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.