The wild part about this, at least to me, is the wholesale incompetence demonstrated by Israel in this regard. If I couldn't google the talking points the bots make and see Israeli officials saying the same things, one would think these bots were Iranians acting with the intent to make Israel look bad.
What's the incompetence? Having talking points? If you have a group of people trying to advocate for something, isn't "talking points" something you expect would arise organically? I'm sure YIMBYs have "talking points" as well (eg. how it'll reduce housing costs or whatever), but nobody would say that's "wholesale incompetence" for having them. Or maybe it's having it easily searchable? I'm sure if you search around you can find YIMBY bloggers on substack or whatever saying how good YIMBYism is. Aren't those basically "talking points"?
James Bamford has written extensively on this. Pathetic that the FBI doesn’t arrest any of them as acting as unregistered foreign agents, but not surprising given the cowardice of DC officials in the face of AIPAC.
It's a very interesting thing, it demonstrates something uncomfortable & scary to me as a goy Zionist, who hangs out in a private, predominantly Jewish, space.
Note the biggest word in the cloud: UNRWA. All my confirmation bias was in one direction in October. The oddly dissonant and desperate messaging you'd see made things extremely difficult to maintain that, like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?"
(n.b. this was in a lefty Jewish space, broadly denigrating governmental institutions isn't a usual virtue signal)
Going back to the beginning, there's an uncomfortable willingness/ignorance of Overton window widening, in a way that reduces sympathy rather than engenders it, and all of a sudden, otherwise kind people are engaging in rank racism*, glorification of destruction, and extreme conspiracies**.
* lots of "no such thing as innocent Palestineans", "Palestineans love redacted", when questioned, turns into "it's not racist if they're not a race, and they aren't because bla bla bla"
** Day after day after day of the bailey, "World Central Kitchen was trying to smuggle terrorists", coupled to the motte "Jose Andres held a barbecue buffet! Lol!"
Out of idle curiosity, how did you arrive at Zionism from a non-jewish and leftist background? That has to be one of the rarest identities to simultaneously associate with.
Thank you for asking, it's sublime to see that you're unique in others eyes, very hard to see yourself
Let me really blow your mind: also, raised very conservative Catholic, didn't do Confirmation, then was Muslim for about 6 years
It's all a long story. Catholic, LGBTQ stuff rubbed me the wrong way and in some of the deepest grace I've seen, my religious educator encourage it.
Muslim, I was essentially on my own once I turned 15 (abusive and absentee parents) and transferred from Catholic school to public school (save $$), and the most welcoming people were foreign, the rest had been in the same classes for a decade. They didn't prostelyize, it was fun going there on Friday nights to play dodge ball, it was little incremental work to show up earlier and it felt good.
Zionist...I swear to God there wasn't a single negative word about Jews or Israel or other religions at either of the 2 mosques I went to. There was a quiet understanding that Palestinians were hurt and that it was a bit melodramatic at times, given they had structural issues on their own side.
In general, I'm an inveterate both sides er, and I'm guessing knowing a lot of avowed older Zionist as well as Muslims makes me feel secure in "ugh there's some extremists / ignorant people in group X" rather than "wow group X is inherently evil"
And now you're making me think maybe the parents have more to do with it than I realize. It took a lot to finally say...wait, no...what they're doing is wrong and I don't owe them anything. As long as I'm thinking things out and rational, I'm doing my best. Adds to the comfort with tendatiousness/both sides and confidence in holding to it.
(Ran out of posts on main, so this is from my old backup when I was gainfully employed at FAANG)
Ah! You’re your own Jerusalem; ever in the middle. :)
That does make more sense: unless I read you wrong, leftism wasn’t a real sway here - and that’s easier to square away. Leftist Zionism is (as far as I can tell), almost only advanced by Jews.
Neat, though I’m perhaps confused as to how you might even arrive at Zionism (a rather polar position to take).
> like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?"
I think saying "evil" anything is wrong. But the UN is still a body made up of people, and like everything has its flaws. Its done some things that have turned out great and truly made the world a better place. Its done other things that haven't worked out so well. I certainly don't think it is above criticism.
For the record, I agree wholeheartedly. It's hard to word these things. I hope it's clear the meaning is short of "The UN/UNWRA is above all criticism", happy to explicate at length if it isn't (I wouldn't be surprised, at all, anything I write on this looks like an unnecessarily mousey person's verbal diarrhea to me :) )
I can understand why Israelis might be suspicious of the UN. The relationship between UN and Israel seems kind of fraught in a way that isn't true of pretty much any other country. The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 (edit: 2014), the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries, and the whole UNRWA being totally different with different rules than any other refugee group, all make israel a bit unique in its relationship to the UN. I could easily understand how someone from Israel might feel that the UN treats them differently from other countries and is perhaps biased against them.
> the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries
Two thoughts on this:
Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses. To be clear, I would very much like every country on earth that engages in human rights abuses prosecuted for it, including mine, and specifically every U.S. President that's still currently alive since they are ALL guilty of them in varying degrees. And that way, we can't be accused of biases.
Secondly, I believe it's fair, even if we are biased against Israel in this way, to be biased since it has the rather unique position of being a state that exists solely because of and by the authority of the West. It is a colonialist project and has been from it's inception and I don't think you can take this situation on fully without acknowledging that fact.
Debating whether it should or shouldn't exist is rather moot at this point because it does, and tons of people live there who have committed no crime and done no wrong. That said, it is at the end all, an ethno-nationalist state built on a foundation of war crimes too numerous to count, that is currently incrementing as they barrage an utterly impotent neighbor to death, and it is doing so with the enthusiastic encouragement of FAR, FAR too many colonial powers. Maybe that's enough to say, ethically, that all of it's citizens should be displaced, maybe not. I do not know the solution. My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon. That cannot be ignored.
> Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses.
My favorite one of these is when South Africa would say that the only reason people were angry about Apartheid was their obvious "anti-Boer prejudice." Which sounds stupid, until you remember that the British rounded up Boers and put them into concentration camps. It's still stupid, but if you accept the premise that being abused gives you the right to abuse, it's a claim as legitimate as any other of that type.
> My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon.
They could have just torn down the walls, and still can. Israelis can call the resulting country Israel, and Palestinians can call it Palestine. It only requires both groups to give up any dreams of theocracy. What made the PLO and Arafat so distasteful to Israeli power players was the fact that they were secular, reasonable, and making moral arguments, not theological ones. People whose goal was to wipe out the Palestinians vastly preferred Hamas.
I feel like comparing just to china is an unconvincing argument.
I think a more reasonable argument would be number of resolutions relative to the behavior in question and the types of behavior that are criticized.
Israel has basically been condemed more times than all the other countries combined. At the same time while Israel is not perfect there are objectively much worse countries out there. There are countries ot there where citizens have no civil rights, there are countries where slavery is effectively still a thing, etc. It seems impossible to explain this disparity of attention except by politicization and bias.
Second the behavior criticized often seems quite minor compared to things in other countries the human rights council is silent about. For example, in 2018 Israel was condemed for allowing people in the golan heights to vote in municipal elections. The argument goes that since that should be syrian territory, its wrong to treat the people there like citizens. Without getting into the pros and cons of whether that is right or wrong, it seems crazy that given all the terrible human rights abuses in the world, extending voting rights to people is what the human rights council is trying to stop.
Sure. I'm not doing a PhD thesis on this topic. I just came up with one example on the fly. I don't think it's particularly unconvincing but anyways. My main point is that we can actual quantitatively convince ourselves that Israel is singled out.
Re: Golan heights that's a particularly interesting example since if Israel does not let people vote in occupied territories then it's condemned as an "Apartheid State". But if it does then it's condemned for something else. Basically Israel can not win, condamned if it does, condamned if it doesn't.
This is exactly what I'm referring to in the root comment.
#1) The China claims are straight up lies. I'm a Zionist, I was willing to believe it, then I googled it.
#2) "our human rights abuses aren't relevant because there's others" isn't convincing
#3) the implication that other human rights abuses aren't policed is another google-able lie
#4) we got slapped on the wrist by the world for being an offender, thus we are a victim, is obviously fallacious in a way that is alarming to anyone who isn't prioritizing self-soothing, instead of prioritizing Zionism
#5) the Golan Heights stuff is really rank. It's not about "preventing voting" it's about turning territory that isn't Israel's into Israel's, a huge, massive, problem and violation of international law for many, many, many years
You don't get to say "I Googled it and it's a lie". How many security council resolutions and UN general assembly resolutions are there condemning China vs. how many condemning Israel? If you say it's a lie let's have those numbers.
The best I can find Googling is: "Joint Statement on Behalf of 50 countries in the UN General Assembly" which is very different than the criticism Israel is getting from the UN.
#2 - This is not the argument at all. I'm not even debating "human rights abuses" though I think there's plenty to debate there. Even under the lies propagated by Israel's critics Israel is receiving unfair treatment.
#3 - Show me the proof. Don't say "Googleable lies". How are human rights abuses by Palestinians in the west bank and Gaza enforced by the UN? In Syria? Saudi Arabia? Iran? I mean the list is endless. Give me some measurable criteria that supports your ridiculous claim that equal standards are applied to Israel. Again, without even debating the validity of the claims against Israel, many of which are debatable.
#4 - "We" get attacked by the world for using force to defend "our" citizens. The offense in question is daring to do what other countries have done and what international law allows countries to do to defend themselves. Wars are not a sterile matter. The US and the UK e.g. had many questionable incidents in their various endeavours to guy fight random bad guys around the world. Israel is far from perfect and we can ask for a much better government than the bunch of morons running it and we can be critical of many things, but what we're seeing isn't legitimate criticism, what we're seeing is a political lynch mob.
#5 - So we should have handed it to Syria, without a peace agreement, so we can have Iran's militias on the high ground above Israel's north and more cities in rocket range? Or we should have kept it as "occupied" territory where people would say "Apartheid", how can you not give those guys rights? Make up your mind, either Israel is "Apartheid" for not giving e.g. Palestinians voting rights, or those are occupied territories that are waiting for a peace agreement? And that ignoring the legal debate about the precise status of those territories.
I'm a Zionist. Please don't troll me about being part of some They screaming apartheid, and please don't troll about how you can't find any security council resolutions on China. It cheapens our cause. Shameful.
People are smart enough to see that, and it's clear you think about this enough to know exactly what you're doing by bemoaning the lack of security council censure of China, and it cheapens our cause to have behavior like that affiliated it with it.
I'm not trolling. Can you make a coherent counter argument that's not "I'm a Zionist stop embarrassing us". I'm stupid. Explain your position to me. Is your point "ofcourse the security council is not going to go after China" or is your point "they go after China, who is really committing a genocide, just the same way they go after Israel fighting a war", or is your point "China is cool, Israel is committing the terrible crimes and so ofcourse the UN goes after it"?
Tell me what you're claiming and what metric or some objective method we should use to measure your claim. I'm claiming Israel is picked on in the UN disproportionately. I can't even tell from your reply what's your position on this topic.
I wouldn't call myself a Zionist. I'm an (ex-)Israeli. The right of the Jewish people to live in Israel is an axiom for me. It's ridiculous that's debated. It's a fact and Israel is not going away.
I think your point is maybe don't use China as an excuse. That's maybe fair enough. But it's not the topic. I'm not debating whether Israel should have a pass for genocide because China does, I'm debating whether Israel is disproportionately attacked which is what I would consider antisemitism. This claim can be debated independently of the other multiple things there are to debate here. Israel should not have free pass to do anything and it should also not be subjected to the lynch mob it's being subjected to, these are not mutually exclusive.
How were all security council resolutions on Israel blocked, until one got through, 2 months ago?
How can a security council resolution be blocked?
Who is on the Security Council?
If you just don't know the basics of what you're talking about, my apologies, not a troll, just ignorant, opinionated, and willing to claim anything and everything for your argument, and make others do the work of explaining why the refs aren't rigged while you weaponize dead bodies to make your argument for it
I'm sorry but you are still avoiding my topic. Is or isn't Israel singled out by the UN? What is the metric of your choice? What is your opinion/position? Pick Asad killing 600,000 civilians or pick other examples of your choice and metrics of your choice.
UN Security Council resolutions against China is technically a dumb example on my side but my original statement you called a lie was:
> We can measure "unjustly singled out" fairly well.
> How much condemnation from the UN has China received for what it's doing to the Uyghurs?
> How many times has the UN security council discussed that vs. discussions related to Israel?
You googled that and found it's a lie. That means China was discussed more times? (veto isn't relevant to this question) The UN has otherwise condemned China (veto isn't relevant to that either) more times than Israel? What exactly is the lie here?
The US vetoes some/most security council resolutions against Israel. And sure, China can and will veto resolutions against itself. So that is your counter argument? As I said, you pick the metric. How many vetoed resolutions were there against Israel and how many against China? How many meetings to discuss these issues? If the security council wants to make a statement, as it seems to want to do endlessly against the US and Israel, then certainly it can keep bringing proposals and let China veto them, right?
What about the general assembly? China has no vetoes there.
I picked China off the top of my head as one of an infinite list of severe human rights violations that the UN shrugs off. Maybe it wasn't the best example. We can pick the Turkish and the Kurds. We can pick Syria. We can pick Azerbaijan. We can pick Pakistan. Saudi's actions in Yemen. I mean literally the list of "bad things that happen in the world that nobody cares about because no Jews" is endless. Most of the world is in a terrible state. You're nitpicking me on veto rights but you're not addressing my point.
Israel is singled out. It is the target of endless lies and racism. It is the target of antisemitism. There is no doubt about that and I'm not sure how you can be a "Zionist" and not see that.
This does not mean everything Israel does is right or that there's no criticism to be levelled at it. My argument isn't Israel should get a free pass because look how bad the world is. My argument is Israel is subject to antisemitism and double standards.
And this is before we even start debating the facts of the war and the history of the conflict.
> I'm sorry but you are still avoiding my topic. Is or isn't Israel singled out by the UN?
Honestly, I haven't read more than a couple sentences of these obsessive rants in 3 comments, just enough to check what you've learned about the UN so far.
This isn't behavior I expect to see on HN, and after reviewing the thread, it looks like its a consistent issue, across multiple threads: you ask questions addressed long ago, claim people aren't answering them, then go rabid with page after page telling us the answer. Thanks for your insightful contributions.
I mean, you said it yourself, you found the UN criticizing Uyghurs. Then, we can also find Uyghurs have bombed and missiled Beijing. You lied, sorry.
Then you went off on me, a Zionist, about how I'm yelling apartheid(?).
Then you went off about how the security council (with China on it??) is the real measure.
Then you went off on I never answered if I thought UN was biased against Israel compared to China (???) We can start again from there if your interest here is curiosity. Is it?
> Isn't the US a colonialist project from its beginning? Isn't Canada? Isn't all of South and Central America? Australia? New Zealand? Jordan? Saudi Arabia? and the list go on.
I mean, yes? And while in a better world we'd have proper solutions to that that would render unto these various peoples the land that was unjustly stolen from them, that is neither practical nor realistically achievable (undoing everything done to America and sending all Americans back to the various places they came from is quite a logistical undertaking, and we've decimated the various native populations to a degree where re-settlement would take quite a long time). Fortunately the vast majority of exploited peoples, Palestinian and otherwise, share a commonality with the vast majority of the rest of humanity; they don't want revenge or domination, they simply want to exist free of oppression, which is quite a bit easier to do (though not easy thanks to entrenched settler supremacist ideas worldwide).
So, stop spreading propaganda that they're inferior, stop excluding them from the halls of power, let them participate in determining the destiny of their societies, give reparations, etc. etc. I don't know if these things will be enough for all of these groups, they were harmed in different ways and the wounds are in different states, but it certainly beats what we've done so far, which is status quo while endlessly debating it.
> Fortunately the vast majority of exploited peoples, Palestinian and otherwise, share a commonality with the vast majority of the rest of humanity; they don't want revenge or domination,
It seems pretty hard to square this with the rhetoric and actions of Palestinian leadership, especially Hamas.
Like if this was their goal, why are they so opposed to a two state solution? It seems like they could easily have had this if they wanted it. Instead their leaders became obsessed with revenge against a militarily supperior force, and the results lead to the present day.
[To be clear, there have also been plenty of missed opportunities for peace on the israeli side as well, but it seems at least the israeli side has at various points in time made good faith attempts at finding peace, even if it ultimately went no where]
Alongside the other comment, Hamas is far from popular in it's leadership position in Palestine. Probably something to do with the last election being in 2006. Saying it is representative of all Palestinians is a pretty tough reach.
I think you are confusing hamas with the PA. From what i understand, the reason that there have been no elections is because those who are de-jure in power know they would lose to hamas if an election was held.
Regardless, at some point it doesn't really matter how popular leadership is, only that, whether rightly or wrongly, they are in a position to give orders and have those orders obeyed.
The current Hamas charter calls for a 2 state solution with the internationally recognized 1967 borders. But what's written and what leadership would accept might be two different things.
Even what is written is kind of questionable and seems more like wanting it both ways, just look at the beginning of the wikipedia article on the topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hamas_charter
You are imagining propaganda but are spreading much of it yourself in my opinion. Israel exists because Jews were prosecuted. If there were reparations, it would be quite the sum going to Israel or Jews living in other countries.
Israel exists because the West wanted a seat of military power in the Middle East. Just like America exists because various European powers wanted to exploit the Americas, until American leadership wanted to stop cutting them a slice. Just like Peurto Rico is directly under America's authority yet remains entirely unrepresented in it's government. Colonies all, of various justifications.
We exist in a world built by colonialism, by exploitation, who's foundations are lousy with the bones of cultures we dominated, some to extinction.
The idea that Jews needed a nation of their own after the Holocaust was debated at the time and remains so to this day, especially since the nation that was created is now engaged in it's own genocide. However there was no reason at all Israel HAD to be in the Middle East, apart from the fact that none of the colonial powers that worked to create it felt the urge to carve away their own land from themselves, and felt quite comfortable taking it from a bunch of nations who had zero say in the process.
I don't know if a Jewish state was needed or not, I'm not educated enough on the subject to have an opinion, but I know it was far from a consensus, and irrespective of how you want to slice that particular issue, the fact remains the powers that be at the time who were responsible for Israel's creation did not do it on land that was there's to give, but instead on other's. And said other's have had pretty understandable tension with Israel ever since.
> Israel exists because the West wanted a seat of military power in the Middle East
I think this is mixing up time periods. This doesn't make sense in the context of the 1940's/early 1950s.
Later on, sure. USA wanted a military base to counter soviets becoming buddy buddy with several of the Arab countries... typical cold war stuff. But i don't think that is historically accurate in the immediate post-war period. If for no other reason than at that point in time Israel would make a shitty military base.
Israel isn't involved in a genocide and it was their homeland once. If they are colonizer so is everyone else involved here at least. It doesn't carry any meaning.
Your tensions with Israel might indeed be understandable, meaning the prevalence of such animosity isn't really something new. In that regard I indeed believe that Israel needs to exist.
I also disagree that this was a plot by the west. Of course some pretty smart political moves enabled the foundation of Israel. But that was a special interest group. There were strategic considerations by nations involved, but there is much more to it.
If you want to get rid of your bad conscience of your colonial part, pointing your fingers at Israel surely is the wrong thing to do.
That's a laughable argument, comparable to Italian fascists claiming Romania as the legacy of the Roman empire. Israel is built majority on refugees, and secondly on colonizers who hold a tenuous connection to the land. But you don't get to claim 2000 year old grievances, especially if your supposed ancestors share as much genetic material with the current inhabitants. Political zionism always had fascist components, but it really turned for the worst in the last 40 years, and I truly do not understand how an educated individual cannot see the parallels to the rise of fascism 100 years ago or apartheid South Africa 40 years ago. The post-holocaust refugees at least at large had the decency to recognize the injustice they put on the palestinians, but their children turned to a maximalist, fascist, and deeply dishonest ideology instead.
I won't deny there exists a rise in extremism in Israel itself.
That said, my education strongly tells me that there is indeed something reflecting fascism coming alive and I don't look at Israel here.
The self reflection about innocents being harmed is something that you can see exclusively in Israel with very few exceptions. That is not an indignation of Palestinian children that have constantly exposed to severe propaganda, but at least have the decency to not blame Israel for that.
The parent comment also was wrong with his analysis of Israel being a result of western powers wanting some form of outpost. This is just bad history.
Clearly people in this discussion are getting different views of reality. There is definitely a long term rise in extremism in Israel but what that means to someone who is closely familiar with Israel and someone who is not can be two very different things.
I don't think people outside Israel think that Israelis are engaged in self reflection. That aspect isn't something that's reported on. There are some Israelis that don't care about innocents in Gaza, and it's easy to just pick up that story if it furthers the reality that you believe in. Reality isn't one, or two, or one hundred stories. It is a continuum.
Israel being a "western colonial enterprise" is not an analysis. It is a talking point. I've seen it hundreds if not thousands of times in online discourse on this topic. It's something that has been pushed for some time (a decade or two?) in various circles. The history of Israel can be studied superficially in one semester in University. To really understand the period and all the nuances, and the related historical processes, get a PhD. There are good lectures on YouTube by historians and good resources on the Internet that give you a taste but you need to put in time.
It's also about the semantics, what exactly do these terms mean, a common theme in the information war arena is to use words in unusual ways or to redefine them in a way more convenient to your cause.
Jews maintained a pretty strong connection to the land. They keep praying to be in Jerusalem and Zion. The connection is a central part of their identity and faith. Jews also generally stayed together as a people and a group and genetics do show this connection. It's not exactly a secret that Jews had a country in the region- it's mentioned in the most popular book in existence.
I'd say the connection of Israeli Jews to the land is stronger than the connection of most citizens of most countries to their land. To descibe that as "tenuous" is at best unfair.
[EDIT: erased a bit of not so nice retort]
Israel's right wing isn't very different than right wing parties in other parts of the western world. I'm not a fan of Israel's extreme right but conflating the violence between Israelis and Palestinians with either the rise of fascism or South Africa is just again yield to propaganda. The various governments of the Palestinians, the PA or the Hamas, make the Israeli right wing look centric. Put aside the various labels that are intended to dehumanize the Israelis, after Israel tried in earnest to make peace roughly around the proposed two state solution and was met by a wave of Hamas suicide bombers that impacted at some level every single Israeli, what do you think is an actual solution here?
I'm originally from Israel. No Israeli that I know thinks that Palestinians are inferior. Famously the ex-Israeli Prime Minister Barak said that if he were a Palestinian he might have become a terrorist himself. I'm not saying it's not a thing in certain right wing circles but painting all of Israel with this brush is not right. If anything there's a tiny minority in Israel that would consider Palestinians inferior to Israelis (or Muslims inferior to Jews or whatever). Plenty of right wing nazis everywhere in the world.
You're also wrong on the Palestinians willing to move forward. They had plenty of chances. They absolutely do want domination. For the most part the story that land was unjustly stolen is factually wrong. Land was bought by Jews during Ottoman times legally. Palestinians never had a country so that couldn't have been stolen from them either. Palestinians were displaced during 1948, in a war Arabs started against the new state of Israel. Read Israel's declaration of independence to see how Israel would have preferred that play out. Palestinians, and the Arab countries, have inflicted plenty of harm on Jews in the middle east. Jews were ethnically cleansed from most Arab countries and more land was stolen from Jews in the middle east than the entire area of Israel. But sure, the topic of harm and reparations can be discussed once Palestinians decide to stop using violence to pursue their goals (of domination). This is not about reparations anyways.
This fairy tale you're telling yourself here is some westernized story that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. Sorry if I'm sounding patronizing.
EDIT: and by the way we can totally reverse Canada and New Zealand for example? Let's use those as test cases for your anti-colonialism fix the world sentiment and see how it goes? Those guys have zero claim of any sorts to the land they're on. Israel at least has something.
>Famously the ex-Israeli Prime Minister Barak said that if he were a Palestinian he might have become a terrorist himself.
I wonder how do someone tells something and not think it through? Can you get the the full statement by Barak on this? He says why he would choose to fight. He clearly understood that for Palestinians, no other venue to raise against the brutal oppression exist. If that doesn't make you understand, I don't know what will. The irreversible damage that tye state of Israel has done had made it so. And it continues to do so, and finds new ways to make the lives of Palestinians literal hell.
>Plenty of right wing nazis everywhere in the world.
Yes plenty do. But not many examples where they are armed to the teeth, has a façade of democracy, has the liberty to label the other as human animals, and has practically a free hand in killing the other. Not many the so called neo nazis have that sort of institutionalised power. There are not many examples of this level of apartheid. Not many places where a settler could shoot and kill children and can get away with it.
"יו"ר מפלגת העבודה ח"כ אהוד ברק, אמר אתמול כי אם היה פלשתינאי ובגיל המתאים, ייתכן שהיה מצטרף לארגון טרור. ברק אמר את הדברים בתוכנית "פגישה אישית" שתשודר הערב בערוץ הכבלים, בתשובה לשאלת המראיין גדעון לוי, מה הוא, שלחם בטרור הרבה שנים, היה עושה כפלשתינאי צעיר. ברק הוסיף, כי זוהי שאלה לא הוגנת מאחר וארגוני הטרור פועלים בצורה לא הומנית, חמורה ושפלה ועוסקים בהריגת אזרחים, נשים וילדים חפים מפשע, דבר שיש לגנותו ולפעול נגדו."
"ברק אמר אמש ל"הארץ", כי דבריו לא היו בגדר פליטת פה. "למיטב זכרוני יצחק שמיר אמר דבר דומה. בן גוריון, כשנדרש לתאר את עוצמת השנאההערבית נגדנו אמר דבר דומה, וגם דיין אמר דבר דומה. ההתעסקות התקשורתית בעניין הזה היא מגוחכת. מה רצו שאומר? שאם הייתי צעיר פלשתינאי שהווייתו מינקותו היא הוויה פלשתינאית, הייתי הופך להיות מורה בכיתה ג' בבית ספר עממי?" מהליכוד נמסר בתגובה, כי ברק ירד מהפסים, וכי אינו מתאים עוד לייצג מפלגה ציונית במדינת ישראל. "בדבריו ברק מעודד פלשתינאים בגיל המתאים
להצטרף לארגוני טרור"."
I need to find the actual interview if we want to be super precise. But either way, the way this is referred to in the Pro-Palestinian narrative that you're presenting here is incorrect.
Barak isn't saying that Palestinians have no other venue for rising against the "brutal oppression". He's just stating the fact that if he was a Palestinian, and grew up under that ideology, and was in the right age, he would probably be in those organization. He is not justifying that. The point I was making is that Israelis don't view Palestinians as inferior. They view them as wrong, brainwashed, driven by extreme ideologies, etc.
Israel is a democracy. It's not a "facade of democracy". It's not labelling all Palestinians as "human animals" though there were certainly a lot of heated statements and emotions after the Oct 7th attack on Israel. There is no Apartheid. It's armed to the teeth because its neighbours want to destroy it. Settlers in general can't shoot and kill children and get away with it though I do agree that there should be better law enforcement in the west bank (and ideally no settlers until its status is resolved). That's my perspective anyways which I think is well in line with the facts and reality.
Palestinians never had a country so that couldn't have been stolen from them either
You know, you wouldn't be invoking this defense if you weren't aware, deep down inside -- that it really is mostly forcibly expropriated land that the State of Israel currently sits on.
Imagine a defense lawyer making the following argument: "Your honor, my client would never have broken into that house, and stolen that woman's necklace. It goes against everything he was raised to believe in. BTW it was never hers to begin with, so it couldn't have been stolen from her anyway."
No Israeli that I know thinks that Palestinians are inferior.
And yet -- the State of Israel was founded on the belief that its claim to the land and resources was categorically more legitimate than that of the people who (by and large) had been living and thriving in the area continuously for thousands of years -- since before the establishment of the first Israelite settlements, in fact.
I'm not "invoking a defense". I'm stating facts. You give me a definition of "forcibly expropriated land" and we'll compare it against the facts for Israel and all other countries in the world and see what comes up. It's not going to support your thesis.
The trial analogy is also completely false. The appropriate adjustments to this story is that nobody broke into that house, you actually own the house and it's always been in your family, no necklace was stolen, but you're still put on trial for stealing a necklace that doesn't exist from your own house because you're Jewish.
Your last statement of "fact" is also not fact. It is simply not factually true that all the people that lived in the region have been living and thriving there for thousands of years since before the Israelites. Many Palestinians have immigrated to the area in fairly recent times. Many Gazans are from Egypt. There are probably some Palestinians who do trace back to the Israelites. In general much of the population of the Levant and the middle east in general, including the Israeli Jews from all over the place, goes way back but there's no specific historic continuity of Palestinians in Israel for the most part. There was plenty of population movement and immigration. This is well supported history with plenty of archaeological evidence.
I also think the characterization of Israel as being "founded on the belief that its claim to the land and resources was categorically more legitimate than" is also false. There was no comparison of legitimacy of various claims simply because there were no other claims at the time. Israel was definitely founded on the (factual) belief that it is the historic homeland of the Jewish people who feel a strong connection to it. What we see in practice is that a person of Italian heritage, living in California, taken by force from Mexico, with the aboriginal inhabitants confined to a reserve and all their resources literally stolen after they were genocided and ethnically cleansed, is telling Israeli Jews why their country, founded on their historical land, where they went as refugees in more recent times because they had nowhere to go to, is illegitimate. If we want to litigate every country's legitimacy going back 3000 years, sure, let's do that. Are you an immigrant in Canada? better start packing since you're going back to where your ancient ancestors used to live. This is ofcourse all total nonsense.
I don't like to appear to be dismissive of longer posts by picking out just one aspect of them and ignoring everything else that was said; but in this case there's one assertion you're making which stands categorically above all others:
You're still put on trial ... because you're Jewish.
If what you mean here is the fact that the State of Israel is often subject to criticism for both for its founding ideology and the violent mechanisms of its creation (or its various attempts to expand its borders and resource claims through the present day) -- no, it's not simply because the people behind this project are of Jewish ancestry. You seem to believe axiomatically that this is in fact the case -- i.e. that all strong critiques in regard to the founding of the State of Israel or its modern policies are basically the Dreyfuss Affair all over again.
I do not share this axiom, so it is unlikely that we will have a productive discussion in regard the finer-grained historical topics.
We're unlikely to have a productive discussion anyways because we're so far apart and this is not a good medium to handle something like this topic. People that are entrenched in certain positions don't seem to want to give them up.
However I'm not claiming all criticism on Israel is because "the people behind this project are of Jewish ancestry". But certainly antisemitism plays a role. It plays a role in Arab views on Israel and that in turn plays a huge role in the world's take. That's just one of the ways it plays out. There are other factors including geopolitics. I would go so far to say that the majority of criticism of Israel is not in good faith, but sure, not all of it is because there are Jews involved. But certainly that accounts for some portion.
> Imagine a defense lawyer making the following argument: "Your honor, my client would never have broken into that house, and stolen that woman's necklace. It goes against everything he was raised to believe in. BTW it was never hers to begin with, so it couldn't have been stolen from her anyway."
I was going after this analogy which feels completely wrong.
> all strong critiques in regard to the founding of the State of Israel or its modern policies are basically the Dreyfuss Affair all over again.
I disagree with this statement. There's no problem with any critique of Israel in general. Where it becomes a problem is when Israel is singled out. E.g. if there is no critique of the founding of Jordan, which was given as a gift by the British to the Hashemites for helping them during the Arab revolt, then I think this is a problem. Then there is "critique" and there is stuff that's not critique. But for people that are interested in reopening the question of how various countries were founded in general in the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, sure we can have this discussion and include Israel in it for sure. For people whose main focus is simply attacking Israel by any means possible, I think that's a problem. I'm totally with John Lennon "Imagine" on a purely romantic idealistic way, but then there's reality.
I still don't think the original statement I jumped in at ("Palestinians never had a country so that couldn't have been stolen from them") stands on its own, or helps explain the current situation.
Of course they had a country; and hence would not recognize domination by a foreign population -- unless imposed by overwhelming force. The original Zionists were keenly aware of this fact, which is why it has become one of guiding tenants in nearly major strategic decisions Israel has made since.
>if there is no critique of the founding of Jordan, which was given as a gift by the British to the Hashemites for helping them during the Arab revolt, then I think this is a problem.
That can also be criticised. Although what is tend to get lost in these type of arguments is that, it is entirely different to give assistance in ruling a patch of land versus literally displacing people from their land and homes and imposing military control over them.
Let's do a thought experiment. Please give this a honest consideration.
If the Uyghurs had 40,000 combatants. And if they were dug in tunnels under Uyghur cities. And fires 10's of thousands of rockets into Chinese cities. And killed thousands of people with hundreds of suicide bombings. Their cities were mined and booby trapped. Their combatants were well trained, armed with RPGs, sniper rifles, machine guns.
Then the Uyghurs raided some Chinese city, killing 1200 people, taking hundreds of hostages.
What do you think China would do?
China isn't bombing them because it doesn't need to bomb them.
Uyghurs have less people that care about them in the international community, for sure. I'm not sure they're not suffering a lot more than the Palestinians are.
If china's goal is to wipe them out as a people, its more effective to do that quietly.
Having Uyghurs cry for their kins brings international attention. Having them slowly deported to camps and sterialized brings about the same result without that pesky international pressure.
Apologies for the LMGTFY, but there needs to be a ratcheting up of gently-administered teasing of people when they share tired, easily checkable, fallacious, talking points like this.
Frankly, to me personally, it's stomach-churning, especially when it's reserved for "my racism justifying human rights violations is noble self-defense, unlike theirs."
> Do the Uyghurs launch rockets on Beijing? Did they blow up busses and restaurants in Beijing?
The Uyghurs did not launch rockets on Beijing. As far as I can tell they did not blow up any buses or restaurants in Beijing either. To contrast suicide bombings in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem were a weekly affair during the early 2000's. And Palestinians fires 10's of thousands of rockets into Israeli cities.
Ofcourse China is not justified in what they're doing to the Uyghurs. Israel also did not respond to the significantly larger attacks on its civilian population like China.
You've decided that Israel is engaged in racist human rights violation and not self-defense. I think that's the crux of the issue. I think Israel is engaging in self defense and during the course of the self-defense inevitably human rights are violated. This is true on a personal level and it's true on the level of a country. We violate the human rights of criminals we put in prison. If you're killing someone else to defend yourself as an individual you are "violating their human rights".
The world largely stands by as China genocides the Uyghurs. No campus encampments. No boycotts. No heated HN discussions. 10 million people effectively being wiped out.
> The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010
You're not going to throw that out without reference to how the US and Israel have consistently been the only countries to oppose Palestinian UN membership and voting.
I mean, i was trying to talk about why Israelis might feel the UN is against them. That doesn't preclude Palestinians feeling the same way.
It is possible to talk about why X might feel Y without talking about why other groups might feel the same way or even whether or not that feeling is justified.
Talking about motivations is different than determining what is "fair"
Palestinians are not a country. What other members of the UN are not countries? I believe other countries have opposed to the Palestinians becoming UN members. The last time around 9 countries voted against and 25 abstained. So I guess 34 did not support that purely symbolic vote (since the UN general assembly can't give the Palestinians membership, only the UN security council can).
> Palestinians are not a country. What other members of the UN are not countries
In fairness, the definition of state is pretty arbitrary and seems more like a popularity contest than anything else. Like how is taiwan not a state? How is the vatican a state? How is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta a state?
Wikipedia says: "International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, a government not under another, and the capacity to interact with other states.[2] "
Taiwan has a permanent population, it has a government not under another, and it has the capacity to interact with other states (and does). There's no doubt Taiwan is a state and the only reason it's not universally recognized as one is China.
"Palestine" has no defined territory, no government, and really no capacity to interact with other states as one.
Wikipedia goes on to say: "There are also entities that do not have control over any territory or do not unequivocally meet the declarative criteria for statehood but have been recognised to exist as sovereign entities by at least one other state." including Palestine in this list.
It feels like the statehood of Palestinians should be a matter between them, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, the three countries that own the land that Palestinians desire to have as their state. Can the world declare that California is a state if the US doesn't want it to be?
Btw re: admission to the UN: "The requisite conditions are five in number: to be admitted to membership in the United Nations, an applicant must (1) be a State; (2) be peace-loving; (3) accept the obligations of the Charter; (4) be able to carry out these obligations; and (5) be willing to do so."
You might be right. I'm not an expert on the legalese of their peace contracts with Israel. I think giving the Palestinians autonomy was part of the agreement with Egypt. In which case, it's a matter between Israel and the Palestinians.
+1, the thing that jumps to mind is how "U N Schmu En" dates back to the...50s? I was disappointed people were 'shocked' by Gvir tweeting it because it sounded new. I am no fan of Gvir, but again, goes back to what a complex mess there is.
It's a body made out of countries. Many of which are not free, not democratic, do not support basic human rights. What has the UN done that's turned great and made the world a better place? Top 3 examples?
UN has been pretty succesful in areas that are not super politicized.
E.g. they have done a lot of good work reducing hunger & famine throughout the world. UNESCO has done a lot to preserve unique cultural & envirnomental sites around the world. UN has done a lot to put pressure on countries to ban female genital mutilation.
I think you're a reasonable person so I'm not going to argue much ;) I don't see the UN as a successful organization. It's just a mirror though to what this world looks like.
"The appointment of Ali Bahreini, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, to chair the 2023 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Social Forum (2 and 3 November 2023), is nothing more than a slap in the face given the human rights situation of most Iranians, particularly women, and the repeated executions in the wake of the ongoing protests in the country and, more generally, the Islamic Republic's gross human rights violations and its catastrophic and politicised handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, when its refusal to import Western vaccines cost hundreds of thousands of lives."
It's amusing you can self identify this way without much hesitation. My personal experience with colleagues and family on both sides of the regional, religious, lijguistic, and cultural debate is that if you talked about being a non-Muslim supporter of political Islamists or up to including Hamas or similar groups, so anywhere in that continuum inclusive, few in Western or Israeli media will hesistate in labelling you in a way common with these talking points: a terrorist.
So good luck to you, but I'm not surprised you'd stay private
But my anecdata (or some may call life experience) tell me you'd be fine and fare well where a similarly extreme position on the opposite end of the spectrum would cost you a lot personally and professionally. I wish we all reflected in the West or in tje region or conflict area, well, why is that?
For the record since I inevitably get routinely called an anti-Semite anyway: I think Hamas and groups like them are vile, but many in the region opposing them don't take the high road by comparison either. Im nkt sure if its recent or monitoring that become easier and more economical, but that means their opponents with this crap and other tactics have really screwed up. This HN post further supports my cynicism and disappointment.
Its bad because if Palestinians agree with the attack then they can be collectively punished, that's usually what comes after showing those polls. How many in Ireland supported IRA? Should UK have bombed them as well?
Did Israel provide evidence that UNRWA supports Hamas? If so why did many countries reinstate aid to UNRWA?
Israel may have left Gaza but they still control all their borders and airspace, even the Egyptian border as nothing can pass there without Israel approving it (even before Oct 7).
Israel might be loosing the propaganda war because they're killing mostly civilians and are starving them. They are a colonialist and apartheid state. The current government has supported Hamas as a divide and conquer strategy so Palestinians cannot unite and form their own state.
If you want to get out of the propaganda bubble of Israel try the Badhasbara podcast.
Gently: I think there's a better way to phrase this, and you still have time to edit. It's strong but once you're at paragraph 4....once you're "saying propaganda war/colonialist/apartheid/you're in a propaganda bubble".........let me start again. We all have agency, and denying agency/telling someone they're in a bubble and not able to think for themselves, is one of the easiest ways for them to ignore your invitation for them to seize agency and think for themselves, via consuming the media* you recommend.
* they would say propaganda. It's a "you're rubber I'm glue, whatever you say..." type deal
But they maintained a land, air, and sea blockade of the region, controlling water, food, power, trade, and immigration. And the region remained under continuous threat of the Israeli military returning. That's not self governing.
> But they maintained a land, air, and sea blockade of the region, controlling water, food, power, trade, and immigration. And the region remained under continuous threat of the Israeli military returning. That's not self governing.
The key is that Gaza can be "self-governing" even with the above restrictions. What they lack is "sovereignty".
We're blessed with polls right before 10/7 re: "Support for Hamas." Roughly 40/60. I've seen other junk ones passed around. I don't think 10/7 or what we ended up with in Gaza was justified, a sweeping international majority agrees, and both Israel/Gaza will poll at "of course it was justified and why are people so evil as to not support us"
You transmutated "I've never seen any jokes about WCK" to "the only thing I've ever seen is links about polls" to "linking to polls isn't bad.": sure, no one would say it is. so it comes across as an attempt to claim it is unreasonable to claim that worse things go on than linking to polls.**
> has a vested interest in perpetuating the "refugee" status of millions of Palestinians who were born outside Israel
I'm familiar with this argument: sure. If that's the case, let's get rid of the UN. We'll have to find some way to get not-terrorists governing Gaza, i.e. providing for the people.
There's two choices from there.*
In my experience, one of them is consistently ruled out by people who spend time litigating the UN. And I strongly believe that is where the breaking point in international support is.
* if you exclude "kick the can down the road" and "the Palestineans without the guns should seize power from the guys with the guns, otherwise they're complicit"
**
It's just a feeling, but one informed by 1000 conversations I've had: if the strawman about poll links means "yeah, I've seen racism, but justified and rational, because the polls say a majority of Them" -- I think that's exactly the class of behavior that leads me to be a proud Zionist, it's dangerous to proscribe beliefs to a group, based on location of their housing, religion, skin color, anything. It justifies some very ugly things.
* Assuming the comments came from Israelis/Jews.
All the left and right-wing channels are infiltrated with Iranian agents(plenty of news on that topic in Haaretz/Walla). They are causing rift and radicalization in society.
That's a solvable tech problem to shut it down. Unfortunately, it's not a priority on a state level because everyone is doing it.
From an outside perspective, this doesn't appear to be the case.
It's like that old management consulting saw: "Strategy without execution is useless — execution without strategy is aimless." Israel's actions appear to be entirely reactive; they're on the back foot, and they don't have a clear set of strategic objectives. Execution without strategy.
In essence, they're responded to one chevauchée raid with another chevauchée raid. It's only going to end in tears for all involved.
It appears the government has no clear strategy and lacks the famous "the day after" plan.
But from IDF side, it took two weeks to take over the whole border with Egypt. Rafah is empty and by the end of the month, it will be Israeli.
So yes, they spent months not doing anything while the government was trying to secure hostage release and Biden was screaming do not touch Rafah.
But in general what strategy do you need? Take over, destroy the military infra and prevent smuggling. That's all that is needed.
Gaza is thousand years back, it will never recover. It is not a threat anymore in any meaningful way.
Do you really believe this? Do you think this is an efficient way to perform military counterinsurgency?
And are you really sure it's a good idea to wallow in war crimes like this in relation to the rest of the world? Something like, the UAE kind of gets away with it in Sudan currently, so Israel can use IDF like its own janjaweed?
Look at Judea&Samaria, beyond a shooting from stolen weapons nothing happens and that's without tight control over the border.
Insurgency works as long as you have a constant supply of weapons. Gaza had it, but not anymore.
Why do you think that? I follow the reports from palestinian resistance and news quite closely and see no signs that the weapon supplies have been cut off.
> But in general what strategy do you need? Take over, destroy the military infra and prevent smuggling. That's all that is needed. Gaza is thousand years back, it will never recover. It is not a threat anymore in any meaningful way.
Impressively amoral post, but this is insanity.
(1) Israel doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is not self-sufficient.
(2) There's something monstrous about keeping 2M people herded up in a closed pen.
Whether or not those people are "threats" shall remain to be seen, but Israel is going to lose (is, already, losing) the hearts and minds of everybody on the planet under age 40 -- and you're going to see what being a real pariah state feels like. Israel won't survive as a state very long after that; it is a hard thing, to be despised. And yet, if it comes to that point, it will be very richly deserved.
What you need is a strategy which improves the lives of Gazans -- not one that bombs their homes to rubble and sets them back a thousand years. You need to address their very real grievance. Without this, you're both sunk. Gonna end in tears, like I said.
>Whether or not those people are "threats" shall remain to be seen, but Israel is going to lose (is, already, losing) the hearts and minds of everybody on the planet under age 40
At this point, I think these are not the real power dynamics.
I used to think Israel needed western support to exist. I don't do anymore. Now I believe that Israel needs any support, and they are perfectly fine with the idea of allying with Russia, China or whoever seems reliable enough and willing to put up with their stuff. Which means that Israel is not dependent on the west, more specifically, the US. The US is reliant on Israel for presence in the middle east.
Which would explain why they seem to do whatever they want, ignoring warnings from the US. The warnings aren't real, Israel is going to commit unspeakable abuses on a population either way, so might as well have them on our side. I believe that to be the current state of affairs.
I have no doubts that Israel is willing to search for support anywhere it can find it. Yet, this doesn't mean that they don't need the western one to keep with their standards of living, political standing in the west, and self-identification as a modern western country. A serious political condemnation and sanctions would be enough to steer Israel towards a different course- provided that the radicalisation of society hasn't already reached a point of no return.
On the other hand, the US certainly doesn't need an ally that creates far more problems than it resolves. Their solid, oil-rich ally in the region is Saudi Arabia. The power dynamic between Israel and the US is not that of a client-state and its powerful protector or even one between allies; it resembles more that of a narcissistic, abusive lover towards their submissive partner. This is why we have been seeing the entire US government utterly humiliating itself for the past few months, finding pathetic excuses to pretend they haven't been slapped in the face every single day, while reiterating their unconditional love and swearing that their partner never did anything wrong.
Really, there is no rational (in the sense of geo-political or strategic) explanation for this. It's a psychological subjugation.
Hello friend. I've been on HN for a while. I contribute to the discussions here and contribute with submissions (you can check my submissions and comments pages through my profile). I have earned my right to crack a joke once in a while.
Please consider not shooting from the hip and respecting other users' comments here, yourself.
Is it? Pragmatically speaking, who is going to make it end in tears? Nobody in the region really wants a war with Israel: the Arab countries got their fill of it and Iran sure doesn't want to get into an actual war. And if anyone gets any big ideas, there's always Uncle Sam (and Uncle Sam's Western allies; who, btw, include Turkey).
I understand that people want to see things put right, but we must understand what world we live in and how the cards are dealt. There are three great powers, the US, China and Russia, and Israel has a um special relation with one of them, whereas none of its enemies do. The Arab countries want to make peace and do business, Iran might like to be a regional power but has no friends in the region and the Palestinians have nothing to negotiate with and nobody to stand up for them; nobody with any clout, that is.
There is nothing and nobody that can make it all end in tears for Israel. You and others misunderstand the geopolitical situation in the Middle East: Israel can do whatever the fuck it pleases, and it does.
To be perfectly clear, it is a shitty situation, but there is no obvious way out of it.
US support, extraordinarily stalwart as it is, has shown its first cracks. Western allies are considerably less religiously motivated, or defense-industrial-linkage motivated, and can’t be counted on in the same way. Recent ICC news can be read as an indicator of prevailing winds.
The US is not above dropping allies when politically convenient, and as Israel burns its public image (or seeks geopolitical independence), both parties stateside can entertain anti-Zionism.
Watch what was previously far-left/right become normalized as legitimate considerations regarding US support of Israel. That Iran would entertain its recent long-range strike should tell of regional estimations of how likely the US would be to intervene, and then extrapolate from there.
I don't completely disagree. It's clear that the US does not want war in the Middle East: it's bad for business and I think that the US too has had its fill of fighting. I'm also kind of getting the vibe that the US administration is not at all happy with the Israeli government's actions.
But that doesn't change the geopolicical situation: Israel is an important ally of the US in the Middle East and the US is an important ally of NATO, so whatever Israel does, the US will stand behind, and Nato will stand behind the US.
In any case, if the US wanted to stop the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza they would have done it months ago. I don't think they really care, and if the Republicans come into power, with all the looney tune characters from the Christian Zionist right in their ranks, I don't think there's going to be more care.
But, hey, we'll see what happens. It would be great if public sentiment and opinion counted for something in modern liberal democracies, but we have the recent enough example of the war on Iraq and the gigantic demonstrations against it in the UK, and how they didn't change one thing in the decisions of a liberal British PM.
> There are three great powers, the US, China and Russia, and Israel has a um special relation with one of them, whereas none of its enemies do.
Things keep going the way they're going, and that special relationship has got twenty years left on the clock, max.
I don't think that American support should be taken for granted -- and it's not like Israel is cozying up to the Russians or Chinese. They may well end up like South Africa, with investment bans, arms embargoes, sanctions, no participation in international cultural events, etc. That's a very hard fate for a nation. The white South Africans of those days weren't able to hold out for very long.
I disagree. It is very obvious, as Levitz points out above, that Israel can just cozy up to the Chinese or the Russians if Uncle Sam washes its hands of it, China and Russia who would jump at the chance to gain a foothold in the Middle East, right next door to all those industrial juice springs. If I may.
But even if that were not the case 20 years is plenty of time to cleanse Gaza, and the West Bank with it, of every last Palestinian. I'd say at the current rate it would take hardly a couple years.
Edit: to be fair, I don't know how to compare SA and Israel. Maybe you have a point, but I don't think it's that simple to impose any kind of, essentially, sanctions to Israel as long as Uncle Sam's got its back. That special relation is a pretty big trump card there. And, btw, we're still at a Democratic president. Can you imagine the Republicans letting Israel suffer arms bans and trade embargoes?
> But even if that were not the case 20 years is plenty of time to cleanse Gaza, and the West Bank with it, of every last Palestinian. I'd say at the current rate it would take hardly a couple years.
Surely you realize that this is completely unhinged?
You are apparently an intelligent person. Doesn't it strike you that there should be a moral dimension to this? That there is a right way to act that is independent of realpolitik? Do you not realize that those people are, quite literally, under the care of Israel's government, and that to "cleanse" them would be a crime of world-historical proportions -- even if it might make life a little bit easier for people in Tel Aviv?
Besides, I don't think you understand what the reaction would be. Also, I think you overstate China's willingness, and Russia's capacity, to meaningfully support Israel should the US wash its hands of the region.
>> Doesn't it strike you that there should be a moral dimension to this?
I'm not endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians if that's what you mean. At the same time, you can say that Israel has lost peoples' hearts, that it goes against international law, that it's unhinged etc etc but none of those things will stop the people in power in Israel, who btw are textbook fascists who spit "peace" like a dirty word, from doing whatever they like.
Historically speaking, the Holocaust did not end until the Allies invaded Germany (and even then, it continued until the last moment) and the massacre of Palestinians will not stop until a large international force invades Israel. This will not happen, so the massacre will continue until the last Palestinian dies or leaves and Israel extends from the river to the sea, just like the settlers want it.
That's the facts on the ground. In Lord of the Rings, the bad guys lose. In the real world, they often get their cake and eat it. You can call it unhinged, or realpolitik, you can insult me and attack me, but you're just shooting the messenger.
I kinda agree with your position, but I don’t share your optimistic outlook regarding Israel fate if it loses US support. I think the Arab world is mostly at peace with Israel because of US support, and Russia/China are only thinly supporting other nations because US has such a large stronghold via Israel that make really little sense economically. If Israel loses US support, this calculation changes wildly, and I’m kinda skeptic that Israel could pivot that quickly to other patron, the chaos on the power struggle between factions would create enough delay.
My impression yet is that unless something radically changes, I don’t think Israel would lose US, the power vacuum in the region would be filled by somebody else, something US is unlikely to allow. Despite the show, I don’t believe Biden/Netanyahu’s fallout; it’s simply the only way Biden can do at least the tiny amount of damage control that allows him to keep the most of Jewish/leftist voting blocks.
You're probably right that there would be a power struggle etc, if Israel simply unceremoniously dumped the US as a patron. I just think they would sound out the other great powers beforehand (at the risk of intelligence leaking that they are doing so, of course) so it would be a careful and calculated move, not a sudden jump. That's what I'd do if I was in their shoes, anyway.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Israel is a nuclear power and there are no others in the region (for now), so that, too, gives them some extra time and leverage.
I totally agree that all this is just hypothetical and I, too, am not convinced that Biden is going to take serious action on Netanyahu. I would think that he's royally pissed off at him, privately, though. Bibi has caused Biden no end of trouble and I think it's clear that if Biden lost the elections, Bibi would celebrate.
That's hard to square with the reality on the ground: tens of thousand killed, millions displaced, half of all buildings damaged and the Palestinians can do nothing to stop it, but they're "perfectly capable" of genocide?
Israel has a fully mechanised army, tanks, F16s, drones, rockets, bombs, nukes, while Hamas has ... their grandpas' hand-me down AK-47s? What are they gonna do to genocide the Israelis? Give them the evil eye?
Your prediction isn't substantial. Israel will never win a popularity contest, but that is irrelevant. It also isn't true that all young people are firmly on one side of this issue, in fact they are probably a minority, even if they can be pretty loud. Strong opinions and little information often comes in a package.
Israel exists because Jews were despised. They did not have support when the country was founded and got weapons on the black market. Today their security situation is a lot more stable.
There are western firms/nations trading with Russia today, money always beats popularity, geostrategic interest beats popularity, pretty much anything beats unsolicited opinions from college students on Israel.
In fact I believe support for Gaza will need a lot more political capital in the future and the countries supporting them actively will try to withdraw from this conflict.
The few Gazans that sold products on the world market will have their existence evaporated, since they had to trade through Israel. Those that worked in Israel probably will not return for a very long time.
People pointing their fingers at Israel often simply lack perspective.
> So yes, antisemites and the mentally ill are loud on the streets and on the university campuses but they haven't won the hearts and the minds of people, and rightfully so.
Is that right?
> The survey found that 61% of the population opposes Israel's military action in the sealed-off Palestinian territory.
> Public support in Germany for Israel's military operations has dropped significantly, the survey shows.
> In November, shortly after the October 7 attacks, 62% favoured the Israeli military actions in Gaza, compared to 33% in the most recent survey, indicating a recent shift in public opinion almost eight months into the conflict.
Your point about the Eurovision is something I also am very curious about. I don’t understand how that’s possible, from TikTok and Instagram to Reddit and HN, All I see are mass protests and hate comments against Israel. So how come tens of millions overwhelmingly voted for Israel, even in Scandinavia? Sweden gave them 12 points!
Can you speak more to your perspective? The only way I can understand your take is to say that the West Bank is rightfully Israeli and therefore its residents should be citizens with voting rights. Are you opposed to an independent Palestinian state?
The west bank isn't independent. If a citizen there commits a crime, they are sent to an Israelite court. Their infrastructure and policing are done by Israel. Their elected officials are completely powerless, they cannot change anything.
Their vote cannot affect the government that governs them. They are israeli citizens with no say in the state that controls them.
Not OP, but I am for either giving the Palestinians the same rights as Israelis in a 1 state solution or a an independent Palestinian state but since Israel doesn't seem interested in that it's a cheap talking point because Israel will just crush the Palestinians under its boot until economic sanctions are applied similar to how it was done re South Africa.
"Yitzhak Rabin presented the Oslo II Interim Agreement to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, in his final speech to the legislative body. As he spoke, he boldly laid out what he believed to be the future of the Jewish state, boasting that “The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War.” He also described his vision of a Palestinian “entity” he described as “less than a state.”
You can't expect people under brutal military occupation to suddenly start loving their occupiers while under that occupation.
You have to end that occupation, period. That means ALL illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank need to move off the settlements too btw.
If after an independent Palestinian state is established on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, all of West Bank and all of Gaza and then Israel faces violence from that state, then you'll have support of many you don't right now.
You can't occupy people forever, or because one of their leaders rejected a deal once etc.
>> You can't occupy people forever, or because one of their leaders rejected a deal once etc.
Turkey, which has for all intents and purposes occupied the (ancestral lands of) the Kurdish people for many years, would like to disagree.
Turkey, btw, which has occupied the ancestral lands of the Kurdish people, alongside the ancestral lands of the Ionian and Pontiac Greeks, Assyrian and Cappadokian Christians and Armenians, whom it has ethnically cleansed and genocided.
Sure you can occupy people forever. Or until you massacre every last one of them who won't leave (what is now) your land.
But Israel was not the one that rejected two state solutions offered by UN in 1948, USA in 2000, and by Israel in 1990s, 2008 etc. It was Arab countries, and Palestinian leaders.
Why was Palestine not a state before 1967 with Gaza and West bank as territory?
How many times have Palestinians offered to recognize and make permanent peace with Israel?
Responding to your edit
>> If after an independent Palestinian state is established on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, all of West Bank and all of Gaza and then Israel faces violence from that state, then you'll have support of many you don't right now.
Huh, why did they not accept it in 2000 then? Why launch the second intifada? Why ask the "right to return"? Why call for the destruction of the entirety of Israel as a "white settler colonial state"?
It's questionable that the Western dominated UN of 1948 had any authority to make such a proposal and that it was fair in terms of how the territory was to be divided.
> Why was Palestine not a state before 1967 with Gaza and West bank as territory?
Because it was occupied by Egypt and Jordan and before then by the Brits and before then by the Ottomans....
Are you making an argument that the Palestinians were occupied since forever so why not occupy them forever?
> Huh, why did they not accept it in 2000 then?
The 2000 deal was a deal for 'less than a state' that's why, see my previous post.
The West Bank is occupied by in substantial fraction by Americans, not even Israelis, who choose to live in the West Bank, from where Palestinians were exiled by the IDF, under Israeli protection. How is that anything like Afghanistan nation building?
Countries with bantustans that they technically don't claim as part of their territory, but in practice completely control without giving the population any rights, are not normally considered democratic. See for example South Africa.
The reason why South Africa and many intellectuals consider Israel to be an apartheid state is not because of the treatment of Arabs that were allowed to become Israeli citizens after the Nakba, but because of the occupation of the West-Bank. The West-Bank is not rightfully Israel land, but has been de facto under Israeli occupation for 50 years. The situation there is very comparable to SA Bantustans; the people there have no rights, have no nationality, and are brutally suppressed by the Israeli government and fascist settlers. Ghaza is basically an open air concentration camp.
The status quo is apartheid. The options to change that are one multicultural state, a two-state solution or genocide.
Israel, contrary to generally agreed upon international law, considers East Jerusalem as a part of Israel. The autochtonous Palestinians living there are eligible for Israeli citizenship which would allow them to vote. However only a tiny fraction has gotten Israeli citizenship as that would legitimise the annexation.
This is absolutely true: there are hundreds of thousands of adults who live within Israeli territory under Israeli control, where Israeli law and order is applied, who are not allowed to vote, have no representation at all, and are regularly subject to lethal violence from Israeli citizens.
> Given that designation as a separate state, complaining that they can't vote in Israeli elections is like complaining that Canadians can't vote in US elections.
I don’t remember the US ever occupying Canada.
Not like that at all, and this is a clearly biased take even considering this line on its own.
At no point did Filipinos have the ability to vote for Senators, Congressmen, or the President. Same for Puerto Ricans. US has other territories too, by the way, with the same restrictions.
You have no problem calling the US a democracy, but when the same rules are applied elsewhere you have a problem?
Look, you really like to talk with confidence, but every time you bring up a a point, you pull a whatabout. Have you even looked into what the people you’re so very concerned with want? That’s the most relevant part of all. It’s not your feelings. It’s what the people you say you care about want. It doesn’t appear they want what you want for them, and you’re big mad about that bro.
Nothing like moving the goal posts, conflating a whole bunch of different issues, and then projecting statements on to me when you’re called out nonsense.
Why is your definition of democratic the valid one?
Mine is, a country is only a real democracy if ALL people it rules over have the same set of rights. Israel isn't a democracy and so isn't the DRC, despite the fact that it has democratic in its name.
I like how these people think the checkmate move is assume the person they’re talking to is a blind supporter of the USA for some reason, and have zero response when they realize that rationally applying the same rules to everybody really does mean Israel doesn’t pass the bar for a democracy.
> > Given that designation as a separate state, complaining that they can't vote in Israeli elections is like complaining that Canadians can't vote in US elections.
> I don’t remember the US ever occupying Canada.
I'm confused by this.
Normally under international law, it is illegal to allow people in occupied territory to vote or otherwise integrate them into civil government.
Israel has even gotten criticized by the UN human rights council for allowing elections in occupied territory (in golan heights, so not Palestinian occupied territory) http://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/L.18
An occupying force holding its own elections in an occupied place is indeed illegal (your reference was about Israeli people holding elections in the Golan heights).
Comparing an _occupied_ people’s attempt to hold elections in the occupied place (Palestinian people in Palestine) to two separate non-occupied states (USA and Canada) is nonsense.
There is an argument to be made that if the Palestinians have to ask permission to become a real state from Israel, then their "government" isn't really a government, and that all the Palestinians are in thrall to Tel Aviv, a government which rules them but does not represent them, whose laws bind them but for whom they may not vote.
There is such a valid argument. But the Oslo accords officially created the PA, which rules over the Palestinians in the West Bank. And Gaza is ruled by Hamas. The Palestinians are governed by a mix of Israeli military law and PA laws, which originate from Jordan, I believe.
Some argue that in practice, Israel has control over all the Palestinians, so in practice there is one large apartheid state. I don't believe this argument is valid, for the reasons I outlined above; I think it doesn't make sense for Palestinians to fight for their own State, have a semi-autonomous government that rules over them in practice (two if you count Hamas), fight to get international recognition for this Palestinian State and get it from many countries, but claim that they are being ruled by Tel Aviv.
(Of course the situation is murky - I think the important thing isn't what label we give this, it's to know what the facts are. Those above are the relevant facts, I believe. If you agree with me on the facts but choose to label it in one way vs. another, I think that's a less important discussion at that point.)
And Bibi supported and kept Hamas in power so Israeli society could labor under the delusion that keeping Palestinians out of sight and out of mind was a viable plan. Until it wasn’t.
He’s been elected again and again, and has been steadfast in preventing self governance from ever taking hold. To the degree Israel is a “democracy” it is because there is voter consensus that there can be no Palestinian self rule.
He's a believer. He want several things that can't be well understood by the non-religious. He wants the al Aqsa mosque demolished/removed, so the temple can be rebuilt. He wants all of Jerusalem. And, even what he would call all of "Greater Israel" eventually. In that order, but he's willing to settle for those things out of order if it looks possible. A peaceful neighboring Palestine doesn't allow for any of that. A peaceful, neighboring Palestine wouldn't, for instance, ever do anything that could be used as an excuse to seize territory, or to remove Palestinians (via any of the various forms of ethnic cleansing). This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that the people in the West Bank would be provoked into doing something, or that Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.
All of this will seem like the dumbest bullshit to you. Why would anyone want that? But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.
None of that seems accurate, not when it comes to Netanyahu. He's not a religious zealot and almost certainly isn't pursuing anything because of religion.
> But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.
I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished, that is a delusion that has no historical basis at all. There are of course religious extremists who want really bad things, but they are a relatively small minority of the population.
Most of the population just wants to live in peace and safety. They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).
> This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that [...] or Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.
This is a ridiculous line of thinking. Hamas (and Iran) are shooting rockets at Israel, including at al Aqsa, Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets, and you think it's part of a nefarious Israeli plan to destroy al Aqsa?
> I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished,
There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.
>They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).
They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews. There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.
> Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets,
The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate. Could someone finagle it so that it lands where they want? Would be a beat trick. Just have to wait for the right trajectory, one would think.
> There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.
First, you're assuming that all ultra-Orthodox want to see Al Aqsa demolished, which is a huge assumption that is probably not correct.
Second, in a country of 9 million people, I think it's misleading to say that "millions want" when referring to less than 2 million. I think saying about a country of 9m people that "millions want to see an incredibly important place/monument destroyed" gives a very wrong impression of what is the general spirit here, and is especially misleading because "Al Aqsa is in danger" has been a common worry of the Palestinians for a hundred years, with very little factual basis for that worry, IMO.
> They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews.
Of course. The one state solution is a ridiculous non-solution as acknowledged by every official international body that has ever considered the problem, and as acknowledged by about 99% of the people living in the region. And as agreed by the parties themselves in the Oslo accords and ensuing future peace process in which the plan was to find a way to create two states living side by side.
> There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.
Unfortunately, you're wrong about that. There is a small, minority, but currently influential group of Israelis that pretty explicitly espouses the idea of, in their words, "voluntary relocation". Which everyone reads as a pretty implicit call for ethnic cleansing.
> The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate.
No kidding. Plenty of people have been hurt by this debris, and I've seen pieces of it - those can be pretty big chunks of metal falling on people's heads.
Still, the implication that it would somehow be part of Israel's plan to destroy Al Aqsa to keep the war going so that maybe debris from rockets that Israel shoots down would land on Al Aqsa, and the implication that this would then be Israel's fault, and not the fault of the people shooting the rockets at Al Aqsa in the first place, is... I don't know what to even call it beyond morally absurd.
You're partially right, and I've stated many times that I think Israel has acted in morally wrong ways for the last 15 years of Netanyahu's rule.
But I think it's important to understand that the reason the Israeli electorate went down this path is because of the failure of the peace process in the 1990s and 2000s. The Israeli public multiple times elected leaders pursuing peace. Even former right-wing hawks turned around and pursued peace. And some things came out of it, like the creation of the PA which gave limited self-governance to the Palestinians.
But eventually, the Palestinians turned down what were perceived to be very serious and generous peace offers by the Israeli public, walked away from the negotiations, and started a terrible wave of terror attacks.
Similarly, Israel removed all settlers and all army personnel from Gaza, the result of which was the election of Hamas, with a sworn mission to destroy Israel, and constant rocket attacks on Israel.
So the way the Israeli public (correctly) sees it, there is no "partner for peace", and even when peace was very seriously pursued and positive steps taken to give Palestinians what they ostensibly wanted, the result was violence directed at Israel.
That is why there was a turn away from pursuing peace and just trying to "live with the situation".
Likely that it (or, specifically, East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem was Israeli both under the partition and the 1949 Armistice Agreement) is part of the territory Israel occupied after 1967 that wasn't Israel, despite later being decalred as annexed, and is generally not viewed internationally as Israeli territory.
Likely, but since as you say West Jerusalem is Israeli, and the government of Israel is in West Jerusalem on a practical basis, calling it a Palestinian city is both wrong, and making a point that I think is worth stating explicitly.
