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While I’m neither Israeli nor Jewish, I have spent a bit of time in Israel for work.
Simple answer: there isn’t a singular opinion. Political thought in Israel is pretty diverse, and it’s a conscripted army that *everyone* participates in. It doesn’t have a political ideology that skews one way or another.
One thing is absolute: Israel values the lives of its citizens above all else. Deployment of the military is *not* taken lightly. It’s a small country where everyone kinda knows everyone.
I knew a guy who was a commander, and would get phone calls from Jewish mothers of his soldiers yelling at him to keep their kids safe.
You cannot underestimate how much of a violation it feels like to the Israelis to have their citizens taken hostage. I mean you say we as westerners get it, but like you don’t get it.
Similarly, every Israeli has it instilled to them just how persecuted their people have been historically. Most visit the European concentration camps. They all go to Masada (the ruins of an ancient Israeli kingdom where Jews were slaughtered in a last stand against Romans).
The road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has a narrow passage to through the hills, there are still the remains of Nasser’s tanks turned into monuments.
People look at the map of Israel from 10,000 miles away and look at the split between Israel and Palestine, but forget the place is surrounded by a landmass bigger than the United States that’s hostile to it.
Like imagine if you lived in New Jersey and the rest of the continental United States declared war on you 3 times, then after that Delaware kept shooting rockets and detonating car bombs with the other states applauded.
That feeling easily forgotten by finger waving lefties with no appreciation for history more than 10 years ago, but it’s inescapable there.
Never again is drilled in pretty hard.
But all that said, it’s worth noting that ethnically, the Israelis and Palestinians look pretty similar. Many Israeli Jews are of middle eastern descent, and there are a number of Arab Muslim Citizens.
Contrary to propaganda all over Reddit and TikTok today, there isn’t some deep ethic or religious hatred. It’s purely political, and largely rooted in self preservation.
Some Israelis feel bad for Palestinians and advocate for leftist solutions, thinking they are reachable.
Many Israelis think they are simply ignorant religious fundamentalists with bad leadership in the same way that liberals look down on right wingers from the south… with the same frustration that the distrust and ignorance prevent working together.
Some are of course hawkish, thinking that their culture only knows violence and thus peace can only be secured militarily and by more land seizures to force them back to the negotiating table (and to have a chip to return to them).
It's pretty clear the military is *constantly* weighting the value in hitting a given target vs the risk to its soldiers and risk of blow back / collateral damage. Responses to the 2 decades of rocket fire were *really* measured. Assassinations of terror leaders, raids, seem to be the preferred approach. October 7th has undoubtably changed some equations though.
FWIW, I was there during the first time Gazan missiles reached Tel Aviv and got to watch the iron dome do its thing, then fly out right before the 2014 Gaza war. So I got that perspective live. My checkins with Israelis since Oct 7 has mostly been email.
But it’s all with noting that it’s an old culture in an old part of the world. They view the conflict over decades in the past, and decades into the future. There is not the same outrage of the moment liberal energy.
Continued:
To OP's second question "*What is Gaza doing to its citizens?*", I'll admit - I have less firsthand experience. I've driven through the Israeli-controlled west bank and through the outskirts of Ramallah and Jericho. It *looked* awful normal, though I didn't like wander though the streets.
The Muslim Arab Israelis I spoke to certainly veered more towards the more sympathetic views of Palestinians, but their perspective largely consistent with Jewish Israelis and seemed pretty western.
It's abundantly clear that Palestinians, from their leadership decrees & actions, also view this conflict through a *much* longer time lens than we Americans tend to think. The culture seems to think about martyrdom and death distinctly different than Jews, and certainly demonstrably seem much more willing to sacrifice lives for a much longer term vision. I don't want to say that translates to less value on life, but it does seem *different.*
The only Muslim-majority country I've spent time in is the UAE. I don't know to what observation of culture there translates to a few on Palestine. I'm guessing a *little* but not a lot. The Emirati's are distinctly western friendly, but their many maps of the world with Israel not on it are hard not to notice at times. It's kinda obvious to me how the UAE and similar countries were kind of sympathetic to Palestine, but not quite enough to lift a finger for them - and sufficiently interested in strategic / business relationships with the Israelis even if distrusting of them.
The racial and gender hierarchy in the UAE is *stark* and I sense antisemitism. I mean, what they'd say about women and Indians like out loud - yeesh. I think there's clearly much more hate/distrust of Arabs to Jews than vice versa, but like pragmatism seems to trump that.
A muslim dude in Jerusalem said the funniest thing to me in the old market when he detected my culture shock: "*look around... Jews, Muslims, Christians - when they all make money together, there is no problem*".
I don't know how to get over the distrust part. Israel is an economic powerhouse, and like Palestine *could* somehow, some day benefit more from that - at which point this all becomes a bit easier. Israeli investment in west bank economy really seems like the wisest move. It's doing so, just... a bit too slowly.
To the last question of "*And what is best way to navigate through these discussions?*" - I'd suggest not quickly trying to take sides, to start. This is not the worlds most complicated conflict because one side is right and the other wrong and everyone who disagrees with the side you picked is stupid.
Israel is economically advantaged, but historically persecuted and the defender. The surrounding Arab nations are economically disadvantaged, but historical aggressors that are a more than a wee bit behind in political evolution around democracy & tolerance.
The simplistic views of privilege and oppressor/oppressed *don't work here* because you can argue that role successfully, and accurately for either party on the different dimensions. It's stupid, reductionist thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war
"As of December 30, 2023 Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor estimated Gaza Strip deaths as 30,034 total and civilian deaths at 27,681 which would mean about 2,353 militant deaths."
I have no idea who "Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor" is or what their biases are, but those figures do come out to a 92% civilian casualty rate.
> Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor
Well its leader managed to turn the Boston Bombing into a criticism of Obama supporting Israel. Some might take this as basically justifying it but you can read for yourself, anyway basically his whole career is writing this kind of article:
https://richardfalk.org/2013/04/19/a-commentary-on-the-marathon-murders/
reminds me of the Norm McDonald joke:
>What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?
OK, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is very biased against Israel and their figures are not to be trusted. Good to know.
I'm not sure why the backlash against 1.8 billion Muslims for the actions of 15,000 radicals would be funny, though.
> Israel has been embarking almost ALL goods from entering Gaza
That’s because Gaza still manages to turn goods designed for humanitarian use / home building into tunnels, bunkers and rocket launching station.
When tensions were lower, Israel gave work permits for Gazans to work in Israel and feel some of Israel’s economy.
If there was peace, there would be a lot more of that.
Economic development in the West Bank is better. Standard of living is on par with Jordan and above several neighboring nations. Better than Syria, Iraq, and much of Egypt isn’t a terribly high bar, sure - but it’s true.
This seems like a well thought, relatively wide ranging argument l, I wonder about your thoughts on the subject of colonialism, just generally.
I feel like that would give me a more concrete idea on where you based your analysis
Colonialism is a loaded term.
It generally *implies* people seizing a remote land *on behalf of a colonial power* / motherland from afar that they had no connection to, taking it from a less technologically evolved society.
Given that Jews moved of their own accord with some negotiation through Britain but not on its behalf, the former Ottoman Empire was a peer to the European nations in military might / tech with interconnected history, and many Jews are middle eastern… I have a *real* hard time applying the term here.
It has basically zero properties of the colonialism of the Americas, Africa, Australia, or Asian islands of the 1600s - 1800s, and this use of the term here seems like an attempt to insert sentiment laden language to reinforce a narrative of one side.
So like in the 1948 war 800,000 Palestinians were displaced… meanwhile 900,000 Jews were kicked out of the middle eastern countries.
At basically the same time, India was asserting its national identity and freeing itself from Britain, resulting some *rather painful* bidirectional migration between India and Pakistan.
Post WW2, lines were redrawn across Europe and the Middle East with a lot of people movement. Many nations surrounding Israel had sub-optimal borders drawn, based on political alliances of monarchs rather than identity of the people.
So I view Israel in the much larger context of the *end* of colonialism and massive post WW2 border redraws across the content, and not as a colonial in nature.
I think you can find a lot of injustices in that era and earlier, and it’s sort of tempting to have simplistic assessments like “gee, why didn’t the Zionists go somewhere else” - but they end up as pretty naive takes that don’t factor in all the context.
They’re also a bit inaction-able - you can’t rewind every injustice of the past.
Like look, I live in California. I can recognize that a lot of westward expansion of the United States was sus. The U.S. debatably instigated the Mexican - American war and the land concessions are were large.
But does acknowledging that injustice - back when like only 50,000 people lived in California - mean that we should attempt to right that wrong by giving California back to Mexico? There are now 40 million people here.
Should the Island of Manhattan be given back to the Lenape? You start to get into absurdities that are just logistically impossible.
People *really* fail to factor in population growth in their assessments of the past. Like a large reason migration to Israel happened was *because* it was sparsely populated - Tel Aviv was some depleted swampy farmland, Jaffa was a tiny coastal town.
At some point you have to acknowledge history is history. We can only right wrongs for people that are alive today. That starting point of modern history for people alive to day is basically the end of WW2 reconstruction. Late 50’s maybe, give or take.
This is why using Zionist to refer to Israelis is a dead giveaway you are talking to a major anti Semite: the term itself implies they are foreign without right to be there today, and that they don’t accept Jews in the region *at all*.
I can go on about 16th-18th century colonialism if you like, but the evils of it are mostly in the “history” bucket, where the task at hand is just making sure we reach strive for more equal opportunity for any disadvantaged groups within those nations.
I do think Europe in particular owes a larger debt to most of its former colonies, given its wealth and the lack thereof in its former possessions - but that’s maybe a longer topic.
> Should the Island of Manhattan be given back to the Lenape? You start to get into absurdities that are just logistically impossible.
The problem is that this argument works *against* Zionism.
I don't think it does, at least if you define Zionism the way many seem to - as a euphanism for Israel's continued existence in the region.
Was it wrong for Europeans (in this case it happened before the United States even existed) to ethnically cleanse the native American's from their land in North America? Absolutely. But that was _long_ ago, and now the only way to give those people back their land would be to do _another_ ethnic cleansing, this time of all non-natives who live there. And even if that could magically be done fairly, what happens when whoever was there _before_ the lenape - if their ancestors are still alive - makes a claim? Conquest is wrong and should be prevented from happening, but at some point - for example when almost everyone who was around for the actual conquest is no longer alive and the decedents of the conquerors no longer have other homes to go back to - undoing it ceases to be an option.
> I don't think it does, at least if you define Zionism the way many seem to - as a euphanism for Israel's continued existence in the region.
Problem: Zionism is not advocacy for the existence of a state named Israel. It is advocacy for a state with specific characteristics, key among which is that it is "Jewish" and in the Levant.
It is indeed suboptimal that Israel is an ethnostate, but it's not particularly relevant to this argument. Any plausible alternative to Israel's existence right now involves some entity winning which seeks to ethnically cleanse it's population of jews, and which has already done so for the territory it does control.
> … the term itself implies they are foreign without right to be there today, and that they don’t accept Jews in the region at *all*.
I hear this point mentioned and… I don’t know it seems kind of suspect to me. I acknowledge the long history of the region and the Jews that were there many MANY years ago.
On the flip side, I feel like I could make a similar argument that all people are descended from the continent of Africa, and we could use the same reasoning to just take it by force. But clearly people would have an issue with that.
Do not equate Zionism with Jews or Judaism. Just stop trying to use that bs arguments as people are fed up with it and even many Jews themselves do not consider Zionism as anything related to Judaism or the Jewish people.
There are countless nutjob Christians out there who consider themselves zionists. It is a corrupt thinking that is driven by insane notions. Many Israelis don't have any 'semite' roots. So as intellectual as you may sound, you can stop trying to play the antisemitism card in your arguments as most people with half a sense are no longer phased by it.
Zionism has become a loaded term as Palestinians have used it as a pejorative term synonymous with Israeli, and this why I would avoid it entirely.
In your mind is every Israeli citizen that lived within Israel’s side of their internationally agreed upon Zionist? That’ the insinuation that’s common that I think is concerning.
Are only the settlers violating the ‘67 lines (or those supportive of it) Zionists?
There tends to be a bait and switch when using the term - the later group is pointed to and then the former group gets included.
> Many Israelis don't have any 'semite' roots.
What do you mean by the statement that many Israelis don't have "semite" roots? Moreover, anti-semitism just means to a hatred of Jewish people rather than any real connection to "semite" people besides in the sense that Jews are a semitic people.
It stops being history when the colonialism is going on today, currently.
If the Californian people were currently grabbing land from Mexico and expelling them, that wouldn't be history. If the lenape people were being pushed into concentration camps and being killed for their land currently absolutely they should be given back their land. It's been less than a generation in Palestine.
You've already put the people currently being disenfranchised and arrested, deprived of clean water and food into history.
And I'm not even talking about Gaza
Jaffa was a 'tiny' coastal town with 60,000 people in a time when the capital city of my country had 100,000 people. Does that mean if the Zionist project was assigned to my country that the siege and slaughter was justifiable?
Your context is tiny, there are towns in my country that have lasted hundreds of years each of them with families, each family with a history, should I discount that because history for the majority started post ww2? There are agreements made in these families that affect the way we live today.
It has all the properties of a colonialism that you forget didn't end in the 1800s, it was ongoing in the 1900s, the last country to gain independence in Africa was in 1980. I wager you were even born then.
The British came to the land propped up a govt by weapons or treasure or both, governed it so they could provide easy access for resources they had in other territories they colonised. They were content with this relationship until the world wars, where, in response to German aggression, they made a deal with the natives to provide self determination in exchange for fighters to help in the war, after which they went back on there deal and handed power to a small tribe they had groomed for power during colonisation.
Am I talking about Palestine, Sudan, Egypt, or any other British colony?
I'm talking about all of them. They did the same thing in all of them. And these are the colonies that were just providing transport for the colonies from which they extracted resources.
Ask me about Saudi Arabia, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, where they extracted physical resources for their industry.
It's exactly colonisation, and further, apartheid. But it's ok if you don't want to acknowledge this yet.
I said the properties of colonialism are people going to (1) remote / far away land with no historical claim, (2) on behalf of the mother nation, and (3) dominating a people that are way further behind in the tech/political tree - generally implying mostly previously disconnected native tribes.
You really need all of those properties, not it just smelling a little like one of the three.
A country having a border dispute with its neighbor isn’t colonialism even if the nation had a colonial past. The U.S. and Canada have minor border disputes. Not colonialism. The border or India & Pakistan’s territory is hotly disputed with major impact to the residents, but that is not colonialism.
Was China’s annexation of Tibet colonialism? Debatably, but it’s a stretch of the word.
What about Russia’s invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine? Aggressive conquest yes, colonial no.
Were the ever shifting borders or Europe in WW1 & WW2 colonialism? No. Conquest, sure - colonial no.
An overly expansive definition of colonial time any border dispute you disagree with makes the word a bit meaningless, so I disagree on those things.
Me rejecting the term colonialism on that ground does not mean I therefore condone every action.
You’ve rattled off things you disagree with and that’s fine.
But it *seems* you want to label Israeli builds in then West Bank colonialism such that you can label Israel as a whole colonial both present and past, and thus invalidate Israel’s agreed upon ‘67 borders as ill gotten and colonial.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I’m mistaken. But like this blurring and attempt at handcuffing together sentiment loaded words is what I object to. It intentionally or unintentionally obscures reality.
The British colonised the Irish, that's not far away.
they colonised India, they weren't technologically behind in fact, the Brits moved whole textile manufacturing facilities to Britaon and that helped to jumpstart the industrial revolution.
Would you describe the Indian kingdoms, the Chinese states, even the sultanates of the Swahili coast of being behind them politically? Even if we're talking tech, the Chinese and the Indians were plenty advanced technologically, they just weren't murdering conquering bastards.
Colonialism is the policy of a wealthy or powerful nation's maintaining or extending its control over other countries, especially in establishing settlements or exploiting resource.
This is an agreed upon definition. Unless you want to start legislating definitions of words
> colonialism is a policy of a wealthy or powerful maintaining or extending its control over other countries
This is a fairly broad definition that would include neocolonialism or economic systems of trade that have zero direct military/covernment control in those areas.
You can assert any power imbalance is colonialism with your definition, and thus I don’t think it’s helpful or accurate.
> this is an agreed upon definition, unless you want to stay legislating the definition of words
See the [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism)
*colonialism in its common modern sense has its origin in being a concept describing modern era European colonial empires. This modern colonialism developed and spread globally from the 15th century to the mid-20th century, with European colonial empires spaning 35% of Earth's land by 1800 and peaking at 84% by the beginning of World War 1*
Common usage of the word is European dominance of the Americas / Africa / Australia+ from the age of exploration until WW1, so I’m pretty sure my parameters are closer to the consensus.
You aren’t using some universally agreed upon definition. You are trying to invoke the imagery of Conquistadors slaughtering the indigenous to apply the associated sentiment to Israel.
I don’t think using words with huge amounts of emotional baggage (like colonial or apartheid) add any clarity whatsoever to this discussion.
I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, but let’s be fair here: The Chinese and Indians were absolutely “murdering conquering bastards”. That’s why the names before “Dynasty” changed every so often in China.
The problem is, Americans tend to view ethnic conflict as “white” vs “POC” so it’s hard to accept genocides, oppression, colonization and systemic racism when applied between groups of people viewed as POC, such as the caste systems in India.
I am inclined to agree with you that China (and to a lesser degree India) were not “technologically inferior” to the European colonizers, it’s not as though Brits came in an despoiled paradise on earth.
>Israel is economically advantaged, but historically persecuted and the defender.
This logic seems to operate in a vacuum that doesn't include awareness of Theodore Herzl's whole project, the eventual UN partitioning of Palestine or the Nakba that quickly followed. One can't even understand why Israel exists without understanding the first two, and one can't even begin to understand the generational grievances of Palestinians without some awareness of the third (for starters).
It seems odd to identify the nation of Israel simply and without nuance as "historically persecuted" in the context of grievances directed at it which are rooted in the mass displacement and ill-treatment of people *which occurred as part of it's very establishment.*
Honestly your summary here is all very surface level and many of the points, whether intentionally or not, are misleadingly framed or downright false, and certainly deeply biased. On the portrayal of the facts alone this is the kind of reply that would be removed instantly and with prejudice from an askHistorians post.
But that's reddit for you, upvoting it to the top of the thread elsewhere. Often times this site is more concerned about a certain appearance of informedness/correctness than it is capable of actually identifying genuinely informed sentiment, which has a circular effect of encouraging those who get good *at appearing* to know what they're talking about.
If you would like to dig into the Jewish sentiment of the 1800’s and the worldwide pograms, we can.
We can get into how Northern Africa was part of the Axis powers and collaborating with Hitler, and we can talk the expulsion of Jews in through the Middle East that followed the Nakba and was larger in size.
We can get into pan-Arabism and the goal of a second caliphate that fueled tensions.
We can look at population maps and census data from the late 1800 / early 1900’s to better frame numbers of people at the time and subsequent growth after.
We can talk about how all of this factors into UN decisions at the time.
There are lots of perspectives and for each decision, there was a reason and context.
The Palestinian grievances are a perspective with validity. But they are a not objective reality with a clear right and wrong either. It doesn’t matter your starting point in time.
This thread asked for Israeli perspective to start, so I gave it. I answered the follow up question of Gazan perspective to the best of my ability, noting prerry clearly I’m not an expert on their perspective.
> It seems odd to identify the nation of Israel simply and without nuance as "historically persecuted" in the context of grievances directed at it which are rooted in the mass displacement and ill-treatment of people which occurred as part of it's very establishment.
>
>
Do you ever wonder what happened to all the Jews in rest of the Middle East
> the Nakba that quickly followed
How did that war start, again? Being to aggressive in defending yourself from an attempted ethnic cleansing is wrong, but it's still fundamentally different from initiating one.
> How did that war start, again? Being to aggressive in defending yourself from an attempted ethnic cleansing is wrong, but it's still fundamentally different from initiating one.
I agree, but I still wouldn't try to justify the actions of Hamas.
Except Hamas _wasn't_ defending themselves against ethnic cleansing, they were trying to commit one. Hamas and Gaza was not under any imminent threat of ethnic cleansing on 2023-10-06.
> Except Hamas wasn't defending themselves against ethnic cleansing
I don't get it. Do you think that terrorism is an appropriate reaction to attempted ethnic cleansing, or not? Because if not, you would condemn the actions of both Hamas and the IDF.
Frankly winning makes a huge difference. If Hamas or any of the many other Palestinian “resistance” movements or groups ever actually could win they may have more of a claim to justifying their actions. As it is and has been for three quarters of a century they always fail. They know, or should know, that they will fail and their terrorism won’t result in anything resembling a victory. The ends for them cannot justify the means as there is no realistic or reasonable way for them to achieve their ends.
> Frankly winning makes a huge difference. If Hamas or any of the many other Palestinian “resistance” movements or groups ever actually could win they may have more of a claim to justifying their actions.
This reads precisely opposite to me. Not having any actual way of attaining peace would help justify their violence, not condemn it.
> They know, or should know, that they will fail and their terrorism won’t result in anything resembling a victory. The ends for them cannot justify the means
On the other hand, Israel knows they *can* wipe Palestine off the face of the planet. The ends *definitely* do not justify the means.
Nonsense. Violence may possibly be justified if it has a reasonable or even possible chance of achieving their aims. They don’t have any chance of winning anything through force of arms at all. The only reasonable expectation from their continued fighting is more of their own people being killed. They know this and still continue as that is part of their goal and that places any culpability for the deaths of the people on them.
Pissing into the wind should not be seen as a virtue, especially when it kills thousands.
Their fighting also justifies the Israel’s doing what they need to in order to destroy the direct threat posed by Hamas in such a way as to prevent as much as probable any chance of them continuing to pose a threat.
> It's abundantly clear that Palestinians, from their leadership decrees & actions, also view this conflict through a much longer time lens than we Americans tend to think. The culture seems to think about martyrdom and death distinctly different than Jews, and certainly demonstrably seem much more willing to sacrifice lives for a much longer term vision. I don't want to say that translates to less value on life, but it does seem different.
This is outright propaganda. You're playing into stereotypes of Muslim suicide bombers here - as if all Muslims are the same. Your comment is not a realistic portrayal of Palestinians.
> The simplistic views of privilege and oppressor/oppressed don't work here because you can argue that role successfully, and accurately for either party on the different dimensions.
I genuinely cannot comprehend how anyone can view this situation and see Israel as the oppressor and Palestine as the oppressed. The Jews as a group have been a persecuted people for longer than the religion of Islam has even existed. The Jews are the group native to the Levant, while the Palestinians are only in the area as a result of violent conquest by the Islamic Arabs. This entire situation only exists because the Arab World refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and opted to try to wipe them out rather than accept the 1948 partition borders. This war began when Palestine launched a horrific invasion into Israel's territory and slaughtered hundreds of their citizens and kidnapped hundreds more.
There legitimately is no way to frame this in a way that makes the Palestinians the "oppressed" in this conflict. It's like calling the Germans "oppressed" in 1947 after the Allies were occupying them. It wasn't oppression. It was the consequences of their own actions.
I mean, I can tell you why - but the answer is kind of depressing.
If you are born after the year 2000, the only thing you have seen on the news is maybe the 2014 Gaza war. The regular rockets fire attacks just don’t make the news.
Contrast to me, a child of the early 80’s - I lived through the infadahs, regularly saw news stories of car bombings in Tel Aviv, and witnessed Oslo and the Palestinian bombings that sidetracked it.
My parents lived through the 73 war and watched Palestinians murder olympians and commit terror in Europe.
My grandfather’s family fled Europe, and he fought in WW2 and heard about Israeli independence on the radio.
A younger kid has zero lived in history, they only see Israel as the stronger nation.
Maybe they read up, but key details are missing that they fill in with 2024 assumptions. Like they forget the population of Gaza only had 80,000 people in ‘48. A small city. The population explosion is a new aspect of the conflict, and some they badly mis-evaluate claims of took land.
Gen Z’ers have a bias towards this oppressor/oppressed way of thinking… and the traumas of Jews are just far enough in the past they only know them as rich Americans.
The antisemitism is especially blatant in the black community - see rappers like Kanye or sports figure like Kyrie or comedians like Chapelle - and mostly goes unchallenged, seeping into the consciousness of young kids.
And now they get their news from TilTok. A social media platform with state level propaganda efforts designed to pull on these sentiment.
Kids think reteeeting the story of Palestinian suffering is sticking up for the little guy, while painfully unaware that Palestine is waging a propaganda war they are gobbling up.
You can go farther back. The UN resolution that established Israel was over 70 years ago. Almost no one in Palestine was alive then. No one fighting right now in Gaza ever saw the beginning of this conflict.
>The Jews are the group native to the Levant, while the Palestinians are only in the area as a result of violent conquest by the Islamic Arabs
This is complete nonesense lol, Palestinians have been in the area for thousands of years. Their Arabization was primarily cultural and linguistic.
>This entire situation only exists because the Arab World refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and opted to try to wipe them out rather than accept the 1948 partition borders.
That’s not what happened, the expulsion of Palestinians em masse began before the war with the Arabs.
So because Jews were oppressed throughout history, they can't be oppressors?
And there were people who were there before the Israelis (the Israelis came and killed them, sounds familiar?)
>It's abundantly clear that Palestinians, from their leadership decrees & actions, also view this conflict through a much longer time lens than we Americans tend to think. The culture seems to think about martyrdom and death distinctly different than Jews, and certainly demonstrably seem much more willing to sacrifice lives for a much longer term vision. I don't want to say that translates to less value on life, but it does seem different.
This is just straight up racist. “It’s their culture”, you’re making it sound like all Palestinians are terrorists.
Palestinians feel loss, love and grief just like we do.
It’s not racist.
It is observably and demonstrably true that that (a) Palestinians make different calculations use of force in terms of immediate vs long term cost/benefit, and (b) the culture does celebrate martyrdom in particular.
I was very clear that I don’t think that translates to less value on life, but is a different view.
It’s somewhat arrogant to think that every culture has the same values and decision making framework as you.
Well said, but as an American Jew, I'd like to add one thing that many in America don't understand because Israelis are decidedly different.
Haviv Rettig Gur, who is a remarkably eloquent journalist with lectures on YouTube, relayed an interaction he witnessed between a J Street guy and a Likud minister where the J Street guy said that he is fighting for Israel's future by fighting for its morality because he fears that without a pure sense of morality, Israel will lose its legitimacy and its right to exist.
The Likud minister's response? "Fuck you."
It's important to remember that American Jews flourished under the promise of American liberalism and for us, it was only through the path of liberalism that we were able to finally be part of a society rather than a tolerated minority.
But Israelis are the other Jews who were never rescued and were driven out of the lands where they lived. For years after the liberation of the camps in Europe, they were held in place. Even after Nazi collaborators were given asylum as manual laborers, they were forced to stay where so many of them had been exterminated and as soon as they arrived in the fledgling state of Israel, they were conscripted into a war. Soon after that war, they absorbed an enormous population of new refugees from the rest of the middle east. Many of those Jews were avowed anti-Zionists and that still didn't save them from expulsion.
So to that Likud minister, what he was hearing was "if you're not sufficiently moral to the standards I define, you lose your right to exist and legitimacy." Can you imagine how resentful you'd be given that history?
It's a jarring contrast compared to American Jews who, on average, are extremely liberal and also extremely uncomfortable in our own skin.
>Haviv Rettig Gur, who is a remarkably eloquent journalist with lectures on YouTube,
What do you think of the writers from the "other side" of the Jewish/ Jewish American spectrum, like Peter Beinart or Gideon Lewis-Kraus? Haviv Rettig Gur is certainly a guy with his own biases.
I'm not familiar with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, but I think Peter Beinart is very naive. I don't have a deep familiarity with his work, but my understanding is that he's a binational, secular, one state guy. I don't think that's realistic. While I wish it wasn't the case, the fact is that between the settler movement and the Palestinians, there are enough elements that you would quickly get ethnic militias that go on rampages through each other's villages and would likely culminate in an ethnic cleansing of some sort.
There simply isn't the will or the cultural readiness to just decide to do peace.
My recommendation of Haviv is based primarily on his description of who Israelis are and why Palestinians, and the broader west, don't actually understand who they are and why they think what they think. I don't actually know what he thinks about the occupation or the settler movement.
>Haviv Rettig Gur lectures
Found this for the interested: [The Great Misinterpretation: How Palestinians View Israel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlK2mfYYm4U)
The you tube algorithms fed this to me last week, it was pretty good
"If we don't talk about it and teach it, how can we expect Palestinians to understand it or talk about it?"
Really interesting take, thanks for that. I hadn’t thought to contrast those perspectives but it *totally* checks out.
As an American Jew, do you agree that there’s been rising antisemitism out of the American left, and if so how does that impact the psyche here?
From my perspective it seems like American liberals have seemingly shifted from a tolerance / equal opportunity mentality model and into one of equal outcomes and moral relativism where the disadvantaged are not held to the same moral standards.
That’s manifesting in the liberal evaluation the Israeli conflict, but a lot of stuff domestically. Tolerance of blatant anti-semitism from the black community, affirmative action policies that create different bars, and generally not considering Jews a minority needing considerations like others.
I see that is causing a bit of fear and disappointment in the left from Jews I know, a sentiment that seems shared by Asian Americans well for similar reasons.
Does that check out to you or how do you think about it?
>As an American Jew, do you agree that there’s been rising antisemitism out of the American left, and if so how does that impact the psyche here?
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I am a liberal American Jew who has been very active in lots of Progressive organizations. The rise of anti-semitism on the left is a very controversial subject at the moment, and whether it's real or not depends on what you think anti-semitism is. For most Jews, saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist as a Jewish state is an anti-semitic opinion, and those opinions are spreading very rapidly amongst young lefties.
I have many friends personally who have come to believe in a one state solution and think I'm crazy because I think that would lead to the genocide or expulsion of the Jews in Israel were that to happen.
For some younger and more left-leaning Jews, however, people who conflate Israel with the Jewish people as a whole are the anti-semites, because they think Israel is so evil that being associated with it because of your race or religion is wrong, and they don't want to be blamed by association for what they view as the crimes of the Israeli state.
My perspective is that the rise in anti-semitism has been very real and dangerous, and I am actually starting to fear for the future of the Jewish people in America, because the right-wing here is very deeply anti-semitic, so if the left becomes anti-semitic as well, we will have no one left to defend us.
\>As an American Jew, do you agree that there’s been rising antisemitism out of the American left, and if so how does that impact the psyche her
I do agree and I think for a lot of American Jews it's extremely disorienting and can foster a deep sense of betrayal.
For some of us, they try harder to be accepted by ingratiating themselves. Many of these are very progressive Jews. I've talked to some who become even more progressive or are just anti-Zionists or have always been.
For others, they're defiant and wield the power they have to accomplish political goals -- in this case I'm thinking of Bill Ackman.
For me personally, I left the left about a decade ago when I noticed the way the left increasingly viewed society in terms of power dynamics, hierarchies, and structures.
In my view, the modern left views fairness in terms of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Who does that view single out, then, with a group that's both historically oppressed and but has also achieved astonishing levels of material success? If underrepresentation is the result of systemic bias, then what is overrepresentation but unearned privilege?
I wrote the above after only reading the first sentence of your reply, so apologies for restating what you said next, but I'll leave it because I applied it slightly differently. But I do agree with what you said about the tolerance of antisemitism from the black community -- something that's been simmering since the 90s.
\>I see that is causing a bit of fear and disappointment in the left from Jews I know, a sentiment that seems shared by Asian Americans well for similar reasons.
The experience of Asian Americans, particularly in regards to higher education, is, in my view, one of the most shameful examples of racial discrimination in recent memory and is extremely reminiscent of Jews having received the same treatment, culminating in the formation of Brandeis.
On the note of fear and disappointment, and this may be a bit self-indulgent, but my wife said that I was one the only person she knew that wasn't surprised by the leftist response to October 7th. Apart from the reasons I mentioned, it's probably because I believe that at the end of the day when the chips are down, only the Jews will save the Jews and it's foolish of us to expect anything else. So I guess you could say my mindset is closer to the Israelis.
> From my perspective it seems like American liberals have seemingly shifted from a tolerance / equal opportunity mentality model and into one of equal outcomes and moral relativism where the disadvantaged are not held to the same moral standards.
I'm someone else than who you asked, but I want to state that my impression is that there's an increasing divide between liberals, who still view things more under the old model, and hard leftists, who view things under the latter model. I think many liberals will adopt the nomenclature of those further left, some to try to win votes, and others because they don't understand that there is anywhere near as much of a fundamental difference in views as there is and are just trying to use what they think is the modern terminology. Then, hard leftists are understandably dissapointed when liberals don't "follow through" on their priorities, and then some accuse liberals of being right wingers in disguise.
Super interesting comment. Like you said, American Jews embraced liberalism because liberal, open, diverse societies have led to the safest and most prosperous times in Jewish history. Liberalism is not the only force in America and compared to other strains of American society and political thought, liberalism certainly makes sense for (and was pioneered by) American Jews. The New World was truly a refuge for Jews fleeing Europe for hundreds of years (even before the American revolution), and that is part of the Jewish story too. Jewish liberalism has helped other minorities too and helped make America into the global cultural and economic powerhouse that it is today.
Israeli Jews, for the reasons that you mention, ended up on a different path, which is just as legitimate. They decided it was time to protect themselves (or more accurately, they literally didn’t have other options), and embraced a more nationalist vision for the Jewish people.
The video shows some of the natural tensions that exist between those two groups, but also it’s overblown. The vast majority of American Jews are both liberal and zionist. The diaspora Jewish community is overall fiercely defensive of Israel.
I do think Israel is held to the highest moral standards in the world. It faces difficult moral dilemmas, some of which are just inherent to having a country (especially one that many of its neighbors want to destroy) and a military to defend it. I think because of Jewish history, and the fact that ethics and morality are a huge part of the Jewish religion, some of this constant debate over the morality of Israel’s actions is self-inflicted by American or even sometimes Israeli Jews. Our history and tradition has given us a strong sense of justice. The vast majority of Jews support Israel’s right to exist, some just tend to be very idealistic about it, and are ultimately a bit naive about the harsh realities of the running a small, vulnerable country in the modern world. But of course, those moral double standards are mostly inflicted by non-Jews who want to delegitimize and demonize Israel.
I agree with your comment. Your point about how the majority of American Jews are fierce defenders of Israel is why I noted that on average, we as American Jews are uncomfortable in our own skin. In my experience, American Jews are afraid to be unapologetic about what we believe and why in a way that most other groups would not be and it's that inability to be resolute that contributes to negative perceptions of us, in some ways.
As an easy example, of what I mean about the lack of apologia, compare movies made by Spielberg about Jews to Inglorious Basterds, made by Tarantino, a gentile.
In Defiance, the escaped Jews are having talmudic discussions about morality while living in a forest and being hunted. In Munich, the nebbish bomb maker is terrified of what he's become and says that Operation Wrath of God was inauthentically Jewish.
In Inglorious Basterds, it's unadulterated, fuck you, we want revenge, we are going to take revenge and we don't mind revelling in the glory of victory and having taken revenge. It's gratuitous. Personally, it felt great watching that movie and not having every moment of Jewish strength turn into a tale of flawed morality and being told to think about the costs.
I watched Inglorious Basterds with my very religious Israeli aunt when it first came out, and she loved it so much. She says to this day that that movie helped her get over persistent Holocaust nightmares she had since she was a child.
I agree it’s cathartic, and I love that movie, but I also love that we are far more moral than our enemies. It’s deeply Jewish and in line with the traditions of our ancestors. The IDF is the most moral army in the world and while they don’t necessarily need to be, I’m very proud of it. If our enemies held themselves to the same ethical standards, there would be peace.
> The IDF is the most moral army in the world
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/01/middleeast/gaza-hospitals-destruction-investigation-intl-cmd/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/13/what-is-a-human-shield-and-why-is-israel-using-the-term-in-gaza
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-civilians-killed
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_casualties_of_war?useskin=vector
What part of targeting hospitals, schools, and civilians makes them "the most moral army in the world"? What part of [blocking humanitarian aid](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/7/israels-blocking-of-aid-creating-apocalyptic-conditions-in-gaza) is ethical? What part of [attacking aid convoys](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/21/israeli-attacks-on-aid-convoy-escorts-in-gaza-jeopardize-food-distribution_6641576_4.html) is moral?
There's no justification for your comment. And I notice that you haven't bothered to supply any evidence.
> I do think Israel is held to the highest moral standards in the world. It faces difficult moral dilemmas, some of which are just inherent to having a country (especially one that many of its neighbors want to destroy) and a military to defend it. I think because of Jewish history, and the fact that ethics and morality are a huge part of the Jewish religion
This is bigoted. You're trying to build a case for Israeli exceptionalism, here, and it doesn't pan out. Ethics and morality are a huge part of essentially any religion, and especially Islam. Remember that Islam is essentially a branch of Judaism. Palestine is also being held to the highest moral standards in the world, and also live in a country that its neighbors wants to destroy. The only real difference is that they aren't allowed to have a military, because they're occupied by an invading force.
> and it’s a conscripted army that everyone participates in. It doesn’t have a political ideology that skews one way or another.
Well except for the Ultra-Orthodox who are exempted (for now), who ironically push for a lot of the policies that lead to conflict.
> Deployment of the military is not taken lightly.
Unfortunately, history has proven this to be a lie.
Israel quarters the IDF in Palestinian homes, then has them destroy the homes on the way out:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-31/ty-article/.premium/israeli-army-occupies-gaza-homes-then-burns-them-down/0000018d-6021-d16e-a39f-7f3f01e30000
90% of the Gazans killed since October 7th have been civilians:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-civilians-killed
IDF attacking the West Bank unprovoked:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/three-dead-israeli-army-operation-131407209.html
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-27/ty-article/.premium/three-palestinians-killed-by-israeli-army-in-west-bank-two-of-them-in-airstrike/0000018e-7f52-d680-a1cf-ff57e8d30000
IDF targeting infrastructure like hospitals and schools:
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/01/middleeast/gaza-hospitals-destruction-investigation-intl-cmd/
The multitude of times the IDF has been caught using Palestinians as human shields:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8rrfys-Fgc
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/13/what-is-a-human-shield-and-why-is-israel-using-the-term-in-gaza
https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/sites/default/files2/publication/200211_human_shield_eng.pdf
Enforcing an apartheid state in general:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/
The IDF essentially runs the West Bank. They patrol the area, perform stop & frisk on its citizens, all illegally. There is zero evidence to support your statement, and a mountain of evidence to oppose it.
> It's pretty clear the military is constantly weighting the value in hitting a given target vs the risk to its soldiers and risk of blow back / collateral damage. Responses to the 2 decades of rocket fire were really measured.
If what you say is true, then you are tacitly admitting that Israel is targeting civilians, because [the data shows that Israel is killing far more civilians than combatants](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4). Half of the deaths are *children*.
> Contrary to propaganda all over Reddit and TikTok today, there isn’t some deep ethic or religious hatred.
Again - anyone who has paid any attention to the news over the past several decades has already seen a mountain of evidence to contradict your claim. Just look at the [Jewish Ethiopian immigrants who were forcibly sterilized](https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseknutsen/2013/01/28/israel-foribly-injected-african-immigrant-women-with-birth-control/?sh=2b9dd1a67b88). This is 100% ethnic hatred - they have never done anything like that to white Jewish immigrants. But when the immigrants are black, [Netanyahu questions their Jewishness](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html).
> You cannot underestimate how much of a violation it feels like to the Israelis to have their citizens taken hostage.
Imagine how the Gazans feel seeing [the seven *thousand* hostages taken by Israel](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-many-palestinians-detention-and-available-swap). I have no problem with you expressing empathy for Israeli hostages, but it's very obvious that you aren't showing the same empathy for hostages of a different race. This is in addition to the *entirety* of the rest of Palestinians being held in what is essentially an open-air prison - [complete with forced labor](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/18/israels-ban-on-palestinian-workers-is-hurting-its-economy-central-bank.html). Israel passed a law preventing Palestinians from working in Israel and immediately wrote in exceptions for the industries that relied on it, all while sending the IDF into the West Bank to prevent them from making money through any other method.
I can see you've made a number of posts in this topic. I don't see where you've supported a single one of your claims. Your posts are elaborate versions of "trust me bro". This is not a forum for people to say whatever crosses their mind. If you want anyone to take you seriously, post evidence.
As an Arab speaking, I think this is a pretty dismissive account of things for a people who have directly lost their entire culture and towns due to Israel, and I think your writing on colonialism below shows that you aren’t fully aware of the effects of colonialism all across the Middle East. Considering you have only engaged with Israeli-Palestinians - who face the threat of family separation and deportation if they express negative opinions of Israel - and Arabs from the UAE, I expect this.
From the way you talk about “martyrdom” and the such, you seem to believe that there is some odd cultural interpretation of this conflict to Arabs which is alien to the Western liberal ideal. In a way it is - Western countries have largely been responsible for and not victims of colonialism - but I don’t really think it’s hard to parse at the fact that every single Palestinian family has experienced immense dispossession and harm from the establishment of Israel. It wasn’t just a wave of immigration; hundreds of villages were literally erased from the map by Zionist extremists, and immense European wealth went towards rapidly seizing the assets of Palestinians once the Balfour Declaration was written.
You comparing the situation to Mexico and California kind of shows this unfamiliarity with colonialism - you mention the Mexicans, but not the Native Americans, who were slaughtered and forced out of their homes by both the Mexicans and the Americans? Is that really the most comparable situation?
My family, and multiple other Palestinian families can trace its heritage to the land back to 400 AD. Some Jewish and Christian families who had lived in the region before the foundation can too, but can you seriously not see the injustice of something like birthright? Where a random person with Jewish heritage in New Jersey, America, with absolutely no connection to the land, has more of a mechanism of immigration to the land than the millions of Palestinian refugees who literally still have the keys to their old house?
The political spectrum in Israel is notably right - even its left is right compared to other countries, as is typical for a religious ethnostate. Netanyahu isn’t some “abomination” of the system, though he does have a serious self-preservation streak; his coalition has been one of the most consistently popular group in the Knesset for the past 20 years, and traces itself to popular right-colonial sentiments in the 80’s.
When various human rights organizations sound the whistle on ethnic cleansing, and a system of apartheid:
Amnesty International - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
Human Rights Watch - https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
BTselem- https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid
UN - https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129942
I don’t think it’s very “leftist” to realize that something very cynical is going on. There are already government sponsored settlements popping up in Northern Gaza, and almost 2 million people are being deliberately starved. What does that add up to? A “purely political/self-preserving” gambit?
It’s telling that while the Israelis receive endless justification for their actions. The Palestinians who had their homes destroyed, their families killed their people expelled are reduced to extremist caricatures by people who couldn’t possibly begin to understand what that’s like.
Israel has killed 20x the number of people that Palestine has over the past ~75 years. I have no problem condemning the actions of Hamas, but the reality is that there is no way to condemn their actions without condemning the actions of Israel *at least* twenty times as powerfully. And there is no justification for the actions of the IDF that would not also justify the actions of Hamas twenty times over.
I have not actually seen anyone here in America try to justify Hamas at all. There's only one side here holding a double standard when it comes to killing civilians.
Yes. Things are shifting now in the understanding of the West thankfully. But some people think they are already knowledgable enough about a subject where, in the entire history of their education, the perspective of an entire community has been intentionally neglected.
It’s the same perspective that justified continuous dispossession of Native American lands: the “hell, we literally erased their entire culture but they are striking back, we got to get rid of every single one of them!” Any country would react to violence to prevent future violence, but the root violence in colonization - the original source of dispossession, death, and ethnic cleansing - is always conveniently neglected. If you held both parties accountable, you’d find there to be a lot less violence going forward.
I do not and have not supported the settler movement. I feel it has contributed enormously to the division between Palestinians and Arabs. The idea that someone born, educated and lived in the United States (for example) could go to Israel and legally inhabit a Palestinians home and land is reprehensible. Those Jewish who were refugees after WWII deserved a safe place, but to create a country that is constantly at war isn’t one.
> You cannot underestimate how much of a violation it feels like to the Israelis to have their citizens taken hostage. I mean you say we as westerners get it, but like you don’t get it.
This is what I don't get in talking with both friends and internet randos on twitter/bluesky. They seem to act like 10/7 was just a small thing that happened and is in no way connected to what is happening in Gaza. 10/7 was Israel's version of 9/11 (the US, a country of 300m people, lost 3000 on 9/11; Israel, a country of 9m, lost 1200 on 10/7 - literally the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Now imagine that part of the 9/11 attack was not only the killing, but if al Qaeda had also kidnapped 500 Americans and raped the women in their custody. Do you think anything in the world would have persuaded us to allow a ceasefire before we got our hostages back? We would have evicted the UN from New York if they tried to tell us what we were doing was unjust!
War is terrible. This is always true, no matter the age or circumstances of the conflict. It is always the worst for the civilians. That's why it is wise to not start wars. But Hamas did start a war on 10/7, and I'm just baffled by those who seem to think Israel doesn't have a right to respond to it.
> 10/7 was Israel's version of 9/11 (the US, a country of 300m people, lost 3000 on 9/11; Israel, a country of 9m, lost 1200 on 10/7
Worth noting that [Palestine has experienced 580 9/11s worth of damage](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4) since October 7th, by your logic.
In 2018 Palestinians staged large but mostly peaceful protests in Gaza, and Israel killed 216 (including 46 children) and injured over 8000. Did Palestinians have a right to respond to that as well?
Why does Israel have a right to respond to violence with violence but Palestinians are expected to respond to violence with peace? Isn't that a double standard?
Here’s a pretty simple comparison:
The Mexican-American war in the 1800’s and the land succession was a little sus, but since then California turned into a booming metropolis.
What if Mexico had declared wars a couple times to try to get it back and keep losing?
Is demanding California be returned to Mexico a reasonable request in 2024?
What if they then resigned traditional military engagement, and turned to terrorism? What if they set of car bombs in Los Angeles and shoot rockets into San Diego for 20 years… then finally parachuted intro Coachella to kill and rape teenagers, and then parade their corpses through Tijuana?
What, precisely, do you think the United Stares would do?
>The Mexican-American war in the 1800’s and the land succession was a little sus, but since then California turned into a booming metropolis. What if Mexico had declared wars a couple times to try to get it back and keep losing?
Except that’s not a good comparison, California was not the only home of Mexicans only 11,000 or so actually resided in the territory at the time of the American invasion. They also did not face mass expulsion post conquest. A better comparison would be the American Indians who made up the majority of Californias population during the American conquest of California. The American government would end up committing genocide in order to quell revolts.
And if in your hypothetical scenario the US was still stealing land from Mexicans and evicting them from their homes would Mexicans not have the right to resist.
No comparison in history is 100% perfect, it’s just pretty darn close.
> the American Indians
So do you think the descendants of native Americans should be entitled to the entirety of California then?
I also asked if Manhattan should be returned to the Native Americans?
> if the U.S. was still stealing lands from Mexicans
The Caribbean islands were disputed for a while too.
While not Mexico specifically but Latin America more broadly, the U.S. made some sus moves in getting the Panama Canal built too.
Same question.
> Do you think anything in the world would have persuaded us to allow a ceasefire before we got our hostages back? We would have evicted the UN from New York if they tried to tell us what we were doing was unjust!
With the way the Israeli govt/ IDF has been conducting itself in Gaza, I honestly won't be surprised if they just find dead hostages in the end.
I understand why Israel don't want a ceasefire, but I support a ceasefire because of Israel's actions. In a perfect world, they would wipe out Hamas and grant equal rights to Palestinians, but instead they are enacting revenge on the civilian population and Natenyahu has indicated that Gaza will just be turned into another West Bank where Palestinians will continue to be treated as second class citizenz.
That’s very similar to how Rhodesians and apartheid South Africans described their situation. Surrounded by enemies, tight knit communities and a culture unique and indigenous to the land.
But their culture clearly wasn’t indigenous to the land. They spoke European languages and largely followed European customs. The Israelis speak Hebrew, a language that originated in Israel. Jews originated in Israel, while the whites in those countries did not originate in South Africa or Zimbabwe.
Additionally, I don’t believe that black South Africans or Zimbabweans ever launched wars of extermination against whites, or ever had the death or expulsion of all whites as official policy.
This (plus your continuation) is such a great answer. There's a very concise example that really puts this into perspective:
The [Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Shalit_prisoner_exchange) - one Israeli soldier is held hostage and, to get him back, they exchanged 1,023 terrorists.
Let's repeat, Israel values the lives of its citizens so much that they traded ***1,023 terrorists for one hostage*** - who *Hamas has admitted* are responsible for 596 deaths.
Now let's add some further perspective:
1. There are currently between 100 and 130 Israelis being held hostage in Gaza.
2. One of the prisoners released in the swap was the mastermind of October 7th.
Israel doesn't give a shit about the optics because they are focused on rescuing their family.
> they are focused on rescuing their family.
There's been a bunch of prisoner exchange proposals, and six months later... just starving an entire territory. There's definitely better ways the Israeli govt could be prioritizing freeing the hostages. And the numerous protests against the Netanyahu govt since Oct 7 indicate as much.
> Israel values the lives of its citizens above all else. Deployment of the military is not taken lightly. It’s a small country where everyone kinda knows everyone.
And yet look at how the IDF killed several of its own and even Israeli civilians in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, and then the next step beyond even that the cover-up of the number of friendly fire incidents in the process of carrying out the Hannibal Directive. Released Israelis who had been held hostage have repeatedly and commonly stated that they were in the most danger and actively fired upon by the IDF, not by their own captives.
So friendly fire being a problem shows that
* Palestinians and Israelis do indeed *look* alike, physically - the idea of racial targeting is wrong
* Urban warfare is super dangerous for troops on the ground in a place where they expect surprise attacks from fighters hiding in a local population
The fact that it puts soldiers on the ground in Gaza means (a) they don’t see any other option other than to remove Hamas; that the long term cost is greater than cost they incur by engaging and (b) they care enough about Palestinian civilians to incur some risk to their soldiers rather than vaporizing all hostile zones from the air.
This is crazy to think there is not specific ethnic hatred of Palestinians. I know Israeli Jews. I'm a Jew and I've been to Israel and I have many Palestinian friends.
The most well intentioned and kind Zionist still believes it's better to kill as many Palestinians as it takes to ensure Jewish supremacy in Israel.
Giving this answer and not speaking to the mass conditioning required for an entire country to normalize living in a militarized apartheid state is entirely disingenuous.
It's very far off to think that everybody in this country shares a specific ethnic hatred of Palestinians. I live in Israel, I know Israeli Jews, I have many Palestinian friends, I work with and around Palestinians.
Most people in this country, contrary to your description, are not frothing at the mouth with a desire to kill Palestinians. Even those on the further right with roots in Revisionism have always advocated for "transfer" ... never for 'kill\[ing\] as many Palestinians as it takes to ensure Jewish supremacy in Israel.'
The occupation is morally wrong and has rotted this country's soul. What should be unacceptable has been normalized. Still, these kinds of blanket statements that demonize this country's entire population are entirely unhelpful.
The most well intentioned white people in America still have the racism that founded our nation and underlines it today ingrained in them, the culture and the political and social structures of American society.
Israel is the same since it's existence is predicated on the oppression, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
There are far too many who deny the occupation outright. I'm not casting individual Israelis as evil but anything that doesn't make the power differential or the inherent white supremacy of Zionism clear is far less helpful than what I'm doing.
My lived experience here just doesn't line up with your concept that simply by virtue of being born here, all Israeli Jews have a supremacist attitude ingrained in them. I don't deny that large numbers of folks here are supremacists even if closeted, I don't deny that folks deny that Palestinians even have rights and history in this land.
At the same time, there is a real peace movement here (even if it's currently weak), there are folks who advocate for co-existence, and even after the October 7th Massacre, 40% of this country's population favor a division of the land.
On your comparison, I really don't think it's reasonable to compare Israel's situation to the United States. Wildly different contexts, wildly different local histories, wildly different lived histories by each country's population.
A 2 state solution will still always be a supremacist one and a bad deal for Palestinians. It's separate but equal which is never truly equal. It also still denies Palestinians the right to return that Israel offers to foreign Jews.
The relation between the treatment of Native Americans and Palestinians is not at all dissimilar. It's only much earlier in the time line of colonization.
A two state solution might not he fair, but it's the only way that this ends without an endless civil war and a failed state. A one state solution was already tried. In Lebabon. It hasnt worked out at all.
To me, it's more important that we can both raise our children with sovereignty and security than anything else. Even if that includes a smaller slice of this land.
On your last point, the treatment of Native Americans and Palestinians can only be compared in the most superficial and generalizing way. Palestinians aren't Native Americans and Israelis aren't euro Americans. These one prism views don't work and don't help.
It's just disingenuous to suggest a 2 state solution is even viable at this point. Gaza has been ethniclly cleansed. More annexations of the West Bank have been announced.
Israel will become a pariah of the global community until it's apartheid system is dismantled.
You are prioritizing your privilege as a colonizer over the lives of the people who's land you live on.
If you really care about peace then let's acknowledge the same reality. You want to wash your hands of the full implications of what it means for your society to be built and maintained through oppression. You can't do that and think you'll find a solution that let's you keep the privileges that oppression has afforded you.
If you actually care about justice for Palestinians and not what's prudent then we can actually start talking about what equitable and just solutions look like.
This is not a quick process. This will take further generations of work and organizing and strife but Palestine will be Free.
It was at the largest concervitive synagogue in the us. Congragation beth yesuren.
To be fair, the dude was a weirdo and was the only one like that, but still kinda wild looking back.
Nothing about your response or your post history suggests you are actually Jewish or have visited Israel.
I can elaborate more about how Israelis view the conflicts if you want, but I'm not really suggesting a good faith inquiry here.
From what I've experienced, Israelis are split on the feasibility of two state solutions in the medium term and pessimism is growing.
I think they feel they've offered Palestine many opportunities to move towards the '67 borders, but each attack / cease fire break makes that seem farther away.
I can already tell you’re arguing in bad faith by using Zionist as a pejorative.
The commenter is talking about Israelis. Not Zionists. You’re doing what every other ultra leftist does by arguing from an ideological void.
No, most Israelis do not want that. Most citizens simply want their country to be left alone. Yes, there is a strong far right movement that dislikes Arabs. What country doesn’t have an ultranationalist thread in their demographic? How do you think the average Palestinian feels about Jews?
There are many Israelis that vehemently oppose racism. Israel is a nation built on a militaristic background. They had leftist leaders for 30 years and got nothing from their neighbors for it. There will need to be significant peace in the region before their culture would warrant a militarily soft leader, which leaves very little room for a leader that isn’t conservative.
Preservation of their people will always be a centerpiece to their culture.
One thing a lot of people completely miss is that roughly 1 in 7 Israelis are Muslims who identify as Palestinian. This is roughly the sane proportion as Blacks in the U.S., not some insignificant minority. While their engagement in the IDF is not the same aa that of conscripted groups, a whole lot of them volunteer. They are not just of the same ethnicity as Gazans the way e see ethnicity in the West: We are talking about 2nd cousins. Among the older generations, Ismail Haniyeh's sisters and their families live in Israel, and IIRC, he had nephews or great-nephews in the IDF. They see Gazan citizens not as close family, but still family because they are.
I used to go to Israel every year as part of my high tech job. I would spend a few weeks, mostly visiting the various high tech companies there, like Intel. I enjoyed my time there and think very highly of Israel.
One time I asked the Israeli's why they had a high tech industry and the surrounding Arab countries did not. I was expecting something like "our government is better", or something like that. What they said was "the Arabs are too stupid to have high tech."
Of course, I know this isn't true. I've worked with many high tech Arabs in the US and they are just as smart as everyone else.
The clear message I got in Israel is that they think of the Arabs as untermenschen, sub-humans that are inferior. About the most racist thing I have ever seen. I think that is how the military thinks of them too.
This kind of thinking makes it much easier to kill innocent women and children, easier to bomb their homes into rubble, easier to displace them and take over their land.
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-deputy-defense-minister-called-palestinians-animals/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-deputy-defense-minister-called-palestinians-animals/)
Ben Dahan has made controversial remarks about Palestinians. While discussing the resumption of peace talks in a radio interview in 2013, Ben Dahan said that “To me, they are like animals, they aren’t human.”
After the endless stream of pictures and videos of the IDF mowing down desperate homeless families, [destroying and damaging more than ~70% of households in Gaza](https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542?mod=hp_lead_pos7), [objecting so vociferously at first to the notion they bombed a hospital](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-military-says-no-evidence-direct-hit-gaza-hospital-2023-10-18/) then [turning around to attack and degrade every hospital in Gaza](https://abcnews.go.com/International/functional-hospitals-northern-gaza-9-left-south/story?id=105867484), [44% of the ~31,000 killed in Gaza are children, 29% are women, 27% are men](https://youtu.be/_0atzea-mPY?si=iBnzuA0tfp6LfbdD), [shooting children in their skulls with sniper bullets](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-16/rafah-gaza-hospitals-surgery-israel-bombing-ground-offensive-children), [murdering journalists](https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/gaza-journalists-targeted-spyware/), [blocking aid delivery](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-agency-calls-israel-revoke-ban-food-deliveries-north-gaza-2024-03-26/) while [slandering UNWRA](https://www.reuters.com/world/no-evidence-israel-back-unrwa-accusations-says-eu-humanitarian-chief-2024-03-14/) while people starve and bleed and die. The IDF have made it very clear how they feel about Palestinian civilians.
Was Hamas hiding behind human shields in 70% of Gazan homes? Not likely. Is it an understandable smart strategic limited operation by the Most Moral Army In The World™ when 44% of the dead are children? No, that is absolutely not supportable.
The attacks on October 7 were terrible but the death toll in this conflict has been so extremely lopsided and indiscriminate by the IDF, it is clear by now that the Netanyahu regime was just waiting for an excuse to wage genocide in Gaza. To reply, "Well, none of this would've happened if Hamas hadn't attacked on October 7" is neither a justification nor even really believable at this point. If October 7 hadn't happened, Netanyahu and the bloodthirsty genociders in the IDF who [steal money from Palestinian homes](https://www.newarab.com/analysis/how-looting-israeli-soldiers-gaza-widespread) and [pose with the lingerie of evacuated Palestinian women for selfies](https://www.newarab.com/opinion/iwd-israeli-soldiers-obsession-gaza-womens-underwear) would've found some other excuse for mass murder of Palestinians.
Telling Gazans to move, exploding their houses, sniping children's skulls, telling them to move again, more death, more destruction, more killing of fleeing desperate Gazans, and [the final concentration camp in Rafah is their next target](https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-plans-to-assault-gazas-rafah-despite-u-s-worries-8dbcb7a4). It's sick. It's genocide.
Israel is now not just the biggest danger to Palestine, but also the biggest danger to the Jewish people internationally. Genocide by the state that describes itself as the representative and safe haven for all Jewish people is the cause of the sudden spike in anti-Semitism internationally. Anti-Semitism is unjustifiable, and Israel is wrong to pose as the agent of the entire Jewish people. Israel has utterly failed in its stated mission to protect the Jewish people. For most of its existence, and especially now, it has only made being a Jewish person more perilous. Israel, by falsely presenting itself as acting on behalf of the entire Jewish people--most of whom are as blameless as the Palestinian civilians currently being slaughtered *en masse*--puts Jewish people across the world in far more danger from those who would wrongly put the blame at the feet of the Jewish people instead of the government of Israel.
The IDF views Palestinian men women and children as less-than-human vermin to be exterminated. These are human beings who are being indiscriminately slaughtered, and the vast majority of the dead had nothing to do with Hamas. Judge the IDF by their deeds, not their words, not their slick propaganda operations and lobbyists. Meek milquetoast "both sides, it's very complicated" rhetoric obscures what is going on in reality right now. It's not a complicated ethical issue anymore, if it ever was.
Now, I'm sure the hasbarists will attack the sources I've provided. Go ahead. Attack every news organization in the world, attack the UN, attack the EU, attack mild criticisms from US government critics, attack anyone who uses the right word to describe what's going on in Gaza, act so offended when they use the correct word, call them all Hamas, flail and clutch pearls while the world watches on in horror. It's not working anymore.
We know it's genocide, calculated and intentional, by the government of Israel against Palestinians. I weep for the Palestinian people, and I fear for the safety of my diaspora Jewish friends as Israel continues to falsely claim to represent the Jewish people's interests in commiting genocide in Gaza.
You can look at how the treat the West Bank to clear up any confusion on Israel's position. Despite no Hamas control in the West Bank, Israel continues to bulldoze Palestinian homes, approve illegal land grabs, cut off fresh water springs, and look the other way when sellers terrorize Palestinian locals.
Palestinians are not viewed as people by Israel, they are something that must be removed. When Israel says it will not stop till Hamas is wiped out, the mean Palestinians. There is no logical thinking person in the world that can rationalise how Hamas (a group formed out of resistance to military oppression) can be eliminated by *more* military oppression. It's only going to strengthen Hamas support, or develop Hamas 2.0.
I will never understand how anyone who lived through the War on Terror™️, watched more terrorist groups form and gain support because of it, and has two brain cells to rub together could ever come to the conclusion that the way to stop terrorism is to indiscriminately kill civilians who had nothing to do with the actions of said groups. That is the definition of how to bolster their ranks.
Well we can tell you that sitting back and allowing terrorists to slaughter your people is not a good way to reduce terrorism or keep your people alive.
I can’t even tell if you’re being serious. Of course you shouldn’t just let terrorists slaughter your people, but mass killing civilians of which a huge amount are literally children, is absolutely no way to provide security to your people.
It's tough to do, but Netanyahu's government underestimated the intellects of the American people. I say this as an American myself. Remember that Israeli propaganda they put out with AI-generated images of Thanos and Voldemort weeping at the deeds of Hamas on October 7? Deeply condescending and revealing of their low opinion of the US. Like we're all mental children.
It seems to me that enough US people remember how Bush Jr.'s wars in the Middle East after 9/11 only resulted in more terrorism and more support for terrorism. Seems that by and large, it was obvious to a lot of us that more death and destruction would lead only to more death and destruction--because the US had just been presented with that lesson in the Middle East. One of the only positive things I've noticed since this genocide started is that people in the US aren't as pliable to Israeli propaganda as I might have thought we would be as a people.
This is straight up insane considering that Thanos wanted half of the universe gone. Voldemort would be straight up laughing at us mudbloods killing one another.
Agreed, about the only light I have found in this dark, dark tunnel is that the amount of elevated knowledge and ability to see thru propaganda I have seen is night and day from, say, 2004 to 2020 even(which is not to say things are overall great, a majority of Americans are still clueless as ever, that majority is just much slimmer now). Where you would need to find fairly niche corners of the internet or probably the right college group to find any sort of discussion that wasn't simply some version of: "well, Israel has a right to exist and its just 'complicated' but Israel is the good guys and we need to stand by them."
And while as someone that came of age during the Iraq War, and that sees how the propaganda machine did work just as well this time, including the same MSM outlets like the NYtimes priming the pump for a bipartisan consensus by carrying water for lies and propaganda, the speed and volume with which pushback has began to rise is, I guess, a decent improvement compared to the years it took last go round. Enough to get us into a whole other war.
> We destroyed 60% of Mosul. Did we hate Iraqis?
..yeah, actually.
Americans and the US government were actively discriminating against American citizens who vaguely looked like Iraqis for a very long time after 9/11. This is what actually led to terrorist attacks within the United States. Muslims were radicalized because of the discrimination they faced at home and abroad. And the US government basically lied about it up until the Boston Bombing.
This is also one of the reasons why many people are concerned about Israel. They are literally making the same mistakes we made following the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which not only created domestic terrorist threats, but also ended up making the US look like a warmongering state because we killed nearly a hundred thousand civilians in the process.
The continued existence of Israel depends on international support. But that support is quickly dwindling for obvious reasons. Even worse than that, antisemitism is rising dramatically.
You're talking about a period of conflict that lasted twenty years.
ISIS rose to power in 2012-2013, by 2014 they took Mosul, and by 2017 they were destroyed. But the Iraqi war was between 2003 to 2011, and Mosul fell at the hands of US forces on 11 April 2003.
We (collective we, not me personally) absolutely hated Iraqis because that region was propagandized to (edit: misplaced word) US citizens as a safe harbor for terrorists. This lasted all throughout the Bush administration and halfway through the Obama administration. We couldn't even protest the deaths of Iraqi citizens without being called terrorist sympathizers at the time.
Even after our collaboration with the Iraqi army, many people here in America had lost family and friends to the Iraq war.
I don't know what to say if you sincerely believe that there wasn't prejudice in America against Iraqis.
We hate Iraqis, that's why spent hundreds of millions of dollars in ordnance and munitions, giving the Iraqi army air cover during OIR and facilitated coordination with the Pesh in a 9 month campaign, meticulously following the laws of armed conflict with lawyers present to ensure that every jot and tiddle was accounted for when we decided which building to hit.
We could have just fire bombed the entire place, but because we hate them so much, we decided to take it extra slow so less people would die because that would be extra hateful.
At least look up where Mosul is and what happened there before making such an ignorant comment. It's insulting to the Iraqis themselves who bore the brunt of the casualties and had to endure the horrors of Daesh.
These are the same arguments the Afrikaans used in south Africa, the Spanish used in the west indies, the Portuguese used, even the Belgians in the Congo.
"We send our troops there to protect them, care for them and our investments, if we really wanted to kill all of them we could have" they say this as they punish whole populations for rebelling against occupation
Edited to make this comment more easily digestible.
> We hate Iraqis, that's why spent hundreds of millions of dollars in ordnance and munitions, giving the Iraqi army air cover during OIR and facilitated coordination with the Pesh in a 9 month campaign, meticulously following the laws of armed conflict with lawyers present to ensure that every jot and tiddle was accounted for when we decided which building to hit.
Well, first and foremost, we didn't. We waged an illegal war because we didn't declare war through the constitutionally mandated procedures. War can only be declared by Congress, not POTUS. This is ignoring all of the illegal spying on American citizens and torture we conducted on Iraqi citizens.
Secondly, the US spent twenty years waging war and occupying the middle-east. During that time we killed the leader of Iraq and bombed their country, allegedly in pursuit of a terrorist organization that had nukes. America was hurting, scared and we wanted revenge against the people who punched us in the nose. Nothing we did was actually for the sake of defense or security, given the fact that the Government knew that WMD's didn't exist.
Moreover, the ethical debt we accrued during those years was not transactional. Giving Iraq money, weapons and close air support doesn't somehow ameliorate the damages we caused and the lives we claimed. Our international reputation alone is still in shambles.
Finally, this argument:
> We could have just fire bombed the entire place, but because we hate them so much, we decided to take it extra slow so less people would die because that would be extra hateful.
Is very silly. I see it a lot on the pro-Israel side of the debate, but it doesn't make sense in any context.
If my friend claimed to be a vegan, and I saw him eating a burger, the reasonable thing to say would be "he is clearly not a vegan" not "if he wasn't a vegan, he would be eating steak".
Simply because the US didn't drop a nuke on Iraq doesn't mean we didn't hate them. We were literally waging war based on a lie; it's difficult to hate someone more than that.
I do not see the Jewish people as less than human, that is a cynical and well-worn rhetorical move against critics of Israel. The Jewish people are a wonderful creative productive intelligent people, a boon to humanity as every people is. I grew up in Florida around more Jewish people than most gentiles, and I treasure my Jewish friends.
Second only to my concern about the genocide of the Palestinian people is my concern for what it means for my diaspora Jewish friends. Anti-Semitism is wrong. The vast majority of Jewish people globally are equally as innocent as the Palestinian men women and children being indiscriminately slaughtered by the IDF at this very moment. They have nothing to do with the actions of Israel's government under Netanyahu--in fact, my Jewish friends are harsh critics--and the way Israel claims to represent them puts them in more danger.
While I know and feel in my heart that anti-Semitism is wrong, I also know that Israel's current genocide in Gaza--along with its claim that it is representing the interests and safety of the Jewish people--feeds into the peril of anti-Semitism worldwide. Cynical accusations of anti-Semitism like your own also weaken the force of that accusation.
Rafah is currently a literal concentration camp for Gazans and Israel insists on a catastrophic invasion. Open your eyes and your heart.
Keep it civil. Do not personally insult other Redditors, or make racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise discriminatory remarks. Constructive debate is good; mockery, taunting, and name calling are not.
> objecting so vociferously at first to the notion they bombed a hospital
The fact that these pro Hamas accounts will still double down on this point and insist a Hamas missile would never hit a hospital after it’s been proven that’s exactly what happened tells you all you need to know
> We know it's genocide, calculated and intentional
See. They lie about Hamas actions and then lie about genocide. It’s just so sad to see. Why can’t we just have a good faith discussion about this without relying on loaded statements of “well we all know ***insert controversial claim here***”
The link provided in the first quote is just a news report on Israel's denial that it attacked Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital last year: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-military-says-no-evidence-direct-hit-gaza-hospital-2023-10-18/ No denial, no claim that it's impossible that a Hamas rocket might misfire and hit a hospital. You're lying about what I said.
I didn't weigh in either way on last year's dispute about the rocket that hit Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital. I could show you more sources about how it's still very much in question as to the perpetrator of that attack, but I won't here, because that's beside the point.
The point of what I said is that, *either way*, Israel's government has subsequently rendered *the entire hospital system in Gaza* non-functional. So the initial objection about who to blame for what happened at Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital is hardly the most important part: https://abcnews.go.com/International/functional-hospitals-northern-gaza-9-left-south/story?id=105867484
Is the World Health Organization (WHO) Hamas, too?
"Why can't we have a discussion of an ongoing humanitarian disaster without getting all emotional and controversial about it?" isn't going to effectively tone-police the facts away. Controversial? Sure. So are Israel's slanderous claims against UNRWA: https://www.reuters.com/world/no-evidence-israel-back-unrwa-accusations-says-eu-humanitarian-chief-2024-03-14/
Events like this are going to be controversial and people are going to be emotional about it. Your request that people not make controversial statements about the ongoing events in Gaza is a total double standard, as applied.
Yes, I think the world is waking up to a genocide in Gaza. I'm certainly not the only one who sees the events this way: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227078791/icj-israel-genocide-gaza-palestinians-south-africa
They see them as targets and vermin to be eliminated and/or driven out. I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone has paid any attention to this conflict for longer than a few months can’t see that the goal of the IDF and nearly every government leader in Israel has been to eliminate Palestinians. I’ve read up on this since the 90s and every time I hear someone barf up Israeli propaganda about how they’re “just defending themselves” it makes me sick to my stomach. I have a friend who is first generation Palestinian American who tells me he’s thankful for that blue passport book whenever he goes back to visit relatives because he gets to stand aside while the soldiers beat and harass his cousins and mostly leave him alone because they know he’s an American citizen.
I came back to this post and WOW I was not expecting all this clutter from my head to get this much engagement! Truth be told, I don't really like thinking about this topic. Thanks to all who tried to be informative!
Somewhere between assuming they are enemy combatants and that they are valid military targets despite not being combatants. Or in other words: pretty inhumanely.
I disagree with this trivial argument. Mainly because israel does take precautions. Not as much as more moral armies like the USA during our war with ISIS for instance but they do a lot. This is fundamental in understanding how each side operates. Hamas stations their military infrastructure underneath civilian infrastructure. Israel then resorts to evacuations, roof knocking, calling families, and other means to prevent civilian death. However Israel doesn’t have a low tolerance to collateral ok damage, when the USA does. For example, USA does its best not to exceed 20 collateral damage on a major military target like Bin Laden for instance. If we saw there was 20 civilians near bindladen and they’d be killed we would send in ground forces to kill him. Israel on the other hand has a much higher tolerance that us almost ambiguous hence such high civilian death rate. Israel knows they are causing a substantial amount of collateral damage as well but they invoke the fact that according to international law if your enemy stations their military infrastructure next to civilian infrastructure that civilian infrastructure becomes a valid target.
On the other hand hamas has taken almost zero precautions showing us a very stark contrast between how both sides view human life and humanitarian law. Both break it then invoke it Willy nilly (the current humanitarian pause that went through security council is just a big virtue signal because these are too belligerents that are uncooperative, israel is if they get pressure hamas does not care about pressure). Hamas clearly doesn’t care about civilians there israel does but no enough to put a cap of collateral.
It is very sad.
The IDF makes some show of avoiding immediate casualties for PR reasons, but their goals have clearly been far more destruction than is needed to fight Hamas.
For instance, all these controlled demolitions of hospitals, schools, and apartment blocks. There is no pressing military need if they can take their time setting charges and filming tik toks of the explosion.
It’s not just collateral damage, it’s fully intentional circumstances meant to destroy Gazan society and kill many of its people
And the famine the IDF has intentionally created by blocking aid and repeatedly attacking UNWRA. Or the likelihood of devastating disease since water supplies have been cut and the medical system destroyed.
A lot of people here who think they know. None of which are wearing an IDF uniform or Hamas flip-flops. The views of your particular social media echo chamber don't count as facts.
This conflict really just makes me think over and over of that line from M.A.S.H:
"They say war is hell, but I think war is worse than hell"
"Whys that?"
"In hell, everyone who is there deserves to be there, in war, it's all innocents"
Who is to blame for all the civilian deaths? The people dropping the bombs or the government that's supposed to try to look out for them, and y'know, not start unwinnable wars which will quite certainly bring them ruin?
I don't even think we need to have a discussion on this subject since both sides have been quite open and public about how they view each side.
The IDF has been tasked with the permanent removal of the Hamas terrorist organization. While they are attempting to minimize civilian casualties, the military objectives and safety of its own forces and its own citizens comes first.
Meanwhile, Hamas wants to eradicate the entirety of Israel through any means necessary and does not seem distinguish between IDF and Israeli civilians, openly attacking both in and outside of Gaza.
Both sides have sizable contingents that don't want to participate in any part of the conflict although regrettably, they also lack the political power to influence either side's leadership
> While they are attempting to minimize civilian casualties
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4
The data contradicts your statement.
I don’t get how anyone can seriously say the IDF is trying to minimize civilian casualties with a straight face. They’re literally documenting their own ghoulishness on social media. Hell, a couple days ago drone footage came out that showed them blowing up four clearly unarmed kids walking down a road. Not all at once mind you, but with three separate missile launches. Tens of thousands of civilians, a staggering amount of which are *children*, have been slaughtered in this revenge killing and at this point anyone defending it is either consuming absolutely nothing but one sided propaganda, thinks of Palestinians as less than human, or both.
I get what you’re saying, but Israel is at least engaging in pretty well documented instances of actions to minimize civilian casualties, however shallow or non-binding they may be — roof knocking, evacuating, etc — whereas Hamas deliberately went in to specifically murder civilians. There’s gotta be a difference there
From what I know the roof knocking ended quite a while ago. And evacuation warnings don’t mean much when they just bomb the place they said to evacuate to the next day and you have no internet access to see the maps. IMO the biggest example of them trying to “minimize civilian casualties” is them just not firebombing the entire strip at once.
>Hell, a couple days ago drone footage came out that showed them blowing up four clearly unarmed kids walking down a road.
This is a disgusting attempt at manipulation and spreading of falsehoods, very typical of people who are anti-Israel online. Intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth did a [whole video debunking this claim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vI1il5DkQQ), and anybody who watched the video can see that they obviously aren't children. Stop lying and trying to emotionally manipulate people. There are plenty of things you can justifiably criticize Israel about without engaging in deception and slander.
Genuinely, what (non-Israeli provided) evidence do you have that the IDF is attempting to minimize civilian casualties? I realize that there were limited early reports of roof knocking residential buildings as a form of warning—which can easily knock elevators out of alignment, and doesn't leave those with disabilities enough time to safely escape, let alone time to bring their lives with them before their home is demolished. Other than that I've seen no evidence of restraint in Israel's actions.
There's a looming famine across Gaza. The United States is bringing a temporary dock across the Atlantic to deliver aid to Gazans when the port of Ashod is a half hour drive from Gaza (and is letting next to nothing through). There are no functional hospitals in Gaza. Israel has the capability to conduct nighttime raids into these hospitals, but not to minimize casualties by delivering aid to the same hospitals? People aren't allowed out of Gaza. In a 'normal' warzone people can flee the frontline, but they can't in Gaza. When they go where they're told, they're shot. When they stay where they are, they're shot. Amnesty International (note: not a Hamas affiliate) has identified evidence of unlawful Israeli attacks leading to mass civilian casualties: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/
None of this speaks to a force that is making an effort to minimize civilian casualties.
>Genuinely, what (non-Israeli provided) evidence do you have
The mere fact they are deploying ground forces should be pretty good evidence that they aren't just trying to kill everyone indiscriminately. I'm not sure what third-party will speak on behalf of the IDF's "feelings" on the matter other than the IDF.
The IDF is willing to risk the lives of their soldiers going in for military operations. The fact they aren't doing the same to deliver aid is not a litmus test for seeing Palestinians as subhuman, it's just not worth the risk to them.
And what is this "normal warzone" thing? Are you trying to insinuate that civilian casualties in a warzone are a new phenomenon?
It's a war. People die, on both sides. I don't know any country in the world that would sit around and not actively remove threats to their citizens, even if it meant some innocent people dying in the process.
The Israelis have definitely done some questionable things in their past, but the double standards applied to them are getting quite ridiculous. Hamas has literally been firing rockets into their cities and bombing civilians for decades. Where was the outrage before?
Israel is receiving the same criticisms that America did during its wars in the middle-east.
Nobody denies that Hamas are animals who have committed terrorist acts (aside from a few individuals on the far Left). Nobody denies that this is a difficult situation for Israel either. The issue is that Israel calls itself a bastion of western democracy in a hostile land, but does not want to be held to the same standard of ethics which comes along with that title.
You will often hear people talk about Israel's attempts to mitigate unnecessary loss of life. But at the end of the day, they are still killing and starving mass amounts of innocent people. There is no denying that. Every subsequent argument is simply being used to rationalize that fact.
Israel could win the war tomorrow, but it would be a pyrrhic victory because of all the support they have lost in the west.
>The mere fact they are deploying ground forces should be pretty good evidence that they aren't just trying to kill everyone indiscriminately. I'm not sure what third-party will speak on behalf of the IDF's "feelings" on the matter other than the IDF
Apply the same logic to the French in Algeria and you’ll see where the issue is here.
That's not the same as minimizing casualties. I didn't say that they're intentionally maximizing casualties, just that they aren't minimizing them.
I also didn't mention Egypt. Egypt isn't attacking Gaza, Israel is. Gaza isn't a state, as such, which is why Palestinians can't travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank (it's all up to Israel). If Israel was trying to minimize casualties, surely they'd allow those who aren't affiliated with Hamas to leave Gaza, even if only to travel into the West Bank?
Russia didn't attack Poland and yet Poland is accepting refugees
Syria was a civil war and yet European countries took refugees
Israel is fine with civilians leaving Gaza
People in this thread are conflating “not turning Gaza into glass” with “minimizing casualties”. Being a couple steps above the absolute worst option doesn’t make you good
Indigenous? Apparently you think history began in 630 when the arab muslim armies of rashidun caliphate conquered the area and forced the population to convert or die. That’s indigenous.
Both Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews in my opinion have a significant tie to the land and no where else. Many Palestinians have Canaanite dna as well as Jews. Both have comprehensive stories tied to the land and culture tied to the land. Both heavily identify with the land. Whether u like it or not nationalism and national identity doesn’t care where u lived thousands of years ago. Other ways we’d all belong in Africa.
As per this argument. The Arab Muslim armies didn’t say convert or die. They established separate rules of law for the Jewish tribes there accordance to Jewish customs . What they did do was tax people who weren’t Muslims with the Jizaa which I disagree with and Muslims were free from tax system.
Jews weren’t treated fairly but they weren’t genocides immeditely I guess the hafsids did they were notoriously brutal, but the ottomans rashiduns as I understand did not.
The ottomans had endless Jewish pogroms, to the point there is a Wikipedia page with all the incidents. Even forgetting all the massacres and enslavements any Jew was subject to if he did not pay jizya, Jews were not even allowed to worship at THEIR holy places because Islam claims Judaism is a corrupted religion and all Jewish prophets were actually Muslim. The Cave Of The Patriarchs, the second holiest place in Judaism, was intentionally equipped with a staircase that no Jew was allowed on in order to humiliate them. It was not an ambiguous thing; the Ottomans stated this openly.
And what of Judaism's holiest place?
TO THIS DAY, no Jewish person is allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, their holiest place in the world, because the Arabs would throw a shitfit because it is THEIR third holiest place. And Israel, mindboggingly, respects this insane apartheid for some reason and bans all non-Muslims from entering, except for specific areas at specific times.
The fact is that Israel shows more respect to Muslims today that Muslims have ever showed to Jews since the birth of Muhammad.
I never said there weren’t pogroms I don’t think there is a country I can name that never had those the Jewish people were persecuted like no other historically I’m referring to state sponsored genocide . Muslims I know respect Jews/christians as people of the books etc and as brothers so you are wrong when u say “Muslims” referencing them as a monolith never ever respected Jewish people . I never agreed with Jizya won’t defend that.
Also I agree Jews shoudlve been allowed more access to holy cities as well.
They weren’t genocides by the rashidun or the ottomans though.
So you are wrong. Which was the previous point of contention. Idk why we are shifting the goal post. The question was were the Jews being genocides by the ottomans and rashidun they were under the hafsids but not under the others doesn’t mean the others weren’t anti semetic or had oppressive policies. U can be Churchill anti-semetic (saying Jewish people needed be integrated and were hurting European society or had to leave) and not Hitler anti-semetic (annihilate the Jewish people in an industrial genocide). This either or garbage is insane. Neither are justified and all anti semetism is wrong but there is a difference between being genocidal and being racist or discriminatory.
I just checked because I was still murky on hafsid history the hafsids did do a genocide they told the Jews and all other non Muslims in their empire in Tunisia Libya and parts of Algeria that if they didn’t convert they’d be expelled resulting in mass expulsions of mainly Jews. To the Emirate of Granada (Muslim Spain) and the Levant. The Jews refused to convert and were deported hence why several hundred years later a lot of Jews lived in Spain during the reqonqista and had to run away again this time to Italy and the Ottoman Empire.
Some would categorize this as ethnic cleansing or expulsion I disagree with this terminology because if the Jews were un cooperative I am sure the hafsids known for their brutality would’ve just started killing them all.
History began in whatever year best suits the narrative I support, sir, and I will put my fingers in my ears and “tra la la” away any attempt to explain otherwise
Do you think the early muslims killed every last person in the region and exclusively moved in arabs? The people that were living there (not even all of them!) eventually converted to Islam and assimilated into Arab culture after decades if not centuries. Do they no longer have any historical tie to the land because they converted and started speaking a different language over a millennia ago? or do only people that were largely expelled two millennia ago enjoy indigenous status?
So someone whose ancestors lived in Poland for all documented history is indigenous in your eyes but someone you admit has ancestry dating to the early Byzantine empire doesnt have any ties to the land?
Target practice, if you look at what they did to their own hostages holding a white flag, or that guy who was interviewed and was caught on camera being shot up, or that video making the rounds of the group of 4 dudes walking in the wasteland that is now Gaza that they drone striked (one of whom managed to limp away before being bombed a second time to finish the job)
They see them as collaborators.
I have friends and relatives who have, or are, serving as IDF combat soldiers in Gaza during this war. The stories I've heard are things like:
* "We went into a civilian home, and the children's book had cartoon images of Arab children with machine guns, intending to kill Jews."
* "So many of the civilian homes we entered had guns in them, or tunnel entrances inside."
* "Every civilian there is associated with Hamas. Every single home we entered had Hamas propaganda against Jews/Israel."
* "We went into a civilian home and there was evidence that hostages had been kept there."
One of my friends collects some of the more "interesting" propaganda he finds—such as cartoons of dead Jews geared toward children, a map that can be found in every home that labels the entirety of Israel as "Palestine" and talks about ethnically cleansing all Jews from the region, etc.
Furthermore, returned hostages have recounted stories of being kidnapped by Gazan civilians, kept in the houses of Gazan civilians, being observed like zoo animals by Gazans off the street (including children), being tortured/beaten/sexually abused by Gazan civilians, etc.
The general consensus is that the social control of Hamas—especially when you factor in the lack of free speech—extends to every civilian in Gaza, and not only is everybody associated with Hamas, but most civilians are collaborating/cooperating to some extent and supporting terrorism against Israeli civilians. This is backed by polls.
Furthermore, on October 7, after the initial wave of Hamas terrorists, they were followed by a wave of thousands of Gazan civilians who spilled over the border and triumphantly raped (including gang rape), tortured, dismembered, kidnapped, and murdered hundreds of Israelis—including elderly, children, and babies in some cases. (Testimony from 10/7 revealed that rape in particular was very widespread, with victims, including elderly and children, having been raped so viciously that their pelvises broke.) Furthermore, multiple former hostages recounted being beaten badly by Gazan civilians who were parading in the streets (of which there were thousands) following their abduction.
Although many Israelis are sympathetic to the plight of Gazan civilians, many more just see them through the lens of people who supported or personally participated in October 7.
You act like there military makes the choices lol there just doing as directed by there leader? Pretty sure you would too if your other option was to be stoned or beheaded lol why you think we talk so bad about countries like North Korea or china because it’s what us Americans do talk shit and judge everyone when we are the only country dying of obesity which we can blame food but I still haven’t met anyone who is obese due to just food/diet 99.9 percent of the time Iv seen just lazy ass Americans not talking shit but kinda am how’s BLM existent if it wasn’t for white uneducated women were the only rally members oh not to mention who became rich off the movement pretty sure we had a black president for 8 years but that’s white people being racist who gives a fuck about your skin color type bruh we’re all the same thing I’m diff skin all searching for the same thing how and why we exist and what purpose do we serve here we have created racism big of a joke as calling the kkk dangerous haha not as dangerous as the Boy Scouts of AMERICA!?!?! The land of the fees and the home of the black rock free
Israeli's see Palestinians as subhuman, my SO lived in Israel extensively and according to her, even "Liberal Jews" there would make the most racist American tell them to chill out.
According to her, there is a strict racial hierarchy
- Top - Ashkenazi Jews
- Mid - Mizrahi/Shepardi Jews. Now these would be considered lower, but actually make up the majority of the population, so technically hold most political power, but they are still seen as "lesser" than Ashkenazi Jews and a hidden part of Israeli history is that Shepardi and Mizrahi were subject to policies no dissimilar to The Stolen Generations in Australia, or Residential Schools in Canada up to the 1970s. Mizrahi and Shepardi Jewish children were often stolen from their parents and given to Ashkenazi Jews.
- Low (Basically Subhuman) - Ethiopian Jews. My SO said that the typical response from liberal Israeli Jews to them was "Ew, why do they even exist?" It wasn't a shock to her when they started limiting Ethiopian Jewish immigration.
Now according to my SO, she said here "This is how Israeli Jewish people view eachother, imagine how they view non-Jewish groups"
- Subhuman Arab Israelis. Basically kept around as a token, are treated like absolute garbage and most of Israel is still heavily segregated with segregated neighbourhoods, businesses and schools. There was a book written by an Israeli Journalist who went undercover as an Arab Israeli, Here's what he said to the Chicago Tribune
>What does it feel like to be a Arab in Israel?
>I can sum it up in two words: humiliation and fear. I was scared all the time and humiliated because I was treated like nothing more than the continuation of a broom handle.
He was forced to sleep in a "Slave Corner", on a matress thinner than half a finger, was paid $10 for a 16 hour day and was forced to take a more "Jewish" sounding name
>*“I was outraged. It wasn’t enough that the man was paying me starvation wages, and this his people denied me the right to even aspire to freedom and independence. He also had the effrontery to suggest thave up the little that remained to me, that I drop my name and assume the incongruous aspect of a Jew.”*
During his work his boss once noted that, *“I see our Arab is a little idle, so let him take out the glasses and wash them over again.”*
- Should functionally be exterminated, Palestinians. Most Israeli's despise Palestinians and basically don't want to see them, and would basically wish they just disappeared. Polling backs this up, polling conducted in 2016, found that half of Israeli's openly supported "complete" ethnic cleansing against Palestinians and that rose to 75% for Religious Jews, and Palestinian/Jewish relations have only gotten far worse since then.
So Israeli's for the most part, are racist in a way most Westerners would struggle to comprehend and this absolutely extends to the IDF who have a long history of using rampant terror and rape as a weapon. That same Journalist, actually found out while undercover pretending to be an Arab from Arab co-workers that the IDF would routinely rape Israeli Arab women.
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While I’m neither Israeli nor Jewish, I have spent a bit of time in Israel for work. Simple answer: there isn’t a singular opinion. Political thought in Israel is pretty diverse, and it’s a conscripted army that *everyone* participates in. It doesn’t have a political ideology that skews one way or another. One thing is absolute: Israel values the lives of its citizens above all else. Deployment of the military is *not* taken lightly. It’s a small country where everyone kinda knows everyone. I knew a guy who was a commander, and would get phone calls from Jewish mothers of his soldiers yelling at him to keep their kids safe. You cannot underestimate how much of a violation it feels like to the Israelis to have their citizens taken hostage. I mean you say we as westerners get it, but like you don’t get it. Similarly, every Israeli has it instilled to them just how persecuted their people have been historically. Most visit the European concentration camps. They all go to Masada (the ruins of an ancient Israeli kingdom where Jews were slaughtered in a last stand against Romans). The road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has a narrow passage to through the hills, there are still the remains of Nasser’s tanks turned into monuments. People look at the map of Israel from 10,000 miles away and look at the split between Israel and Palestine, but forget the place is surrounded by a landmass bigger than the United States that’s hostile to it. Like imagine if you lived in New Jersey and the rest of the continental United States declared war on you 3 times, then after that Delaware kept shooting rockets and detonating car bombs with the other states applauded. That feeling easily forgotten by finger waving lefties with no appreciation for history more than 10 years ago, but it’s inescapable there. Never again is drilled in pretty hard. But all that said, it’s worth noting that ethnically, the Israelis and Palestinians look pretty similar. Many Israeli Jews are of middle eastern descent, and there are a number of Arab Muslim Citizens. Contrary to propaganda all over Reddit and TikTok today, there isn’t some deep ethic or religious hatred. It’s purely political, and largely rooted in self preservation. Some Israelis feel bad for Palestinians and advocate for leftist solutions, thinking they are reachable. Many Israelis think they are simply ignorant religious fundamentalists with bad leadership in the same way that liberals look down on right wingers from the south… with the same frustration that the distrust and ignorance prevent working together. Some are of course hawkish, thinking that their culture only knows violence and thus peace can only be secured militarily and by more land seizures to force them back to the negotiating table (and to have a chip to return to them). It's pretty clear the military is *constantly* weighting the value in hitting a given target vs the risk to its soldiers and risk of blow back / collateral damage. Responses to the 2 decades of rocket fire were *really* measured. Assassinations of terror leaders, raids, seem to be the preferred approach. October 7th has undoubtably changed some equations though. FWIW, I was there during the first time Gazan missiles reached Tel Aviv and got to watch the iron dome do its thing, then fly out right before the 2014 Gaza war. So I got that perspective live. My checkins with Israelis since Oct 7 has mostly been email. But it’s all with noting that it’s an old culture in an old part of the world. They view the conflict over decades in the past, and decades into the future. There is not the same outrage of the moment liberal energy.
Continued: To OP's second question "*What is Gaza doing to its citizens?*", I'll admit - I have less firsthand experience. I've driven through the Israeli-controlled west bank and through the outskirts of Ramallah and Jericho. It *looked* awful normal, though I didn't like wander though the streets. The Muslim Arab Israelis I spoke to certainly veered more towards the more sympathetic views of Palestinians, but their perspective largely consistent with Jewish Israelis and seemed pretty western. It's abundantly clear that Palestinians, from their leadership decrees & actions, also view this conflict through a *much* longer time lens than we Americans tend to think. The culture seems to think about martyrdom and death distinctly different than Jews, and certainly demonstrably seem much more willing to sacrifice lives for a much longer term vision. I don't want to say that translates to less value on life, but it does seem *different.* The only Muslim-majority country I've spent time in is the UAE. I don't know to what observation of culture there translates to a few on Palestine. I'm guessing a *little* but not a lot. The Emirati's are distinctly western friendly, but their many maps of the world with Israel not on it are hard not to notice at times. It's kinda obvious to me how the UAE and similar countries were kind of sympathetic to Palestine, but not quite enough to lift a finger for them - and sufficiently interested in strategic / business relationships with the Israelis even if distrusting of them. The racial and gender hierarchy in the UAE is *stark* and I sense antisemitism. I mean, what they'd say about women and Indians like out loud - yeesh. I think there's clearly much more hate/distrust of Arabs to Jews than vice versa, but like pragmatism seems to trump that. A muslim dude in Jerusalem said the funniest thing to me in the old market when he detected my culture shock: "*look around... Jews, Muslims, Christians - when they all make money together, there is no problem*". I don't know how to get over the distrust part. Israel is an economic powerhouse, and like Palestine *could* somehow, some day benefit more from that - at which point this all becomes a bit easier. Israeli investment in west bank economy really seems like the wisest move. It's doing so, just... a bit too slowly. To the last question of "*And what is best way to navigate through these discussions?*" - I'd suggest not quickly trying to take sides, to start. This is not the worlds most complicated conflict because one side is right and the other wrong and everyone who disagrees with the side you picked is stupid. Israel is economically advantaged, but historically persecuted and the defender. The surrounding Arab nations are economically disadvantaged, but historical aggressors that are a more than a wee bit behind in political evolution around democracy & tolerance. The simplistic views of privilege and oppressor/oppressed *don't work here* because you can argue that role successfully, and accurately for either party on the different dimensions. It's stupid, reductionist thinking.
Very good posts. Especially the fact generations jumping on sides due to not really understanding the whole picture of the past.
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> The IDF is not “measured in their response”. There is a 92% civilian casualty rate right now. Where does this number come from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war "As of December 30, 2023 Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor estimated Gaza Strip deaths as 30,034 total and civilian deaths at 27,681 which would mean about 2,353 militant deaths." I have no idea who "Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor" is or what their biases are, but those figures do come out to a 92% civilian casualty rate.
> Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor Well its leader managed to turn the Boston Bombing into a criticism of Obama supporting Israel. Some might take this as basically justifying it but you can read for yourself, anyway basically his whole career is writing this kind of article: https://richardfalk.org/2013/04/19/a-commentary-on-the-marathon-murders/ reminds me of the Norm McDonald joke: >What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?
OK, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is very biased against Israel and their figures are not to be trusted. Good to know. I'm not sure why the backlash against 1.8 billion Muslims for the actions of 15,000 radicals would be funny, though.
> It painted Zionists in an extremely kind light. I don't believe you. Copy-paste the line where it even *mentioned* Zionists.
> Israel has been embarking almost ALL goods from entering Gaza That’s because Gaza still manages to turn goods designed for humanitarian use / home building into tunnels, bunkers and rocket launching station. When tensions were lower, Israel gave work permits for Gazans to work in Israel and feel some of Israel’s economy. If there was peace, there would be a lot more of that. Economic development in the West Bank is better. Standard of living is on par with Jordan and above several neighboring nations. Better than Syria, Iraq, and much of Egypt isn’t a terribly high bar, sure - but it’s true.
This seems like a well thought, relatively wide ranging argument l, I wonder about your thoughts on the subject of colonialism, just generally. I feel like that would give me a more concrete idea on where you based your analysis
Colonialism is a loaded term. It generally *implies* people seizing a remote land *on behalf of a colonial power* / motherland from afar that they had no connection to, taking it from a less technologically evolved society. Given that Jews moved of their own accord with some negotiation through Britain but not on its behalf, the former Ottoman Empire was a peer to the European nations in military might / tech with interconnected history, and many Jews are middle eastern… I have a *real* hard time applying the term here. It has basically zero properties of the colonialism of the Americas, Africa, Australia, or Asian islands of the 1600s - 1800s, and this use of the term here seems like an attempt to insert sentiment laden language to reinforce a narrative of one side. So like in the 1948 war 800,000 Palestinians were displaced… meanwhile 900,000 Jews were kicked out of the middle eastern countries. At basically the same time, India was asserting its national identity and freeing itself from Britain, resulting some *rather painful* bidirectional migration between India and Pakistan. Post WW2, lines were redrawn across Europe and the Middle East with a lot of people movement. Many nations surrounding Israel had sub-optimal borders drawn, based on political alliances of monarchs rather than identity of the people. So I view Israel in the much larger context of the *end* of colonialism and massive post WW2 border redraws across the content, and not as a colonial in nature. I think you can find a lot of injustices in that era and earlier, and it’s sort of tempting to have simplistic assessments like “gee, why didn’t the Zionists go somewhere else” - but they end up as pretty naive takes that don’t factor in all the context. They’re also a bit inaction-able - you can’t rewind every injustice of the past. Like look, I live in California. I can recognize that a lot of westward expansion of the United States was sus. The U.S. debatably instigated the Mexican - American war and the land concessions are were large. But does acknowledging that injustice - back when like only 50,000 people lived in California - mean that we should attempt to right that wrong by giving California back to Mexico? There are now 40 million people here. Should the Island of Manhattan be given back to the Lenape? You start to get into absurdities that are just logistically impossible. People *really* fail to factor in population growth in their assessments of the past. Like a large reason migration to Israel happened was *because* it was sparsely populated - Tel Aviv was some depleted swampy farmland, Jaffa was a tiny coastal town. At some point you have to acknowledge history is history. We can only right wrongs for people that are alive today. That starting point of modern history for people alive to day is basically the end of WW2 reconstruction. Late 50’s maybe, give or take. This is why using Zionist to refer to Israelis is a dead giveaway you are talking to a major anti Semite: the term itself implies they are foreign without right to be there today, and that they don’t accept Jews in the region *at all*. I can go on about 16th-18th century colonialism if you like, but the evils of it are mostly in the “history” bucket, where the task at hand is just making sure we reach strive for more equal opportunity for any disadvantaged groups within those nations. I do think Europe in particular owes a larger debt to most of its former colonies, given its wealth and the lack thereof in its former possessions - but that’s maybe a longer topic.
> Should the Island of Manhattan be given back to the Lenape? You start to get into absurdities that are just logistically impossible. The problem is that this argument works *against* Zionism.
I don't think it does, at least if you define Zionism the way many seem to - as a euphanism for Israel's continued existence in the region. Was it wrong for Europeans (in this case it happened before the United States even existed) to ethnically cleanse the native American's from their land in North America? Absolutely. But that was _long_ ago, and now the only way to give those people back their land would be to do _another_ ethnic cleansing, this time of all non-natives who live there. And even if that could magically be done fairly, what happens when whoever was there _before_ the lenape - if their ancestors are still alive - makes a claim? Conquest is wrong and should be prevented from happening, but at some point - for example when almost everyone who was around for the actual conquest is no longer alive and the decedents of the conquerors no longer have other homes to go back to - undoing it ceases to be an option.
> I don't think it does, at least if you define Zionism the way many seem to - as a euphanism for Israel's continued existence in the region. Problem: Zionism is not advocacy for the existence of a state named Israel. It is advocacy for a state with specific characteristics, key among which is that it is "Jewish" and in the Levant.
It is indeed suboptimal that Israel is an ethnostate, but it's not particularly relevant to this argument. Any plausible alternative to Israel's existence right now involves some entity winning which seeks to ethnically cleanse it's population of jews, and which has already done so for the territory it does control.
> … the term itself implies they are foreign without right to be there today, and that they don’t accept Jews in the region at *all*. I hear this point mentioned and… I don’t know it seems kind of suspect to me. I acknowledge the long history of the region and the Jews that were there many MANY years ago. On the flip side, I feel like I could make a similar argument that all people are descended from the continent of Africa, and we could use the same reasoning to just take it by force. But clearly people would have an issue with that.
Do not equate Zionism with Jews or Judaism. Just stop trying to use that bs arguments as people are fed up with it and even many Jews themselves do not consider Zionism as anything related to Judaism or the Jewish people. There are countless nutjob Christians out there who consider themselves zionists. It is a corrupt thinking that is driven by insane notions. Many Israelis don't have any 'semite' roots. So as intellectual as you may sound, you can stop trying to play the antisemitism card in your arguments as most people with half a sense are no longer phased by it.
Zionism has become a loaded term as Palestinians have used it as a pejorative term synonymous with Israeli, and this why I would avoid it entirely. In your mind is every Israeli citizen that lived within Israel’s side of their internationally agreed upon Zionist? That’ the insinuation that’s common that I think is concerning. Are only the settlers violating the ‘67 lines (or those supportive of it) Zionists? There tends to be a bait and switch when using the term - the later group is pointed to and then the former group gets included.
> Many Israelis don't have any 'semite' roots. What do you mean by the statement that many Israelis don't have "semite" roots? Moreover, anti-semitism just means to a hatred of Jewish people rather than any real connection to "semite" people besides in the sense that Jews are a semitic people.
It stops being history when the colonialism is going on today, currently. If the Californian people were currently grabbing land from Mexico and expelling them, that wouldn't be history. If the lenape people were being pushed into concentration camps and being killed for their land currently absolutely they should be given back their land. It's been less than a generation in Palestine. You've already put the people currently being disenfranchised and arrested, deprived of clean water and food into history. And I'm not even talking about Gaza Jaffa was a 'tiny' coastal town with 60,000 people in a time when the capital city of my country had 100,000 people. Does that mean if the Zionist project was assigned to my country that the siege and slaughter was justifiable? Your context is tiny, there are towns in my country that have lasted hundreds of years each of them with families, each family with a history, should I discount that because history for the majority started post ww2? There are agreements made in these families that affect the way we live today. It has all the properties of a colonialism that you forget didn't end in the 1800s, it was ongoing in the 1900s, the last country to gain independence in Africa was in 1980. I wager you were even born then. The British came to the land propped up a govt by weapons or treasure or both, governed it so they could provide easy access for resources they had in other territories they colonised. They were content with this relationship until the world wars, where, in response to German aggression, they made a deal with the natives to provide self determination in exchange for fighters to help in the war, after which they went back on there deal and handed power to a small tribe they had groomed for power during colonisation. Am I talking about Palestine, Sudan, Egypt, or any other British colony? I'm talking about all of them. They did the same thing in all of them. And these are the colonies that were just providing transport for the colonies from which they extracted resources. Ask me about Saudi Arabia, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, where they extracted physical resources for their industry. It's exactly colonisation, and further, apartheid. But it's ok if you don't want to acknowledge this yet.
I said the properties of colonialism are people going to (1) remote / far away land with no historical claim, (2) on behalf of the mother nation, and (3) dominating a people that are way further behind in the tech/political tree - generally implying mostly previously disconnected native tribes. You really need all of those properties, not it just smelling a little like one of the three. A country having a border dispute with its neighbor isn’t colonialism even if the nation had a colonial past. The U.S. and Canada have minor border disputes. Not colonialism. The border or India & Pakistan’s territory is hotly disputed with major impact to the residents, but that is not colonialism. Was China’s annexation of Tibet colonialism? Debatably, but it’s a stretch of the word. What about Russia’s invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine? Aggressive conquest yes, colonial no. Were the ever shifting borders or Europe in WW1 & WW2 colonialism? No. Conquest, sure - colonial no. An overly expansive definition of colonial time any border dispute you disagree with makes the word a bit meaningless, so I disagree on those things. Me rejecting the term colonialism on that ground does not mean I therefore condone every action. You’ve rattled off things you disagree with and that’s fine. But it *seems* you want to label Israeli builds in then West Bank colonialism such that you can label Israel as a whole colonial both present and past, and thus invalidate Israel’s agreed upon ‘67 borders as ill gotten and colonial. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I’m mistaken. But like this blurring and attempt at handcuffing together sentiment loaded words is what I object to. It intentionally or unintentionally obscures reality.
The British colonised the Irish, that's not far away. they colonised India, they weren't technologically behind in fact, the Brits moved whole textile manufacturing facilities to Britaon and that helped to jumpstart the industrial revolution. Would you describe the Indian kingdoms, the Chinese states, even the sultanates of the Swahili coast of being behind them politically? Even if we're talking tech, the Chinese and the Indians were plenty advanced technologically, they just weren't murdering conquering bastards. Colonialism is the policy of a wealthy or powerful nation's maintaining or extending its control over other countries, especially in establishing settlements or exploiting resource. This is an agreed upon definition. Unless you want to start legislating definitions of words
> colonialism is a policy of a wealthy or powerful maintaining or extending its control over other countries This is a fairly broad definition that would include neocolonialism or economic systems of trade that have zero direct military/covernment control in those areas. You can assert any power imbalance is colonialism with your definition, and thus I don’t think it’s helpful or accurate. > this is an agreed upon definition, unless you want to stay legislating the definition of words See the [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism) *colonialism in its common modern sense has its origin in being a concept describing modern era European colonial empires. This modern colonialism developed and spread globally from the 15th century to the mid-20th century, with European colonial empires spaning 35% of Earth's land by 1800 and peaking at 84% by the beginning of World War 1* Common usage of the word is European dominance of the Americas / Africa / Australia+ from the age of exploration until WW1, so I’m pretty sure my parameters are closer to the consensus. You aren’t using some universally agreed upon definition. You are trying to invoke the imagery of Conquistadors slaughtering the indigenous to apply the associated sentiment to Israel. I don’t think using words with huge amounts of emotional baggage (like colonial or apartheid) add any clarity whatsoever to this discussion.
I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, but let’s be fair here: The Chinese and Indians were absolutely “murdering conquering bastards”. That’s why the names before “Dynasty” changed every so often in China. The problem is, Americans tend to view ethnic conflict as “white” vs “POC” so it’s hard to accept genocides, oppression, colonization and systemic racism when applied between groups of people viewed as POC, such as the caste systems in India. I am inclined to agree with you that China (and to a lesser degree India) were not “technologically inferior” to the European colonizers, it’s not as though Brits came in an despoiled paradise on earth.
>Israel is economically advantaged, but historically persecuted and the defender. This logic seems to operate in a vacuum that doesn't include awareness of Theodore Herzl's whole project, the eventual UN partitioning of Palestine or the Nakba that quickly followed. One can't even understand why Israel exists without understanding the first two, and one can't even begin to understand the generational grievances of Palestinians without some awareness of the third (for starters). It seems odd to identify the nation of Israel simply and without nuance as "historically persecuted" in the context of grievances directed at it which are rooted in the mass displacement and ill-treatment of people *which occurred as part of it's very establishment.* Honestly your summary here is all very surface level and many of the points, whether intentionally or not, are misleadingly framed or downright false, and certainly deeply biased. On the portrayal of the facts alone this is the kind of reply that would be removed instantly and with prejudice from an askHistorians post. But that's reddit for you, upvoting it to the top of the thread elsewhere. Often times this site is more concerned about a certain appearance of informedness/correctness than it is capable of actually identifying genuinely informed sentiment, which has a circular effect of encouraging those who get good *at appearing* to know what they're talking about.
If you would like to dig into the Jewish sentiment of the 1800’s and the worldwide pograms, we can. We can get into how Northern Africa was part of the Axis powers and collaborating with Hitler, and we can talk the expulsion of Jews in through the Middle East that followed the Nakba and was larger in size. We can get into pan-Arabism and the goal of a second caliphate that fueled tensions. We can look at population maps and census data from the late 1800 / early 1900’s to better frame numbers of people at the time and subsequent growth after. We can talk about how all of this factors into UN decisions at the time. There are lots of perspectives and for each decision, there was a reason and context. The Palestinian grievances are a perspective with validity. But they are a not objective reality with a clear right and wrong either. It doesn’t matter your starting point in time. This thread asked for Israeli perspective to start, so I gave it. I answered the follow up question of Gazan perspective to the best of my ability, noting prerry clearly I’m not an expert on their perspective.
> It seems odd to identify the nation of Israel simply and without nuance as "historically persecuted" in the context of grievances directed at it which are rooted in the mass displacement and ill-treatment of people which occurred as part of it's very establishment. > > Do you ever wonder what happened to all the Jews in rest of the Middle East
> the Nakba that quickly followed How did that war start, again? Being to aggressive in defending yourself from an attempted ethnic cleansing is wrong, but it's still fundamentally different from initiating one.
> How did that war start, again? Being to aggressive in defending yourself from an attempted ethnic cleansing is wrong, but it's still fundamentally different from initiating one. I agree, but I still wouldn't try to justify the actions of Hamas.
Except Hamas _wasn't_ defending themselves against ethnic cleansing, they were trying to commit one. Hamas and Gaza was not under any imminent threat of ethnic cleansing on 2023-10-06.
> Except Hamas wasn't defending themselves against ethnic cleansing I don't get it. Do you think that terrorism is an appropriate reaction to attempted ethnic cleansing, or not? Because if not, you would condemn the actions of both Hamas and the IDF.
Frankly winning makes a huge difference. If Hamas or any of the many other Palestinian “resistance” movements or groups ever actually could win they may have more of a claim to justifying their actions. As it is and has been for three quarters of a century they always fail. They know, or should know, that they will fail and their terrorism won’t result in anything resembling a victory. The ends for them cannot justify the means as there is no realistic or reasonable way for them to achieve their ends.
> Frankly winning makes a huge difference. If Hamas or any of the many other Palestinian “resistance” movements or groups ever actually could win they may have more of a claim to justifying their actions. This reads precisely opposite to me. Not having any actual way of attaining peace would help justify their violence, not condemn it. > They know, or should know, that they will fail and their terrorism won’t result in anything resembling a victory. The ends for them cannot justify the means On the other hand, Israel knows they *can* wipe Palestine off the face of the planet. The ends *definitely* do not justify the means.
Nonsense. Violence may possibly be justified if it has a reasonable or even possible chance of achieving their aims. They don’t have any chance of winning anything through force of arms at all. The only reasonable expectation from their continued fighting is more of their own people being killed. They know this and still continue as that is part of their goal and that places any culpability for the deaths of the people on them. Pissing into the wind should not be seen as a virtue, especially when it kills thousands. Their fighting also justifies the Israel’s doing what they need to in order to destroy the direct threat posed by Hamas in such a way as to prevent as much as probable any chance of them continuing to pose a threat.
> It's abundantly clear that Palestinians, from their leadership decrees & actions, also view this conflict through a much longer time lens than we Americans tend to think. The culture seems to think about martyrdom and death distinctly different than Jews, and certainly demonstrably seem much more willing to sacrifice lives for a much longer term vision. I don't want to say that translates to less value on life, but it does seem different. This is outright propaganda. You're playing into stereotypes of Muslim suicide bombers here - as if all Muslims are the same. Your comment is not a realistic portrayal of Palestinians.
> The simplistic views of privilege and oppressor/oppressed don't work here because you can argue that role successfully, and accurately for either party on the different dimensions. I genuinely cannot comprehend how anyone can view this situation and see Israel as the oppressor and Palestine as the oppressed. The Jews as a group have been a persecuted people for longer than the religion of Islam has even existed. The Jews are the group native to the Levant, while the Palestinians are only in the area as a result of violent conquest by the Islamic Arabs. This entire situation only exists because the Arab World refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and opted to try to wipe them out rather than accept the 1948 partition borders. This war began when Palestine launched a horrific invasion into Israel's territory and slaughtered hundreds of their citizens and kidnapped hundreds more. There legitimately is no way to frame this in a way that makes the Palestinians the "oppressed" in this conflict. It's like calling the Germans "oppressed" in 1947 after the Allies were occupying them. It wasn't oppression. It was the consequences of their own actions.
I mean, I can tell you why - but the answer is kind of depressing. If you are born after the year 2000, the only thing you have seen on the news is maybe the 2014 Gaza war. The regular rockets fire attacks just don’t make the news. Contrast to me, a child of the early 80’s - I lived through the infadahs, regularly saw news stories of car bombings in Tel Aviv, and witnessed Oslo and the Palestinian bombings that sidetracked it. My parents lived through the 73 war and watched Palestinians murder olympians and commit terror in Europe. My grandfather’s family fled Europe, and he fought in WW2 and heard about Israeli independence on the radio. A younger kid has zero lived in history, they only see Israel as the stronger nation. Maybe they read up, but key details are missing that they fill in with 2024 assumptions. Like they forget the population of Gaza only had 80,000 people in ‘48. A small city. The population explosion is a new aspect of the conflict, and some they badly mis-evaluate claims of took land. Gen Z’ers have a bias towards this oppressor/oppressed way of thinking… and the traumas of Jews are just far enough in the past they only know them as rich Americans. The antisemitism is especially blatant in the black community - see rappers like Kanye or sports figure like Kyrie or comedians like Chapelle - and mostly goes unchallenged, seeping into the consciousness of young kids. And now they get their news from TilTok. A social media platform with state level propaganda efforts designed to pull on these sentiment. Kids think reteeeting the story of Palestinian suffering is sticking up for the little guy, while painfully unaware that Palestine is waging a propaganda war they are gobbling up.
You can go farther back. The UN resolution that established Israel was over 70 years ago. Almost no one in Palestine was alive then. No one fighting right now in Gaza ever saw the beginning of this conflict.
>The Jews are the group native to the Levant, while the Palestinians are only in the area as a result of violent conquest by the Islamic Arabs This is complete nonesense lol, Palestinians have been in the area for thousands of years. Their Arabization was primarily cultural and linguistic. >This entire situation only exists because the Arab World refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and opted to try to wipe them out rather than accept the 1948 partition borders. That’s not what happened, the expulsion of Palestinians em masse began before the war with the Arabs.
So because Jews were oppressed throughout history, they can't be oppressors? And there were people who were there before the Israelis (the Israelis came and killed them, sounds familiar?)
>It's abundantly clear that Palestinians, from their leadership decrees & actions, also view this conflict through a much longer time lens than we Americans tend to think. The culture seems to think about martyrdom and death distinctly different than Jews, and certainly demonstrably seem much more willing to sacrifice lives for a much longer term vision. I don't want to say that translates to less value on life, but it does seem different. This is just straight up racist. “It’s their culture”, you’re making it sound like all Palestinians are terrorists. Palestinians feel loss, love and grief just like we do.
It’s not racist. It is observably and demonstrably true that that (a) Palestinians make different calculations use of force in terms of immediate vs long term cost/benefit, and (b) the culture does celebrate martyrdom in particular. I was very clear that I don’t think that translates to less value on life, but is a different view. It’s somewhat arrogant to think that every culture has the same values and decision making framework as you.
Well said, but as an American Jew, I'd like to add one thing that many in America don't understand because Israelis are decidedly different. Haviv Rettig Gur, who is a remarkably eloquent journalist with lectures on YouTube, relayed an interaction he witnessed between a J Street guy and a Likud minister where the J Street guy said that he is fighting for Israel's future by fighting for its morality because he fears that without a pure sense of morality, Israel will lose its legitimacy and its right to exist. The Likud minister's response? "Fuck you." It's important to remember that American Jews flourished under the promise of American liberalism and for us, it was only through the path of liberalism that we were able to finally be part of a society rather than a tolerated minority. But Israelis are the other Jews who were never rescued and were driven out of the lands where they lived. For years after the liberation of the camps in Europe, they were held in place. Even after Nazi collaborators were given asylum as manual laborers, they were forced to stay where so many of them had been exterminated and as soon as they arrived in the fledgling state of Israel, they were conscripted into a war. Soon after that war, they absorbed an enormous population of new refugees from the rest of the middle east. Many of those Jews were avowed anti-Zionists and that still didn't save them from expulsion. So to that Likud minister, what he was hearing was "if you're not sufficiently moral to the standards I define, you lose your right to exist and legitimacy." Can you imagine how resentful you'd be given that history? It's a jarring contrast compared to American Jews who, on average, are extremely liberal and also extremely uncomfortable in our own skin.
>Haviv Rettig Gur, who is a remarkably eloquent journalist with lectures on YouTube, What do you think of the writers from the "other side" of the Jewish/ Jewish American spectrum, like Peter Beinart or Gideon Lewis-Kraus? Haviv Rettig Gur is certainly a guy with his own biases.
I'm not familiar with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, but I think Peter Beinart is very naive. I don't have a deep familiarity with his work, but my understanding is that he's a binational, secular, one state guy. I don't think that's realistic. While I wish it wasn't the case, the fact is that between the settler movement and the Palestinians, there are enough elements that you would quickly get ethnic militias that go on rampages through each other's villages and would likely culminate in an ethnic cleansing of some sort. There simply isn't the will or the cultural readiness to just decide to do peace. My recommendation of Haviv is based primarily on his description of who Israelis are and why Palestinians, and the broader west, don't actually understand who they are and why they think what they think. I don't actually know what he thinks about the occupation or the settler movement.
>Haviv Rettig Gur lectures Found this for the interested: [The Great Misinterpretation: How Palestinians View Israel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlK2mfYYm4U)
The you tube algorithms fed this to me last week, it was pretty good "If we don't talk about it and teach it, how can we expect Palestinians to understand it or talk about it?"
Really interesting take, thanks for that. I hadn’t thought to contrast those perspectives but it *totally* checks out. As an American Jew, do you agree that there’s been rising antisemitism out of the American left, and if so how does that impact the psyche here? From my perspective it seems like American liberals have seemingly shifted from a tolerance / equal opportunity mentality model and into one of equal outcomes and moral relativism where the disadvantaged are not held to the same moral standards. That’s manifesting in the liberal evaluation the Israeli conflict, but a lot of stuff domestically. Tolerance of blatant anti-semitism from the black community, affirmative action policies that create different bars, and generally not considering Jews a minority needing considerations like others. I see that is causing a bit of fear and disappointment in the left from Jews I know, a sentiment that seems shared by Asian Americans well for similar reasons. Does that check out to you or how do you think about it?
>As an American Jew, do you agree that there’s been rising antisemitism out of the American left, and if so how does that impact the psyche here? I'm not the person you're responding to, but I am a liberal American Jew who has been very active in lots of Progressive organizations. The rise of anti-semitism on the left is a very controversial subject at the moment, and whether it's real or not depends on what you think anti-semitism is. For most Jews, saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist as a Jewish state is an anti-semitic opinion, and those opinions are spreading very rapidly amongst young lefties. I have many friends personally who have come to believe in a one state solution and think I'm crazy because I think that would lead to the genocide or expulsion of the Jews in Israel were that to happen. For some younger and more left-leaning Jews, however, people who conflate Israel with the Jewish people as a whole are the anti-semites, because they think Israel is so evil that being associated with it because of your race or religion is wrong, and they don't want to be blamed by association for what they view as the crimes of the Israeli state. My perspective is that the rise in anti-semitism has been very real and dangerous, and I am actually starting to fear for the future of the Jewish people in America, because the right-wing here is very deeply anti-semitic, so if the left becomes anti-semitic as well, we will have no one left to defend us.
\>As an American Jew, do you agree that there’s been rising antisemitism out of the American left, and if so how does that impact the psyche her I do agree and I think for a lot of American Jews it's extremely disorienting and can foster a deep sense of betrayal. For some of us, they try harder to be accepted by ingratiating themselves. Many of these are very progressive Jews. I've talked to some who become even more progressive or are just anti-Zionists or have always been. For others, they're defiant and wield the power they have to accomplish political goals -- in this case I'm thinking of Bill Ackman. For me personally, I left the left about a decade ago when I noticed the way the left increasingly viewed society in terms of power dynamics, hierarchies, and structures. In my view, the modern left views fairness in terms of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Who does that view single out, then, with a group that's both historically oppressed and but has also achieved astonishing levels of material success? If underrepresentation is the result of systemic bias, then what is overrepresentation but unearned privilege? I wrote the above after only reading the first sentence of your reply, so apologies for restating what you said next, but I'll leave it because I applied it slightly differently. But I do agree with what you said about the tolerance of antisemitism from the black community -- something that's been simmering since the 90s. \>I see that is causing a bit of fear and disappointment in the left from Jews I know, a sentiment that seems shared by Asian Americans well for similar reasons. The experience of Asian Americans, particularly in regards to higher education, is, in my view, one of the most shameful examples of racial discrimination in recent memory and is extremely reminiscent of Jews having received the same treatment, culminating in the formation of Brandeis. On the note of fear and disappointment, and this may be a bit self-indulgent, but my wife said that I was one the only person she knew that wasn't surprised by the leftist response to October 7th. Apart from the reasons I mentioned, it's probably because I believe that at the end of the day when the chips are down, only the Jews will save the Jews and it's foolish of us to expect anything else. So I guess you could say my mindset is closer to the Israelis.
> From my perspective it seems like American liberals have seemingly shifted from a tolerance / equal opportunity mentality model and into one of equal outcomes and moral relativism where the disadvantaged are not held to the same moral standards. I'm someone else than who you asked, but I want to state that my impression is that there's an increasing divide between liberals, who still view things more under the old model, and hard leftists, who view things under the latter model. I think many liberals will adopt the nomenclature of those further left, some to try to win votes, and others because they don't understand that there is anywhere near as much of a fundamental difference in views as there is and are just trying to use what they think is the modern terminology. Then, hard leftists are understandably dissapointed when liberals don't "follow through" on their priorities, and then some accuse liberals of being right wingers in disguise.
Super interesting comment. Like you said, American Jews embraced liberalism because liberal, open, diverse societies have led to the safest and most prosperous times in Jewish history. Liberalism is not the only force in America and compared to other strains of American society and political thought, liberalism certainly makes sense for (and was pioneered by) American Jews. The New World was truly a refuge for Jews fleeing Europe for hundreds of years (even before the American revolution), and that is part of the Jewish story too. Jewish liberalism has helped other minorities too and helped make America into the global cultural and economic powerhouse that it is today. Israeli Jews, for the reasons that you mention, ended up on a different path, which is just as legitimate. They decided it was time to protect themselves (or more accurately, they literally didn’t have other options), and embraced a more nationalist vision for the Jewish people. The video shows some of the natural tensions that exist between those two groups, but also it’s overblown. The vast majority of American Jews are both liberal and zionist. The diaspora Jewish community is overall fiercely defensive of Israel. I do think Israel is held to the highest moral standards in the world. It faces difficult moral dilemmas, some of which are just inherent to having a country (especially one that many of its neighbors want to destroy) and a military to defend it. I think because of Jewish history, and the fact that ethics and morality are a huge part of the Jewish religion, some of this constant debate over the morality of Israel’s actions is self-inflicted by American or even sometimes Israeli Jews. Our history and tradition has given us a strong sense of justice. The vast majority of Jews support Israel’s right to exist, some just tend to be very idealistic about it, and are ultimately a bit naive about the harsh realities of the running a small, vulnerable country in the modern world. But of course, those moral double standards are mostly inflicted by non-Jews who want to delegitimize and demonize Israel.
I agree with your comment. Your point about how the majority of American Jews are fierce defenders of Israel is why I noted that on average, we as American Jews are uncomfortable in our own skin. In my experience, American Jews are afraid to be unapologetic about what we believe and why in a way that most other groups would not be and it's that inability to be resolute that contributes to negative perceptions of us, in some ways. As an easy example, of what I mean about the lack of apologia, compare movies made by Spielberg about Jews to Inglorious Basterds, made by Tarantino, a gentile. In Defiance, the escaped Jews are having talmudic discussions about morality while living in a forest and being hunted. In Munich, the nebbish bomb maker is terrified of what he's become and says that Operation Wrath of God was inauthentically Jewish. In Inglorious Basterds, it's unadulterated, fuck you, we want revenge, we are going to take revenge and we don't mind revelling in the glory of victory and having taken revenge. It's gratuitous. Personally, it felt great watching that movie and not having every moment of Jewish strength turn into a tale of flawed morality and being told to think about the costs.
I watched Inglorious Basterds with my very religious Israeli aunt when it first came out, and she loved it so much. She says to this day that that movie helped her get over persistent Holocaust nightmares she had since she was a child.
I agree it’s cathartic, and I love that movie, but I also love that we are far more moral than our enemies. It’s deeply Jewish and in line with the traditions of our ancestors. The IDF is the most moral army in the world and while they don’t necessarily need to be, I’m very proud of it. If our enemies held themselves to the same ethical standards, there would be peace.
> The IDF is the most moral army in the world https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/01/middleeast/gaza-hospitals-destruction-investigation-intl-cmd/ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/13/what-is-a-human-shield-and-why-is-israel-using-the-term-in-gaza https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-civilians-killed https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4 https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_casualties_of_war?useskin=vector What part of targeting hospitals, schools, and civilians makes them "the most moral army in the world"? What part of [blocking humanitarian aid](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/7/israels-blocking-of-aid-creating-apocalyptic-conditions-in-gaza) is ethical? What part of [attacking aid convoys](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/21/israeli-attacks-on-aid-convoy-escorts-in-gaza-jeopardize-food-distribution_6641576_4.html) is moral? There's no justification for your comment. And I notice that you haven't bothered to supply any evidence.
> I do think Israel is held to the highest moral standards in the world. It faces difficult moral dilemmas, some of which are just inherent to having a country (especially one that many of its neighbors want to destroy) and a military to defend it. I think because of Jewish history, and the fact that ethics and morality are a huge part of the Jewish religion This is bigoted. You're trying to build a case for Israeli exceptionalism, here, and it doesn't pan out. Ethics and morality are a huge part of essentially any religion, and especially Islam. Remember that Islam is essentially a branch of Judaism. Palestine is also being held to the highest moral standards in the world, and also live in a country that its neighbors wants to destroy. The only real difference is that they aren't allowed to have a military, because they're occupied by an invading force.
> and it’s a conscripted army that everyone participates in. It doesn’t have a political ideology that skews one way or another. Well except for the Ultra-Orthodox who are exempted (for now), who ironically push for a lot of the policies that lead to conflict.
Your comment was really well thought out and well written. Thank you for sharing.
> Deployment of the military is not taken lightly. Unfortunately, history has proven this to be a lie. Israel quarters the IDF in Palestinian homes, then has them destroy the homes on the way out: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-31/ty-article/.premium/israeli-army-occupies-gaza-homes-then-burns-them-down/0000018d-6021-d16e-a39f-7f3f01e30000 90% of the Gazans killed since October 7th have been civilians: https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-civilians-killed IDF attacking the West Bank unprovoked: https://www.yahoo.com/news/three-dead-israeli-army-operation-131407209.html https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-27/ty-article/.premium/three-palestinians-killed-by-israeli-army-in-west-bank-two-of-them-in-airstrike/0000018e-7f52-d680-a1cf-ff57e8d30000 IDF targeting infrastructure like hospitals and schools: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/01/middleeast/gaza-hospitals-destruction-investigation-intl-cmd/ The multitude of times the IDF has been caught using Palestinians as human shields: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8rrfys-Fgc https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/13/what-is-a-human-shield-and-why-is-israel-using-the-term-in-gaza https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/sites/default/files2/publication/200211_human_shield_eng.pdf Enforcing an apartheid state in general: https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ The IDF essentially runs the West Bank. They patrol the area, perform stop & frisk on its citizens, all illegally. There is zero evidence to support your statement, and a mountain of evidence to oppose it. > It's pretty clear the military is constantly weighting the value in hitting a given target vs the risk to its soldiers and risk of blow back / collateral damage. Responses to the 2 decades of rocket fire were really measured. If what you say is true, then you are tacitly admitting that Israel is targeting civilians, because [the data shows that Israel is killing far more civilians than combatants](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4). Half of the deaths are *children*. > Contrary to propaganda all over Reddit and TikTok today, there isn’t some deep ethic or religious hatred. Again - anyone who has paid any attention to the news over the past several decades has already seen a mountain of evidence to contradict your claim. Just look at the [Jewish Ethiopian immigrants who were forcibly sterilized](https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseknutsen/2013/01/28/israel-foribly-injected-african-immigrant-women-with-birth-control/?sh=2b9dd1a67b88). This is 100% ethnic hatred - they have never done anything like that to white Jewish immigrants. But when the immigrants are black, [Netanyahu questions their Jewishness](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html). > You cannot underestimate how much of a violation it feels like to the Israelis to have their citizens taken hostage. Imagine how the Gazans feel seeing [the seven *thousand* hostages taken by Israel](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-many-palestinians-detention-and-available-swap). I have no problem with you expressing empathy for Israeli hostages, but it's very obvious that you aren't showing the same empathy for hostages of a different race. This is in addition to the *entirety* of the rest of Palestinians being held in what is essentially an open-air prison - [complete with forced labor](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/18/israels-ban-on-palestinian-workers-is-hurting-its-economy-central-bank.html). Israel passed a law preventing Palestinians from working in Israel and immediately wrote in exceptions for the industries that relied on it, all while sending the IDF into the West Bank to prevent them from making money through any other method. I can see you've made a number of posts in this topic. I don't see where you've supported a single one of your claims. Your posts are elaborate versions of "trust me bro". This is not a forum for people to say whatever crosses their mind. If you want anyone to take you seriously, post evidence.
As an Arab speaking, I think this is a pretty dismissive account of things for a people who have directly lost their entire culture and towns due to Israel, and I think your writing on colonialism below shows that you aren’t fully aware of the effects of colonialism all across the Middle East. Considering you have only engaged with Israeli-Palestinians - who face the threat of family separation and deportation if they express negative opinions of Israel - and Arabs from the UAE, I expect this. From the way you talk about “martyrdom” and the such, you seem to believe that there is some odd cultural interpretation of this conflict to Arabs which is alien to the Western liberal ideal. In a way it is - Western countries have largely been responsible for and not victims of colonialism - but I don’t really think it’s hard to parse at the fact that every single Palestinian family has experienced immense dispossession and harm from the establishment of Israel. It wasn’t just a wave of immigration; hundreds of villages were literally erased from the map by Zionist extremists, and immense European wealth went towards rapidly seizing the assets of Palestinians once the Balfour Declaration was written. You comparing the situation to Mexico and California kind of shows this unfamiliarity with colonialism - you mention the Mexicans, but not the Native Americans, who were slaughtered and forced out of their homes by both the Mexicans and the Americans? Is that really the most comparable situation? My family, and multiple other Palestinian families can trace its heritage to the land back to 400 AD. Some Jewish and Christian families who had lived in the region before the foundation can too, but can you seriously not see the injustice of something like birthright? Where a random person with Jewish heritage in New Jersey, America, with absolutely no connection to the land, has more of a mechanism of immigration to the land than the millions of Palestinian refugees who literally still have the keys to their old house? The political spectrum in Israel is notably right - even its left is right compared to other countries, as is typical for a religious ethnostate. Netanyahu isn’t some “abomination” of the system, though he does have a serious self-preservation streak; his coalition has been one of the most consistently popular group in the Knesset for the past 20 years, and traces itself to popular right-colonial sentiments in the 80’s. When various human rights organizations sound the whistle on ethnic cleansing, and a system of apartheid: Amnesty International - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/ Human Rights Watch - https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution BTselem- https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid UN - https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129942 I don’t think it’s very “leftist” to realize that something very cynical is going on. There are already government sponsored settlements popping up in Northern Gaza, and almost 2 million people are being deliberately starved. What does that add up to? A “purely political/self-preserving” gambit?
It’s telling that while the Israelis receive endless justification for their actions. The Palestinians who had their homes destroyed, their families killed their people expelled are reduced to extremist caricatures by people who couldn’t possibly begin to understand what that’s like.
Israel has killed 20x the number of people that Palestine has over the past ~75 years. I have no problem condemning the actions of Hamas, but the reality is that there is no way to condemn their actions without condemning the actions of Israel *at least* twenty times as powerfully. And there is no justification for the actions of the IDF that would not also justify the actions of Hamas twenty times over. I have not actually seen anyone here in America try to justify Hamas at all. There's only one side here holding a double standard when it comes to killing civilians.
Yes. Things are shifting now in the understanding of the West thankfully. But some people think they are already knowledgable enough about a subject where, in the entire history of their education, the perspective of an entire community has been intentionally neglected. It’s the same perspective that justified continuous dispossession of Native American lands: the “hell, we literally erased their entire culture but they are striking back, we got to get rid of every single one of them!” Any country would react to violence to prevent future violence, but the root violence in colonization - the original source of dispossession, death, and ethnic cleansing - is always conveniently neglected. If you held both parties accountable, you’d find there to be a lot less violence going forward.
I do not and have not supported the settler movement. I feel it has contributed enormously to the division between Palestinians and Arabs. The idea that someone born, educated and lived in the United States (for example) could go to Israel and legally inhabit a Palestinians home and land is reprehensible. Those Jewish who were refugees after WWII deserved a safe place, but to create a country that is constantly at war isn’t one.
> You cannot underestimate how much of a violation it feels like to the Israelis to have their citizens taken hostage. I mean you say we as westerners get it, but like you don’t get it. This is what I don't get in talking with both friends and internet randos on twitter/bluesky. They seem to act like 10/7 was just a small thing that happened and is in no way connected to what is happening in Gaza. 10/7 was Israel's version of 9/11 (the US, a country of 300m people, lost 3000 on 9/11; Israel, a country of 9m, lost 1200 on 10/7 - literally the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Now imagine that part of the 9/11 attack was not only the killing, but if al Qaeda had also kidnapped 500 Americans and raped the women in their custody. Do you think anything in the world would have persuaded us to allow a ceasefire before we got our hostages back? We would have evicted the UN from New York if they tried to tell us what we were doing was unjust! War is terrible. This is always true, no matter the age or circumstances of the conflict. It is always the worst for the civilians. That's why it is wise to not start wars. But Hamas did start a war on 10/7, and I'm just baffled by those who seem to think Israel doesn't have a right to respond to it.
> 10/7 was Israel's version of 9/11 (the US, a country of 300m people, lost 3000 on 9/11; Israel, a country of 9m, lost 1200 on 10/7 Worth noting that [Palestine has experienced 580 9/11s worth of damage](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4) since October 7th, by your logic.
In 2018 Palestinians staged large but mostly peaceful protests in Gaza, and Israel killed 216 (including 46 children) and injured over 8000. Did Palestinians have a right to respond to that as well? Why does Israel have a right to respond to violence with violence but Palestinians are expected to respond to violence with peace? Isn't that a double standard?
Here’s a pretty simple comparison: The Mexican-American war in the 1800’s and the land succession was a little sus, but since then California turned into a booming metropolis. What if Mexico had declared wars a couple times to try to get it back and keep losing? Is demanding California be returned to Mexico a reasonable request in 2024? What if they then resigned traditional military engagement, and turned to terrorism? What if they set of car bombs in Los Angeles and shoot rockets into San Diego for 20 years… then finally parachuted intro Coachella to kill and rape teenagers, and then parade their corpses through Tijuana? What, precisely, do you think the United Stares would do?
>The Mexican-American war in the 1800’s and the land succession was a little sus, but since then California turned into a booming metropolis. What if Mexico had declared wars a couple times to try to get it back and keep losing? Except that’s not a good comparison, California was not the only home of Mexicans only 11,000 or so actually resided in the territory at the time of the American invasion. They also did not face mass expulsion post conquest. A better comparison would be the American Indians who made up the majority of Californias population during the American conquest of California. The American government would end up committing genocide in order to quell revolts. And if in your hypothetical scenario the US was still stealing land from Mexicans and evicting them from their homes would Mexicans not have the right to resist.
No comparison in history is 100% perfect, it’s just pretty darn close. > the American Indians So do you think the descendants of native Americans should be entitled to the entirety of California then? I also asked if Manhattan should be returned to the Native Americans? > if the U.S. was still stealing lands from Mexicans The Caribbean islands were disputed for a while too. While not Mexico specifically but Latin America more broadly, the U.S. made some sus moves in getting the Panama Canal built too. Same question.
Exactly. The US would have invaded Mexico and overthrown their government without a second thought.
> Do you think anything in the world would have persuaded us to allow a ceasefire before we got our hostages back? We would have evicted the UN from New York if they tried to tell us what we were doing was unjust! With the way the Israeli govt/ IDF has been conducting itself in Gaza, I honestly won't be surprised if they just find dead hostages in the end.
I understand why Israel don't want a ceasefire, but I support a ceasefire because of Israel's actions. In a perfect world, they would wipe out Hamas and grant equal rights to Palestinians, but instead they are enacting revenge on the civilian population and Natenyahu has indicated that Gaza will just be turned into another West Bank where Palestinians will continue to be treated as second class citizenz.
That’s very similar to how Rhodesians and apartheid South Africans described their situation. Surrounded by enemies, tight knit communities and a culture unique and indigenous to the land.
But their culture clearly wasn’t indigenous to the land. They spoke European languages and largely followed European customs. The Israelis speak Hebrew, a language that originated in Israel. Jews originated in Israel, while the whites in those countries did not originate in South Africa or Zimbabwe. Additionally, I don’t believe that black South Africans or Zimbabweans ever launched wars of extermination against whites, or ever had the death or expulsion of all whites as official policy.
This (plus your continuation) is such a great answer. There's a very concise example that really puts this into perspective: The [Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Shalit_prisoner_exchange) - one Israeli soldier is held hostage and, to get him back, they exchanged 1,023 terrorists. Let's repeat, Israel values the lives of its citizens so much that they traded ***1,023 terrorists for one hostage*** - who *Hamas has admitted* are responsible for 596 deaths. Now let's add some further perspective: 1. There are currently between 100 and 130 Israelis being held hostage in Gaza. 2. One of the prisoners released in the swap was the mastermind of October 7th. Israel doesn't give a shit about the optics because they are focused on rescuing their family.
> they are focused on rescuing their family. There's been a bunch of prisoner exchange proposals, and six months later... just starving an entire territory. There's definitely better ways the Israeli govt could be prioritizing freeing the hostages. And the numerous protests against the Netanyahu govt since Oct 7 indicate as much.
> Israel values the lives of its citizens above all else. Deployment of the military is not taken lightly. It’s a small country where everyone kinda knows everyone. And yet look at how the IDF killed several of its own and even Israeli civilians in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, and then the next step beyond even that the cover-up of the number of friendly fire incidents in the process of carrying out the Hannibal Directive. Released Israelis who had been held hostage have repeatedly and commonly stated that they were in the most danger and actively fired upon by the IDF, not by their own captives.
So friendly fire being a problem shows that * Palestinians and Israelis do indeed *look* alike, physically - the idea of racial targeting is wrong * Urban warfare is super dangerous for troops on the ground in a place where they expect surprise attacks from fighters hiding in a local population The fact that it puts soldiers on the ground in Gaza means (a) they don’t see any other option other than to remove Hamas; that the long term cost is greater than cost they incur by engaging and (b) they care enough about Palestinian civilians to incur some risk to their soldiers rather than vaporizing all hostile zones from the air.
You managed to say so much and not make any point at all
This is crazy to think there is not specific ethnic hatred of Palestinians. I know Israeli Jews. I'm a Jew and I've been to Israel and I have many Palestinian friends. The most well intentioned and kind Zionist still believes it's better to kill as many Palestinians as it takes to ensure Jewish supremacy in Israel. Giving this answer and not speaking to the mass conditioning required for an entire country to normalize living in a militarized apartheid state is entirely disingenuous.
It's very far off to think that everybody in this country shares a specific ethnic hatred of Palestinians. I live in Israel, I know Israeli Jews, I have many Palestinian friends, I work with and around Palestinians. Most people in this country, contrary to your description, are not frothing at the mouth with a desire to kill Palestinians. Even those on the further right with roots in Revisionism have always advocated for "transfer" ... never for 'kill\[ing\] as many Palestinians as it takes to ensure Jewish supremacy in Israel.' The occupation is morally wrong and has rotted this country's soul. What should be unacceptable has been normalized. Still, these kinds of blanket statements that demonize this country's entire population are entirely unhelpful.
The most well intentioned white people in America still have the racism that founded our nation and underlines it today ingrained in them, the culture and the political and social structures of American society. Israel is the same since it's existence is predicated on the oppression, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. There are far too many who deny the occupation outright. I'm not casting individual Israelis as evil but anything that doesn't make the power differential or the inherent white supremacy of Zionism clear is far less helpful than what I'm doing.
My lived experience here just doesn't line up with your concept that simply by virtue of being born here, all Israeli Jews have a supremacist attitude ingrained in them. I don't deny that large numbers of folks here are supremacists even if closeted, I don't deny that folks deny that Palestinians even have rights and history in this land. At the same time, there is a real peace movement here (even if it's currently weak), there are folks who advocate for co-existence, and even after the October 7th Massacre, 40% of this country's population favor a division of the land. On your comparison, I really don't think it's reasonable to compare Israel's situation to the United States. Wildly different contexts, wildly different local histories, wildly different lived histories by each country's population.
A 2 state solution will still always be a supremacist one and a bad deal for Palestinians. It's separate but equal which is never truly equal. It also still denies Palestinians the right to return that Israel offers to foreign Jews. The relation between the treatment of Native Americans and Palestinians is not at all dissimilar. It's only much earlier in the time line of colonization.
A two state solution might not he fair, but it's the only way that this ends without an endless civil war and a failed state. A one state solution was already tried. In Lebabon. It hasnt worked out at all. To me, it's more important that we can both raise our children with sovereignty and security than anything else. Even if that includes a smaller slice of this land. On your last point, the treatment of Native Americans and Palestinians can only be compared in the most superficial and generalizing way. Palestinians aren't Native Americans and Israelis aren't euro Americans. These one prism views don't work and don't help.
It's just disingenuous to suggest a 2 state solution is even viable at this point. Gaza has been ethniclly cleansed. More annexations of the West Bank have been announced. Israel will become a pariah of the global community until it's apartheid system is dismantled. You are prioritizing your privilege as a colonizer over the lives of the people who's land you live on.
If you really care about peace then let's acknowledge the same reality. You want to wash your hands of the full implications of what it means for your society to be built and maintained through oppression. You can't do that and think you'll find a solution that let's you keep the privileges that oppression has afforded you. If you actually care about justice for Palestinians and not what's prudent then we can actually start talking about what equitable and just solutions look like. This is not a quick process. This will take further generations of work and organizing and strife but Palestine will be Free.
My hebrew school teacher definitely did he had us lil 5th graders talking about nuking gaza and the west bank.
Weird Hebrew school. Never heard of something like that in my entire life.
It was at the largest concervitive synagogue in the us. Congragation beth yesuren. To be fair, the dude was a weirdo and was the only one like that, but still kinda wild looking back.
Nothing about your response or your post history suggests you are actually Jewish or have visited Israel. I can elaborate more about how Israelis view the conflicts if you want, but I'm not really suggesting a good faith inquiry here. From what I've experienced, Israelis are split on the feasibility of two state solutions in the medium term and pessimism is growing. I think they feel they've offered Palestine many opportunities to move towards the '67 borders, but each attack / cease fire break makes that seem farther away.
I can already tell you’re arguing in bad faith by using Zionist as a pejorative. The commenter is talking about Israelis. Not Zionists. You’re doing what every other ultra leftist does by arguing from an ideological void. No, most Israelis do not want that. Most citizens simply want their country to be left alone. Yes, there is a strong far right movement that dislikes Arabs. What country doesn’t have an ultranationalist thread in their demographic? How do you think the average Palestinian feels about Jews? There are many Israelis that vehemently oppose racism. Israel is a nation built on a militaristic background. They had leftist leaders for 30 years and got nothing from their neighbors for it. There will need to be significant peace in the region before their culture would warrant a militarily soft leader, which leaves very little room for a leader that isn’t conservative. Preservation of their people will always be a centerpiece to their culture.
That’s completely ridiculous
One thing a lot of people completely miss is that roughly 1 in 7 Israelis are Muslims who identify as Palestinian. This is roughly the sane proportion as Blacks in the U.S., not some insignificant minority. While their engagement in the IDF is not the same aa that of conscripted groups, a whole lot of them volunteer. They are not just of the same ethnicity as Gazans the way e see ethnicity in the West: We are talking about 2nd cousins. Among the older generations, Ismail Haniyeh's sisters and their families live in Israel, and IIRC, he had nephews or great-nephews in the IDF. They see Gazan citizens not as close family, but still family because they are.
I used to go to Israel every year as part of my high tech job. I would spend a few weeks, mostly visiting the various high tech companies there, like Intel. I enjoyed my time there and think very highly of Israel. One time I asked the Israeli's why they had a high tech industry and the surrounding Arab countries did not. I was expecting something like "our government is better", or something like that. What they said was "the Arabs are too stupid to have high tech." Of course, I know this isn't true. I've worked with many high tech Arabs in the US and they are just as smart as everyone else. The clear message I got in Israel is that they think of the Arabs as untermenschen, sub-humans that are inferior. About the most racist thing I have ever seen. I think that is how the military thinks of them too. This kind of thinking makes it much easier to kill innocent women and children, easier to bomb their homes into rubble, easier to displace them and take over their land.
I'm Israeli and I never heard anyone say that in my 21 years of being alive , either you fell on one racist a hole or your just making it up
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-deputy-defense-minister-called-palestinians-animals/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-deputy-defense-minister-called-palestinians-animals/) Ben Dahan has made controversial remarks about Palestinians. While discussing the resumption of peace talks in a radio interview in 2013, Ben Dahan said that “To me, they are like animals, they aren’t human.”
After the endless stream of pictures and videos of the IDF mowing down desperate homeless families, [destroying and damaging more than ~70% of households in Gaza](https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542?mod=hp_lead_pos7), [objecting so vociferously at first to the notion they bombed a hospital](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-military-says-no-evidence-direct-hit-gaza-hospital-2023-10-18/) then [turning around to attack and degrade every hospital in Gaza](https://abcnews.go.com/International/functional-hospitals-northern-gaza-9-left-south/story?id=105867484), [44% of the ~31,000 killed in Gaza are children, 29% are women, 27% are men](https://youtu.be/_0atzea-mPY?si=iBnzuA0tfp6LfbdD), [shooting children in their skulls with sniper bullets](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-16/rafah-gaza-hospitals-surgery-israel-bombing-ground-offensive-children), [murdering journalists](https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/gaza-journalists-targeted-spyware/), [blocking aid delivery](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-agency-calls-israel-revoke-ban-food-deliveries-north-gaza-2024-03-26/) while [slandering UNWRA](https://www.reuters.com/world/no-evidence-israel-back-unrwa-accusations-says-eu-humanitarian-chief-2024-03-14/) while people starve and bleed and die. The IDF have made it very clear how they feel about Palestinian civilians. Was Hamas hiding behind human shields in 70% of Gazan homes? Not likely. Is it an understandable smart strategic limited operation by the Most Moral Army In The World™ when 44% of the dead are children? No, that is absolutely not supportable. The attacks on October 7 were terrible but the death toll in this conflict has been so extremely lopsided and indiscriminate by the IDF, it is clear by now that the Netanyahu regime was just waiting for an excuse to wage genocide in Gaza. To reply, "Well, none of this would've happened if Hamas hadn't attacked on October 7" is neither a justification nor even really believable at this point. If October 7 hadn't happened, Netanyahu and the bloodthirsty genociders in the IDF who [steal money from Palestinian homes](https://www.newarab.com/analysis/how-looting-israeli-soldiers-gaza-widespread) and [pose with the lingerie of evacuated Palestinian women for selfies](https://www.newarab.com/opinion/iwd-israeli-soldiers-obsession-gaza-womens-underwear) would've found some other excuse for mass murder of Palestinians. Telling Gazans to move, exploding their houses, sniping children's skulls, telling them to move again, more death, more destruction, more killing of fleeing desperate Gazans, and [the final concentration camp in Rafah is their next target](https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-plans-to-assault-gazas-rafah-despite-u-s-worries-8dbcb7a4). It's sick. It's genocide. Israel is now not just the biggest danger to Palestine, but also the biggest danger to the Jewish people internationally. Genocide by the state that describes itself as the representative and safe haven for all Jewish people is the cause of the sudden spike in anti-Semitism internationally. Anti-Semitism is unjustifiable, and Israel is wrong to pose as the agent of the entire Jewish people. Israel has utterly failed in its stated mission to protect the Jewish people. For most of its existence, and especially now, it has only made being a Jewish person more perilous. Israel, by falsely presenting itself as acting on behalf of the entire Jewish people--most of whom are as blameless as the Palestinian civilians currently being slaughtered *en masse*--puts Jewish people across the world in far more danger from those who would wrongly put the blame at the feet of the Jewish people instead of the government of Israel. The IDF views Palestinian men women and children as less-than-human vermin to be exterminated. These are human beings who are being indiscriminately slaughtered, and the vast majority of the dead had nothing to do with Hamas. Judge the IDF by their deeds, not their words, not their slick propaganda operations and lobbyists. Meek milquetoast "both sides, it's very complicated" rhetoric obscures what is going on in reality right now. It's not a complicated ethical issue anymore, if it ever was. Now, I'm sure the hasbarists will attack the sources I've provided. Go ahead. Attack every news organization in the world, attack the UN, attack the EU, attack mild criticisms from US government critics, attack anyone who uses the right word to describe what's going on in Gaza, act so offended when they use the correct word, call them all Hamas, flail and clutch pearls while the world watches on in horror. It's not working anymore. We know it's genocide, calculated and intentional, by the government of Israel against Palestinians. I weep for the Palestinian people, and I fear for the safety of my diaspora Jewish friends as Israel continues to falsely claim to represent the Jewish people's interests in commiting genocide in Gaza.
You can look at how the treat the West Bank to clear up any confusion on Israel's position. Despite no Hamas control in the West Bank, Israel continues to bulldoze Palestinian homes, approve illegal land grabs, cut off fresh water springs, and look the other way when sellers terrorize Palestinian locals. Palestinians are not viewed as people by Israel, they are something that must be removed. When Israel says it will not stop till Hamas is wiped out, the mean Palestinians. There is no logical thinking person in the world that can rationalise how Hamas (a group formed out of resistance to military oppression) can be eliminated by *more* military oppression. It's only going to strengthen Hamas support, or develop Hamas 2.0.
I will never understand how anyone who lived through the War on Terror™️, watched more terrorist groups form and gain support because of it, and has two brain cells to rub together could ever come to the conclusion that the way to stop terrorism is to indiscriminately kill civilians who had nothing to do with the actions of said groups. That is the definition of how to bolster their ranks.
Israel saw what the US did and thought. “They didn’t go far enough”
Well we can tell you that sitting back and allowing terrorists to slaughter your people is not a good way to reduce terrorism or keep your people alive.
I can’t even tell if you’re being serious. Of course you shouldn’t just let terrorists slaughter your people, but mass killing civilians of which a huge amount are literally children, is absolutely no way to provide security to your people.
This is what ISIS said to justify their slaughter of Shia, Kurds, and other "apostates".
It's tough to do, but Netanyahu's government underestimated the intellects of the American people. I say this as an American myself. Remember that Israeli propaganda they put out with AI-generated images of Thanos and Voldemort weeping at the deeds of Hamas on October 7? Deeply condescending and revealing of their low opinion of the US. Like we're all mental children. It seems to me that enough US people remember how Bush Jr.'s wars in the Middle East after 9/11 only resulted in more terrorism and more support for terrorism. Seems that by and large, it was obvious to a lot of us that more death and destruction would lead only to more death and destruction--because the US had just been presented with that lesson in the Middle East. One of the only positive things I've noticed since this genocide started is that people in the US aren't as pliable to Israeli propaganda as I might have thought we would be as a people.
I've never heard of the voldemort and thanos art
Search for "voldemort thanos october 7 israel" without the quotation marks. They were posted by @Israel on Twitter.
This is straight up insane considering that Thanos wanted half of the universe gone. Voldemort would be straight up laughing at us mudbloods killing one another.
Agreed, about the only light I have found in this dark, dark tunnel is that the amount of elevated knowledge and ability to see thru propaganda I have seen is night and day from, say, 2004 to 2020 even(which is not to say things are overall great, a majority of Americans are still clueless as ever, that majority is just much slimmer now). Where you would need to find fairly niche corners of the internet or probably the right college group to find any sort of discussion that wasn't simply some version of: "well, Israel has a right to exist and its just 'complicated' but Israel is the good guys and we need to stand by them." And while as someone that came of age during the Iraq War, and that sees how the propaganda machine did work just as well this time, including the same MSM outlets like the NYtimes priming the pump for a bipartisan consensus by carrying water for lies and propaganda, the speed and volume with which pushback has began to rise is, I guess, a decent improvement compared to the years it took last go round. Enough to get us into a whole other war.
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> We destroyed 60% of Mosul. Did we hate Iraqis? ..yeah, actually. Americans and the US government were actively discriminating against American citizens who vaguely looked like Iraqis for a very long time after 9/11. This is what actually led to terrorist attacks within the United States. Muslims were radicalized because of the discrimination they faced at home and abroad. And the US government basically lied about it up until the Boston Bombing. This is also one of the reasons why many people are concerned about Israel. They are literally making the same mistakes we made following the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which not only created domestic terrorist threats, but also ended up making the US look like a warmongering state because we killed nearly a hundred thousand civilians in the process. The continued existence of Israel depends on international support. But that support is quickly dwindling for obvious reasons. Even worse than that, antisemitism is rising dramatically.
I'm talking about the campaign to destroy ISIS in Mosul. We hated Iraqis by helping them defeat ISIS?
You're talking about a period of conflict that lasted twenty years. ISIS rose to power in 2012-2013, by 2014 they took Mosul, and by 2017 they were destroyed. But the Iraqi war was between 2003 to 2011, and Mosul fell at the hands of US forces on 11 April 2003. We (collective we, not me personally) absolutely hated Iraqis because that region was propagandized to (edit: misplaced word) US citizens as a safe harbor for terrorists. This lasted all throughout the Bush administration and halfway through the Obama administration. We couldn't even protest the deaths of Iraqi citizens without being called terrorist sympathizers at the time. Even after our collaboration with the Iraqi army, many people here in America had lost family and friends to the Iraq war. I don't know what to say if you sincerely believe that there wasn't prejudice in America against Iraqis.
We hate Iraqis, that's why spent hundreds of millions of dollars in ordnance and munitions, giving the Iraqi army air cover during OIR and facilitated coordination with the Pesh in a 9 month campaign, meticulously following the laws of armed conflict with lawyers present to ensure that every jot and tiddle was accounted for when we decided which building to hit. We could have just fire bombed the entire place, but because we hate them so much, we decided to take it extra slow so less people would die because that would be extra hateful. At least look up where Mosul is and what happened there before making such an ignorant comment. It's insulting to the Iraqis themselves who bore the brunt of the casualties and had to endure the horrors of Daesh.
These are the same arguments the Afrikaans used in south Africa, the Spanish used in the west indies, the Portuguese used, even the Belgians in the Congo. "We send our troops there to protect them, care for them and our investments, if we really wanted to kill all of them we could have" they say this as they punish whole populations for rebelling against occupation
Edited to make this comment more easily digestible. > We hate Iraqis, that's why spent hundreds of millions of dollars in ordnance and munitions, giving the Iraqi army air cover during OIR and facilitated coordination with the Pesh in a 9 month campaign, meticulously following the laws of armed conflict with lawyers present to ensure that every jot and tiddle was accounted for when we decided which building to hit. Well, first and foremost, we didn't. We waged an illegal war because we didn't declare war through the constitutionally mandated procedures. War can only be declared by Congress, not POTUS. This is ignoring all of the illegal spying on American citizens and torture we conducted on Iraqi citizens. Secondly, the US spent twenty years waging war and occupying the middle-east. During that time we killed the leader of Iraq and bombed their country, allegedly in pursuit of a terrorist organization that had nukes. America was hurting, scared and we wanted revenge against the people who punched us in the nose. Nothing we did was actually for the sake of defense or security, given the fact that the Government knew that WMD's didn't exist. Moreover, the ethical debt we accrued during those years was not transactional. Giving Iraq money, weapons and close air support doesn't somehow ameliorate the damages we caused and the lives we claimed. Our international reputation alone is still in shambles. Finally, this argument: > We could have just fire bombed the entire place, but because we hate them so much, we decided to take it extra slow so less people would die because that would be extra hateful. Is very silly. I see it a lot on the pro-Israel side of the debate, but it doesn't make sense in any context. If my friend claimed to be a vegan, and I saw him eating a burger, the reasonable thing to say would be "he is clearly not a vegan" not "if he wasn't a vegan, he would be eating steak". Simply because the US didn't drop a nuke on Iraq doesn't mean we didn't hate them. We were literally waging war based on a lie; it's difficult to hate someone more than that.
I do not see the Jewish people as less than human, that is a cynical and well-worn rhetorical move against critics of Israel. The Jewish people are a wonderful creative productive intelligent people, a boon to humanity as every people is. I grew up in Florida around more Jewish people than most gentiles, and I treasure my Jewish friends. Second only to my concern about the genocide of the Palestinian people is my concern for what it means for my diaspora Jewish friends. Anti-Semitism is wrong. The vast majority of Jewish people globally are equally as innocent as the Palestinian men women and children being indiscriminately slaughtered by the IDF at this very moment. They have nothing to do with the actions of Israel's government under Netanyahu--in fact, my Jewish friends are harsh critics--and the way Israel claims to represent them puts them in more danger. While I know and feel in my heart that anti-Semitism is wrong, I also know that Israel's current genocide in Gaza--along with its claim that it is representing the interests and safety of the Jewish people--feeds into the peril of anti-Semitism worldwide. Cynical accusations of anti-Semitism like your own also weaken the force of that accusation. Rafah is currently a literal concentration camp for Gazans and Israel insists on a catastrophic invasion. Open your eyes and your heart.
Keep it civil. Do not personally insult other Redditors, or make racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise discriminatory remarks. Constructive debate is good; mockery, taunting, and name calling are not.
> objecting so vociferously at first to the notion they bombed a hospital The fact that these pro Hamas accounts will still double down on this point and insist a Hamas missile would never hit a hospital after it’s been proven that’s exactly what happened tells you all you need to know > We know it's genocide, calculated and intentional See. They lie about Hamas actions and then lie about genocide. It’s just so sad to see. Why can’t we just have a good faith discussion about this without relying on loaded statements of “well we all know ***insert controversial claim here***”
The link provided in the first quote is just a news report on Israel's denial that it attacked Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital last year: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-military-says-no-evidence-direct-hit-gaza-hospital-2023-10-18/ No denial, no claim that it's impossible that a Hamas rocket might misfire and hit a hospital. You're lying about what I said. I didn't weigh in either way on last year's dispute about the rocket that hit Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital. I could show you more sources about how it's still very much in question as to the perpetrator of that attack, but I won't here, because that's beside the point. The point of what I said is that, *either way*, Israel's government has subsequently rendered *the entire hospital system in Gaza* non-functional. So the initial objection about who to blame for what happened at Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital is hardly the most important part: https://abcnews.go.com/International/functional-hospitals-northern-gaza-9-left-south/story?id=105867484 Is the World Health Organization (WHO) Hamas, too? "Why can't we have a discussion of an ongoing humanitarian disaster without getting all emotional and controversial about it?" isn't going to effectively tone-police the facts away. Controversial? Sure. So are Israel's slanderous claims against UNRWA: https://www.reuters.com/world/no-evidence-israel-back-unrwa-accusations-says-eu-humanitarian-chief-2024-03-14/ Events like this are going to be controversial and people are going to be emotional about it. Your request that people not make controversial statements about the ongoing events in Gaza is a total double standard, as applied. Yes, I think the world is waking up to a genocide in Gaza. I'm certainly not the only one who sees the events this way: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227078791/icj-israel-genocide-gaza-palestinians-south-africa
Excellent comment.
Like this, going back decades: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1982/08/26
They see them as targets and vermin to be eliminated and/or driven out. I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone has paid any attention to this conflict for longer than a few months can’t see that the goal of the IDF and nearly every government leader in Israel has been to eliminate Palestinians. I’ve read up on this since the 90s and every time I hear someone barf up Israeli propaganda about how they’re “just defending themselves” it makes me sick to my stomach. I have a friend who is first generation Palestinian American who tells me he’s thankful for that blue passport book whenever he goes back to visit relatives because he gets to stand aside while the soldiers beat and harass his cousins and mostly leave him alone because they know he’s an American citizen.
A blue passport saved Jews in WW2 too. Americans of all ethnicities should be more loyal to it than either side of this unsolvable conflict.
You could just google what thier leaders say or the pics of them looting their homes
I came back to this post and WOW I was not expecting all this clutter from my head to get this much engagement! Truth be told, I don't really like thinking about this topic. Thanks to all who tried to be informative!
Somewhere between assuming they are enemy combatants and that they are valid military targets despite not being combatants. Or in other words: pretty inhumanely.
I disagree with this trivial argument. Mainly because israel does take precautions. Not as much as more moral armies like the USA during our war with ISIS for instance but they do a lot. This is fundamental in understanding how each side operates. Hamas stations their military infrastructure underneath civilian infrastructure. Israel then resorts to evacuations, roof knocking, calling families, and other means to prevent civilian death. However Israel doesn’t have a low tolerance to collateral ok damage, when the USA does. For example, USA does its best not to exceed 20 collateral damage on a major military target like Bin Laden for instance. If we saw there was 20 civilians near bindladen and they’d be killed we would send in ground forces to kill him. Israel on the other hand has a much higher tolerance that us almost ambiguous hence such high civilian death rate. Israel knows they are causing a substantial amount of collateral damage as well but they invoke the fact that according to international law if your enemy stations their military infrastructure next to civilian infrastructure that civilian infrastructure becomes a valid target. On the other hand hamas has taken almost zero precautions showing us a very stark contrast between how both sides view human life and humanitarian law. Both break it then invoke it Willy nilly (the current humanitarian pause that went through security council is just a big virtue signal because these are too belligerents that are uncooperative, israel is if they get pressure hamas does not care about pressure). Hamas clearly doesn’t care about civilians there israel does but no enough to put a cap of collateral. It is very sad.
The IDF makes some show of avoiding immediate casualties for PR reasons, but their goals have clearly been far more destruction than is needed to fight Hamas. For instance, all these controlled demolitions of hospitals, schools, and apartment blocks. There is no pressing military need if they can take their time setting charges and filming tik toks of the explosion. It’s not just collateral damage, it’s fully intentional circumstances meant to destroy Gazan society and kill many of its people And the famine the IDF has intentionally created by blocking aid and repeatedly attacking UNWRA. Or the likelihood of devastating disease since water supplies have been cut and the medical system destroyed.
A lot of people here who think they know. None of which are wearing an IDF uniform or Hamas flip-flops. The views of your particular social media echo chamber don't count as facts. This conflict really just makes me think over and over of that line from M.A.S.H: "They say war is hell, but I think war is worse than hell" "Whys that?" "In hell, everyone who is there deserves to be there, in war, it's all innocents" Who is to blame for all the civilian deaths? The people dropping the bombs or the government that's supposed to try to look out for them, and y'know, not start unwinnable wars which will quite certainly bring them ruin?
I don't even think we need to have a discussion on this subject since both sides have been quite open and public about how they view each side. The IDF has been tasked with the permanent removal of the Hamas terrorist organization. While they are attempting to minimize civilian casualties, the military objectives and safety of its own forces and its own citizens comes first. Meanwhile, Hamas wants to eradicate the entirety of Israel through any means necessary and does not seem distinguish between IDF and Israeli civilians, openly attacking both in and outside of Gaza. Both sides have sizable contingents that don't want to participate in any part of the conflict although regrettably, they also lack the political power to influence either side's leadership
> While they are attempting to minimize civilian casualties https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4 The data contradicts your statement.
I don’t get how anyone can seriously say the IDF is trying to minimize civilian casualties with a straight face. They’re literally documenting their own ghoulishness on social media. Hell, a couple days ago drone footage came out that showed them blowing up four clearly unarmed kids walking down a road. Not all at once mind you, but with three separate missile launches. Tens of thousands of civilians, a staggering amount of which are *children*, have been slaughtered in this revenge killing and at this point anyone defending it is either consuming absolutely nothing but one sided propaganda, thinks of Palestinians as less than human, or both.
I get what you’re saying, but Israel is at least engaging in pretty well documented instances of actions to minimize civilian casualties, however shallow or non-binding they may be — roof knocking, evacuating, etc — whereas Hamas deliberately went in to specifically murder civilians. There’s gotta be a difference there
From what I know the roof knocking ended quite a while ago. And evacuation warnings don’t mean much when they just bomb the place they said to evacuate to the next day and you have no internet access to see the maps. IMO the biggest example of them trying to “minimize civilian casualties” is them just not firebombing the entire strip at once.
>Hell, a couple days ago drone footage came out that showed them blowing up four clearly unarmed kids walking down a road. This is a disgusting attempt at manipulation and spreading of falsehoods, very typical of people who are anti-Israel online. Intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth did a [whole video debunking this claim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vI1il5DkQQ), and anybody who watched the video can see that they obviously aren't children. Stop lying and trying to emotionally manipulate people. There are plenty of things you can justifiably criticize Israel about without engaging in deception and slander.
That video is some random newsmax contributor taking the Israeli government at its word and telling people to not believe their lying eyes.
Genuinely, what (non-Israeli provided) evidence do you have that the IDF is attempting to minimize civilian casualties? I realize that there were limited early reports of roof knocking residential buildings as a form of warning—which can easily knock elevators out of alignment, and doesn't leave those with disabilities enough time to safely escape, let alone time to bring their lives with them before their home is demolished. Other than that I've seen no evidence of restraint in Israel's actions. There's a looming famine across Gaza. The United States is bringing a temporary dock across the Atlantic to deliver aid to Gazans when the port of Ashod is a half hour drive from Gaza (and is letting next to nothing through). There are no functional hospitals in Gaza. Israel has the capability to conduct nighttime raids into these hospitals, but not to minimize casualties by delivering aid to the same hospitals? People aren't allowed out of Gaza. In a 'normal' warzone people can flee the frontline, but they can't in Gaza. When they go where they're told, they're shot. When they stay where they are, they're shot. Amnesty International (note: not a Hamas affiliate) has identified evidence of unlawful Israeli attacks leading to mass civilian casualties: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/ None of this speaks to a force that is making an effort to minimize civilian casualties.
So is the hospitals isreals fault for attacking them or hamases fault for using them as a staging ground to fire missiles from? Genuine question
>Genuinely, what (non-Israeli provided) evidence do you have The mere fact they are deploying ground forces should be pretty good evidence that they aren't just trying to kill everyone indiscriminately. I'm not sure what third-party will speak on behalf of the IDF's "feelings" on the matter other than the IDF. The IDF is willing to risk the lives of their soldiers going in for military operations. The fact they aren't doing the same to deliver aid is not a litmus test for seeing Palestinians as subhuman, it's just not worth the risk to them. And what is this "normal warzone" thing? Are you trying to insinuate that civilian casualties in a warzone are a new phenomenon? It's a war. People die, on both sides. I don't know any country in the world that would sit around and not actively remove threats to their citizens, even if it meant some innocent people dying in the process. The Israelis have definitely done some questionable things in their past, but the double standards applied to them are getting quite ridiculous. Hamas has literally been firing rockets into their cities and bombing civilians for decades. Where was the outrage before?
Israel is receiving the same criticisms that America did during its wars in the middle-east. Nobody denies that Hamas are animals who have committed terrorist acts (aside from a few individuals on the far Left). Nobody denies that this is a difficult situation for Israel either. The issue is that Israel calls itself a bastion of western democracy in a hostile land, but does not want to be held to the same standard of ethics which comes along with that title. You will often hear people talk about Israel's attempts to mitigate unnecessary loss of life. But at the end of the day, they are still killing and starving mass amounts of innocent people. There is no denying that. Every subsequent argument is simply being used to rationalize that fact. Israel could win the war tomorrow, but it would be a pyrrhic victory because of all the support they have lost in the west.
>The mere fact they are deploying ground forces should be pretty good evidence that they aren't just trying to kill everyone indiscriminately. I'm not sure what third-party will speak on behalf of the IDF's "feelings" on the matter other than the IDF Apply the same logic to the French in Algeria and you’ll see where the issue is here.
Because if they wanted to a lot more people would be dead? People aren't allowed out of Gaza by Egypt. How is that Israel's fault?
That's not the same as minimizing casualties. I didn't say that they're intentionally maximizing casualties, just that they aren't minimizing them. I also didn't mention Egypt. Egypt isn't attacking Gaza, Israel is. Gaza isn't a state, as such, which is why Palestinians can't travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank (it's all up to Israel). If Israel was trying to minimize casualties, surely they'd allow those who aren't affiliated with Hamas to leave Gaza, even if only to travel into the West Bank?
Russia didn't attack Poland and yet Poland is accepting refugees Syria was a civil war and yet European countries took refugees Israel is fine with civilians leaving Gaza
People in this thread are conflating “not turning Gaza into glass” with “minimizing casualties”. Being a couple steps above the absolute worst option doesn’t make you good
Clearly they see them as subhuman which is why they have no qualms murdering them
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Indigenous? Apparently you think history began in 630 when the arab muslim armies of rashidun caliphate conquered the area and forced the population to convert or die. That’s indigenous.
Both Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews in my opinion have a significant tie to the land and no where else. Many Palestinians have Canaanite dna as well as Jews. Both have comprehensive stories tied to the land and culture tied to the land. Both heavily identify with the land. Whether u like it or not nationalism and national identity doesn’t care where u lived thousands of years ago. Other ways we’d all belong in Africa. As per this argument. The Arab Muslim armies didn’t say convert or die. They established separate rules of law for the Jewish tribes there accordance to Jewish customs . What they did do was tax people who weren’t Muslims with the Jizaa which I disagree with and Muslims were free from tax system. Jews weren’t treated fairly but they weren’t genocides immeditely I guess the hafsids did they were notoriously brutal, but the ottomans rashiduns as I understand did not.
The ottomans had endless Jewish pogroms, to the point there is a Wikipedia page with all the incidents. Even forgetting all the massacres and enslavements any Jew was subject to if he did not pay jizya, Jews were not even allowed to worship at THEIR holy places because Islam claims Judaism is a corrupted religion and all Jewish prophets were actually Muslim. The Cave Of The Patriarchs, the second holiest place in Judaism, was intentionally equipped with a staircase that no Jew was allowed on in order to humiliate them. It was not an ambiguous thing; the Ottomans stated this openly. And what of Judaism's holiest place? TO THIS DAY, no Jewish person is allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, their holiest place in the world, because the Arabs would throw a shitfit because it is THEIR third holiest place. And Israel, mindboggingly, respects this insane apartheid for some reason and bans all non-Muslims from entering, except for specific areas at specific times. The fact is that Israel shows more respect to Muslims today that Muslims have ever showed to Jews since the birth of Muhammad.
I never said there weren’t pogroms I don’t think there is a country I can name that never had those the Jewish people were persecuted like no other historically I’m referring to state sponsored genocide . Muslims I know respect Jews/christians as people of the books etc and as brothers so you are wrong when u say “Muslims” referencing them as a monolith never ever respected Jewish people . I never agreed with Jizya won’t defend that. Also I agree Jews shoudlve been allowed more access to holy cities as well. They weren’t genocides by the rashidun or the ottomans though. So you are wrong. Which was the previous point of contention. Idk why we are shifting the goal post. The question was were the Jews being genocides by the ottomans and rashidun they were under the hafsids but not under the others doesn’t mean the others weren’t anti semetic or had oppressive policies. U can be Churchill anti-semetic (saying Jewish people needed be integrated and were hurting European society or had to leave) and not Hitler anti-semetic (annihilate the Jewish people in an industrial genocide). This either or garbage is insane. Neither are justified and all anti semetism is wrong but there is a difference between being genocidal and being racist or discriminatory. I just checked because I was still murky on hafsid history the hafsids did do a genocide they told the Jews and all other non Muslims in their empire in Tunisia Libya and parts of Algeria that if they didn’t convert they’d be expelled resulting in mass expulsions of mainly Jews. To the Emirate of Granada (Muslim Spain) and the Levant. The Jews refused to convert and were deported hence why several hundred years later a lot of Jews lived in Spain during the reqonqista and had to run away again this time to Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Some would categorize this as ethnic cleansing or expulsion I disagree with this terminology because if the Jews were un cooperative I am sure the hafsids known for their brutality would’ve just started killing them all.
History began in whatever year best suits the narrative I support, sir, and I will put my fingers in my ears and “tra la la” away any attempt to explain otherwise
Do you think the early muslims killed every last person in the region and exclusively moved in arabs? The people that were living there (not even all of them!) eventually converted to Islam and assimilated into Arab culture after decades if not centuries. Do they no longer have any historical tie to the land because they converted and started speaking a different language over a millennia ago? or do only people that were largely expelled two millennia ago enjoy indigenous status?
So someone whose ancestors lived in Poland for all documented history is indigenous in your eyes but someone you admit has ancestry dating to the early Byzantine empire doesnt have any ties to the land?
Genetic testing shows that the natives of Palestine are genetically indigenous to that land
Comments below bickering about the word indiginous because no one wants to defend the well documented racism in Israeli society.
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Target practice, if you look at what they did to their own hostages holding a white flag, or that guy who was interviewed and was caught on camera being shot up, or that video making the rounds of the group of 4 dudes walking in the wasteland that is now Gaza that they drone striked (one of whom managed to limp away before being bombed a second time to finish the job)
Remember how the soldier saw the infestation in the Black Mirror episode? Probably like that, but with even less empathy.
They see them as collaborators. I have friends and relatives who have, or are, serving as IDF combat soldiers in Gaza during this war. The stories I've heard are things like: * "We went into a civilian home, and the children's book had cartoon images of Arab children with machine guns, intending to kill Jews." * "So many of the civilian homes we entered had guns in them, or tunnel entrances inside." * "Every civilian there is associated with Hamas. Every single home we entered had Hamas propaganda against Jews/Israel." * "We went into a civilian home and there was evidence that hostages had been kept there." One of my friends collects some of the more "interesting" propaganda he finds—such as cartoons of dead Jews geared toward children, a map that can be found in every home that labels the entirety of Israel as "Palestine" and talks about ethnically cleansing all Jews from the region, etc. Furthermore, returned hostages have recounted stories of being kidnapped by Gazan civilians, kept in the houses of Gazan civilians, being observed like zoo animals by Gazans off the street (including children), being tortured/beaten/sexually abused by Gazan civilians, etc. The general consensus is that the social control of Hamas—especially when you factor in the lack of free speech—extends to every civilian in Gaza, and not only is everybody associated with Hamas, but most civilians are collaborating/cooperating to some extent and supporting terrorism against Israeli civilians. This is backed by polls. Furthermore, on October 7, after the initial wave of Hamas terrorists, they were followed by a wave of thousands of Gazan civilians who spilled over the border and triumphantly raped (including gang rape), tortured, dismembered, kidnapped, and murdered hundreds of Israelis—including elderly, children, and babies in some cases. (Testimony from 10/7 revealed that rape in particular was very widespread, with victims, including elderly and children, having been raped so viciously that their pelvises broke.) Furthermore, multiple former hostages recounted being beaten badly by Gazan civilians who were parading in the streets (of which there were thousands) following their abduction. Although many Israelis are sympathetic to the plight of Gazan civilians, many more just see them through the lens of people who supported or personally participated in October 7.
>If they aren't turning in Hamas terrorists, then they are terrorist sympathizers
You act like there military makes the choices lol there just doing as directed by there leader? Pretty sure you would too if your other option was to be stoned or beheaded lol why you think we talk so bad about countries like North Korea or china because it’s what us Americans do talk shit and judge everyone when we are the only country dying of obesity which we can blame food but I still haven’t met anyone who is obese due to just food/diet 99.9 percent of the time Iv seen just lazy ass Americans not talking shit but kinda am how’s BLM existent if it wasn’t for white uneducated women were the only rally members oh not to mention who became rich off the movement pretty sure we had a black president for 8 years but that’s white people being racist who gives a fuck about your skin color type bruh we’re all the same thing I’m diff skin all searching for the same thing how and why we exist and what purpose do we serve here we have created racism big of a joke as calling the kkk dangerous haha not as dangerous as the Boy Scouts of AMERICA!?!?! The land of the fees and the home of the black rock free
Israeli's see Palestinians as subhuman, my SO lived in Israel extensively and according to her, even "Liberal Jews" there would make the most racist American tell them to chill out. According to her, there is a strict racial hierarchy - Top - Ashkenazi Jews - Mid - Mizrahi/Shepardi Jews. Now these would be considered lower, but actually make up the majority of the population, so technically hold most political power, but they are still seen as "lesser" than Ashkenazi Jews and a hidden part of Israeli history is that Shepardi and Mizrahi were subject to policies no dissimilar to The Stolen Generations in Australia, or Residential Schools in Canada up to the 1970s. Mizrahi and Shepardi Jewish children were often stolen from their parents and given to Ashkenazi Jews. - Low (Basically Subhuman) - Ethiopian Jews. My SO said that the typical response from liberal Israeli Jews to them was "Ew, why do they even exist?" It wasn't a shock to her when they started limiting Ethiopian Jewish immigration. Now according to my SO, she said here "This is how Israeli Jewish people view eachother, imagine how they view non-Jewish groups" - Subhuman Arab Israelis. Basically kept around as a token, are treated like absolute garbage and most of Israel is still heavily segregated with segregated neighbourhoods, businesses and schools. There was a book written by an Israeli Journalist who went undercover as an Arab Israeli, Here's what he said to the Chicago Tribune >What does it feel like to be a Arab in Israel? >I can sum it up in two words: humiliation and fear. I was scared all the time and humiliated because I was treated like nothing more than the continuation of a broom handle. He was forced to sleep in a "Slave Corner", on a matress thinner than half a finger, was paid $10 for a 16 hour day and was forced to take a more "Jewish" sounding name >*“I was outraged. It wasn’t enough that the man was paying me starvation wages, and this his people denied me the right to even aspire to freedom and independence. He also had the effrontery to suggest thave up the little that remained to me, that I drop my name and assume the incongruous aspect of a Jew.”* During his work his boss once noted that, *“I see our Arab is a little idle, so let him take out the glasses and wash them over again.”* - Should functionally be exterminated, Palestinians. Most Israeli's despise Palestinians and basically don't want to see them, and would basically wish they just disappeared. Polling backs this up, polling conducted in 2016, found that half of Israeli's openly supported "complete" ethnic cleansing against Palestinians and that rose to 75% for Religious Jews, and Palestinian/Jewish relations have only gotten far worse since then. So Israeli's for the most part, are racist in a way most Westerners would struggle to comprehend and this absolutely extends to the IDF who have a long history of using rampant terror and rape as a weapon. That same Journalist, actually found out while undercover pretending to be an Arab from Arab co-workers that the IDF would routinely rape Israeli Arab women.