I think they are saying that the composition of users of these apps skews one way rather than the other due to pre existing stances, and the fact that the apps are not available in some markets.
As a result, certain views are prioritised as a byproduct of the fact that all modern social media apps have an algorithm that shows you more of what you already agree with, in order to maximise ad profits.
I think the notion that the vast chunk of Twitter or TikTok had a pre existing stance on Israel/Palestine before Oct 7 is kind of silly, imo? Before this I could scroll Twitter without seeing anything about Israel or Palestine for... idk. Weeks, months at a time. I'll maybe see one thing on Palestine being oppressed, usually about West Bank settlements, from the one or two people who happen to be Palestinian. Now I literally cannot avoid it whenever I open either app.
I really struggle to believe anyone beyond a small minority even thought about Palestine or Israel before Oct 7.
The US quashed a ceasefire vote in the UN, so that the carnage can continue. It is monstrous evil. The US is now providing bunker buster bombs as well, which are being used. We see the videos and photos today of that.
Gaza shares a border with Egypt; Egypt keeps that border closed.
> It is monstrous evil.
I agree, Israel is doing horrible things. That doesn't excuse the hypocrisy of the Arab states that are using the suffering of the Palestinians as a political tool against Israel. There's plenty of blame to go around.
They believe that Israel would like to drive out the refugees and seize their land, essentially putting an end to Palestinians in Israel. They believe that's what happened when Israel was founded and subsequently - there are still refugee camps, and a priority of Palestinians is the 'right of return' to their former lands - and with recent Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and specifically with Israeli actions in the West Bank since Oct 7.
Essentially, they think refugees will never be allowed back.
That doesn't mean they care, but without that issue resolved, they won't accept refugees. Also, probably they don't want to take on care and feeding of millions, and to simultaneously relieve Israel, their enemy, of that burden.
By way of contrast: Poland took over 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, despite the fact that most probably won't go back to Ukraine, and that depopulating eastern Ukraine helps Russia.
I don't think they care nearly as much as they say they do. I think Hamas doubts it too; one reason for the attack was to stop Arab reconciliation with Israel that may have left Palestinians in the cold.
The idea that they would care seems like a bit of prejudice - Americans and Europeans don't care about every refugee either, no matter where they're from or what they've done, especially these days.
My point is that using this argument for the Palestinian issue is intellectually dishonest.
> That doesn't mean they care, but without that issue resolved, they won't accept refugees.
I find this dubious. Under any reasonable humanitarian perspective, a Gazan would benefit by immigrating to most other countries.
The Arab nations around Israel (with the sort of exception of Jordan) can't even bother allowing 3rd generation Palestinian descendants to naturalize. In some, such as Lebanon, this not only precludes political rights, but results in all sorts of benefit losses relative to what others born and raised in the country would receive.
That's a pretty strong sign of "not caring" from a humanitarian perspective.
You also declare that Israel is the enemy of Muslim nations, which it is not, unless forced by hostilities explicitly declared by the other side.
If you mean 'enemy in warfare' then no, they aren't fighting a war directly. But by any other definition of enemy .... In addition, there's Iran (Persian, not Arab).
If they aren't enemies, what do you call them? Allies? Friendly neighbors?
Israel as a state was created solely by following agreements proposed by external parties (UK and UN in particular), and even then mostly on lands that were legitimately bought or were not legally owned by anyone (aside from possibly Ottoman empire in bulk) mostly for the reason of being badlands. It then had aggressive war foisted upon it within 48 hours of creation, which it has then won. Any territorial gains for Israel since then have only happened as a result of defensive wars, and a whole bunch of those territories were given back, including the Sinai peninsula. Gaza strip would also have been given back, except Egypt flatly refused to have anything to do with it (I wonder why).
Israel doesn't have any a priori hostility to Muslim nation-states (or any others, for that matter). You can freely practice Islam (or any other religion, including none at all (with some stupid caveats if you are actually a Jew - not a restriction, but practical incoveniences)) inside of Israel, Arabic is the second official state language.
So, unless a nation-state goes forward and declares, by their own volition, that they want to kill Jews and obliterate Israel, or undertakes practical hostile actions - it's not an enemy of Israel, and Israel would indeed gladly be a friendly neighbour (be it in the literal sense, or planetary), trading, cultural, tourist, scientific and any other kind of partner. At worst, I dare say, a disinterested observer - though it is hard to imagine, given the extroverted and warmly Levantine character.
In any case, if Arab states are (understandably) refusing Palestinian refugees due to concerns of political stability, why not just say so, instead of blaming solely Israel?
The population was small, up to about 5% of the region during the Ottomans (after heavy losses due to multiple Black Plague outbreaks), but the reason that specific area was chosen (as opposed to alternatives) was because there was already a community of Jews there.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of the area was uninhabited swamps until the 1940s and huge numbers of people died from malaria every year before resettling Jews completely changed the local terrain.
Look up details about the the late 1880s and the distinctions marking the difference between the Old Yishuv and New Yishuv.
Political aspirations of the Old Yishuv were pretty low due to the fact that they were broke as shit and depended on handouts from abroad, whereas New Yishuv resettlers came with money and dreams.
The biggest problem I find with the collective understanding people have of the conflict is that people largely think nothing of note happened before 1900 but the prior history determines a ton of why later decisions were made that people attribute to the start of conflict.
Ultimately, the security needs of Israel need to be balanced against the rights of the Palestinians, and as it stands, the Palestinians have no negotiating power, so they get nothing. If politicians around the world made it clear you cannot be 'the only democracy in the middle east' while having millions of people subject to military law, I expect the Palestinians would have enough negotiating room to force some kind of reasonable settlement.
History is complicated, yes, but it is how we got into this situation and everybody's idea of a solution is based on their preferred version of history.
> Are Palestinians citizens of Israel, or is it a foreign country
> that Israeli settlers are invading
League of Nations (and UN) mandates can not change the laws of the lands they administer - then can only issue temporary orders (usually limited to three years). So British orders are not valid in the holy land today. Likewise, military occupation (Jordanian, Israeli) also can not change the laws but rather can issue temporary orders. So the law of the land in the West Bank even today remains Ottoman law, modulo "temporary" Israeli military orders that are actually renewed (for the most part) every three years or so.
Ottoman law since the 1850's stated that anyone who settles land (houses, farms, factories) owns it - Muslims and Jews and Christians alike. Their goal was to increase the population of the near-desolate holy land (which they called Greater Syria), and collect more taxes. Those laws still stand today, for better or for worse. There is nothing "illegal" about Israeli citizens building homes in the West Bank. What would be illegal would be if the Israeli state were to transfer its citizens - international law is binding on states, not citizens. But citizens moving is not banned by any international law, and settlement of the West Bank is actually encouraged by the laws in the West Bank dating over 150 years, because nobody since has had the authority to change those laws.
I was thinking the other day, why doesn't Israel offer the west bank to Jordan?
I think that by permitting, providing security and infrastructure for, and aiding settlement activity, Israel demonstrates a lack of interest in actually passing off occupation. Because of the settlements already there today, it would be already very difficult to maintain the rights and security of Israeli citizens who live in the west bank without the military occupation.
So while I think your argument about Ottoman law is mostly sophistic (why is Ottoman law in 'force'? Because Israel has not allowed self-determination) I think it's really hard to argue that Israel has demonstrated any commitment to ending the occupation: rather, the settlement program makes the occupation a permanent necessity, even if the Israelis elected a government that had ending the occupation as a number one issue on the agenda.
> I was thinking the other day, why doesn't Israel offer the west bank to Jordan?
> I think that by permitting, providing security and infrastructure for, and aiding settlement activity, Israel demonstrates a lack of interest in actually passing off occupation. Because of the settlements already there today, it would be already very difficult to maintain the rights and security of Israeli citizens who live in the west bank without the military occupation.
> So while I think your argument about Ottoman law is mostly sophistic (why is Ottoman law in 'force'? Because Israel has not allowed self-determination) I think it's really hard to argue that Israel has demonstrated any commitment to ending the occupation: rather, the settlement program makes the occupation a permanent necessity, even if the Israelis elected a government that had ending the occupation as a number one issue on the agenda.
You need to understand that these organizations are for the benefit of a future state called Palestine, not for the benefit of the people who would live in that state. The people - and their suffering - are a means to an end to establish that state. I know that is very difficult for Westerners to comprehend, as Western states are _for_ the citizens.
I think this is really wrongheaded on a couple of counts. Because Israel as a state 'for the jews' is an ethnostate, it must keep a jewish demographic majority. So long as that is the case, there is no way for Palestinians to have rights without having their own state.
Second, that suffering is directly caused by Israel. You can't blame the political projects of the Palestinians for the actions of the IDF.
Thirdly, what form of self-determination would actually be acceptable to Israel? Would it include the banning of settlement activity, and the settlers having to live under Palestinian law? Would it include palestinian's right to border control? Or a military? The reason why people call Gaza a prison is because the Palestinians had absolutely no ability to leave, import, or export, because it did not have control over its own borders. That is obviously just as intolerable as an explicit military occupation.
> Because Israel as a state 'for the jews' is an ethnostate, it must keep a jewish demographic majority. So long as that is the case, there is no way for Palestinians to have rights without having their own state.
> Second, that suffering is directly caused by Israel. You can't blame the political projects of the Palestinians for the actions of the IDF.
> Thirdly, what form of self-determination would actually be acceptable to Israel? Would it include the banning of settlement activity, and the settlers having to live under Palestinian law? Would it include palestinian's right to border control? Or a military?
> The reason why people call Gaza a prison is because the Palestinians had absolutely no ability to leave, import, or export, because it did not have control over its own borders. That is obviously just as intolerable as an explicit military occupation.
Yes, but the kind of blockade that Israel employs around Gaza would be considered an act of war by essentially every state on earth.
I think this idea you have that Palestinians are oppressed by basically everybody except Israel is totally insane, and comes across as strategic blindness rather than honest conviction. If you just go to Hebron, you have to be pretty deluded not to see oppression, even if you're unwilling to think through the fact that Israel having defacto power in the West Bank entails that the rights of Palestinians are being denied by Israel, and it's immaterial whether that's by commission or omission, even if you're going to ignore any of the many ways in which the Palestinians rights are regularly infringed by Israeli security forces.
> You cannot be “the only democracy in the Middle East” and use the excuse that the other countries are making you be authoritarian despots.
If you can find a body to administer the West Bank, I'd love to hear your suggestion. The obvious bodies who have been tasked with developing this authority, such as the PA, have proven themselves time and time again of being incapable of such.
You have to go back to the 4th century, and earlier, for Judaism to have a significant presence in Palestine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
Note: The original European Zionist Jews called their own project settler colonialism back then, and they were opposed by Orthodox Jews, at the time.
You'll also note that League of Nations (and UN) mandates can not change the laws of the lands they administer - then can only issue temporary orders (usually limited to three years). So British orders are not valid in the holy land today. Likewise, military occupation (Jordanian, Israeli) also can not change the laws but rather can issue temporary orders. So the law of the land in the West Bank even today remains Ottoman law, modulo "temporary" Israeli military orders that are actually renews (for the most part) every three years or so.
The demographic numbers I cited came straight from that wikipedia article, and they do not agree with your "nearly-empty" claim.
I don't know where you are getting this from, it isn't true. The League of Nations Palestine Mandate [0] granted the UK "full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate" (Article 1). You will not find any limitation preventing them from making permanent laws within it.
The UK imposed its own legal system on the Mandate, as Article 1 allowed. It ended up mostly abolishing Ottoman law, although it retained it in certain areas (especially family law, inheritance, religious affairs and real estate). The laws it imposed were not necessarily those of the metropolitan UK – the criminal code was largely copied from colonial India. The starting point of Israeli law is Israel's decision at the time of independence to continue the British Mandate's legal system, until such time as the Knesset decided to alter things. It wasn't until 1977, for example, that Israel completely replaced the British-imposed penal code with its own. Palestinian law has the same fundamental starting point, although with the added complexity of being overlaid with Egyptian and Jordanian legislation (in Gaza and the West Bank, respectively), and then a mixture of Israeli and Palestinian legislation laid on top of that.
As far as I’m aware, the reason why the UK retained Ottoman real estate law in Mandatory Palestine was pragmatic rather than due to any international obligation that they do so-all the existing land titles were based on Ottoman law, changing them to a different system of real estate law would have involved a lot of work for little practical benefit, so the British decided to leave the existing Ottoman system in place. But, if they’d felt strongly enough about it, they could have done otherwise
Not saying you're necessarily wrong, but I find this hard to believe because the majority of the area was not uninhabited swamps back during the time of the Roman Empire, so why would it have become uninhabited swamps at some point between then and the 1940s? Of course terrain does change over time, but I've never heard of the Levant turning into swamps in post-Roman times.
https://www.amazon.com/Zionism-Creation-Society-Studies-Hist...
For a couple of hundred years prior there were tens of thousands of Jews in the region, including at one point 30,000 counted just in Safed by the end of the 16th century.
Also keep in mind that in 1800 populations were an order of magnitude smaller than they are now.
Citation needed. Nearly 2M people called Palestine their home in the 1940s, the majority Muslim.
We also know that the Palestinian villages bulldozed by the Israeli European Jewish settler colonialists over the last 75 years had existed for many hundreds of years-- many of the parks in Israel are built on top of the ruins of these destroyed Palestinian villages, to hide these crimes from the world. We know that the Palestinian olive orchards bulldozed by the Israelis were filled with trees that were hundreds of years old. Gaza itself, was a prosperous ancient city that once stood upon a crossroads of trade. Besides the 10s of thousands of civilians majority women and children murdered by Israel (war crimes) in this latest massacre of the many massacres by the Israelis, the Israelis are destroying all the buildings and civilian infrastructure in Gaza (war crimes), there may be no more Gaza when the Israelis are finished.
Short version, you are spreading falsehoods in defense of genocidal behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
Just because Hitler blew his brains out, doesn't mean everything was hunky dory fine again. There were pogroms against people who had survived the concentration camps, Stalin was now in charge of the majority of nations where Jews had lived, local authorities that had collaborated with the Nazis were still in charge in many places...
I do think simply calling Israel a colonial state is insufficient. The Jewish people didn't have a place they could return to like the British or the French, and the contemporary events obviously created an extremely dire situation. I'm not sure that makes what was done to the native Muslim population in Palestine okay, and there were certainly elements of a colonial project on display that continue to this day (notably, the formation of Jewish settlements in the west bank in violation of international law). The zionist movement also pre-dates the rise of the Nazis. That they were vindicated doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't a colonial project.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38576719
Zionism is and was a European project. Here is a challenge for you, name a single Mizrahi in a position of power in Israel; it is all Europeans.
This appeared repeatedly as important news, sadly mostly due to wars and terrorism.
Jerusalem relevance alone for multiple religions with its holy sites made it important topic for many.
As an example, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are among the top 10 countries in terms of Twitter users.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-...
I grew up in the 1980s and recall intense flareups on this subject matter for as long as I can remember. The arrival of the Web and social media simply amplified them.
It's not like the collective West (aside from USA) offered safe haven to Jews. We kinda just threw them into that corner of the world.
The important issue here is the obviously shrinking pseudo-state of Palestine. The 1947 borders of Palestine have shifted dramatically in Israel's favor, but Israel continues to send settlers to the West Bank.
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Hamas was wrong to attack Israel. But Israel is wrong to continue expanding its borders.
Around 1AD, the greatest concentration of Jewish people was Alexandria, Egypt, where they made up 1/3 the population, not Jerusalem. The actual history of the Middle East defies simplistic narratives.
Earlier today, I was listening to an interview with a child of early Zionists (he grew up on a Kibbutz in Israel, but now resides in the US, escaping the [his words], "Fascist turn" in Israel) who said that Israelis (referring to the European Ashkenazi Jewish Zionist settlers) were very happy to have the Mizrahi come. They referred to the Mizrahi as, "Jews at Arab wages." Israeli Ashkenazi Zionists were and are very racist; where it would be odd, but arguably correct to call them a brand of white supremacists.
Only about a thousand jewish refugees were let into the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/nyregion/oswego-jewish-re...
Zionism is a very complex topic, and some elements seem quite murky.
But I certainly agree with your final point. Ignoring the religious angle, in terms of political dynamics this seems to be a fairly straightforward case of extremist nationalism.
I mean, the explicit goal post WW1 was to cut up the Ottoman Empire (which inevitably would divide the Muslim world, as the Ottomans were the major Muslim empire). The Jewish/Zionist cause is a useful means to that end. No better way to cut-up that region by offering it to Israel / a different religious group who had publicly lobbied for a place there.
I'd more rather blame 1917 / WW1 politics for this than the Jewish people per se. Cutting up and humiliating the Central Powers post-defeat was just one of the World War 1 issues.
Its Britain who signed it after all, and we all know what Britain wanted post WW1. (And one can argue that Britain treated the former-Ottomans with more respect than some other Central Powers...)
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I can imagine a parallel universe where Britain would cut up the Ottoman Empire differently without creating a Jewish land / start of Israel in years following WW1. But in most concievable alternative-histories I can think of, the four central powers / empires would be dissolved and otherwise cut up into tiny pieces and scattered into the winds in a humiliating defeat.
You don't see how being part of a large, well-regarded Muslim Empire (a true Caliphate) has an effect on the psyche of the largely Muslim Palestinians? Or why they'd be against Western-rule in the post-Ottoman world of 1918+?
I'm certainly not calling the Ottomans saints. But the Ottomans were stewards of the Muslim world for those centuries.
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If Britain realized how much trouble all of this Middle Eastern crap would be after the dissolution of the Ottomans, I'm sure they would have rewritten the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.
Truth is since the Babylonian captivity in the 5th century BCE the area was not ruled by any indigenous people but held by interloping empire after empire, none of which were shy about relocating peoples into and out of that tiny piece of land.
Are you comparing that to being part of an empire for the preceding 400 years?
It also left Gaza in 2005, forcibly extracting settlers, and left no military presence. In Gaza, in every real sense, Israel contracted its borders.
Who controls the water, electricity and internet in Gaza?
Who controls the borders of Gaza?
Who has military ships control sea waters of Gaza?
Who randomly sends missiles, air strikes and “mows the grass” in Gaza?
Israel.
As for the Berlin wall, I only used it for dramatic effect, to convey how serious the blockade is. Also why did you put “blockade” in quotes? Are you under the impression that Israel is not imposing a “blockade” on Gaza?
But you got me. You are better at debating than me. Congratulations.
Actually, I don't know what the status of the Golan Heights is. I suppose it's Syrian territory, occupied by Israel. But I know that the State of Israel has never claimed the Gaza Strip. TTBOMK it was Egyptian territory in 1948, and its present occupants are mainly refugees from the Nakhba and their descendants - i.e. they are mainly the original occupants of the territory of the present State of Israel.
I suppose the Gaza Strip must still be technically Egypt; but it's quite clear that Egypt doesn't want responsibility for 2 million impoverished Palestinians, many of whom are aligned with the Moslem Brotherhood, a group that arose in Egypt that has always opposed the Egyptian government.
I don’t know why you are so fixated on how Israel defines their own borders. They very much control much more areas then what is formally considered within Israeli borders.
Here is a map of West Bank settlements in 2020 [1] These have de-facto expanded since then even before October 7th, particularly in East Jerusalem which is fully controlled by Israel. Pay special attention to the blue area of the map,area C, which is fully controlled by Israel, home to almost 500,000 Israel settlers who vote in Israeli elections, adhere to Israeli laws, pay with Israeli Shekels, etc. Israel is under international oblegation to cede this area to Palestine, but instead have been moving more settlers into it at accelerating pace.
Also look at where the border infrastructure are in this map, this is fences, walls, checkpoints, etc. It is not on the West Bank borders like you would expect if Israeli borders hadn’t expanded, but instead almost completely within it, and in some cases very deep within it (see e.g. South of Ramallah, North of Salfit, and around Bethlehem) also notice how East Jerusalem is completely cut off from the rest of the West Bank with border infrastructure, almost as if East Jerusalem has been completely annexed by Israel.
In this map you also see they plan to build a lot more boarder infrastructure very deep inside the West Bank. The only way to interpret that is that they are moving the boarder even further and annexing even more land. Even if they claim these settlements and these areas aren’t part of Israel, they very much are.
1: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/West_Ban...
Yes, the Arab states started wars to conquer the holy land from the Jews, and lost. Do you really think that if they had won anybody would be talking about how the Jewish state is shrinking? Losing territory in a war that they started in order to gain territory is somehow controversial?
> Israel continues to send settlers to the West Bank.
Israel has never sent a single citizen to settle the West Bank. People have moved to the West Bank of their own accord, which by the way is legal and encouraged under the legal frameworks applicable to the area (Ottoman law actually, because everything since had been mandate or occupation). But the state has not and does not move people.
I am against all violence and murder of civilians, but per international law, Hamas resistance fighters[1] had every right to attack Israel, the occupying power, but not civilians. And, as more comes out, there are more questions about who is responsible for the majority of the civilian casualties in the Hamas resistance fighter's attack. E.g., hundreds of the 1400 originally reported Israeli victims of the Hamas attacks have now been identified as Palestinian Hamas resistance fighters "burned beyond all recognition" [by Israeli forces]. And, the majority of Hamas targets were military. Whereas nearly 100% of the Israeli targets in the current massacre are civilians (including literally babies in incubators); the majority of the murdered have been women and children.
And, per international law, Israel, as occupying power, does not have a "right to defend itself" against the occupied Palestinians.
The International Criminal Court was investigating Israel for past crimes against humanity, but the Chief Prosecutor was replaced with one more friendly to the Zionists (no doubt under US pressure). Past Israeli activities and especially the current massacre is textbook genocide per international law, and while Israel refuses to sign onto the the ICC, Palestine has (which provides jurisdiction), but even if it hadn't, universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity such as the genocide being perpetrated by Israel allow for the prosecution of Israel's crimes. Israeli leaders (and hopefully soldiers) will eventually be brought to justice (as well as those who facilitated the genocide like Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, Ursula von der Leyen, Nearly all Democratic members of congress and all Republican members of congress and many many more).
[1]There is also a lot of confusing Hamas the political wing with Hamas the militant resistance fighters. These are distinct, and there is good evidence that the political wing of Hamas was unaware the attacks were going to happen until after they had occurred. Think of it as Sinn Féin political wing of IRA vs. IRA resistance fighters, fighting the English colonizers, in Ireland. The political wing Hamas, is the democratically elected government of Gaza.
>accepting Palestinian refugees?
If I am a parent in Gaza, I would not care about “home”. I just want my kid to have a future.
Given Israel's misleading and lying stances as other nations inspect the conditions of the conflict, and their regarding of Palestinians as less than human, I am not convinced they are interested or even capable of providing other cultures a better quality of life. Apparently invading other lands and engaging in colonialism is cool in 2023.
There also a similar weird gulf between the shouts about 'genocide' and the refusal to allow any to escape. Someone who truly believes that should always allow for refugees. I guess most people making these claims don't really believe them and except Israel to maintain reasonable-enough treatment.
This has little to do with the actual point, though.
Because otherwise it invalidates their opinion? So, are you ready to sacrifice yourself in the streets for Mr. Biden / Mr. Trump / Mr. Macron / Ms. LePen / etc etc, or to rehome the "victims" of their policies?
It provides some signal as to how “deeply” one (or a group) feels.
>So, are you ready to sacrifice yourself in the streets for Mr. Biden / Mr. Trump / Mr. Macron / Ms. LePen / etc etc, or to rehome the "victims" of their policies?
No, I do not deeply feel regarding this topic.
Because refusing diplomatic and business relationships, repeatedly condemning Israeli actions in the largest international forums they have access to, demonstrating in the streets of their countries, jeopardizing relationships with the richest countries in the world because of this topic, etc etc, are not sufficient signals...?
You can certainly criticize ambiguities in certain environments (e.g. Saudi rulers), but overall I don't think one can seriously challenge the depth of feeling on the matter when it's shared by literally billions of people. Maybe one doesn't get exposed to all that because most of these people are poor, living in poor countries that are largely ignored by the Western mainstream, but they are definitely there.
Regardless of that point, it's not their responsibility to facilitate Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Ironically, the USA IS SPENDING BILLIONS on the war in Ukraine with nothing for the Palestinians.
Yes, most Americans knew the conflict existed previous to this past October, but few who weren't Jewish or Muslim and/or Arab (I think most Arab Christians are generally/vaguely pro-Palestinian, but not sure) would have had strong opinions about it or been able to tell you much. I don't think the issue has ever featured this heavily in the US news cycle since oil embargoes in the 70s, and the issue is a lot more contentious now due to a few different factors.
Right now, unless someone consumes zero news media and has very curated social media feeds, I don't see how they could avoid understanding this has all been a major geopolitical event that is continuing to unfold.
That’s simply incorrect. Extensive news coverage of the flareups I referred to led to the subject matter becoming a common topic of conversation and public interest. Heck, I remember there being conversations and debates about it among kids in my school’s cafeteria, and that was in a part of the US where at the time way less than 1% of the population was Jewish or Muslim.
It has been a relatively prominent issue in Ireland, and especially Northern Ireland for some time. You can find plenty of images over the years of republican murals with Palestinian flags on them (e.g. 10 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/189yeg/o... ), or conversely unionist bonfires with palestinean flags on it: (e.g. last year https://nitter.dafriser.be/M_AndersonSF/status/1542523209311... )
OP stated: "If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views".
They're explicitly stating that they believe pro-palestinian views are prioritized.
This is an important clause here. It means that they do not believe that pro-Israel views are prioritised but __if__ any it is the case that there are prioritised views are pro-Palestinian views.
Now, you could argue that this is a bad faith rhetorical device but it is not “explicitly stating that they believe pro-Palestinian views are prioritised”.
Of course pro-Israel views can be prioritized and still be in the minority.
Politically, we know the bias of the Western ruling class is aggressively pro-Israel. This indisputable knowledge that means the most likely platform bias is pro-Israel.
I don’t think what you’ve mentioned is indisputable or really backed by facts.
> They're explicitly stating that they believe pro-palestinian views are prioritized.
I'm also saying that they are prioritised, here is a sentence from my previous comment:
> As a result, certain views are prioritised
The October 7th attack was carried out against civilians in their homes living on land that is internationally recognized as Israel by an overwhelming majority of countries.
I'm not sure what you are opposing. I wrote that majority of the world is against Israel's occupation. And it's not only West Bank, this is map showing all the lands occupied by Israel with timeline https://i.stack.imgur.com/0xM5P.jpg
> The October 7th attack was carried out against civilians in their homes living on land that is internationally recognized as Israel by an overwhelming majority of countries.
Pro Palestine doesn't mean pro Hamas or pro terrorist. Here is another general assembly vote, from 26th October where majority of the world voted differently than Israel, and in favor of Palestine:
The majority voted for a truce, which greatly favors Hamas at the expense of Israel.
Hostages are still being held in Gaza, and a truce agreement was sustained for as long as Hamas were willing to free 10 hostages per day of truce. Hamas stopped short with 137 hostages still remaining in Gaza. Why on Earth would Israel agree?
I define Palestine borders same as UN resolution from 1947.
> The majority voted for a truce, which greatly favors Hamas at the expense of Israel.
I believe that the need for a truce vote would be less pressing if Israel reduced civilian and child casualties. There are accusations of Israel committing war crimes. Recently, an independent investigation into the killing of a Reuters journalist suggested that it was a deliberate attack by the IDF on civilians, constituting a war crime. They told Palestinians to go south to be safe and then they bombed them there. Responding to atrocities from 7th of October with further atrocities is not justifiable. The strategy to eradicate Hamas might be counterproductive, potentially leading to the creation of more militants than are eliminated, due to the civilian casualties caused.
> Hostages are still being held in Gaza, and a truce agreement was sustained for as long as Hamas were willing to free 10 hostages per day of truce. Hamas stopped short with 137 hostages still remaining in Gaza. Why on Earth would Israel agree?
No one is advocating for a cessation of the fight against Hamas, but there has been a loss of world support due to the methods employed. Even the US, as indicated by Blinken either today or yesterday, has stated that there are insufficient efforts being made to protect civilian lives and that Israel is saying one thing but the reality and numbers coming from Gaza says something different.
> No one is advocating for a cessation of the fight against Hamas
We’ve seen people do just that. Not only that, but also open expressions of support for Hamas and its actions.
I also don’t think it’s possible for Israel to stop attacks until all the people kidnapped by Hamas are returned, rescued, or confirmed dead. Hamas isn’t returning them, because forcing Israel into continued war is its most effective weapon in the war for international sympathy.
The part about eradicating Hamas is clearly pure propaganda though. Doing that would require killing their leaders who sit comfortably in Turkey, Lebanon and Qatar.
> I define Palestine borders same as UN resolution from 1947.
> I believe that the need for a truce vote would be less pressing if Israel reduced civilian and child casualties.
The point under discussion above is the fact that the Arabs rejected the borders of this proposed Arab state. So they started a war and the borders were changed. That's the risk they took and lost. It is disingenuous to claim that Israelis stole Arab land at this point - the Arabs tried to steal land and lost.
In an ideal world what you’re saying would be true. Hamas could be eradicated without civilian casualties. No children would get hurt.
But you’re not proposing an alternative — and part of the reason is that Hamas has made it explicitly hard to do so.
Is the verdict that any territory that is sufficiently populated can’t be retaliated against?
> this is map showing all the lands occupied by Israel with timeline https://i.stack.imgur.com/0xM5P.jpg
1. The geographical area of Palestine, also often called The Holy Land among other names, that was not inhabited by Jews.
2. The area that the UN Partition Plan designated for an Arab state.
3. The areas that the Palestinian Authority has both civil and military control over.
The problem with the first definition is obvious: It displays a geographical area with a racial modifier. That would be like showing a map of France with all the areas where French people live highlighted, then assuming that 100% of the remaining areas are "Immigrant Land". In reality, the far majority of the land was not settled by Jews nor Arabs in time frame of this map - it was so empty that the Ottomans created laws specifically to increase both Arab and Jewish settlement in the area, they didn't care so long as the taxes were paid.
The UN Partition Plan was not perfect, but it for the most part proposed an Arab state in the areas that were Arab majority, and a Jewish state in the areas with a Jewish majority. The Arabs rejected this plan in an attempt to conquer more land - so complaining that the borders changed from these borders is disingenuous. The Arabs started a war (well, more than one) with the specific intent of changing these borders.
The map in 1946 is false, since all of it was British, zero of it was Arab or Jewish.
The UN plan never happened.
The 1967 map pretends like there was a country "Palestine" when there never has been.
And the 2010 map is just straight up fiction.
The majority of the global ruling class is for Israel's occupation of Palestine.
History is incomprehensible if we ignore class conflict.
The aforementioned organization in no way represents “the majority of the world” or “the rest of the world”; it makes a joke out of the values of freedom and human rights.
Treading a fine line here between Bayesian priors and stereotypes, but the worldwide Muslim/Jewish population split is something like 112:1. Obviously that's not going to be the same proportion on a given media-service, but it should still inform our expectations of what is the "default" state before theorizing about platform algorithm-tweaking or propaganda-campaigns.
The war is shockingly unpopular on both sides of itself and seemingly the only people who are in favor of Israel's current plan of action is the Israeli government and the people who, for PR reasons, refuse to criticize Israel since Israel has done such an excellent job propagandizing people into thinking being anti-Israel in any way is synonymous with being anti-Semetic.
[1] https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-...
And we DIDN'T EVEN GET BIN LADEN THERE. We captured him years after entering the region, in PAKISTAN, a FRIENDLY state, with a single company of marines. No invasion required, no massive civilian casualties, and to my knowledge, we didn't give any terrorist groups a fresh fleet of well maintained vehicles either during that particular one.
Like, at this point, if you still believe that the answer to these terrorist organizations is force, then you really need to bring some evidence to the table, because every time we go to places we are not wanted, and inflict our will upon people who do not want us there with fire and fury, we leave a decade later with an entire city's worth of PTSD afflicted soldiers, leaving behind billions of dollars in military assets, and accomplishing exactly nothing but giving the war profiteering class a fresh infusion of cash.
75% of Palestinians "support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th." 76% have positive views of Hamas (other armed terrorist groups have even larger support).
https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20...
But if you don't believe these numbers, here is one from the Washington Institute in July 2023:
"Overall, 57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas"
"But it is organizations like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Lion’s Den that receive the most widespread popular support in Gaza. About three quarters of Gazans express support for both groups, including 40% who see the Lion’s Den in a “very positive” light, an attitude shared by a similar percentage of West Bank residents."
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-sh...
You are speaking to the startup crowd. Anyone can put anyone's logotypes on their website and claim they are your partners. It's not even that hard.
Mind your sources folks.
Today these are considered liberators, but during the colonial wars they were all considered terrorists who conducted inhumane acts. Perhaps people knew that but still supported their fight, simply because they considered the oppression inflected by their colonizers worth fighting against.
The amazing amount of historical revisionism where once it became so obvious and irrefutable that the causes of these various entities were, in fact, correct the entire time at which point colonial powers suddenly do an about face and call them freedom fighters instead of terrorists in genuinely nauseating. ALL groups in this vein commit various kinds of atrocities, because war, especially guerilla war, is itself largely an atrocity. And more war will only breed more of these groups as more people who do not belong in an area, do not share it's culture, and blatantly do not give a steaming shit about either of those things continue to meddle in their affairs.
Hamas will not do open battle with Israel, because of course they'd fucking lose, just like the Taliban would've to us, or the Viet Cong to us, or anyone else. They can't field an army and they know that, they aren't stupid. But what else would you have them do? Just waive the white flag and let the Western powers redraw their borders again, fuck up their cities and culture and treat them like brainless savages to avoid being killed?
What about caring for their civilians, not using them as meat shields, not using hospitals as bases, not starting rockets from civilian buildings; using the obscene amount of international aid responsible for the benefit of people, over selling it for profit in their supermarkets to fund rockets, digging up goddamn water pipes to turn into rockets, etc. Oh, also, maybe don’t shoot their own people trying to evacuate an active warzone?
Hamas is an utterly disgusting terrorist organization, this is an objective fact. Equating them to freedom fighters is just vile, and a disgrace to any decent movement that tried to overthrow their oppressors.
> One presentation that David shared made the case that Hamas intentionally stations its military operations near civilian sites as part of its strategy of deploying “human shields.” United Nations officials have discovered Hamas rockets hidden in a vacant school in the past, and indeed, the militant group's vast, underground tunnel network endangers civilians throughout the Gaza Strip. Yet the recent IDF document uses broad categories to identify Hamas military sites and Israeli targets, including a “Hamas bank” located next to a Palestinian kindergarten.
You are repeating the talking point of the Israeli propaganda machine. These may all turn out to be true, but as of now there are no evidence for it except Israeli propaganda.
But yet even if some of these are true (say digging up waterpipes, stealing aid money for weapons) history will probably state these as part of the liberation struggle (at least among Palestinians).
IRA in Ireland and the FLN in Algeria both did stuff like that and worse for their liberation from the British and French respectively. Yet both terrorist organizations and their political arms (Sinn Féin in Ireland) had plenty public support among the colonized peoples.
If you are not suffering from colonial oppression it may be hard to understand this.
And yeah, hamas is popular with Palestineans, they are very very radicalized, which is a sad state of affairs. There are plenty of populist parties even in democracies that are popular in spite of being harmful for their citizens. People en large are not the smartest.
> “Hamas does really good PR,” continued Schwarzbard. “We need to change the narrative.” She implored the group to use focused language. “We need people to see this isn't just a run-of-the-mill resistance, freedom fighter group. This is something equivalent of ISIS.”
You are literally playing their game. There is no evidence for the atrocities you cite. These are only anecdotes coming from the very same people who are so careless in leaking their propaganda techniques.
Put your self in the shoe of a Palestinian. Your family is dead. Your pets are dead. Your home has been bombed. You know who did these things. You know they will face no justice under the current order. Off course you support any resistance to this order, off course you support the people who are actively trying to make these offenders pay for their crimes.
Number [1] does not show anything, except a group of people trying to flee and then turn around after some load bangs. The bangs might as well be from unrelated firefight we don’t know. We have to believe the interpretations from the Israeli propaganda machine to conclude your claim of Hamas snipers firing at them is true. If you are a Palestinian, you are very unlikely to do that. Conveniently the IDF has a recording of a Palestinian doing exactly that [3]. However this is material recorded and distributed by IDF them self. IDF has been shown to release plenty of material of questionable origin. And if you are a Palestinian you are not going to take them at their words.
Note I’m not saying Hamas hasn’t done any atrocities, of course they have. As did FLN, IRA, Mau Mau, Viet Cong, ANC, etc. before them. However how we view these atrocities depends very much on whether you justify the colonizer or sympathize with the colonized. If you are part of the colonized and living their oppression, you are very unlikely to justify the colonial enterprise. And you are very likely to justify any actions against them, even the most horrible ones. In many cases history has joined the colonized and indeed justified the resistance.
1: https://twitter.com/alexhiggins732/status/172294287253666242...
2: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/viral-video-appears-to-...
3: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-gaza-resident-says-hamas-p...
And again, as I said, even if Hamas was able to field a proper military, they would be slaughtered immediately because Israel has the full financial and tactical backing of the West. Their military is extremely akin to the United States, because we basically built it with them. That is why guerilla war exists and it's no coincidence that it came about and is used almost exclusively by colonized nations that cannot stand up to their colonizers in direct traditional combat.
And my point isn't that Hamas is akin to those other organizations, I don't know enough about this conflict to say that, and I'm guessing neither do you. What I do know is a long history littered with organizations that were, at their time, derided as terrorists and whatnot and were later vindicated when the history of the colonized people they fought for was finally allowed to be written.
That being said, Facebook and Instagram are actively stifling pro-palestinian accounts and content. This was leaked 5 weeks ago. X also throttles and bans certain pro-palestinian accounts for phrases like "from the river to the sea" or "decolonization". Tik tok however does not. Tik tok is more representative than the general american sentiment that is not supportive of Israel as the images are quite damaging. Finally, the study linked above is misleading. Tik tok is not causing anti-semitism. Israel is, and it's being reflected in the platforms.
It doesn't come up on my Instagram presumably because I had previously unfollowed everyone who posted about whatever other injustice they'd been told to be pissed about, and shockingly I don't feel the need to go and vandalize property to spread the word.
Indeed, I would say that anyone older than 10 has participated in such conversations. The person you're responding to makes it sound like it's a new thing.
When I had the conversation about it in real life, I expressed sympathy and discussed a few aspects that they informed me of since I hadn't heard about the instigating attack, and then I went on about my life, thankful that my family and nobody I know personally is on either side.
Maybe around you. I probably wouldn't talk about the topic around you if we were in the same circles, because it might feel pointless.
> it does seem to be a suspiciously recent topic
You're right, it's not a coincidence! Recent conversation is driven by the recent killing of 20,000 Palestinian civilians.
> and then I went on about my life
Nothing wrong with that if you don't feel you have nay power to effect change. But it rather seems like you don't even care if it happens or not. However, many people do care and believe they can influence policy through conversation and protest. (Reminder: they can about the ongoing mass murders of civilians, which started recently and is happening at this very moment. It's time-sensitive.)
> But it rather seems like you don't even care if it happens or not.
It's easy to conflate what I've said with not caring, but really I'm just dismissing having a low bar for personal emotional investment, particularly when it comes to relatively superficial acts of bringing attention to the issue and letting external sources of emotional stimulation operate my consciousness.
Do you not feel like it's a better idea than ever to be protective of how much of your attention is captured by dopamine farms, whether it's ostensibly related to something people should care about or not?
Of course people care primarily about the actions of their own democratically elected government, that's the whole point. There's no need to protest when people agree with their government.
> Settlements are of course wrong
Ottoman law since the 1850's stated that anyone who settles land (houses, farms, factories) owns it - Muslims and Jews and Christians alike. Their goal was to increase the population of the near-desolate holy land (which they called Greater Syria), and collect more taxes. Those laws still stand today, for better or for worse. There is nothing "illegal" about Israeli citizens building homes in the West Bank. What would be illegal would be if the Israeli state were to transfer its citizens - international law is binding on states, not citizens. But citizens moving is not banned by any international law, and settlement of the West Bank is actually encouraged by the laws in the West Bank dating over 150 years, because nobody since has had the authority to change those laws.
You are all through this thread. You have detailed opinions of the history of the area, and you are clearly aware that the ground reality is that Israel makes and enforces the laws in the West Bank, and that the Israeli military has supported Israeli people in driving the existing Palestinian residents off their land, and either destroying existing Palestinian homes and infrastructure then building their own homes, or simply moving into the forcibly confiscated homes. It is extraordinarily misleading to pretend a) that you believe that the actual law in the West Bank is that of the Ottoman Empire that no longer exists or b) that you believe Israeli settlers being friendly locals who are simply following Ottoman law and developing empty land.
You also, with your demonstrated familiarity with the history of the area, must be aware of the military-enforced eviction from and demolition of Palestinian homes and farms, and the restrictions on Palestinian people preventing them from moving out of the occupied West Bank. There is no person on earth who knows this history, is capable of arguing on Hacker News, and also needs an explanation of why forcibly driving people from their homes under military occupation in order to replace them with people of a different religion/ethnicity/nation is bad. There are, unfortunately, a number of people who simply disagree with this moral position - and it appears you are one of them, and that you are attempting to convince other less informed people that this is not what is happening by lying about it.
> Israel makes and enforces the laws in the West Bank, and that the Israeli military has supported Israeli people in driving the existing Palestinian residents off their land, and either destroying existing Palestinian homes and infrastructure then building their own homes, or simply moving into the forcibly confiscated homes.
> It is extraordinarily misleading to pretend a) that you believe that the actual law in the West Bank is that of the Ottoman Empire that no longer exists or
> b) that you believe Israeli settlers being friendly locals who are simply following Ottoman law and developing empty land.
It could do a lot in the West Bank (where the fully or partially PA administered territory is divided into 166 non-contiguous regions), and anything there xould be done in a way that it looks like a win for the Fatah-led PA, weakening the perception that Hamas and its violence is the only entity capable of delivering for the Palestinian people, undermining Hamas politically.
OTOH, the whole reason Israel fostered Hamas during the direct occupation of Gaza was to create an Islamist competitor for the more secular and sympathetic to non-Muslim states PLO, and the reason they've (and government ministers have said this explicitly) continued to support them in between periods of active conflict is to deflect pressure for peace and a two-state solution, so there’s zero chance of the Netanyahu government doing this.
Israel and especially its present governing coalition is not blameless for the situation (and nor are Palestinian factions and some of their supposed allies blameless for Israel's tendency to keep electing governing coalitions more interested in projecting power than continuing peace processes), but it's a lot more complicated than Israeli govts wanting Hamas to be a thing and nobody else in the region having agency. Undoing tacit support for an Islamist alternative to the PLO in the 1970s isn't really a policy option (if it is, someone should give the undo button to the US for Afghanistan!), that happened because there was open conflict long before Hamas and Netanyahu, and apparent diplomatic wins for the PLO did them absolutely no good in the noughties when Palestinians could still choose whether or not to vote for therm
Funny since Israel originally supported (including arming) Hamas* hoping the religious Hamas would split the populations support for more secular nationalist movements in Palestine. But, you can be both religious and nationalist.
*Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood; Hamas grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Not almost. The far right Israel factions (Netanyahu, Likud, etc.) have actually repeatedly encouraged and cultivated Hamas. They benefit far more from the polarization that Hamas brings than a mild and moderate PA who is willing to work diplomatically, because then that increases pressure on those far right Israelis to also be more temperate, which goes against their goals.
No, obviously the genocidal factions (Netanyahu and his right-wing allies, Hamas, at least as currently and historically led) will have to be displaced from power for a two-state solution to come into being.
Agreed any real solutions are a nonstarter in current situation, but a lack of imagination or will about how to move forward just further normalizes the illegality of it all.
Israel's policies caused Hamas, they have plenty of options that don't involve a giant starving ghetto but they choose not to exercise them. In particular: negotiate a resolution with Fatah, then provide Fatah with military support in ousting Hamas from Gaza (e.g. providing them with guns and access to the Gaza strip in the first place). Israel starving Gaza and keeping their economy permanently dead will only feed Hamas's victim narrative and enrage off Gaza's population more.
Yet there's large protests in countries that aren't allied with the US or Israel, when no such protests were forthcoming in other analogous scenarios. And there were scarce protests in the US against Saudi Arabia's campaign in Yemen despite US alliance.
I do agree that your thesis is a partial explanation, but it is far from a full explanation. There's two other things going on.
Among Western leftists and minority groups, Israel is a symbol. It's perceived as the last vestige of Western/White colonialism. A symbol of someone with white skin punching down on brown skinned people. It harkens back to the reason that your ancestor was forced (either literally or by material circumstance) into the US in the first place, and why you are living today under systemic racism. Defeating this placeholder is therefore an important milestone in restoring their sense of historical justice. Needless to say this is oversimplified given how many Israeli Jews are indigenous to I/P or were ethnically cleansed from the surrounding MENA area and forced into the I/P area, but people do legitimately hold that dichotomous oppressor/oppressed worldview.
Among Muslim countries, this is an ethnoreligious blood feud. Assad killing Muslims doesn't cause the same anger because it's within the same identity group. So it's a classic case of identity divisions leading to disparate anger. I'm massively oversimplifying here, there are many other factors, but it's part of what's behind the energy.
Comparing it to the Ukraine's invasion and we can see this is so much more "invasive". There's a literal wall around 2M ppl with little agency, while most of them are refugees from the other side of the wall.
To methis is one of the most abohorrent conflicts in earth in this day and age. Given South Africa is no longer segregated, and Rwanda reconciled.
I'd be interested to hear what's equally abhorrent in your view.
There is a really very simple solution for them to have all of the dignity, agency, independence, prosperity, peace, sovereignty, stability to raise children, etc that you and I want for the Palestinian people. They only have to - and hear me out - not kill Jews. It really is that simple. Don't kill Jews, not by rockets, nor suicide bomb, nor stabbing attacks, nor stealth attacks by terror tunnels, nor any of the varied and creative ways that Jews have been attacked in the region for more than a century.
Most people think that Free Palestine means independence and sovereignty. It does not. Sovereignty has been proffered many times in the last 75 years. So given that it decidedly does not mean what we Westerners expect it means when we hear Free Somewhere - "Free Tibet" "Free Donbas" or whatever - I would like my fellow Westerners to really meditate on the meaning of the term "free" in "Free Palestine". Really ruminate on what possible meaning that can have.
Or read the Hamas charter. Or read about the writings, life and times of al-Husseini, the architect and sire of the Free Palestine movement.
We know "free" does not mean "freedom" in the Western understanding of that phrase, because sovereignty has been proffered many times in 75 years. It is not what Palestinians want. You need to listen to Palestinians, not Westerners westsplaining. And then, when you are really clear on what they mean by "free", you must bravely make your own moral evaluation of whether the "free" they actually mean is something you can support. Only then, and I mean this honestly, will you be able to really understand the dynamic going on over there. Only when you understand what Palestinians, by their own words, want, will you be an effective advocate for peace and prosperity in the region.
"Would you be willing to share land equally with Jews in peace?"
"Would you compromise with Israel for peace?"
"Do you want to expel the Jews?"
"Why do you reject all peace offers?"
"Should Iran nuclear bomb Tel Aviv?"
"Is killing innocent Israelis heroic?"
"What is your solution to the conflict?"
"How do you explain Jewish archeology sites?"
Etc
After watching that it's instructive to listen to Israelis answer the question "Why can't you admit there is an occupation?"
Then "Did Israel steal Palestinian land?"
I had never heard of Ahmedi before.
Is there any way through for Israelis and Palestinians?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Yacoub_Abu_Al-Qia%2...
The expropriation of land seems pretty sketch. I'm glad that Arab Israelis found their voice though, at least according to the article. What are the prospects for this kind of thing ending?
Consider what the Israeli response might have looked like if they didn't have access to the munitions that they do (2000 pound bombs, etc). Likely they would have still invaded Gaza and fought a very bloody battle but with many fewer innocents killed at the expense of more of their own soldiers.
Essentially, Israel has made the judgement that the lives of their soldiers are (many times) more important than those of innocent people.
Also all countries military's inherently value its own soldiers over an advisory civilians. If I was a IDF general it would be my goal to minimize the casualties taken in securing what ever goal the political leadership sets forth within the laws of war.
Israel having too little “money, power, and resources” is not the reason Israel dropped nearly as many bombs on Gaza in the first six days of its reaction to the Oct. 7 attacks as the US dropped in the peak year of bombing in the Afghanistan war.
If anything contributed to that, it was a surplus of resources, not a shortage.
Not to be facetious, but if I were to drop 1,000 bombs on a village of 100 people, killing them all, it hardly matters that I can claim my 'kill rate' was 0.1.
I think people often have a very magical feeling about what is possible military-wise. There is no way whatsoever to be significantly more precise in a densely populated area with tunnels, hiding behind civilians, etc.
I would say you are right about this. Maybe what is so shocking in this particular situation (at least for many people) is how little relative value Israel places on the civilians of their adversary. The recent reporting by +972 Magazine[0] on the Israeli decision making process for selecting bombing targets makes this clear.
[0] https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
It's been said that the Iron Dome saved more Palestinian lives than anything else in living memory because it allowed Israel to ignore Gaza (well, up till now anyway).
Be very very happy Israel has the tech to minimize civilian casualties and the desire to minimize them - things could have been very different.
E.g., only a few years ago, there was a peaceful march of thousands of Palestinians demanding their right to return to their homes on the other side of the separation wall. The Israelis opened fire with live ammunition, murdering 200, and maiming thousands more-- it appears the Israeli snipers were aiming for the protesters' kneecaps to permanently disable them. The protesters were unarmed. Zero coverage in the western corporate press.
In a prior massacre of Gaza that the Israelis called, "Operation Cast Lead", the Israeli snipers wore shirts with a picture of a pregnant women in the cross hairs of a rifle, with the slogan (in Hebrew) below, "One bullet, two kills."
And, as has been ongoing continuously for decades, Palestinians were forced from their homes by Israeli settlers only days before the October attacks. And there was a murder of Palestinians by Israeli settlers also only days before the attack-- these things happen literally all the time, so it is expected that there would be.
Israel has also kidnapped more civilians including children than they released in the prisoner exchange since they began this most recent massacre of Gaza. If you paid attention, the hostages Israel released were in large part women and children, held for years without charge, and under indefinite detention. Two of the children they released were two 14 year old boys who were 11 or 12 when kidnapped by Israel, and they were released into an area where there is no way for a Palestinian to travel to the area their families reside, as Israel prohibits Palestinian travel. There were plenty of younger child hostages released by Israel as well. These kidnappings (without charge and indefinite detention) are also a constant occurrence. Pretty much a guarantee, if you are caught demonstrating against the occupation.
You know there are zero Jews in Gaza, right? No Israeli settlers at all. They are flat out forbidden to go there.
And the violence by Zionist settlers (with tacit approval of the Israeli state) in the W. Bank against the Palestinians has only gotten worse since the attack by the Hamas Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza.
The closest thing to a just resolution, at this point, would be for Israel to allow Palestinians to return to their homes in what is now called Israel. Remove the laws from the books that favor Jewish Israeli citizens over non-Jewish citizens of Israel-- e.g., no more Jewish only roads. The demographics will change. Jews will be a minority. Place names will likely return to their original names. Jewish extremists will likely engage in terrorism, but hopefully the violence will be short lived. Many Jews (those of European decent, in large part, maintain dual citizenship with European countries / the US) will, likely, voluntarily leave. The rest will have to incorporate themselves into this new reality of a single state where the indigenous Palestinians are equal citizens.
The vast majority of Israeli Jews are living on recently stolen land, even inside recently stolen homes. Much of this must go back to their rightful owners for there to be justice. But, the Jewish newcomers can remain. Under Muslim Ottoman rule, the region now know as Israel/Palestine was multi-religious with mostly peaceful coexistence. It can be that again.
Israel has foreclosed any possibility of a "two state" solution with their continuous settling of Palestinian land. There no longer exists any Palestinian controlled land to create a Palestinian state separate from that major portion of their land that is now called Israel that was stolen and given to the Jewish settlers by the British after WWI.
What happened to Jews in Europe in WWII was horrific, but Palestinians had nothing to do with that. What is currently happening to the Palestinians is similar to what the Jews in Europe experienced. But, this time, the Zionist Jews are the oppressor. The actions of Israel are creating an environment around the world where people predisposed to antisemitism can point at an example of how evil Jews are as justification of their hatred. It was once possible to separate Jew from Zionist, but Zionists have been doing their best to confuse that. The peace organization, Jewish Voices for Peace is now "antisemitic". Things need to change in Palestine/Israel or Jews are not going to be safe anywhere. And, many many more innocent Palestinian civilians will be massacred.
So, yes. Right of return is not only required by UN resolutions, it is the only solution that will bring some semblance of justice, and thus bring peace.
Suppose an American president had said "I've killed lots of blacks in my life and there's no problem with that". Or that the US largest newspaper published essays arguing that America would have failed if it ever got a black president. Or that congress enacted laws saying that the right to national self-determination in the US is unique to white people. If the US was like that would you say that blacks had equal rights?
https://web.archive.org/web/20210201162924/https://www.jpost...
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n...
Boycott divestment and sanctions.
Although, in Israel's case, just losing the multiple billions of dollars it receives every year from the U.S., and loss of its uniquely favored trading status with the EU, might be enough, on its own, to motivate Israel to change course.
the actual numbers in casualty count don't convince me that the IDF is acting any different.
PS: I know I'll be downvoted for this. look at the numbers of KIDS killed. hamas are not the only babykillers here.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-cr...
“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
The destruction levied in Gaza is not about achieving any military aims. It is about satiating the Israeli public's monstrous appetite for blood. The primary goal of the government is ensuring that it wins the next election too. Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't joking when he said "remember Amalek".
“ What would you suggest Israel do if fighting hamas is not an option.”
Avoiding hard questions is easier as it doesn’t require responsibility. Are you able to provide your answer please to the hardest part of the parent comment?
Read the article I linked to. Then claim with a straight face that razing Gaza is the only option Israel has.
Great comment and again no answer.
You think question with suggestive answer is dishonest way of conducting debate? Ok. I get that. Let’s remove any suggestiveness from the question. “ What would you suggest Israel do if fighting hamas is not an option.”
I am not OP an I personally did not suggest anything, I just wanted to see your responsible answer.
So, what Israel should do in your opinion? And what outcome you expect after it does it?
PS: I’ve read the article. Disappointed by the quality of it. It is written with intention of emotional impact and to push predefined agenda. It twists meaning by playing with words. I notice those tricks and can’t read it with keeping my face ‘straight’( using your word).
The "agenda" is to make people aware of the fact that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians, based on sources within the IDF who work on targeting. The "emotional impact" is that any person with normal human emotions would be sickened by the fact that Israel is killing tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
I know I asked another person but the main question was :
“ What Israel should do in your opinion? What outcome you expect once it does it?”
Can you answer that question too?
As to the “agenda” I see different “agenda”.
What it definitely should not do is murder thousands of Palestinian children and destroy the Gaza Strip. However, this is what Israel has chosen to do.
Looking further ahead, what do you think the consequences of continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) will be? Can you justify keeping millions of people under continued military occupation, without any rights and under constant harassment? Can you justify the continuation of the dual legal regime in the occupied territories, under which Jewish settlers have full citizenship rights, while Palestinians have no rights (this is what many now characterize as Apartheid)?
Sure this could be a possibility once you finish describing consequences of the action of withdrawal you’ve suggested Israel to take. Suggested alternative is incomplete without you describing realistic outcome of it an thus leaves the current option Israel took as the only one possible which makes discussing it irrelevant wether you like it or not.
Please responsibly describe outcome of the suggested alternative and then we can compare it with current situation.
Well what you have suggested would inevitably lead to what is happening already only on a bigger scale. Consciously or not it seems you do not mind that and thus the loss of life because it is too hard for you to analyse outcome of your own propositions.
The alternative, you claim, is "what is happening already only on a bigger scale," meaning more attacks on Israel, as on 7 October. You say that ending the occupation will lead to loss of life, which you accuse me of not caring about.
In other words, in your view, only Israel's security matters, and only Israeli lives matter. 20k Palestinians killed: a necessary price for Israel's security. Indefinite Palestinian subjugation to a foreign military power that slowly takes over more and more Palestinian land: necessary to preserve Israeli security. Israel withdrawing to its internationally recognized borders, as demanded by UN Security Council Resolution 242: unthinkable.
This is incorrect and it’s demonstration of putting words into my mouth. Another trick to be noticed.
Short reflection on this exchange shows clearly that I am deliberately trying to avoid putting words into your mouth in order to see your analysis of the outcome to the actions you’ve suggested for Israel to take.
And while I do that you are desperately trying to avoid answering second part of the question.
“What outcome you expect after Israel does what you’ve suggested?”
Since analyse of outcome did not arrive I did it for you.
>The alternative, you claim …
I didn’t. I have analysed your so called “alternative” which it is not. Israel has already tested this “brilliant” idea in 2005 by withdrawing it’s forces from Gaza together with all settlements in Gaza strip in case you didn’t know and it have led to the current situation with a bigger scale of loss of life. Not caring about this fact together with your repeated lack of wish to analyse deadly outcome of your own suggestion demonstrates your lack of caring about the loss of life wether it is intentional or not.
> In other words …
Well let’s leave ‘In other words’ as ‘another words’ that are just words. They ate yours, not my.
The confusion in your comment between some fantasies and my actual opinion rises questions about integrity of ways in which you’ve analysed this conflict in general.
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
"On Oct. 10, the Israeli Air Force bombed an apartment building in Gaza’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, killing 40 people, most of them women and children. In one of the shocking videos taken following the attack, people are seen screaming, holding what appears to be a doll pulled from the ruins of the house, and passing it from hand to hand. When the camera zooms in, one can see that it is not a doll, but the body of a baby."
Are you telling me this was necessary? Israel had no choice but to kill 40 people MOST OF THEM WOMEN AND CHILDREN?
Since those are usual tactics to avoid answering hard questions it makes one wandering wether you are deliberately trying to avoid answering it responsibly or you did not understand the question?
Can you provide your answer instead of repeating your disagreement with the choice Israel have made? You’ve made it clear already few times. What is still not clear is this: What is your answer to the hard question.
You keep avoiding answering it.
Let me remind the question if you forgot it:
So, what Israel should do in your opinion? And what outcome you expect after it does it?
I hope we will see your answer this time. Not criticism of the answer provided by Israel but your own answer. I hope I made it as clear as possible by now.
I also hope as someone with such strong opinion on the matter you took time to think about it and you do have your answer.
Are you a parrot or something?
No, I am a person and you are exploring limits of my famous patience which is allowed only to my students as long as they wish to learn.
Also I am very persuasive in following logic and being responsible for own words. The only sensible way to discuss hard issues and to keep being in sync in conversation.
>Do you not understand that NOT killing 20k Palestinians in 60 days is an option (and answers your question)?
Help me understand what you suggest exactly and what outcome you expect after Israel does it? Make your statement so we would be on the same page to discuss it. Then it actually would be possible to discuss it.
Don’t you think you should be responsible with your words and understand consequences of things you suggest before opening your mouth about such sensitive topics? I am getting sick of irresponsible people spreading BS around without ever stating what they say or thinking through the consequences of the things they suggest.
>I've posed several questions to you and you keep not answering them.
This is because you didn’t answer one and only question I ever asked you in the first place.
> To methis is one of the most abohorrent conflicts in earth in this day and age.
He agrees with you.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/26/gaza-and-the-cr...
Interestingly, the idea that Mandela called Israel an apartheid state was debunked on Stack Exchange, you can read that here: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50771/did-nelso...
What Mandela did say about atrocities was directed at the US:
> If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings.
- Nelson MandelaIsrael is an apartheid state. Israel, last time I checked, had 19 laws which give preferential treatment of Jewish citizens of Israel over non-Jewish citizens of Israel (not talking about Palestinians in W. Bank / Gaza).
Palestinians are not permitted to repair their homes or even their mosques. Go up on the roof and make a repair, and you risk having your home bulldozed by the Israelis.
I once hitch hiked on a Jewish only road in Israel. Jewish only really means not Palestinian.
What exists in the W. Bank and Gaza, is much worse than apartheid. Israel has turned Gaza into an open-air prison-- a concentration camp, if you will. Israel controls all water, food, fuel, electricity, and people entering and exiting from Gaza[1]. And, their carpet bombing of the civilian captives has turned this concentration camp into a death camp.
[1]Israel's PM calls his periodic starving of Gazans, "putting them on a diet" when he blocks shipments of food. And, the water wells in Gaza are contaminated by salt water intrusion, so Israel cuts off fresh water to punish Gazans as well. No freedom of travel even when Israel isn't carpet bombing civilians (the Israelis call these periodic massacres from the air, "mowing the lawn"). Gaza is correctly called an open-air prison or a concentration camp.
> You are simply cherry picking.
> Israel, last time I checked, had 19 laws which give preferential treatment of Jewish citizens of Israel over non-Jewish citizens of Israel (not talking about Palestinians in W. Bank / Gaza).
> Palestinians are not permitted to repair their homes or even their mosques. Go up on the roof and make a repair, and you risk having your home bulldozed by the Israelis.
> I once hitch hiked on a Jewish only road in Israel. Jewish only really means not Palestinian.
> What exists in the W. Bank and Gaza, is much worse than apartheid. Israel has turned Gaza into an open-air prison-- a concentration camp, if you will.
> Israel controls all water, food, fuel, electricity, and people entering and exiting from Gaza[1].
> And, their carpet bombing of the civilian captives has turned this concentration camp into a death camp.
If they are blockaded by the country that they cant get along with then it is at least partially on Egypt and Jordan that they are given no way out.
*The existence of the agreement is not secret, but the contents are.
The other thing is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades, and many people have formed strong opinions on it. The United States is deeply involved in the conflict, as it is Israel's major international backer. There are both Palestinian and Jewish diasporas all around the world that care deeply about the issue. There are many reasons why this conflict captures so many people's attention.
Ukraine lost a double-digit % of its population when you include permanent displacement (these refugees will not return), and its civilian casualties are absurdly underestimated (yea, Mariupol had 1K, right - when the Russians bombed places with the writing 'children' on them). Syria had an official 500K - only because they stopped counting - and millions of refugees. These are literally on another scale by both time and damage, without even going into Sudan/Yemen which are on a scale of their own.
Well, the only way to claim something absolutely idiotic like that is to have absolutely no clue:
During the fifty days of Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, Israel bombed and shelled the Gaza Strip, causing massive damage to civilian infrastructure and homes. About 18,000 residential units were either completely destroyed or heavily damaged, leaving more than 100,000 Palestinians – some 17,000 families – homeless. [...] Today, more than four years later, about 20% of the homes are still unusable and some 2,300 families – about 13,000 people – remain homeless. Some 1,600 of these families had been receiving rent subsidies from UNRWA at rates ranging from 200 to 250 USD per month, depending on the size of the family. In July 2018, however, following US funding cuts, UNRWA was forced to halt financial assistance, leaving families out in the cold. Families that are still renting are having trouble making payments.
https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20190303_13000_gazans_hom...
The Gulf states you think are generous have changed their allegiances and are now Israel's friends. The current Israeli government has radicalized even further since 2014 and revel in the suffering of Palestinians and will likely prevent any future reconstruction efforts.
The number of refugees from Ukraine is 6.3 million or 14% with up to 30% of its infrastructure damaged. This is less destruction in TWO YEARS than Israel has inflicted in 60 DAYS.
https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-russian-invas...
[0] https://bnn.network/politics/erdogan-pledges-to-rebuild-gaza...
P.S. What you wrote about Ukraine just confirms what I wrote above.
> It's hard to reach these people.
"A United Nations-led aid consortium estimates that more than 234,000 homes have been damaged across Gaza and 46,000 destroyed, amounting to about 60 percent of the housing stock in the territory, which is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians."
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/11/29/as-truce-holds-...
“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
Because large numbers of formerly peaceful men will now be engaged in the fight, either from grief at losing their families, or the natural instinct to resist an invader.
The GP is just spreading falsehoods to justify genocide. There is a huge ops campaign by Israel and pro-Zionist organizations within the US. They are doxing, getting people fired, anything to scare people into self-censoring their critiques of Israeli genocide of Palestinian civilians. There are no doubt some useful idiots parroting Zionist propaganda, and also Zionists themselves spreading it in this discussion forum. But, no serious person can believe that over 10,000 women and children (including literal babies in incubators) murdered by Israel in this latest of many massacres, are "combatants".
(the US also used such a definition in Afghanistan to fake its civilian casualty numbers-- any male that appears 14yrs old and over was the American's definition of "combatant")
This is the number provided by Hamas. Per Israel, 15k people have been killed, approximately 10k of whom are civilians.
> For comparison, it's more than the civilian death toll in the nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine.
This is according to numbers sourced from Russians. According to Ukrainians, >20k civilians died in Mariupol’ alone (a city 1/5th the size of Gaza).
Oh much better! If true, seems perfectly justified and A-ok!
Doctors were forced at gunpoint to leave premature babies to rot at Al Nasr hospital. And you're surprised that the world is horrified?!
Journalists and healthcare staff and schools have been targeted at a shocking rate. Civil infrastructure and historic churches blown up without the thinnest veil of a reason. More UN staff killed than any 'conflict' in history. Human rights groups and genocide experts are calling this genocide, ethnic cleansing, and worse.
And this wasn't done by some poor, decimated, tin pot dictatorship. This was done by a nuclear power, and it was supported by England and American politicians against the express wishes of a large majority of their populations.
There's no gain; none. No conceivable good can come from this. Believing that such acts will end Hamas/terror is profoundly delusional.
Approximately 600,000 people died in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia in the two years from November 2020 to November 2022. 40% of the Ethiopian population is children.
The Yemeni civil war (2016-present) had killed at least 377,000 people, as of two years ago. By now, many more than that.
There are mass graves in Mali and Sudan where hundreds of bodies are just piled up on top of each other, visible from space, thanks to collaboration between Wagner Group and the local regime.
Syria is bombing their own population once again at this very moment, in continuation of their 10 year civil war which has killed at least 300,000. Notably, many, many images from the Syrian civil war have been recycled as supposed footage from Gaza (https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...) for propaganda purposes - not that there isn't plenty of legitimate horrible footage from Gaza too.
None of them have higher civilian death rates per day.
None of them have so many murdered children, journalists, UN workers per capita per day (and often even in absolute terms).
None of them are so drastically David and Goliath, where one clear oppressor and occupier is killing so, so many more people.
Sudan, Libya, and Ethipoia aren't spending tens of millions of dollars funding propaganda to smear anyone who suggests they might stop genociding a people.
Even if these "events happening elsewhere" were as bad, or were as directly funded by the West, or were as one-sided - so what? What exactly is your point? What are you calling ignorant?
> It's not very effective.
I am curious though; what are you calling rumours? The murder of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian children? The four premie babies left to rot in Al Nasr hospital? The hundred plus murdered UN workers? The targeted journalists and academics and poets? Reem and Tarek?
Those aren't rumours. They're all on video, and the world has seen them. You can go on Shaun King's Instagram and see hundreds of similar atrocities whenever you like, and so can the entire planet. They're not rumours, they're documented war crimes.
We can all see the residential blocks vaporised under cover of night. We can all see the aftermath of bombed refugee camps and humanitarian corridors and UN schools.
It is infuriating.
So, yes, I'm furious. But if anyone is rabid, it's the people committing these war crimes and atrocities, the people cheering it on, and the people accusing anyone who calls for a ceasefire of anti semitism.
If you're looking for rumours that lack evidence, try the Hamas command bases in hospitals, or the 40 beheaded babies, or the babies in ovens, or the pregnant women slit open, or the "mass rapes"; all proven lies that were spread by Israel and corporate media only to be debunked weeks later.
There has been no debunking of the fact of the October 7th atrocities. Hamas admits doing it, filmed themselves doing it and said they plan to do it again. You can watch their videos if you can stomach it.
Your debunkings are lip service for the anti-Israel stance you plan to have anyway. At least, unlike Hamas, you know that killing, burning, raping and kidnapping innocent civilians is wrong, which is why you must deny that it happened.
You have lost your moral compass, and someday you will feel great shame at having done so. Unfortunately, you have lots of companions to mutually validate your moral corruption. Fortunately, Israel does not need your permission or approval to end the terrorist regime and bring their leaders to justice.
It is sad that genuinely innocent Palestinian civilians are dying. They are another crime that Hamas will have to answer for.
This isn't a topic for awful reading comprehension leading to vile accusations. Settle down. Take a breath. Try reading again.
Or don't; because really, nothing productive is going to come from someone whose response to Israel's war crimes and atrocities is to put their fingers in their ears and blame Hamas 100%. That's an incredibly shitty thing to do. I hope you find your way out of that mindset; it's abhorrent to the nth degree.
I think the salient point is that we both care for Palestinian children. We both differ on what to do about it.
From my perspective, they live under a brutal, genocidal dictatorship who will fling them into the maw of war to tactically garner sympathy. This tactic is not successful for me, because I view it as emotional manipulation. It just makes me angrier at them.
I happen to be well-disposed towards Israel and its people. When Israel says they are sincerely trying not to kill children but that Hamas keeps putting them in harm's way, I will generally believe it until I have a good reason not to believe it.
This seems to contrast to how many people view the statements of Israel, including very powerful people in, eg, the BBC, HRW, WHO, UN, Amnesty International, Harvard, Justin Trudeau, etc. Many people seem to view every statement of Israel with suspicion. I don't really get it, but here we are.
However.
What you're doing here is abhorrent.
Children weren't 'flung' anywhere. They were at home, or in refugee camps after being displaced four times, before being vaporized without warning. They were in premie beds, before being left to rot and be eaten by wild dogs. That happened. It's happening now.
Blaming Hamas for it is the mark of a seriously disturbed mind. There were no Hamas terrorists forcing the Israeli soldiers to march doctors out of the care room at gunpoint, that was something they chose to do. They chose to leave those babies behind, after promising the doctors they'd receive care. No evidence of Hamas leaders in bombed refugee camps was ever offered.
Israeli programmed AI has decided that 100 civilians per Hamas leader is acceptable. It isn't. It really, really isn't. It's completely insane to think that it is, and yet they say it with a straight face, calling anyone who argues a Jew hater. It's so, so dangerous.
> Many people seem to view every statement of Israel with suspicion
They have lied so, so often. The lies are tissue thin, as if daring people to question them. 40 beheaded babies? Pregnant women cut open? Babies in ovens? Hamas command center tunnels under every hospital? These lies are still being used to justify atrocities, and it's beyond sickening. The whole world is aghast.
Israel have called stone throwing children terrorists for decades, shooting them on a whim. Their response to a 13 year old being raped was to designate the investigating charity a terrorist organisation. They've called the UN, the BBC, the Guardian, the Ivy leagues, and anyone who criticized their war crimes in any way anti-semitic. Slogans of freedom - "from the river to the sea" have been framed as calls for genocide. They've co-ordinated smear campaigns against well-respected thought leaders for simply stating casualty figures.
Again - nothing good can possibly come from this. If you love Israel, or even like it a little, you should be horrified at what they are doing to themselves. This stain will never come out, never; and it keeps getting worse.
If you care for Jewish people, and Palestinians, the only sensible action is to demand an immediate ceasefire.
I don't think calling people who disagree with you "a disturbed mind" as you did is helpful, nor leads to understanding. My advice is to assume those who disagree with you have information you do not have, ask them for their information, consider it, and only then reject it. Calling people "disturbed" does not lead to any understanding.
From my perspective, the Free Palestine movement only has emotional arguments. I do not think it can be rational because its fundamental premises are flawed. You can debate me, find out why, share your information, or you can dismiss me as disturbed. One leads to exchange of views and new information for both of us. The other leads to contention and endless flame wars that help no one.
Prove me wrong through information and arguing against the best version of my arguments, not through insults and dismissal.
That's disturbed.
I don't care to understand whatever is wrong with someone who can say something so abhorrent during a full on genocide, and ask for civil debate. It's demented beyond measure.
You are dismissed, no debate for you.
There is a phenomena in genocides called "Accusation in a Mirror" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror The side that is committing a genocide genuinely believes, or cynically accuses, the targets of their genocide of perpetrating genocide. Right now you believe that is Israel. Right now I believe that is Hamas.
In your favor: the ratio of Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths.
What I find alarming about all of this, is that there is genuine, physical and video evidence of genocide where the only explanation is genocide and its perpetrators admit that it is genocide. The world dismisses this as lying, or playing the victim.
In Israel's favor, these assertions:
"We are not targeting civilians intentionally." Dismissed as lies.
"Hamas is using civilians as human shields." Dismissed as lies.
"The high ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths is an artifact of Hamas policy." Dismissed as lies.
"Our women were raped." Dismissed as lies.
"Babies were burned alive." Dismissed as lies.
Every single assertion that Israel makes about its intentions are dismissed as lies no matter the evidence. The only acceptable explanation for people (such as yourself?) is that Israel wants to commit genocide and is lying to do so.
By contrast, Hamas explains to the world that they intend genocide and will try for it as long as Israel exists.
I don't know how much clearer it can be. What am I missing?
Oh and sorry, it wasn’t 40 beheaded baby, it was just killed babies and separate instance of beheadings, with goddamn shovels. Much better. Also, to question the mass rapes is just vile and utterly disgusting propaganda on your part - these untold evils have all been uploaded on hamas telegram channel by themselves and can easily be seen.
The only evidence put forward that I've seen turned out to be a ten year old picture of Kurds. If the Israeli government wants its claims to be taken seriously, it needs to stop making up crazy racist shit like beheaded babies and babies in ovens. "Those who can make you believe absurdities..."
The only reason to make shit up on top of the already terrible acts of October 7th is to break people's minds in advance of a land grab. Only the greediest, the most ignorant, and the highly delusional are falling for it. Most of the planet is horrified at Israel's response.
There was so much sympathy internationally on October 8th. Now it's universal condemnation. Human rights groups, every population, the UN, the ICC. That's not anti-semitism, it's a normal human response to Israel's actions.
Again, and again; this won't ever be forgotten. It will never be lived down. It could lead directly to Israel's end, if America is forced to stop supporting the genocide.
Netanyahu has created an unending source of national shame. The way the world sees Israel will never be the same. No amount of oil, or gas, or blood-soaked salt-ruined land is worth this.
The absurd claim was always based on testimony from one single guy (Eli Beer), with nothing else.
Why were you so convinced it was real? Try and justify it however you like; it was always absurd, and there was never any actual evidence.
Israel are running targeted assassinations on journalists, poets, academics, health workers. Ten thousand very real children have been murdered. And you're all worked up over a baby that never existed. Explain it to me.
> And you're all worked up over a baby that never existed. Explain it to me.
This is from the article:
A variety of evidence is available on Hamas' cruelty, which includes the murder of parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. There were sexual assaults, rapes and mutilations, while some victims were bound and some of the dead were desecrated. Some homes were burned with the people still inside.
None of this is in dispute.
It goes into quite some detail.
So, I am worked up over this atrocity. I'm glad that I can relegate to fiction the image of a woman being raped while her baby burns to death in an oven, because that's nightmare fuel. It is important that the world gets the details accurate, so I would not say it doesn't matter. It does.
Just, I guess I don't understand - and again, I really want to understand your perspective - how, given all of the other depraved stuff that Haaretz confirms did actually happen, how that translates to Israel is necessarily lying? Like, Hamas admits to doing the other stuff, there's video of it. What is it about the story of the burned baby and 40 beheaded babies that, because it didn't happen, makes you so angry? Again, not attacking, I promise. Really trying to understand.
I say this with all kindness and good intent: if you struggle to understand that, there's something very wrong with your worldview. I can't be expected to diagnose that.
Why do you think lying about beheaded babies is okay?
I don't think lying about beheaded babies is ok. I employ the Principle of Charity whenever possible, though. I don't automatically assume someone is lying unless I have evidence for it. Just makes life easier. It means that sometimes people will get away with lying to me, but as a teacher and father, I'd rather that than assuming an honest mistake is a lie. However, when there is a lie, I'm certain, because I have eliminated all other possibilities first, so I have no doubt.
I don't assume 40 beheaded babies was a deliberate lie. Maybe you have information I don't, but it seems to me that while some people might say such things to be malevolently deceptive, I think in this case that particular untruth reasonably could have been down to shock + rumor + "the game of telephone". Do you have clear evidence that it was a deliberate deception?
I too once assumed that anyone who had the same information I had but held a different opinion was some combination stupid, crazy or evil. But in this case, I don't even have the same information you have.
In the same spirit of genuine kindness that you offered before, I can assure you that will not serve you nor your causes. If your cause is true, speak plainly without fear.
There is no end to this confit regardless. It will go on as you have 2 groups with claims on the same land. Wars are won when the loser accepts defeat I don't see that ever happening. There have been multiple attempts at a negotiated solution like the Peel commision, the 1948 UN partition, or the oslo accords. All have been rejected.
This is the apocryphal "pounding them into submission" (or, "display of overwhelming force"). The idea is to break them, and discourage them from thinking to ever try something like this again.
Problem is, you need to make sure they had anything to do with it in the first place. If someone launches a false flag op, you're being trolled into committing genocide against civilians.
I fear they're being played but they've become a schizophrenic dealing with their demons via Howitzer. Paranoia is easily exploited.
In much of the west[0], you're pro-Israel because fuck Nazis - NEVER AGAIN. In America, you're pro-Israel if you're Republican, pro-Palestine if you're Democrat, or pro-Israel if you're Democrat. If you're anti-colonial, you're pro-Palestine. In Ireland, you're pro-Palestine because fuck England, or you're pro-Israel because fuck Irish nationalism. If you're Muslim, you're pro-Palestine because Zionism is an existential threat to you[1]. If you're an Islamofascist you're very pro-Palestine, if you're a Christofascist you're very pro-Israel. They're just labels you stick on yourself to signal virtue.
This is, of course, terrible for actually discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict, because anything you say about it gets a bunch of mutually contradictory political positions tacked onto it. It's especially difficult to delivering nuanced takes like "Israel and Palestine both have a lot to answer for and we'd be way closer to an actual peace agreement if every politician in both countries dropped dead tomorrow[2]", because I just stepped on like five different rhetorical landmines with that one sentence.
The homomorphism is also bijective: those political labels you're being slapped with get colored with the side of the conflict they're associated with. The most obvious example being Nazi Germany, whose war crimes and crimes against humanity are viewed through the pro-Israel lens. We talk a lot of the 6 million dead Jews but not so much of Hitler's political opponents, Soviet PoWs, black people, gay people, the Roma[3], Jehovah's Witnesses[4], Freemasons, ethnic Poles, Slovenis, and Slavs, and the mentally ill[5]. That's another 11 million victims that we just... don't even think of as victims of the Holocaust. That's how much we link everything to this one crisis.
[0] Japan inclusive
[1] Or at least this was the case in the 1970s
[2] Ok, maybe this doesn't sound nuanced to you. That's the standard of debate here... :/
[3] In America we still use "gypsy", which is terribly offensive in Europe
[4] Which itself has inspired a meme among JWs that lying to protect the faith is A-OK, which is really strange.
[5] This includes autistic kids, who were sent off to Hans Asperger - YES WE NAMED THE DIAGNOSIS AFTER A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL BECAUSE WE LEARNED NOTHING
Is it? In Spain we still call them "gitanos", heck, they even call themselves that: https://www.gitanos.org/
1) The algorithms of the platforms
2) The disinformation / astroturfing / asymetric warfare, driven from Russia, Iran, CCP, and many other 'interested parties'
3) The actual organic opinions
The drivers are in about that order of force. The point of #2 is to make it appear organic, so people can make the argument that 'it's just people's opinion', even when it is wrong.
This is about authoritarians starting and driving a global war on democracy. Russia => Iran => Qatar =>Hamas. Why do you think Hamas leaders and Iranian leaders met in Moscow in mid-October? Gaza is opening a 2nd front on the Ukranian war. Putin & Russian officials have repeatedly stated that they think it is their right to rule at least the entire Soviet and Iron Curtain territory. Russian media is openly cheering the Republicans for blocking Ukraine aid.
But you can go right on believing the shrill propaganda, as if Hamas was some kind of organic protest movement (they are not, they are terrorist occupiers of Palestine). Just be sure you enjoy it when you no longer have a vote that counts after autocrats take over in your country, as they already have in Iran, Gaza, Hungary, etc.
This is because Netanyahu and Hamas both oppose a peaceful resolution.
Hamas =/= Palestinian people. However, if your family's home is taken from you by Israel and your family members are killed by Israeli forces, you will vote for anyone most capable of fighting back, and Israel's funding means Hamas is most capable.
>Just be sure you enjoy it when you no longer have a vote that counts
I am from the US. My vote is useless. No party or candidate representing my interests can run, much less win.
Agree: Hamas =/= Palestinian people. They are an absolute plague on the Palestinian people. Their leaders literally and openly call for Palestinian people to be "martyred, more of them". Using the people they are supposed to protect as human shields, and martyring them as a publicity stunt to gain sympathy is about as evil as it gets; and nevermind making shelters for themselves but not for any civilians, or stealing all the aid. Even if the 2006 election where Hamas supposedly won is considered free & fair (dubious), it has been 17 years since then. No Gazan under the age of 35 ever voted for Hamas.
>>I am from the US. My vote is useless. No party or candidate representing my interests can run, much less win.
Your vote is far from useless. But we must deal with a fundamental flaw in the First-Past-The-Post voting system used almost everywhere in the US. It mathematically forces 1- or 2-Party rule. All others are spoilers, helping elect the worst possible candidate from the POV of the people voting 3rdPty. Ranked Choice Voting fixes this flaw, but it is only in lower races in Maine and a few other locales. Push for it whenever you can.
You also are evidently under the misconception that voting is some kind of contest of finding a perfect candidate. It is not. It is a strategic choice among people/parties who will administer the government. Demanding a 'perfect' candidate to bother to vote ensures that you will get the worst possible outcome. (Again, RCV will give 3rdPtys a chance, and allow voting for them in a way that won't force a worst-choice to win)
And if you think it is bad now, you need to read on countries which have fallen to authoritarianism. Look at Russia, where 20% still lack even indoor plumbing [0], and of course if you say anything like what you just said here, you'll get a visit from the police. The US is under direct threat of that kind of administration in the next election. Hungary has already fallen.
Today, there is literally only one issue to vote on, and that is which party is going to preserve democracy, as without that, we will never get another worthwhile candidate. Which party is attempting to allow more, and more fair, voting, reading, healthcare, etc., and which is suppressing and gerrymandering voting, banning books and healthcare, etc.? Which leader is literally saying he'll "be a dictator on Day 1"? Until we get Ranked Choice voting, there is only the top two to choose from, and there is no choice if you ever want the possibility of another candidate again. Vote wisely and strategically.
[0] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-st...
Your statement alone is dripping with bias and a perfect illustration of how non-nuance the discussion is.
For sure it’s a tragedy.
In my country (US) we've had ~200k deaths from opioid prescriptions. It gets attention but it's really not enough when the perpetrators should be in prison for life.
None of this is a good thing but "outrage of the week" is simply attention and attention span. We're all limited.
Meanwhile the Islamic world has ok’d (in the UN and other forums) China to literally create concentration camps to sterilize and erase the Uygur culture and Islamic religion.
Things are not so straightforward.
You think the "red scare" was actually about the commies attacking? No, it was about limiting an alternative economic system == resource control.
I don't adhere to an Abrahamic religion and frankly dislike monotheism on general principle. But while I don't believe in any of this, it's a fact that huge numbers of people do for different reasons. For example US Evangelicals are obsessed with events in Israel because many of them consider conflict there to be the harbinger of the Apocalypse prophesied in the Book of Revelation. The principal military and political actors in this conflict may be privately secularist or only nominally religious, but they're quite willing to leverage religion for financial and political capital.
That's funny, because you sound like the kind of person who says the same about every conflict.
They are per se responsible for what people see. If pro-Palestinian views are on TikTok at 36:1, that's what TikTok wants, they could easily promote content at a different ratio.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/11/hamas-attacks-isr...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...
> If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views.
That platforms prioritize one over the other is just one possible explanation. An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views. And it's dishonest to present one explanation and omit the other.
Nothing inflames people like injustice.