I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
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Have you watched the Mandalorian? Palestinians are Grogu and the Mandalorian, Israel / US and Zionists are the Empire.
The humanitarian aide workers.
The volunteers that risk going to do stuff in either side. It’s crazy out there
on a scale from 1 to 10 how serious are you in asking this, I ask because I am genuinly unsure if you are confused and unaware of what is happening, or if you are trying to start some shit
I’ve answered this in the post to another commenter, but I am 100% serious.
Well for Decades the Irealies have both been genociding the Palistinians, and have been on a long push to try to conflait zionism, an origionaly anti-symetic idea in eurpope, that was even embraced by the Nazis, and quinticentialy jewish, so they could use anti-semitism to shield themselvs.
The good guys are the palistinians who where there before anyone else got there, and have been being genocided agian for decades on end, and are being genocided now.
I thought the Jewish heritage and population had been there just as long but were purged out from the area. And as part of the WWII agreements, land was set aside for them to reclaim what was theirs many centuries ago.
the Jewish diaspora started during the Roman period. dring any Muslim control of the land the Jewish people were more or less welcomed and had a good life there.
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10 kids born 2 killed guess what, there are still 8 left
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Like killing like isn’t what’s going on here, though. Unless I’m missing something.
Very few of Israeli Jews are actually Arabs. They are largely of European descent. So it is misinformation to characterize this as Arabs murdering Arabs. What this is is Western settler-colonialism.
Arabs have been murdering Arabs for hundreds of years. To say Israel started it is not only wrong but spreading misinformation.
“Israel” was internationally recognized as established in the 1940s based on a European movement from the 1800s to create a settler-colonial ethnostate. Israel did start it, it is an occupying force that displaced Palestinians from their lands in living memory, implemented violent apartheid conditions, and is currently doing a genocide.
Your “Arabs just kill each other this isn’t different” is frankly just relying on racism to avoid actually addressing the real history.
Who started it is pointless at this point
No, it is very much an important point as it happened in recent history via occupation, terrorism, and forced immigration by European settlers backed by the British empire and then the US empire. You must ignore this in order to share the positions that you have.
but this anti Palestine sentiment from Israelis has been brewing for decades. For some context look up Arab-Israeli war of 1948
Anti-Palestinian sentiment has been a core part of the Zionist project since its inception. 1948 is when the largest expulsions happened, the war was a response to this occupation and aggression.
The palestinian people. Sure, they have done some horrible things but it’s been mostly out of desperation for decades of abuse from Israel, who are actively invading their country.
Yeah the conflict started way before october the 7th.
The fact that somebody would be asking this question after a year of genocide is phenomenal.
Reminder that at the outbreak of WWII, TONS of people in the US supported the Nazi regime right up until they started invading Western Europe AKA “the countries that matter”
Also worth noting that the US continued to do business with the nazis well into the war, and IBM famously facilitated the holocaust.
The resistance including Hamas, Ansar Allah, Iraqi resistance, Hezbollah, etc.
but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
lol what. You do realize gaza is a concentration camp right? That’s like saying the Jews who fought back during the warsaw ghetto uprising were bad guys. Also they aren’t trying to get their hostages back at all. On oct 7 the IDF was responsible for the MAJORITY of deaths. Look up hannibal directive.
The bad guys are Zionists. Simply put they think they are superior to anyone that’s not Jewish. Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews.
I actually didn’t realize Gaza was a concentration camp.
In 1948, during the Nakba, Israel ethnically cleansed much of Palestine. From that (and a good portion of the ethnic cleansing Israel has done since), many of the people were driven into Gaza.
In 2006, when Israel got kicked out of Gaza due to an uprising, they built a wall around it and restricted the amount of food, fuel, and other items, and banned the gazans from constructing wells, water containers, and other things that would allow the people in Gaza to stay alive longer if Israel cut off food/water supplies.
We learned about the displacement of Palestinians in school and it made me so angry. Great-grandchildren are being punished because their relatives (might) have fought against Israel back then. Aren’t the Israeli politicians realizing they are fueling the conflict by doing this? Well, I suppose that’s just what they want! (Please note that I am only criticizing the Israeli government, not Jews or Israel in general; you have to be very careful to not get accused of antisemitism where I live.)
P.S. I am from Germany, imagine new generations still had to suffer for the crimes the Nazis committed. That would be unforgiving and unjustified. It is our job to make sure this never happens again, though.
Great-grandchildren are being punished because their relatives (might) have fought against Israel back then.
They are punished because they are Palestinian and Israelis are racist occupiers.
Aren’t the Israeli politicians realizing they are fueling the conflict by doing this?
Yes, of course. Israel has a long record of maximum escalation and starting wars and ethnic cleansing. They have official doctrines of killing as many civilians as possible in bombing campaigns rather than engaging with fighters directly.
Israelis are incredibly racist.
P.S. I am from Germany, imagine new generations still had to suffer for the crimes the Nazis committed. That would be unforgiving and unjustified. It is our job to make sure this never happens again, though.
Good on you for having this position despite the racism of your government against solidarity with Palestine!
Great-grandchildren are being punished because their relatives (might) have fought against Israel
Fighting against settler colonists who came and established an apartheid regime is not a crime.
I am only criticizing the Israeli government, […] Israel in general
Israel is a settler colonial project, an Israel that provided equal rights to all Muslims, Christians, and Jews living in its territory would be less related to the current state of Israel than modern South Africa is to Apartheid South Africa.
not Jews
Yes, we agree that it’s antisemitic as fuck to associate Jewishness with Zionism. When Israel is murdering children in public view, implying that Israel represents Jews is just blood libel with extra steps.
Fighting against settler colonists who came and established an apartheid regime is not a crime.
But killing and kidnapping hundreds of innocent civilians is. You have to be clear about that, and also take a nuanced look at the whole conflict. There is no single good or bad side.
Apart from innocent Palestinians and Israelis (good) there are the terrorists (a.k.a. Hamas) who killed and kidnapped hundreds of civilians (bad). Then there is are the settlers, occupying land and terrorizing Palestinians (bad) with the help of the IDF. The Israeli government either looks away or even encourages them (bad). The IDF imprisons children, willingly destroys houses and infrastructure in Gaza and the west bank and executes “precision strikes” in areas of high population while also blocking humanitarian aid (bad).
I support chief investigator Khan’s arrest warrant for Netanjahu, Galant, Deif and Haniyya. Regarding the riots after trying to arrest nine IDF soldiers for abusing a Palestinian prisoner, it is obvious that Israel won’t be interested in a trial or at least not able to arrange one.
[…] an Israel that provided equal rights to all Muslims, Christians, and Jews living in its territory would be less related to the current state of Israel than modern South Africa is to Apartheid South Africa.
That is my dream. Just people living together peacefully, no matter their religion.
But killing and kidnapping hundreds of innocent civilians is. You have to be clear about that
I am being clear.
Would you condemn the Polish resistance because they killed some of the German settlers who came to settle Poland during the 1940s? The South African anti-apartheid movement because they burned some Boers and their collaborators alive? Or would you say the oppressor doesn’t get to judge the morality of the tactics the oppressed use?
Requiring every antizionist to constantly stop to condemn Hamas creates a false equivalency between the people who are inside a concentration camp and the people keeping them there.
That is my dream. Just people living together peacefully, no matter their religion.
This is what existed before Israel, and god willing, it’s what we’ll have after Israel.
Thank you for the information. I did not know this.
Just count the dead, injured, displaced, starved, and dehydrated on either side. You’ll find pretty quickly the numbers are extremely disproportionate. If that’s [not] a baseline consideration for your judgment then you should think on that.
[Edit in brackets]
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This is absolutely false, hamas is not anti-semitic, they’re anti-zionist. You’re doing the british / murican tabloid thing of equating the two.
- Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
Fine but why does one potential future genocide justify the realized genocide currently under way?
…it doesn’t?
I don’t understand your response then. If it doesn’t then why would it be a consideration here?
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I’ve made no claims about the ethics of Hamas here. Simply put, genocide is not an act of strategy, and putting the ethics of retaliation aside, does nothing to further the security of your own citizens. Israel has not made its people safer, rather the opposite. It has paved the road to open war with other nations, and is walking it.
I generally agree that the response seems lopsided. However, I also find it odd that Hamas simply hasn’t returned the hostages. This to me signifies two possibilities- they are not actually interested in peace, or they don’t believe that returning the hostages will stop Israel’s destruction.
Would that appraisal of the situation seem reasonable?
Not really. Israel has a vested interest in continuing this land grab. The hostages are a convenient excuse, but separate from the inciting event. Furthermore it’s just as likely the hostages have been killed in israeli bombings.
I see. So you think Israel wants the hostages to be kept in order to give them a public excuse to continue their campaign?
No. I said they’re a convenient excuse. If they were to return then a new excuse would be found. The impetus for this campaign started as “self defense” in response to the Oct 7 attack. Then when that was no longer sufficient to justify things they moved onto the hostages as a bargaining chip.
There is a lot more to this way than just the hostage situation - Israel has been in control of Palestinian territory for a long time (they consider it theirs) and they have been fighting with the Hamas organization for years now. This is the single worst escalation of it.
Hamas doesn’t want peace. The status quo is domination of Palestine under Israel government - erasure of Palestine effectively if they laid down arms and disbanded. They want liberty, and payback for hardships.
There isn’t reason to believe Israel will stop the attacks on return of the hostages, as they have gone overwhelmingly above and beyond the total damage done by Hamas (even comparing women and children victims vs. the concert raid that started it all) and given Netanyahu’s far right government is at the helm, so your second point has merit.
Hamas wants to trade those hostages for Palestinian hostages. Which have been imprisoned for decades.
It is a tale of “Israel started it” and the Palestinians have no other possible way to make demands from Israel than using the same tactics.
Israel openly says they will continue the destruction. Even if Hamas releases the hostages. Their government does not care about hostages. But the Israeli people do. Hamas would be giving up the only leverage they have against Israel by releasing the hostages.
Up until 1967, the bad guys were Britain.
Britain seized Palestine from the Ottomans during WWI with the help of the local Palestinians, promising the Palestinians sovereignty in exchange for their help overthrowing the Ottomans.
At the same time, Britain promised to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine (in the Balfour Declaration), and Jewish refugees from Europe began settling in Palestine. Britain did this because they thought they might gain the support of Jewish financiers for their war efforts.
The Balfour Declaration was deliberately vague about whether Britain was giving all of the land to the Jews or just some of the land. It was vague because Britain wanted to appeal to Jewish Zionists (who wanted all of Palestine) while not alienating the Palestinians.
Britain never did divide the land, resulting in two different populations who felt they legally owned the land, one who had always been there, and one who mostly arrived as refugees.
When Britain left following WWII, a civil war broke out for control of the land. A border was eventually drawn at the line of control (which ran through the middle of Jerusalem), and Israelis declared the new State of Israel, while Palestinian refugees fled to their side of the border or neighbouring states. That was in 1948.
So, up until then, it’s a messy situation created by Britain, but one which eventually resulted in the land being split (albeit violently), with both Israelis and Palestinians having a state, and each having part of Jerusalem. The world accepted this as the new status quo and hoped it would be sustained peacefully.
That changed in 1967 when Israel annexed the Palestinian lands (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) in the Six Days War. Since then, Palestinians have been living under a harsh Israeli occcupation as a stateless people (meaning no citizenship), with their rights and freedoms strictly curtailed. Palestinians have been resisting through a number of resistance movements, usually designated as terrorist groups in the Western media.
There was a political movement towards peace and repartitioning of the land that peaked in the 1990s, but since then it has been held up by a series of right-wing governments in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has been aggressively building Jewish neighbourhoods (called settlements) in the formerly Palestinian lands of the West Bank.
So since 1967, Israel has pretty clearly been the bad guy.
The terrorist attack that killed 1200 young Israelis was horrific, and we should all hope nothing like that ever happens again. But the root cause of the attack was Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The way to prevent future terror attacks is to end the oppression of the Palestinian people.
Concise, eloquent, and fair. I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
There’s something else I want to mention.
In 1947, the UN attempted to sort out Britain’s mess by creating a “partition plan” in which the land would be split between a state of Israel and a state of Palestine.
Though adopted as a UN resolution, it was never implemented, and the aforementioned civil war broke out instead.
I just mention this because I find a lot of people are under the misimpression that Israel was created by the UN in 1947 as some kind of compensation for the Holocaust, and that’s not what happened.
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Israel started the six day war by striking its neighbors. It wanted that war, it knew it had dedicated sponsors that would back them up.
PS Israel, as an apartheid ethnostare premised on settler colonialism, should not exist. The “state” of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a non-apartheid, non-ethnostate that includes all of the people and guarantees a return of stolen homes and land.
Israel struck first in the Six Days War.
Over a shipping route.
while Palestinian refugees fled to their side of the border or neighbouring states.
Technically not incorrect, but too much passive voice. Palestinian refugees were expelled by Israel, either by being directly told to leave or die or through massacres.
The terrorist attack that killed 1200 young Israelis
Another correction: The attack that killed 1200 Israelis, 33% of which were legitimate military targets and 66% of which were civilians. Don’t let Israel trick you into thinking Hamas just entered, killed a bunch of civilians and left, because that creates what they consider justification for their genocide.
Another correction: The attack that killed 1200 Israelis, 33% of which were legitimate military targets and 66% of which were civilians.
I never said they were civilians.
Yes but that’s the implication when you say “the terririst attack that killed 1200 young Israelis”.
I wasn’t implying that.
I mean okay but that’s how it reads like, especially because that myth is still alive and well.
They were young people who were gathered for a music concert.
Israel has compulsory military service for young people, so many of them were enlisted in the military. That doesn’t change the fact that they were young.
If 66% of 1200 are civilians killed by Hamas then
Don’t let Israel trick you into thinking Hamas just entered, killed a bunch of civilians and left
is false (they indeed came and killed a bunch of civilians).
I’m not a pro-Israel person, I hate Netanyahu with a passion but still Hamas killing innocent people is not deserving of compassion albeit I understand their reason.
is false.
How so? Hamas attacked a number of Israeli military bases and outposts on October 7th, which was along with taking hostages the goal of the attack. The Israeli narrative conveniently ignores that, painting the whole thing as one big act of barbarism.
still Hamas killing innocent people is not deserving of compassion albeit I understand their reason.
It’s not about compassion. They definitely committed a bunch of atrocities on October 7th, and that very much deserves condemnation, but ignoring the very real military goals behind the attacks helps no one but Israel. Nobody really talks about that anymore, but if you remember before it was overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza things like how much of Israeli accusations against Hamas was true, how many casualties were Israeli friendly fire, what Hamas’s goals behind the attack were, etc etc were still open questions. The world quite reasonably stopped focusing on these things because Israel kept one-upping themselves in genociding Gazans, but that had the side effect of cementing the Israeli narrative on them as reality in the minds of most pro-Palestinian Westerners. What I’m saying is: Condemning terror that happened during the attack and condemning the attack itself are a different things, and one of them invalidates many legitimate acts of resistance.
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Also do not forget that on 10/7 Israeli helicopters were firing on civilians and the state censors have been covering this up. There are attempts to ban Haaretz, a friendly mouthpiece for state interests, because they have been reporting on this.
That’s a pretty good summary. I will add that the partition plan was deliberate tactic by Ben-Gurion to set a precedent for the Ethnic Cleansing needed to create the Settler Colonialist Ethnostate within Palestine. The alternative presented by Palestinian Representatives was a Unitary State for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Partition
The Zionist position changed in 1928, when the pragmatic Palestinian leaders agreed to the principle of parity in a rare moment in which clannish and religious differences were overcome for the sake of consensus. The Palestinian leaders feared that without parity the Zionists would gain control of the political system. The unexpected Palestinian agreement threw the Zionist leaders into temporary confusion. When they recovered, they sent a refusal to the British, but at the same time offered an alternative solution: the partitioning of Palestine into two political units.
- Pg 132 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine
On 31 August 1947, UNSCOP presented its recommendations to the UN General Assembly. Three of its members were allowed to put forward an alternative recommendation. The majority report advocated the partition of Palestine into two states, with an economic union. The designated Jewish state was to have most of the coastal area, western Galilee, and the Negev, and the rest was to become the Palestinian state. The minority report proposed a unitary state in Palestine based on the principle of democracy. It took considerable American Jewish lobbying and American diplomatic pressure, as well as a powerful speech by the Russian ambassador to the UN, to gain the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly for partition. Even though hardly any Palestinian or Arab diplomat made an effort to promote the alternative scheme, it won an equal number of supporters and detractors, showing that a considerable number of member states realized that imposing partition amounted to supporting one side and opposing the other.
- Pg 181 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine
Ethnic Cleansing and Settler Colonialism
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
- The Transfer Committee, and the JNF Ethnic Cleansing, which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate before the Nakba
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
Historian Works on the History
-
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
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The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
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A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
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The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
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10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
The good guys are aid workers and Palestinian and Israeli civilians who do not like the conflict.
Can you please show me a single protest of an Israeli citizen against the war specifically because of the genocide?
Asked n’ answered hahaha
💯 this. The people doing the kidnapping, murdering, and genocide are the bad guys. The people trying to help are the good guys.
The people violently resisting a genocide are also good guys.
If someone is trying to kill you and everyone who looks like you, shooting back is good.
Shooting back is not only good, but necessary for survival.
Folks throughout these threads would’ve been wringing their hands over occupier civilians killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, acting like they just can’t tell who’s right or wrong.
About the Warsaw Uprising, I thought the targets were purely German military, so while a close analogy to how Hamas framed their action, it’s not exact.
The Warsaw Uprising was an open air prison/ghetto break with a wide number of participants, both organized and not. Those facing violence by the people seeking to fight their genociders were not just those in the military. It was anyone in the way or supporting them, per individuals’ wonts.
In addition, Hamas et al (Hamas was not the only organized group participating 10/7) did also focus on military targets while also taking hostages from a wider set. It is important to note that kibbutzim, little settler colonies, are often militarized and fired on them and others.
What sources do you have on German civilian casualties during the Warsaw Uprising?
Direct accounts. Here is one.
https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/warsaw-uprising.html
The good guys are the humanitarian aid workers risking their lives bringing food and medical care into the region.
The same folks being killed by Israel? Those ones?
You know it!
In Western fiction, you are taught to support the scrappy underdogs facing oppression from a racist occupying force. You root for them and cheer when they blow up military facilities and you feel for them when they lose their compatriots to oppressor violence. You know very well who the good guys and bad guys are.
But then, in Western media, with a mere change of labeling and some paper-thin propaganda, they will have you believing the opposite. All they need to do is call the freedom fighter resistance “terrorists”, say that the occupiers “have a right to defend themselves”, and pretend the “conflict” is “complicated” and really about religion. And they will so this even when the occupier ramps up genocide to unignorable levels.
The good guys remain those fighting occupation. This is consistent with a basic understanding of liberation, with nearly everyone’s stated beliefs about self-determination, and international law. The bad guys are the ethnic supremacist apartheid settler colonist occupiers doing a genocide as well as their supporters.
Question- isn’t Hamas constantly attacking Israel with the stated goal to eradicate them?
Israel is a racist genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate. All good people wish for the destruction of such a thing just like all good people wished for the destruction of the apartheid South African ethnostate. If Hamas wishes this, they should be commended for it, don’t you think? And anyone who disagrees called out for the racial supremacist that they are?
I’ve seen many people in this post say the best solution is a two state system. You’re saying that’s not what you would prefer, and that Israel should be wiped out?
I don’t have a particular opinion on your view because my knowledge of what Israel and Hamas has done is admittedly limited, but I would lean towards the idea that you’re justifying Israel’s reaction and statements that the reason they are taking the action they are is because of, well, ideas like yours.
I think, from what I’ve learned over the past week of exploring this situation, that a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable. I seem to have an innately negative reaction to what you suggest here.
I’ve seen many people in this post say the best solution is a two state system.
That is not a solution, it is bantustans.
You’re saying that’s not what you would prefer, and that Israel should be wiped out?
The “state” of Israel should be destroyed thoroughly. The “state” of Israel is premised on ethnosuoremacist genocidal apartheid and colonization. Remove those things and the “state” of Israel will fundamentally no longer exist, both because injustice will have been addressed and also because a very large number of Israeli settlers will simply leave, as they only care about living in an ethnostate that serves them. Something similar happened with Boers.
I don’t have a particular opinion on your view because my knowledge of what Israel and Hamas has done is admittedly limited, but I would lean towards the idea that you’re justifying Israel’s reaction and statements that the reason they are taking the action they are is because of, well, ideas like yours.
Israel’s political leadership have always understood their project as ethnosupremacist, of requiring stealing land from the natives, as requiring oppression of the larger population of Palestinians who will not tolerate these conditions. They correctly understand that this project will end if those conditions are addressed, if justice is done. That is not a reason to accept their justification, as no ethnkstate deserves to exist or “defend itself” against those it oppresses.
I think, from what I’ve learned over the past week of exploring this situation, that a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable. I seem to have an innately negative reaction to what you suggest here.
A two-state solution is bantustans and not even taken seriously by the “Israelis” or their American sponsors. It is just a nice-sounding “compromise” they hold in front of liberals like a carrot so that they will accept their continued slow (or now fast) genocide and displacement of Palestinians. “Israel” prefers its slow and steady expulsion of Palestinians into smaller and smaller concentration camps, like districts from South Africa. Those could never be considered a “state” under any circumstances and “Israel” would never accept them as such, even in such a diajointed condition.
Justice requires an end to the ethnostate itself.
Thank you for such a detailed response. Considering your views that ethnostates should be done away with, an interesting question came up for me. Would you be in favor of forcefully going in and forcing regime change in Israel?
I think the latter is entirely unnecessary. The US and its co-sponsor lackeys could do plenty by simply withdrawing support. The Zionist project is 90% dependent on constant material aid from Western powers to prop up its regime and would be forced to concede to the larger and more committed Palestian liberation movement without it. If they were to do anything active that was helpful, it would be to denuclearize Israel first.
Both of this things would require significant changes, though. Israel is propped up because it’s violence against its neighbors is useful for US domination of the region. But we can work for this in pieces by blocking arms exports, disrupting supply chains, and builsing leverage to demand that countries spend domestically instead of supporting genocide. Ironically in EU countries it is far-right electoral groups that have more steam for the latter due to the fact that liberals have made themselves the warmongers focused on increased militarization, but of course we cannot trust those right wingers to follow through.
Please understand the distinction between the destruction of the state of Israel and the destruction of the people of Israel. The example you were just given was the destruction of the state of South Africa.
a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable.
That sounds nice, but Israel wants no such thing and never has, despite its past claims to the contrary.
I think a Two-State Solution would be a good idea (and I have opinions on exactly where the border should go), but it will have to be imposed on Israel by the international community.
Israel has never been sincere about a Two-State solution, and their “offers” to Palestine have been inadequate and unworkable, and the Palestinians have been right to reject them because there’s no point in accepting a deal that won’t lead to peace. Only a fair and workable deal can lead to peace.
Israel has demonstrated that they are an illegitimate state, because legitimate states do not bomb the stateless people living within their borders. At this point we should be treating Israel like Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. The Israeli military should be placed under foreign control, and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza returned to the Palestinians.
So far, the only thing stopping this from happening has been the United States’ support for Israel.
Israel needs to realize that the United States is rapidly declining in power, and if Israel doesn’t voluntarily cede the Palestinian territories, Israel might not exist at all in the near future.
What does destruction of Israel as a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate look like to you? Does it look like Oct 7 writ large across all of Israel? Does it look like the massive bombing campaign, displacement, and destruction of capacity for civilians to live that Israel has perpetrated in Gaza?
You can support Palestine as a people right to live, and condemn Israeli blanket bombing without supporting Hamas’ shooting civilians.
Or did you also struggle with condemning British occupation of Ireland, whilst also disagreeing with the IRA bombing of civilian targets?
How did it look when south africans overthrew the apartheid regime? Didn’t come anywhere near the racist nightmares of white supremacists, and there’s no reason to believe the return of palestine will be any different.
Also it’s up to Palestinians, and no one else to decide what to do with their land.
The end of apartheid, the end of ethnosupremacy at both the state and societal level, land back for displaced Palestinians. But most importantly, self-determination for the people of Palestine. They decide what they need or want once they are in a position to liberate themselves, not you and not me.
The side you are carrying water for is an ethnosupremacy at apartheid settler colonial occupation. You don’t get to hand wring about what you think the oppressed will do to their opprrssors.
First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter. I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned, dismantling apartheid and establishing self-determination for Palestinians. However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal. Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.
Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.
First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter
And yet you used a tired Zionist talking point that amounts to, “what if the people we are oppressing do the same things to us if we stop the oppression?” It was also used for apartheid South Africa, incidentally. And we can see that the oppressed are far more humane than these ethnic supremacists.
But maybe you are anti-Zionist and just picked up this question from others.
I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned
The outcomes I mentioned are incompatible with a two-state solution. A two-state solution is bantustans and it was “agreed” to by compradors. It is not a serious proposal, which is why Israel/the US has never attempted to implement it and has instead further oppressed and fragmented Palestinians.
A two-state solution means no right of return, the continuation of the Israeli apartheid ethnostate, and the status quo for Gaza and The West Bank. There can be no state under occupation, with its orchards and homes stolen, with its towns disjointed, with a comprador government installed by Western interests. That is neither sovereignty nor justice and it would not be tolerated by the oppressed.
However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal.
Define atrocities. Israel will simply shoot and torture peaceful movements. It already has done so many times. Only armed resistance can defeat such an oppressor.
Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.
Just as the West labels all Palestinians freedom fighters, they will label actions far lesser than what Israel does on a daily basis “war crimes” when it suits them, just like the ICC seems to basically only go after black African war criminals (Bush and Cheney weren’t tried at the Hague, hmm). Guerilla warfare against an oppressor will not be clean, this is impossible. Intelligence will fail and targets will be colocated, e.g. the IDF has part of its headquarters by a shopping mall. And individuals will do terrible and violent things. Also, Israelis and the West, including the US president, will simply lie, like with the “beheaded babies” narrative. So you will have to prepare yourself to question these narratives and accept a world where the freedom fighters will be accused of war crimes by the usual sources.
Though, if we are speaking of international law, occupied people are allowed to resist their occupiers by any means they deem fit.
Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.
I use this platform for chatting and agitation. This convo is in the agitation category, of course. Generally speaking it is important to shout down pro-genocide narratives, whether it is Zionist propaganda or Dems trying to get their voters to tolerate genocide.
Because you’re unable to distinguish between a state and a people, you’re unable to imagine anything but the eradication of a people, even though the example of the state of South Africa was just given to you.
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conflation of state and people that Hamas’s ideology clearly makes
A Document of General Principles and Policies
by largely targeting and slaughtering civilians in their homes
That is not what happened. That is what Western media said happened.
- The Intercept:
- Al Jazeera: Why did Israel deploy Hannibal Directive, allowing killing of own citizens?
- Electronic Intifada: How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October
.
If Hamas wants to dismantle Israeli oppression through activism, negotiations, and political reform great.
- It has tried to do that for decades. The most recent significant attempt was Great March of Return, wherein the IDF slaughtered Gazans.
- Palestinians have the legal right under UN law to struggle against their occupiers by any means necessary, including armed struggle.
- Israel, as an occupier, has no right to “self defense.”
Does it look like Oct 7 writ large across all of Israel?
Can’t say they don’t deserve it
Which is why Jews across the world have said Israel is genuinely the greatest source of danger to them in terms of antisemitism - because it has linked its atrocities to their identity, regardless of their personal support.
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Israel has been keeping Palestinians in a brutal and murderous apartheid state and brutalizing them for 80 years-- imprisoning them indefinitely without charges too. But you want to question what the oppressed do and why, as if it was mysterious. I’m having a hard time beleiving you when you say you want this explained to you, but I suppose I’ll take it at face value and hope for the best.
If you truly want to understand this stuff, start with a deep dive-- several actually, into history. Start with the jewish-roman wars to understand the zionist/zealot motivations. At this point the original states of Israel were 1000 years gone, having weakened themselves with civil war over taxation, then plundered and abosrbed by the neo-babylonians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars
From there you’ll want to look at the expansion of the ottoman empire and jewish place in it, and how they were governed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire This overlapped with the crusades. I recommend “empires of the sea” by crowley. Crucial in there is how the Ottoman empire depended on slaves to function, but their religion only allowed them to get slaves by capturing them in battle, and it forbade muslims from trading in slaves thesmelves, but allowed buying them. Hence the birth of slave traders as a caste, who were foriegn, and became largely a jewish group. This understandably was not well received back in Europe, where the slaves came from. The ottomans almost totally depopulated the mediteranean coasts gathering slaves. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_14 Toward the end of the ottoman empire (it was an 800 year empire), they officially tolerated muslims as slave traders. (Progress?)
You can also read up on how jews participated in and were persecuted in the crusades, and draw some conclusions as to why and how that played out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_the_Crusades#:~:text=In the First Crusade%2C Jewish,Jews in France suffered especially.
Then move on to jewish presence in the region during the ottoman empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Turkey
Read up on how jewish expulsions from european countries came about because of christianities Vix pervenit. Theres a lot there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vix_pervenit
See how because of medeival views of usury, Jews were ejcted by monarchs in europe as a way to justify seizing their assets, only to allow them back a bit later and starting the process over https://humsci.stanford.edu/feature/stanford-historian-explores-how-expulsions-became-widespread-medieval-europe
From there you can end up in the start of WW2, the jewish holocaust, and then Haganah and Irgun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
Partition, the UN creating a state of Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
Israel’s leadership thoughts at the time: https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
From there, the Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
The six day war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War The USS liberty incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
The first and second intifada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada
Oslo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_I_Accord
The creation of hamas by Israel to thwart the PLO peace plans and two state solution https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
9/11 and Osama bin laden, and the use and weaponization of his logic by western powers https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/miller.html
The rise of indefinite administrative detention https://apnews.com/article/israel-detention-jails-palestinians-west-bank-793a3b2a1ce8439d08756da8c63e5435
Storming of al aqsa mosque on oct 4 2023 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot
October 7 2023 attacks https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67039975
The use of the hannibal directive https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
You can google and read a lot about the negoatiations and doubts for whether Netenyahu wanted to negotiate for the release of hostages at all, and the Israelis protesting his lack of interest in getting the hostages back. You can also look at settler groups auctioning off peices of gaza, and now lebanon.
That’s fine. Some of my leftist friends feel the same way, like I’m not asking in good faith. I don’t have any way to convince you that I am. I just feel like I’m not educated on the subject and that’s why I’m looking for a wide array of facts and opinions.
Personally I think your perception is part of a larger problem of a breakdown in communication and education, where people automatically assume the worst of everyone’s intentions because of either experience with other bad actors, or because you feel like since you have the knowledge you have and it feels intuitive to you, you feel like everyone else must also have that knowledge and anyone outside of that sphere is simply trying to be a disruptor.
Personally I think your perception is part of a larger problem of a breakdown in communication and education, where people automatically assume the worst of everyone’s intentions because of either experience with other bad actors
Thats a fair accusation. Theres often a lot of bad faith in these communications, so if you are coming from a place of good faith and are here to learn, I apologize, and I’ve added a bunch of history links to my original comment, so you can interpret the history yourself.
Thank you for adding all of that information to your original post. I will read through it!
Did you watch the video I linked you below?
I’m sorry, I don’t see a video link.
Just to be clear, Hamas does not want to eradicate the Jews. That is a myth propagated by Israel.
Hamas wants to eliminate Israel, by which they mean they want Israel replaced by an Arab-majority state in which both Jews and Arabs live. (Hamas want the return of 4 million Palestinian refugees to Israel/Palestine, which would make it an Arab-majority state.)
Furthermore, they have indicated they are open to negotiating a Two-State solution.
I don’t think it makes any sense to portray Hamas as unreasonable for wanting Arabs to control the whole land (from the river to the sea) when Israel want the same thing for Jews.
Why does Hamas get to say they want to eradicate Israel as a state and have Arab-majority control over the region, but Israel doesn’t get to say they want to control the entire region? What makes who correct to say that in either case?
Because Palestine is a multifaith, multicultural country and Israel is a colonial foothold & apartheid that is actively and systemically trying to erase both Palestine and Palestinians.
Resistance is justified, oppression is not.
Your confusing a state with a people.
Hama’s want to stop Israel (the state) from existing as they occupy of their territory, and make them live in internment camps.
Israel wants to stop the Palestinian people from existing, because they are an inconvenience.
Because Israel set up an apartheid state. If they had set about building a representative democracy that included a constitutional right of return for Jews nobody would have had a problem. Instead they want to own all this land and oppress the people who live there.
Either that’s a legitimate goal or it isn’t. I don’t think it is.
but Israel doesn’t get to say they want to control the entire region?
What do you mean Israel doesn’t “get” to say that?
Israel does say that, and Israel does control the entire region, and almost every Western power allows them to.
I guess I meant to ask why is it morally okay for Palestinians to want to do that, but not morally ok for Israelis to want to do that. Is it because Israel is an apartheid, ethnostate?
Palestinians want the right to return from where they were ethnically cleansed, Israel wants to maintain a Jewish majority state.
Israel is saying they want to destroy Hamas which is the government of Gaza.
And they are saying they want to control the region. They call it Greater Israel.
I just want to briefly make one point because I think most of the important points have been very well covered by others already.
What’s terrorism and what’s freedom fighters is determined by history. By the same standards that Hamas are being called terrorists, you could easily make an argument that 1910s Irish republicans, black South Africans under apartheid, and British suffragettes (not to be confused with suffragists) could easily be considered terrorists. Innocent civilians were killed by all these groups, but looking back on it today we almost universally say they were in the right, because they were fighting for their groups to receive rights denied to them by the ruling class. Their methods weren’t always as perfectly clean as we might ideally want, but the primary target was always someone oppressing them in some way. And right now and for the last half century+, Israel have been oppressing the Palestinian people.
1910s Irish republicans,
Wait really? I thought terrorism was more of a Troubles tactic.
The brits set up a giant military garrison in northern Ireland called the Plantation of Ulster in the 1600s, and used it to turn nearly the entire population of Ireland into slaves, and project english military might onto Ireland and colonize it for hundreds of years. They have always labelled resistance to their imperialist project as “terrorism”.
The british army should absolutely be the ones labelled as terrorists, not the ones opposing them.
It is rather ironic that all he fighting the Irish did, blowing UK’s corpo assets turned out to be the most effective one.
I actually deliberately avoided mentioning the Troubles because I wanted to bring up cases where everyone today could fairly uniformly agree that we were discussing freedom fighters more than terrorists. Too many today would still say that the Provisional IRA were the bad guys (or at the very least that they were “as bad as” the other side). But the point I wanted to make was how given enough time, even terroristic actions can end up being viewed on the whole as coming from the “good guys”, if their cause is viewed as just.
I could also have mentioned American revolutionaries.
Blowing up money changers offices is terrorrism?
The good guys are the citizens who want none of this.
The bad guys are the citizens who want all of this, and the military personal behind the weapons, and the generals calling the shots.
Same as it ever was.
Edit: Lemmy.ml disagreed and nobody was surprised 🙀
This simplistic one size fits all argument falls flat when one side is being occupied and ethnically cleansed by the other side. It implies that Hamas is the “bad guy” and all other occupied Palestinians are the “good guy,” and it implies that non-military Israeli settlers are the “‘good guy.” But the truth is that the great majority of adult Israelis are militant settler-colonizers; and that Palestinians have the legal right under UN law to struggle against their occupiers by any means necessary, including armed struggle; and that Israel, as an occupier, has no right to “self defense.”
The good guys are the citizens
I’m going to have to stop you right there, because the Palestinians are not the citizens of any state: they are a people being occupied, apatheided, and genocided by the state of Israel. So there’s a “very, very simple truth” for you.
Oh my goodness would you look at that it’s lemmy.ml again
Bye 👋
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out 👋
Sees lemmy.world
Sees weird .ML obsession and conflation of victims fighting oppressors with their oppressors
Yeah, not surprised.
It’s kinda funny how fediverse servers are kinda akin to countries. USonians see someone from a country on the “countries of concern” list, and instantly assume every single person from that country is sneaky, lying, acting in bad faith, or insert whatever other adjective here.
We don’t or shouldn’t make that same mistake. There are good people on every fediverse server, and we shouldn’t blanket demonize whole groups like racist colonizer ideology does.
When you can’t support your own arguments, you could of course just acknowledge this or even just not comment at all instead of lashing out at those who can.
It is particularly disgusting when your arguments serve to obscure genocide.
thank you for telling me I should block you.
That’s your own mess lol
Can we please block .world already?
You want to defederate from the largest Lemmy instance, the poster child, and the mascot of Lemmy? Good luck. They are Lemmy now.
Don’t care. If I gave a shit about the biggest instance because it has the most users, then I would have stayed on Reddit which has orders of magnitudes more users and to put it in the linked comment’s words, they still are link aggregators in the the commenter thinks .world “are” Lemmy. The whole damn point of federation is your instance is not locked into what the biggest instance wants to do.
What does your both-sidesing accomplish here? Are you trying to say that Palestine’s resistance to colonialism isn’t justified?
If so, then you’re doing this gandhi quote, but for the palestinian resistance.
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