Unfortunately, that is the reality of how the loudest voices globally want to frame the issue, probably for their own political reasons. That it is possible to be pro-Israel but criticize Likud is inconvenient for those trying to paint an entire country with a single brush. Ironically, the hard-line anti-Israel stances end up forcing such people to keep the criticism quiet.

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 advanced.

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.

The Arab states haven't made amends for ethnically cleansing huge numbers of Jews (majority of Israel's Jewish population are Mizrahi Jews who fled ethnic cleansing by Arab governments)

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

> 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.

Why were these Arab states not persecuted for their ethnic cleansing of Jews?

Whatabouttism doesn't change the underlying topic

Because they didn’t do it on an industrial scale?

What is industrial? How many Jews are left in Syria, or Lebanon, or Egypt, or Tunis, or Iraq, or Yemen, or Persia?

> What is industrial?

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

Because they aren't buying off Western politicians in bulk, but that's exactly what Israel is clearly doing

It is called a rhetorical device. It is considering the ends of your argument. If you are British, French, German, American, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. and you support the argument that displacement or control of a people is bad, I agree, but consider what you would want to do and apply the rule fairly. Criticising one country for “taking” land when it was given that land by the same UN you use to claim that it is a genocidal country today… well that really is rich

Yes of course it's a rhetorical device, and it's meant to subtly change the subject to prevent engaging with it.

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.

Was it really the "same" UN? In 1947, most of the world was still colonized, and had no UN representation. France, Britain and the US might not have had much of a problem with telling some people in the Third World to give up their homeland, but sentiment in colonized countries would have been very different.

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

> Israel was literally born out of political scheming

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.

That was the Ottomans who made that change. After losing a war to Prussia, to collect more taxes in 1856 they openly encouraged migration of all peoples - Jews, Christians, Muslims alike - to the Levant area. By the 1870s Jerusalem was Jewish majority, half a century before the British Mandate era began and even before the First Aliyah.

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

I was referring to the well documented deals and shenanigans that were instrumental first to get the promise of support for an Israeli homeland, and then in the UN to get the partition plan approved.

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

Do you still think that today its a colonial project ?

Does Israel still encourage colonies in the west bank?

Have Israel and Palestine determined borders ? A ceasefire line is not a border after the ceasefire is broken and the front line moves

Do you really expect you can defend Israel with this kind of lawyering and be taken seriously? "Well akshually a ceasefire line...". For god's sake. Let's not even get into who has violated the supposed ceasefire first, or on the legality of settling your population outside of its line, violated or not (spoiler: illegal in any case). Settlements have been declared illegal many times during the decades, most recently this year by the ICJ, and Israel has known this perfectly well since the start.

Legality ends up following the de-facto reality. What's the future of the legality of Golan annexion ? With the new Syria, its soon going to become legal.

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.

> Do you still think that today its a colonial project ?

Thanks for answering your own question.

So all palestinian Arabs are autochtones and all palestininan Jews are colonists. How many generations to lose that status then ?

> Legality ends up following the de-facto reality.

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 was asking why the post-1948 ceasefire lines are more legal than the post-1967 lines ? If you decide to go after the 1947 UN partition, keep the 1947 lines as the only legal border. If the 1948 war can redefine what's legal, then the 1967 war can do it as well.

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.

Zionism is the belief that Jews have a right to their indigenous homeland. Your Western leftist ideology have twisted the definition to your own agenda.

And the Arab opposition movement that later became the Palestinian movement has ties to literal Nazis...

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

It's not a party - it's an ideology: zionism [1], for which there is widespread left and right support. It is almost like a 20th century manifest destiny [2], with largely the same inevitable outcome.

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

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

Zionism is the belief that Jews, like all other peoples, have an intrinsic human right to self-determination and a state to call their own, and should not live as second class citizens at the whim of the states in which they reside.

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

Like with Manifest Destiny the problem comes when the area you want to decide to call your own already has people living there. I'd also add that there is no sort of human right to having your own homogeneous country. Most countries in the world have large sects of the population that would like to form their own autonomous states, many with populations substantially larger than that which initially carved out Israel for themselves. Unfortunately we live on a planet in which most of all land that's remotely habitable has been claimed by somebody.

Israel isn't a homogenous country. It is majority jewish, but there are large minorities of Arabs, Druze, levant Christians, etc. These minorities--just under 30% of the population--hold full citizenship and have the same civil rights as any other Israeli.

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.

Yes, and surely these minorities are not treated like second class citizens? What's that? "A 2018 report by the Israeli State Comptroller on the protection of non-Jewish civilians found that 46% of Arab citizens in Israel lack access to adequate shelters, compared to 26% of the general population" In the context of bomb shelters.

Because individual municipalities are the ones who build the bomb shelters, and the Arab municipalities put no effort in that direction.

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

If all Israeli cities are mixed, then what is an Arab municipality? What point exactly are you trying to make?

Arab villages. Villages that start off with Arab inhabitants do not allow Jews to rent or buy property there. It's not a problem. But it makes these villages Arab only.

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

You are sharing a warped view of reality. There were already jews living there when arabs decided to start a war against them in 1948. After the arabs lost the war, they were urged to leave by their own arab leaders, and many of them did. At which point, some more land fortunately became available for the targets of the initial violent war who won the war. This is pretty normal when you start a war and lose it; you might lose something like your land or your life. BTW the land is literally called Judea. If people are living there alongside the jews for whom it is an ancestral homeland, and then those people leave after getting violent and losing a war, that was their right to leave but you don't have to blame the jews for the arabs' decision to start a war. Also this starting of violent conflicts is a recurring pattern initiated by one side. It's been happening since way before 1948. There used to be millions of jews in other middle east countries and there has been targeted violence by certain people driving them back to their homeland for many decades before 1948.

I love the phrase "became available" in this paragraph

You’re witnessing extreme levels of cognitive dissonance. This individual isn’t trying to convince anyone. They’re trying to convince themselves. Benign phrasing to avoid calling it a land grab is clear evidence of this in action.

Okay… "land grab" works too. Grabbing back those parts of their ancestral homeland that were abandoned by the aggressors.

when does history stop?

This chapter will stop when the hostages are returned and Hamas is defeated.

>like all other peoples, have an intrinsic human right to self-determination and a state to call their own, and should not live as second class citizens at the whim of the states in which they reside.

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

Yes, Palestinians have a right to self-determination as well. That is not at odds with Zionist beliefs, so long as there is room for BOTH peoples to reach a compromise on a solution that meets the core needs of both Jews and Arabs. That remains elusive.

It really does not seem like this is the actual view of those in control of Israel.

I fail to see the relevance. Zionism is a belief about the primary importance of Jewish self-determination. It is not tied to contemporary Israeli politics, whatever that might be.

Palestinians is a problematic word. Golda Meir was a Palestinian; she said so herself and her proof was that she had a Palestinian passport. Does that mean Palestine was a country? No, it was just a designation for a region that contained places such as Israel and Jordan. Did you mean to say "arab" or "muslim" or "muslim arab"?

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.

My sympathies are with all the civilian population in the area.

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.

> their land taken, by 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).

> Others left on their own volition

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

Massacres happened on both sides, but one side (the instigators) had leadership telling them to flee, maybe because it wasn't really their homeland to begin with; they were just settlers from all over the region. And the other side stayed, because it was their ancestral homeland.

Have you done a survey, like how many people ran away because of the massacres per se, and how many ran away because their leaders told them to (for reasons unrelated to avoiding a possible massacre)?

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.

There is the belief that Palestinians are the ones living in the area of British palestina and that Israel are also considered Palestinians and there should be one state

Almost every country have minorities that have had atrocities done against them, Jews are not special in that regard. The problem is that there was already people living in the area you colonized, and are now geocoding. Your supposed intrinsic human right is butting your boot on a peoples throat.

I am regretfully neither Israeli nor Jewish.

Zionism is the belief that Jews have a right to kill Palestinian children to take their land to build their own private Mediterranean resort homes.

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.

Zionists do not support genocide. This is defamatory BS without any evidence at best

>Zionists do not support genocide.

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

The ICC charges do not include genocide, so that doesn't support your claim. Khan sought a somewhat related extermination charge, which was rejected by the pre-trial chamber.

I find this a strange take, and I hear it a lot from inhabitants of both the USA and Israel about their leadership.

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.

Yet the only basis they have of the claim of genocide is a heavy journalistic trend to exaggerate Arab suffering in this war, and a selection of government official quotes which are interpreted in the worst way possible.

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.

The evidence of Israel’s genocide is plain to see. Israel is directly responsible for the systematic murder of countless civilians, a disgusting portion of which are children. What you are doing with this comment is attempting to shift the blame and responsibility in a transparent and gross manner. The journalists are not the problem, the people dropping the bombs every day are.

You are denying the most well documented genocide in human history. Bad look my dude.

You keep posting this, so I'll just copy and paste my previous reply as well.

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.

I'll repeat what I told you then, if you continue to deny this ongoing genocide despite the mountains of evidence, then you are complicit.

What evidence? The only evidence that I see is statements by Israeli officials that are deliberately being taken in the most unfavorable terms. Even worse statements by Arab politicians are not taken so unfavorably.

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.

You've got your head buried so deep its a wonder the magma hasn't cooked you.

wait journalists are responsible for dead children because they mention the dead children which encourages people to put children in a position where people have to shoot them but the people shooting the children aren't?

Yes. That is exactly what happens. Hamas, and many journalists, have specifically said this.

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.

but, and I'm only asking this a second time for confirmation, the people who point the guns at the children and pull the trigger did not kill the children? they bear no responsibility?

Let's be clear, Israel is not pointing guns at children and pulling the trigger. After October 2023, Israel has pretty much stopped protecting human shields. Before October 2023, Israel would hold fire when Hamas were hiding behind their populations' children. This is extremely well documented and I encourage you to research it. After October 2023, we have stopped protecting the human shields. This is because our own children, our babies, and our brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers, are being held in Gaza. How long can we be expected to continue protecting their children at the expense of our own?

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.

What does "protecting the human shields" mean in a practical sense? That's clearly a euphemism. Describe what it means in a literal, blow by blow sense. Who are the human shields? What does it mean to protect them? What does it mean to stop protecting them?

It means that Hamas stores and fires rockets, sniper fire, anti-tank fire, and other weapons from hospitals, schools, residential areas, and other civilian infrastructure.

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.

Your desperate bid to respond without actually answering the question is the answer. You're simultaneously trying to justify it without admitting that it happened in the first place.

Then I don't understand the question. Could you please repeat it? It looks to me like I answered the question posed in the comment I replied to.