And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people are taking sides on a religious war. Stay out. Stay far out. There is no winning. There is no stopping the conflict. Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. The only thing to see is human atrocities as far as the eye in the name of <your god of choice>.
> There's a state ... [that has] ... the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium
Do they? It's oft repeated. But I vaguely remember this country being sold on an Iraq invasion due to nukes. Nukes that never existed and never were close to existing. This wasn't a simple miscalculation. The nukes were entirely and knowingly fictional. And that's just one example of a bullshit made-up reason this nation has started a war to waste lives.
How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Why should I believe my country today? Why is today the day of all days that the truth is finally being told? Why is today the day that god is real and I should jump in on the bloodshed?
Your masters are lying to you, to their benefit. They didn't wake up today and decide to be honest.
The sudden switch yesterday from "they can't make nukes" to "they're a fortnight away from ICBMs" felt a little too reminiscent of Iraq twenty years ago.
If we want a stable Middle East, we have to stop bombing the shit out of it, and invest. Negotiate fairly for resources. Offer them a future. And demand Israel stop committing war crimes.
Forced separation only deepens the hatred.
Trump and his people are children in the back of a car that found mummy’s gun in her purse. They have no idea what they are doing. I understand what Israel is doing but the US administration are clueless and rudderless.
It is the only country that has constitutional preference for an ethnic group instead of equality of all subjects/citizens.
It is also the only country with automatic citizenship based on religion.
It is also the only country with nuclear weapons but not part of NPT. Even North Korea is a member of NPT.
The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore.
Looks theocratic to me
Some well meaning citizens said “I want to check Israeli rather than Jew, Druze, Arab, etc.” Except Israeli is not a nationality in this sense. Nor is Jewish, on this form, a religious identification. It is a way of tracking, for census reasons, something closer to ethnicity. Not for nefarious purposes, but just to track demographics.
from the article:
> the court explained that doing so would have “weighty implications” on the State of Israel and could pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people.
That is a very strong claim that needs very strong evidence.
Is there discrimination, in all directions? Yup. The world is a tribal place.
But you should move on from that "tiered" thing. I live here. I have been doing a project with Arabs for the last two weeks. We have lunch together most days. Move on.
- Constitution -- You clearly have not read the constitutions of Syria, Saudi Arabia, or many other countries. Ethnic groups are all over the identities of most of the world's countries.
- Automatic citizenship - How narrow do you define this? African Americans can go to Liberia and other countries of Africa. Until just twenty years ago or so anyone with a German grandparent could automatically get German citizenship. If you are Cuban you can get American citizenship. Are you thinking this through?
- NPT, I am not sure anyone cares, but this is very different than your other topics.
As convincing as your lunch anecdote is, I'm not sure you're can hand waive away the problem so easily.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel
A March 2010 poll by Tel Aviv University found that 49.5% of Israeli Jewish high school students believe Israeli Arabs should not be entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel
An October 2010 poll by the Dahaf polling agency found that 36% of Israeli Jews favor eliminating voting rights for non-Jews
A 2012 poll revealed widespread support among Israeli Jews for discrimination against Israeli Arabs, including 33% of respondents believing Israeli Arabs should be denied the right to vote, 42% objecting to their children going to the same schools as Arabs, and 49% "[wanting] the state to treat Jews better than Arabs"
And on and on and on...
I live here. In places like Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs are together all day, every day. 40% of the police officers in Jerusalem are Arabs.
What is your problem?
Why do you selectively omit the polls of Arabs and Palestinians... about lots of things.... (attitudes to Jews, support of violent Jihadist groups, etc etc)
If you want peace, push for peace.
If you want violence and blood, keep doing what you are doing.
My problem is that Isreal is killing innocent people every day and I want them to stop it. Their horrible record of human rights violations is undeniable.
So I'm sorry if this colors my view of Israelis treat non-Jewish people within Israel and makes polls like the one's I cited easy to believe. But you're right I don't live there so I don't know the ground truth.
> If you want peace, push for peace.
That's exactly what I want. How do you suggest I push for it then? Because from where I sit, a good start is to be critical of (or at to least stop supporting) the biggest perpetrator of civilian death on the planet.
Our elected leaders constantly attempt to expand their own power. To maximally punish whistleblowers. Our election system is ran by a duopoly who exerts extreme power over those voicing alternative views and opinions.
About democracy, it is not.
Let's say it was though. What gives us the right to blow other countries off the face of the planet? Are we somehow so much better than everyone else because we believe we're democratic? We don't even rank in the top 10 most democratic countries. We throw more people in jail than China. Per capita AND total overall. We throw more kids in jail than any other first world country [0].
Surely, democracy does not automagically lend to treating people fairly. We have enough problems in our own damn democracy to worry about. Crazy to be starting wars to "help" someone who never asked for it. Forcing violence upon those who never consented is absolutely abhorrent.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/afric...
Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things
Hamas has started in on the 7th of october 2023, effectively rolling back years of negotiations done by Yasser Arafat. Where do you think they've got the weapons from? Netanyahu is no better, but they offered him the perfect motive for a response.
Ultimately, from the United States taxpayer. Who supply the Egyptian military government, who turn a small proportion over to the Islamists to keep them from too much rabble-rousing. Who smuggle them to Hamas.
Both Qatar and Iran supply money and other forms of support to Hamas. But no RPG makes it into Gaza (across a shorter than 10 mile border) without the Egyptian military sort of knowing about it.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/19/hamas-used-iranian-p...
1. You have to define 'Israel' quite carefully to make it work. Palestinians in East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. Is East Jerusalem part of Israel or not?
2. There are several other democracies in the Middle East, for example Iraq and Lebanon.
3. Some of the countries which aren't democratic, would be democratic, except that representative governments were overthrown by the United States, in part to enforce cooperation with Israel, against the wishes of most of the people in the country. For example, Egypt.
What do those folks want for themselves? Be part of the Palestinian Authority? (Not the ones I have been doing a remodel with.) Make them part of Jordan?
Jerusalem is disputed territory. That makes it an uncomfortable mess, for more or less everyone.
The region needs more efforts toward peace, and less black and white, good/bad labeling.
East Jerusalemites are in limbo waiting for peace.
It's Jerusalem. It's a strange place.
Yes, it extends that support to cover apartheid colonial occupation, more-than-likely genocide by all the accepted definitions, and the usual smattering of targeting civilians, executing paramedics in marked ambulances and ethic cleansing.
What? Israel is 2000 Kms away from Iran, and would want nothing do to with them if not for Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan and policy...
> Do they?
The IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, hardly a "bullshit made-up excuse"
> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.
> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?
They clearly and openly state that they want to force Palestinians off of their land and are using violence towards that end.
If there were a button to get rid of Palestinians, Israelis would “hit it twice”.
You know better than to listen to rants on line... I hope!
Here’s a survey conducted by Israeli researchers showing that vast majority (82%) of Israelis surveyed support forcibly expelling Palestinians.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article/.p...
Hamas could have ended the war in Gaza a year ago. Or on October 8 2023.
Do they? No. They will fight to the last Gazan child.
Is it nice that Israelis see no alternative to Gazans being resettled elsewhere? No.
Do you have a path for Gazans to go back to the mid 1990's when 100+ Gazans came to Kibbutz Nir Oz for a peace festival?
No matter how many times I see it, the constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me.
Do you live in a place that has a death cult committing daily acts of violence and killing (against people on both sides of the fence, of both "ethnicities")?
Do you live in a place where billions are spent on offensive weapons (tunnels, rockets) and stolen from donated food aid (as Hamas has been hijacking aid for many years and selling it at profit)?
If you do not, do you have any idea how a group of people (e.g. a society) responds to ongoing violence and threats of violence?
Your dismissive "constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me" is the mark of someone who sits in an armchair and experiences no threat.
Beware of being dismissive. This region needs people who push for the hard work of peace and avoid labels and dismisiveness.
There was a peace movement in the 1990s. It accomplished a lot (a million+ Palestinians live under a Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza was left to its own devices in 2005).
A death cult (probably two) killed that process. By killing people (including the Israeli Prime Minister). Years earlier, that death cult killed Sadat for his peace making work.
Support those who push for peace.
Call out those who don't.
Uh? So can you explain the genocide?
(If you correct for the 100K+ who left Gaza before Egypt closed its border in 2024)
The population growth rate in the West Bank and Gaza is higher than that of Europe.
I ain't the one having the babies... The residents of those places are.
That is not a well thought out question. The answer is different in PA controlled areas, non PA areas, and Gaza.
And Gaza's life expectancy is different for members of Hamas vs. non members. And was one thing on October 6, 2023 and October 8, 2023.
Hamas has agency.
They could end the war a year ago or tomorrow.
Why don't they?
Do you know what Hamas is?
Do you know their charter?
Do you know that they diverted billions of $, meant to build housing for Gazans to their own pockets and to a huge underground fortress under a civilian population?
Do you know that most Gazans support Hamas, and that Hamas has made many offensive wars against the civilians and armies of both Israel and Egypt? (Hamas killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers running wild in Egyptian Rafah in 2014... Know what Egypt did? Leveled hundreds of housing structures)
Hamas has been in a state of war since the day they took power in Gaza.
Hamas has murdered hundreds of Palestinians, including many who worked for peace.
What do you want to see?
More violence and blood?
Or more peace?
Promote what you want to see.
(Digging out the 100's of miles of offensive tunnels in Gaza is slow slow work. Hamas could end the war any time, but they will never surrender. They will fight to the last Gazan child. Do you want that?)
Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up.
Israel doesn't fear Iran's nukes. Israel fears an economically functional Iran and uses the wmd excuse to sabotage it as much as possible. The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.
Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now.
(Edit: typo)
Why do you think there was a revolution?
Iranians keep protesting; last few years have seen several large protests, involving hundreds of thousands, and continuing for months. The popularity just isn't there.
Regarding revolutions, it's quite often that a relatively small group of like-minded people capture the control, and the majority is weakly supporting them, or is even weakly opposed but complies. The French revolution was mostly about some nobility wanting to remove the monarchy that oppressed them, along with the rest; most of the population wasn't overtly anti-monarchy, and not even covertly so, but it did not like the monarchy's pressure either. The Russian revolution was "communist" and "proletarian", but even by their own Marxist accounting, proletarians were less than 10% of Russian population, and communists, much fewer still. Nevertheless, they subdued most of the Russian empire.
The Iranian revolution was also done by a group of highly religious people who were fed up with the shah's secularization reforms. The shah, AFAICT, was a guy a bit like Putin, or Saudi kings: efficient and geared towards prosperity of the country, but quite authoritarian. The fact that e.g. the educated urban population in Iran wasn't happy about authoritarianism does not imply that the same people were (or are) huge fans of theocracy. Actually, the theocracy ended up even more oppressive.
It was a blind alley anyway. Zero countries that embraced Marxism-Leninism were able to reach prosperity on that ideology. Meanwhile, a lot of desperately poor countries of the 1950s are nowadays reasonably well of, on the basis of a normal, regulated market economy.
A revolution is something in which a significant part of a nation actively participates, not something that almost the entire population sits out passively.
Of course we can debate what is the necessary fraction, but 3000 militants isn't a big deal in a country of several million. Every Iraqi cleric in 2010 was able to put together a bigger militia than that.
Sort of? The US played a role in that shit show and it wasn’t all happy days under the Shah.
(Similarly, China under Deng Xiaoping was not a paragon of political freedom at all, but it was quite a bit more sober than under Mao Zedong. The US administration had tons of shortcomings under president Biden, but it was in quite a bit less of disarray than under president Trump.)
Israel is currently engaged in genocide, how would it be good for it to benefit enormously?
Yeah, I mean we can still use it (or it's slowness and uselessness) to hide behind it but the facts are on the table. Gaza looks like post-war Germany at this point. People ARE starving. Meanwhile Israel expands to the east. Also illegally.
Is this some reality distortion field? This never happened. Instead the ICJ issued multiple explicit orders to Israel that Israel has violated and the genocide case is still ongoing.
People should just say what they actually mean instead of ambiguous words like genocide. Is the genocide limiting food aid with the aim of demoralizing the population into losing support for Hamas? Or is it directly killing people in the fighting? He could have just said that so his words mean something. Those actions might or might not be genocide but they might still be something worth criticizing.
If you actually care about international law, you might be interested to know that the ICC has issued (standing) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Israeli Minister for Defense for various crimes against humanity and the use of starvation in warfare.
Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak.
Even Iran has publicly said that they have enriched to 60%. 60% is not needed for civilian uses and only useful for research in how to make it go boom.
they could show research that theyre doing for how to make nuclear power using 60% enriched uranium. nothing says they have to use an existing design
www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/un-nuclear-watchdog-censures-iran-a-move-that-could-lead-to-restore-sanctions
Israel couldn't care less about Iran until 1979. It's the Islamists who are obsessed with Israel.
If Iran stopped chanting "Death to Israel" and stopped arming anti-Israeli groups then Israel would have no issue with Iran.
It's a stupid slogan because it gives politicians ammunition, but it can be interpreted various ways. For example:
Ali Al Bukhaiti, the former spokesman and the official media face of the Houthis, said: "We really do not want anyone's death. This slogan is only against the intervention of those governments [i.e. the United States and Israel]."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Israel
Meanwhile, if you judge a country by it's actions rather than it's slogans tell me how Israel is looking right now on the "death to ..." scale.
I can oppose IRA violence and British imperialism at the same time but if we're having a reasonable conversation we have to recognise that British colonial force in Ireland is what drove people to form the IRA.
To continue the analogy that's like going back to 1900 and saying Britain could pull out of Ireland except for Ulster and there'd still be people calling for further decolonisation.
Even Iran’s leaders would laugh in your face at such a naive statement, you should reconsider your media diet
So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is.
Land it didn't own. Most people can be very generous with what they don't have.
Try to read a non fantasy sionist history book…
Can you name one Palestinian who has fought against Israel's occupation and is not considered a terrorist by you?
https://jcpa.org/the-parallels-between-yahya-sinwar-and-yass...
No. Jews migrated to Ottoman controlled land legally and paid for it. Palestinians were offered their own country but rejected that offer in favor of trying to expel the Jews and taking their land. Then they spend the next 70 years trying and failing to destroy Israel and rejecting every offer of their own country.
This is getting old, do you have any fresh hasbara for me?
Palestinians need to take responsibility for reacting to the formation of Israel in the most self-destructive way possible.
Do you dispute that Jews legally purchased land during the Ottoman period?
Do you dispute that the 1947 UN partition was rejected by Arab leadership?
Do you dispute that five Arab armies invaded in 1948?
Which specific historical claim do you think is incorrect?
Using "hasbara" as a dismissal tactic is essentially admitting you can't refute my factual claims on their merits.
For example, you recognize the fledgling UN's decision to partition the land but don't recognize any decision they've taken since, not like you're following those borders anyway.
I can all it Israeli state propaganda talking points if you want, hasbara is less of a mouthful though.
Do you find the Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people relevant?
"you recognize the fledgling UN's decision to partition the land but don't recognize any decision they've taken since"
I know that the Palestinians have rejected at least two excellent offers from Israel for their own country. If they had accepted them they would be VASTLY better off then they are now.
You cannot absolve the Palestinians of their responsibility for their shitty lives due to their terrible decisions.
Relevant as far as its the latest and greatest excuse Israel can use to take more land and genocide the locals. US had a long history of doing the same when it came to Indians.
I wouldn't fault jews and other minorities in the holocaust for fighting back against their oppressors either.
" US had a long history of doing the same when it came to Indians."
Yes, and you don't see Native Americans trying to take back their land using military force and mass murder because they aren't evil and aren't stupid.
"I wouldn't fault Jews and other minorities in the holocaust for fighting back against their oppressors either."
The only people oppressing Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
Gaza immediately became a mafia state run by the Muslim brotherhood and subsisting off handouts and extortion. Consider it a failed experiment in self rule.
Please explain your reading if you're going to make such personal attacks.
All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
You do not believe the above.
> All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
And I'm not sure why you feel I don't recognise the agency of Muslims?
As I said previously please make an argument or explain your position and I'll respond to it, but it feels absurd to entertain these seemingly baseless ad hominems.
I grew up in a conflict zone and feel that I have some understanding of the group dynamics. That's totally reasonable and I encourage you to ask yourself if your apparent anger and incredulity here is misplaced.
“Violent Zionism” was inconsequential in comparison to the violence the Muslim population visited upon their Jewish (Zionist) neighbors/subjects/citizens from 700CE when Islam was formed through 1947 when the partition plan was proposed, and all the way to the present day.
So again, I say, you’re dehumanizing Muslims by refusing to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own actions. Because even if everything you claim was true (it isn’t), you are still claiming they are not capable of bearing responsibility for their own actions and instead any violence they commit is the responsibility of nebulous “western colonialism” and inchoate “violent zionism”. The bigotry requires to totally remove an entire religion’s agency is, as I said before: breathtaking.
You just have no idea of what you're talking about.
I have no idea what “legally affirmed” means in the context of sovereign states. The UN, or even the UNSC passing something doesn’t actually mean anything as it applies to sovereign nations. Paraphrasing Andrew Jackson: a law is only as good as the ability to enforce it. A bunch of random people agreeing to something even if they call themselves “The United Nations” doesn’t mean anything if that group of friends doesn’t have the will or ability to enforce whatever they’ve agreed to. They’re akin to you and your drinking buddies passing out edicts after one to many dry martinis.
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of guerilla warfare you are not a terrorist. (Many palestinian fighters when there is an active conflict with Israel)
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of relative peace, and your reignition of violence has no goal of achieving anything for your people, you are probably not a terrorist, but probably doing something wrong and stupid and horrible that hurts your own civilians, driven by nationalism or ideology or whatever. (Palestinian fighters on October 7 that struck military bases for example).
If you strike civilian targets or tage hostages, you are a terrorist. And worse if you do it at a time of relative peace to ignite violence against your own people. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi's have engaged in plenty of the latter since a long time.
By the way, if you level a building with 8 militants and 20 civilians that is brutal urban warcare but not terrorism. If you go to a festival and kill predominantly hundreds of civilians, that's terrorism.
I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either.
Islam, ie the Koran, recognises the banu Israel (forgive my spelling/transliteration) from c.2500 years ago. Apparent muslims say "Israel has only existed for 50 years" (or words to that effect). The inference made is that they then have no rights to the land.
It seems the basis for the 'lack of rights of Israel to exist' is fundamentally opposed to the origin story of Islam itself.
Personally I find the concept of nationhood a bit ridiculous; but I'm not sure how practical it would be to organise a World without statehood.
People still have a living memory of specific properties in specific locations that they were forced out of and are now occupied by other families, often with some of their relatives killed in the process That applies both to places in Israel proper (displaced in 1940s to 1960s) and to Gaza and the West Bank (in the time since then). Even before the most recent war in Gaza, any Palestinian could be forced out of their home at any moment by an Israeli settler with no recourse.
back to the point.
Journalist traveled to refugee camps in lebanon/gaza and then to israel to see how arabs that decided to remain are doing.
(following are more or less exact quotes from memory)
He describes how somebody were telling him in great details about giant house that he had had, with veranda surrounding it. how he will sit there in shadow of the orchard and the fertile soil that he had.
when journalists was visiting israel he decided to stop by this location. all what he found is shack barely suitable for cattle, 2 fruit trees and rocky soil that will be really hard to work.
also, while been in refugee camp in lebanon he had a meeting with somebody who managed camp. this person told him that most of those who tell him that they had untold riches actually had nothing: they were workforce for hire and were renting from landlords both housing and in some cases soil to work. he adds that most of them in a heart beat will give up on "right of return" in exchange to $10k and place to settle "anywhere".
additional nice touch in article it's description of UNRWA school (it's 1961) where they teach children that one day as soldiers they will come back kill jews/liberate their country
I have to say though, it's pretty unconvincing. It reads very similarly to saying: their right to stay where they are, or even not be killed by someone else that wants their land, is less because they're poor and renters (yuck!). I know that's an ungenerous characterisation of what you've said but it really has that undertone.
It does seem a bit low for some refugees to exaggerate their past wealth or to accept (essentially) a bribe to forget about atrocities committed against them and their families. But it's a totally incomparable to what was done to them in the first place, and certainly doesn't justify it.
I've never been in anything like that situation, and I imagine you haven't either. If I was totally destitute, forced to live in some camp (and still not safe), could I honestly say I do something similar (lie or take cash to run away)? It's hard to say but I don't think I could rule it out. But I like to think that I can rule out ever forcing people out of their homes, from land that I have no living ancestral claim to, and murdering the ones that don't run quickly enough, on religious (i.e., invented) grounds.
Maybe you've more to add, some sources to convince me?
And yet, the previous government of Iran had friendly relations with Israel, as do some other Arab and Muslim countries.
The US also has friendly relations with countries with whom it disagrees vehemently, and that do (IMO) far worse things than Israel does.
Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities.
Before the Ottomans and various Islamic conquests it was almost entirely Christian/Roman (as was the whole Middle East). Before that Jewish.
And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there.
Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN which you reference.
Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...
The jews of Ottoman era were Sephardic and Mizrahi jews of N. Africa, not the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis of Germany, France and Russia.
After the UN divided the holy land into an Israeli and an Arab state, the Arabs began their ethnic cleaning campaign. That is why there were zero Jews left in Gaza or the West Bank after the war. The war that was started with the stated goal of eliminating the Jews.
And note that despite Arab calls for the Arabs to evacuate the holy land, it remained 20% Arab. And let's not get started on the Jews in the other 20 plus Arab states. What at happened to them?
> Ashkenazis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...
(Links a page that shows the exact opposite)
> If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleanse 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
> Links to a page that shows the exact opposite
> Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleans 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
Exactly. The Ottoman rule of Palestine spans 400 years, and the graph at the top of the page you linked shows that Jews became a majority in Jerusalem only at the very end of it, following zionist immigration at the end of the 19th century.
> The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish)
The problem is that this isn't reddit and people actually read the sources. This is the text of the Partition Plan:
"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence..."
Of course if the UN were suddenly to declare that half of my country is now assigned to them only to build their, say, Arab state- then I would be quite pissed. Wouldn't you?
It wasn't "their" land, it was Ottoman land and they let Jews migrate there because Jews paid for the land.
> The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903 ... An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated.
https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/8/12/israel-sau...
What are you basing this on? Are "religious" Muslims some kind of True Scots Muslims? I'm willing to bet that if I speak to any of my Muslim neighbours none of them will agree with this.
So what area are arabs from? You know there are arab jews and christians right?
This is all well documented in Arab sources, they are very proud of this.
Oh i didn't realize we're going back more than a millennia. Well, in that case every modern nation state is the product of one form of genocide or another - the USA being the worst genocidal state, going back just 500 years.
>The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula
Seems silly to me to claim a land that "your people" inhabited centuries and millennia ago, as it honestly seems silly to me talk about "racial features" when talking about humans. Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
> Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
Denying the existence of Arab culture, of which the Arabs are (rightly, in my opinion) very proud of, is racism. Not everybody has the same values and customs as you do.
That's like saying there is a european culture, it's nonsense.
Literally the second sentence in that wiki
Please do keep reading past. The next sentence (literally sentence #3) gives you: Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:
And then a detailed list of shared-culture-related items.
- A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;[5][4]
- A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";[5]
- A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;[5]
- A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another.[5]
- Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe.
And then there are 15 categories from Music to Science to History, listing cultural similitudes or shared values.
And all swedish people are steppe barbarians who committed genocide against the local sami people.
False. The population in 1800 was ~90% Muslim, ~8% Christian.
> let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN
The UN had no authority to partition other people's land.
Land belongs to whoever controls it. That's it. That is all it will ever be.
If there is not some higher power (e.g. the UN, who you say does not have authority), you have no recourse.
No matter what land it is or who they are: nobody currently living was there first. The only claim is always "I was the last to control it". But none of us are the first.
> "Most of Palestine's population, estimated to be around 200,000 in the early years of Ottoman rule, lived in villages. The largest cities were Gaza, Safad and Jerusalem, each with a population of around 5,000–6,000."
OP's point was "Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities."
What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then?
> Almost no Jews at that time either.
What a wild claim: almost no Jews in places like Jerusalem? Please cite whatever source you have to make such an extraordinary claim.
Exactly the part that you left out: that the Jewish presence (before zionist immigration began) was of any relevance in the demography of the region.
Source for census data:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_JerusalemPresumably during one of the frequent rounds of forceful expulsion from European states.
"Palestine Partition Plan" is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), adopted on November 29, 1947. This resolution, officially titled "Future Government of Palestine," recommended the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem and its environs to be placed under a special international regime."
It only became the name for the land after the Bar Kockba revolt, the Romans named it such specifically to spite the Jews. And then it stuck when various powers controlled the land over time (Romans/East Romans aka. Byzantines, Caliphate, Ottomans, British).
Who proposed the Balfour Declaration 30 years prior?
The entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came.
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496386/Pahlavi-and-Israel-t...
so what exact goverment your arr referring?
Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion.
Well, considering that Israeli's are occupying land that rightfully belongs to someone else, I'd say not very well indeed. It's the final major European colonial outpost, and its fighting hard not to go the way of Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and a long long list of others.
First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries.
Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations.
The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers.
It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced.
Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return.
Maybe, but obviously the other side thinks exactly the same.
Religious wars were lots of fun five centuries ago. They will be funnier still in the nuclear age.
Do they? What is this based on? My understanding was that they were reacting to a pattern of imperialism of which Israel was the crown jewel. Is there actually something inherent about the Shi'ite religion which says Israel must fall?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
Framing it as a religious opposition paints Iran as an irrational actor which can't be reasoned with, when it appears to me that it's behaving the way it's been pushed to behave by encroaching colonial forces.
I don't believe in Islam or in Judaism but I do believe in radical discourse and trying to understand the position of the other. Saying "it's their religion to be bloody violent and destructive, what can we do?" throws any space for understanding out of the window.
Their religious leaders like literally come out and say, "This is based on our religious beliefs."
Henry VIII used religious justification for breaking off from the pope as well but surely we're grown up enough to recognise those movements came about from a desire for political autonomy more than disagreements over bible interpretations?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
>In 2024, Ali Khamenei told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "The divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea."
In particular check out the "clerics" section of that article for the statements of multiple leading religious authorities in the regime on the religious justifications.
But just for argument's sake and to respect your position I always want to point out that your quote subtly talks about "the Zionist entity" and not about Israel or Jews. So I can assume that you're equating Israel with Zionism, which is arguably fair. Now the question I would have is do we recognise the inherent violence of Zionism and, if so, why do we decentre that in our conversation and instead focus on the reaction to it?
It is important to understand how we got here, to understand what might be plausibly achievable.
In the 1920s after Britain kicked out Turkey there was a partition proposal. The Jewish leadership at the time agreed saying they would accept a land "the size of a tablecloth". The Palestinian leaders refused absolutely and demanded the expulsion of all Jews. Their leader declared "It is impossible to live alongside the Jews" and threatened "A river of blood".
In 1937 there was another proposal in which 'Israel' would have been the small region from Tel Aviv north to the Lebanese border. The Palestinians rejected it out of hand.
In 1948 the Palestinians were granted considerably more land than they have now for their own independent state, but refused partition as unacceptable. Five Arab nations attacked Israel with the intention to destroy it completely. The General Secretary of the Arab League at the time Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, who personally orchestrated the attack declared the intention of the war was "An extermination and a momentous massacre".
Jordan and Egypt annexed the West bank and Gaza for the next 2 decades during which the Palestinians had no political rights or freedoms. The Palestinian leaders never pushed for the formation of an independent state during this time, and Israel took both regions during the Six Day War.
So if we include the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have been offered an independent state of their own four times, and every time they have rejected it completely as unacceptable. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" literally means free of Jews. Over and over, the Palestinian leadership have made that crystal clear. An independent state of their own alongside Israel in any shape or form, in their own statements and openly declared intentions has persistently been rejected.
Meanwhile Egypt and Jordan have realised that Israel is no threat to them, in fact both states have suffered coup attempts by Palestinians. They are now functionally Israeli allies against the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has now pretty solidly moved in the same direction.
if you include the oslo accords, the narrative that palestinians are the one and only problem breaks down. the only time there was agreeable terms being set, and israelis assasinated their leader for proposing them.
i wouldnt expect america to ever be favourable to carving out a new independent state of Venesuela from colorado because theres a lot of non-citizen refugees. you can see americans today pushing back against having more immigrants, too and removing the people that are here
In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite.
Secular discussion about conflict in the Middle East frequently discounts the possibility that self-professed religious fundamentalists are in fact religious fundamentalists. A lot of Israeli settlers really do believe that they are fulfilling a sacred duty. A lot of Palestinians really do believe that becoming a martyr for al-Aqsa guarantees them an eternity in paradise. A lot of American Evangelicals really do believe that conflict in the Middle East will bring about the day of judgement.
I might believe that we live in a godless and meaningless universe in which death is final, but that puts me in a very small minority. Most people -throughout history and across the world - frequently act in ways that are totally irrational from a secular perspective, but are perfectly logical within a framework of faith.
Why? What do Hezbollah or the Houthis care about the world? They fight Israel, which is a genocidal regime.
This even ignoring the ludicrous idea that if they got a nuclear weapon they could deliver it anywhere.
You said israel regime as genocidal? What was the cause of all this issues? How many was killed in october attacks in israel? Why did they held hostages from different countries? So, yes i strongly believe that those terrorist doesnt need a reason to attack. Their goal is global islamisation. Khamenei had openly said that their number 1 enemy is America.
> To suggest Iran would do it anyway is equivalent to saying that they're completely, crazy, fanatical, genocidal and stupid
There is nothing racist or dehumanising about acknowledging cultures different from your own. In fact, I would say that assuming everybody adheres to your cultural values is the racist position.
The Basic Laws, which sort of comprise the makeshift constitution of Israel, don't seem to make any religious references, but rather refer to the founding UN principles like human rights.
Even civil courts are allowed to refer to holy texts if the law is not clear.
could you please show me any law in israel, that gives blanket approval to civil courts to refer to holy texts if the law is not clear ?
Besides, the fanatical leader of that country has said in clear terms that they consider nuclear weapons forbidden by their religion. They have also said in clear terms that oppose the "Israeli regime" and the existence of Israel as a political entity- that's what they mean by "destruction of Israel", not nuking it.
Sadly, I highly doubt that the regime of the ayatollahs is going to act like that, instead of fighting fanatically to the bitter end and the last drop of Iranian blood if need be. (A bitter end is very far from the current situation though.)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkUVIj3KWY
The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. The price the put on human life (their own people as much as anyone else) is low, and they're all for martyrdom. With Iran, you cannot assume it's a just a deterrent in a cold war. You have to assume an increased likelihood that they will actually use them.
Compare the number of deaths caused by Iranian weapons and those caused by Israeli weapons in the last year. Or 5 years, or 10.
Do you have some other way of defining ‘death cult’?
Nukes are good as a deterrent, not good as a weapon.
As for their religious views, hasn't their supreme leader declared multiple times that nuclear weapons are prohibited by their religion?
This video got blocked after publishing by a political action group / NGO, it came back online only after dozens of other YouTube channels reported that.
And yes - this video depicted life of people in a theocracy ;-)
I can go to USA, interview a few crazies (and there's a lot of them) and then make a documentary.
The truth is that Iran doesn't want to take out the holy sites in Israel and if martyrdom were the real goal, then Iran would have started all-out war with Israel decades ago.
Or not. Perhaps, we understand the nuances of that because we were raised in a christian culture, but don’t understand the nuances of martyrdom in islam because we weren’t raised in a muslim culture? I know that’s true for me, i assume that’s true for any non-muslim who claims stuff about the core of islam.
Stop being so naive.
You failed to answer my question. Why?
Check out YouTube and see the high rate of ballistic missiles thrown at Israel. Those existed for years, and were developed for this exact purpose. It just so happened they didn't have the nuclear warhead yet.
I repeat the question: are you really asking why a country would be afraid of a regime which is literally raining ballistic missiles over them?
How is it supposed to work ?
Why is an Iranian weapon somehow different do one held by any other country? Countries with them usually don’t use them, and the one that has is attacking Iran.
The whole “preemptive strike” stuff is BS and not a serious argument.
I'm guessing from the words and actions of Iranian leaders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
Also, let’s leave rhetoric aside. What is the actual record of violence between Israel and anyone else? It’s not even close https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
Israel here is the aggressor. Not acknowledging that makes no sense and doesn’t leave grounds for any meaningful discussion.
In 2015, former Basij chief and senior RIGC officer, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, stated in an interview that the destruction of Israel is "nonnegotiable". In addition, according to the Times of Israel, Naqdi said that during the summer Gaza conflict with Israel, a significant portion of Hamas’s weaponry, training, and technical expertise was provided by Iran.[27][28] In 2019, Naqdi made a direct call for the destruction of Israel during a televised interview. Naqdi asserted that the Zionist regime must be "annihilated and destroyed," asserting "This will definitely happen." He declared his intention to one day raise the flag of the Islamic Revolution over Jerusalem.
Also, you seem to be putting a lot of weight from words 10 years ago by former officials when current Israeli officials including the head of state is clearly voicing support for genocide.
The otherising of brown Muslims comes easy.
Also, by your distorted rationale, given that the US has committed the most acts of terrorism in the world over the last 50 years, do you think it's OK if a random country (let's say, China) to bomb them as being sponsors of terror in Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, East Timor, Vietnam, Guam, etc etc? I'm guessing, no, right? But you're very comfortable with Iran being bombed. What does that say about your biases?
Even by your own logic, do you believe that having a country threaten your existence is not reason enough to want them destroyed?
Be serious.
This is no justification to ignore international law. But that's dead now. Nobody will ever care again until we're done with the next big war or something. Bomb away...
There's no natural law setting the mullahs against the existence of Israel, as I said they think and vocally declaim publicly that it is divine law. Don't believe me, just look up what they say.
I do think the way this is being handled is a travesty though. There was a functioning agreement with international monitoring in place in 2016 and Trump tore it up. Since then Iran has increased their enrichment capacity, and their stockpile of enriched material by 22 time above what they committed to in that agreement. Canceling that deal was a foolish blunder that had lead us to this.
Ultimately the only path to long term peace has to be the fall of theocratic rule in Iran, but that's a mater for the Iranian people. It's quite possible the nuclear question could have been managed, but just as with NAFTA Trump saw personal political advantage is scrapping an old deal in order to rebrand it as his better deal, but dropped the ball because he doesn't understand the geopolitics, and here we are.
Trump wanted another deal and told Bibi not to attack. Bibi didn't want that and attacked. Trump jumped on the bandwagon and now everybody is talking about him again.
I don't particularly blame the Israelis though, and there's broad support for this over there, it's not just Netanyahu.
Jews were often well treated and flourished in the earlier Islamic caliphates.
But with the formation of a Jewish Israel the conflict. Generally in Islamic belief there must be an Islamic caliphate with Sharia Law. Jerusalem is considered one of the holy sites of Islam and therefore belongs to that caliphate.
That’s contrasted with Judaism and Israel being the land promised to the Jews. Though modern Israel was largely founded by secular Jews so it’s a bit more complicated on that front.
I believe this is very important to highlight, and, unfortunately, many Iranians will suffer because of the Iranian government's views.
But I do believe there are viewpoints held on both sides that can make achieving peace in that region extremely difficult. Consider these two video excerpts (You only need to watch about 10 seconds for each)
Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you.
How well would you sleep at night?