Israel has over 2M Arab citizens. An Arab supreme court Justice and one of the most liberal human rights laws anywhere. This just isn't true.
Palestinians in the occupied territories are not citizens but that is due to the fact that these territories aren't a part of Israel. This is bad but also leaves an opening to a Palestinian state in the future.
Most of the Palestinians who don't live in Israel left after the independence war. This war was started by Palestinians who were unhappy with the division of the land. They lost and some ran off. Those who stayed got full citizenship.
Those who ran can't come back. This is sad but understandable. To be fair, many Jews lived in Arab countries prior to the formation of Israel. They can't go back either and also lost all of their possessions when they ran.
The right of return is specifically aimed for Jews since Israel is defined as the homeland of the Jewish people. Yes, it's a problematic law but a special case, it's the exception not the rule.
> You're right. Israel was at war with Palestinians long before Hamas came to be, and made no effort to coexist with them under a system of segregation. Their actions are better described as 'genocide'.
Nonsense.
Israelis co-existed with the Arab populace. Local Arab leaders wrote congratulatory letters to the Israeli government after the 1967 6 day war. There were violent incidence and discrimination for sure. But also amazing co-existence. Famously, the Jews in Haifa stopped the local Arab population from running in the independence war and guaranteed their safety.
There is no segregation in Israel. Some cities are Jewish and some are Arab. Some are mixed e.g. Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel-Aviv/Jaffa etc. are all huge mixed cities. It's illegal to discriminate based on race/religion/gender or sexual orientation. Does it happen? Yes. Do people sue and win? Also yes.
> > mass murder of civilians.
> At least 14,212 Palestinians and 2,746 Israelis have been killed by someone from the other side since 2000. - https://ifamericansknew.org/stat/deaths.html
You're mixing between the occupied territories and Israel. Jews were killed mostly in terror attacks which included MANY suicide bombings during those years. Retaliation took many forms but this is war. Notice children got killed in both sides.
I 100% agree the occupation should stop. But the Hamas specifically places children in the line of fire to create these situations. E.g. just the other day the Hamas claimed Israel killed 500 people in a hospital. Turns out it was a misfired missile they tried to shoot at Israel. They did that a lot over the past few years.
Israel makes a lot of effort to minimize civilian casualties. But how would you fight against an enemy that puts on suicide vests and blows up busses en-mass?
That enemy is driven by an extremist religious dogma and believes that children who die are rewarded in heaven. They use children as human shields and have no moral compass.
I agree Israel should do better. But it's not a simple task.
> I assume you're of the opinion that the Israeli deaths were due to unprovoked attacks, and the Palestinian deaths were justified retaliation, albeit with regrettable collateral damage?
I want a peaceful solution. So do 80-90 percent of Palestinians and Israelis. There are the crazy people on both sides who keep destroying that chance for peace.
Making the rhetoric more extreme and supporting these psychos (like the Hamas) is damaging to both sides.
The depopulation of Palestine was no accident. The Zionist movement sought to create a Jewish state in a territory where Jews were a minority. On the eve of the Nakba, Jews constituted 30 percent of the population and owned 7 percent of the land. Within months, they forged a state on 78 percent of the territory where they flipped the demographic ratio from 30:70 Jews to Arabs to 90:10. To think such dramatic demographic change happens by accident—only coincidently suiting decades old Zionist aims—is dangerous naiveté. Such things happen only by design. — https://www.thedailybeast.com/nakba-denials-must-be-condemne...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Natio...
Look, I get it, you want a country of your own, and consider some Palestinian displacement a necessary consequence. Can't make an omelette etc. But people would respect Israel a lot more if it just admitted it's a Jewish ethno-state borne of conquest, instead of peddling excuses and rationalizations how they just want to ensure democracy, and expelling the previous inhabitants of what is now their land is just an unfortunate coincidence that is not their fault.
Dude. I live next to Jaffa and it is 100% an Arab city. Not "depopulated". Neither is Haifa etc.
We can go back to 48 in which case we can start talking about the staggering amount of death dished out by both sides. It's tragic but doesn't help anyone. It also predates modern law and democracy in Israel. It predates human rights laws etc.
There was a large amount of immigration to Israel in the 40s as Jews fled the Holocaust. Once borders opened up they moved in and also fled Arab countries where they were quickly deemed the enemy. People lost everything there too. I'm not saying the Palestinians aren't a victim here, but don't pretend they weren't an aggressor either. This was a bad situation with victims and aggressors on both sides.
> Such things happen only by design.
This is nonsense and speculative. It's inconsistent with the facts that some communities remained whole while others were indeed chased away.
> People would respect Israel a lot more if it just admitted it's a Jewish ethno-state borne of conquest, instead of peddling excuses and rationalizations how they just want to ensure democracy, and expelling the previous inhabitants of what is now their land is just an unfortunate coincidence that is not their fault.
This is ridiculous. People would most certainly not respect Israel more if it made such a claim.
Why doesn't the USA make this exact claim for native Americans? Or really, any country that exists in the Americas? Australia? Hell, the UKs crown is German ruling over Danes.
If the unfortunate coincidence would have gone the other way it's a good chance that Jews would no longer exist. I'm sorry for the suffering of the Palestinian people. I truly am. But when that happened instead of talking to Israel the surrounding countries ganged up and attacked multiple times. The only reason Israel has these territories to begin with is that 3 armies surrounded Israel and attacked it together.
After the 1948 Palestine War, most of its Arab population fled or were expelled, and the city became part of then newly established state of Israel, and was unified into a single municipality with Tel Aviv in 1950. Today, Jaffa is one of Israel's mixed cities, with approximately 37% of the city being Arab. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa
Yes, it's a single municipality, my kids go to school there. Tel Aviv grew to be bigger than Jaffa we have huge towers here and Jaffa is an ancient city so you can't build up there.
The benefit of being a part of Tel Aviv means it has the same municipal services and advantages of being a part of the richest municipality in Israel.
You wrote "I live next to Jaffa and it is 100% an Arab city. Not "depopulated"" The wiki states it is only 37% Arab, and was depopulated, via expulsion. I guess you're trying to stretch the fact that the expulsion was not permanently 100% effective into alleging it never happened at all.
I highly doubt the 37% number though. I'm guessing it includes new construction on the outskirts as Arabic is the main language around in the street and in most shops. Looking at the Hebrew page there are more than 46,400 Arabs living in Tel-Aviv/Jaffa compared to 414,200 Jews most of whom live in the Tel Aviv region. Some Jews live in Jaffa but it's still very much an Arab city.
I agree very much, with one caveat though: Hamas isn't claiming anything about being "the only democracy in the Middle East", it doesn't export military surveillance tech (to my knowledge), it doesn't receive substantial support from my government. So while I agree that with friends like Hamas, you don't really need enemies, I just can't get worked up about that. They do what they do and what I resent and stand against -- but they don't involve me. (the right-wing government of) Israel very much tries to involve me, by proxy. To Hamas, I'm just an infidel; to Likud, I'm an useful idiot in spe. They claim we're similar, playing the same game in the same ball park, and thereby force me to refute them.
E.g. at the moment Israel is still on a "neutral side" in the Russia/Ukraine conflict which is insane.
I hope this is a temporary thing. I hope that Israel can leave this dark period and be more worthy.
It has to! Israel cannot give in to the very aspirations of antisemites, but it also must not become like its persecutors.
As a German, I cannot even begin to say what I feel, but it's a lot. It's a tangent, but I have to think of the Israeli movie "Walk on Water" (which I love, as kitschy as it may be), and which kinda sums up what I'm struggling to express. I sincerely wish Israel to be safe and sound and something to be proud of (or jealous of), and that includes the "heart", not just the territory. Antisemites aren't scared of Israeli atrocities, they're smug about them, they love to be able to point to them. And I wish there was nothing to point to. That wouldn't make antisemitism go away, but it would put Israel on better footing, I genuinely believe that.
There is a Chinese proverb, "he who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount". I think this applies to the jingoists of both sides (and certainly Netanyahu), they have nowhere to go to except to climb even higher. But as you said, most "normal people" dragged into any conflict are really just normal people and don't wish harm on anyone. People need to find a way to talk to each other without their "leaders". Keep your head up, and thanks for speaking out.
It can't as long as support for (and opposition to) the forces that are dependent on keeping Israel in that dark period is conflated with support for (and opposition to) Israel.
That's not the only barrier, but it is a sufficient one.
Palestinians were expelled from their land based on their race, they cannot get Israeli citizenship despite having lived there for centuries, while a Jew from New York can get that citizenship by virtue of his race.
> Calling Israels war with Hamas Apartheid is utter nonsense.
You're right. Israel was at war with Palestinians long before Hamas came to be, and made no effort to coexist with them under a system of segregation. Their actions are better described as 'genocide'.
> mass murder of civilians.
At least 14,212 Palestinians and 2,746 Israelis have been killed by someone from the other side since 2000. - https://ifamericansknew.org/stat/deaths.html
I assume you're of the opinion that the Israeli deaths were due to unprovoked attacks, and the Palestinian deaths were justified retaliation, albeit with regrettable collateral damage?