This has been going on for decades while the Western media ignores most of it, reporting acts of resistance and terrorism from the oppressed side as if they were motivated by ideological hatred, and in general depicting the situation as "complicated"- a position you're now repeating without a second thought.
- One side is occupying the other's lands, not the other way around.
- One side has killed most people, not the other way around.
- One side has illegally annexed the other's territory, not the other way around.
- One side enforces apartheid, not the other way around.
- One side regularly destroys the other's villages, not the other way around.
- One side steals water, destroys greenhouses and olive groves, imposes blockades- not the other way around.
- One side is rich, organised, well armed, and has the full support of the West, not the other way around.
True. Hamas has offered this since 2017 [1] but Israel has never honestly offered it. And it's practically impossible anyway at this point with all the illegal (under international law) settlements in the west bank, supported by the IDF. Something you wouldn't do if you were trying to move toward a "two state solution", but something you would do if that was just talk intended to delay any implementation of Palestinian human rights in Israeli occupied territory while finalizing a drawn out campaign of ethnic cleansing as fast as you think the US will allow.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/hamas-new-char...
Btw. it's not any prettier with hard-core Israel supporters either. Fair is fair.
And what about Israel's right to exist? Maybe this is what you were referring by "interesting choice of words" - to some, Israel is itself an excess which needs to be corrected. If the self-appointed "corrector" is American, I will remind them on how their country was founded, the genocide of the native peoples, and how maybe now's the time to return it all to their rightful owners and head back to wherever their ancestors have come from. They don't like this line of questioning usually. And the same argument can be applied to pretty much any people. We all descend from migrants who elbowed their way into territories where others were already present, etc.
This level of cognitive dissonance here is absolutely bizarre to me.
We are watching israel perpetrate a genocide, ethnically cleansing Palestine and Palestinians. israel is cheering it all on, just like you said. The imagined thing you're shuddering at is happening to a different ethnic group and country than you imagined. How about a shudder for Palestinians? They are just as much people as israelis.
> And what about Israel's right to exist?
And what about Palestine's right to exist?
We have means of dealing with this sort of situation, but it requires israel realizing they are a party to the conflict, not the judge of it, and stepping back to let the established international bodies decide things. You know, like they did in order to get created in the first place? That would mean they had to stop the genocide, and they have refused to do so at every available opportunity (including right now).
The relevant international bodies have decided that collective punishment is illegal, so regardless how much culpability israel personally feels innocent Palestinian civilians must bear, it is still a war crime. Any related complaints israel has ("human shields! this is hard!" etc) can be submitted, with evidence, to the same bodies for judgement, but that doesn't justify further war crimes.
The relevant international bodies have also decided that many of the other atrocities israel regularly perpetrates in Palestine should be criminal, and made them so. Thus, regardless of any justifications real or imagined, those further atrocities are still war crimes.
If there is to be sustainable peace in the region, it must start with the cessation of war crimes. Then the relevant international bodies can address Palestine's right to exist, which is equal in all ways to israel's, because Palestine is a country equal to israel, and Palestinians are people equal to israelis.
Do I foresee that this will happen? Of course not: every indication, including direct quotes from them, is that israel wants domination and ethnic cleansing, not equality and sustainable peace.
"And some of them, I assume, are good people"
here's your mask, you dropped it.
Isn't this just a tacit admission that Israel is committing genocide like the American colonists did? Americans who are alive today at least have the excuse that they weren't around at the time and didn't actually commit the genocide, but the Israelis dont even have that excuse- they're doing it right now
Similarly natured antisemitic comments in the thread weren't flagged, so what was this one?
In what way can this be read as 'honestly offering a two-state solution'? If one is not willing to recognise that there would be two (sovereign) states, it's not much of a two-state solution, is it?
Yes, Palestine. A 2-state solution means 2 equal states, without 1 bossing the other around, and with each being equally protected against the other.
> the other has refused it.
Yes, israel: not only do they refuse proposed 2-state solutions, they even refuse proposed ceasefires that could lead to peace.
> That one side has been openly and proudly exterminating the other side wholesale
Yes, israel is actually doing this.
> one side is much more democratic than the other
How does israel feel about the democratic votes held in the UN regarding their behavior? Does israel respect that democracy?
Next you can argue that this number is wrong, and since you believe the number is lower, then... it's not a big deal.
Ironically, who introduced the phrase "good faith argument" in this yelling-at-each-other?
A farcical answer for a farcical question (which is also deflecting from the actual issue).
You seem to want to have an argument about the borders of discussion, and are moaning that blah A, blah B, blah C, that some bored people on the Internet who are on "the other side" of the argument is doing is preventing you to have a discussion. You're having a "fight" but it's not even about the genocide ("Wait, what's a genocide!?! Define that!"), but about the terms of discussion.
I want to understand what your expectations of Israel were after October 7th. I believe my questions have been very specific, but I realize you have no desire to have an actual discussion. Good day.
Everyone in the US and Europe has been indoctrinated to support Israel for most of their lives. That’s those who support Israel and those who don’t.
If you went to literally any school, or watched any television, in the US or Europe any time in the last 7 decades, every lesson taught, every broadcast made, that could have involved Israel was pro-Israel and pro-Zionism.
Not a single program or teacher has been able to share the viewpoint that religious ethnostates should not exist, or that the native Palestinian people didn’t deserve to be genocided to make room for one. If you expressed such a view, you’d be prevented from teaching or broadcasting. For decades.
I did have to go to school some time ago, but I also gained access to the internet during that time that allows anyone to research both sides of a topic. There are tons of books available that provide descriptions from both sides.
Why do I have to be on one side or the other? Is it because of my push back against a specific side, you assumed I aligned with the other?
My point, that from the 1950s through the 2010s, no one in the US or Western Europe has been presented facts from both sides, and seeking out facts from the "wrong" side would result in social, financial, and possible criminal penalties, was incredibly clearly stated.
Because of the way you keep twisting others' words, it seems pretty safe to assume you would side with the fascist religious ethnostate that's been committing a genocide for decades with the financing and approval of the US and EU state, military, financial, media, and educational apparatuses.
People who oppose fascism don't communicate the way you have communicated in this thread.
It seems we agree. The internet was much more available 15 years again in 2010 than it was prior. Since then, unlimited opportunity has opened to research each perspective, and even share those with people across the world.
At no point in this thread have a resorted to name calling, I hope your day is better.
The primary difference between them is that the side which openly shouts for genocide doesn't have the means that the side that at least doesn't openly shout for genocide has. (By openly I mean the majority of the people, not select extreme individuals. Some of whom are in positions of power.)
I'm not going the route that it's okay to want to genocide a peoples because of things that were done to them by another group of people. Because if that's your way of viewing this conflict, then Israel has more than enough to point at to 'justify' their genocide.
And I'm not going to excuse calls for genocide with "well, they don't have the power to, so who cares". Because all these routes lead straight to hell. You can't even begin to resolve the conflicts between these peoples.
This conflict isn't nearly as cut-and-dry as say Russia-Ukraine, and it benefits no one to pretend it is. Ukraine never invaded Russia, nor did it commit any terrorism against them. This isn't the case between Israel and the Palestinians.
Between 1968-2023 over 3500 acts of terrorism were committed by the Palestinians against Israel. Of which the vast majority (Between 70-78% depending on if you count purely civilian targets), targeted civilians.
You can argue for a long time which side committed the most heinous acts, but neither side is anywhere close to "clean".
A strong rich country tacitly/actively allowing and protecting illegal settlements and Israeli citizen's violence, land theft, and worse against the Palestinians they encroached on, doesn't leave them a moral high ground. It puts them on par with Hamas vile crimes against Israeli civilians.
Which makes the genocidal starvation of an entire country's population of civilians even less acceptable. (If that is even possible).
If that was not clear, Netanyahu said "remember what amalek did to you". If you know anything of what was done to the amalekites, you know this is a genocidal statement.
The statements of ministers in netanyahus cabinet and generals showed very well the intent going into this conflict. They are still adhering to it.
"Remember what amalek did to you" is about remembering evil. The same statement appears at Yad Vashem, for example, yet no one has accused the Holocaust museum of calling for a genocide of the German people.
Israel has bombed all those things.
Your statement of Amalek is disingenuous. Netanyahu would not say anything that does not have plausible deniability. I think it is important to look at how his words were interpreted. Shortly afterwards there were at least two clips (one of which was use by south Africa in their ICJ deposition ) of Israeli soldiers (lots of them!) going to Gaza singing about destroying the seed of Amalek and "there are no uninvolved civilians".
The thing about genocidal statements is that most people committing genocide are not at outspoken av Gallant and Ben-Gvir.
You say the chants occurred “shortly afterwards”, but wasn’t that in December? Whereas the speech you’re drawing a connection to was in October.
If we’re going to accuse people of the most heinous crimes, we should have much more solid evidence.
There is about a month between the letter and the video clip being published, a little more from the speech. Someone even took the time to write a song.
Smotrich also invoked amalek, but he continued with "what Rafah needs is complete destruction". It is very clear what he meant.
I guess this has been less obvious for those living or growing up in a country that closely allied to israel.
I have a friend who would say anytime someone brings up that "it's a complex issue": "They should just stop stealing peoples houses dude". This pretty much sums it up. Maybe if they stopped that a few decades ago this wouldn't have happened.
Which start? There are so many in that conflict.
> - Israel has been illegally occupying, enforcing apartheid, committing war crimes for decades.
So did the other sides. For outsiders, it's very hard to know what's really going on in that region; so many history, so many details, so many emotions, so many abuse and killing... It's a chain of reactions and counter-reactions which is going for over a century. Don't assume that everyone can know everything.
Israel was also very good at manipulating the Western World and building on their collective guilt. Even if a politician knew what was going on, it would have been political suicide to speak out too much about this. Even now, it's a delicate topic. And people still blindly spreading hate against all Jews, while it's mainly the fault of some factions, is also not really helping the cause here.
> - I don't hear any apology about the above
Apologize for what? At the end of the day, there are all trapped in a situation where they have very little control.
"Both sides, X and Y, are bad" requires as a prerequisite that X is in the set of "bad". Doesn't matter which of X and Y are government policies in Israel or Palestine.
Now, if the comment you'd replied to was saying "it's all X's fault, Y is innocent", then "we've all seen Israel's true face now" would be a reasonable response.
What I'm referring to is a rhetorical technique deployed to get people to simmer down and accept the status quo. Folks who support Israel know they can't get people to be 100% behind Israel anymore, so the fallback position is "it's complicated, the Palestinians don't seem like great people either so I'm not going to go out of my way to support them". That leaves the ruling class foreign policy establishment to run the horror show the way they like without any troublesome democratic meddling.
If you want to see an example from a historical genocide, just look at what the Turkish government writes about the Armenian genocide.
People are complicated, anyone saying otherwise is also selling you propaganda.
Hamas in this case (and I do mean Hamas not Palestinians in general) were explicitly genocidal, mellowed a bit, and are currently back using explicitly genocidal goals.
Hamas were just fine with targeting civilians, have been for ages. Hamas are also weak, which is the biggest difference between them and the IDF. That power disparity makes it easy and obviously necessary to condemn the big strong force that's damaged or destroyed approximately all buildings in Gaza, and killed 2-14% of the population depending on whose estimate you follow. Some governments (e.g. Germany) do still find they need to say "well Hamas started it!", but overwhelmingly the international consensus is "I don't care who started it, we need to stop it".
Both countries fomented war for decades. On civilians.
Israel by tacitly/actively letting Israeli citizens illegally "settle" land that was not theirs, and the violence, theft and worse those settlers imposed on Palestinian civilians.
Those actions would be considered acts of war, if done against any stronger actor.
And Hamas fomented war with its responses and atrocities against Israeli civilians.
But this "complication" is of a kind that makes it even more egregious for either side to claim any moral high ground for continued harm to the other side's civilians. Making genocidal type starvation of an entire territory's civilian population even less acceptable. If that is even possible.
And could it further be, „just maybe“, that such acts as filmed by the American Soldier could only conceive under the guise created by the same indifference of the public, which is nurtured by the immediate exaggeration into conspiracy theory land when the topic of Gaza comes up?
So who are those people with guns in between Egypt and Gaza for the past decades? Or blocking Gazan fisherman from fishing for decades?
The Zionists leave a settlement in northern Gaza and call that "leaving Gaza".
The Zionists brought this on themselves when they decided to take over Gaza in 1967. 33 of the victims of the Zionist aggressions in 1967 were those brave US Navy sailors on the USS Liberty that the Zionists killed then.
On Palestine
by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Frank Barat (Editor)
Goodreads Rating: 4.27, 11,732 ratings, 1,588 reviews
Operation Protective Edge, Israel's most recent assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater.
First published May 7, 2015
The paperback is about $12 on Amazon.
As if no Ukrainian had a right to attack Russia besides those in the occupied regions.
As if no American except Californians would have a right to fight if California were occupied by a foreign power.
- the situation was actually very clear from the start
- Israel has been illegally occupying, enforcing apartheid, committing war crimes for decades. You always ignored it.
- I don't hear any apology about the above, nor any indication that these people won't return to their default stance of pretending all is well in Palestine as soon as the bulk of the killing stops.