It boggles my mind that militaries keep attempting despite decades of experience showing that damn near every single time it's been attempted, it's been an abject failure in its aims and very often entirely counterproductive.

FWIW the reason that Israeli troops are on the ground and not just razing the Strip from the air is to reduce risk to civilians.

Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. Netanyahu has, to date, handled Trump deftly and Rubio's current presence in Israel seems to be aimed at offering support to the ground offensive, not opposition. I honestly have no idea what kind of backlash it would take to shake U.S. support for this genocide.

It is worth noting that Andrew Cuomo, in a desperate last-minute gamble to boost support in the NYC mayoral race, has come out against Israel. Considering that much of the attacks on Mamdani have focused on his support for Palestine (construing him as antisemitic), it's notable that other candidates also seem to think that being anti-Israel is actually the vote winner for moderates right now.

I understand that that's the current shorthand, but it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily polarizing to me.

You can be for the existence of a peaceful Israel that has entirely retreated within recognised borders and made amends for its past genocidal behaviour- but it's not what the current Israel is or, sadly, can ever be.

> There's still plenty of Labor or more progressive elements of the Israeli public who are against...

No. Not at all.

Shouldn't similar preconditions of making amends apply to whether or not we accept the existence of those Arab states?

And what if they should? Do you think it make Israel's genocide look better now?

Stop trying to change the subject or shift the blame, it's a trick and it's pathetic.

Curious you ask: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/israel-gaza-blockade-s...

This conversation went like this:

>>>> ppl keep railing about being pro or anti Israel and it's overly simplistic and also not really accurately describing things. It's more pro/anti Likud or Kahanists

To which I replied that Israel is constitutionally born out of a pre-planned colonisation and ethnic cleansing and it's wrong to think that its supremacist ideology only belongs to a part of its political spectrum- it could change but it's unfortunately unrealistic.

>>> Israel was literally born out of political scheming to get assigned a portion of someone else's territory for an exclusive ethno-nationalistic state; then out of ethnically cleansing that territory. It was necessary to the project and planned in advance.

To which the GP replied with something that tries to change the subject on Arab states, at the same time introducing a historical falsehood:

>> The Arab states haven't made amends for ethnically cleansing huge numbers of Jews

Now,

1) the Arab states are not born out of a planned ethnic cleansing of anyone (at least not in the recent past)

2) Many, perhaps most of the Jews that immigrated to Israel did so voluntarily (made Aliyah)

3) By the way, Israel itself even engaged in false flag terrorism to push Jews to emigrate from Arab countries to Israel.

And most importantly, the argument has no bearing with the original subject, which is whether its a specific political side that is determining Israel's course now or the country is constitutionally like that. Arab countries have nothing to do with the subject, they belong to a different conversation.

Hope it helps.

Also recall that it was only a UN recommendation, not a binding resolution.

Its more of a popular jewish movement that over 100 years changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.

Political scheming is secondary and was born well after the 1840s.

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

  > changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.

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

Zionism itself is a product of 19th century nationalisms and of course of a (widespread at the time) colonial mindset.

Jewish people coming back to live on its ancient homeland has no legal basis; It's their collective will which allowed its coming into existence (continuous immigration from other countries since the 1840s).

The legality of its existence wouldn't help it survive even one second.

Thanks for answering your own question.

Then what was the purpose of your previous objection about ceasefire lines? None. You just threw it there hoping to derail the argument with a pointless distraction, and now that it didn't work you are saying legality doesn't matter. This fundamental, shameless dishonesty is common to most defenders of Israel and frankly unsufferable.

I personally think the borders should be decided between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The only agreement to date between them has been the 1991 Oslo accords, with A, B and C zones. Further talks about definitive borders stopped with the Second Intifada in 2000.

German and Bosnian WWII veterans, including a handful of former intelligence, Wehrmacht, and Waffen SS officers, were among the volunteers fighting for the Palestinian cause. Veterans of WWII Axis militaries were represented in the ranks of the ALA forces commanded by Fawzi al-Qawuqji (who had been awarded an officer's rank in the Wehrmacht during WWII) and in the Mufti's forces, commanded by Abd al-Qadir (who had fought with the Germans against the British in Iraq) and Salama (who trained in Germany as a commando during WWII and took part in a failed parachute mission into Palestine).

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

Husseini is still regarded by many as 'the George Washington' of the Palestinian people, and if the Palestinians were to get a state of their own, he would be honored in the way our founding father is.

In February 1943 the first of three divisions was formed of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, who wore fezes decorated with SS runes and were led in their prayers by regimental imams notionally under the supervision of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.(Mohammed Amin al-Husseini from 1921–1937)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

If you think Zionism means something else, you have been lied to (even perhaps by Wikipedia!)

Zionism is a desire to have a majority-jewish state that is strong enough to protect jews from future pogroms. It is not a quest for a homogenous state.

And before you declare that the existence of Arab municipalities make Israel an apartheid state, all Israeli cities are mixed.

Likewise, there are Jewish villages. Few of these have Arab inhabitants, but it is not forbidden for them to move in.

All other people except Palestinians then? It sure seems like this is exactly the treatment they have received over the decades.

The Palestinians you have in mind are getting the treatment they are getting because they have not stopped being violent and holding hostages. This is a pattern that recurs over years and decades, always with the same side instigating violence. Yes the "Palestinians" lost some land after starting wars and losing said wars. That's what happens when you start needless wars against good people. Unfortunately there are some Palestinian and Israeli civilians caught in the middle. Your sympathy seems to be only with those civilians from the side who started the conflict, not with those civilians from the side trying to end it.

By your own logic here, you would suggest that the people killed in the heinous terrorist attack in october 2023 were killed because they did not stop being violent?

Of course that is a ridiculous statement.

Palestinians have been oppressed and attacked and their land taken, by Israel, for many decades. This does not justify terrorist attacks, but neither do the attacks justify what Israel has done.

We can keep in mind that the most promising peace deal was sabotaged by extremists from Israel.

I have no sympathy for terrorists of any nationality or designation, which is why I condemn both Hamas and the current administration of Israel.

Some of them stayed peacefully and are now happy citizens of Israel and those ones kept their land.

Others left on their own volition and at the recommendation of their own leaders after their side started a war and lost. And those ones have not been allowed to return and have lost their land. That’s what happens when you start a war and lose.

Others have been given land by Israel in deals where we have seen the result (the new gazans immediately burned to the ground the prosperity-building greenhouses that the Israelis left for them).

That's a nice euphemism for "they saw the next village massacred, so they ran away when the army approached their village".

You seem to assume that it is 0% of the former and 100% of the latter, which I find dubious.

Because even if it is let's say 50% and 50%, it is no longer true to say that all have left voluntarily.

Which part of that is false?

Remember, your own Bible states Jews should kill children to steal their land:

"16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you." - Deuteronomy 20:16-17

And this is bolstered by the fact that Netanyahu himself recalls the old testament of erasing the memory of Amalek. in the fight to conquer Palestine, so you can't claim that the Old Testament doesn't matter.

I never said this in my post. This is a reflexive defense on your part as I never specifically called out Zionists, in general, supported genocide. I said, the vast majority of the Knesset, supports genocide. I will say though, zionists in general are wishfully ignorant of this fact.

>This is defamatory BS without any evidence at best

Which parts are defamatory? Are you seriously going to argue that the Religious Zionist Party doesn't support genocide? Cmon man, Bezalel Smotrich is wanted by the ICC.[1]

[1]https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157286

For better or worse, Netanyahu represents the Israeli governement, which represents Israel. Similar with Trump and the USA, or Putin and Russia. Sorry for the people who don't agree with them, but that's an internal power struggle, and as an outsider it is normal to abstract that away. For all of us: Your country is doing what it does.

As a Belgian, I spit on my idiotic, nasty governements. Insert tiny violin, whatever Belgium does on the international forum, I'll still be tarred with it. Similarly, we talk about Germany's role in world war 2, even if only about 10% of them were associated with the NSDAP.

Every power struggle is always represented overly simplistic. Sorry for both the jews and Israëli's who don't agree with it, you're probably good people. This time I am lucky to sit at a very comfortable sideline, criticising your country. But the point stands: Israel is correctly described as officially committing a genocide, and hence it can't be described as the good side.

The journalistic actions are beyond reprehensible - they are responsible for the deaths of so many children by encouraging Hamas to ensure child deaths. This is not some theory, if you speak Arabic go read the Gaza telegram channels. They're not shy about it.

No, I'm speaking about the most oft repeated lie about genocide.

Go look at who authored this report. It is not "Top Legal Investigators" as the title states. And just read the report itself.

Furthermore, Israeli actions on the ground clearly demonstrate our efforts to protect civilians. Clear among them are the warnings to civilians to evacuate structures before they are destroyed.

It is incredulous to you and I because our culture would never support such a thing. I implore you to look at the Arabic channels that Hamas and the other Islamic bodies publish.

It should be also noted, and this is extremely well documented, that between 1/3 and 1/5 of all Hamas rockets fall back into the Gaza strip. That is an extraordinarily dense urban area, and all those injuries are blamed on Israel. Culturally, it makes sense for Arab media to report them as "killed in a war with Israel". But Western media then translates and reports that as "killed by Israel".

This is not some conspiracy theory the Arabs status very clearly. I highly suggest that you go through the Arabic Telegram channels. I personally speak Arabic, but if you don't then Telegram has a built-in translation feature anyway. Or go through any other Arab media, it's all over the place.

If you don't want to see children getting hurt, then stop protecting and encouraging Hamas.

It means that Hamas has children stand guard around rocket launchers. As far back as a decade ago, when this started becoming more and more common, I saved a video of a Hamas rocket fuse failing, killing the children guarding it. That was quite when I started taking more of an interest in what is going on over there.

The human shields are Gazan citizens - many of which are themselves happy to die "for the resistance" thanks to UNRWA education. This I have been told at least twice by Gazans face to face, and dozens of times online. Yes, I know Gazans and I speak with them online in Arabic. I suffer a lot of abuse, I have a thick skin (I laugh that I'm divorced, you can't insult me more than my ex).

There is no euphemism. These are real people risking their lives - and sometimes loosing - to protect military equipment designed to exterminate Jews. That is not a euphemism either - even the Gazans who work in Israel clearly state that all Gazans would happily kill any Jew. Just a few weeks before the October attacks I was having a conversation, pleasant and civil, and the guy tells me "without your weapons the Arabs would trample you" - I was unsure if he was threatening me. Just a few weeks after that they overran the Kibbutz where I until recently worked, and killed over 10% of the population. That is literal, biblical, decimation.

I think you're overthinking this. We're taking about a country committing genocide here. You either support them or you don't.

But the bodies who promote the viewpoint that Israel is performing genocide, instead of the reality that Israel is protecting her citizens from genocide, are the ones who seek to destroy us. And to divide the West.

They rely on Western useful idiots to forgo examination of nuance, and to jump to an emotional stance after seeing manipulated footage.

Oh, wait, that was Likud's slogan long before anyone else used it.

Shame on you for your utter condescension that anyone remotely critical of Israel's behavior are "useful idiots" devoid of nuance.

But, how about Israel's declaration of independence? Arguably more representative of the consensus.

"WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/israel.asp

And guess what, those that listened are now part of the one million Israeli Arab citizenry.

I think if we see nuance we can acknowledge it. The worldwide campaign against Israel is devoid of nuance. Some western leaders pay lip service to the idea of removing Hamas and that Israeli hostages should be released but in fact they are taking actions that prolong the war and embolden Hamas. Basically the way the world looks at it is "we told Israel to stop and it doesn't" vs. the way it should be looking at is "What would any other country in the world be doing in these circumstances and what are the conditions Israel is looking for to end the violence and how do we get to those conditions.". There is also orchestrated pressure via social media and media like Al Jazeera that pushes narratives that we're seeing in this thread and is not factual. The cries of genocide started before Israel barely fired a shot after it was attacked and what we're reading today is the same talking points that have been flooding social media for the last two years alongside with an unprecedented flood of war imagery we have not seen in any other conflict because the sole purpose of Hamas is to get as many people killed and injured and attack Israel's image. It's been doing that really well.

Being critical of Israel's actions is 100% ok. I am very critical. But what we're seeing is public lynching, not criticism. There is nothing Israel can ever do that is right here. There are no suggestions or proposals for Israel to adjust course that make any sense. Calls for a "cease fire" don't and haven't made any sense because cease fire (which we've had) means Hamas remains in control of Gaza, can re-arm and attack Israel again, and keeps the hostages. Typically this is where the discussion goes to the standard talking points of "didn't start Oct 7th", "Gaza was occupied", "UN blah blah blah", and rhetoric which ignores Hamas and the role of Palestinians in getting where are today. We have maybe 5% of the people in these discussions (on both side - I'll admit that) who have any sense of nuance. We have maybe 1% of people who have enough knowledge on the topic/history etc. We have ideology and propaganda being the dominant forces.

So this is why this shouldn't be on Hacker News. There are enough other avenues for online "discussion" (which this is not) on the dividing topics of the day.

Israel just bombed residential Qatar the other day, killing and injuring civilians. Israel celebrated. They seem to be completely unrestrained.

So even if you're personally ok with Gazans being eliminated, there are other reasons we should be paying attention. Speaking of nuance.

A (failed) attempt to kill Hamas dimplomats who were there to discuss a ceasefire proposal. What does that tell you?

Israel's founding founders made no bones of the fact that they saw cleansing Palestine of Palestinians as key to your ethnosupremacist ambitions.

You talk with the utter condescension (to borrow the other reply's words) of a people who have been coddled by impunity for far too long, and there is way too much tolerance for your racist narrative in spaces like this.

Isn’t the only just response to completely eliminate the offending group, Hamas? Why should Israel and its resident tolerate ANY future risk to their residents?

Israel is eliminating far more than the "offending group" and they're doing it in a cold blooded, inhumane manner. That's why it's not "self defense". It's shameful.

This is factually incorrect, and even if it were true it's not exactly a great example for you to rest your case on.

> the IDF is actually doing far better than any other army in protecting civilians

According to who, Israel? Not according to the thousands of women and children they've murdered. Who likely far outnumber the number of militants they've killed.

Wasn’t sure who you were talking about there. Still not.

"Attacks began in 2001. Since then (August 2014 data), almost 20,000 rockets have hit southern Israel,[35][36] all but a few thousand of them since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August 2005."

...

"Some analysts see the attacks as a shift away from reliance on suicide bombing, which was previously Hamas's main method of attacking Israel, as an adoption of the rocket tactics used by the Lebanese group Hezbollah."

But we're going way back, during this ongoing war: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/10/7/live-hezbo...

"Updates: Hamas, Hezbollah fire rockets at Israel on October 7 anniversary"

I hope the answer to that last question includes those joining Hamas because of the first couple hundred thousands of Gazans killed.

What Israel's critics will add to that is that Israel has no right to self defense because it was occupying Gaza before the Oct 7th attack.

They'll also downplay the Oct 7th attack, claim Israelis killed their own, there was no sexual violence etc.

Then they'll look at the number of casualties as another proof. It's not "proportional". Israel is only allowed to kill a certain number of people in its wars. Otherwise it's clearly not self defense. But only for Israel, for other countries, still self defense.

People see bodies, children, on their social media feeds and destruction and that makes it very clear who the good guys and who the bad guys are.

Israel can't win this argument. Don't look for logic. Days after the Oct 7th attack Israel was already accused of genocide. Nothing Israel can do here is right and the actions western countries have taken (e.g. US post 9/11 or western response to ISIS) are not available to Israel because Israel shouldn't even exist and therefore should definitely not be allowed to defend itself (vs. the Americans and the Canadians who have lived on their land for 10,000 years and definitely didn't just steal it from the natives and kill all of them).

The only thing Israel can win is the actual war on the ground and so the leadership of Israel, while making many mistakes, is determined to win the war on the ground. Not all Israelis agree with that either. Personally I don't know if any other options really exist.

All that said, you can't really argue with the fact the population of Gaza is suffering immensely, many of them have lost everything they've had, many killed and injured, they live in terrible conditions. I mostly blame Hamas. I also blame the west for prolonging this war and not offering any reasonable solutions to Israel. Israel has faults and can and should do better but for the most part its hand is forced and has been forced by Palestinian violence/actions for some time. Maybe Gaza should have been taken immediately after Hamas took over in 2007. Maybe there would have been other courses of actions including post Oct 7. I donno. Oct 7th stunned me, it was an utter failure. Not really seeing anything proposed here at this point in time and don't recall seeing anything productive going back.

So all in all it's terrible. There's human suffering. We need to end it. The only way out I see is for Hamas to surrender. Let's get there and then we can debate what words mean, two states, one state, where do we go from here. This was is not going to end e.g. by the US telling Israel to end it.

With pressure on Hamas to surrender after being defeated in a war they started, this conflict would probably be over long ago.

However it still has considerable weaponry and underground facilities and it is still holding Israeli hostages. The issue isn't Hamas tomorrow. The issue is the consequence of letting Hamas retake the entire Gaza strip and rebuild itself, and the loss of deterrence when Hamas is going to declare they won the war once it ends on their terms.

I can relate to your point though and many people would agree with you. Let's stop killing people and see where this takes us is not an unreasonable position. But Israel is still in PTSD from Oct 7th and the mood is that it can't afford to take a chance here and that any stop/pause will just result in a higher price for Israelis and Palestinians paid a little down the line. The truly totally "unreasonable" side here is Hamas and I see how you can't understand their calculus because it is so death-cult fanatical.

The oppression is the biggest reason Hamas can grow. If that stopped I think with time Hamas would weaken and disappear. Like IRA in Northen Ireland eventually did.

Wrong. It is only their goal to occupy "everything" because they got attacked and need to secure their borders.

Israel already tried to completely withdraw from Gaza which evidently isn't a feasible solution. And this behavior, which cannot sensibly disputed, would also directly and thoroughly contradict any ambitions for genocide as well for that matter.

Israel has to leave the west bank eventually and what they do is wrong. But it is only tangentially related to the current war in Gaza.

I’m sure it’s not a sign of bias how often, eg, the UN writes reports on Israel versus murdered Christians in Africa.

I think a lot would have been won if the illegal settlements stopped and the apartheid like system ended. Hamas (and any other resistance) lives on the resentment created from that.

It think if Israel went back to the border of -67 and then did not try to expand its territories. It would with time resolve.

I can’t remember, was that the third or fourth time in 20 years that all of Israel’s neighbors simultaneously invaded it and lost territory? It’s hard to keep track with all of the wars of aggression against Israel that Israel won and gained territory from.

What would happen is exactly what did happen. Hamas would take over the entire territory. Arm to the teeth. Dig tunnels. And launch endless attacks against Israel.

I'm not a fan of the settlements but they are not the issue. The issue is Jewish presence in the middle east. When there were no settlements Israel was attacked. Pre-1967 it was still attacked. Pre-1948 Jews were still attacked. I don't think there should be any settlements and I would support dismantling them. I also condemn the settler violence against Palestinians. But again, this isn't really the issue, this is an outcome. Israel should have either annexed the west bank and given citizenship to all Palestinians or not allowed Israeli civilians to live there.

Tell me how the Jewish people murdered German civilians, broadcasted that to the world, committed hundreds of suicide bombing attacks in German cafes, supermarkets, malls and theaters, and fired 20,000 rockets at major German cities. Just so I can complete your analogy in my head. Also explain to me how what Israel is doing in Gaza to Palestinians is in any way comparable to the Nazis murdering six million Jews by rounding them up, loading them on trains to concentration camps, and then packing them in gas chambers. How does this compare with Israel targeting Hamas combatants, evacuating civilians population, and providing them with aid?

It's the mass murder of civilians part they have in common. Sure they haven't hit the million mark yet but they're getting there.

> Nazis murdering six million Jews by rounding them up, loading them on trains to concentration camps, and then packing them in gas chambers. How does this compare with Israel targeting Hamas combatants, evacuating civilians population, and providing them with aid

Somewhat similar if your look at the effect on innocent civilians. The Israelis are accused of starving them, blocking aid (and even targeting aid workers), and other crimes.

There is no such defence against a charge of genocide.

The lawyers who wrote the international treaty, many of whom themselves survived the Holocaust and lost their relatives in it, carefully considered whether to add such a defence. They did not add it. They considered that genocide is a crime for which there is no excuse. That is should be possible to defend yourself without resorting to it.

In any case, the group at issue is not Hamas. The genocide is being conducted against all Palestinians.

Your argument also conveniently omits the extreme level of military dominance which Israel has over the Palestinians.

The real reason many Israelis cannot conceive of a solution other than killing or expelling them, is: how can we leave them there, after the level of hatred, murder, violence, and abuse we have heaped on them over the last two years? We have taken revenge for our 36 dead children, won't they want revenge for their 20,000?

- hamas refuses to disarm

- nobody wants to be part of international force.

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

EDIT: More likely Naama Levy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Naama_Levy

But at this point, Israel exists. People have been born and died there. Its people's homes. Just as I rail against Israel causing forced displacement of Palestinans - a crime against humanity - I will not call for the same crime to be visited on Israelis.

Both peoples exist, have rights and deserve to exist in peace. Currently, Palestinians are treated as subhumans by the state of Israel and that has to stop, but none of that means that we shouldn't support Israel's right to exist. The alternative is to visit upon them the very same despicable crimes we criticise them for committing.

I'm pretty sure everyone here agrees that Israel can not exist on its own. Even with its nuclear capabilities, it's very small country and vulnerable. What do you think a war with Hamas or Iran would last if they don't receive daily shipments of weapons from allies, mainly the US? It's fully dependent on its Western allies; like any other colony, it will eventually collapse when money finally runs out.

Zionism is the idea of colonial occupation. The internal logic will always end in ethnic cleansing. It did in 1948. It's doing it now. American Manifest Destiny had a similar function, and it also resulted in massive genocide for which we have not atoned.

Zionism is done. A secular democratic state for all people with the right of return guaranteed for displaced Palestinians along with some kind of reeducation / denazification program for the genocidal citizens of the current state of Israel is the only viable solution.

As a Jew, I don't think Arabs should pay for Germany's crimes. I think Germany should pay. They paid a little already. They should pay more, especially now that they are supporting this genocide too.

But we often don't have world powers pay immeasurable or insurmountable amounts due to the game theory that slip-up's between world powers are inevitable, and when they find themselves in a compromising and vulnerable enough position that another nation state can exert enough power on them to "punish" them, those world powers are already decimated enough that the only logical reason for the punishment is retribution/revenge, thereby adding more "hurt" into the world - when that world power's decimation was already its justice.

A lot of people were displaced, forcibly moved to other areas, often to labor camps after WWII. Somehow we are able to accept this new order and live in peace. Arabs started multiple war over it, lost all of them, are still waging war today. The road to peace for them is to lay down arms, surrender and accept the resolution made by the winning side - exactly what we all have done after WWII.

Germany no, but the Arab states should definitely pay for ethnically cleansing the Mizrahi Jews who currently make up a majority of Israeli Jews.

Source: https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/2018/07/Ethnic...

As a Jew, what do you say every Seder? Do you do a Seder? לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָלָיִם

There is no colonial occupation. There is immigration. Jews are not a colonizing force and Jews, and Israelis, have (with very very few exceptions) have never engaged in ethnic cleansing. Zionism acknowledged that the current people living in the region have rights. Those people didn't acknowledge the rights of the Jewish people.

As the other comment mentions, Jews were ethnically cleansed from many countries in the middle east. Their land and property stolen. Jews were attacked and ethnically cleansed in the land of Israel (e.g. Hebron, Tsfat, Jersualem, Gaza). Did you know Jews used to live in Gaza from the second century BCE until finally removed by force in 1929?

A secular democratic state for all people is what was offered to the Arabs when Israel was established! The Palestinians don't want that. Look at how Jews are faring in all other Arab countries today when you talk about "re-education". Antisemitism is rampant in those societies and Jews are erased.

You're entitled to your opinions ofcourse but IMO you are completely disconnected from your heritage and the reality on the ground. If you haven't already I recommend reading a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Love_Dead_Jews that might give you some glimpse into some history you might not be familiar with.

You are wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet

2. This was during war time.

3. "This strategy is subject to controversy, with some historians characterizing it as defensive, while others assert that it was an integral part of a planned strategy for the expulsion, sometimes called an ethnic cleansing, of the area's native inhabitants".

4. This article seems to be pretty biased based on the terminology used. Wikipedia often is a political battleground.

5. This is regurgitating anti-Israel talking points. If you have a deeper insight please share it.

Let's just look at some details ( https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%9B%D7%A0%D7%99... ):

" ב-29 בנובמבר 1947 החליט האו"ם על תוכנית החלוקה, שכללה את סיום המנדט הבריטי בארץ ישראל ואת הקמתן של מדינה עברית ושל מדינה ערבית בשטחה. יום לאחר מכן, ב-30 בנובמבר 1947, תקפו ערבים ביריות אוטובוס יהודי בקרבת פתח תקווה, הרגו חמישה מנוסעיו ופצעו שבעה. ביריות אלה נפתחה מלחמת העצמאות, שנמשכה כשנה ושבעה חודשים."

So post the UN resolution to end the British Mandate and create a Jewish (and Arab) state in the region (which the Arabs rejected) there was an attack that killed 5 civilians near Petah Tikva that started Israel's war of independence (terrorism has been a theme back then before there was Israel).

"המטרה האסטרטגית של הערבים: ליצור טרור ברחבי הארץ שיגרום להפסקת עלייה, לעזיבת יישובים יהודיים ולהתנוונות היישוב היהודי בארץ "

The Arabs' strategic plan was via terrorism to deter Jewish people from migrating to Israel and "ethnically cleanse" it from Jews (the text says "make them leave their villages").

" .

יש היסטוריונים הטוענים כי סילוק הערבים מתחומי המדינה היהודית היה המטרה העיקרית של התוכנית. חלקם סבור כי מטרת תוכנית ד' הייתה להשתלט על שטחי המדינה הערבית המיועדת ומניעת הקמתה. לדעת ההיסטוריון יואב גלבר קריאה כזו במסמכים מתמקדת בסעיף אחד ומוציאה אותו מהקשרו. לדבריו, סעיפים אלו הנוגעים להתנהגות עם האוכלוסייה הערבית הם משניים בתוכנית שעיקרה היה היערכות לפלישה הצפויה של צבאות ערב. בנוסף, הוא טוען כי קיימת התעלמות מכך שההנחיה לגרש כפריים התייחסה רק לאלו שיגלו התנגדות פעילה ויילחמו ולא למי שייכנע לאנשי ההגנה, וזאת מתוך כוונה למנוע מלוחמים ערבים להפוך את הכפרים לבסיסים נגד היישובים היהודיים הסמוכים.["

Some historians claim that removing Arabs from Israel was the main idea. However Yoav Gelber (mentioned here, a history professor that research this), says that was a minor portion of the plan that shouldn't be read out of context and points out that this only applies to villages that would be used as bases for attacking nearby Jewish towns during the war, where there are armed forces and refuse to surrender.

" "כיתור הכפר ועריכת חיפוש בתוכו. במקרה של התנגדות - השמדת הכוח המזוין וגירוש האוכלוסייה אל מעבר לגבול המדינה... במקרה של אי התנגדות - יוכנס חיל מצב לתוך הכפר, אשר יתבצר במקום או במקומות המאפשרים שליטה טקטית מוחלטת. מפקד חיל המצב יחרים את כל כלי הנשק, כל מקלטי א-ט [אלחוט רדיו] וכל כלי הרכב... יאסור את כל האישים החשודים מבחינה פוליטית. בהתייעצות עם הגורמים המדיניים ימונו מוסדות מבין תושבי הכפר להנהלת ענייניו הפנימיים. "

The plan was basically the strategic plan for being able to defend the territory of Israel against the attack by the Arabs (local and surrounding). So the context is already the understanding that once the British leave Israel will be attacked - which happened. It dealt with villages that were hostile, in certain areas, and with being able to create and control defensible territory against Arab armies. Only given armed resistance the population was to be expelled. This was 1948, maybe today this doesn't fly but this sort of stuff happened a lot in the world those days. At the end of the day, Israel was not ethnically cleansed in 1947-48, many Arabs live there to date. Of those that left (the 1948 refugees) the forced expulsion are a minority.

I'm not necessarily proud of all these aspects but given the creation of a new state, with armed forces threatening it from day 1, this is what happened. As I mentioned in other replies, Israel called on the Arabs to become full and equal citizens of the new state (a solutions some people are suddenly remembering to advocate for) and the Arabs refused. They refused. This conflict is not about the Arabs wanting to live in their property as equal citizens in a free/democratic country. They had this option and they refused. This conflict is about erasing Jewish presence in the region. Has been and still is.

Insinuating that diaspora Jews don’t do Seder, or don’t do it “the right way”, is insulting and gross.

I am making an assumption that a Jewish person who claims Jews have no connection to Israel doesn't practice those aspects of Judaism that emphasize this connection, of which there are many. I am also making this point for the benefit of the non-Jews who are not familiar with Jewish traditions who claim Jews have no connection to Israel and Zionism is some sort of modern invention of that connection.

But if I insulted anyone, given that Yom Kippur is upon us, I apologize and hope you forgive me.

Isn't the very goal of "progress" in progressive to move away from victimhood to self-determined?

Albert Einstein added his name to a famous letter to the NY Times in the late 40's, in which EXACTLY THIS was explained, in plain & uncompromising language, in the very first paragraph. For Israel to exist, it would have to be just like the Nazis. That's LITERALLY what that letter said.

The splitting of a non-existing hair argument that you're trying to do is just to avoid admitting that you've been wrong the entire time, and enough people warned (or boasted) about it from the very beginning that you really don't have an excuse for being this wrong.

Europe accepted millions of Ukrainian refugees to keep them out of harms way, why do they not extend the same helping hand to Palestinians from Gaza? who are, at least according to this UN report, in much worse condition?

My idea is to buy the gaza strip from the residents and they can take their newfound wealth to another arab country and be prosperous happy and peaceful there.

But yeah, the fact that no one is taking them in proves they are all a bunch of anti semites or virtue signallers. They don't care about palestinians, it's just politically convenient to pretend that they do.

It would be far less costly to give each family in Gaza $100k and a plane ticket than to continue this humanitarian disaster.

Just realise this: your propaganda playbook stopped working a long time ago. I doubt you have the slightest inkling of how much deep loathing much of humanity has developed for your Zionist Nazi movement. And every time you smirkly suggest that the victims should just surrender, you turn stomachs.

Your failing propaganda only works to convince others of the only possible solution. The end of this evil settler-colonial monstrosity, and the return of ALL the land to its native population.

But to be balanced it has to work both ways. Send everyone back where they came from! All the immigrants must go back to their home country. But the Jews! Where do they come from? Oh... Yeah.

If you don’t have the capacity to stop it but you do have the capacity to offer them a home shouldn’t you ?

Or is it the moral equivalent to the American “thoughts and prayers “?

It’s similar to the Ukrainian Russian meat grinder. The support is only extended enough for this to continue on forever

Nor is available power and leverage being brought to bear on stopping them. Any honest attempt at helping innocents being traumatized would start there.

Then yes, facilitating voluntary movement after that would help, without also blatantly facilitating those who want to drive them out.

I suppose you could that in theory but only in theory. In practice, the current situation is not very surprising given the overall trajectory since the inception of the country. It's very disturbing to see the memes that are coming out of the social media of the soldiers and even the general population.

Even if the current govt. of the country changes, I wouldn't hold my breath about the new government making reparations or taking any other positive steps.

More worrying for Israel is that it's becoming a partisan issue. That goes to both ends - previously unthinkable, unwavering support under Republicans but a very short leash under the Democrats.

A highly salient political issue becoming partisan is a good thing in a representative democracy, as that is the only thing that makes it possible for the public to influence it by general election votes.

Every possible alignment of circumstances “backfires” in FPTP because FPTP is a fundamentally bad way to elect a legislature.

That’s not a problem of, e.g., salient political issues becoming partisan—representing a coherent position on salient issues is the only useful thing parties can do—it is a problem of FPTP.

https://nypost.com/2024/11/25/us-news/andrew-cuomo-joins-hig...

And as for the Right, it's primarily isolationism, but they certainly aren't going to favoring Palestine over Israel anytime. That's already hedged in. At the end of day, it largely goes against of the interests of every actor not aligned with Iran or seeking stability to let Israel fall in favour of Palestine. We do need that hard power when America is retreating from the region.

For many people that's amazing.

Israel also has a law that says that the right of self-determination only belongs to its Jewish citizens- it calls itself the Jewish state. I would be entirely for a one-state solution with equal rights for everyone, but that thing cannot be Israel.

But a peace process might give people a few years of peace. And peace is the best starting point we have for further peace.

And you think they should just walk away from the hostages? If Hamas released the hostages the world would soon make Israel quit. But as it stands why in the world should they be expected to give up?

Ending unconditional US support is the only thing that motivates Israel to seek an end other than by genocide, which is a necessary (but not sufficient, on its own) condition for any desirable outcome.

As long as the Dahiya doctrine persists, it won't be. But that's an Israeli problem - their disproportionate response has been exploited for years. Hamas is fine letting Israel commit as many war crimes as it takes to satisfy their leadership, it very clearly hasn't changed tactics in recent years. The cost to Israeli international credibility seems to be "worth it" in their eyes.

So, if Israel wants peace they first have to stop escalation. But even if Hamas was defeated, we know that wouldn't be the end of things. Next the Druze has to be defended, which would result in a very justified annexation of south Syria and repeat of the same genocidal conditions in Gaza. They would also attempt to unseat power in Yemen, and then embroil America in an unwinnable war against Iran to sustain a true hegemony.

I wouldn't be running an explicitly racist apartheid ethnostate. I wouldn't be engaging in constant ethnic cleansings for the last 75 years.

The answer for both sides is that both sides have historical claim to the land, and there is no better neighborhood to live in for either of the sides anyway.

But Gazans can’t leave (the borders have been closed for years now), while Israelis can emigrate whenever they like. So on an individual basis, every Israeli has made a choice to accept living in the bad neighborhood, whereas the Gazans have no choice but to make the best of the bad situation.

As for the Jews, there is no place safer than this "bad neighborhood".

This is an argument that Hamas is bad not why buildings need to be destroyed

Many of the dead children pinned on Israel are the result of the bobby trapped buildings. This actually makes sense in Muslim media, where culturally those killed by either side are considered martyrs and afforded the gifts of heaven. But it makes no sense in Western media where human life is supposedly valued.

a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

As soon as Hamas returns the hostages, we could then progress to the day after and who will rule the strip.

And look at Israel vs Hezbollah--Hezbollah makes little use of human shield tactics, casualties run in the ballpark of 90% combatant. Same force, same type of opponent, what's the difference in Gaza? Hamas makes very heavy use of human shield tactics and worse. We see 30-50% combatants. That implies that the majority of the deaths are because of Hamas.

Why would the military in countries hostile to Israel provide Israel with advice or plans on defeating their enemies?

Currently there is war, peace is out of the window. First step is to stop the war, second step is to make both side actually negotiate.

It was attempted by Clinton a while ago but assassinations from mossad and hamas prevented the process to success.

To be honest, politicians have failed us too many times for my sad brain to believe that there will be a good outcome.

Most probably Israel society will keep radicalizing itself, Palestinians will be killed and Gaza bombed/annexed leading to the death of both Palestinian and Israeli civilization. Palestinian will be all dead and Israeli will have become in all manner what they initially sought to destroy, literal nazi.

I’d even bet that death by zyklon is more human that seeing your family and yourself getting slowly hungered to death. And contrary to nazi Germany, no Israeli can pretend to not know what’s going on.

People can yell and moan but that is honestly the best outcome for gaza. If they are rational, the gazans are cursing the Israelis for withdrawing in 2006 and abandoning them to hamas.

The two state solution died on Oct 7.

Edit: But i've actually come up with a clever idea how everyone can (eventually) ends up a winner. It might sound desperate but remember this completely unnecessary crisis is already in its 4th generation:

A good solution that should satisfy everyone would be to offer a couple million palestinians a new life in any of the dozen arab states that exist and are much bigger then israel. They will get enough money to set themselves up and a pathway to citizenship in their adopted country. In short treating them like every other refugee in history, just much better. I've done the calculations, if 2 million palestinian get offered 50k dollars each, including children plus whatever they can get for selling their house this scheme would cost $100 billion dollars, which actually kind of makes sense seeing how much this war is costing. It might cost something in that ballpark to that to rebuild gaza anyway. You can call that whatever you want, but i'd say that is the path to an optimal outcome for all sides. (actually i like that idea so much i think it deserves the Nobel prizes in the peace and economic categories.)

Or you can get hung up about ethnic cleansing and gaza stays a hellhole for the next 20 years and increasingly overpopulated.

Military intervention meaning invade a nuclear power?

This sort of mentality will perpetuate conflict and atrocities.

Not really, there are security measures connected to citizenship and vehicle registration, not "Jewish only" roads. Jews are not allowed in Area A, though.

> Is Israel not attacking several different countries in the region?

Not really, it responded to several attacks against it. Do you expect Israel to tolerate attacks with no response? States that gave up on trying to destroy Israel, like Egypt and Jordan, have not been attacked by Israel since.

> Do Jewish Israelis not use "From the river to the sea" as well?

"Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" is not nearly as problematic as "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab".

Which in practice means there are Jewish-only roads.

> Jews are not allowed in Area A, though.

It's the Israeli government that bans Israelis from entering Area A. The Palestinians don't ban Jews from entering. I personally know Jewish people who have visited Area A.

> Not really, it responded to several attacks against it.

Israel has launched unprovoked attacks on Iran, Syria and most recently Qatar. Qatar has no intentions at all of destroying Israel, and Syria barely even has a government.

> "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" is not nearly as problematic as "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab".

Leaving aside the fact that you distorted the Palestinian chant (which ends, "Palestine will be free"), the Israeli version is much more problematic, because Israel is actually implementing it. The Palestinians have a vague hope that all of historic Palestine will be free one day. The Israelis actually control all of historic Palestine, subject millions of people there to permanent military rule with no rights, have murdered over 60,000 Palestinians in the last two years, and are systematically stealing land in the West Bank. There's no comparison at all.

I am flagging your comment as it was written in bad-faith. Please reread the guidelines for discussion here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think most Americans would rather support dissolving the Houthi regime and forcing them to pay reparations to the Jews they ethnically cleansed and whose property they stole.

But it's OK, because they are the wrong people. It's fine to punish/displace the wrong people for what they happen to be born into.

'Your grandparents were pushed out of their homes and Israel was the only nation that would take them in? To bad so sad boo hoo. You are a monster for being born, no one cares what happens to you, you are evil for being born' -- You probably

I'm imagining someone telling my friend whose grandparents came to the US undocumented that my friend has to leave and who cares what happens to my friend, what happens to them is their grandparents fault. Fuck that.

You are asking them to accept extinction. If that were forced on them they would take the Sampson option.

And don't say "go home". The majority are descended from those expelled from Arab lands, there's no home to go to.

Do the Palestinians promise genocide of the Jews in Israel? Yes.

Well, if Syria and Lebanon didn't want to lose territories, maybe they should not have started wars to ethnically cleans Jews from the place?

I mean, when you start a war with your neighbour with the goal of extermination, you don't get to complain when you lose.

In fact, you should be happy that even though you tried to exterminate them, they didn't try to exterminate you when they won.

The whole thing about ethnic cleansing is really turning history on its head. The reason why Israel is hated by its neighbors is because Israel was founded by European settlers who conquered and ethnically cleansed the land.

In May–June 1967, in preparation for conflict, the Israeli government planned to confine the confrontation to the Egyptian front, whilst taking into account the possibility of some fighting on the Syrian front. Syrian front 5–8 June

Syria largely stayed out of the conflict for the first four days.

False Egyptian reports of a crushing victory against the Israeli army and forecasts that Egyptian forces would soon be attacking Tel Aviv influenced Syria's decision to enter the war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War#Golan_Heights

Two thirds of the area was depopulated and occupied by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and then effectively annexed in 1981

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

In the months prior to the outbreak of the Six-Day War in June 1967, tensions again became dangerously heightened: Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that another Egyptian closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping would be a definite casus belli. In May 1967, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran would again be closed to Israeli vessels. He subsequently mobilized the Egyptian military into defensive lines along the border with Israel and ordered the immediate withdrawal of all UNEF personnel.

On 5 June 1967, as the UNEF was in the process of leaving the zone, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Egyptian airfields and other facilities in what is known as Operation Focus. Egyptian forces were caught by surprise, and nearly all of Egypt's military aerial assets were destroyed, giving Israel air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula as well as the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip. After some initial resistance, Nasser ordered an evacuation of the Sinai Peninsula; by the sixth day of the conflict, Israel had occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula. Jordan, which had entered into a defense pact with Egypt just a week before the war began, did not take on an all-out offensive role against Israel, but launched attacks against Israeli forces to slow Israel's advance. On the fifth day, Syria joined the war by shelling Israeli positions in the north.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War

Sure, Israel struck Egypt first, but Syria is not Egypt. And calling it a preemptive strike should be pretty uncontroversial considering Egypt's naval blockade, expulsion of peacekeepers, deployment of ~100k troops near Israel's border, and Nasser being pretty explicit about his intentions.

> And calling it a preemptive strike should be pretty uncontroversial

It's actually highly controversial, given that:

1. Egypt had no intention of attacking Israel (as we now know for certain).

2. The Israeli leadership was extremely confident in its own military dominance over Egypt, and that it would win any war quickly.

3. The Israeli leadership of the time had ambitions of territorial expansion.

Where are you getting this idea from? A leader with no intention of attacking Israel would not have made statements like

"We will not accept any possibility of co-existence with Israel. [...] The war with Israel is in effect since 1948." (Nasser, May 28, 1967)

and then proceeded to amass ~100k troops near the border, or in Nasser's words: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ..."

As far as preemptive strikes go, it really doesn't get any clearer than this.

Not to mention the naval blockade which was in itself an act of war, making the question of who started the war rather moot.

The Israelis had been planning their own attack on Egypt for years. Ben Gurion had aggressive, expansionist foreign policy views, which the crisis with Egypt allowed him to implement.

The Israeli public was afraid of Egypt, but the leadership was extremely confident that Israel had massive military superiority over the Egyptians and would rapidly win any war. That's also what American intelligence thought, and what they told the Israelis.

As for Egyptian public statements about Israel, remember the political context: Israel had been founded 19 years earlier through the mass theft of Palestinian land and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Israel had carried out terrorist bombings in Cairo in the early 1950s in order to try to politically destabilize the country, and had invaded Egypt in 1956, as part of a conspiracy with Britain and France to take over the Suez Canal. The Egyptians had good reasons to view the Israelis as enemies and loudly complain, but we now know they had no intention of attacking.

Even if Nasser planned to wait and induce Israel to fire the first shot, how would Israel know when Egypt's actions, as well as many of their statements, were perfectly consistent with a military preparing to immanently invade?

Taking this to the extreme, if Russia launched a silo of ICBMs targeting DC, and it turned out that they were all convincing decoys with no payload, would you say the US "initiated the war" for responding with real munitions?

Realistically, pre-emptive strikes don't get any clearer than this. If one objects to this pre-emptive, one would pretty much have reject the notion of pre-emptive strikes categorically. There can be a legal argument that pre-emptive strikes never technically fall under then narrow language of Article 51, but that's more of a strict textualist argument and not a pragmatist one.

> Taking this to the extreme, if Russia launched a silo of ICBMs targeting DC

Your analogy has already gone off the rails, because Israel held massive military superiority over Egypt. The Americans and the Israelis both knew that Israel would rapidly win any war with Egypt.

The military escalation that preceded the 1967 war was triggered by Israel's own attack on Egypt in November 1966. Israel was pursuing an extremely aggressive foreign policy. It took actions that caused a massive increase in tensions, but then claimed those actions gave it the right to launch a preemptive war (though actually, when the war broke out, the Israeli government just chose to lie and claim that Egypt had attacked Israel first).

I don't think that's accurate, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the discussion anyway. The point was just that the instigator of a war isn't necessarily the side that technically fires the first munition.

> Israel's own attack on Egypt in November 1966

What do you mean? There was no Israeli attack on Egypt at that time.

> then claimed those actions gave it the right to launch a preemptive war

Not sure what you mean. Israel's justification was the naval blockade and Egypt's apparent preparations for an invasion, nothing else.

It is accurate. There are many declassified documents from the time that discuss Israeli vs. Arab military capabilities. They come to the conclusion that the Israelis enjoyed massive superiority. Here's one [0]:

“The judgment of the intelligence community is that Israeli ground forces 'can maintain internal security, defend successfully against simultaneous Arab attacks on all fronts, launch limited attacks simultaneously on all fronts, or hold on any three fronts while mounting successfully a major offensive on the fourth.'”

Here's another [1]:

“They would try to destroy the Egyptian airforce first and thus gain ability for a tank strike to take Sinai and the Straits. Secretary McNamara said the Israelis think they can win in 3–4 days; but he thinks it would be longer—7 to 10 days.”

> What do you mean? There was no Israeli attack on Egypt at that time.

I mistyped. Israel attacked Jordan in November 1966.

> Israel's justification was the naval blockade and Egypt's apparent preparations for an invasion, nothing else.

Israel actually cycled through a number of different justifications. Their initial justification was just a pure lie: they claimed that Egypt had attacked first.

0. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19...

1. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19...

If you want a more colloquial version of the US assessment, this is what Lyndon Johnson told the Israelis before the war (paraphrased in the official US diplomatic records):

“The US assessment does not agree with that of the Israelis: our best judgment is that no military attack on Israel is imminent, and, moreover, if Israel is attacked, our judgment is that the Israelis would lick them.”

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19...

Invaded what state? Mandatory Palestine? It sounds like you're just referring to (mostly legal) Jewish immigration. Would you apply the same label to Arab immigrants such as Arafat, or is it only an invasion when Jews immigrate?

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

  - The nakba happened in 1947. 
  - Arab armies invaded the Jewish state in 1947.
  - Jews did not invade any Arab state in 1947.
  - The Arab armies invaded the Jewish state in 1947.

  > It was literally Palestinian land.

  > European Zionists invaded and encouraged Arab Jewish mass immigration.

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

Jewish migration only became illegal in the Holy Land in 1936, when the Brits specifically made Jewish immigration illegal in response to the big Arab riot that year. Do you remember all the fuss a few years ago when Trump suggested that Muslims should not migrate to the United States? Would not a similar response be warranted for targeting Jewish migration?

  > The founding texts of Zionism, the Balfour Declaration and Nakba are all very well documented.

And yet here we are, with a fundamentalist Islamic population in Gaza, which elected a genocidal party into power, claiming they are now this new invented group of pepole. And to be clear - they are explicitly genocidal, with intent spelled out clearly in the Hamas charters.

Don't see how either justifies what you are pushing? That millions of people are guilty because of where/who they were born to, and that it doesn't matter what we chose to let happen to them/the nation they were born into, lived their entire lives.

But thank you for being honest about the end goal. So many people on this topic aren't willing to be honest and just want to pressure it into being without having to confront what they want to pressure into being is.

How is me equating Israel with the actions of Imperial Japan in WW2 deflection? Come on. You switched to the WW2 equivalencing, not me.

I'm highlighting that you are OK with a huge group of people inheriting guilt because 'zionism'. Nagasaki and Hiroshima is what your position leads to/justifies.

People whose families were kicked out of their middle eastern home countries because they had the wrong religion/race, irredeemable in your eyes. Evil settler babies/children? Irredeemable/not even a consideration because... zionism.

You are OK with just displacing 10 million people (many whose family were forced out of other middle eastern countries because they had the wrong religion) with zero plan and zero care on your part, simply because there are zionists involved somewhere along the way.

You keep saying 'Zionism makes inheriting guilt ok' and 'zionism makes not caring and having zero plan for what happens to 10 million people OK'. We don't need to argue what 'zionism' is. No matter what it is, heck I'll give you every horrible think you imagine it to be, I think your position is horrible and evil.

That you have zero self reflection or self censorship to the point you do not give a fuck what happens to 10 million people because they are 'evil' is wild and not normal. But I'm really glad you are stating what so many here believe but aren't quite yet ready to say out loud.

Some of the worst atrocities have been committed by people who knew they were in the right, or people that were passing judgement on others on a mass scale. That you have zero reflection on it and just jump to 'zionism' is scary af, not gonna lie. I've lost a shit ton of karma hoping you would get any kind of self awareness. But you are all in on 'fuck 10 million people'. But like I said, at least you are honest that you are fine with whatever happens to millions of people, as long as they are people you judge unworthy of caring. Most pro-palestinians don't have the nerve to clearly state their intentions and are just downvoting me.

Go look at who authored this report. It is not "Top Legal Investigators" as the title states. And just read the report itself.

The actual durable solution is something like how Sri Lanka defeated the Tamil Tigers, or how Russia defeated the insurgency in Chechnya. Which is roughly the same as what Israel is doing in Gaza now. But Israel is playing on hard mode because the international community has given such a morale boost to Hamas, prolonging the time until surrender.

I think this is key. The protest must condemn Hamas while supporting innocent people. Protests that support Hamas as some kind of justified resistance just prolongates everything. Hamas doesn't care for its people. It has an ideological system that glorifies death. Death is just a means to an end for them.

This is the problem of viewing things black and white. The whole conflict is varying shades of Grey.

Good job. The feat of not blaming the obvious aggressor is something very few accomplish.

Israel has control over water, electricty, gas, road, "law enforcement", etc. and used it for decades to push palestinians out of their homes. The last violent events are a result of long oppression and netanjahu establishing a theocracy. Only focusing on extremes and make conclusions on such a basis is something dumb people do, dont you agree? Israel is clearly to blame, when you know a little more nuanced history and consider its long time dominant position in that conflict.

> international community has given such a morale boost to Hamas

By ignoring israels obvious long running now openly genocidal master plan, you are doing the same.

In order to be effective, US pressure would have to be aimed at forcing Israel to do one of two things:

1. Withdraw its military from the Palestinian territories (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza), dismantle all of its illegal settlements there, and recognize a fully sovereign Palestinian state. This is basically asking Israel to give up its dreams of taking over the Palestinian territories and to withdraw to its own borders - a simple ask.

2. Alternatively, Israel gets to keep the Palestinian territories, but it has to grant full, equal citizenship to the Palestinians who live there. That would mean that 50% of the Israeli electorate would be Palestinian, effectively ending the Jewish nature of the state of Israel. The next prime minister could be a Palestinian - who knows?

Israel has held onto the Palestinian territories for nearly 60 years without granting the people who live there (except for Israeli settlers) any rights. It has to either leave the occupied territories or grant everyone who lives under its control equal rights. It's actually quite a simple and reasonable demand.

Right now, because of unconditional US support, Israel has no incentive to do either of the above. Israel's leaders correctly believe that they can have it all: they can keep the land without granting the Palestinians who live there any rights. They operate with complete impunity. The US could end that impunity and impose real costs on Israel for its actions.

Both options laid out above (the 2-state and 1-state solution) are vastly better for the Palestinians than living under permanent Israeli military occupation with no rights, and subjected to continuous violence from the Israelis. It would not be the Palestinians who would block these types of solutions, were they actually on offer.

> The Israelis have a near monopoly on force in this conflict. They are the overwhelmingly dominant party, the only one with tanks, aircraft, destroyers and nuclear weapons. They have the power to dictate solutions, and that's what they've been doing for decades, using brute force. Pretending these are two equal sides that just can't agree is a fantasy.

Why should the losers of a conflict get to decide the terms? Has that ever happened, in all of recorded history? Say the Israelis don't want to give up East Jerusalem under any circumstances, what then? Would the Palestinian side be justified in "blocking" the resolution of the conflict?

The way I see it, the fairest and best outcome was a two-state solution with Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem -- this would have represented a compromise on both sides.

Today, I don't know. I don't think that there is a fair or best solution. They're probably going to just keep fighting until the Palestinian side is hollowed-out and the Israeli side is a Burma-tier pariah state.

Because might doesn't make right. Because there's such a thing as international law. Because it's wrong to steal land and force people out of their homes.

> The way I see it, the fairest and best outcome was a two-state solution with Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem -- this would have represented a compromise on both sides.

The Palestinians have already given up 78% of Palestine. They only want the rump: East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Most big Israeli cities used to be Palestinian cities, until the Israelis conquered and ethnically cleansed them in 1948.

The standard 2-state solution is already a massive concession by the Palestinians. It's not the starting point for more concessions. You're asking them to now concede the most cherished piece of Palestine that they haven't yet given up: East Jerusalem. That would be such a humiliation that the Palestinians would never accept it.

The way out of this is massive international pressure on Israel. Israel is strong as long as it's beating up on almost completely defenseless Palestinians. But Israel is a small country that could be pressured by the US and EU fairly easily. Instead, they back it to the tune of billions of dollars a year and give it diplomatic support.

When has this stopped any army? And hasn't this very thing happened to Jews in Middle Eastern countries, who were sent packing without any hope of compensation?

> You're asking them to now concede the most cherished piece of Palestine that they haven't yet given up: East Jerusalem. That would be such a humiliation that the Palestinians would never accept it.

The same goes for the Israelis, who swear a religious oath by Jerusalem every year, and time has shown (repeatedly, at that,) that no Israeli leader will be induced to give it up.

At some point, you've got to admit defeat, or else the conflict will simply continue forever, very much to the detriment of all involved, and their children, who are innocent.

The passions obviously run high, but obviously both sides should compromise from the position of the status quo, and it's wishful thinking to suppose that the side that has prevailed in combat will knuckle-under and let the loser decide the terms of the peace. This is quite literally something that has never happened before.

Granted, the Israelis are fighting their war in a way that is deranged and quite dangerous for their own long-term survival. If they were somewhat more chivalrous, their own goals would be far better served; there appears to be a very nasty edge to Israeli democracy.

You seem to be conflating the region of Palestine, which has always included a mix of religions including Jews, with the modern Palestinian national identity.

If we're using "Palestinian" to mean someone from Palestine, why wouldn't we count a family from the First Aliyah as Palestinian? The Second Aliyah? Holocaust refugees?

Some who now identify as Palestinian also immigrated during the economically prosperous Mandatory Palestine period. Would you say they're not real Palestinians, because they joined too recently? How about Arafat, who doesn't have a "pure" unbroken Levantine lineage (being born in Cairo)?

Should American families who have only been here for one century have fewer rights, perhaps less voting power, than families who have been here for multiple centuries?

> Some who now identify as Palestinian also immigrated during the economically prosperous Mandatory Palestine period.

Relatively few. Not enough to have much of an impact on the overall Arab population of Palestine. This is radically different than the Zionist colonization of Palestine, which was a mass influx of people with the explicit intention of taking over control of the territory.

> Should American families who have only been here for one century have fewer rights

I think you would accept that the following two situations would be very different:

1. People immigrate to the US, settle down, send their kids to school, and eventually become American citizens.

2. A large group of people enter the US with the explicitly stated goal of founding their own country - a country in which they want there to be as few Americans as possible. They have their own militias and operate completely outside the control of any government that the people of the United States control. Just to make this scenario more realistic, we can say that the US is currently under the rule of a foreign empire, so that Americans have no say in their own government. The foreign settlers start taking over large parts of the country. Finally, the UN says that the US should be split in two, giving half of it to the foreign settlers. The foreign settlers agree, but Americans think it's unfair and don't agree. War erupts. The foreign settlers, based on superior political organization and funding from abroad, quickly establish massive military dominance over the Americans, and go on to conquer 78% of the United States, expelling 80% of the American population from the territory they control.

Not exactly the same thing.

The numbers are largely unknown for border crossings. But the point is that it's a gross oversimplification to say that Palestinians are native to Palestine (even those born outside?) while Jews are not. The intentional naming collision encourages this oversimplification.

And if we move past the rather old-fashioned idea that more recent immigrants don't count, the more relevant figure is that there was a (slight) Jewish majority within the partition plan borders.

> mass influx of people with the explicit intention of taking over control of the territory

Many of them simply had no choice, having been driven out of other MENA states.

> with the explicitly stated goal of founding their own country

I don't think that it's wrong to legally immigrate, regardless of any statehood aspirations, or that such immigrants are less deserving of any rights than other residents.

Actually, we do have a very good idea. The demographics of Palestine were studied at the time (e.g., by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry), and are well understood. Arab population growth in Palestine was almost entirely due to simple births minus deaths, and was similar to population growth in other Arab countries of the time.

> But the point is that it's a gross oversimplification to say that Palestinians are native to Palestine (even those born outside?) while Jews are not.

Which Jews? There were Jews who were native to Palestine. They made up a few percent of the population of the region. But the overwhelming majority of the people who founded Israel were recent immigrants. The first Israeli prime minister, David Ben Gurion, was from Płońsk, Poland. The first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann was from Belarus. Golda Meir was from Odessa and grew up in Milwaukee. You can go down the list. They're almost all like that. Heck, the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was from Budapest, and barely ever set foot in Palestine (only once, I think).

> The intentional naming collision encourages this oversimplification.

The reason for the naming collision is simple: the Palestinians are the people who lived in Palestine before the Zionists came in, took over most of it and established Israel.

> Many of them simply had no choice, having been driven out of other MENA states.

No, that happened in the years after the founding of Israel, as a consequence of it. It turns out that kicking out hundreds of thousands of Arabs from their homes and loudly proclaiming that you're doing so in the name of the Jewish people is a really effective way of stoking antisemitism in Arab countries.

> I don't think that it's wrong to legally immigrate, regardless of any statehood aspirations, or that such immigrants are less deserving of any rights than other residents.

If you read the scenario I sketched out above and think it's the same as everyday immigration and is okay, I don't know what to tell you. It's like calling the European settlers who drove out Native Americans "immigrants."

Do you have a source for this? I don't think that matches the British census data, unless we postulate that the birth rate somehow skyrocketed.

> There were Jews who were native to Palestine. They made up a few percent of the population of the region

What do you mean by "native"? What's special about the particular time period you're referencing? The Palestinian identity didn't exist then.

> the Palestinians are the people who lived in Palestine before the Zionists came in

There were always Jews in Palestine. Even if we're zooming in on a period where their numbers were small (and I'm not sure why), we shouldn't be saying things that erase these Jews from history.

> as a consequence of it

I think most of us would agree that there's no justification for ethnic cleansing. (I don't condone the cases of that done by Jewish militias in some towns either.)

> and think it's the same as everyday immigration

Not what I said at all. The point is that, in both this analogy and the actual topic of immigration to the Levant, it shouldn't matter how many centuries a family has lived in a region.

It's in the official report of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, which did actually use demographic data gathered by the British. It's not that births skyrocketed. It's mainly that infant mortality went down. This exact same phenomenon has played out throughout most of the world at some point in the last 200 years, and it typically leads to a population boom (until families adjust and start having fewer children).

> What do you mean by "native"? What's special about the particular time period you're referencing? The Palestinian identity didn't exist then.

We don't have to get into a big theoretical discussion of what "native" means. When the Zionist movement began, there were already people living in Palestine. Most of them had deep roots there, going back many hundreds of years (or more). The Zionist movement was a European movement that aimed to colonize Palestine - to settle it and establish a state for European Jews. This is basically very similar to what happened in North America with European colonists and Native Americans. There are particularities to each case, but the basic dynamic between the existing ("native") population and the group that's coming in to displace them is the same.

The fact that Palestinians didn't have a firm national identity in 1900 isn't a justification for taking their land and expelling them.

> There were always Jews in Palestine.

This is a red herring. The fact that there was a tiny group of Jews living in Palestine does not have much of anything to do with our discussion. We're talking about Zionism, a movement among European Jews to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

> I don't condone the cases of that done by Jewish militias in some towns either.

Without the ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias (and the IDF, after it was officially founded), there would be no Israel. The entire basis for Israel's existence is the creation of a large Jewish majority in a substantial portion of Palestine. That happened through the mass ethnic cleansing campaign in 1947-48.

> Not what I said at all. The point is that, in both this analogy and the actual topic of immigration to the Levant ...

We're not discussing "immigration to the Levant." We're talking about an organized effort to take over a foreign territory, against the will of the people who live there.

This is a complicated analogy. There was no sovereign, so noone to decide on an immigration policy and no arbiter of legality.

Some settler groups purchased land and had good relations with natives. We don't tend to deem those problematic merely because people relocated and didn't look like the other people living there at the time. Many settlements were of course problematic for other reasons.

A closer analogy would be black families legally relocating to safer white neighborhoods, "against the will of the people who live there". If a neighborhood flipped from majority-white to majority-black, and black politicians gained power, would you say the white community gave up something that was rightfully theirs?

> Without the ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias (and the IDF, after it was officially founded), there would be no Israel. The entire basis for Israel's existence is the creation of a large Jewish majority in a substantial portion of Palestine. That happened through the mass ethnic cleansing campaign in 1947-48.

This isn't accurate at all. There was already a Jewish majority in the proposed Jewish state by the time of the partition plan. Hundreds of thousands of additional Holocaust survivors were expected. Ethnic cleansing of Jews from surrounding Arab states also greatly contributed to what became a much stronger Jewish majority.

> against the will of the people who live there

I don't believe a demographic majority has some inherent right to deny access to minorities who wish to legally immigrate.

You're making a big deal of the existence of a "sovereign" - in this case, an imperial overlord that ruled without any democratic accountability, and which implemented policies that were almost universally hated by the local population they ruled over. But because the British Empire supported Jewish settlement of Palestine, you view that as just fine - regardless of what the people who actually lived there thought.

> I don't believe a demographic majority has some inherent right to deny access to minorities who wish to legally immigrate.

That "legality" was established by an undemocratic regime that ruled directly against the will of the overwhelming majority of the population. You're setting up a morality here in which the European imperial powers had a moral right to dictate to their captive colonial populations who would be allowed to live where, and to force them to accept the political / demographic takeover of their lands by a foreign people. And what's more, you think it would be immoral for the colonial population to resist what would effectively be an invasion by a foreign people. Why? Because the imperial overlord said the invasion was legal.

But if you're being morally consistent, you'll have to now say that the Israelis have no moral right to prevent the millions of Palestinians who live scattered across the world from immigrating to Israel. I'm sure you'll quibble that Israeli law doesn't allow that immigration, but that's not a moral objection. If the Palestinians had been allowed to run their own affairs in the 1920s-40s, instead of being ruled over by a foreign power, they would have passed laws preventing Jewish immigration, just as Israel now prevents Palestinian immigration. If you're morally consistent, you'll accept that Israel should allow itself to become a majority-Palestinian country.

An analogy is not an equivalence; one can make meaningful analogies involving aliens or unicorns. You have not provided any actual argument for why the analogy might be flawed.

> you'll have to now say that the Israelis have no moral right to prevent the millions of Palestinians who live scattered across the world from immigrating to Israel

Open borders are probably morally optimal, at least theorists like Joseph Carens would say so. You seem to be holding Israel to a standard of moral sainthood, or expecting me to. No state decides immigration (or any other) policies based on what is morally optimal.

> That "legality" was established by an undemocratic regime

We can just as well pretend that there was no sovereign power, only anarchy. When there's no legal argument for blocking immigration, we're left with only moral arguments, and I don't think a demographic majority has any inherent moral right to deny the freedom of movement of select minorities.

You really want me to explain to you why black families moving into a white-only neighborhood is a ridiculous analogy for Zionist settlers moving in to Palestine with the goal of transforming it into a Jewish state?

I'm surprised that this has to be explained, but here goes.

In your analogy, blacks are an oppressed minority inside the United States who are merely exercising their freedom to live in whatever neighborhood they want. They are not foreign invaders coming in to take over the country, expel the native population and establish an ethnically exclusive state for themselves.

In Palestine, the goal of the Zionists were essentially invaders. They had the goal of transforming it from an Arab country into a country for European Jews, where Jews would have unquestioned supremacy and control over the state. In Palestine, the Zionists were not some oppressed minority. They were much wealthier than the Arabs. They had enormous financial backing from the outside in order to buy up land from absentee landlords, expel the tenant farmers, and establish Jewish settlements. They were backed by the imperial overlord, the British Empire. The Arabs had no power of self-governance. They were ruled over by a foreign power, the British Empire, which imposed a policy on them that meant that a foreign people - European Jews - would take over the country. When the Arabs rose up, they were brutally suppressed by the British army, with the help of Zionist militias.

This is what you're comparing to a few black families moving into a white neighborhood. It's beyond absurd.

This is a really unconvincing appeal to authority when we consider the three particular individuals behind the report, as well as broad anti-Israel bias in the UN.

> Appealing to no authority except the evidence here

You haven't mentioned evidence here, only authorities.

Arafat was offered something very close to a two state solution. He walked away without responding. He couldn't accept (he would have been assassinated if he agreed), he couldn't make a counter-offer because there was a risk of it being accepted, leading to the same end.

Look carefully at all the "peace" proposals from the Palestinians. All are non-viable due to details buried in them. Typically this is hidden references to the "right of return".

The offer made to Arafat was awful for many reasons that are well known, and that I won't go over here (but to give you an exanple, the proposal said that the Palestinians would have no military, and that the Israeli military would have the right to enter Palestine whenever it wanted, meaning that Palestine would not have real sovereignty).

> He walked away without responding.

Actually, he told the Israelis that the offer was a very bitter pill to swallow, and that he would have to show it to the Palestinian national council before he could accept it. Then, the PLO came back a few months later to negotiate further in Taba. The Israelis eventually broke off negotiations, because the ruling party was about to lose the election to a party that opposed the two-state solution.

> Typically this is hidden references to the "right of return".

It always amazes me how Israelis say the Palestinian right of return is so awful, absurd, outlandish, unacceptable, etc., when the entire founding ideology of the state of Israel is that the Jews have a right of return from 2000 years ago.

Right of return = total Palestinian victory in the next election, which at this point probably means genocide of the Jews.

They hide it because it a known deal-killer.

The only one who pursued 2 state solution is Israel.

> he handed over more areas of west bank to PA

As Netanyahu explains in the video, he only handed over a small piece of territory, in exchange for a letter from the US saying that Israel could define "security zones" in the West Bank that would remain under Israeli control. That allowed Netanyahu to declare everything a security zone, blocking all future withdrawals. Netanyahu boasts in the video that he gave up a tiny piece of land to end the piece process and prevent there from ever being a Palestinian state.

In the years since, Netanyahu has repeatedly boasted that he's the one who prevented the creation of a Palestinian state. The founding charter of his party literally says that everything from the river to the sea should be Israel.

0. https://youtu.be/UzA04I3klkY?si=-Lm0ey7dsJSsWzZ5

video from 2001. Bibi is not PM for 2 years already, and in 2000 there was camp david which could give palestinians state (they refused it, and started intifada instead). there were more negotiations that palestinians refused.

bibi boasting about something ? sure he does. he wants to appeal to electors. doesn't mean that he sabotaged anything.

and on topic of killing oslo peace process, i'll suggest you this lovely document from just after camp david that describes how palestians worked on implementing it: http://israelvisit.co.il/BehindTheNews/WhitePaper.htm . and in general to review second intifada

He literally says in the video that that loophole enabled him to sabotage the entire peace process. Netanyahu has always opposed any "final settlement of borders." He does not accept the idea of a Palestinian state in any form, in any borders. Refusing to implement the agreed-upon withdrawals was a way of making sure the Oslo peace process would break down.

> video from 2001. Bibi is not PM for 2 years already

In the video, Netanyahu is describing what he did as Prime Minister.

> bibi boasting about something ? sure he does. he wants to appeal to electors. doesn't mean that he sabotaged anything.

"Don't believe your lying eyes and ears." Netanyahu is on video (which he doesn't know) candidly describing how he intentionally derailed the peace process. He's said throughout his career that he opposes a Palestinian state. He campaigned viciously against Rabin for signing Oslo. His party's charter explicitly rejects the 2-state solution. But you want me to believe that despite all that, Netanyahu actually supports the 2-state solution?

By targeting first responders, jornalists, paramedics, and any professionals able to properly rescue wounded, dead and count the causalties, making available numbers a gross underestimate on the true death toll. Just a few days ago we all watched a staircase full of working first responders and jornalists being blown by israeli tank fire.

Palestinians who are not part of Hamas are third parties and when they are attacked, you can't tell them to ask Hamas to release hostages or do anything, because they have no more influence over Hamas than anybody else does.

Would note that not all Muslim Palestinians support Hamas, and to the degree they say they do, I wouldn't morally equivocate their actions with those who actually commit the atrocities (or refuse to surrender hostages).

Christian population is going down in Palestine, and up in Israel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazan_Christians#Hamas

In fact, so far as I know (I only know the Levant) there are no growing minorities in any Levant country, other than in Israel.

>In 2007, the year Hamas took over Gaza, the Gazan Christian population was at 3,000.[5][33] Israel's subsequent blockade of the territory accelerated the emigration of Christians, with many going to the West Bank, the United States, Canada, or elsewhere in the Arab world.[5]

I think they don't. I think it's as states, that they either emigrate to the West Bank or go far abroad.'

There are extreme efforts in Israel to push Christians out of certain neighbourhoods, for example, in Jerusalem, where people have been going after the Armenians.

It is a war crime.

Spouting talking points is pointless.

This is a war.

> This is a war.

Yes. That’s what the Geneva convention is for.

You’re welcome.

Settlers in the West Bank openly murder Palestinians like animals, as well. The State of Israel is a violent terrorist state.

Occam's Razor indicates that it was a legitimate operation by Hamas and Israel underestimated their adversary.

https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-october-7-attack-an-assessment...

https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/analyses/guard-down-d...

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/05/nx-s1-5318591/israel-shin-bet...

That is such a shallow understanding of someone for whom the whole region is just a source of entertainment. While Hamas is an "Iranian proxy" in a similar way that Ukraine is an "American proxy" that doesn't mean that Hamas and Ukraine don't have agency - who, despite their reliance on outside help, have a righteous cause and will keep defending their lands with or without that help.

It's also ironic that you would describe it as "on a deeper level" when it's quite the opposite - it's shallow and misguided. Hamas is a Sunni militant group, while Iran is Shia. You clearly have no understanding whatsoever how these groups have historically fought each other - just look at how they have been fiercely fighting each other in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

So why would Iran help Hamas then? For Iran, attaching themselves to a righteous cause such as Palestine has been a very effective tool to whitewash Iran's image and present Iran as "Axis of Resistance" despite having caused much harm to the Sunni-Muslims in the region (e.g. Iran cooperated with America in destroying Iraq, Iran also helped Assad oppress the Syrians for decades). Thus, helping the Palestinian resistance gives the shady Iranian regime legitimacy and positive PR like no other cause in the world. (the average iranian may genuinely support Palestine, because they are mostly unaware of the meta-game being played by their own regime)

Why does Hamas accept help from Iran? This should be much easier to understand. Most of the Arab regimes are ruled by puppets who are subservient to America and have betrayed the resistance. One of the main reasons for October 7 was Saudi's MBS being close to normalizing with Israel and thus sealing Palestine's fate forever. This was a "now or never" moment so the resistance made clear that they mean business and that they won't let any normalization happen without a sovereign Palestinian state. Back to Iran - so when you're in a dire situation, you can't be picky with your allies. Iran helps Hamas because it's a great tool to whitewash the Iranian image and Hamas gets weapons in return. October 7 however was most certainly not in Iran's interest in any way. Despite Iran's harsh language towards America, they very much tried to cozy up and seek "forgiveness" because of the crushing sanctions. Iran may play dirty games like Israel does, but Hamas doesn't - for the resistance it's quite literally about survival and resisting zionist-colonialism.

[Some more examples. In 2012, relations between Iran and Hamas soured after Hamas refused to support Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad, a key Iranian ally in the Syrian civil war. This led to Iran taking punitive measures against Hamas.

- As a financial punishment, Iran cut its funding to Hamas. This financial support had been estimated at around $23 million per month and the cut caused a significant financial crisis for Hamas in Gaza.

- Along with financial cuts, Iran also ceased military cooperation, which ended the supply of weapons to Hamas from Tehran.

- They began to rebuild their relationship around three years later, though tensions remained (see links below)

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/hamas-ditches-assad-ba...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/hamas-iran-reb...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palest... ]

I also must protest the notion that I would see the whole tragedy as entertainment. I don’t.

It's clear that you have a very surface level understanding of the entire history and I highly recommend that you first study the whole history extensively[0] before you cast judgement. While you're at it, make sure to study other revolts and its gory details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner's_Rebellion

There are several aspects of this which are rather fascinating:

1) The response of Oct 7 to almost 100 years of brutal colonization, ethnic-cleansing and mass-murder of Palestinians since the Nakba and the Tantura-massascre [1] was only a tiny fraction of the pain the colonizer suffered compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians. Regardless, it has been treated as pretty much the worst thing ever, while it factually was only a tiny fraction of the the pain compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians for almost a century! "Nothing justifies October 7, but October 7 somehow justifies everything" - The resistance has proven the ungodly amount of bias through which the world judged them and they forced the world to re-calibrate their unjust scales.

2) You're talking about their methods, but you haven't even studied their history comprehensively, all that they have tried, what misery Israel has inflicted upon them and their families for decades. An enemy that's unparalleled in its deviousness - invites you to peace talks, but is only interested in trying to murder your diplomats. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike...]. How would you deal with such ruthless colonizers? You judge the resistance by the 1 thing that finally forced the world to properly pay attention. Say what you want, but it was Oct 7 which forced the world to properly study the history of Palestine. For almost a century the Palestinians only received fake sympathy while much of the world uncritically accepted and even regurgitated Zionist lies knowingly or unknowingly. The outrage that was shown on Oct 7 was never ever shown when Palestinians were the victims, so this was a key moment when such biased individuals were confronted with massive evidence that woke them up to their selective outrage and their unjust judgement.

3) It was the severity of Oct 7 that humiliated the colonizer who had always seen themselves as superior to the "kushim" of Palestine ("The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.). It was that humiliation that the colonizer felt - they couldn't even bear to suffer a fraction of a fraction of the pain they inflicted upon the Palestinians for almost a century, such that they whipped themselves into a genocidal-frenzy and dropped their diplomatic hasbara mask. The resistance unmasked the colonizer, made them drop their masks - made the world understand who the Zionists really are and who they have always been. ["Leibowitz said that the State of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and described Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on the victims and the oppressors." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz ]. And even after all that, much of the world still stubbornly refused to believe their own eyes while observing the evil that Zionists livestreamed so proudly. Only after Zionists consistently and persistently insisted on being so openly and proudly evil for almost 2 years straight is when people started to believe what they were witnessing:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ...

4) Go through Palestine's history, enlighten the people how your methods would have been so much less "despicable and stupid" in resisting colonizers who have been absolutely unscrupulous and devious at every step: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir... . Colonizers who have murdered your ancestors and established an apartheid ethno-state [2][3] on the mass-graves of your women and children, while raving on your stolen land - within your field of vision from the open-air prison in which they have locked you up.

[0] "The Masterplan for the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" - https://youtu.be/C3cnRcfp_us?si=hsKzuI6T1wljAAW0

[1] YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNtrUjUNkJw or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B0B8KSBXJX

[2][3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-... https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...

How would the hostage return the land? How would Gazan tell Hamas to stop?

Both answers are they can't

Edit: I see you edited your comment to blame the hostages for being in the music festival. So, you normalize blaming regular people who have nothing to do with the war; the very thing you said we shouldn't do.

Ironically, that was one of the biggest campaign points and voter sentiment on which people flipped to Red. We all know what happened.

Obviously not. They hate you. They want to destroy America. That's why decent, right-thinking Americans voted for Republicans and our dear leader who, because of his tireless efforts to bring casinos and resorts ^W^W^W peace to Gaza absolutely deserves not one, but two Nobel Peace Prizes!

Besides, if we're going to support genocide, we might as well go whole hog and turn our home into an authoritarian hell-hole. It makes perfect sense, right?

Yeah, not voting for those baby eating/molesting Demonrats was absolutely the right choice. In fact, Vance Boelter had the right idea, just not enough bullets.

>I don't think most of the (rather large block) of folks I know who abstained wanted a fully solved problem, they wanted the US to stop funding Israel and that is a position that the Democratic party could have taken if they had chosen to do so.

How is that working out for you now? I'll tell you how it's working out -- it's working out great! And as we're killing all those subhuman darkie ragheads in Gaza, we'll continue to terrorize the darkies here in the US with that $150 Billion budget for ICE. Boo yah! It doesn't get much better than this, does it?

Your abstention is really reaping the rewards you'd hoped for, isn't it?

And now we have you yelling at other people in your party, sewing more division, alienating even more people from your coalition. "How is that working out for you now?"

Non-sequitur much?

>And now we have you yelling at other people in your party, sewing more division, alienating even more people from your coalition. "How is that working out for you now?"

My party? Which party are you talking about? Don't be shy.

Just pointing out second order consequences.

As for you, what exactly are you trying to say? It's not clear to me what you hope to contribute to the discussion other than satisfying your imagined superiority to other Americans. Or is just those with an excess of melanin?

Genocide is cause for war and destruction of countries. And fortunately, Republicans made it convenient to destroy American society.

You see children being burnt alive by racist zealots with your tax dollars, and you CONTINUE to fund it? Yah that's a good way to end your society. The USA is no exception.

Well Europe was probably going to fell to the far-right anyway...

It does make me despair to have the two parties that together govern our country both be so committed to something so heinous. Can one really be a proud citizen of such a nation?

Not only that, the current president literally promised everything to everyone - just to win! People are too naive (or too innocent) not to notice the lies.

Of course, we haven't adopted the other facet of Athenian democracy which is ostracization by voting.

If I beg you to reconsider on a very serious issue that is in your power to change stance on, and you not only ignore me but laugh in my face, then why exactly do you still get my vote? Why exactly should I reward you for completely ignoring my protests?

Make sure to swap Gaza for your single issue - maybe LGBT rights, or abortion, or gun rights - and then seriously think about how you would deal with it.

The Democratic party has basically decided to lean on “but they’re worse” as a political platform while backsliding on multiple issues. They do this because Democrat voters lap that shit up, chant “vote blue no matter who” like members of a cult, and then cry out in astonishment when the Democrats in Congress and in the gov keep sliding towards the right.

Also, an addendum: before blaming abstainers and third-party voters, it might be good to ponder on why Democrats preferred risking losing the presidency over making any concessions whatsoever on Palestine. At best, it was a grave miscalculation borne out of hubris. At worst, it was an act of self-sabotage to ensure unconditional support for Israel. Pick your poison :)

Say centrist Dems, unless it’s Zohran Mamdani. They have learnt nothing. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/16/zohran-mamda...

1) threaten the international rules-based order, shattering the expectation of adherence to any number of human rights-centered protocols and representing crisis that can snowball into larger conflicts,

and 2) are often facilitated in part by police actions (civilian detainment, censorship, killings dressed up in lawful rules for the use of force, etc.), which threatens a general spillover of military action into the civilian/domestic status quo.

In other words, tolerance of genocide leads to a general shift towards war and despotism, even for people who aren't in the group targeted for genocide. Tolerance of evil builds the scaffolding for further subjugation.

Sitting out of the process does absolutely nothing, whether its a protest vote, pretending that politics don't affect you, or just giving up completely. The people who get elected in those situations always 100% ignore you.

When people are in office that are at least willing to listen, you then make a lot of noise and put on pressure. You might get ignored mostly, since you are a minority voting block, but you can make incremental gains and even sometimes big wins.

I certainly found plenty of folks who were not only okay with the DNC's position but who were actively happy with Harris as the nominee.

Black people are, however, not a monolith. I'm quite aware of the differences between the many different sets of ideas (everything from hoteps to DNC-paid shills to people who genuinely liked the Harris platform to black anarchists/commiunists/ ex-panthers/ etc) and it's highly reductive to try to make the claims you're making here about "what black folks have learned".

As a person who genuinely believes actual leftist (communist and anarchist) politics are legitimate I found plenty of folks who abstained or tried to hold the DNS to change their policy.

But regardless of the "harm reduction strategies" or how legitimate you think having any semblance of political representation, the fact remains:

the democrats lost.

Unless you want to concede that "the party can only be failed, it cannot fail the people", the reality is that the party could have changed its policies and accommodated groups that abstained and perhaps won.

You can claim that the voters are just fools, but at the end of the day very few of us have any power at all over the DNC platform so it's simply bizarre to blame us for their horrible, provable failed choices.

What you’re arguing for is only single-round optimal, but multi-round suboptimal — much like defection in the Prisoners Dilemma is defeated by trust strategies the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma.

Until you show how it’s multi-round optimal, you haven’t addressed their critique.

Right now it looks like you drained the baby with the bathwater.

My bigger question: Why would you make the foreign issues dominate your national issues?

But to answer the first, I’ve heard directly from party strategists that they look for people who vote, but not in a particular race. They can’t identify them directly, but a higher ballot submitted count than (eg) presidential vote count is a signal that they can gain voters in that area — which they follow up by surveying independents, etc to see what policy issues they’re concerned with.

The argument is that by not voting some rounds, you influence their platform in subsequent rounds. If you vote for them regardless, there’s no incentive to optimize their platform to address your concerns.

What you're advocating benefits the greater evil ten times as much over a 20-year timespan. They're absolutely loving you. The more Bidens, the more Harrises, the more Clintons, the better for them.

You know why China is doing so well? Because they still remember how to think in the long term.

Black citizens make the most progress by strategies built around embarrassing the powers that be. Those powers generally capitulate (as much as they ever were going to) after a period of tantrum-throwing, which is where we are now. Such politicians hate having to vote against the donor class's wishes, but they'll do it to get reelected (or they'll be primaried by candidates who will). Or, they'll lose. Those are the choices, which Kamala Harris unfortunately learned the hard way.

One other thing black folk have known for decades: nobody you can put into the White House or the legislature will be able to stop half the country from thinking of you as a n!gger. You don't vote based on that because Carter and Clinton and especially Obama and Biden have shown us that election-based social progression is a pipedream.

https://jewishcurrents.org/chuck-schumer-cannot-meet-the-mom...

On the other hand, there is no guarantee that completely cutting off ties with Israel, would make anything better for Gazans. While it's possible there would be fewer civilian casualties, it's also possible there would be more if Israel switched to from precision strikes to ground invasions and dumb weapons.

The most obvious proof of this is the intifiada which followed Oslo

That solution works. Let's do that one.

Netanyahu and his ilk didn't like the awkward questions of why the terrorists were negotiating but they weren't. So they started propping up Hamas.

> And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power and began an Iran backed rocket crusade against Israel.

"They" started firing rockets, or Hamas? Hamas who is 30,000 of Gaza's 2.5M? Just when was that last election, again?

Palestinian elections in 2006 were forced by USA (because democracy and stuff) despite objections from Israel and PA who were afraid that Hamas will win.

When Hamas won elections and assembled government, USA sponsored coup executed by PLO. Coup succeeded in West Bank and failed in Gaza.

Are you sure you want to hold voters directly accountable for an election that happened over a decade ago? If yes, then it's a pretty slippery slope to be on, esp if the same standard were to be applied to US voters.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...

[3] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolste...

[4] https://theintercept.com/2023/10/14/hamas-israel-palestinian...

When Hamas won elections (both in west bank and gaza) and assembled government, USA sponsored coup executed by PLO. Coup succeeded in West Bank and failed in Gaza.

That's not exactly true, no matter which side you support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Isra...

  Qatar started sending money to the Gaza Strip on a monthly basis in 2018. $15 million worth of cash-filled suitcases were transported into Gaza by the Qataris via Israeli territory. The payments commenced due to the 2017 decision by the Palestinian Authority (PA), an administration in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and rival to Hamas, to cut government employee salaries in Gaza. At the time, the PA objected to the funds, which Hamas said was intended for both medical and governmental salary payments.

also, you probably weren't around back than, but there was international pressure on Israel to allow those money, because, quoting mainstream press, un, etc "hundreds of thousands of people will be hungry, there will be famine and collapse of all services in gaza that will lead to humanitarian disaster".

so, now, after Israel caved to international pressure to prevent humanitarian disaster in Gaza, Israel is blamed for propping up hamas.

Last general palestinian elections in which hamas won was in 2006.

attempted coup by PLO was in 2007

you will know it, if you will know history.

> Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

> According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

quoting you "Israel interfered in Gaza politics to ensure they had no option but Hamas".

A few corrections on this topic:

- there was/is no Gaza politics

- Elections were general elections in Palestinian Autonomy

- Both Israel and PA were against elections because they were afraid that Hamas will win but USA forced it because "democracy shall prevail and will resolve everything"

- Hamas won general elections in Palestinian Autonomy in 2006 and assembled government chaired by ismail haniyeh as PM

- USA trained Fatah to coup against legitimate Palestinian government

- Coup succeeded in west bank and failed in gaza in 2007

- During coup, Hamas killed, dragged behind bikes or threw from rooftops those that opposed it

- After coup, Hamas tortured into obedience or killed all opposition

just one example: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestin...

and on topic of how hospitals in gaza used, from same article: " Some were interrogated and tortured or otherwise ill-treated in a disused outpatient’s clinic within the grounds of Gaza City’s main al-Shifa hospital."

How would “dumb” bombs be worse?

Syria killed 10,000s of civilians in just a few weeks using only dumb artillery to shell a city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre

The American incendiary bombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 people in a single night of bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_194...

And it's not a thin pretext--every hospital is a Hamas base. Remember all the rejection of the idea that Hamas HQ was in bunkers under the main hospital? Repeated denials that any such bunkers existed. Israel had a very simple response: we built the bunkers, we know they exist. If hospitals were acting as they should be they would be open territory--the IDF could simply walk in and look around. Yet every time it's been a big fight. And I remember a supposed "hospital" strike where they actually hit a tunnel--got the commander they were after and got secondaries. A bomb that simply explodes underground isn't going to cause secondaries, so clearly they hit a tunnel that supposedly did not exist.

Come on man.

This is a claim made exclusively by an aggresor army that has no credibility whatsoever, given that we've seen them lie through their teeth about double tapping attacks and because they have explicitly stated that their purpose is to destroy Gaza no matter what.

What exactly do you pretend to defend?

I agree with everything you said about Biden being practically better for Palestine, but this is nonsense. Israel would be a completely isolated state without US support. Even North Korea has China. The last completely isolated state in the world was South Africa whose apartheid ended as a result. It's not crazy to think Israelis might realize forcing people who have lived in the same country for generations to be stateless and voteless to preserve a "pure", "Jewish" state is not a worthwhile gamble if it costs them any connection to the outside world.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/05/12/j...

This applies to every act of theft, torture, rape & murder committed across the decades, by this erstwhile 51st state of this unholy union.

The US could have stopped this genocide with a single order. The bombs & bullets the Zionists use to terrorise the entire Middle East don't grow on trees. They come from SOMEWHERE. Guess where?

Thats why Biden is guilty of the WORST crime known to mankind. GENOCIDE. That's why EVERY SINGLE Democrat who served at his pleasure are also guilty. Of GENOCIDE. Just as the Nazis were.

And that's why they don't deserve the votes of anyone with a conscience. Saying that Team Red is equally genocidal, but more "in your face" about it, doesn't mean much. You're both guilty. Of GENOCIDE.

Why don't you try to pen a coherent argument why any group, anywhere, at any time, that is guilty of GENOCIDE, deserves your vote.

Go on. I'll wait...

I don’t think many people are thinking through now especially the one at the top of power chain, otherwise we’d not have witnessed child charades like invade Canada, Greenland, and Panama, as well as overnight gutting of USAID.

The neighbors who signed peace treaties (Egypt, Jordan) seem to be maintaining peace fine.

It's the ones who've refused to normalize relations since 1949 and keep launching rockets over the border at civilians who get hit back.

And, yes, the settlers are not a good thing--but the problem exists because the government knows they are not the actual cause of the problem, Israel would gain nothing from curtailing them. And note that the violence is wildly misreported, much of it is defensive in nature (look at how often you see one person get shot who is facing the settlers when supposedly they were fleeing--awfully hard to shoot a fleeing person in the front) and plenty of it is purely fake.

Isreal's approach to foreign policy doesn't do them any favours, I've lost count of the number of negotiators they've taken out this year. The US would be helping them by forcing them to conform a bit more to global norms, if they upset less people and try some more cooperative strategies we might see progress on peace in the region. The fact that the Democrats failed to find a frame like that to prevent what appears, superficially, to be a genocide really goes to the heart of what GoatInGrey was pointing at.

It was unambiguously clear that no matter how bad you felt Obama/Biden/Harris were on Israel, Trump was/would be worse.

If every single human life is worth saving (and it is), it's indisputable that Trump is worse for Gaza than Harris would have been.

It was the ultimate Trolley Problem, and a bunch of progressives acted like pulling the switch on move the trolley is NEVER acceptable regardless of how many lives it saves...

Like a political partys job is to get votes. An electorates job is to withhold votes to punish poor performance. The entity not doing their job here is the party.

The party is aware of the trade-offs. It goes ahead with its best estimation of what will win. Sometimes they can do everything right and still lose. One such scenario is when people would rather have the greater of two evils rather than be responsible for the lesser.

"We can't adopt [potentially winning strategy] because it might harm [definitely non-winning strategy]" is not a reasonable position. You don't have to adopt any specific alternative plan, but clinging to a non-working plan clearly isn't the right answer.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/support-for-israel-contin...

The less evil party commands no loyalty at all, you vote for it only so long as there are no better options. If we're presupposing that there will never be any other option but the greater evil, then the lesser evil very much should be voted for consistently. Why can't the other side be the one that needs to reform to better appeal to the voters interests? What is to stop the lesser evil from becoming more evil, catering to voters who actually show up?

If people voted for a third party, that would be one thing. Sure the odds of winning the election are slim, but a third party candidate needs only 5% of the vote for the party to get federal campaign funds, to say nothing of the increased legitimacy in upcoming elections. It's happened in my lifetime, it can happen again. A strong showing by a third party forces the major parties to adjust to avoid splitting the vote. Jill Stein of the Green Party was openly opposed to Israel's actions in Gaza, they could have voted for her. And while there they could have voted for down ballot candidates so one party doesn't get control of all branches of government. But they didn't; third parties had their worst election since 2012. Of the 6 million democrat votes lost from 2020 to 2024, 400,000 were picked up by the green party. You can't simultaneously accept that the two party system is the be all end all and that you don't have an obligation to vote for the better of the two parties. It's understandable that people unenthusiastic with the current political situation just want to disengage, but don't act like it's a noble act of protest. Staying home isn't playing the long game, it's just throwing away your vote.

> The neoliberals are to blame more than anyone else for the situation we’re in today. They love to deflect but they are complicit in everything going wrong right now.

That they could have done better doesn't reduce at all the blame of those who specifically worked towards creating the current situation, and those who saw what was happening and chose to do nothing.

Want peace over there, make peace not bring problems for Israel. But so long as Iran keeps fanning the fires of war I see no way to accomplish that.

So really the only hope for peace is the elimination of the state of Israel and to return the land to Muslims.

(It also made the statements about "radical left" candidates very ironic.)

Where is the study?

Staying home does nothing to combat the two party system, gives no direction to politicians as to which way they ought to move to get your vote in the future, and doesn't allow you to participate in local politics.

Frankly, my reading was that Democrats preferred risking losing the presidency to making any concessions whatsoever on the Palestine issue.

And that’s a bad analogy. AIPAC is literally buying out elected officials, while I am simply participating in democracy by choosing how to use my vote.

And yes, a large contingent of Democratic lawmakers inexplicably believe staying on Israel's good side is the most important issue facing our country. That doesn't make letting Trump win the smart move.

Of course, on paper, yes, if these were automatons with no feelings, they would use their vote against Trump.

It is easy to claim objectivity in the face of a moral quandary that doesn’t impact you or your loved ones personally. But it is not easy to make a decision to not give your vote away when the alternative is also terrible.

And there was no alternative. It was "no explicit political support for Palestine" regardless, the only choice being made was "fucked by Trump" or "not fucked by Trump". Anyone with any sense of political strategy would have seen this. I have no sympathy for people who feel the need to vote for "their feelings" instead of the reality we actually live in, because they fucked me. I can't understand how someone would have more emotional connection to the fantasy their vote on paper represents than to the reality their actions will create.

Now, you ask what could Democrats have done differently? How about holding a Democratic primary? Or maybe acknowledging the Gaza genocide instead of ignoring it even exists (no need to even use the g-word since it angers some of their base)? Perhaps offering a fig leaf to internal dissenters within the party? Maybe inviting Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices to speak at rallies? Heck, maybe not explicitly vetting and banning any suspected pro-Palestine attendees at said rallies? Or how about making a strong, unambiguous campaign promise to do something (however vague) about a ceasefire in Gaza?

This is all the bare fucking minimum, mind you, but it may have likely pushed the needle.

I also don’t see how any of this would have significantly alienated their pro-Israel base enough to shift votes away. But if it did, I think siding ever so slightly with those calling for a ceasefire over warmongers might be the moral thing to do, don’t you think?

Next time around, when the Democrats ignore your issue, I would love to hear how you “objectively” rationalize your vote then.

My main issues are actually vote reform, climate change, and single payer healthcare (voted for Bernie in the primary) so I'm no stranger to being ignored politically; my issues are not even remotely on offer.

And FWIW I would strongly support sanctions against Israel for its disgusting treatment of Palestinians, and support aid for Palestine. I just knew that wasn't on offer.

So the Democrats, who presumably wanted peace in the middle east, knew that Trump would be a disaster, and yet they still ignored voters concerns?

This is nonsense outside Michigan. And to the extent this happened, I'd have to say pro-Palestinian voters in swing states casting with the guy who initiated the Muslim ban and recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital essentially communicated that they were fine throwing millions of people in the Middle East under the bus to satisfy their vanity.

Though I was honestly surprised at how much of my Muslim community was so anti-Harris that they voted for Trump. Harris may be pro-Israel, but Trump is anti-almost everything else we stand for.

I'm honestly split between pro-Palestinian Arab-American Trump voters and soybean-farming Trump voters as the stupidest voting blocks of 2024. Not only are you helping put someone in power who is so obviously going to work against your interests. You've also removed yourself from the other party's table where your issue might have gained priority down the road.

This doesn’t work unless you have the numbers to field your own candidate.

Not for these groups. They wouldn’t rank something that benefits their interests because they’re not voting for anything; they’re voting against. That generally doesn’t work in democracies, which require engagement and compromise.

For, or from? this is an important distinction to make.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saar-urges-250-...

250 us legislators had to fly there (probably paid by the taxpayers) a few days ago.

Sadly, looking at the US politics, whichever side you vote, israel wins.

You could easily fit that delegation into New Hampshire’s House of Representatives of 400 seats.

Meanwhile it’s more than double California’s total state legislature size of 120 seats.

It’s fun!

Imagine 250 representatives all going to a country with a similar population. It'd be mighty strange if 250 representatives from across the US went to Kyrgyzstan. Frankly, I'd find it strange if 250 went next door to Mexico all in the same year and that's a directly neighboring country that's actually relevant to US interests and the US's single biggest trade partner. Israel gets some sort of special treatment and it's really, really weird. It's treated with higher reverence than any state within US borders is.

When was the last time 250 representatives visited any of those countries?

(This is also an account that exclusively posts defending Israel)

I doubt that there are recorded numbers just for politicians, but these are all popular destinations for Americans in general. Now, if there's something else odd about this statistic other than just the number you want to point out, that's a different story.

Then you're electorally irrelevant. Particularly if your only civic (in)action is not voting.

If they cast a blank ballot, sure. Otherwise, betting on new turnout is a losing strategy. Particularly if you’re counting on that off cycle or in a primary.

There isn’t. Not across partisan lines.

There is to flip primaries. But those too lazy or stupid to vote don’t affect those.

Fun fact: If people like you would get off their asses on Election Day, Texas would have been a blue state for the last 15 years.

The GOP would be done, and we could meaningfully decide between the Bidens and Bernies of this world.

At that point, the GOP splinters or moves to center (they’re currently pandering to the rightmost 1/3 of the country, and would have to pander to the right 1/2 if you voted), and the “blue” people you dislike become the new “red”.

Then, the candidates that are against things like genocide will have some sort of chance in hell of winning.

Of course, it’s a moot point for this genocide, since the above will take a decade.

Continue to protest by not voting, and you’ll be wishing for the days when Trump was in office.

I learned a very uncomfortable—though valuable—lesson about humans that day.

It's true that the casualties of the Israeli counter-offensive can only conclusively be tied to ~20-30 casualties, but for many casualties it's unknown who is responsible, and there is (inconclusive) evidence Israeli fire resulted in the burning of 77 vehicles, many of which were returning to Gaza with captives (or their bodies)

It seems unlikely to me there were fewer than 80 civilian casualties (out of 815) attributable to friendly fire, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that number is over 200.

Remember that 47 minutes of video Israel was screening for reporters but did not release? They've gotten permission from some of the families and have released part of it. You definitely see people being killed on camera.

And the really important part isn't the video itself, but that it's stuff that Hams people chose to post on social media. Something to be cheered, not a horror.

And, no, they didn't get permission from any of the other victims families to publish on that site.

So, the IDF literally has no direct confirmation of rape.

Pew says only 52% percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of UN in 2024 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/most-peop...

On a political or legal level for Israel it might have more implications though, that is impossible for them to ignore, but ICJ will focus on the leaders who can avoid visiting certain countries...just like Putin.

Lots of people will care, but it isn’t going to move a lot of opinions.

> Pew says only 52% percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of UN in 2024

Yes, but it says 57% do in 2025, the first positive change in support since 2022. [0]

But neither is that much more than the 50% that already think Israel is committing genocide [1], and the positions are probably significantly correlated, so this probably isn’t swaying many people that aren’t already convinced.

> On a political or legal level it might have more implications though but ICJ will focus on the leaders who can avoid visiting certain countries.

Always good to see assessments of international legal impacts from people who don’t know that the International Court of Justice deals exclusively with cases between states, and that the standing body that deals with individual offenses that are war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression is the International Criminal Court.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/05/united-na...

[1] https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3929

So what is your expert opinion then? What is the risk to the state of Israel itself if ICJ makes a case against them?

Informing people > admonishing them

Unfortunately not all nations are equal and many suffers because of that.

To actually solve big world problems it would take massive investments and sacrifice quality of life for many and increase taxes on rich. Obviously no one would agree. It's way beyond clicking "like" and "repost" buttons on social app or adding UTF-8 country flag to your name.

Now from watching the coverage of this war you can't help but come to the conclusion that there's an organised but invisible movement opposing the war. The various humanitarian bodies and news outlets like al jazeera and bbc all quote each other in a self reinforcing loop of anti israel talk. If it's not an organised conspiracy at least it's a very strong convergence of interests giving the impression of one.

Historically the main opposition to Israel comes from the Arabs with the European countries joining in with various levels of enthusiasm mainly for the pragmatic reason that the Arabs have all the oil.

The anti american block is also anti israel because that goes against US interests.

It's not surprising then that the UN would be completely taken over by anti israel groups. It's basic maths.

But my point is what is the historic motivation for the anti israel movements? It's definitely not out of great sympathy for the palestinians although that's definitely why most Westerners are pro palestinian, but that's just marketing.

I think i've established fairly well it all comes back to the Arabs. And their motivation without a question is genocidal anti semitism. They are just upset the Germans didn't finish off their job and they are taking everyone else along for the ride.

I'm not saying there can be no legitimate opposition to Israel, but it's my belief, backed up by a certain amount of historical evidence that most of the opposition from official sources has its roots in anti semitism.

That is not true. Political will to introduce sanctions is maxed out. And current US administration has even less interest in doing so than previous.

>>But my point is what is the historic motivation for the anti israel movements? It's definitely not out of great sympathy for the palestinians although that's definitely why most Westerners are pro palestinian, but that's just marketing.I think i've established fairly well it all comes back to the Arabs.

Funny enough, no Arab country wants to really help Palestinians, to open borders for refugees. To host palestinians who lost wars with Israel.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Egyptian_coup_d%27%C3%A9t...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Virtually no mention to the far worse horrors Iran is perpetrating elsewhere.

https://honestreporting.com/behind-the-headlines-the-data-th...

https://www.newsweek.com/mainstream-media-biased-against-isr...

https://www.ajc.org/news/podcast/journalist-matti-friedman-e...

https://icejusa.org/2025/05/22/anti-israel-media-bias-ratche...

"blame the 'evil' Jews" is one of Western Civilization's favorite "games" for some reason. "Their culture values education, frugality, they don't accept Jesus Christ as 'the Messiah', they must be evil!"

(I'm not Jewish, but many of my close friends are, and I've read a lot of history/religion/politics books)

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/on-democraci...

https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Democracies-and-Death-Cults-Au...

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/when-christi...

*edited typos and capitalization

(1) "Hamas produces a lot of fake anti-Israel propaganda" -> (2) "All anti-Israel evidence is fake" -> (3)"Israel is not committing genocide".

You can't reach conclusion (2) from (1).

Him: "Those videos are demonstrably fake."

You: "Doesn't matter!"

Are you sure that's the right fallacy?

Him: "Here is some evidence that some videos have been faked" Me: "The fact that some have been faked doesn't mean there aren't real ones"

So yes, it's the right fallacy.

https://www.reuters.com/pictures/aerial-photos-show-scale-de... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/05/wasteland-rubb...

If we are talking about propaganda machines, US/CIA are "pro-israel". Facebook/Google are "pro-israel". Russia/KGB are "pro-israel". India is "pro-israel". Mossad is "pro-israel".

Which "powerful forces" are on the same level but on the opposite side?

>start demanding better from your party or be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Stop building strawmen and explain what I could have done on election day for the couple hours spent on voting that would have been more useful for the Palestinians than voting for Kamala, and explain why.

The best thing you could have done on election day is not vote and encourage everyone you know to not vote. Our system is 100% corrupt and invalid, stop propping it up.

I will vote when there is an anti-Zionist running, until then I will abstain and encourage everyone to do the same. Very curious that going against Israel is beyond the pale for Democrats despite being a wildly popular position.

Yeah cause they get money.

>Our system is 100% corrupt and invalid

Yes

>stop propping it up.

I’m not atlas holding the electoral system on my shoulders here. I think voting is unhelpful, but still worth doing when it’s the system that dominates our politics.

>The best thing you could have done on election day is not vote and encourage everyone you know to not vote.

Why does that help either change the dems or dismantle the electoral system? Most Americans don’t even vote, yet the system continues to exist just fine. If you’re saying discourage dems specifically from voting to send the party a message, again what if I’m helping elect someone worse towards Palestine?

>Biden's policy (which was as bad as Trump, if not worse).

How so? Don’t get me wrong, Biden was a-okay with the genocide, but Trump takes it a level further. There’s no attempt at an appearance of concern or moderacy.

It’s hard to say what Harris would have done, but it’s unlikely she would have greenlit the complete demolition of Gaza so she could build a resort.

Similarly, I doubt she would have forced places like UC Berkeley to send her lists of people critical of Israel (like you), then opened critical investigations against them.

Refusing to vote is the best way to ensure policies you object to the most are expanded.

Congrats on supporting genocide.

Voting 3rd party sends a message: "be more like this 3rd party if you want my vote".

Not voting also sends a message: "I wont show up and vote, so just ignore me".

No, only those that fall within the definition contained in Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

Just taking the US example, this is the same public who were gullible enough to think that Donald and Kamala were good candidates. Of course their opinion is swayed by that much propaganda.

It’s clear who has the most power in this situation and it’s not the “2 billion”. It’s the “420 million” US + Israeli citizens who make up the military coalition that is currently decimating a population of < 2 million. You want to talk about numbers? Let’s talk numbers. If there’s such a power imbalance why is the ratio of Gaza’s killed to Israelis 100:1 in this “war”?

At the very least ban Israeli IP addresses.

Here's what they flagged of mine:

To really hold them responsible, they have to be given war crimes trials at The Hague. At this point, just removing them from office is not enough. They really need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

This includes anyone that voted to provide military aid to Israel as well as any propagandist that claims Hamas raped anyone on October 7 (of course never naming the names of any alleged rape victims). People like that have literally been given the death penalty at The Hague for promoting genocide before.

It really is too late to save any politicians from prosecution at this point. They are now fully complicit in the genocide, not just aware of it. And this UN report will further bolster any prosecution against them.

Will HN do something about the deranged genocidal Zionists brigading problem on this site? They really are trying to ban anti-Israeli voices in their attempt to normalize the continued existence of the state of Israel. At the very least ban Israeli IP addresses.

Here's what they flagged of mine:

To really hold them responsible, they have to be given war crimes trials at The Hague. At this point, just removing them from office is not enough. They really need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

This includes anyone that voted to provide military aid to Israel as well as any propagandist that claims Hamas raped anyone on October 7 (of course never naming the names of any alleged rape victims). People like that have literally been given the death penalty at The Hague for promoting genocide before.

It really is too late to save any politicians from prosecution at this point. They are now fully complicit in the genocide, not just aware of it. And this UN report will further bolster any prosecution against them.