Still, I know that the deep and long hatreds overshadow it all.
My solution is a glib one. The participants just need to stop being who they are. These ways don't seem to work well. My automatic reaction is that they all just need to do the hard work of true forgiveness. But, again, that's not who the participants are. That is a Christian method for Muslims and Jews; it's not going to happen.
I guess my main disagreement is that the proposed solutions don't deal with the longer term, just the shorter one, and they don't accept the agency and feelings of the Palestinians and their incentives.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss and learn more. Please tell me where I am wrong and missing out on things. Also, sorry for delays in response and I think we're in quite different time zones and schedules.
lmao
>Palestinian accepting the existence of Israel
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an israeli as he was working toward a two state solution. Yasser Arafat recognized the right of Israel to exist in 1988 was assassinated. (sorry, "died of mysterious causes for no reasons and toxicology report said it was all good no biggie we don't know what Mossad uses anyways.). Israel spent the last 40 years systematically destroying any hope at giving palestinians any chance to ever want to "accept" Israel
>foregoing their demands for the right to return
Promised by God 3000 years ago for me but not for thee. Israel exiled millions of Palestinians from the land they were inhabiting.
>and East Jerusalem
Holy land for all three major abrahamic religions, but I guess it's israeli now. And muslims are banned. Cool cool. Now onto the cool stuff:
>Maintaining strong border security
Which ones, the ones that already existed where IDF soldiers shot children for fun ?
>erect more walls
Build a better prison ?
>prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel
Let's see. Walls on land. Naval blockade. Yep, building a better prison. And since the IDF is, day after day pushing palestinians into whatever city is left. Khan Yunis is gone, Rafah is gone, Gaza City is gone, Jabalyia is gone, Beit Hanoun is gone. Five of the seven major cities of Gaza are rubble, and palestinians are forced to move to ever smaller encampments with no food, water or health care, while Israel is systematically stopping any attempts at sending aid.
>control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
You already do, and you miserably failed at it. What next, nuke Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt because they might have tunnels ?
>Besiege Gaza until they are returned.
Not only have you ensured that a vast majority of hostages will never be returned by flattening Gaza and burying a vast majority of them, that's something called collective punishment.
Let's tally it up. Collective punishment. Ethnically cleansing a land (which is what the Nakba was). "God given right". Systematic and intentional starving, dehumanization and imprisonment of a group. Military occupation. Concentration camps.
I have great news for you, you're a nazi.
I can't wait until the US government cuts Israel off from the weapons teet and tells them to fight their genocidal wars of aggression with their own money instead of the American taxpayer's money.
Learn history, we already did. Independence Day and six days war was without American support against Egypt Jordan Syria and Lebanon. We won.
You already do under the Israeli government - you're just living under the one you prefer.
Right, the government which I voted for in 2021 in a democratic and free election, composed of entirely secular Jewish parties, and included an Arabic party as part of the coalition, that’s an example for a theocratic government.
Honestly, I wouldn't ask Israelis or Palestinians for their opinion. I think the OSN should mandate and using peace forces:
- Establish a new, transitional government of Israel/Palestine, nominated by the UN
- Give citizenship to every Israeli and Palestinian for the whole territory
- Mandate a 50/50 ethnic quotas system in the military, police, judiciary and all government institutions, and minimum 30% ethnic quotas in every other employer
- Create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, modeled after JAR; it would figure out what reparations are needed to each citizen
- Mandate both hebrew and arabic as official languages, and teach every kid both in school
- Once things would settle down, after 1-2 years, run a new elections but with constitutional provisions (5-10 years) against dismantling the quotas
Heck, even US could do this unilaterally (just like British did), if they wanted to pursue human rights.
What a silly, unrealistic idea. No other country or coalition is going to launch a violent ground invasion of Israel and Palestine in order to impose peace terms on them. Protecting human rights in other countries is not our responsibility. They'll have to solve their own disputes one way or another.
No ground invasion is needed, not even serious economic sanctions for non-compliance. Just a simple phone call from American president, that Israelis are now free to fend themselves from "hostile Arabs", without US military aid (there's a precedent btw). After all, it's Israel's own responsibility to protect human rights, isn't it?
You think Israel would just collapse if the US stopped supporting them?
Who would support Israel? Who’s aircraft carriers would stand by?
The official doctrine of Israel is to nuke the whole region [1] rather than accept anything similar to what has been proposed above.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Research Israel’s independence war where Czechoslovakia contributed arms. It wasn’t until Nixon that Israel had American support.
Im talking about now, not 50 years ago.
Czechoslovakia doesn’t even exist. Who else would provide the support the US gives?
My point was that even without American support, Israel won its wars.
> Who would support Israel?
If the United States launched a land war on Israel and Palestine, Russia and China. It would be an opportunity to bog down the United States in the Middle East for another generation.
I haven't confirmed the numbers, but I saw an estimate of 75% of Israeli military funding came from foreign aid (primarily the US) and those numbers did not include the US sitting in the Mediterranean with ships intercepting rockets.
If they had to cut down their military to 25% they would collapse from outside attacks. Israel would probably figure out the funding so it wouldn't drop by that much though.
If you think it is important to your position, I recommend you look into confirming those numbers.
Israel is spending around 30 Billion/yr now US is currently giving them about 18 Billion/yr US historically gave them about 4 Billion/yr
US spending during the war is about 75% as much as internal spending, not 75% of the total.
If US turned off the money tap, Israel would go from winning several wars at once to having to pick its fights.
Thanks for the clarification on the numbers. I will take a look into them more.
Which "hostile arabs"? Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States want military cooperation with Israel to counter Iran. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc are too busy with their own affairs and have no desire to fight a unnecessarily destructive war.
> Is two-state solution possible?
More than a one-state solution.
Would it be nice if people could get along and not require militarised borders to keep them from killing each other? Sure. This was essentially the colonial assumption when the Middle East (and Africa’s) modern borders were drawn—that local preferences could be overcome by force of will.
In reality, where you draw borders on a map matters less than the people on the ground’s identities and guns.
Besides, Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. A Palestinian state would be Lebanon x 1000, never ending war and no respect for borders. The real problem is Europe and America's funding and insane levels of political and diplomatic support for Israel, to the point that we are willing to gut international law and even our own citizen's civil rights to prop up the zionist invasion.
> Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will.
Who have they bombed recently? I make it Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Gaza (is this bombing themselves? Palestine?).
It’s darkly hilarious how terrible neighbouring Israel would be.
A one-state solution will just result in a civil war, followed swiftly by an actual genocide (i.e. 5,000,000+ dead).
They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Look at my proposal above. War didn't happen in postapartheid JAR, despite everybody saying it would. What would people fight for, after all? They are all citizens of the same (biethnic) country, that's the perspective the world "leaders" should bring to the table.
You need to bring some argument.
> They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Okay, so in your opinion, there is exactly one state that is currently engaged in a civil war. How would world leaders telling them "You are actually one country engaged in a civil war" stop that war?
The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. The muslim arab majority would not accept a jewish minority living within them, they consider them foreign colonialists that need to be purged (and you may have heard of one or two groups currently leading those muslim arabs that have that exact official position).
> You need to bring some argument.
When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre (picked as an example because of the "humour" of having to disambiguate it from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks ) no one thinks going back to that is viable.
> The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority.
In the modern world, if you accept universal human rights, every minority in the world has to accept that it's a minority, and every majority in the world has to learn to accept the minority. In addition, everyone is a minority is some sense and somewhere - depends on your worldview.
What you're saying is a very condescending (and frankly antisemitic) claim - that Israelis (or Jews) are somehow "special" in being so stupid to never accept this. Of course they can accept it, just like everybody else in the world learns to accept there are other ethnicities and races. Americans, for example, learned to accept it. Likewise, all Jews outside Israel have accepted being a minority. It's not really a problem that racists make it out to be (at the end of the day, people individual differences and conflicts trump most group differences).
> When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm
That's why modern biethnic countries have laws and other systems that prevent that - see my comment above. A good example is Belgium. The point is, you can change the perception from 2-states to functioning 1-state without having to give up anything related to each ethnicity's cultural heritage. Has been done many times in history.
But South African apartheid, as well as American Jim Crow laws, were about people who didn't think they occupied different countries, and didn't think they should. It was about changing how the law saw people within the same country, with everyone agreeing they should be in the same state, under the same government.
Israel/Palestine seems to be two groups of people who really do not want to live together, and would prefer to be rid of the other side.
In an ideal world none of the past 70 years of conflicts that led to this unrecoverable resentfulness would have happened. Unfortunately the only peaceful solution I can imagine is for Israel to let Gazans move to other Arab-world countries, let Israel annexate Gaza, and then imposing strict border controls and watches such that if Israel attempts any ethnic cleansing or illegal occupation they get severly sanctioned.
> Gazans move to other Arab-world countries
This is a problem for the neighbouring countries, isn't it? They don't want to deal with a bunch of new people any more than any other country does.
> let Israel annexate Gaza
This is just admitting that might makes right
> and then imposing strict border controls... severly sanctioned
You would need people to actually believe this
Even so, this plan does not address the fact that both parties really really want to live on the same land. You might as well ask the Israelis why they aren't content to resettle some other place, they wouldn't accept it anymore than the Palestinians would.
This would be about the 5th time your approach has been tried. Every time the result has been the same: Israel happily accepts your gift of land, expands, and conducts the same attacks against the next bit of land, violating all peace treaties. Why do you expect different results this time?
Why not the reverse? Israel is clearly the aggressor here, not Palestine. The only path to sustainable peace is to do to Israel what the world did to Germany after WW2: a complete destruction of the fascist Tel Aviv regime and the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for top Israeli officials.
This happened in the West Bank, not Gaza. But if you are talking about peacekeeping forces in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, I think there's a good argument for it.
Like the peacekeeping troops sent into South Lebanon after UNSC Resolution 1701? Oh, you didn't know about that one? Maybe there's a reason Israel does not trust diplomacy anymore.
> international peacekeeping forces
To the extent there is consensus among today’s superpower and regional powers, it’s that international peacekeepers don’t work. At best they delay while incubating a conflict.
Peacekeeping worked in the former Yugoslavia and many other places. It's more like these days it seems like the international aspect is lacking; the consensus of the so-called world community has really been in shambles for the past two decades. I think the one time where unanimous cooperation existed was against Somali piracy in the early '10s.
Actually, there are studies that show (by looking at past conflicts) that peacekeeping does work.
> there are studies that show (by looking at past conflicts) that peacekeeping does work
They work for the people whose peace they're keeping. Their benefit to the benefactors is less clear. It's why they're becoming increasingly uncommon [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_peaceke...
> international peacekeepers don’t work.
What’s the solution then? We keep wringing our hands and saying it’s impossible?
There is no solution. It's an intractable problem. Violent conflicts between ethnic / sectarian / tribal groups have been a constant in that region for millennia. The only periods of (relative) peace have come when an external hegemon comes in and conquers everyone, and none of the current superpowers have any interest in doing that. Everyone will keep wringing their hands and nothing will really change. It's terrible but that's the reality.
UN peace keepers were assigned to southern Lebanon after the 2006 war. They didnt do anything as Hezbollah remilitarized heavily. Israel cannot trust external peacekeepers.
Do you want to be a part of those troops sent to control Hamas?
Truth is no one wants to fight overseas anymore.
Are you sure? There's still careers in combat.
Both Hamas and Isreal to enforce peace
How can anyone view October 7th footage and think that Hamas should survive.
And how can anyone look at Gaza and think Israel should be allowed to carry on as it does?
Someone needs to actually try and improve things.
Ruzzia is bombing Ukrainian cities to the ground. No countries are actively trying to stop them, just minor help to Ukraine to keep them afloat.
At least we aren’t giving the Russians bombs. The same can’t be said for Israel.
And Iran is giving bombs to Hamas and ruzzia.
That is a tragedy what happened to Gaza. Even friendly Arab nations don't want them to come as refuges, I'm curious why.
It’s not equivalent.
Look at the destruction of Gaza and the deaths.
Every country loathes refugees more than anything else. Doesn't matter if they happen to have the same religion and skin colour.
west gives tens of billions of dollars to russia every year for oil/gas. and with this money russia builds bombs. or buys bombs from iran and north korea
Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza, but Hamas has rejected it. If I may quote Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, "We stress our people's rejection of the presence of any non-Palestinian actors on our land." [https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2024/04/02/hamas-says-no-to-i...]. They only accept aid organizations.
>Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza
This is a bit misleading.
Israel proposed that it maintain absolute and total military control of Gaza, but that a "peacekeeping force" from three Arab nations, bizarrely to be controlled by the US, would "secure food distribution".
Israel has absolutely zero intention of handing over control of Gaza, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to vilify and delegitimize every international organization at every turn.
An actual peacekeeping force as described above would be about keeping Israel in check as much as ensuring Hamas doesn't re-appear.
> Israel has absolutely zero intention of handing over control of Gaza,
The charter for Hamas for years called for the total destruction of Israel. That's been recently removed, but their actions haven't changed.
Why would any nation allow such a government to be their neighbor? The best that anyone could hope for would be a North / South Korea or CCP/KMT divide, but those only work because both sides share a common identity.
Israeli administration of Gaza preceded Hamas' foundation. Its administration of the West Bank is characterized by regular IDF incursions into its settlements where homes are demolished, residents are kidnapped and tortured without cause, and armed, escorted settlers are let loose to assault the same residents and loot their businesses. Hamas' founders were all born either in settlements that have been forcefully depopulated by Israel or in refugee camps that still exist today because they keep getting filled up by people who lived in those settlements. I imagine most people would be miffed by this set of circumstances.
Israel is trying to destroy Gaza and its people - look at any recent photos. There is some equivalence in the aims, and one group has begun to get close - Israel.
It’s time for aggressive outside intervention.
None of the countries with the actual capacity for aggressive outside intervention have any interest in doing so. For better or worse it's just not a priority. People in the Israel / Palestine region will have to find a solution to their own problems, or (more likely) just continue the horrifying and pointless cycle of violence.
The countries with capacity for outside intervention are intervening - to support Israel. Without constant outside support, Israel would fall by this time next month. It would not longer be a country.
Nah. Israel is a nuclear power. They have a right to exist and won't just quietly disappear. If they feel that they're facing an existential threat then they'll use those weapons. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, just that it would be the most likely outcome. The current situation is bad for everyone involved but it could get even worse.
Gaza is within Israel. Israel can't nuke Gaza without also nuking large parts of Israel.
Gaza isn't the existential threat.
The charter for Israel still calls for the total destruction of Palestine...
Israel doesn't really have a charter, are you thinking of Likud?
> Israel doesn't really have a charter,
It has a series of Basic Laws that serve that function (they are expressly a solution to the failure initially to pass a Constitution and are intended to be compiled once complete into a Constitution), but while some of them are problematic on grounds that touch on the Israel-Palestine conflict, I don't think any of them call for the destruction of Palestine (which isn't to say that most Israeli leaders since Israeli occupied the West Bank and Gaza haven't done something like that, but that's a different issue than the Basic Laws doing it.)
actually old (original) charter of hamas was never removed or replaced. it's still there.
> Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza
Given the history of Israel with the UNIFIL...
Question: Which miltary body other than any linked to one of the conflict parties did Israel propose to do the peacekeeping?
If the answer is "None" then Israel did not in fact propose peacekeeping forces.
> Which miltary body other than any linked to one of the conflict parties did Israel propose to do the peacekeeping?
Hamas didn’t counter with a preferred peacekeeping composition, they rejected peacekeeping to retain their monopoly on violence (and Gaza’s resources).
To the extent there are evils in this story, they’re the leadership of Hamas and Likud.
So your answer is None?
I didn't claim Isreal set forth a realistic peace keeping plan, you did. And you failed to bring the receipts.
What you say here is the equivalent of Russia proposing to Ukraine that the war could be ended if they install the Russian National Guard as peace keepers in their country and then saying: "But Ukraine didn't make a counterproposal".
Yes, because that kind of proposal is an insult to the intelligence of everybody who has to read it. And your point about Hamas means you're waving the flag for one of the war parties here and thus have an entirely untrustworthy position anyways.
Let me clarify: If a party to any war proposes a peacekeeping force that is already fighting in the war, it is not a credible peace offer, period. A credible peace offer involves a peace keeping force that is seen as neutral enough by both sides of the conflict.
> If a party to any war proposes a peacekeeping force that is already fighting in the war, it is not a credible peace offer
This is fair. My point is Hamas has shown zero interest in an international peacekeeping force in Gaza. A lack of enthusiasm possibly only matched by the nations that would have to provide said force.
Israel is the textbook example of proverbs "you become what you're fighting with" and "if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you".
Zionism didn't become nazism by fighting against it, there is a deep history of zionism collaborating with the Nazi regime. Both shared an ethno-nationalist worldview from the start and the objective of moving the Jewish people out of Germany.
This is true.
The original European Jews who founded Israel were even opposed to the German Nazis transferring thousands of Jewish children to other countries to save their lives.
These Zionist Jews thought it would be better for their state building project if these children were all murdered than if the children were sent anywhere except to Palestine.
But, some of the collaboration wasn't really the Zionist Jews' entire fault. E.g., the machine tools the Zionist Jews used to create weaponry to murder Palestinian civilians and ethnically cleans Palestine were all German made, and purchased from the Nazi regime, but this was because the Nazis only allowed the rich jews to leave with German made products, not with cash. So, when the minority of Jews fled to Israel/Palestine instead of to the United States (vast majority went to the US), they were instructed to purchase machine tools from the Germans to bring with them.
Good old German industrial lobbying with opponent with their fingers in a vise. I'm wondering in case of a conflict who will be better off, me with stock portfolio at "broker GmbH" or others with real estate within the range of Russian rockets and drones.
This is insane and offered up with zero sources.
You can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Nazi_f%C3%A4hrt_nach_Pal%C... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement ,https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?ac...
If they were 10% as bad as their opposition Gaza would have been Arab-free for decades now.
I'm afraid "we're still not as bad as them" is part of that thinking.
They have been settling the only territory that actually stopped the armed struggle against Israel. The West Bank has literally kicked out Hamas, stopped fighting for years, and given up their arms for the most part. And Israel has been relentlessly colonizing them since then, as a show of good faith I guess. The Palestinians there have absolutely 0 recourse, and will eventually lose all of their home land.
But I'm sure they wouldn't have done the same to Gaza if they would've just done the right thing by kicking off Hamas, and stopping any armed resistance !
I mean they didn't literally kill every single arab in Gaza yet so they are very progressive. They'd rather just slowly settle your land and kill you if you resist, as opposed to Hamas who would've done the same but faster. Let's not forget that they have killed tens of thousands of Muslims, but at least they could've killed even more!
Actually hamas, pij and other organizations are alive and kicking in West Bank. There are areas that PA doesn't control because of them. Last year PA tried to deal with them, failed and called in Israel in order to take out hamas. PA in West Bank exists only because Israeli military supports it.
Also there is non stop attempts (some successful and some not) to execute terror attacks from West Bank. It just never appears in Western media
Still, as you said they are also hunted down and are marginal in the West Bank. It did nothing to stop Israel from settling as they pleased.
And the Fatah also stopped armed resistance on their own, and fought off Hamas. So while the PA might only exist now because Israel props them up, that wasn't the case 20 years ago, not to the same extent.
The West Bank Palestinians there went for a more pacifist route and in return, got the biggest wave of unbridled settlements in the past 60 years. And they have lost any mean to even scare the settlers off. The settlers know that they are almost entirely defenseless, relatively speaking.
a) not marginal. they are powerful enough to create "no-go zones" for PA and to attempt executing terror acts in Israel
b) i'll suggest you to take a look how many new settlements israel build in last 20 years or so. it may surprise you
c) Fatah didn't stop armed resistance. It military wings got wiped by Israel in second intifada. And it didn't fought off Hamas. It lost to Hamas in Gaza and survived in west bank because Israel is present there
d) west bank palestinians didn't went a more pacifist route [-1]. it's just western media doesn't cover palestinian violence in west bank. as i previously suggested, check out how many new settlements were build in last 20 years.
[-1] https://www.jns.org/over-6300-terror-attacks-against-jews-in...
I'm not sure why you say that it would surprise me. How many settlements do you think is okay? And more importantly, how many projected settlements are okay, in your opinion?
No, Fatah did absolutely stop armed resistance. Getting wiped by Israel hasn't been a reason for Palestinians to stop fighting or laying down the arms before. Fatah stopped fighting, in part due to Israel's military victory, sure. But also because they chose to not further entrench themselves in insurgency. Hamas has been knocked out almost into oblivion, and still manages to fight, and according to what you said, they are even gaining ground in the West Bank.
And yeah, no go zones means that the PA doesn't go there because they are against Hamas, and afaik they don't fight Israel either. Sounds like they did chose the pacific route w.r.t Israel ?
Also, any terror attacks in the West Bank itself against Israelis is by definition an attack against settlers. Rockets aren't getting thrown from there, incursions into Israel are very rare, etc. And even those aren't done by organized groups (like the Fatah used to be), except for Hamas, and again Hamas is seen as an enemy by the Palestinian authorities there. The Fatah did win in the West Bank 20 years ago, against Hamas.
I'm not sure how you are arguing against my original point though. The West Bank authorities and the majority of the people living there aren't engaging in armed resistance against Israel. Groups who do are being treated as criminals and they work with Israel to fight them off. Israel in return keeps expanding their settlements (the scale doesn't matter, that's exactly what they have been doing, and Israel had been vocally pushing for the largest expansion in settlements ever, months before October 2023).
- learning basic facts facilitates fact based discussions. you avoid going and learning facts that may not correspond to your worldview
- fatah was beaten down. it doesn't say "stopped". it says "lost". hamas wasn't knocked down into oblivion and they were always more popular than fatah
- no go zones means that PA doesn't go there because Hamas/PIJ will kill them there.
- rockets not thrown from there not because due to generosity of local population but because of work of shin bit. in fact since oct 7th there been significant increase in arms smuggling from jordan to west bank to a point that IDF is unable to prevent or monitor it. including heavier weapons. this is probably for cultivation of famously fertile west bank soil, according to you ?
- map showing that hamas won in most areas of west bank as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
- recent polling on elections: But if new legislative elections were held today with the participation of all political forces that participated in the 2006 elections, 62% say they will participate in them, and among the participants in the elections 43% say they will vote for Hamas, 28% for Fatah, 8% for third parties, and 19% have not yet decided. In the Gaza Strip, vote for Hamas among voters participating in the elections stands at 49% , and vote for Fatah among voters participating in the elections stands at 30% . In the West Bank, vote for Hamas stands at 38% and Fatah among voters participating in elections stands at 27%
- link that i posted above more certainly show that population engages in armed and not armed but violent resistance and attacks israeli population and constantly attempts to perform terror acts in Israel. and you still didn't tell me how much exactly israel expanded it settlements. you just claim that it did without any factual backing.
There shouldn't be any "israeli population" in the West Bank. To a large extent it is armed and commonly also in uniform, without being in IDF service.
From 1999 to 2018 colonial population in the West Bank grew from ~177000 to ~430000 or so. Since the current israeli government took power they've massively accelerated colonial efforts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and also moved away from military administration in a blatant rejection of international law. I.e. before the response from Hamas in October 2023.
Hamas are popular because they've achieved results, and are perceived as relatively moderate and flexible in politics. Their main competitor, PIJ, disavows parliamentary politics entirely as long as the occupation is in place, considering it a waste of resources and naive pandering to foreign governments that they have no faith in.
you failed to write how much settlement grew. can't find any data about it ?
Why did you fail to read my comment?
https://www.statista.com/chart/20001/number-of-israeli-settl...
https://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements-watch/settlements-dat...
This excludes a few hundreds of thousands in East Jerusalem.
According to international law all of these people must be relocated to israeli territory. If I have understood it correctly the UN GA has given Israel a deadline for this in September.
Population expansion doesn't imply area expansion. People in Israel procreate.
Could you articulate how much in acres settlements expanded in past 20 years. Year over year or something. Or in total
Get to your point.
There should be zero so called settlements. Nil. None. They must all be removed. This is the law.
so settlements do not expand ?
Not sure why you were downvoted. Though it's a disgustingly poor excuse to say "at least we're not as bad as the Nazis" in justifying your own country's crimes against humanity, it also gives a bit of perspective when people do actually compare the modern Israeli state's violence with the savagery of the political system that provoked its formation.
Lots of people clutching their pitchforks over the great rivalry of Israel and Palestine that began in October 2023.
Boy did this get downvoted. Truly folks, if any of you really believe the modern Israeli state to be in any way comparable to Nazi Germany, I suggest you go read a fucking history book or two in detail. I'm not defending Israel here either. The Netenyahoo (and he is a murderous, corrupt yahoo indeed) government has long since crossed the lines of defensibility, even for someone who has generally been a strong proponent of Israel's right to national defense, and an opponent of giving the Palestinian political organizations way too many moral free passes.
The person writing the next update to this article is going to have to take a deep breath before doing so.
https://www.kqed.org/news/12043918/feds-detain-2-palestinian...
The last update was
June 13: A previous version of this story named the two Palestinian men who were sent back home. Their names were removed after concerns were raised for their safety.
Why comply with the idea of calling a colonialist a "settler"? It's a deliberate propaganda word choice that for some reason caught on outside Israel. Let's stop, please?
Odeh Mohammad Khalil al-Hathalin, 31, was murdered by Yinon Levi, durring the same attack, an excavator brought to destroy homes was used to strike other unarmed palisinians. There is video that also documents the murderer ,Yinon Levi, directing soldiers to arrest his victims family, which they did.
David Ben Avraham, a 63-year-old Israeli Jew, was asked his name, then immediately shot dead for being of Palestinian ethnicity and having a Jewish name, because he was a Jew.
That's really sad.
The Isreali man really should not have been there, but I have to recognise a couple of things.
1) I don't know what anyone is saying except, ironically, plea's of someone near the camera man asking the Israeli man to "Shoot me".
2) I do not know what lead up to this confrontation
3) I have been in a circumstance before where a large group of people are acting frantic and in a threatening way and it's genuinely terrifying, so much so that you will act irrationally - this might be something others on this platform might not be familiar with.
The circumstance could have been avoided by Israel not having any settlers in the west bank, for sure, and it's a tragic situation.
However, I'm sitting here, in Sweden, behind a computer on a site about entrepreneurialism and technology.
I can't possibly say anything on the subject that's meaningful, none of us can. Why is it here?
From watching the video it doesn't appear although anyone other than the settler was armed.
Being armed is not a requisite.
If anything being armed in that situation is incredibly stupid, because you'll still panic and now you're acting irrationally with a deadly weapon. The weapon can be used (as this example) or taken off you.
I speak from experience, I got mobbed upon by a local gang, thought it would be smart to arm myself with a prop sword in order to stop them advancing.
It didn't stop them, and in fact the sword was taken off me (because it was a prop, and I wouldn't have used it even if it wasn't to be honest) - and they proceeded to smash it over my head sending me to hospital.
All of this is only obvious with a clear head, and in hindsight. Being in that situation as a human being is just.. awful. I don't recommend it.
EDIT: I'm getting flagged a lot from emotional people; I think this is part of why I really dislike this topic, we know nothing except how we feel and refuse to look at things objectively - and we're not even qualified to do that anyway. So everything becomes pornography to confirm our biases and to drown out anyone who doesn't immediately call for the end of Israel.
You brought a fake sword for protection?
No, I grabbed a fake sword as a deterrent, it was on hand.
The settler was in someone else's land, and actively participated in displacing the people that were "terrifying" them. An easy way would've been to just leave. It's not even controversial, almost every country on earth recognizes that the settlements are illegal.
If a Russian soldier in Ukrainian territory shot some civilian in the face, I guess you'd also have put yourself in their shoes and given them the benefit of the doubt? I mean, they were terrified!
As you ask why this is here. Copied from the guidelines of this site: “What to submit? On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. (…) anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” So it’s fair to say that this site is about more than entrepreneurship and tech.
Perhaps we need to make some mapbox visualizations about the devastation in Gaza. Then we'll be on theme, but the topic is not going to change. Maybe someone should make a game about it and put it on Steam. Maybe it'll get banned. Then we can have the PERFECT discussion on HN, as so many want:
- About tech
- About a current event
- About censorship
Genocide by itself, that's just not good enough apparently. That's very weird because there's tons of serious discussion on HN about history. This place cares a lot about history. Whatever is happening right now is just real-time history.
Displacing natives with bulldozers and guns. Anywhere else this would be an invasion. Why do Israelis get the mantle of "settler"?
Invader is when someone does it to you. Settler is when you do it to them.
fwiw Media Bias Fact Check rates LA-Times as "least biased" https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/la-times-los-angeles-times/
All the x.com links to the videos are broken for me
https://x.com/yuval_abraham/status/1949865010437505343
https://x.com/basel_adra/status/1950202311168385309
I am in full support of Israel's actions in Gaza, but think Israel is completely out of line and breaking the law with their settlers actions in the West Bank.
As a Norwegian, it is absolutely baffling how someone can seriously utter the words "I am in full support of Israel's actions in Gaza". Is the media coverage that different in USA than in Europe? How is it possible?
I try very hard to find credible primary and secondary sources of what's true on the ground. For Gaza, but also for Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, I am basically a nerd about conflict zones. From all of my research, I believe the IDF gets a bad rap but is no worse in Gaza than any Western army would be in the same situation. And indeed we can see that in dug in cities like the coalition forces vs ISIS in Mosul, civilian casulaties happened at quite similar rates to Gaza.
The United States occupation of Iraq was like a trip to an amusement park compared to Gaza. Please don't compare the IDF to the US military. At least the US military and its soldiers had RoE that they respected. Any breaking of those rules did not get ignored like they do in the IDF.
People who actually study this stuff say otherwise https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/im-a-war-scholar-there-is-no-gen...
That's a right-wing propaganda outlet, not an institution of studying
Here is the same guy on NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/29/nx-s1-5478643/war-scholar-dis...
He is also the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, he is a real subject matter expert. I could also point you to plenty of similar sources.
Is it possible that "any Western army" is also pure evil?
Ulysses Grant, hero of the Civil war for the Union, said, "War is cruelty and cannot be refined." But evil is up to you.
As someone from the USA what I see from media coverage is genocide in Gaza. They would have to be truly ignorant and intentionally uninformed to say something like that or be in favor of genocide.
did you ever consider that media coverage is very selective and biased ?
i remember half an year ago, during ceasefire when gaza was swamped in aid and food was rotting on the streets, laura coates at prime time said that "hundreds of gazans die from starvation daily". never happened. not even dozens.
or when at abby phillips show yesterday, somebody tried to say that presenting images of children with genetic diseases as image of children who are dying from starvation is manipulative, abby phillips stopped this person and said that it's not important.
nyt for example quietly updated it's story on this topic https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-862667
you must have seen numerous mentions that 500 trucks of food to gaza is minimum (and actually needed even more), because it's the number of trucks that were entering gaza before war ? but did you see even once mention that 500 is total number of trucks that included construction materials, animal feed, etc.. etc.. and maximum of trucks of food that entered gaza in 1 day before war was 72(82?)
you don't get journalism in mainstream media coverage anymore. you get activism https://www.thefp.com/p/friedman-when-we-started-to-lie
I am guessing that no-one ever gets convicted for this murder. One small part of state condoned ethnic cleansing (if we are being generous) / genocide (if we are being less generous).
> I am guessing that no-one ever gets convicted for this murder.
He was arrested by Israeli police for questioning, but was later released on house arrest while an investigation continued.
About a dozen Israeli soldiers raided the mourning tent, pushing those attending out while keeping a thumb on the pin of a stun grenade. Soldiers declared the area a closed military zone and said only residents of the village could be present. They arrested two activists and threw stun grenades at journalists who were too slow to leave.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/palestinian-aw...
Was there ever a single serious arrest and conviction of anybody on Israel side in past 2 decades, be it civilians or IDF? Serious question, it doesn't seems so in similar attacks (and they are not that rare and will probably escalate)
A few, for example Meir Ettinger, an hilltop youth leader has served some time in jail.
The idea for Israel was to have its national criminal jurisdictions prosecute just enough to not be seen as failing by the ICC and meet its 'complementarity' criterion [0]. Even spying on ICC staff to see who it was investigating.
At least that's how it used to be, now they just threaten the ICC.
[0]: https://www.pgaction.org/ilhr/rome-statute/complementarity.h...
Cold blooded murder on video and it is still not enough for our countries to take action.
Not only our countries but the state of Israel itself, it's ongoing for decades, it has only further eroded Israel's security (who could've guessed that allowing your citizens to displace, and/or kill, people who already lived there would have consequences?).
The documentary "Checkpoint" is more than 20 years old by now, the treatment of West Bank's Palestinians has been fucked up for even longer than that, and Netanyahu's government only made it worse.
I wish to see in my lifetime Israel having to reckon with the fact they've become the monster, justifying their actions after the immense suffering their ancestors went through during the Holocaust is impossible...
Edit: according to Yuval Abraham[0], the killer instructed soldiers to arrest the other 4 family members of Awdah Hathaleen which are still in jail, while the murderer was released under house arrest, fucking insane.
[0] https://x.com/yuval_abraham/status/1950190191584419923
Since I'm past the window to edit my comment, here's another example of the abhorrent behaviour from Israeli forces[0] which has been all too common for decades, not very different from Amon Göth, and just check the article's date (2018).
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/10/video-appears-...
Out in the real world - how much "our countries take action" stuff actually happens when regular & systematic violence is occurring somewhere?
When it does happen, how often does well-intended foreign intervention actually "fix" things - vs. turning into a yet another "park our troops there 'till we finally run out of patience" occupation?
My read is that the many powerful factions which favor (overtly or not) the ongoing violent mess in/around Israel have (generally) very good understandings of the situation and its dynamics. And the benefits & costs - for them - of encouraging it to continue indefinitely. Vs. the opposing side is dominated by sincere but all-too-simple "make horrible things stop happening!!!" emotions.
:(
I don't think anyone is realistically expecting western countries to intervene to stop the genocide. But we are expecting our countries to stop helping the genocide. That's the difference.
What action did our countries take after the cold blooded murders on October 7th, 2023?
My country (USA) gave them $10B+ in military aid
The game theory, as per recent events, is as follows:
1. Hamas doesn't accept a two-state solution.
2. Israel is therefore forced into implementing a one-state solution.
It looks like israel is the one rejecting 2-state solutions*
* - 2-state means 2 co-equal states, with equal people, and equal rights (including the equal right to be safe from the other)
Hamas has quite literally never been open to anything like this. Israel no longer is, but they definitely were before the second intafada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hamas_charter
Hamas is willing to accept the 1967 borders as Palestine.
> but they definitely were before the second intafada.
No. But some of the important people in Israel were smart enough to pretend they were.
The palestinains shouldve called their bluff instead of refusing every deal offered then.
Neither Hamas nor Israel's current right-wing government wants the kind of solution you're proposing.
It is essential to pay attention to the timeline of events, to not distort the sequence and progression of events. First Hamas rejected the two-state solution. Israel has later, in effect, accepted their rejection.
Your argument is subtly biased in that you equivocating two different levels of entities: one of them is a political/militant/terrorist organisation and another is a state.
If we're dealing with the first level we should compare Hamas and Likud (+coalition); if we're dealing with the second level, we should compare Palestine and Israel. Elevating Hamas to represent the entirety of Palestine in the conflict is twisting the logic.
Those with the guns (Hamas) are those that matter. The powerless puppet Palestinian government is irrelevant.
The Arab countries just called for Hamas to lay down their weapons, thereby proving my point.
nothing makes more unsympathetic to the Israeli side than talking to zionists themselves. I had a guy threaten to doxx me to employer in instagram because I said that Israel is committing a genocide and that killing children is unjustifiable. I reported it to instagram, a clear case of malicious verbal intent and yet they decided it wasn't against community guidelines.
"Murdered" not "killed".
And by a colonialist, not a settler.
[flagged]
If you keep creating accounts to break HN's rules, we will ban your main account as well.
Hamas to this day still has hostages. People were still butchered and raped by Hamas. The meme that Palestinians are blameless is just not accurate. Not defending either side, just saying this is like the Soviets and the Nazis on the Eastern Front.
I'm sorry, what is Awdah Hathaleen's connection to Hamas?
Not surprising coming from a fascist ethnostate
Last night I went to bed late and my wife had trouble sleeping. She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide that they will plannedly un-live whole other nation and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
We're both from the country where most of the planned un-living of the First Holocaust were performed. We recently discussed how in a street poll, half of Polish population couldn't solve a simple math task, a simple language task and one more simple task, placing Poland in the second last position from all the countries taking place. (For comparison, in Norway and Holland only 9%). And how it was likely a consequence of genetic holocaust performed on Poles by both German and Russian nazis during the 2WW. That systematic destruction of elites can behead a country for years to come.
I tried to calm her down, show her that it's just her Instagram bubble that makes her think so. That such things like planned un-living don't happen anymore in the civilized world where we are living, that last time something like that was about to happen, there was a UN action in the Balkans. Or that through the common effort we've managed to halt Russia's advance when they once again attempted to conquer Europe.
But now in the morning the next day I have my own doubts. That people have to use special language to talk about the Holy Land situation to avoid censorship on Youtube or other websites. That this thread got pulled down 30 minutes after posting (even though I was positively surprised when it was reinstated another 30 min later). That just like during the First Holocaust, even though the nations of civilized world are being informed about what's happening, people are ignoring the subject and not beliving that it actually happen.
Why use this word, "un-live" multiple times? How does one confront or at all protest grotesque things if they can't so much as mention them without absurd, childish euphemisms? Kill, it's about killing, or maybe more accurately: exterminating, butchering, slaughtering, murdering. There, better to properly, crudely name things that are by nature crude and barbaric.
You can say "murder" on HN.
I think you are right to have doubts. Europe was sincere when it said Russia must not be allowed to unilaterally invade and occupy other countries. Because that is the starting point to what you said, the unilateral murder or expulsion of whole peoples and nations.
If we look backwards in time, we come from a very violent history, but politics and technology has continuously reshaped how it happens. For example wars post industrialism were much more murderous than ever before.
The long arch view(?) seems to be that the post-WWII era has ended and something new is coming around the corner. It looks like an era of bigger empires but without the single superpower.
Good thing you removed all the double plus ungood badthink from your post citizen, your corporate owners thank you and remind you to reward yourself with a cool, refreshing Pepsi-Cola!
But don't kick the vending machine to get it or you'll have to answer to the Coca Cola company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9B7owHxMQ
Are you suggesting that the 91% that can solve some tasks in the street are descendants of Jews or priests/nobles/landlords?
WTF is "un-live"? Had to double-check I wasn't on YouTube.
Content creators use that language to avoid being de-monetized. Note, no platform actually censors "kill", "suicide", etc, but they do remove monetization. I have no idea why other people use it. It's not like you can monetize comments. I guess it just shows how much cultural pull "new media" have.
It's dystopic to say the least to see it escaping the social media bubbles and land here where it serves no purpose
AIUI the tiktok algorithm actually does heavily punish overtly "adult" language
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051231194586
But thankfully HN is not TikTok; I thought it is a place for adults (and manchildren LARPing as adults).
> We're both from the country where most of the planned un-living of the First Holocaust were performed. We recently discussed how in a street poll, half of Polish population couldn't solve a simple math task, a simple language task and one more simple task, placing Poland in the second last position from all the countries taking place. (For comparison, in Norway and Holland only 9%). And how it was likely a consequence of genetic holocaust performed on Poles by both German and Russian nazis during the 2WW. That systematic destruction of elites can behead a country for years to come.
Objecting to the Holocaust because it eugenicized the wrong way is a thing I guess.
Out of curiosity, are you referring to this "action" in the Balkans, where the UN soldiers basically stood up watching and doing absolutely nothing while 8k civilians where executed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre
Ah sorry, I thought he may be talking about the bombing of Belgrade :)
Nope, while I'm aware of Srebrenica (still have a history podcast on that in my backlog) I meant other actions like arms bans, two air campaign (Deliberate Force and Allied Force) that have prevented even more atrocities.
I've read up a little more about it now, didn't know it was that complex. (Pretty much 3 or more wars in the 10y period). Since I read up on it now, I noticed some connections to planned un-living of the current second holocaust in The Strip. Just like in Gaza, there were ~140k ppl killed and millions displaced.
Nothing in the message you are answering suggests this is what they are talking about.
That is precisely the point. OP cites "UN action in the Balkans" to soothe his wife, whereas UN's inaction led to the first legally recognized genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.
> She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide [...] and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
>> She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide that they will plannedly un-live whole other nation and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
> You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
Being upset at the world and unwilling to engage in diplomacy is, thankfully, not a valid justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
> What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
The ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians is definitely sadder than what preceded it.
Being upset at the world is not a valid justification for terrorism, either.
Being upset at what you believe to be terrorism is, thankfully, not a valid justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide, either.
I don't like these "experiments" as dang called them of allowing Reddit-like rage topics on HN. I can get that elsewhere.
It’s worth reading the thread - there is a lot here that was new to me and I follow the news and read the history of the region.
Notice the "experiments" only go one way. Where is the story of the NY Times viral starving child photo retraction on the front page?
By NY Times "retraction," I assume you are referring to this statement:
> Children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation. Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.
I hardly think that constitutes a retraction, nor do "pre-existing conditions" make the image of a starving child any less chilling, for me, personally.
The picture, for anyone curious: https://x.com/CallumHoare_/status/1947770415092314506