> Human Rights Watch also found repeated inaccurate application of the “adult nudity and sexual activity” policy for content related to Palestine. In every one of the cases, we reviewed where this policy was invoked, the content included images of dead Palestinians over ruins in Gaza that were clothed, not naked. For example, multiple users reported their Instagram stories being removed under this policy when they posted the same image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed.

... so no nudity, no sexual activity

> For example, a Facebook user post that said, “How can anyone justify supporting the killing of babies and innocent civilians…” was removed under Community Standards on “bullying and harassment.” Another user posted an image on Instagram of a dead child in a hospital in Gaza with the comment, “Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…” which was removed under Community Guidelines on “violence and incitement.”

... arguing _against_ violence is flagged as harassment. Image and statement about Israeli action flagged as incitement

> In one case, an Instagram user received a warning that the comment she posted “may be hurtful to others.” The comment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, consisted of nothing more than a series of Palestinian flag emojis.[77] In other cases, Meta hid the Palestinian flag from comment sections or removed it on the basis that it “harasses, targets, or shames others.”[78]

...that's just kinda indefensible.

> Many users reported posts on Instagram being removed when they criticized the Israeli government, including the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter how nuanced or careful their posts were. Meta removed these posts under its “Dangerous Organizations or Individuals” and hate speech rules, respectively.

... which is crazy since there have been plenty of reasons to criticize Netanyahu well before the Oct 7 attacks.

On the topic of "From the river to the sea", they specifically mention that posts with this phrase, as well as others

> such as “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “Stop the Genocide,” were repeatedly removed by Instagram and Facebook under “spam” Community Guidelines or Standards without appearing to take into account the context of these comments.

I.e. Meta's own cited policy was not that it "is considered hateful" as you say, but that this political expression was labeled as spam. That sounds pretty bogus.

As for the "is considered hateful by many", that's true, but is also subjective, and very tangled given that prominent Israeli conservatives have used very similar phrasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea#Simi...

If someone actually praising the Oct 7 attacks or something gets flagged/banned/etc, then sure, Meta is just applying its policies. That does not seem to be what's happening here. It's true that the report doesn't give numbers for these specific treatments, and the authors have a limited and biased view based on who responded to their call for evidence. But the limited view doesn't seem to be of Meta even-handedly and competently applying their policies.

_However_, I don't want to attribute everything to malice where incompetence may be at least a partial explanation. If motivated 3rd parties are repeatedly flagging a photo of a clothed, dead Palestinian as "nudity", and Meta's systems are built with the assumption that such user-provided flags are presumed trustworthy, then we could easily see how someone posting that photo would get incorrectly/inappropriately flagged.

The report also has some pretty strange language, like mentioning that a post which was flagged for nudity contained a picture of a dead woman, and a fully-clothed man holding her body. But... There are so, so many pictures of fully-clothed, male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women they abducted and/or raped before murdering. Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed? Maybe it's just a grammatical error, but they're really light on the details, and releasing the underlying data would answer a lot of questions.

Personally I am suspicious of HRW's report, since they've been caught releasing misleading reports in the past, and the director of HRW's Israel/Palestine division is a BDS activist [1]. Obviously your viewpoint may be different, but without access to the underlying information it's pretty hard to make a compelling case to either side... Which to me points to the report being more worthy of suspicion, since if it was clear-cut, they'd easily convince more people of their correctness by releasing the data.

1: https://www.ngo-monitor.org/fact-sheet-on-omar-shakirs-bds-c...

> Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed?

It does not. This is misrepresenting what is written in the report, to say the least. There are two such examples in the report (not sure if they refer to the same image): The first one is "image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed" and the other one is "an image of a fully clothed man holding a girl, both deceased". Obviously in both pictures both man and the woman are dead, debunking your "male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women" theory.

> However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse.

Again, this is just a guess and not factual information. In fact, the report has a link to the original source in footnote 78 (https://theintercept.com/2023/10/28/instagram-palestinian-fl...) and one of the comments Instagram has hidden was on a pro-Palestinian post:

> In one, a user commented on an Instagram video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Jordan with green, white, and black heart emojis corresponding to the colors of the Palestinian flag, along with emojis of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags.

Also:

> The Intercept reviewed several hidden comments containing the Palestinian flag emoji that had no reference to Hamas or any other banned group.

When someone else's information is wrong, you're of course welcome to correct it, but please do so by providing correct information and omit swipes and other flamebait, which only degrade discussion and evoke worse from others.

I know that's not easy to do when emotions are running high, but it's something we all need to work on—and it's the same for everyone, regardless of which side they're on in any conflict.

"responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse."

This is a hypothetical. The poster is literally "making up things."

* This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

> In another, a user posted just three Palestinian flag emojis. Another screenshot seen by The Intercept showed two hidden comments consisting only of the hashtags #Gaza, #gazaunderattack, #freepalestine, and #ceasefirenow.

The Intercept does not provide the context on the posts that the flag comments were on, or the hashtags — and visibly-Jewish people across social media have been barraged since Oct. 7th by strangers brigading their completely-unrelated posts with comments like this, and are targeted for harassment just for being Jewish; I think being suspicious of the context is fairly natural. And please refrain from personal attacks.

Re: the man holding the girl — yes, I am referring to the one in which both are deceased, but only the man is referenced as being fully-clothed; members of Hamas can be deceased too. Maybe the girl is also fully-clothed, but not releasing any of the data doesn't help build confidence.

You are right. I had already edited my post before you posted your response.

> I referenced the three Palestinian flags, not the heart emojis

> members of Hamas can be deceased too. Maybe the girl is also fully-clothed

These sound highly nitpicky and like hypotheses that are hard to justify (a Hamas terrorist raping and killing a woman, then getting killed himself and taken a picture of, while the woman is still in his arms, naked? Really?).

I think we are missing the semantics here. My points were:

- Instagram/Facebook/etc can censor comments as simple as emojis, even though they were posted as comments to pro-Palestinian stories.

- They also censor pictures for nudity, even though they are not. Note that even though the reports is ambiguous about one of such photos, it clearly says that the man and his daughter, both deceased, are fully clothed.

Even ignoring the self-selection sampling issues here, .01% is not exactly something to just wave off.

Am one of those ? I always mark these as spam as I try to keep my account politics free. I have some friends that are obsessed with the Palestinian cause and there was a time this stuff would constantly appear in my feed.

If you post on IG about Gaza and someone comments with a different viewpoint than yours, that's not "spam". If on your Gaza post I comment about how you too can be your own boss selling vitamins, that's spam. And if I comment about Palestinian rights on you post about fashion, that's spam.

The ML is good enough to know whether your followers want to engage with political content. If they don't, Facebook will show them less of it.

This is a very simplistic explanation. If the GP is a political activist and "always comments on draft laws", I would expect their followers to be willing to engage with political content.

It wasn't algorithm, or glitch, or bug. It was a decision made by humans, including you know who. It's a form of crowd control. That's why it's important to have several channels for 'producers'. For others it's a good idea to have several sources. You'll see much more even if each source represents a single side (which is usually the case, 'democracies' are no different).

I can give you a first hand example. One big sh*ty bank didn't let me see my accounts if I refused to activate a debit card. After login they showed a message box, when I pressed 'cancel' they logged me out hoping I will 'click through' to get access. This way they didn't have to explain and could claim it was a bug. It lasted for months till I closed all accounts and they confirmed, but actually didn't do it. What I mean by this is don't expect big company to play nice.

How do you know the reason for your reason for zero reach is any different than mine? I assumed Meta's algo decided none of my friends would be interested in what I posted, not that I was being censored.

They did respond to my next 2 posts so no idea the difference.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...

Personally, I oppose both Russian expansionism and the genocidal antisemitic Hamas terrorist movement, so the Meta policy aligns with my views. But I am deeply uncomfortable with having a small cabal of Silicon Valley executives define the acceptable bounds of discourse for the rest of society. It would be better if they allowed all legal content no matter how objectionable and gave individual users tools to block what they don't want to see.

"' We still won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement."

The "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide of Israelis. Thus Meta is consistent here not allowing for calls for violence against civilians in both cases.

Speaking about lies. Lets look at a pretty typical one mentioned by GGP.

>“Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…”

Running that news directly from the Hamas' mouth, the CNN even had to use the photo of large destruction from completely unrelated location (could be easily checked using satellite images for example). Later the real photos appeared. CNN updated the article

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/middleeast/gaza-hospital-expl...

and you can see that the explosion didn't even make any crater in the pavement to speak of. While these windshields and windows are cracked, the cars at 30-40 ft even still have their windshields and windows. The cars closer are mostly damaged by fire, and only the closest few have blast damage. The solar panels on the roof of the 2 story building next to the parking lot are undamaged (just look at that "house of card" installation of the panels - them still where means no blast wave reached them). There is no way for that explosion to damage the hospital building, and not surprisingly there aren't photos of such a damage. That explosion couldn't kill people beyond the distance of about 30ft. I.e. only people near those damaged cars could have been killed. Even if there was a crowd, such weak explosion doesn't kill beyond the first couple rows of people. So, we're talking at worst 10-20 people, if those for some reason crowded right near those damaged cars (in the middle of the night, why?).

Now, where did the warhead came from? The explosion, judging by night video of it and the described damage on the photos, does look like a rocket of Grad class, definitely not larger. Israel doesn't use such weak warheads in its stand-off weapons. Whereis Hamas does use thousands of such rockets. And these rockets, mostly built by Hamas in underground shops, have high rate of failure, i.e. Gaza is regularly showered with tens of malfunctioning Hamas rockets. And there is even a video from that night with a salvo of Hamas rockets with at least one going in that direction.

No it isn't. Expressing a desire for freedom and regaining ownership of land may make occupiers uncomfortable, but that doesn't constitute genocide.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/ha...

Where will Jews live if there is a Palestinian state from river to sea?

I'm not saying this would be worse for the users, because I agree that "allow all content + powerful filtering tools" would suit me just fine. But it's worth noting that there would be a real serious monopoly problem if there were no conscious choices to differentiate. This would conflict with your main point of friction here: that a bunch of SV nerds shouldn't get to define our Overton window. If one platform provided free speech + filters, and became the only game in town, it wouldn't be long before we were back in the situation we're in today, except the group of toxic SV billionaires running the show would be even smaller.

The phrase has its origins in Arab nationalism. It was coined in 1960 by the PLO to refer to the goal of an Arab state that occupies the entirety of what was Mandatory Palestine. If you ignore the subtext of “what happens to the Jews in that situation” I suppose you can make a case for it.

It’s like the confederate flag. In the 20th century there was an effort to rehabilitate it (as in the Dukes of Hazzard) as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism. And that’s the only connotation lots of people have of it. But it has a pretty unpleasant historical context.

At the very least it’s a dog whistle to the large fraction of the Muslim world that hates Jews: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/adls-global-100-survey-wh.... Americans who use this phrase should really travel to the Muslim world to understand the antisemitism that’s just in the air. You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?

I'm very impressed and glad that HN has discussed Gaza situation has been discussed with seriousness, respect, and a lack of flamewars. Let's not allow the poison to creep in now.

Check out this Reddit thread about a Bangladeshi American dating a Jewish guy, asking what to do about Bangladeshis who support Hitler: https://www.reddit.com/r/bangladesh/comments/17eqywa/how_can...

And check out the first response:

> I just say Hitler is indirectly responsible for the creation of Israel. If he didn't try to kill them all then Jewish people wouldn't have cared that much about founding an independent Israel. This might force them to think a bit differently and change their view about him.

Sure, it’s just one anecdote. But it’s hard to convey to someone who doesn’t have a Muslim family how pervasive anti-semitism is. My favorite aunt, who is the sweetest person, will randomly lower her voice and blame things on “the Jews” (she pronounces it like “juice”). And I’m from a liberal, upper class family where all the women went to college.

Never got that one. Nothing like the flag of a breakaway state founded to preserve chattel slavery as a symbol of… anti-authoritarianism?

Their narrative glossed over slavery, and focused on the other aspects of the conflict: the industrialized north, with its big banks and big corporations, versus the agrarian south. Do you remember the scene in Hamilton where they negotiate about where to put the capital? And the Hamilton says something along the lines of “let the south have the capital, we’ll have the bank where the real power will be.” It’s not hard to make the south look like the good guys if you ignore the Confederate elites’ actual reasons for the war.

I grew up partly in the South of the civil rights era and went to one de-facto segregated school. (Dad was military, stationed in various places.) I was a kid, but I paid attention to the news, and my impression was that racism was the clear, undeniable subtext to the "being a rebel" part: Many Southerners — notably, most of those who held political- and economic power — resented federal "interference" with "Southern ways," namely the violent oppression of blacks to keep them as an impoverished, powerless, underclass workforce.

(In 2020 I read a tweet thread from an anonymous Army officer, recapping the history of post-Civil War Reconstruction and the Union's de facto surrender in 1877; the quote that stuck with me was, "Sherman should've mowed the deep south like a lawn, making multiple passes")

https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843

Name one Arab-majority country where Jews live openly as equal citizens. The suggestion that “freeing Palestine from the river to the sea” would just mean a secular multi-ethnic state where Jews life peacefully among an Arab majority is willful blindness.

The logic of your argument implies that binationalism - a single state, belonging equally to both the Jewish and Palestinian nations - is an inherently genocidal position, and hence that proponents of binationalism are guilty of genocidal incitement.

However, there are Jewish Israeli intellectuals who promote binationalism - for example, the journalist Gideon Levy, and the academic Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin. By the logic of your argument, these Jewish intellectuals are guilty of inciting the genocide of their own people - which I think is a rather preposterous claim. Their critics argue that their plans, if ever actually implemented, would inevitably result in genocide in practice - they insist those critics are wrong. But, I don't think it really matters who is right. They don't intend genocide as a consequence of their proposals, so their proposals are not genocidal, whoever is right about what they'd lead to if put into practice. And nobody can really know the answer to that question, unless some day we actually try it.

But, if a binational one-state solution is not inherently genocidal - what makes a mononational one-state solution fundamentally different? In both cases, the claim of genocide is founded on what critics claim will be the practical results of the policy, not what the policy's proponents claim to expect as the outcome.

Some particular versions of a mononational one-state solution are genocidal, as are some proposed strategies to achieve one. But I'm not convinced the idea in itself (either in its Israeli or Palestinian version) necessarily is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Ottoman...

There were periods of peace, but they were also second class citizens and occasionally the victims of massacres.

My point was merely not to romanticise the past.

House to house, Arab mobs went, bursting into every room looking for hiding Jews. Religious books and scrolls were burned or torn to shreds. The defenseless Jews were variously beheaded, castrated, their breasts and fingers sliced off, and in some cases their eyes plucked from their sockets. Infant or adult, man or woman—it mattered not.

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/134601

> Islam had been at war with the Jewish people since its defining inception in 627 when Mohammad exterminated the Jews of Mecca and launched the Islamic conquest that swept north and subsumed Syria-Palestina. For centuries, Jews and Christians in Arab lands were allowed to exist as dhimmis, second-class citizens with limited religious rights. These restrictions were enforced by the Turks who, until World War I, ruled the geographically undetermined region known as Palestine, which included Jerusalem.

Seems quite pre-“colonialization”, assuming we count the establishment of the current state Israel in the 20th century as the startng point for that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banu_Qaynuqa

I know it hard to feel calm when things like are happening, and everyone wants to blame someone else, but there’s a whole lot of shared responsibility in what’s happening right now.

I care about what’s happening to folk in Palestine a lot, but I also care about the Jews in Israel and what happens to them.

Those are not mutually exclusive things…

This is laughably false.

The fact that the PLO was trying to achieve a secular democratic state or that they envisioned Jews to live in said state?

I’d love to laugh as well, so it would be helpful if you can be more precise.

Full chant is:

من الميه للميه – فلسطين عربيه

(Min al-mayya lil-mayya, Filasteen Arrabiya)

"From the Water to the Water, Palestine is Arab."

> You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?

Perhaps for exactly the same reason Russian passport holders aren't welcome in a lot of places?

don’t think just the fact someone believes they are liberating something makes it right, as in their eyes the russians in the current war are liberating ukraine

If not those who use the phase - and have been using it in exactly the same way for decades - can decide what it means, then who can? Should we apply the same argument to "pro choice" and agreee that that it is a call for premediated murder of infants because that is what the "pro life" crowd thinks?

People often say this but I see no contradiction between the American Civil War being about slavery and it being about states' rights. It was about the states' rights to own slaves!

That aside, the idea that "all historians agree" is absurd.

Should we take your opinion seriously instead? Unfortunately you do not share it.

You’ve repeatedly been asked “What Israel should do in your opinion in current situation and what outcome you expect once it does it?” and you repeatedly have failed to produce any answer to that question even in simplified form.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38582722

> The chant is a call for liberation.

Let’s try again : How this “liberation” would look like ? And what outcome you expect to see once it’s done ?

The oppression faced under occupation by people in the West Bank and in Gaza for over 70 years now reminds us of how situations like Apartheid in South Africa formally continued until 1994.

To dismiss as simple “Jew hate” is really not the correct context; very disappointing to see these broad generalizations dismiss the fundamental needs for human life.

And the antipathy in the rest of the Muslim world is mostly about hating Jews. In Bangladesh, where I’m from, people aren’t marching for justice for the Rohingya being genocided by Myanmar—even though Rohingya are closely related to Bangladeshis. But there are huge protests in the streets for Palestinians. What is the explanation for why people would be so much more concerned about a “human rights” issue involving a far away, distantly related people, in comparison to the amount of concern for the human rights issue happening to a closely related people next door? Because it’s not really about “human rights,” it’s about a Muslim solidarity against Jews.

The issue with Rohingya people is also an issue that people take solidarity with and partake in aid of.

I see your comment as dismissing the desire to establish justice in Palestine as if it is only about fighting Jews for being Jewish. Many people also protested the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which now in the US we recognize as being based on wrong premises. Apartheid was supported by many people but now it is regarded as a dark time in history.

If you wish to be on the side of ignoring the need for justice, know that you won’t be the first to do so. But it does not make it the correct thing to do.

Very few things about this situation are simple.

Not the person you are replying to, but I think the logic is a bit different than “is it politically good or bad.” It is more like “is this speech advocating for genocide of an ethnic group or is it just critical of/disrespectful to a religion.”

I think most people agree that those two things aren’t even close to being the same. Also, I don’t think that “talking negative about islam” has been a “politically good” thing in way over a decade.

It certainly could indicate support for genocide. It also could indicate extreme disapproval for the vastly disproportionate civilian death toll among Palestinians at the hands of Isreal in the wake of Hamas' attacks.

It appears to me that Israel's goal under Netanyahu is to suppress dissent, and label all those who oppose its actions as "genocidal" to therefore justify its indiscriminate violence against the people of Gaza.

Some people are certainly implying support for genocide when they say "from the river to the sea", while others are not. Same for "Greater Israel".

The only sane place to draw the line imo is at explicit support for hatred or violence. Even that standard can be fuzzy, but if there's a reasonable doubt about intent, I don't think we want corporations or governments making those judgments.

I recall back during the furor over drawing Mohammad peoppe an extremist Muslim group said about Matt stone/trey Parker that they "will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh". Is allowing that sort of speech, what appears to be a death threat in response to free expression, protecting free speech? Or is it enabling a culture of self-censorship due to fears of violent reprisals? Things are complicated, you must be flexible.

In this case, I want to be reasonable. I have heard people use “from the river to the sea” in hateful ways many times. People seem legitimately upset by it and are not just putting on airs. It doesn’t advance the discourse in a productive way.

Nope, every single one. There's as much possibility to endorse this slogan and not imply Jewish genocide as there is to see a person wearing a nazi uniform, with a swastika armband, waving a swastika flag, and screaming "kill the jews!" and find out he's not actually endorsing a genocide of the Jews. That is, vanishingly small. If you say this slogan, this is exactly what it means, no ifs, no buts, no coconuts - destroying the population of Israel. Now, there are probably idiots that chant this without even knowing what "river", "sea" and "Palestine", or any other word of it, actually means, and won't be able to point it on the map if promised a million dollar to do just that. But that doesn't mean the meaning of it changes - it just means some idiots are chanting evil things without realizing it, just as if they were chanting "Sieg Heil".

> I don't think we want corporations or governments making those judgments.

Dude, we're so far from where it even was the question we can no longer see it in the back window even using a telescope. Corporations and governments are making these decisions every day now, it's kinda late to notice it a decade after it already happened. I mean sure, I'd be glad to be back to non-censorship days of yore, but it's kinda weird to remember about it only when it's about discussing calls for genocide. Maybe if people cared about it earlier, we could actually have a non-censorship present and future, but right now it doesn't look like we can anymore.

> The only sane place to draw the line imo is at explicit support for hatred or violence.

If there's any meaning in words "hatred" and "violence", "from the river to the sea" is wholeheartedly supporting both and there's probably not many slogans that are more hateful and violent than that towards millions of people. It literally calls for wiping out at least 7 millions of people (that assuming Arab population of Israel would be spared, which is not a given - Hamas was as willing to murder non-Jews as Jews on October 7, just because they found them on Israeli territory, nobody did a DNA test there). That's kinda hard to beat.

People have called for the seizure of "Greater Israel" since Israel's founding[1]. The "Movement for Greater Israel"[2] was one of the parties that merged together to form the ruling Likud Party, and the president of Israel pulled out a map showing "The New Middle East" only having Israel and no longer having Palestine [3]. You know, the one who just invaded "Greater Israel".

My square deal, is if "From the River to the Sea" gets banned as hate speech, Netanyahu's map also gets banned as hate speech. Nobody is allowed to promote the idea that Israel takes over Palestine, or Palestine takes over Israel. It's not fair if we ban things in one direction and not the other. Allow both or neither.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel#During_British_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Greater_Israel [3] https://i.redd.it/x68dg51jb0qb1.jpg

If Hamas would show around the maps, and Netanyahu would show around the maps - I'd say, no problem, let them both have their maps. That's not what Hamas is doing. Hamas has just murdered over 1300 people in Israel, after a long string of lesser murders over 18 years, and after shooting rockets into Israel day to day for all those years. And they plan to continue that - that's not my words, it's theirs. And the "from the river" slogan is an unequivocal support to all that. It's not about drawing of some map, there's not even nearly any comparison between drawing a map and murdering, raping and kidnapping people.

And of course, if you knew anything about policy in Israel, you'd know nobody there, and that includes first and foremost Netanyahu himself, and Likud under his (or anybody else's) leadership, wants to annex Palestinian territories. If anybody wanted it, it'd be done decades ago - as it happened in Jerusalem and Golan. But it's exactly the opposite of what everybody in Israel - very much including Likud, Netanyahu and anybody who is somebody in Israel politics - wants. Only people that know absolutely nothing about Israel politics beyond what they read in some hostile source, itself being derived from some unsourced reddit posting, could claim anything like that. Anybody who knows anything would laugh at it. Israel explicitly exited Gaza because it didn't want any responsibility for it. Israel explicitly signed with PLO because they didn't want to annex the West Banks and have all the Arab population there as citizens. I have no idea what's the story of that map and what was meant by it, and when and in what context it was shown, but if you know anything about what happened there in the last 100 years, you'd know annexing those territories is just the opposite of what Likud or Netanyahu want. So again, there's absolutely no comparison. So if you want, yeah, ban "Greater Israel" - because you'd be banning nothing but the figment of your imagination.

> Israel explicitly exited Gaza because it didn't want any responsibility for it.

That is not how that works. As an occupying force they are obligated to protect the population they are occupying, not commit genocide on them. No amount of kicking up sand changes that very basic fact. It doesn't matter if they actually want what they are doing, they are guilty either way. Who gives a shit what Eichmann "actually wanted" except Eichmann?

Israel hasn't been "an occupying force" in Gaza for 18 years. All those years Hamas explicitly renounced responsibility of doing anything for Gazans, as a normal government should - their functionaries, like Musa Abu Marzouk, openly said they are not going to do anything for the population, that's UN's business. Their business is murdering Jews and using the population as shields, and they should be thankful for that. With this approach there's no wonder all the money went to Hamas' pockets and building the tunnels, that the schools, mosques and hospital were converted to military installations and the population is living in squalor. And the fault for that lies with Hamas - their insane fanatical hate for the Jews didn't leave any space for building any normal life in Gaza. And people on the West that keep enabling them and keep shifting the blame to Israel are part of the problem, because it's their money and their support allow Hamas to do what it does.

> not commit genocide on them

Hamas has genocide as their explicit goal, and they confirmed it many times, and they tried to do it just recently and succeeded in murdering over 1300 people in Israel. They literally murdered, raped and kidnapped everybody they encountered. The goal of Israel never was to commit any genocide (no wonder the population of Gaza tripled under Israel control) - it was to leave in peace and have the Arabs to rule themselves, peacefully. Unfortunately, with Hamas it proved to be impossible. There's only one side there that is hell-bent on committing genocide - and that's Hamas. And they are not hiding it in the least, either - but people like you keep employing astonishing amount of mental gymnastics to hide it from yourselves.

> It doesn't matter if they actually want what they are doing, they are guilty either way.

What Israel is doing is dismantling the Hamas regime. Nothing else. They allowed it to exist for 18 years, so it will take a lot of time and a lot of blood, unfortunately, because Hamas is not going to go willingly, and they are actively using the population of Gaza as human shields, while robbing them (quoting Musa Abu Marzouk again: "The aid that comes to Gaza must be distributed to the resistance fighters, and what remains is done - distribute it to the people. The attempt of some citizens to seize aid, as happened today in Rafah, will be fought with all force" - and by "force" he means murdering anyone who doesn't want to starve for his glory). But of course, the useful idiots on the West will drone about how Israel is guilty in that anyway. Nothing will change them.

> Despite the Israeli disengagement, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and many human-rights organizations continue to consider Gaza to be held under Israeli military occupation, due to what they consider Israel's effective military control over the territory; Israel disputes that it occupies the territory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

They blow up up the Palestinian Supreme court and you claim "What Israel is doing is dismantling the Hamas regime. Nothing else."

https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17317722618482647...

That has as much to do with fighting Hamas as putting children into death camps had to do with fighting "Jews who control the media" or whatever.

You did not change the facts, you did not even cover them up in the slightest. What you did was stand up and get counted as someone looking the other way.

The right to self defense is one of the basic human rights. "Human" here includes Jews, to the surprise of many. Israeli government committed a grave mistake of disarming the population in dangerous areas, thinking people do not need to defend themselves, since it's the job of the government. That cost hundreds of lives - lives of the people that could defend themselves, but were disarmed by their own government. Looks like finally the government realizes the gravity of their mistake. Good, at least they are capable of learning.

Oh sure, anyone who criticizes Nazi mentality and behaviour in Israelis hates Jews.

Nope. Leibowitz was right, and your mental gymnastics just underline that.

Meanwhile: "Palestinians under attack as Israeli settler violence surges in the West Bank"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67173344

I follow this topic daily, on twitter, in telegram (both Israeli and Arab groups), and among the thousands of Jews I know across the world on FB (from anti-Zionist Jews to Orthodox). This is the first time I've ever seen the phrase "Greater Israel" mentioned. I'll go research it now but it strikes me as a manufactured obscurity, while "From the River to the Sea" is prevasive.

Well, it is unquestionably the stance of the entire political party in which Netanyahu is a member of.

I wonder how long the comment would have been up, if it was referring to the other side instead.

edit: I see from the downvotes that my experience doesn't fit your bias. Sorry people -_-

My guess is that the original poster is leaving something out in their comment and the post wasn’t as brazen as the comment suggested.

Do you have any proof of this whatsoever? First that these posts actually exist (this I believe) and that the reason they weren't taken down was because they were about Palestinians (versus, say, overlooked so far)?

And you are touching a lot of different subjects which I don't have time to refute one by one.

Examples:

1. Convinction rate in Israel is over 90% for the entire population, not just palestinians. This is because different reasons such as preference not to press charges if there is not a very high chance of conviction, plea bargains, etc.

2. Multiple checkpoints - The security situation in the west bank is a reflection of the fact this is an occupied territory which should have been solved in subsequent peace negotiations. This never happened, and the reasons for that rest on both sides, but you have to be honest with yourself if you think the Palestinians did not reject multiple fair peace offers.

"Systematically exterminated" - This is an extreme hyperbole.. there are enough historical examples of how systematic exterminations looks like to make this a not serious claim. Just compare the amount of casualties of different middle eastern conflicts to the Israeli-Palestinian one

Please try to touch something more concrete than multiple anecdotes which most do not really represent anything similar to an apartheid government.

you see enough annectodatal evidence and it starts to become a pattern

> And you are touching a lot of different subjects which I don't have time to refute one by one.

thats how systematic oppression work. it has many facets and if you're pro israeli, you've only maintained that position by bot reading though the evidence

> Convinction rate in Israel is over 90% for the entire population, not just palestinians.

fair, but why do palestinians go thougha. seperate miliary court? why are children as young as 10 serving time in military prisons? october 7th was horrible but lets not ignore that it was motivated by people in a desperate situation trying to gain bargaining chips to have their loved ones released. some of those children released from the prisons in exchange for the israeli hostages were as young as 10 at the time of incarceration.

"Systematically exterminated" - This is an extreme hyperbole..

no its not. this proves to me you have spent no time watching any of the documentaries exploring this. you wouldn't last a day living in the west bank as a palestinian. Ive seen plenty of videos of settlers shooting down palestinians in cold blood with IDF soldiers doing nothing to stop it. they only step in when palestinians fight back. as an american who studied history, I know enough about the ku klux klan to to know ethnic cleansing when I see it.

> Please try to touch something more concrete than multiple anecdotes which most do not really represent anything similar to an apartheid government.

I think its obvious that there is no amount of evidence that would meet the bar for you to consider whats going on an apartheid.

Pattern for what? a national conflict is not the same as an apartheid government. We might need to go back to how you define apartheid, because I imagine separate bathrooms mandated by law, and it seems you imagine a national conflict in an occupied territory

> thats how systematic oppression work. it has many facets and if you're pro israeli, you've only maintained that position by bot reading though the evidence

Sounds a bit ad-hominem

> fair, but why do palestinians go thougha. seperate miliary court? why are children as young as 10 serving time in military prisons? october 7th was horrible but lets not ignore that it was motivated by people in a desperate situation trying to gain bargaining chips to have their loved ones released. some of those children released from the prisons in exchange for the israeli hostages were as young as 10 at the time of incarceration.

Military courts are how you manage a military occupied territory, I believe this is quite common in international law. Also Palestinians can appeal to the Israeli supreme court, many do and many decisions are overruled.

About children as young as 10, I need specifics. Looking at Israeli human rights organizations which I don't think anyone would think are pro-government in any way, there weren't any younger than 14 for the very long while I scrolled (https://www.btselem.org/hebrew/statistics/minors_in_custody).

The difference between hostages is these minors were trialed for real crimes, which you probably wouldn't accept in your country as well (attempted murder for example)

> no its not. this proves to me you have spent no time watching any of the documentaries exploring this. you wouldn't last a day living in the west bank as a palestinian. Ive seen plenty of videos of settlers shooting down palestinians in cold blood with IDF soldiers doing nothing to stop it. they only step in when palestinians fight back. as an american who studied history, I know enough about the ku klux klan to to know ethnic cleansing when I see it.

Systematic extermination can be quantified. Let's say one way you could measure it is by comparing birth rate to intentional death rates. I assure you the growth rate of the palestinian population is extremely positive.

Another way you can measure it is compare it to ongoing conflicts, the Syrian civil war which is currently ongoing has 600k casualties spanning a few years. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ongoing for almost a hundred years and it hasn't reached 10% of that.

It doesn't make it less tragic, but saying this is systematic extermination can minimize real cases of genocide.

> I think its obvious that there is no amount of evidence that would meet the bar for you to consider whats going on an apartheid.

I'm not sure. Again, apartheid is a government system that is based on systematic racism and discrimination. Although both exist in Israel, as in many other countries, this is a far cry than South Africa, or even the United States in the early 60s.

or the case where a 13 year oldboy was raped in prison and the IDF labelle dthe group trying to document and report it a terrorist organization?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnH61RvX-VQ&ab_channel=Daizy...

> Sounds a bit ad-hominem

I'm not talking about you specifically. I'm stating that the israeli position requires being absolutely obtuse and deflective for every shred of evidence that comes their way.

to be clear, no one is here to defend Hammas. I just don't think the IDF is any better.

case in point, they shot the three shirtless israeli hostages because they thought they were palestinians? so its perfectly fine to shoot unarmed people basicly?

Although this is a common perception, just the fact a human rights group declares something doesn't make it so. I have to remind you that you live in a world where the UN Human Rights council chair is a country where they publicly hang gay people on cranes and rapes women in prisons.

Case in point, Lebanon is a country where you cannot become president by law if you're not born from a specific Christian sect. This is a country where ethnic discrimination is codified into laws (and of course Palestinians don't have voting rights). This is closer to what you deem apartheid, yet Amnesty did not make a fancy video about that.

> or the case where a 13 year oldboy was raped in prison and the IDF labelle dthe group trying to document and report it a terrorist organization?

I'm sorry, I completely believe you it happened, however this is missing tons of context. Raped by whom? Was this case brought to a court? Do you believe the rape was state sanctioned? What were the charges which caused the IDF to declare it a terrorist organization? For example there were many situations where these organizations were money laundering fronts for Hamas.

And if the answers to all these questions is 'because Israel only does evil things and nothing is ever rational or a mistake or an individual wrong', what are you trying to prove and how does that relate to being an apartheid state

> I'm not talking about you specifically. I'm stating that the israeli position requires being absolutely obtuse and deflective for every shred of evidence that comes their way.

I don't think this is the case any more than criticizing one side for not being compatible with your values while completely ignoring the different side of the coin.

> case in point, they shot the three shirtless israeli hostages because they thought they were palestinians? so its perfectly fine to shoot unarmed people basicly?

It's an obvious blunder, but I think to be fair you have to know a lot more about the situation than we both know. One explanation is these soldiers were trigger happy and wanting revenge, and another explanation is that they misidentified them as armed or there was a failure of communication. There's a reason why it's called 'the fog of war'

ok so I guess amnesty international isn't a good source on if something is an apartheid by your logic?

> Case in point, Lebanon is a country where you cannot become president by law if you're not born from a specific Christian sect. This is a country where ethnic discrimination is codified into laws (and of course Palestinians don't have voting rights). This is closer to what you deem apartheid, yet Amnesty did not make a fancy video about that.

fair point. on the other hand, my tax dollars aren't' funding that discrimination. wheres my tax dollars ARE paying for the palestinian genocide. and yes, 15000 dead with the majority of them being under 18 is genocide. There's enough names to put up a large monument.

> I'm sorry, I completely believe you it happened, however this is missing tons of context.

the video I linked explains a good chunk of the context. it was compelling enough for the US state department to take the allegations seriously and forward the information to the israeli government. their response was to confiscate the computers and classify the the reporting party as a terrorist organization.

FOG of war? they were shirtless and loudly screaming in hebrew as confirmed by many sources. at the very least they could have been apprehended. It was considered a mistake only in that they weren't' palestinians. I haven't' even mentioned the number of journalist "accidentally killed." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V4zG_UkIdc&ab_channel=Middl...)

I mean... this is all pretty damning.

you call it circumstantial and anecdotal but there's a LOT of it. They've even gone so far as to label literal children of holocaust survivors "antisemitic" for speaking out against this genocide. (google it)

I know I probably won't be able to change your mind no matter what I show you. but there are very real reasons antizionism is growing in the world. The only solution that doesn't make israel evil will be to grant palestinians citizenship and equality under the law and let them live in israel alongside jews. abandon this whole ethnostate garbage.

You need to assert your claims and be ready to defend them, "Amnesty said so" is not enough to define a government system, and I heard it somewhere in youtube is not enough to declare genocide.

The conflict is extremely complex and nuanced just as the rest of the world is. People sometimes use this conflict as a way to flatly project their Good vs Evil binary attitudes, please try to embrace complexity.

literally 2 seconds of googling can disprove that

https://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/checkpoints_and_...

> If they need to go thru checkpoints then they are not trespassing their territory.

if there was just one checkpoint between gaza and israel, yes that would be accurate but its not.

last I checked, Mexicans don't have to pass though US checkpoints when they travel from tulum to cancun or mexico city.

Any reason other than hyperbole that you consider Israel to be an apartheid state, as compared to the rest of the Arab countries?

1: Raw video by The Guardian, not even much commentary, see with your own eyes: https://youtu.be/ksnLom8OD9E?si=aYvcLqcLQK960fbx

I don't know what exactly happened with those people - though by the fact that they call Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem "settlers" I can know I can't trust a word that they are saying, and the source - which is the horrendously biased against Israel Guardian - even if everything that they say were true (which I very much suspect isn't), it looks like a property dispute, very likely based on the habit of certain parts of the population (not only Arabic, but often also) to build things first and apply for permits never. This is not always prosecuted, but sometimes it is. Sometimes it leads to very nasty disputes. Never has anything to do with "apartheid", which is lack of rights based on race (or, I allow it, ethnicity). Again, Arabs in Israel enjoy exactly the same rights, so the claim of "apartheid" is pure libel. That doesn't change an iota even if you find some instance of somebody being unjustly treated by somebody else or the legal system (again, I have zero reason to believe The Guardian in this particular case, but even if it did, it would have nothing to do with supposed "apartheid").

Also I note if you watch the film carefully, the Arabs do not just demand the property. They demand the Jews to leave Jerusalem (1:26). Israel is just fine with Arabs living in Jerusalem (even if some may claim they are not fairly treated). Arabs are not fine with Jews living in Jerusalem. And we just witnessed on October 7th what they do to Jews they're not fine with, when they can. In Jerusalem, they can't. But they still would like to. I don't think when they are deprived of this capacity, it's called "apartheid" - it's not what that word was supposed to mean.

I should have been clearer.

The GP claims that calling for the cessation of existence of an apartheid state is considered justified by the world.

He's correct. Most of the world would consider it justified.

But ... most of the world would not consider it justified to call for the cessation of existence of an entire country and, by extension, it's people.

South Africa was the first and the defining apartheid state. People called for the cessation of existence of the state. Anyone calling for the cessation of existence of the South African country would have been considered insane.

Additionally, the argument presented by GP is invalid anyway:

1. Everyone wants an apartheid state to cease existence

2. $COUNTRY is run by an apartheid state.

3. Therefore, everyone is calling for the cessation of existence of $COUNTRY.

It's simply invalid. The presence of assertions #1 and #2 above does not lead to the conclusion #3 above.

The USA already functions as a de facto One State solution where natives have both full rights and a negotiated sub-nationality too. The manifest destiny USA's "right to exist" was settled definitively against as early as 1865.

I wish for a future where there is peace and love, with no violence, from the river to the sea. I wish for a future where all people, from the river to the sea, have full human rights under the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wish for a future where all people, from the river to the sea, are enthusiastic users of GNU/Linux and the worst conflicts are debates over text editors.

If someone uses "from the river to the sea" in a sentence where they call for genocide, then what would make that sentence wrong is the verb phrase calling for genocide.

It's crazy to me the a lot of the same crowd saying, "I don't see how this is hateful" are the same people who told us that the "Okay" symbol meant "white power" and was literal violence.

I remember some people in the arab world took side for ben laden on 9/11 but this time it's happening in the west too.

I see similar sentiments around this war all the time, "Israel deserved this terrorist attack due to imperialism" but again really not much actual support for Hamas.

You can't blame israel for oct 7, ask them to stop their ongoing operations in gaza, not call for the release of hostages, not say a word about the women raped by hamas and gaza civilians, AND pretend to "just want to spare the civilians population". Those people are in practice siding for the hamas, even if they deny it.

At the actual substance level, I also don’t think it’s fair or honest to take “silence” on a topic as evidence of support for it.

In this particular case, I would bet fewer than 0.00001% of the people you’re arguing with are actually okay with (or supportive of) keeping hostages in Hamas’ custody or raping people. You’re battling a cartoon villain that you drew yourself.

Another recent example in Paris as well is the number of people removing "free the hostages" posters in the streets.

And i won't even mention twitter..

This isn't something i've imagined, it's the sad reality. Those people are actively hostile to israelis even if that means supporting the most terrible atrocities commited by hamas.

1. These protestors are actually pro raping Israelis

2. These protestors want a single, specific priority for the protest they organized

And you believe not just that (1) is more likely, but that there’s so little possibility of (2) that you can just discard their entire perspective and accuse them of supporting rape of Israelis without even asking them?

What if a group of men’s rights activists showed up advocating for the men under bombardment? Would the protestors have been wrong to exclude them? Maybe! Arguably! But would their excluding those men’s rights activists have indicated that they are positively “okay with” or perhaps even supportive of the men of Gaza dying? Absolutely not.

That just seems blatantly dishonest. You don’t have the information you think you have.

To be clear: there are people who have the beliefs you’re talking about. Obviously (October 7th speaks for itself). I just think those people are far fewer than you’re perceiving, and it is absolutely necessary for people to be engaging with good criticisms on complex issues like this one with so many lives at stake.

Which is an absolutely horrible stance for a feminist organization. But that's where ideology leads to.

Do you see any other explanation ?

This is not a rhetorical question. I am curious what you make of this. What do you “know” about their opinions based on their failures to organize such demonstrations?

The troubling part is that women are killed almost the same day in the same region, in the same conflict, and i'd even say only the israli ones got targeted as women on purpose and raped. And yet they chose to protest exclusively for the other side.

You should consider asking a few people and actually listening to their answers instead of accusing them of being pro-rape for failing to mention your topics of choice in the same breath.

A lot of people end up with beliefs and attitudes by sheer inertia of those around them and will accordingly have bad answers. Some people don’t though, and they’re the ones who you can both teach and learn from. Thus back to my original point: look for the strong versions of the argument.

the "definitive answer" was for the global historical interest on the israel/arab conflict. But once again, this is another issue than what we were talking about.

Here are a few reasons Americans seem to be so interested in it:

1. We’re paying for a decent chunk of it, both financially and in terms of international political support

2. It cross-cuts American society along very unique dimensions, creating ad-hoc coalitions between people who don’t normally collaborate very much (e.g. far right white supremacists and Zionists, or far left commies and jihadists). These coalitions are already impacting American domestic affairs and will likely influence our upcoming elections.

3. In general it’s reasonable to pay close attention to situations where a thousand people are killed in a terrorist attack under the purview of a western security apparatus or when an urban area is subject to an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign (given that they tend to be humanitarian disasters even in the best of circumstances)

4. This conflict has a very high potential to unravel into a regional and even global conflict given the networks backing each belligerent

How exactly is it odd that people care so much about the situation?

You keep saying "we should ask them, there's probably a better reason for them to act like this than pure hate". So, let me ask you, what do you think that reason could be ?

From several comments up. Seems like a sufficiently plausible explanation not to jump to as cynical and self-serving an explanation as “they think Israeli women deserve to be raped.”

And I’d also not be surprised to see them kick out men’s rights activists doing the same thing. It would be excessively cynical and self-serving to jump to “they think the men of Gaza deserve to be bombed,” too.

“They’re pro rape” is an appalling accusation to level at someone. Doing so with the “evidence” you’ve supplied calls into question your willingness to question your priors and find a real solution. So this will be my last comment on the subject as I think I’ve sufficiently made my point. Have a good holiday season!

It's not about them being pro-rape, it's about them hating israelis more than they like women in general (which is a pretty high level of hate if you're a feminist). It's pure hate and i'm not sorry you're failing to see it for what it is. "Trying to find the best argument" for someone's position only works for people that aren't hypocritical. Otherwise it's just a failed analysis.

Indeed, this hypocrisy is even more important to point out. Do you believe Israeli civilians bear collective guilt for Israel's ongoing war crimes, like you believe Palestinian civilians do?

About this war and the bombing i don't have any numbers since it's very hard to establish as long as the war is ongoing, but given gaza population density and average age i'm willing to accept the idea that there's going to be a very high number of child casualties indeed. And it's an atrocity. The problem i have for critizing them is that :

- they didn't start this war.

- i don't have any idea what else they could be doing. There's no doubt they can't live next to a hamas-led gaza anymore, so they have to topple this regime. And i have no idea how they could have achieved that peacefully.

Back from that time, George W Bush literally said you are either with us or you are with the terrorists, so I feel people are pretty inoculated against allegations that they are supporting the terrorists if they don’t support the military force fighting terrorists. The “America deserved 9/11” crowd generally believes Bin Laden did 9/11 to provoke the Americans into attacking so as to create more terrorists and weaken America. This was supported by how the GWOT kept creating more terrorists after every new counter insurgency operation.

This isn’t maybe, a totally unbiased way to see things, but the point is that the sentiment generally isn’t “Hamas is great because they kill the IDF”, the sentiment is more commonly “Screw that soldier, they’re a pawn that is playing into the hands of Hamas”.

Jonathan Haidt explains:

Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/antisemitism-on-campus

The interesting thing is that the explanation largely preceded these events, he and Greg Lukianoff documented this in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind.

when the "good guys" indiscriminately kill over 15000 children in the span of two months, I dunno what you expect but its certainly not "uncomprehensible"

I wonder why that is

The proportion of civilian casualties in Israel’s invasion of Gaza is not normal for the 21st century, and indicates a below-average regard for civilian life.

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/27/gaza-civilian-deaths-israel...

Greater Israel, extending from the river to the sea, with the Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.

0. This is a typical map. The only indication that there is any Palestinian territory at all is that the tiny "Area A" regions are in a different color. East Jerusalem and the vast majority of the West Bank are simply shown as belonging to Israel. https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9fb3beb756529713386cc...

It is no longer an explicit goal of Likud.

From the original 1977 manifesto of the current Likud party[1]:

> The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

Ever heard of Nakba[2]? History of Palestine, how everyone was living peacefully under Ottoman rule and the current state of apartheid, that is, children's parks fenced and locked, keys given to Jewish mothers[3]? The civilian body count that has now exceeded 25 thousand, in a country with a median age of 19[4]?

1: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform... , also referenced in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea

2: https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/

3: See with your own eyes, hear directly from the mouth of children: https://youtu.be/ksnLom8OD9E?si=aYvcLqcLQK960fbx

4: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/state-of-palestin...

Makes sense ? Well, there is some problem with the sense of it. PLO (and supposedly it’s logo) was created in 1964 when Israel pretty much existed. But of course it makes sense if you wish the destruction of Israel and jewish population of it …same way as the current slogan 'from the river to the sea'.

This is completely incorrect.

Wikipedia:

“The blue stripes are intended to symbolize the stripes on a tallit, the traditional Jewish prayer shawl. The Star of David is a widely acknowledged symbol of the Jewish people and of Judaism. In Judaism, the color blue symbolises God's glory, purity and gevurah (God's severity).[19][20] The White field represents Chesed (Divine Benevolence).[18]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Israel#:~:text=It%20sy....

You can find it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...

What is your point?

To add essential information to yours when you’ve brought Likud and B.Netaniahu and forgot to mention M. Abbas leader of PLO with logo clearly showing map “from the river to the sea” without any place for Israel on it.

Perhaps you can state your point clearly now with this information because your point wasn’t clear at all.

This is in contrast to Israel, which has never officially recognized a Palestinian right to self-determination.

Any document to support this claim? Certainly their logo has not changed.

I know it’s hard to change the logo but I during 30 years it should be possible if it is no longer serving their goal.

> Mr. Prime Minister,

> The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era in the history of the Middle East. In firm conviction thereof, I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments:

> The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security. The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

> The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations.

> The PLO considers that the signing of the Declaration of Principles constitutes a historic event, inaugurating a new epoch of peaceful coexistence, free from violence and all other acts which endanger peace and stability. Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators.

> In view of the promise of a new era and the signing of the Declaration of Principles and based on Palestinian acceptance of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant.

> Sincerely,

> Yasser Arafat, Chairman, The Palestine Liberation Organization

This is a very famous letter, by the way. It was sent at the beginning of the Oslo peace process, which was supposed to lead to a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories within a matter of a few years. 30 years later, Israel still occupies the Palestinian territories (and has actually massively expanded its settlements inside those territories), and still has not recognized the Palestinians' right to a sovereign state.

Very good, now you can make your point about your dismissal of the real map in the real logo of the real PLO which shows no place for Israel while you have brought some school map as argument in the first place portraying it as ‘typical map’ which turned out to be map for children of 2nd and 3rd grades from one book and was 1 of 10 maps in some post in quora that clearly stating that children are exposed to variety of maps according to their age (https://www.quora.com/What-borders-does-Israel-show-in-maps-...).

to avoid duplicating it’s summarised here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38831687

Remind me, what was it that happened 56 years ago?

Not having a clear picture of what was going on [1], the Jordanians and Syrians entered the war on Egypt's side, only to suffer a similar fate as Egypt.

Israel ended up conquering the Sinai peninsula, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.

It's hotly debated whether the war really was a preemptive strike to head off an impending Arab invasion, or whether it was a war of aggression by Israel.

In any case, as a consequence of the war, millions of Palestinians came under Israeli rule. The Israelis were faced with a conundrum: they wanted to keep the land (especially the West Bank and East Jerusalem), but they didn't want millions more Arab citizens, who would shift the demographic balance, ending Israel as a Jewish state. That's why Israel has kept the Palestinians in limbo for more than half a century. They live under Israeli control, but they aren't Israeli citizens.

0. Israel initially claimed that it had been attacked first, but it soon admitted that it had attacked first.

1. Egyptian propaganda in the first hours claimed that Egypt had scored major victories.

There's no question that since the war, Israel has abused its position with respect to the West Bank in particular (it dispossessed Gazan settlers during the disengagement, but has tacitly allowed continued settlement in the West Bank). But the history here is complicated and it's important to get it right.

The issue is actually hotly debated. To this day, former Egyptian generals say that they only placed a force in the Sinai in order to discourage the Israelis from attacking Syria, which the Egyptians thought the Israelis were doing. Additionally, the Israeli government itself does not seem to have viewed Egyptian forces in the Sinai as a serious threat. The Israelis planned and trained for their air operation against Egypt long in advance, which means they were considering a first strike for a long time.

At the very least, the simple story the Israelis like to tell ("We were attacked and defended ourselves") does not hold water.

> But the history here is complicated and it's important to get it right.

The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is not really that complicated. Fundamentally, Israel wants to keep East Jerusalem, the West Bank and, to a lesser extent, Gaza. As long as Israelis think they can hold onto those territories at an acceptable price, they will. The US, by giving Israel unconditional backing, has abetted the occupation.

It's very difficult to make an argument that Israel wasn't threatened, existentially, or that its actions were motivated by anything other than self-defense. The whole crisis was a shitshow of poor intelligence and bad faith (Israel's hands weren't clean either; some of the escalation, and Jordan's involvement in the conflict, probably stemmed from the Samu raid). But Israel hit Egypt because Egypt made war inevitable.

I don't think West Bank and Gaza occupation is all that complicated. We probably agree about it. Palestinians should have sovereignty and self-determination in those territories. Israeli West Bank settlements should be dismantled. But that's obviously not all people are talking about when they talk about the "occupation". We're on a thread about the "from the river to the sea". The motte is the West Bank. The bailey is Tel Aviv.

I don't think it's difficult at all. The force that Egypt moved into the Sinai peninsula was far too small to invade Israel, and in internal Israeli government discussions, they don't seem to have viewed Egypt as an imminent military threat.

> The motte is the West Bank. The bailey is Tel Aviv.

The problem is that the mainstream view in Israel is "from the river to the sea" (the Israeli version, of course), and that that's the de facto reality on the ground. Most of the people chanting "from the river to the sea" want a one-state solution with equal democratic rights for Arabs and Jews.

The 1 state solution turns a Palestinian self determination and Israeli security issues into an existential issue for both sides. This raises the stakes considerably. I can't see it ending in anything but 100's of thousands of dead and a complete meltdown of the middle east.

The one-state solution has already been implemented by the Israeli government. There is one state that rules everything between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. It's called Israel. Israel has ruled that territory for 56 years, which is most of Israel's existence. There is no indication that Israel will give up that territory in the foreseeable future.

The only realistic question now is whether the one state that exists will become a full democracy, or whether it will continue to disenfranchise 40% of its population. Continuing to pay empty lip service to the two-state solution 20 years after the "peace process" died is just useless.

As for how to get the Israelis to agree to finally enfranchise the Palestinians, I think that will take external pressure. Israel has been able to maintain the status quo so long because it has unconditional American backing. If that backing is removed, Israel will be in a very different and much more difficult situation.

* The untenable position the Palestinians are in today stems at least in part to the results of the Six-Day War, wherein Egypt ultimately conceded its administration of Gaza --- in which Palestinians were not full Egyptians --- to Israel, and Jordan conceded the West Bank, which it had annexed after the Arab-Israeli war. That's what Rayiner was referring to upthread --- what happened "56 years ago" was the Six-Day War.

* The Six-Day War may have had multiple causes, and perhaps nobody's hands are clean in it, but it seems beyond dispute that the "preemptive" strike against Egypt was a response to months of military provocation by Syria and, especially, Egypt, both of whom had mobilized on Israel's border, arranged the expulsion of peacekeepers, violated Israeli airspace, and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, an act Nasser acknowledged made war inevitable.

* Had the Six-Day War (and then the Yom Kippur war, which was, like the Arab-Israeli war that preceded the Six-Day War, unquestionably a war of aggression by a coalition of Arab states against Israel) not happened, the cause of Palestine would be directed instead at/against Egypt and Jordan.

* "From the river to the sea" implies, among other things, the dispossession of Israeli Jewish people outside the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israelis were also incredibly provocative, constantly raiding neighboring Arab territory. Israel had a history of aggression against the Arab countries, such as its invasion of Egypt in 1956 and its numerous raids into Jordan and Syria.

> Had the Six-Day War (and then the Yom Kippur war, which was, like the Arab-Israeli war that preceded the Six-Day War, unquestionably a war of aggression by a coalition of Arab states against Israel) not happened, the cause of Palestine would be directed instead at/against Egypt and Jordan.

There are many false assumptions and representations here. First, the Palestinian cause was directed against Israel because Israel is the country that expelled the Palestinians from their homes, not Egypt of Jordan. Whatever complaints the Palestinians had against the Jordanians or Egyptians, those countries had not kicked them out of their villages and expropriated their homes.

Second, the First Arab-Israeli war was not a war of aggression by the Arabs. The declaration of Israeli independence was effectively a declaration of war on the Arab world. The Arabs could not accept European colonists (which the founders of Israel were in their overwhelming majority) establishing an ethnically exclusive state on Arab land. The Arab-Israeli war was preceded by massive expulsions of Palestinian Arabs from their homes by the militias that would later become the Israeli army. From the Arab point of view, the war was a defensive war against foreign colonists intent on conquering Arab land and on expelling the Arab population.

The Yom Kippur War was indeed launched by Egypt and Syria, but its aim was to reclaim Egyptian and Syrian territory that Israel had militarily occupied since 1967. At the time, the legitimacy of Egypt and Syrian aims in that war were widely recognized by the international community, which had already called on Israel to return the territory to its rightful owners.

> "From the river to the sea" implies, among other things, the dispossession of Israeli Jewish people outside the West Bank and Gaza.

Most people who use the phrase view it as a call to turn Greater Israel, which already exists in practice, into a fully democratic state with equal rights for all its inhabitants, including the Palestinian population of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This does not imply any dispossession of Jewish Israelis, any more than the end of Apartheid in South Africa implied dispossession of white South Africans.

We're deep into the thread and nobody is reading us anymore. We're not going to get anywhere with this, and certainly we're not going to resolve the Israeli-Palestine conflict here.

> all of Israel is now occupied territory

This isn't the point I was trying to make. All of Israel was taken from the Arabs - unjustly so. However, I was simply responding to your claim about the First Arab-Israeli War, and when I speak about the "occupied territories," I'm referring to the territories that Israel conquered in 1967, not the 1948 territories.

> since you can't make the case that the Arab states hands are clean with respect to Gaza and the West Bank

Why am I supposed to make that case?

> To do this, you have to ignore the comparable number of Jewish people chased out of Arab states in the same time period.

Jewish people were chased out of Arab countries following the establishment of the state of Israel, and to a large extent, as a result of the establishment of Israel and the antisemitic reaction it caused in the Arab world. The expulsion of Jewish people from the Arab world in the 1950s onwards did not retroactively justify the expulsion of the Arab population from what became Israel in 1948.

> No, they were not comparably provocative.

Launching major raids into Jordan, invading Egypt in concert with France and Britain in 1956 - those are pretty provocative moves.

> You're citing something that happened 10 years earlier.

Israel's invasion of Egypt was 10 years prior, but dominated Egyptian security considerations. Israel's major incursion into Jordan was only 7 months prior. The Arabs had every reason to fear Israeli aggression.

Going back to the original comment about the 1967 war, OP implied that the Palestinians were somehow to blame for the fact that they live under military occupation. The story of Israel simply defending itself in 1967 is not true: Israel struck first, and its claims that it was acting in preemptive self-defense are highly questionable, at best.

In 1967, the IDF was spoiling for a fight, and was extremely confident that it would defeat the Arab armies quickly and with low losses. It had planned and trained for a first strike on Egypt, which is what it ended up executing.

The two points I've been making here are:

1. The traditional narrative that Israel fought a defensive war in 1967 is highly questionable, at best. It does not seem that the Egyptians were planning to attack, the Israelis themselves had a major hand in the escalation leading up to the war, and the Israeli military was extremely confident that it would quickly defeat the Arabs (an assessment that the Americans shared) and wanted a war.

2. This narrative that Israel gained the West Bank and Gaza through a defensive war is then used to justify Israel's more than half-century military rule over the Palestinians. Even if the Israeli narrative were 100% correct, it would not justify imposing military rule over millions of people for decades, while slowly robbing those people of their land and subjecting them to regular violence and humiliation.

The only thing I wish to add is that this kind of “selectiveness” of facts by those who argue with Israel existence is by itself one of the main reasons for Israel creation in the first place.

So it was just a coincidence that Egypt had massed troops on the border, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and ejected UN security forces two weeks before that?

The Egyptians believed that the Israelis were preparing an invasion of Syria, so the Egyptians moved their own force into the Sinai peninsula, in order to deter Israel. However, the Egyptian force was nowhere near sufficient to launch an invasion of Israel.

The closing of the Straits of Tiran was politically significant, but not very economically significant. Only a tiny fraction of Israel's trade went through the straits.

The Israelis had been planning a first strike on Egypt for a long time. Whether they actually feared an imminent Egyptian invasion in June 1967 is questionable. The Israeli military was very confident of its superiority over the Arab forces, and it may have simply taken advantage of the situation to land a devastating blow against the Arabs.

The irony is to talk about the irony without realising the extreme nature of the phrase “From the river to the sea…” for any of the sides. Someone can as easily adapt the same phrase for calls to remove non-jewish population from the land yet the commentator felt the urge to see the irony in “banning the phrase” (as he put it) without thinking through the outcome of using such phrase in all of it’s dangerous aspects.

>every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall that show Israel extending from the river to the sea.[0]

The linked map is from post on quora [1] which does not state that.

To the question : “What borders does Israel show in maps in school textbooks?”

It states the following:

“ It really depends on the age.

TLDR - the books mostly show area international borders with markings for area A, But don’t shy away from the existence of the P.A. In higher grades, they show the evolution of the borders, and the idea that nothing is really fixed or “promised”.

Long answer:

I’ve made a small check on books available on my Child’s elementary school online website. …”

Notice “ elementary school online website.” while commentator states: “ in almost every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall”

Even this one post from only one school speaks about variety of maps presented to children but commentator simply ignores that.

Commentator takes 1 of 10 maps posted there. The one for the smallest age and claims “This is a typical map”

The real irony though is vivid if one looks at the official logo of PLO here [2] who’s chairman is Mahmoud Abbas. It shows the whole map “from the river to the sea” without any marking for Israel. Commentator criticises Israeli maps for only :“ "Area A" regions are in a different color.” and forgot to mention that PLO does not have any color for Israel in fact. The logo is currently on the official PLO web site.

> Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.

The third irony is mentioning “56 years” and forgetting to mention that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 [2] pretty much to the border before 1967.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-borders-does-Israel-show-in-maps-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...

Almost every map in that Quora answer shows Israel extending from the river to the sea, and shows the Palestinian territories as belonging to Israel.

> Commentator takes 1 of 10 maps posted there.

As I said, almost every map in that post shows roughly the same thing.

There was actually a dispute between the Tel Aviv school system and the national government recently, because Tel Aviv schools wanted to mark the Palestinian territories on school maps, which the national government tried to forbid. It's standard in Israel to depict everything between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea as part of Israel.

> PLO does not have any color for Israel in fact. The logo is currently on the official PLO web site.

The PLO recognizes the state of Israel, and has done so for more than 30 years. Israel does not recognize the state of Palestine, and the Israeli government says that it will never allow the creation of a Palestinian state. You're making a big deal about the PLO logo, but it's just a historic logo that hasn't been changed, and it does not reflect the PLO's position. The PLO recognizes Israel and only wants the internationally recognized Palestinian territories.

I do not know how maps from 1922, 1947,1949, 1967 and 2008 with completely different borders are showing “roughly the same thing” for you. (https://www.quora.com/What-borders-does-Israel-show-in-maps-...)

If you refer only to the maps for 2nd and 3rd grades I can assure you that many things in 2nd and 3rd grade appear as “roughly the same thing” and it’s only with further education you begin to notice certain nuances. At this point I believe I should strongly recommend to use maps for more grown up children to make your point.

>You're making a big deal about the PLO logo…

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Plo_emblem.pn...) The official PLO logo clearly suggests no Israel existence.

You’ve brought map to make your point (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38755727) and now you are suddenly dismissal about the map on official PLO logo and then you’ve tried to portrait me as making “a big deal” about it. Another trick to register and unfortunately such tricks and manipulative efforts are common trends in every supporter of “from the river to the sea” chant that I’ve seen. I wander what purpose they are trying to achieve by misleading others and what they are trying to hide under the “nice” words.

You were also completely dismissive about extreme and dangerous nature of the phrase “from the river to the sea” for both sides. You also completely skipped the fact of Israel withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 even after I have pointed to those two main points.

I am making a big deal of you making misleading comments and using manipulative techniques to distort the reality and hide the truth to push certain agenda without thinking through the consequences of your actions (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38589935) and your conscious or unconscious contribution to spreading propaganda beneficial to Hamas which leads to the loss of life on both sides. This is a moral blindness at best and intentional malevolent effort at worst.

> There was actually a dispute … It's standard in Israel …

Sources and facts are required to support such claims. After your manipulative approach with maps it’s difficult to trust the ‘stories’ you spread.

>The PLO recognizes the state of Israel.

Their logo doesn’t reflect it. Documents and factually proven persistent behaviour that is in accordance with such claim are required.

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" in a nutshell

That’s convenient. Zionism, the ideology and its propaganda, “is considered hateful by many” too. Actually, that happy slogan of “from this body of water to that other body of water is all our precious” is shared by both parties. Israel’s flag even has it diagrammed in case you missed the slogans. The two blue lines are RIVERS. One in Egypt the other in Iraq. Believe me that many many find that “ambition” harboring “violent intent” one way or another and don’t like it.

So, Is Facebook really concerned about sensitive feelings of “many”?

This sounded suspicious to me, and brief research shows it to be untrue.

The lines on the flag have zero to do with rivers, it's a symbolic representation of a talith, a prayer garment, which can be seen in any synagogue. Try to get a bit of factual information before you go around spreading nonsense.

For Palestinians to say the want to be “free from river to sea” means the “genocide of Israelis”. But, amazingly but unsurprisingly, for Israelis to say they want to be “free of Palestinians” (who happen to currently be in part in the area “from river to sea”) it does not mean “genocide of Palestinians”. This must be Schroedinger’s genocide. Now you see it now you don’t. Amazing.

A conversation somewhere in the area between river and the sea. That oh so special place on earth that is worth having a world war over. “How long o lord?” Seriously lord.

Here it goes:

- Palestinians say they want to be free from river to the sea!

- Hah, really? The nerve. Why can’t they just go to some Arab country or maybe America?

- They say they are not Arab, they are Palestinian.

- Hah. Nationalism is a sickness.

- Agreed.

- I can’t believe they want to kill us all.

- How you figure?

- Well, they ain’t gonna be “free” while we’re here. That can’t possibly work.

- Hmm.

- And they know that we know that they know.

- Aha.

- Yeah, so obviously, they want to kill us all. A genocide.

- Ingrates.

- Animals!

Yes.

> But, amazingly but unsurprisingly, for Israelis to say they want to be “free of Palestinians”

Who says that? And more importantly, who does that? Arabs are 20% of Israel population. They have full citizenship rights. Nobody tries to be "free" of them in any way or form. I mean, there are probably people that dream of Israel being a mono-ethnic state and how it would make things much easier, but those are empty dreams, without any support in policy or law.

> it does not mean “genocide of Palestinians”.

It doesn't, because Israel never declared its goal to be genocide of Palestinians, and, as I mentioned, is fine with a large part of Arab population. There are more Arabs in Israel, percentage-wise, than Black Americans in the US, for example. On the contrary, there's no Jewish population in any of "Palestinian"-controlled areas and can't be - because we just witnessed what Hamas does to any Jewish (or non-Jewish but having bad luck to be around Jews) population when they have the power even for an hour. And it's not some surprise - it's written in their charter, and they have claimed, before and after October 7th, that this is exactly what they plan to do to any Israeli that they can lay their hands on. Genocide is their official goal, and their official method of achieving "free Palestine". There's no any organization that has "freeing Palestine" as their goal and does not include genocide as their method of achieving this goal. And their "freedom" never means "enjoying the same rights as Jews in Israel" - that Arab citizens of Israel already have. Their "freedom" means no Jews and no Israel at all.

On the contrary, Israel has already achieved this goal - of both Jews and Arabs living in a free democratic state - and is not advocating murdering any of the Arabic populations, whether in Israel or otherwise. Moreover, 18 years ago Israel passed all control of Gaza to Arabic self-government - and those 18 years were used exclusively to shoot rockets at Israel, send terrorists into Israel, convert hospitals, schools and mosques to military outposts and prepare for war with Israel. A war that has the genocide as the officially declared goal of it, and Hamas proudly and constantly confirms this to anybody that asks them.

> Palestinians say they want to be free from river to the sea!

No, that's not what they say. They say "Palestine will be free". Free of what? Free of Jews. Judenfrei, if you will. And only then it will be real freedom - when the filthy Jews are all destroyed. It's not about individual freedom - if you think somebody living in Gaza enjoys any personal freedoms not available in Israel you are absolutely ignorant. It's about freeing the land from the infidels.

> - They say they are not Arab, they are Palestinian.

They are not saying that, where did you see them saying that? These are not contradictory identifications, just as you can be Arab and Jordanian or Syrian. Or Jewish and American.

> Hah. Nationalism is a sickness.

Who you are reproducing here? Whose words are these? I am starting to lose here what "goes" you try to present here. Certainly nobody in Israel would say that. That sounds like some woke student from Harvard. But a woke student already hates Israel, so your whole scenario makes no sense.

> I can’t believe they want to kill us all.

Actually that's very easy to believe because they are saying it over and over and over. And are doing it when they can. For many decades now.

> Well, they ain’t gonna be “free” while we’re here. That can’t possibly work.

It's not some conjecture. Hamas is openly declaring it. And overwhelming majority of the population btw supports them.

> Yeah, so obviously, they want to kill us all. A genocide.

Yes, a genocide. That is exactly the goal. No metaphors, no exaggerations, no equivocations. That is the thing. I know you are trying to be facetious and sarcastic and somehow imply only an idiot can make such a far-fetched conclusion, but it's not far-fetched. It's openly and proudly proclaimed by Hamas. And Hamas is the government of Gaza and by the vast majority the most popular movement among the Palestinians (the only reason why it didn't capture West Banks is because Israel is much more involved there and is not letting them to gain strength, while in Gaza it was an experiment of letting it go - which failed spectacularly). I understand it is very hard to stomach such truths - that in 2023, when we are supposed to be all past those things, we still have millions-strong movements that want the same old genocide of Jews, and the people that want that genocide are the ones we're supposed to be sympathetic with because they are poor and "oppressed" - but that's the harsh reality we are living in. And ignoring this reality would only mean it will reassert itself with blood and murder - which is exactly what happened on October 7th. Israel can not ignore that reality anymore, if they want to survive - and neither can any Jews outside of Israel, if they want to survive too.

“‘Pre-emotive genocide’ is not genocide”.