So long story short this is a complete mess but its very early to declare winners and losers.
I do wonder whether history backs up this statement. When I hear about hostages taken by terrorists in the news, most of the time, if they are released, and if I remember accurately, they are released via negotiations. I think I hear politicians talk about not negotiating with terrorists, but in reality I think hardly any nation has that as an actual policy, and do in fact negotiate the release of hostages. Even Israel falls into this camp.
I don’t think we have any examples in recent history of a country going on a genocidal rampage to free hostages. So I do in fact think that most—if not all—other countries would have indeed reacted in different ways here, and negotiated to free at least all the civilian hostages within a few months, and the military hostages over the next year, and I do think most—if not all—countries would have done so with exactly 0 civilian casualties.
As for examples from history - we have the allies bombing of Germany, the allied reaction to September 11th, Afghanistan etc. Almost no one considers any of them 'genocidal rampages' although they all left millions of dead, we save that rhetoric only for Israel.
There are plenty of terror groups which the rulers of plenty of countries say are existential threats to those countries, some of them even take hostages, Israel alone responds to those attacks with genocidal rampage.
I think the closest behavior to Israel here is ironically Turkey who engages in brutal military campaign against Kurdish communities on a regular basis. But those reactions don’t come anywhere close in scope as the Gaza genocide.
Such as ? When the U.S felt it was under existental threat it definitely responded.
The Madrid/London attacks don't resemble at all the situation between Hamas and Israel - even if Spain wanted to go to war against the terrorists - where would the war happen? Who would they attack? Hamas is right on the border, hell bent on recreating October 7th again and again (their words). And its not just their words Hamas has built an entire army with whatever means they could find, and had fired rockets on Israel repeatedly throughout the years. Madrid and London was one or more sophoisticated terror cell, without knowing what happened there in detail I find it hard to believe it was more than a hundred people involved. Hamas has/had tens of thousands of members, rpgs, explosives, tunnels and tens of thousands of rockets (low quality, but still). Not to mention the fact Israel was immediately attacked by Hezbollah and later on Iran. This comparison to Spain or the UK is simply silly. You simply choose to view Israel as uniquely evil due to your political ideology/own biases and thought processes.
Stupid and ultimately futile though the former mission was, the allied countries never thought they had a historical claim (or even any specific interest) in Afghanistan the way Israel covets (and certain factions within it openly proclaim their intent to fully displace the native population from) the West Bank and Gaza.
We save that rhetoric [accusations of genocide] only for Israel.
Plainly false, given the plethora of genocide rampages in recent decades.
And the extremely prominent media coverage of these situations, which cannot possibly have escaped your notice.
There's no much talk of historical claims on Gaza from Israelis besides very fringe groups who don't number a lot of people. Palestinians on the other hand are pretty much 100% united in their view that history necessitates they "free Palestine from the river to the sea", so if there are major historical claims they mostly come from the Palestinian side and their fans in the West and the Muslim world.
> Plainly false, given the plethora of genocide rampages in recent decades.
> And the extremely prominent media coverage of these situations, which cannot possibly have escaped your notice.
No not really, there was nothing resembling the circus around Israel not even close. Which ones do you mean were vastly talked about or protested against even with 1/100 the amount this does?
They can't be called "fringe" anymore, now that they've been made coalition partners in the 37th government. Meanwhile Israel's expansionist claims on the West Bank have been the de-facto national consensus (and have been supported by every government to one degree or another) since the late 70s.
If there are major historical claims they mostly come from the Palestinian side
These aren't "claims" coming from their side as it has always been their land to begin with.
As for the West Bank, its a tad more complicated than you make it out to be but I was only talking about Gaza here.
When it comes to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, 40% of the public say they help Israeli national security, while 35% say they hurt. An additional 21% think settlements don’t make much difference to the country’s security.
Plus there's the fact that the country, despite all its internal divisions, managed to put Netanyahu in office 3 times (for some 17 years total so far). Who has declared the expansion of the settlements to be a "top priority". And all the mainstream society hate for the Oslo accords, and so on.
These are just a few of many obvious indicators. Of course many feel conflicted about the settlements, and only support them the perceived "security" advantages, and so on. But it's just not tenable to say that the settlements "don't really have mainstream support".
When by all indications, the imperative to support and maintain them has been national consensus for several decades now.
That said, I agree with you, I don’t believe this is only a fringe position that has no relevance on current or future policy which breaks international law.
If push came to shove most Israelis wouldn't care at all if settlements are uprooted again just like Israel did in Gaza, the only Israelis out protesting last time Israel took out settlements were religious Zionists: determined, loud, sometimes violent but definitely not mainstream. No one else cared much.
Even the pew numbers you are showing tell that even now the settlements at the very least are controversial in Israel and definitely not mainstream (no majority is saying they help security).
Relevant here is what actually gets enacted as a policy and at what time. The Israeli government knows full well that these settlements are illegal, that they are morally wrong, and that they strip Palestinians of their civil rights, but they keep it as policy to maintain and expend them anyway. With that knowledge we can assume they don’t care about Palestinian civil rights. And as long as the Israeli electorate doesn’t see this as a deal breaker—which demonstrably, they don’t—we can (and honestly should) assume similar policies in Gaza. At the very least we should belief elected official when they claim they want to violate human rights of Palestinians. Especially now as they have demonstrated they are both willing and capable of committing a genocide.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLmD23UpLOo&pp=ygUIcmhvZGVza...
I have no idea what happened in Rhodesia and I don't think yet another comparison (let me guess - it makes Israel look bad right?) is helpful. The reality is the last disengagement from Gaza went absolutely horribly. Palestinians should also have a big burden to prove they can handle Israel disengaging - so far they absolutely haven't - in Gaza they've been using all their money and energy to try create armies and infrastructure to bring Israel down. We should also believe them when they're saying October 7th was just the start and that "from the river to the sea" Palestine is theirs - this is not some "far right" Palestinian talking point but pretty much a unanimous Palestinian position.
I'm not going to engage your genocide allegation, you're free to believe what you want and we're not going to change each other's minds on this.
No worries. We all learn bit by bit. But I think you could have a look at it. Many of the security beliefs that you shared above related to Israel are not new, but like all the others they are wrong, and dehumanising. Those so called security issues were backbone of violent colonisation and Genocides. Americas, Africa and Asia alike.
The notion that the rest are savages, who can't govern for their interest and we must do it for them, is not new, and is inhuman and wrong. And it is not even new to Zionism, which after all, has unfolded to be a pretty sophisticated colonisation process.
BTW, Israel never fully disengaged from Gaza, you can look up on Gaza Freedom Floatilla raid. Those are not the actions of a disengaged regime, but a colonialist entity doing crimes in the name of security. And although they are now separated by occupation, Gaza and West Bank are not different people. One can't continue to occupy one region, storm their holy sites, while repressing other region to be a an open air prison, and say that we have disengaged.
I can have a look at tons of things, there's a bunch of things I don't know and also a bunch of things you don't know. I don't think delving into the history of every bad thing that happened due to colonialism (or more accurately White colonialism since Muslim colonialism is less frowned upon) will change my mind on Zionism because I don't view Zionism through the Woke lenses as you do. Zionism is not part of colonialism at all to me. To you it conveniently is (convenient because you get to cure the world of 'colonialism' by annihiliating Israel but get to not have any skin in the game. Its not like the U.S, Australia, or the rest of the West for that matter will ever have to rid themselves of colonialism. This is saved only for the privileged Jews for some suspicious reason).
No "mainstream support"?
It's run as an administrative area of the State of Israel, "administered by the Israel Defense Forces Central Command, and military law is applied":
In front of an impassioned audience of thousands of right-wing activists, 11 government ministers and 15 coalition lawmakers pledged Sunday night to rebuild Jewish Israeli settlements in the heart of the Gaza Strip, with some also encouraging the emigration of the Palestinian population after the war with Hamas is over.
Speaking amid a carnival-like atmosphere at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party, extolled the virtues of creating new settlements, declaring: “God willing, we will settle and we will be victorious.”
I don't see how Israel come back from it's current position, even with U.S. backing. Deliberately killing and maiming children and the vulnerable in the many thousands is not something that a lot of people can overlook, regardless of what type of context is provided.
There are people who hate Israel for deep religious and ideological reasons - mostly Muslims and people on the extreme left who tend to see Israel as the root of all evil. For these people you're totally right - no matter what Israel will do its always going to remain the root of all evil. But for the pragmatic part (dare I say majority?), if Israel finds a way to navigate an end to the war and start the reconstruction of Gaza, I don't see why it can't "come back" from its current position.
So again, I'm not making light of Israel's standing - it's bad. But no, I do not think its irreversible.
The challenge for Israel is that there appears to be few limits on what they are prepared to do. Putting aside more recent examples, the decades long encouragement of settlements and displacement of the Arab population and accompanying violence is something I'm not sure how Israel reverses.
I'm not sure most, or even many, people see Israel as the root of all evil. Where does that perception come from? Unfortunately the actions Israel is involved in now most would classify as evil and deliberately so. Rightly, or wrongly they are perceived to have the backing of the majority of the population, which is what makes me think that Israel is not going to fully recover from this period, unless of course they can change course in a similar way to South Africa.
I think there is a huge proportion of Muslims world wide who believe this is the case and also a pretty sizable amount of left wing (especially 'Woke') people in the West. Unfortunately some of these people don't even make a full distinction between Israelis and Jews, so it became bad news to Jews everywhere. I can go on and give a bunch of news stories and anecdotes (your own comment - the words you choose to use btw kind of reinforces my theory) but I don't think anything I write here will change your mind.