:100:

Yes and yes. We can only hope they don't ever go through with it.

Well you point to something important. If we go back far enough, everybody's an invader or colonialist of some kind. Maybe not the Aborigines in Australia. But in many parts of the world this is the case. — Manuel

All homo sapiens emerged from Africa about 70,000 years ago, and they're still moving around. "Colonialism" has not ended. People are still on the move. Look at migration into Europe, or the US. Around 40% of the population of London are non-whites. London is being colonised, yet it's peaceful. It's not entirely unproblematic, but it's a long way from what's going on in Israel and Gaza. So you have to look to another explanation than your knee jerk left wing dogma - that welcomes diversity in Western countries, yet defends everyone else's mono-culturalism.

If we go back far enough, everybody's an invader or colonialist of some kind. Maybe not the Aborigines in Australia. — Manuel

Considering there aren't any hominin than us, Homo Sapiens, around, I wouldn't give any people a waiver in this case.

I bet if had the others been left alone (by us), there likely would be still other hominins around even today...

This is a rare occasion when I can agree with Benkei, 180, Street and NOS in the same breath! Hurrah! — bert1

:sweat:

IF

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. — Desmond Tutu

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. — Elie Wiesel

No amount of evidence can persuade an idiot. — Mark Twain

THEN this thread's ethnic cleansing (post-1967 zionist US client-apartheid state) apologists:
@BitconnectCarlos ☆
@Joshs ☆
@Echarmion
@Number2018
@Judaka
@Andrew4Handel ☆

QED.

Never seen such fucking low-level discussion in a place dedicated to rational thought. — Christoffer

:up:

Hamas in Their own words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU438kMknbQ

"We must attack every Jew on planet earth we must slaughter and Kill them with Allah's help"

Yes these are the people you are supporting.

Perhaps. Assuming the other hominin species were peaceful too.



Knee jerk reaction? I'm speaking about settler colonialism.

In any case, Netanyahu is looking for even more blood now. He's speaking about a "clear victory".

Knee jerk reaction? I'm speaking about settler colonialism. — Manuel

I said, knee jerk left wing dogma. It's easy to look at this, and see nothing but the suffering, and immediately form an opinion; getting so emotionally hung up on the tragic scenes no deeper understanding is sought - and that, it seems to me, is where the left always are.

I'm saying, I see nothing more substantial than that in your arguments. Plenty of hyperbole, and appeals to emotion in support of a purely a one sided view.

I wonder where people like you would have stood in 1948 - the Jews displaced by the holocaust in Europe, and pleading with the axis powers for a homeland? I imagine you'd have been there weeping for them, using similarly emotionally hyperbolic arguments in support of Zionism that you now describe as settler colonialism.

I look at the investment Jews have brought to the region, and think perhaps that Arab belligerence from 1948 onward, was in retrospect, a mistake. They should have welcomed these displaced people - not gang up, and launch one war after another against World War II refugees.

It's not clear to me what my views would be after WWII. It's not like many people in the US, including Roosevelt cared about the Holocaust. In fact, the Holocaust did not become a major issue until the 60's more or less. Maybe I would have supported Israel back then, maybe I wouldn't care.

The US and I suppose a large portion of the population might have been indifferent. There was Japan to worry about after Germany surrendered and then Korea soon came afterwards.

Today settler colonialism is looked at as brutal behavior. It is now recognized as such in the US, Canada and in Australia. Not in Israel. We've also improved quite a bit in terms of racism and sexism, but there's a long way to go. So there is such a thing as moral progress. It's slow but it happens.

I'm simply looking today at Gaza and saying what is evident for everyone to see: it is horrendous. I don't see the issue here being much more complex than one of the largest armies in the world pounding an open air prison to smithereens.

You may wish to find more nuance if you'd like. As there surely was more nuance is Apartheid South Africa too. But that wasn't the point of protesting South Africa.

And it is not the main point in Gaza.

My failure to participate more in this thread is having to find ways explain over and over again why atrocities need to be condemned to people and oppression needs to end who just will never care, it's like the Sisyphean task.

I'm curious how one endures that high level of self-deception for so long. I'm sure I've had my moments before, but the feats are impressive.

I agree it's horrendous, but that's just the surface of things. There are deeper causes to all this that don't allow for an emotive conclusion. It's very complicated. It goes back over a century to the first world war, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Second World War and the withdrawal of the British from the Mandate for Palestine established by the League of Nations in 1922. The 1947-49 Palestinian War, was seminal. But one thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that the Palestinians would have been far better off accepting Resolution 181 of the UN General Assembly. Instead Nikba - and generation after generation of suffering. Yes, it's horrendous, but Arab belligerence has played a very large part in causing this catastrophe.

Is your post in response to my comment, because if so, read this:

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

followed by this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%E2%80%931948_civil_war_in_Mandatory_Palestine

But that's the thing. We can talk of history for a long time. We can even go back to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand as a catalyst that would lead to the creation of Israel eventually.

We can speak of how the Palestinians could have accepted the UN partition which would have given them 45% of Palestine, which was once 100%, but it would've been better than what they have now.

We could also mention how the US could have taken in most of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and we could speak of the Jewish population in the Kibbutz living in Palestine before Israel existed.

All that is complex and multi-faceted and includes many actors.

But that's not the point at all. What's relevant and the reason why people are angry at Israel is because of the occupation and enslavement of Gaza and the way they treat Palestinians as sub-human, with caloric restrictions imposed on them.

The occupation of land and the bombardment of Gaza are not complicated. Israel just needs to stop and give them a state. It's can only be complicated if you are an Israeli trying to rationalize the unjustifiable. The same way many in the US rationalized war crimes in Iraq or way back in Vietnam. For the vast majority of victims, it is not complicated.

I am well aware of the history. What it translates to in the present day is, as Brooks put it, a sheer asymmetry of power that is being unilaterally exercised by a brutal apartheid regime for the sake of settler colonialism. It's that simple.

1. Sure and Israel has offered to give them a state in the past, but with Hamas in power Israel is absolutely under no obligation to go in that direction these days. Hamas is a terrorist group, not a legitimate government. Giving them independent statehood is a serious security concern for Israel. — BitconnectCarlos

That Israel has offered the Palestinians a State in the past is disingenuous. If you look at those proposals, it requires Palestinians to cede land that Israel has illegally occupied and settled. That's not an offer, that's an insult.

The second part of your argument is also an argument to deny Israel a right to a State. The Israeli State is a serious security concern for Palestinians - in fact, more so considering the military capabilities of Israel. It doesn't make for a good argument in my view.

I'd also point out that Hamas is not just a terrorist group and terrorist groups have evolved into peace partners as well. This is why one of the few countries with a sensible classification is the UK; where the military wing is considered a terrorist organisation but the political (and social activist) wing of Hamas is recognised as representing the interest of Palestinians.

Also, when it comes to cease fire violations, the IDF takes the cake. In that respect Hamas has proved more trustworthy than the Israeli government. You put too much weight in what people say as opposed to what they actually do. The "we'll destroy you" language is coming from both sides' extremists but the situation on the ground proves only one is actually doing what they're saying - and it isn't Hamas.

"revert to its inhabitants" is just rhetoric. they just wanted to maintain the status quo with arabs in charge. It's always been fine if there's a state where Arabs are in charge with a Jewish minority. — BitconnectCarlos

How is it just rhetoric if you form the ethnic majority in a region but get less of a say and get less territory? How is it not a valid argument to expect representation?

Israelis did not aggress in '67. But you can uproot the forces that were trying to destroy you. russia was still defending when it pressed into germany. were the allies "aggressing" by pressing into germany? sure you can say that they were going on the offensive, but to describe them as the "aggressors" in the conflict seems strange to me.

Uhuh. You can't annex land and not call it aggression. There's an important difference between occupation and annexation. The latter is not what the Allied forces did. Those forces occupied German territory but they didn't claim that land as part of their country. The occupation lasted so long due to the tensions between the USSR and the Western countries but at no point did any of those countries laid claim that parts of Germany were in fact French, Russian, American or English. Nor did they settle the land with a view to permanently keep it.

So your comparison is simply wrong and what the Israeli did, while initially legal and rightful in 1967, turned into a crime because they decided to annex the land.

In 1948 the arabs declared war on Israel and sought to wipe it out. there was talk of a second holocaust at the time. Land taken and held in '48 was a necessary security measure and I'm not going to apologize for it. Israel was extremely vulnerable w/ 1947 boundaries.

I'm not looking for an apology, I'm looking for recognition that what Israel has done and is doing is immoral. I also don't think the 1947 borders were indefensible. Israel was simply vulnerable as a fledgling state and that had rather little to do with the geographical disposition of the state borders of the partition plan.

I also think that saying the Arabs declared war on Israel denies the intricacies of the time. There was a civil war fought between Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews that resulted in the displacement of Arabs. And while both sides committed crimes against civilians, during the civil war, it was mostly committed by the Jews (with 24 to 33 mass killings, depending on which historian you consult) as opposed to 3 by the Arabs. During the war in 1948 both sides were mostly adhering to the rules except, again, for IDF war crimes. According to Jewish historian Ilan Pappé the goal was ethnic cleansing and it "carr[ied] with it atrocious acts of mass killing and butchering of thousands of Palestinians were killed ruthlessly and savagely by Israeli troops of all backgrounds, ranks and ages." and he continues "If it is possible Israel's conduct in 1948 would be brought onto the stage of international tribunals; this may deliver a message even to the peace camp in Israel that reconciliation entails recognition of war crimes and collective atrocities. This cannot be done from within, as any reference in the Israeli press to expulsion, massacre or destruction in 1948 is usually denied and attributed to self hate and service to the enemy in times of war. This reaction encompasses academia, the media and educational system, as well as political circles."

Bluntly put, Israel has a history of war crimes since its inception and it supresses dissent through laws (Nakba Law) and social pressure.

8. Could you just expound a little further on this?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/22/israelandthepalestinians.usa

Hamas has publicly announced that in 2017 as well through a declaration of general principles. Literally:

Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be
compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances
and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas
rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine,
from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of
the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas
considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent
Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of
June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their
homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national
consensus. — Hamas

i'll agree with you that the israeli government is more recalcitrant that it was in the past and this is due to several factors, but then again so is hamas. neither side right now has a serious interest in peace.

You're making these demands of Israel but it's never going to be your family who bears the repercussions. It's easy to tell Israel to loosen their security or to let Hamas import anything completely unrestricted or to give back half their land when you're halfway around the world.

I'm making these demands because it is quite clear the Palestinians have been open to peace at least since the 90s (Oslo Accords, Camp David Accords) and clearly again since 2008. It's Israel who is not open to peace and has not been because it wants to maintain the settlements in illegally occupied land. If Israel would announce today that they are prepared to move back to the 1967 borders, it would have lasting peace.

I'm making these demands because Israel has been worse than the other side every step of the way.

I'm making these demands because it's the right thing to do.

If there was a homeless problem in your community would you be willing to let some live in your home? How would you feel about fundamentalists muslims as your neighbors? They need a place to live too, why not next to you? They can invite their friends over too.

You make a pretty good post and then you end with what is really a totally idiotic analogy. Why are Palestinians "homeless"? It's not a problem that just appeared out of nowhere. If there was a homeless problem I caused because I took their house then I wouldn't have any moral claim to be living in that house in the first place.

And you keep pointing to muslim fundamentalism with a big stick in your eye failing to see the extremism in Israel itself. It's not "reticence" it's a fucking Apartheid state in 2021 for God's sake where a majority of Israelis are now condoning it. That is, over 50% of Jewish Israelis think Arab Israelis ought to be second class citizens and so we see discrimination enacted through law in every strata of society there. Did you read HRW or Amnesty reports on this?

For the victims, it is not complicated. — Manuel

Exactly what the Jews said in 1947.

We can speak of how the Palestinians could have accepted the UN partition which would have given them 45% of Palestine, which was once 100% — Manuel

No, the territory was 100% ruled by the British - after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

See the Treaty of Sèvres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres

But the British were in a terrible state after WWII, and couldn't maintain their commitments. Resolution 181 was based on demographics. The Jews accepted it. The Arabs rejected it and launched militia attacks on Jews that then led to a wider conflict.

"The first casualties after the adoption of Resolution 181(II) by the General Assembly were passengers on a Jewish bus driving on the Coastal Plain near Kfar Sirkin on 30 November. An eight-man gang from Jaffa ambushed the bus killing five and wounding others. Half an hour later they ambushed a second bus, southbound from Hadera, killing two more. Arab snipers attacked Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2007
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2008
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2010
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2011
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2013
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2014
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2018
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2020

Israel withdrew all it's settlers from The Gaza strip in 2005

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

Exactly what the Jews said in 1947. — counterpunch

Sure. No one else cared.

But the British were in a terrible state after WWII, and couldn't maintain their commitments. Resolution 181 was based on demographics. The Jews accepted it. The Arabs rejected it and launched militia attacks on Jews that then led to a wider conflict. — counterpunch

Fine. The point is most of the people living in Palestine were Palestinians. Why should they accept some other people coming in to take their land?

But again. This is not the point of the thread. I've already stated the point many times. If you want to start another thread dealing with the conditions of how Israel was created and why it was complicated, you can do that.

The occupation now, the time that matters for the issue at hand, is not hard to understand. If the the situation were inverted and Jews lived in Gaza and the West Bank, I don't think you'd raise these points. It would be simple: Palestine needs to give Jews what is their land as stated in 242. That's it.

And the Israelis then were the terrorists, at least for the British.

And if you continue the text you quoted:

Irgun and Lehi (the latter also known as the Stern Gang) followed their strategy of placing bombs in crowded markets and bus-stops.

Anyway, seems that it's abhorred that one could think of this conflict in any other way than one side being the innocent victim and the other the bloodthirsty perpetrator. Demands for justice usually start wars. What's so difficult in accepting that Israel carries on an apartheid state and has treated from start the Palestinians as second rate citizens and Hamas wants to kill all the Jews?

peaceful too. — Manuel

Peaceful too?

Anyway, off topic...

I am well aware of the history. What is translates to in the present day is, as Brooks put it, a sheer asymmetry of power that is being unilaterally exercised by a brutal apartheid regime for the sake of settler colonialism. It's that's simple. — StreetlightX

See my comments above for why it's not "that simple." It's a hugely complex issue, with wrongs and rights on both sides. That what makes it the most intractable conflict in the world. I completely accept that the Palestinians have suffered - and I have sympathy for that, but they've also inflicted suffering, and have done so to resist political compromise solutions. The zero sum Arab solution is, and always has been the eradication of Israel. Is that what you want too? Unreasonableness invites unreasonableness. We all have spiritual ancestry there.

Let us not forget that the vast Majority of the much larger country Jordan was part of The British Mandate of Palestine and 80% of its population are Palestinians.. They make up 10% of it's politicians

Fine. The point is most of the people living in Palestine were Palestinians. Why should they accept some other people coming in to take their land? — Manuel

By that logic "build that wall!" Is that your logic? I'm guessing it's not - Manuel!

This is not the point of the thread. I've already stated the point many times. If you want to start another thread dealing with the conditions of how Israel was created and why it was complicated, you can do that. — Manuel

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If you merely want to weep over the Palestinian causalities, I'll leave you alone with your grief.

I completely accept that the Palestinians have suffered - and I have sympathy for that, but they've also inflicted suffering, and have done so to resist political compromise solutions. The zero sum Arab solution is, and always has been the eradication of Israel. Is that what you want too? — counterpunch

The facts of the matter remain that the one state that is actually carrying out a program of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and pogroms is Israel. Not as a matter of what they "intend", but as a matter of what has happened, and is continuing to happen. As such, the call is to put a stop to that actual happening. If the history is complex, - and it is - this is where it has led. And that 'where' is as simple as it can be. The numbers speak for themselves, no matter how many copy and paste URLs @Andrew4Handel iterates:

*

*These numbers being already far out of date.

This is asymmetrical terrorism carried out by a state which is exclusively responsible for the continued perpetuation of violence and misery in the region.

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If you merely want to weep over the Palestinian causalities, I'll leave you alone with your grief. — counterpunch

We may not have much of it left. History that is.

Nice quote. Never heard of it. :roll:

Feel free to analyze the profound complexities of WMD's in Iraq or of Japanese aggression in WWII. :up:

This is asymmetrical terrorism carried out by a state which holds all the power. — StreetlightX

The reason Gaza suffers more casualties is because Israel has created bunkers for civilians and has the highly sophisticated Iron dome defence system. The aggressor once again was Hamas. The person defending themselves is Israel.

Unethically and pointlessly firing rockets from among civilians knowing rockets will be returned and your own civilians will die is a double act of aggression against Gazan's and Israeli's (including the nearly 2 million Israeli Arabs)

The number of casualties does not prove who started the aggression and who has some kind of moral upper hand.

That isn't even a logical moral stance. It's a war. War could be described as a crime in it's nature.

People forget the survival of fittest and the use of force and exploitation necessary to maintain civilisations. No one's country (repeating myself here) has more of a valid justification for their statehood (or survival).) No country is legitimate or legitimised by written claims or verbal statements(nor any moral claim by that matter)

You are using black and white type rhetoric/polemic because you consider the situation to be unambiguous which it clearly is not. You are exacerbating the situation by having a position that means neither side will want to compromise.

International law has no validity (else where does it get it from?) and is divisive and self serving and only applies by consent. No one is going to compromise without reasonable demands being made on them.

No one is going to compromise without reasonable demands being made on them. — Andrew4Handel

Agreed. It is reasonable that Israel cease its genocide of the Palestinian people, immediately remove all its illegal settlements, and compensate the Palestinian territories for the nearly incalculable damage it has inflicted upon it - all of which counts as among Israel's monumental acts of aggression, thinly masquerading under the veneer of 'defence' by the sycophants who continually draw attention away from its world-historical cruelty.

Agreed. It is reasonable that Israel cease its genocide of the Palestinian people, immediately remove all its illegal settlements, and compensate the Palestinian territories for the nearly incalculable damage it has inflicted upon it - all of which counts as among Israel's monumental acts of aggression, thinly masquerading under the veneer of 'defence' by the sycophants who continually draw attention away from its world-historical cruelty. — StreetlightX

I knew you you would respond to that. You want The Jews expelled from the Middle east and to have no internal security. Your stance on them threatens there existence and is genocidal.

They withdrew their settlements from Gaza as requested and what did that achieve? Thousands of rocket attacks. Your position removes any chance of compromise by Israel or it's supporters and is hysterical.

Please feel free to respond the rest of my post about the validity of nation states and international law etc.

You are just ranting and shouting slogans.

Also as I said previously a Palestinian Arab having 14 children cannot blame Israel for their suffering it is called personal responsibility. Apparently anything a Palestinian Arab does is completely justified or excused because of Israel's conduct. Well that is demented and is certainly not going to make the world a safer place. Enjoy your eternal conflicts.

Also I am mixed race. So which of my parents country of origin do the monocultralists think I should be expelled to?

Ethnicity does not define land entitlement. Last time looked I had to pay rent and taxes and didn't get anything for free because of my ethnicity.

You want The Jews expelled from the Middle east and to have no internal security — Andrew4Handel

Israel's illegal settlements do not constitute its entire presence in the Middle-East - unless of course, you're admitting more than you'd care to do right now. And Israel's internal security would be inestimably improved by not deliberately cultivating an entire population whose misery and poverty is a direct result of Israeli state policy.

I should add that the very first policy that ought to be enacted is the cessation of all US 'aid' and weapons sales to Israel. Their sponsorship of state terrorism is as much as cause of the present situation as anything Israel - or Hamas for that matter - has ever done.

And Israel's internal security would be inestimably improved by not deliberately cultivating an entire population whose misery and poverty is a direct result of Israeli state policy. — StreetlightX

Israel withdrew its Settlements from The Gaza Strip and that clearly reduced it's security and also made it much more difficult for Gazans to travel freely in Israel and to the West Bank. In What way are Hamas or the Palestinian Authority dictatorship (who have had Billions in Aid) helping their people as opposed to causing their misery and not offering them a way out?