It's an insanely complicated mess going back a hundred years. Trying to figure out "who started it?" is impossible because at this point we're so far from the domain of applicability of "who started it?" that it isn't a coherent or well defined question any more.
After Ariel Sharon went full false-flag terrorist in Lebanon, again it’s hard to describe these actions as “reactive”. They were very proactive in their assassination campaigns up to and including their attempts to kill an American ambassador.
The sniper killings of civilians throwing rocks in recent years really precipitated the current (can you call it a third Intifada?)
It’s no easy task saying who started what, nor can we really consider it a cold conflict. It’s constantly simmering, knife attack here, sniper shots there. It’s just going on to keep going.
1. Indefinitely blockading the Gaza Strip by sea and air thus not allowing it to trade normally with foreign countries
2. In the West Bank, applying separate legal systems to Jews (who have Israeli citizenship due to their ethnicity) and Arabs (who have no way to become Israeli citizens)
3. Continuing to expand Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank (remember no country recognizes the West Bank as belonging to Israel, not even Israel themselves, so this is one of the most unambiguously illegal things according to international law that you can possibly imagine).
4. Generally restricting the freedom of movement and property rights of non-Jewish civilians in the West Bank (which, again, does not actually belong to Israel). Something like 99% of building permits in Area C go to Jews only.
Does all this justify killing innocent civilians in random parts of Israel proper? No, I don’t think it does. But it’s all still horrible. I wanted to point it out because a standard pro-Israel talking point is that 1948 is so far in the past that wanting to fix it is akin to trying to evict all whites from former Native American land in the US. Be that as it may, Israel is STILL doing plenty of harm TODAY and could at least stop that much.
It should be noted that this didn't just happen, it was in response to threat of violence. Israel wants gaza to stop shooting them with rockets, so they tried to prevent them from importing things that could be used as weapons.
I mean, maybe you could argue the blockade is heavy handed and the military benefit didn't justify the other harm it caused. But its not that different from other forms of ecconomic sanctions used by countries when they want to do something but not actually go to war.
> In the West Bank, applying separate legal systems to Jews (who have Israeli citizenship due to their ethnicity) and Arabs (who have no way to become Israeli citizens)
My understanding is that under the geneva convention it would be a warcrime to apply israeli civilian law to the arabs who live in the west bank. So its not like that is totally in the hands of israel.
(I agree that 3 & 4 are fucked up and pretty impossible to defend)
Not exactly complete peace, but the closest thing ever, that's why they called it a world war. Just like World War I had been the "war to end all wars" since more people than ever were aware and truly wanted a future benefit from such an exercise, even though it didn't really work perfectly either.
You sometimes have to ask yourself how do you know what it was like in 1948?
Was your late father a World War II combat veteran and able to tell you all about it first-hand over a period of decades?
Or at the opposite end of the spectrum among the vast majority of backgrounds whose World War II veteran ancestors or even regular civilian ancestors are many generations removed by now and there was never as much chance for direct dissemination of first-hand recollections? I would estimate that most people today have not ever met a World War II veteran, much less a World War I veteran like so many grandfathers were when I was growing up.
I accept that type of legacy is informed more so from only one side of the conflict. So it has always made me interested in further understanding those having different perspectives over the decades. And more aware of the natural difficulty of grasping the feelings of those who were on the other side at the time.
One thing about World War II, it was big and it ended with a bang. Real big in both respects. Everybody knows that.
The War to End All Wars wasn't officially upgraded to full World War I status until after World War II got underway. Sequels call for that type of nomenclature.
But what most people worldwide fail to remember now, is that WWII was so big and so deadly that there were only three (3) kinds of people remaining after World War II was over.
1. Those that won World War II.
2. Those that lost World War II.
3. Those that were saved by the ones that won World War II.
That's it.
Everyone else was killed.
Even those at the time having no knowledge that WWII even took place, were still saved by the victors or they would have been cruelly overcome by the more-inherently-violent losing aggressors had they prevailed. More cruelly than anything seen since, although some things are coming closer as memories continue to fade. But on a much smaller scale for now.
In this respect it was the least diverse that humanity had ever been, kind of an unrepeatable bubble of world peace where all everyone can do is pick up the pieces of what's left afterward. So many things were completely destroyed never to be the same again. Everyone has been repressed in some way ever since, with different paths to resolve the devastation but no one could ever realistically expect to "recover" what has been lost forever. But after such a devastating four years of intense combat, huge majorities everywhere were enthusiastic about working together to rebuild rather than fight each other any more. Survivors were so damn lucky and peace was simply worth it so damn much.
Well naturally as time marched on we are all now mostly mixed decendants of those 3 surviving archetypes, nothing that came before really matters as much after WWII than it did before, but difficulty has always arisen among those who could not realize & accept this type of thing. With nuclear proliferation ever since increasing the probability that almost all past human accomplishment would be more fully destroyed if worldwide conflict were to get underway again.
This is how people, some of whose ancestors were not even directly involved in WWII, "lose" World War II in the 21st century.
You lose the memory of it.
Either way the only thing that could ever obliterate the relative world peace that existed from 1946 and beyond, regardless of how that imperfect peace has been forgotten and steadily faded, would be World War III.
And you have to ask yourself who is most likely to actually want to start World War III, should they be stopped, and how would that be accomplished?
Now applying these generic observations to the Palestinians & Israelis today, as well as the Arabs & Jews worldwide, these are peoples that were largely saved by the victors of WWII more so than participating as active combatants. They all should not forget this although I think a lack of appreciation here is basically what's happening when you look at it.
It's not much different than it was in the 1970's during the Arab-Israeli Peace negotiations, and even back before the 1967 conflicts.
The ongoing Cold War was much more ominous and threatening to the entire world, but it was because the governments of US & NATO countries, and the government of the Soviets truly hated each other. This was in contrast to the majority of regular American & Russian citizens who were both fundamentally very similar, having no historical record of animosity, just mostly possessing worthwhile national pride on both sides without prejudice.
OTOH it looks like the majority of Arabs & Jews have hated each other religiously, enough for it to be a source of strife since before anyone living was ever born, and at any one time during recent centuries that was the case and it had been true for centuries before that. It was the modern governments that wanted peace more than the regular citizens, they did the best they could but since then it has been up to the citizens on both sides to pick up the baton and carry it forward into the 21st century. Governments can do no more, it has been up to the citizens themselves to each fully halt all violent aggression & retaliation on their own initiative more & more through time if they desire any kind of peace.
They will have to settle for whatever they can accomplish for themselves, governments have not been able to solve this for centuries even when they try.
And it looks like the governments haven't even been trying for a number of years, those in power might even hate each other more than the opposing citizens do now or there would not have been nearly as many casualties on both sides.
Usually the critique is that civilians are targeted.
If one is an activist, a group commits atrocities and there's no private business related to them, then one sits and do nothing?
The people I see protesting against Israeli invasion of Gaza I failed to see protesting Hamas brutal and inhumane attacks weeks earlier. It seems to me they were silent.
I'm having a really hard time understanding the logic of this kind of activism. It seems to me ideology driven, not humanitarian.
What change would the protests do?
Directly after the attacks the government was overwhelmingly in support of Israel. People do not protest when what they want is already happening.
Adding a disclaimer like "I don't support the 9/11 attacks on WTC but the invasion of Iraq is bad" is akin to subduing to a "have you stopped beating your wife" question.
Many male and female IDF soldiers died in the 7.10. ambush and some were kidnapped back to Gaza, some of them were killed due to very poor / lacking equipment provided by military (overconfidence in intelligence and border protection/monitoring).
The most powerful militaries in the world, and more than 12.000 civilians already dead, packed together tightly as in a prison with nowhere to flee bombs raining down on them.
I don't get why anyone can support that. No matter the pretext. History going back over 75 years with so much suffering on both sides, but death tolls magnitudes larger on the palestinian side. A side that was just mostly regular farmers before the first Nakba but slowly became radicalised.
This conflict will surely radicalise the rest. Is that an active strategy? According to leaks in the Intercept it actually is: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...
Hamas was created as an active divide and conquer strategy.
Regular farmers who were asked by their Arab "brothers" to step aside while they eradicate the Jews. Surprised Pikachu face when that plan didn't work out and the result was that the farmers couldn't go back.
The same "brothers" now tell them to not leave the Gaza strip (and enforce it by blocking the one non-Israel-controlled exit), and to rather die as meat shield for Hamas. Priorities, priorities...
The "Meat shield" disinfo is in the grand scheme of things nothing but a gross excuse for the extreme casualties, just like the 40 dead babies thing, or "cave complexes below every hospital" or other campaign PR like "we are doing it because of WMD's in iraq". It's excuses to dominate.
Most has been debunked if you follow independent media. But it seems most here doesn't. US media is highly pro war and for some reason peddles these lies over and over again like Iraq, Afghanistan or so many other wars.
Most people were just regular farmers. That you think a whole region were bloodthirsty barbarians really says more about the racism of american media than anything else.
Most people are regular families just living everywhere on earth throughout all times. That's the beauty of humans, but war campaigns vilifies people so we can dominate them to "protect" us.
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/12/Ga... cites al-Sisi:
> On Thursday, he said that Egypt was already hosting “nine million guests, as I call them, from many countries who came to Egypt for security and safety.”
> But the case of Gazans “is different”, he said, because their displacement would mean “the elimination of the (Palestinian) cause.”
That's "stay there, no matter what", al-Sisi could unilaterally open the Gazan border, after all. In plain English: Meat shield.
> Most people were just regular farmers. That you think a whole region were bloodthirsty barbarians really says more about the racism of american media than anything else.
First, I don't consume american media.
Second, most people in Mandatory Palestine were regular farmers, alright. The armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq were anything but.
2:1 civilian:Hamas ratio according to the IDF, with 5000 from Hamas dead and 10,000 civilians dead [0]; Gaza’s population is about half under 18 [1].
So if you figure deaths among civilians are random, then about 5,000 Gazans under 18 are dead.
[0] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...
[1] - https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206897328/half-of-gazas-popu...
From [0]:
>The Israeli military has not officially published any estimates of those killed.
> The AFP news agency first reported the Israeli assessment on Monday, citing a briefing for foreign media by senior Israeli military officials. Asked about reports that about 5,000 Hamas militants had been killed since October 7, one of the officials replied, according to AFP: “The numbers are more or less right.”
Help us out?
There is only one way to solve this, and that's by giving Palestinians a life that's worth living. Not by denying them basic rights. In the West Bank there are 40 checkpoins, nightly raids, 500-700 children who are detained every year. Military rule for Pals, civilian rule for settlers. So if a palestinian child throws a stone, he can get 10-20 years in prison, a settler? Nothing usually. We have 700,000 settlements built in West Bank in the past years.
All of this injustice will create the next group, even if the last hamas person is killed.
[1] In the current Gaza war, Israel is withholding water, food, medicines, and electricity for 2.1 mil. civilians, 1.1 mil children is against Geneva Conventions. It punishes civilians. And destroying the complete infrastructure of Gaza (hospitals, schools, universities, etc) will make Gaza uninhabitable, and that plus the genocidal language of Netanyahu and his cabinet (Netanyahu comparing palestinians to "Amalek", which the old testament says to destroy--their women, children, the babies; Gallant comparing them to human animals; Herzog saying there are no innocent people in Gaza, blaming the civilians as well)
More than in any other recent war. It's a grotesque display of war actual war crimes now excused by a torrent of fake stories that keeps getting debunked later like the one with "40 dead babies! Absolutely vile and inexcusable!
Don't spread misinformation that it's "just Hamas" that's targeted. It's everyone because they wan't to annex the whole region Risk style, it's bloody classic geopolitics backed by the worlds most powerful military.
Let that sink in, the worlds most powerful militaries have murdered over 8000 kids in the span of 2 months. The west is the moral low ground. We'll do anything for power, resources and money like so many wars before, like so many coups, death squads, and dictators propped up by us.
Hardliner Israeli settlers have been stealing private property for decades before oktober 7. while murdering youth on the borders of Palestine while cheering from luxurious well kept gardens.
I feel bad for all jews getting spearheaded in this very geopolitical conflict. Many if not most do no stand with the military regime currently at war with their neighbours.
Even if we assume that number is accurate.
Dead children dont neccesarily equal a war crime, it depends on context. E.g. if the children are combatants, not a war crime. If it was collateral damage, not a war crime (assuming that it wasnt reckless, there was a porportional military advantage, etc. lots of details here).
To be a war crime requires a bunch of stuff beyond just children dying.
To be clear, its still a tragedy.
> More than in any other recent war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%9... says more than 85,000 children have died in the yemen civil war, so that's obviously untrue that its more than any other recent war. And that was the first war i checked.
palestine-specific: https://bdsmovement.net/Act-Now-Against-These-Companies-Prof...
more general, a few of the companies profiteering around the work:
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycotts
another (sometimes more effective) approach is looking for ESG alternatives and encouraging your friends and family to the same. boycotts /can/ make a difference, but customer brand trends /will/ make a difference because profit margins and performance are in focus more than ever.
1. "Are you protesting X, why not Y and Z" boring rethoric, I will not even elaborate
2. "Cancelling your amazon account has no impact" well for crying out loud, what are they as an individual supposed to do, lobby the US State Department? Apart from direct action and writing on the Internet about it, not much you can do about a trillion dollar company.
3. "But what about hamas" You don't have to be pro-terrorist to recognise that Israel has attacked civilian targets indiscriminately, repeatedly bombed areas that it had declared safe for refugees, tallies civilian casualties together with military as "enemies killed", etc. It's frankly disgusting to think this can be in any way excused. This is not even to mention how hardliners like Bibi have themselves strengthened Hamas to sabotage the two-state solution.
Dang et al try hard to keep this forum as apolitical as possible and comments as such are definitely not helping.
That said, oct 7 was a clear escalation by hamas and was much more violent than what came before. Unsurprisingly that garnered a response.
"A people were ethnically cleansed from the lands" - From context you are probably referring to the Nakba, but you could just as equally be referring to the Jews being kicked out of Arab countries in the 40's and 50's. Or any number of other events for whichever side you prefer.
There's plenty of blood to go around in this conflict.
Why? Its not relavent to my argument and a full history of the conflict wouldn't fit in a hn comment. I'm sure wikipedia has a big timeline of events of this conflict.
I'm claiming your narrative of events could fit either side. Your narrative only mentioned ethnic cleansing once so i only need a single event to make it fit. There are sadly a number of events that probably fit the bill of ethnic cleansing so i picked the most famous one in the region. It doesnt matter how many so long as its at least one.
> (which by the way is after the nakba so the tit-for-tat theory doesn't hold up)
I did not claim that it was. I only claimed that both events fit your narrative of events.
> what does this have to do with Palestinians being ethnically cleansed?
Nothing? I didn't claim that it had anything to do with that.
> Are you justifying one for the other?
No. Obviously two wrongs don't make a right.
----
My claim is that your view of the conflict as "simple" makes no sense as a way to cast judgement on which side is right as the things you mention arguably happened to both sides. So if you think that justifies one side, than logically you should say the same thing about the other.
Unless you want to say both sides are wrong, which i suppose would be logically consistent.
Your argument is that my statement framing the current conflict in Palestine as "A people were ethnically cleansed from the lands they lived on for centuries and those people continue to be oppressed and subjugated till this day, not only denied to return back to the lands they were expelled from, but continue until now to be forcibly expelled from the small amounts they remain on" applies to either side. I charge that you haven't provided any evidence that it applies to the Jews. You bring an example of Jewish expulsion from other parts of the world after 1948 (which does not fit the full description of the statement anyway) but then admit that it has nothing to do with the Palestinian plight or the current conflict.
I believe the example i gave does fit. I understand from your post that you disagree but i can't figure out what specificly about it makes you think it doesn't fit. What is the part that isn't fitting?
Palestinians have some moral high ground with respect to the nekba, as it was a disproportionate escalation. Israel has the highground with respect to de facto power.
None of them can work until the Jews and Palestinians actually want to stop killing each other.
They are currently stuck in a prisoners dilemma.
Who knows, if you are an optimist, maybe the destruction of hamas will be through enough that a successor accepting of current boarders comes to power.
This is the only way I can imagine things moving forward.
A few months before the Hamas attack, the Israeli minister of finances, Bezalel Smotrich (who also is tasked with the responsibility for administrating the occupied West Bank) said: "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people":
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-minister-s...
I am horrified by the Hamas attack, shocked and sad, but not surprised.
https://twitter.com/mabintou/status/1717987416252817891
Did you know, that the British, during WWII, bombarded German settlements, holding mostly women, children and elderly, on purpose ("Area bombing directive")? In Germany they still call it: "Bombenterror gegen die Zivilbevölkerung", or, "Bombing terror against the civilian population". Here is the Wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive
I do not take any side in this conflict. I think, both sides are monsters. But feeling this way, I can not tolerate one sided commenting, that paints one side as "reasonable" while not accepting what the other side has to endure.
Do you often punch more than 6000 children to death when you have a fist-fight?
I'm being glib, but only in response to your glibness. You're using the classic argument: "It's complicated, and nobody is totally ethical, so I would suggest not taking any action. Ultimately, this benefits my side, but I'm trying to obscure the fact that I'm taking sides so I have the illusion of objectivity."
If you actually cared about human life over choosing sides, you would not be talking about "who started it." You would be talking about how we can end it.
This time, in fact, it's clearer than ever that American citizens have the capacity to make a change. Biden started out as rah rah for Israel and has faced a revolt within his administration from people who have had enough, as well as sustained protests from the outside.
If the former - if you are generally protesting commercial services for the military - then there are a lot of companies you need to boycott, before you get around to Amazon. Amazon is a small fish in the sea.
If the latter, then cancelling your Amazon account is pretty small potatos to protest the Israeli attack on Hamas. And I would have to ask: have you also protested the Hamas attack on Israel? While the whole situation is a mess, Hamas definitely started this particular fist-fight.