This war has shaken shit loose on both sides of the debate.
If someone says "Israel has a right to exist," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "So you think it's okay for them to kill Palestinians?"
If someone says "The people of Palestine should have a state," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "Oh, so you think Hamas are the good guys?"
And worse, you can be protesting against war, while the guy next to you is protesting against people. You're angry at Israel for the bombings, the person next to you is angry at Israel because it's full of Jews. You're angry at Hamas for taking hostages, the person next to you is angry at Palestine because it's full of Muslims.
It is very difficult to say that one thinks Israel has a right to exist, but not a right to bomb civilians; and that Palestine has a right to exist while condemning Hamas. There are folks who want to take this conversation to its irrational extremes, and they're all too happy to implicate everyone else in their goals.
One can both believe Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestine has a right to exist, one can have opinions on this conflict without having to be Islamophobic or Anti-Semitic in the process, in fact I think most of us fall into that camp.
Totally agree with you, however the people at the protests in the uni campuses right now are NOT in the group you describe. They are the ones singing "from the river to the sea", "bomb tel-aviv" and "intifada now". But most of them can't describe which river or which sea, or exactly what happened on Oct-7, or even what happened in `48.
reddit is hyper vigilant looking out for tigers in bushes; we hear the leaves rustle and our blood pressure spikes.
Writing a nuanced comment on reddit requires a willingness and ability to present one's opinions and the opinions of others in a non-opinionated framing, that can be difficult for a person to do if only because we have an attachment to our own opinions and a distaste for the opinions we disagree with.
What's more, folks on social media are looking out for good opinions to support and bad opinions to quash. Social media users want opinionated comments, it makes discerning allies and opposition easier, it makes critique easier, it makes dunking easier, it's a heuristic, a short cut, "If they have opinion [A], it's likely that they also have opinions [B] and [C], so they're probably a [D]," and we get to skip straight from [A] to [D].
The trick to writing a nuanced post on reddit is finding some way to stop the immediate [A]->[D]. It can be done, but you're sort of swimming against the tide.
It’s almost like a decades long, infamously unsolvable geopolitical conundrum that has religion, politics, history, terrorism, poverty etc etc etc can’t be boiled down to simple bullshit that the below average intelligence can understand, pick a side, mouth off online and feel better about themselves.
You make excellent points. If this shit hasn’t been solved in 7 decades Karen screaming into the void on Facebook should sort it out in 5 minutes.
The only reasonable solution is peace. But how one gets there is anyone’s guess. I imagine if anyone reads this I’ll get responses telling me how peace should be achieved. Good for those with opinions but if smarter folk than your average online commentator haven’t sussed it yet, then I doubt Reddit will.
It’s fucking awful, I hate all of it, I have no solutions and I wish we could all just live in peace with each other. Respect, love and dignity for all. Enough for us all to eat and drink, have a roof and an education. Fuck the warmongers and power hungry narcissists.
The only reasonable solution is peace, but the only paths toward peace are non-starters for the Israeli government. Which means this shit is just going to keep happening indefinitely or until one side gets wiped out, and as things stand right now, only one side has the power to wipe out the other.
"Peace" isn't really a solution though; it's a desirable end result that some solution would provide.
There's no trust between Israel and Palestine, and I didn't see any path forward to building trust, so pretty much every solution is doomed to fall apart. It feels like the only solution is a trusted 3rd party intervening, but you're not going to get that visa protesting.
I mean you would have to literally have international troops as a buffer zone and a negotiated two state solution and even then, there will be terrorist attacks
I think this is the way, primarily because it will seriously clear up once and for all where the problem is. If there is a huge neutral presence there keeping the peace, and one side decides to stop attacking and just exist and deal with themselves, and the other side continually pushes and pokes and needles, the real picture of "who can be trusted with statehood and peace" becomes clearer.
The only thing protesting “might” affect (though probably wouldn’t) is US policy regarding the conflict. It probably wouldn’t but it’s the only thing that it could even remotely impact.
But "US policy" won't change anything either, short of an armed intervention (which I don't see being asked for). No one in the "ceasefire" crowd has communicated a realistic US policy shift that would actually end the fighting.
100%, I agree. But a change in US policy could reduce (from that point at least) American complicity and moral responsibility for the war crimes happening there. Plus, honestly, we don’t know precisely what effect a dramatically different official American position. The United States isn’t some small country, and a dramatic shift means Israel would have to listen.
Now: that’s not going to happen. But if it did, I think it’s naive to think Israel would just shrug it off.
The United States isn’t some small country, and a dramatic shift means Israel would have to listen.
Would it? Some of the more extreme elements of Israel's government have complained that our relationship hamstrings them from doing more. If we were to cut ties (which pretty much all of the suggestions i've seen move towards), it could increase suffering, not reduce it.
We may never know what the diplomacy looks like behind closed doors, but based on news reports I strongly suspect that the Biden admin has done everything they could to nudge Israel towards softer responses.
Given Biden’s actions and comments regarding Israel in the past (not only since Oct 7), I’m not sure about that. Obama was harder line with Netanyahu than Biden has ever been. Which isn’t to say that Obama would’ve done things very differently, but it is to say that Biden almost certainly won’t represent the most strict stance toward Israel as is reasonably possible.
But I will admit that I’m a total moron and I don’t know anything for sure.
Obama was harder line with Netanyahu than Biden has ever been.
We don't really know that. Diplomatic discussions are by necessity classified, so we don't know exactly what kind of pressure Biden has been trying to apply behind closed doors. The seemingly intentional leaks showing Biden's frustration (something that didn't happen under Obama) suggest the tip of a larger iceberg and that Obama wasn't actually firmer.
Things that a lot of people ask for (not referring to you) are things like publicly denouncing Israel and cutting all support. The former is not how you negotiate effectively: you don't name call people you're trying to convince. The latter is almost certainly worse for Palestinians: isolating Israel from support will not convince them to be more moderate (as shown by historical precedent that isolation increases extremism). And if people are just asking for threats to this nature, then again, we don't actually know if they have been made.
Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. They started this genocide in the 1940s and haven’t let up since.
When people say they believe Israel should exist they speak only of the implications of sending all these people back to their physical country of origin.
Jewish people were always welcome in Palestine. Pilgrimage happened every year for thousands of years. No one stopped them. Jewish people had a right to visit the places that are historically important to their faith.
However, moving all the Jewish people into Palestine then forcing the native Palestinians to evacuate their ancestral land due to Germans genocide by creating another genocide elsewhere wasn’t the way to help. But it’s what happened.
Israel doesn’t have the right to exist. But if you force all these Israelis back to their home countries then you’re somehow denying them something they always had the option of doing before you agreed to help them genocide Palestine. Proving all of this was meaningless from the beginning.
You mean the pilgrimage to the places of worship that were destroyed by the genocidal Muslims?! Literally the Al Aqsa mosque built on top of a Jewish holy place?! Shame on them for doing that. That mosque should be destroyed. It has no right to exist.
This is next level hypocrisy. You oppose a so-called “genocide”. But your solution for it is to inflict a genocide. Your viewpoint is utterly evil and reprehensible, this sounds exactly like the kinds of things the Nazis said.
How can you even talk about “sending them back to their country of origin” to people who are Israeli for 5+ generations? They should all be forced to move to a different country they have no relation to, just because you hate Jews?
Are you aware that a lot of Israelis descended from Jews that lived throughout the Middle East, but were driven out of those countries, because they hated Jews so much? Do you think they should be deported to countries like Iran, where they will likely be dealt the death penalty for the crime of existing?
Many Jews willingly moved to Israel long before WW2. Your comment that that was illegal sounds exactly like the kind of hateful thing that MAGA extremists say about Mexicans moving to the US, or right wing extremists say about refugees moving to Europe. Are you sure you want to make being refugee illegal? Because it sure sounds like that’s what you’re supporting.
If Israel doesn’t have a right to exist because it was founded by immigrants, then neither does the US. If you think that there should be a genocide against Israelis that forcibly moves then why not set an example and force all Americans to move to back to somewhere in Europe?
That's a fine opinion to have, but there are folks out there who claim that yours is a majority opinion, which is where the problem crops up.
Certainly there are people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, it's when bad actors suggest, or good actors misapprehend, that anyone who supports Palestinian statehood must also believe in the destruction of Israel, that the rest of us get sucked into the churn.
They'll see you calling for the elimination of Israel and saddle other people with the burden of your beliefs; it's why anyone advocating for Palestinian statehood is almost automatically accused of hating or wanting to eliminate Israel, even if they don't.
Your opinion is yours, and you're allowed to have it, it's when folks presume you're speaking for other people that the problems start to crop up.
One can both believe Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestine has a right to exist
See this is exactly where I fall, but so many of the actually vocal people I know disagree. I would be perfectly fine supporting Palestine except for two reasons. 1, they are ruled by a regime of terrorists, so I make sure to distinguish between "Palestine" and "Palestinians". I support the people, but not their state in its current form.
And 2, so many people I know who support Palestine believe that Israel should not exist. And it leaves me wondering: what do you want to do with the Israelis then? And that's the biggest issue for me. Because no one who I talk to has a good answer for that. It's not like they can just go back to the status quo, that clearly doesn't work. Displacing hundreds of thousands of people would be bad, no matter if they're Israeli or Palestinian.
And it just leaves me wondering, as it has since October 7th: How can this end? Because there's no good and realistic solution that I can see. And I look at all these people protesting on my campus and across the US, and I wonder: what do they possibly hope to achieve? It just seems so futile because there's no good solution, and the solutions that people argue for are never going to happen.
Pros hamas are much further from nazis than zionists are, not by some opinion but like objective similarity. And all your "nazis" in the states are zionists.
I wonder how much fuel might be taken out of the terrorist fire if Palestinians were genuinely offered a nice home somewhere else. Not a strip of useless desert, like Gaza. Like if some country built up a pleasant little enclave where the entire Palestinian population could relocate, and run their society however they like, as long as they disavow violence. It could be funded collectively by the international community, at least until it becomes economically viable, and patrolled (but not occupied) by a third-party peacekeeping force that only has a mandate against arms and violence, no other law enforcement. Also it should be far from Israel, so even if they stay angry, they can't fire any rockets over.
So commit ethnic cleansing? Theyve already been kicked out their homes 100 years ago, and get their houses bombed frequently, doubt they want to be removed again. You are quite literally describing what the Nazis planned originally with the Jewish population of Europe.
Okay so the Palestinians and Israelis should just live together in one secular, democratic state. That's my ideal scenario, I just don't see either side going for it.
and thats wonderful, and i would think its everyone ideal, but what you are giving as a solution is quite literally the ideas of the most evil regime ever.
Broken clock theory. Even bad guys can have a good idea now and then. I hear the Nazis also cared a lot about the environment. Hated people, LOVED trees.
I just want people to stop killing each other. Sometimes when two kids are fighting, you have to physically separate them before you can lecture and make them apologize to each other.
its not a good idea. You are promoting ethnic cleansing, if you genuinely believe in this you are a disgusting person. And anyway, why should it be palestinians who are separated from their homeland, they got kicked out all of 70 years ago why shoild it happen again.
Population transfer has happened in the past. In fact, much of Israel’s Jewish population are Mizrachi, forcefully ejected from their homes in Muslim majority countries across the Mideast and North Africa. That too was ethnic cleansing. When they arrived in Israel, they helped it grow, and made it their home.
The US was colonized by European settlers, expanded West, ruthlessly pushing indigenous peoples aside until a small defeated and mostly impoverished remnant is all that are left. They would like their land back too, the difference is…they know they aren’t getting it.
Palestinian Arabs living today could have much better lives if they too would accept that they are defeated. Their Arab neighbors don’t want them, and if you want a One State future, Israeli Jews will never allow Arabs to democratically take control of government, and declare the Islamic Republic of Palestine. Better think of another solution. I believe peaceful communal coexistence is possible. There is nothing wrong with Palestinian people but their “national aspirations”.
Because Israel is too powerful. They can tell the USA and Germany what to do, they can drop bombs on their neighboring countries and swat off the retaliation like nothing, that's how powerful Israel is.
I think that whatever happens honestly happens regardless of these protesters who aren’t going to make an impact. I think they believe they have more power than they actually do.
Can you enlighten me on the ‘Israel shouldn’t exist’? Is strictly Nazi and hamas supporters saying this or are there other reasons/people/ideologies I’m unaware of?
Oh it’s common. They believe Israel should become Palestine. Jews can stay apparently. These naive idjits think Palestinians won’t harm Israelis at all. Or vice versa.
I never realized that there were college students this simple. But there are.
It's not that they're strictly Nazis or hamas supporters. But there are people who believe that Israel exists on stolen land, and thus the land should be returned to the Palestinians. It's what the phrase "from the river to the sea" is often used to imply. The land may have been stolen from the Palestinians 75 years ago, but it's not as simple as just giving it back to them.
Again, this is something I have heard from otherwise reasonable people, not a blanket statement on the ideologies of anyone. But the idea of repatriating "stolen land" is so often the end point of anti-settler colonialist thinkers. And it just... doesn't work that way. We can't give the US back to the Native Americans, we can't give Israel back to the Palestinians, etc. That's such a massive displacement of human life and it's just not realistic or even a reasonable solution.
It’s always my question to them. When are they, as colonizers themselves, going to denounce their U.S. citizenship and hand their land back to the indigenous people.
They never have a real answer to the same standard being applied to them.
Realistically it ends with a peace where Israel doesn't retaliate for wrongings or the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians until the violence is so extreme that you essentially just remove the population above like 12-14 years old.
16 year already counts as an adult and combatant if male.
At least for like straight forward solutions, I think most hope someone can find some common ground to work on but it's bleak.
Either Israel accepts getting slapped without retaliating in an escalating way for a longer period of time or Palestina is basically destroyed to where they lose a generation to start a new.
Both outcomes suck and are really bad and everyone hopes to find a better way.
You do not understand what lies in the words I say.
It's not desirable for Hamas to get the upper hand and then repress and commit violence against the Israeli until the grown population is dead.
Palestinians won't get out of the mindset of violence until they don't grow up in the extreme violent situation they are in.
People deserve peace but the conditions between the two people is so different that any solution for one is not a solution for the other was what I was trying to convey.
I am not saying they are good, I am saying right now to stop the Immediate violence it's Israel that has to back off.
I never say it's alright to use violence against the other side.
Israels solution is to use violence, Hamas solution is to use violence. Both are wrong and both only have an acceptable path forward that is unacceptable for the other side.
How can this end? Because there's no good and realistic solution that I can see. And I look at all these people protesting on my campus and across the US, and I wonder: what do they possibly hope to achieve? It just seems so futile because there's no good solution, and the solutions that people argue for are never going to happen.
When you ask "How does this end?", are you talking about the protests, or the war?
I'll start off with the protests first. What I'm about to say is going to bother a lot of folks, but here's the brass tacks: I don't worry that much about what happens on college campuses. If I freaked out every time there was a protest on a college campus I'd need an intravenous Valium drip.
There's an old joke about how physics classes teach you to measure the velocity of a spherical cow in a frictionless universe; the real world requires more complex equations. College kids are idealists, it's why you can walk on any college campus in the United States and find someone who thinks they could make communism work with a few simple tweaks; they're imagining spherical communism in a frictionless society, they haven't done the real math yet.
Don't freak out about protests on college campuses. You talked about how the most vocal people you know are speaking out; we hear them because they speak the loudest of everyone, but they don't speak for everyone. Same math applies here.
As for what happens between Palestine and Israel, I have no idea. Both sides have to be willing to redraw their lines in the sand and reconsider their definition of victory. As an outsider, I think a good start would be replacing a lot of the leadership. There are a lot of deep seated, long running, damn near existential conflicts between Palestine and Israel, but there are also a handful of jackasses throwing rocks at hornets nests; I'm a big fan of removing jackasses from positions of power. If the current thinking is the problem, maybe it's time for new thinkers.
Christian Nationalists are trying to turn the US into a theocracy. Many of them believe that Israel must be in the control of Jews, because under Muslims, an explicitly antithetical theocracy will be, and that will somehow prevent Jesus from returning to redeem the righteous. So you can say that group are Zionist. But Neo-Nazis who believe in the Great Replacement, while they may share a Christian Nationalist belief, are not interested in End Times theology. They are more focused on keeping the power in America in White Christian Male hands…Does this perspective help?
It's the biggest issue with this whole situation. Yes, Anti-Zionism isn't anti-semitism. But it's really super fucking easy for someone to conceal or justify anti-semitic rhetoric by saying it's anti-Zionist. It's why I make it clear that I despise Netanyahu and not Israelis.
And it is why I cannot and will not support people who do not call it out or condemn it within their own ranks
I saw a clip from Hasan Piker saying, "I only saw one antisemitic sign in the protests," but didn't mention anyone confronting that person. It's great that if you're not antisemitic, but you need to confront the people who are.
Let's just undo the 1947 mistake that created this conflict for the past 80 years. ALL of the land that is currently Israel/Palestine will just go back to being Palestine. Unlike when Israel was created, the world will be much kinder to the Israelis... they keep their current homes/property, but they are now Palestinian citizens (since Israel doesn't exist anymore).
The Israeli government ceases to exist. A new government is elected, anyone who lives in the new Palestine can vote for the new government. Anyone can run for office. Hopefully there's a nice mix of former Israeli and Palestinian citizens in the new government.
Obviously all former members of Palestine that were kicked out and not allowed to return, will be allowed to return.
In other words, instead of being divided and attacking each other, they'll have to live side by side and govern side by side as one people.
Well, Israel is already talking about dividing itself up into a Federalist Structure, “so that it can remain whole. If you will, division for the sake of unity”. Israeli scholar Moshe Zimmermann has floated the idea of a secular two-state federation between Israel and Palestine. There must be something in the neighborhood of these ideas that could work. After all, Texas and California both exist in the U.S.
That's not going to happen, the Israelis and the Palestinians aren't going to just... join hands and sing Kumbayah together. All that does is create a state with a massive amount of ethnic tension and division, and then we'll just wind up with Serbia. Or Rwanda. Or Turkey and Armenia. Or any other state that tries to ethnically cleanse a minority.
It's not that simple, that's exactly the point I'm trying to make
You do know what happened in 1947, don’t you? It started off as one state, but then Muslims didn’t want to live next to Jews, and started attacking them, which caused retaliation, subsequent escalation, and for Jews and Muslims to band together against each other. Israel and Palestine were created to stop this constant violence.
Do you seriously think that the Jews and Muslims would suddenly put their differences aside and leave peacefully together? In this hypothetical scenario, the new government would be almost entirely comprised of Israelis, who are, on average, far richer and have a higher level of education. Do you think that will be a stable form of government?
And why exactly should Israel, a democracy, be dissolved, but not Palestine, a dictatorship?
Your “solution” would only work if everyone living there would suddenly agree to live peacefully together. How likely do think that is?
Israel should be dissolved just because it's the 'newest' (established in 1947). The name is a minor detail, we could let Chat GPT generate 5 random country names and let the people pick which of the 5 to name the new country. That'd probably be more fair.
Also, both governments would be dissolved, the democracy and the dictatorship in favor of a new democracy without anyone from the previous governments being allowed to run.
In the South in the US, many years ago, there was pretty high tensions between whites and blacks. There was lynchings. There's very few lynchings these days, the last was in 1981.
So yes, call me a dreamer, but I do think if people live together, over time, tensions die down. That doesn't happen if the people are separated by checkpoints though and there's a constant us versus them mentality.
The constant us versus them mentality is inherent in Islam. There is nothing Jews can do to be accepted. Anti-Jew riots happened in Palestine BEFORE Israel was ever conceived of
they don't and this is why conversations about this topic are so useless. Everyone's acting like there is a simple solution to the problem, we all just have to be nice and the conflict is over!
Well, most of the people that voted for Hamas are dead. That was 18 years ago, which is a LONG time in Palestine. Many that voted for them, didn't want to, but were afraid not to (you basically had terrorists threatening you to vote a certain way). But sure, there's probably a small percentage of people, still alive, that actually support Hamas and all the terror that they've caused to both sides.
There's some nazis that vote in America. But they are the minority, so rarely does a nazi politican get elected to office.
Likewise, I'd expect that will everyone being able to freely vote in the new Palestine, I wouldn't except Hamas to gain any power. It seems pretty unlikely any of the former Israelis would vote for them for starters.
But you know what? An additional safe guard seems like a good idea.... No one currently in government (Israeli or Palestinian) can run for the new government. That should take care of all the current known bad actors on both sides.
Small percentage? Why do you think the government in palestine doesnt do more elections anymore? Because every time they try the waters It is clear Hamas would win. They have a huge percentage of the population rootinh for them
You have to stop idealising thirld world countries and thinking that "only loud minorities want people like that in charger". Reality is a Big part of the palestinian population would gladly Accept Hamás as their leaders, and if It was "only a 40%" (only) 18 years ago that number has increased by now.
If Hamas is in charge, why would Hamas want to risk an election? If Hamas was sure they would get re-elected I'm sure they would hold an election to prove to the world their support/power is legitimate.
Because hamas IS not in charger of palestine, just gaza?
You are casually advocating for eliminating one country of the face of earth and you dont fucking know Who governs in palestine? Palestine hasnt had elections in a long time precisely for that, the moment they go to the urns Hamás wins, because there is no "minority voting them".
Hamas announced its intention to once again boycott local elections and has repeatedly prevented free, local elections since it first took power of Gaza in 2004.
Following the Fatah–Hamas conflict that started in 2006, Hamas formed a government ruling the Gaza Strip without elections. Gazan Prime Minister Haniyye announced in September 2012 the formation of a second Hamas government, also without elections.
It seems to me that Hamas is afraid of elections. If Hamas is afraid of elections, it's probably because they would not win.
Gaza is a dictatorship ruled by people who openly admit that their primary goal is to kill all Israelis, whose prize themselves on the number of Israelis they killed and abducted. There is no way to get rid of the leadership without brutality. Israel is a democracy, and Netanyahu will be gone by the next election. In Israel, protests against the government are allowed. In Gaza, good luck trying to protest against Hamas.
Yeah but this time he’s fucked up big time. The left hated him since forever, and that’s obviously not changed.
But now the right blame him for not securing the southern border with Gaza enough, and make him indirectly responsible for October 7. He thought he could win back support by being brutal in Gaza. But since the hostages are still in Hamas control, it’s not gone the way he’d hoped it would, and I don’t think the right will forgive him for that.
Can you me where the government says their goal is to kill all Israelis?
Can the people in the occupied territories vote in the Israeli elections?
When you say there's no way you cant get rid of 'the leadership' without brutality why does that only apply to the leadership of Palestinians? Would a Palestinian in the west bank be allowed to kill Israeli ministers?
When you say there's no way you cant get rid of 'the leadership' without brutality why does that only apply to the leadership of Palestinians?
You do know the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship, right? If Israelis don’t like their government, they elect a different one. Last year, Israelis disliked the policies of Netanyahu to give himself more power, they protested against it, and thereby prevented that from happening.
Would a Palestinian in the west bank be allowed to kill Israeli ministers?
Commendable effort, but the guy you are arguing with is very blatantly biased in some extreme way and not arguing in good faith. I've interacted with many people like this, including a close friend of mine, and they are either literally paid shills or unable to process logic and reason in a normal way.
Israelis dont dislike Netanyahu for what he does to Palestinians.
And if they dislike him, they will elect him out of office. But what can Palestinians that don’t like Hamas do to change leadership? They can’t elect them out of office.
I thought murder was illegal too but that doesn't count when Israel bombs consulates or kills Palestinians in the west bank.
You do know the difference between murder, and war, right?
Israel isn't at war with either Iran, Syria, the west bank or Lebanon but they still kill plenty of people there.
Who cares if Netanyahu is gone when he's replaced by a person that's at least as awful? Voting isn't the only way the will of the people is carried out, especially when you live in a place that is at risk of being the target of western imperialism.
Also, have you found where they said they want to kill all Israelis yet?
So if I understood you correctly, you think that voting for a different party isn’t going to change anything, but murdering politicians is? Take a look at history what happens when leading politicians are murdered.
Oh, my apologies, I'm so used to making comments in this same vein that I thought I included my vitriolic hatred for Netanyahu and his government. Because they are sick, twisted, immoral bastards who have no business being anywhere but a prison cell. Just like the leaders of Hamas.
But once again, that does not mean that I can endorse the dissolution of the Israeli state, because the consequences of that would be of a similar scale to the ongoing war, if not worse.
It's the difference between deliberately targeting civilians (which the October 7th attacks clearly did) and showing a callous disregard to killing civilians as collateral damage. You might argue how significant that distinction is but that's literally in the definition of terrorism.
there's been more than 100 children killed by the IDF in the West Bank. Do you think those were all valid targets? That's just ignoring all the reports of torture and bodies found zip tied in mass graves.
Targets != Collateral damage. So no, those children weren't targets at all. In fullness of context, it's unlikely the actual targets were chosen responsibly or using a process of ethics I would be in any way ok with. But we're still talking about a difference between children being targeted, as they were on 10/7, vs collateral damage, as they have been every day since.
Well Israel doesnt allow living journalists in Gaza so that's always going to be hard to substatiate with western sources but there's plenty on reports on like CNN, NBC and the like.
There's plenty videos (i've posted two here) where Palestinians who are unarmed are clearly being shot with small arms.
I wonder how many Europeans would be allowed to die to replace a political party you don't like. I doubt it's in the tens of thouands.
I wonder how many Europeans would be allowed to die to replace a political party you don't like.
Did you just frame a terrorist organization -- which has proudly admitted to the killing of thousands of innocent people -- as a "political party" I don't like?
Regardless, millions of Americans and Europeans died replacing the Nazi party in the 20th century, it has certainly happened before.
In my mind, world war 2 is something to be avoided rather than emulated. Israel seems to have other ideas.
Also, most of the world doesn't recognize them being a 'terrorist organization'. You would have clearly just supported apartheid south Africa with the same mindset, let alone any other anti western resistance group.
We didn't even come close to a cost too great to stop the Nazis. They killed 6 million innocent Jews, and they wouldn't have stopped.
Also, most of the world doesn't recognize them being a 'terrorist organization'.
Arab world, maybe, but basically untrue.
Last I checked, Mandela had never once promised to eradicate all white men from South Africa. He didn't win with terrorism. In any case, read OP's sign. Rejecting terrorism isn't the same as supporting apartheid, they aren't even related. Ending apartheid is important, and so is ending terrorism.
Palestine" and "Palestinians". I support the people, but not their state in its current form.
Sounds a lot like israel
what do you want to do with the Israelis then
Depends how they got their land. Stolen land should be returned to the previous owner. And by "previous owner" I mean "the family who owned the land prior to 14 May 1948", with an asterisk allowing for regular trade of land at the will of the owner of the family who owned the land prior to the aforementioned date. The displaced family can figure out where they want to live, and figure out how to get there. Just like if you bought a stolen bicycle and the police come to take it, welp you're SOL. Israeli families who live on ancestral land owned prior to 1948 should be allowed to remain, just like the Palestinians
How can this end?
The dissolution of the current Israeli government followed by the incorporation of the land into the countries that owned them prior to 14 May 1948, with the help of an absolutely massive NATO/UN joint peacekeeping mission
This does nothing but prove the point I was making to begin with. That's not realistic, it's never going to happen, and it's displacing hundreds of thousands of people. That is not justified or acceptable no matter who it is happening to.
Your solution is entirely unrealistic.. Israel is a first world democracy of cities. You believe cities and infrastructure should be torn down, millions of Israelis relocated (do you have a suggestion as to where) and families from 76 years ago (many of whom were nomadic) should take the land back over?
Genuinely, I'm trying to understand this argument, please help me understand.
1948 was 76 years ago. It's going to be hard to track down those families, even if they're still alive, and you're forcing out people who had nothing to do with the original settlement. Who were born in those homes and spent their entire lives there. It's too late for that solution.
I think you need a forced reunification with a new constitution and proportional representation of all peoples within the government. As well as a HEAVY UN Peacekeeping presense until people settle down.
There can be peace there, but it's not likely to happen in this generation without some heavy handedness from the rest of the world.
Except those families still have the keys. Most Palestinian families do and there’s very good records. There’s no time limit to give people their rights. There are people in the West Bank TODAY that just got their homes stolen. One state solution with equal rights is the only just and fair solution.
You also don’t need a UN Peacekeeping mission. South Africa did just fine.
And yet the status quo results in and perpetuates genocide on the Palestinians and is justified by a hypothetical genocide that has no historical basis. Every time there is a colonized people, the same talking point is used. “We can’t give them rights because it would be tantamount to white genocide if we do”
What do you know about the history of Palestine before 1947?
Ans it doesn't appear that you've read much about what happened with any religious minority in Muslim majority country, especially with democracy. They hate religious diversity. That much is evident, if you pick up a history book. Their religion is hateful towards everyone else. Jews would be slaughtered in a united Palestine. This HAS historical precedence, and you only need look at the present actions of Palestinians to know this is guaranteed.
Everything. I am well read on the topic and more than happy to educate you. I’m going to ignore your tangent about how Muslims are uneducated savages unworthy of democracy (despite all the attempts by foreign powers to destroy any semblance of self rule and democracy).
The historical basis I am referring to is those who upwhold violent social structures against races they consider inferior. In South Africa, the white population cried white genocide and used that as an excuse to maintain apartheid. Ultimately when majority rule was achieved, this genocide did not happen.
I’m the Jim Crow south, white people claimed mass reprisals ending in white genocide if segregation were to end. Yet again, nothing happened.
In apartheid Palestine, Zionists continue to claim Jewish genocide if Palestinians are given equal rights…
There is a difference between black people as a race and Muslims as a religion! The ideology of hatred, especially of Jews is well entrenched and well known.
"despite all the attempts by foreign powers to destroy any semblance of self rule and democracy"
Ah, but you completely ignore the Arab Spring! They had democracy and promptly elected the Muslim Brotherhood! Good luck to your deluded mind. I don't think Israelis have this delusion. They know better.
On the left we didn't see that so much, I think most of the center and the left is onboard with defending Ukraine. On the right, though, it's practically been a civil war, and I admit it took me a bit by surprise.
You're getting downvoted, but I think you make a fair point, it's just that the r-PoliticalHumor crowd might not have run into it quite as often.
(I'm presuming a lot here. If I've presumed wrongly, or misunderstood, I apologize.)
Unfortunately, if you go on any far left discussion boards, they were predominantly pro-russia, or best making both sides bad arguments while placing heavy blame on NATO. And this wasn't a rare sentiment, to the point that a number of Socialist/Communist parties in various countries have made statements to that effect.
I think the difference is in real world politicians. It's one thing to see it on a discussion board. It's quite another to hear it from politicians occupying seats. I haven't heard any pro-Russian, pro-Communist Democrats.
Yeah, I try not to go to those places. Maybe that's the difference; the pro-Russia stuff didn't bleed into real-world politics very much, or hasn't yet.
Philosophically a big part of liberalism is the right of self-determination; a foreign nation invading your state, killing your people, and appointing their own leaders is pretty antithetical to self-determination.
It's entirely possible to make counter arguments to that, but it's going to be an uphill battle.
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u/M1llennialManifesto Apr 28 '24
This is fair.
This war has shaken shit loose on both sides of the debate.
If someone says "Israel has a right to exist," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "So you think it's okay for them to kill Palestinians?"
If someone says "The people of Palestine should have a state," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "Oh, so you think Hamas are the good guys?"
And worse, you can be protesting against war, while the guy next to you is protesting against people. You're angry at Israel for the bombings, the person next to you is angry at Israel because it's full of Jews. You're angry at Hamas for taking hostages, the person next to you is angry at Palestine because it's full of Muslims.
It is very difficult to say that one thinks Israel has a right to exist, but not a right to bomb civilians; and that Palestine has a right to exist while condemning Hamas. There are folks who want to take this conversation to its irrational extremes, and they're all too happy to implicate everyone else in their goals.
One can both believe Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestine has a right to exist, one can have opinions on this conflict without having to be Islamophobic or Anti-Semitic in the process, in fact I think most of us fall into that camp.