Israel-Gaza war

[GMantis]

Civilians who survived the attack on a big outdoor party tell of terrorists shooting at people who were raising their hands and begging for mercy. If some tankies here want to know what not to shed any tears for

The same ones who held a picnic and cheered on airstrikes on Gaza last time this happened, or different ones?

The same ones who had been hiding from Hamas rockets for years before that?

[GMantis]

If 300 Israelis people are dead (the number is actually higher) that is 3 9/11s. Imagine if 9/11 wasn't just a plane attack though, but an invasion that also resulted in at least 1500 hostages and Americans being raped and murdered, including children, in their own homes. Can anyone who does not simply want the Israelis to give up and die tell me with a straight face that in that analogy America/Israel should just sit back and drop a couple of bombs and treat it like any other terrorist attack? If not, then what should Israel do? Should it occupy the equivalent of 80 million people forever, losing more of its own lives in the process to police people who think it not only okay but morally good to molest Israelis in the street?

If Israel can't exist without ethnically cleansing two million people, it doesn't deserve to exist. And I hope that if they actually go through with doing so, the US government grows some conscience and imposes crippling sanctions on them until they collapse utterly.

[GMantis]

https://twitter.com/YousefMunayyer/status/1710777795159228886?t=wajpLhMMxHwcSi0A...

At this point I really don't see why Mods aren't letting us have these discussions. If Likud is having this discussion then I think it is worth considering. I am a free speech absolutist, so I do have a much greater tolerance for this kind of stuff even in other fields, but given the circumstances I do think that in the coming days both Israel and certain Western factions may be considering/supporting options like this.

Are you actually out of your fücking mind? Why in Allah's name should genocide and ethnic cleansing EVER be considered an option?

1. I can't answer on the merits due to moderating policy for the latter. I will say for the former that genocide is always wrong because it takes innocent lives unnecessarily.

2. It should be discussed and freely debated because its going to be a major policy discussion in Israel and the West over the following days. Israel cannot allow Hamas to freely exist in the Gaza Strip after this, and it cannot afford to permanently occupy the Gaza Strip. That lives only one realistic option, as I believe many already recognize.

Rot in Jahannam you fücking bastard

Yeah I'm not the one cheering on murderers and savages.

What would you do if an enclave of cartel members (backed by 2 million people who enthusiastically supported the cartel members and molested the bodies of captured American women and American soldiers in the street) bombarded New York 24/7? Would you say "sorry, yeah, nothing the US can do"?

What if the US had given them everything they wanted re: their enclave, and even kicked Americans out of their homes to do so, but those cartel members still used that as an opportunity to spend the next two decades raiding the US, and then escalating their raids to the point of invading the US and slaughtering and raping Americans, under the demand the US give the entire Southwest back to Mexico? Would you still say the same thing?

Well for starters, I wouldn't be supporting fücking genocide, unlike you.

Genocide is immoral and wrong because it kills innocent people. I don't support genocide.

Your preferred solution wouldn't be possible without war crimes on a vastly greater scale than what we witnessed yesterday. At least be honest with what you truly want.

If 300 Israelis people are dead (the number is actually higher) that is 3 9/11s. Imagine if 9/11 wasn't just a plane attack though, but an invasion that also resulted in at least 1500 hostages and Americans being raped and murdered, including children, in their own homes. Can anyone who does not simply want the Israelis to give up and die tell me with a straight face that in that analogy America/Israel should just sit back and drop a couple of bombs and treat it like any other terrorist attack? If not, then what should Israel do? Should it occupy the equivalent of 80 million people forever, losing more of its own lives in the process to police people who think it not only okay but morally good to molest Israelis in the street?

If Israel can't exist without ethnically cleansing two million people, it doesn't deserve to exist. And I hope that if they actually go through with doing so, the US government grows some conscience and imposes crippling sanctions on them until they collapse utterly.

Israel could turn Gaza into a parking lot and we would still fund them. Maybe 20 Dems + Massie would vote no instead of 10, otherwise no change.

Tbh I think Israel would have to launch an unwarranted nuke to lose our money, and even then I'm not sure.

Unfortunately you're probably right.

[GMantis]

If 300 Israelis people are dead (the number is actually higher) that is 3 9/11s. Imagine if 9/11 wasn't just a plane attack though, but an invasion that also resulted in at least 1500 hostages and Americans being raped and murdered, including children, in their own homes. Can anyone who does not simply want the Israelis to give up and die tell me with a straight face that in that analogy America/Israel should just sit back and drop a couple of bombs and treat it like any other terrorist attack? If not, then what should Israel do? Should it occupy the equivalent of 80 million people forever, losing more of its own lives in the process to police people who think it not only okay but morally good to molest Israelis in the street?

If Israel can't exist without ethnically cleansing two million people, it doesn't deserve to exist. And I hope that if they actually go through with doing so, the US government grows some conscience and imposes crippling sanctions on them until they collapse utterly.

Israel does have a right to exist. I don't think how it originated was fair and correct, but the reality is the reality of today. We need to look in the future, and not grief/hold grudges over the past to an extreme extent because that's not going to improve lives either.

1967 borders with a contiguous border connecting Gaza & West Bank (preferrably through the South) would be fair, and transfer of Israeli people to Israel (who are willing) and Arab citizens/Palestinians (who want) to Palestine. And additionally some guarantees for good treatment of Arab citizens within Israel and vice versa. Though i think it's best if they live in separate states.

I definitely agree that Israel has a right to exist and after what happened yesterday, have the right to destroy Hamas. My objection to Israel is only in the case where the supposition that it can only exist by ethnically cleansing two million people is true, but I strongly disagree that it's true (as difficult it is to find an alternative right now).

The Gaza Strip has no future as a political entity.

Its people, regrettably, will need to be evacuated to Egypt and the city of Gaza likely destroyed. If not, the scenes unfolded over the past week will continue for another thousand years.

Israel is not absent of blame of course, indeed they deserve a lot of it, but what has transpired since the partition cannot be changed. We can only look ahead now.

This is genocidal rhetoric. I understand that tempers are running high now, and I truly do understand why, but can we please draw a line somewhere? The median age in Gaza is 18. If you endorse this you are endorsing the forcible expulsion or more likely death of mostly children.

This is not genocidal rhetoric.

The problem with Gaza is that it's too close to Israel.  It's a thorn penetrating up into Israel's territory.  Israel's racist, genocidal, Nazi enemies use it as a salient from which they have repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly launched attacks on Israeli civilians to try and conquer the country and wipe its citizens off the earth.

This is simply a strategic liability for Israel.  Gaza at this point isn't a proper city.  It's a military fort administered by terrorists.  It's the equivalent of saying Cuba should expel the Americans from Guantanamo.  Imagine if North Korea had a military base in the San Juan Islands that they used to constantly launch rockets and attacks on Seattle.  Would it be genocidal to say that the North Koreans should be expelled and the base destroyed?

Gaza is a completely failed city.  It's a sprawling morass of cheap concrete and rebar.  It's not like it's Jerusalem or some city that it's critically culturally important for an ethnic group to have access to.  It is not cultural genocide by any stretch to push the Arabs out of Gaza.

Frankly it would be better in the long run since under Israeli administration it could actually be built into a modern, humane, decent city, with the Islamic cultural heritage (a handful of mosques and gravesites) not only kept intact but preserved and made safe and available for pilgrimage and tourism.  Right now those mosques are used as safe hiding spots for Hamas terrorists, they know Israel won't bomb them because the international condemnation for destroying a cultural site would be too great.

.
I can't understand how someone who's horrified by what Hamas did (as I very much am) could support measures like removing two million people from their homeland that would be a war crime on a vastly greater scale. I hope it's just emotion caused in reaction to the horrific crime of Hamas (quite understandable) and not something you seriously consider a good idea.

[GMantis]

To start, at least in the short term, Israel will need to invade and occupy Gaza, respecting the property rights of the innocent civilians you seem to take such pleasure in butchering as much as is realistically possible.

Mods, please delete this.  I have never said anything of the sort, nor have I ever given any indication of anything of the sort.  It's astoundingly inappropriate for someone to write something like this.

This is just describing honestly what your proposal of carrying out the worst ethnic cleansing in decades would entail without the pretty words you're obfuscating it with. You can't force two million people out of their homes and then force them into a region that isn't even close to being able to provide for them without at least tens of thousands  - or most likely hundreds of thousands = of casualties. And the atrocities carried out in the process would greatly overshadow Hamas' actions.

[GMantis]

Still waiting for literally any hint of a workable solution to stop the killings from the people self-righteously insisting to me that I'm advocating for mass murder for wanting people to move a few hours west.  Since apparently it's obvious that this would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

For a start, the US as Israel's primary sponsor, must force them to finally work seriously for a two-state solution, the only workable way to end this conflict. Because as horrific Hamas' acts were, they haven't made the whole Palestinian people lesser human beings who don't deserve basic human rights and the only way to both guarantee these rights while eliminating the causes that led Hamas to taking power in the first place.

You guys are ok with the status quo, where the terrorist group that runs Gaza gets to massacre tons of Jews and Israel isn't allowed to go anything about it.  How dare you accuse me of being the inhumane one.  Your unwillingness to consider any alternative to the status quo just indicates that you're OK with it.

And you were okay with the status quo where Israel has blockaded the Gaza strip for sixteen years, killed thousands in bombings, while keeping the rest of the Palestinians under an apartheid regime (while killing hundreds there as well). Sorry, you don't get to claim the moral high ground just because the side you sympathize with was the one that suffered most this time.

[GMantis]

You guys are ok with the status quo, where the terrorist group that runs Gaza gets to massacre tons of Jews and Israel isn't allowed to go anything about it.  How dare you accuse me of being the inhumane one.  Your unwillingness to consider any alternative to the status quo just indicates that you're OK with it.

And you were okay with the status quo where Israel has blockaded the Gaza strip for sixteen years, killed thousands in bombings, while keeping the rest of the Palestinians under an apartheid regime (while killing hundreds there as well). Sorry, you don't get to claim the moral high ground just because the side you sympathize with was the one that suffered most this time.

Sure I do. One side supports genocide and tries to enact it, and tries to conquer territories that it has no claim to under international law; the other side does not. Israel has had the moral high ground for the entirety of its existence and continues to have it now. Not complicated at all, and no reasonable person disputes this or feels sympathy for Palestinian liberationism.

Israel's very existence is owed to massive ethnic cleansing of the native population it carried out in 1947-48. It has held - against international law  - Palestinian majority territories for decades while oppressing the locals. Is that what you call the moral high ground? That the Palestinians have also committed many terrible crimes against Israel over the years doesn't make Israel righteous.

And what does a "reasonable" person want to happen with the Palestinians if "liberationism" is unreasonable? Expulsion or apartheid?

This board is a sh**t show. Full of woke kids who never lifted a finger to do anything and pass judgment based on their minimal knowledge and the ideology they got on the back of a short reading list in college.

There's a core of good posters here, even those who take a more pro-Hamas view here. But in total this board is in a steady downfall since 2016

Is the belief that Israel doesn't have the right to expel the Palestinians from their homeland also pro-Hamas?

[GMantis]

You guys are ok with the status quo, where the terrorist group that runs Gaza gets to massacre tons of Jews and Israel isn't allowed to go anything about it.  How dare you accuse me of being the inhumane one.  Your unwillingness to consider any alternative to the status quo just indicates that you're OK with it.

And you were okay with the status quo where Israel has blockaded the Gaza strip for sixteen years, killed thousands in bombings, while keeping the rest of the Palestinians under an apartheid regime (while killing hundreds there as well). Sorry, you don't get to claim the moral high ground just because the side you sympathize with was the one that suffered most this time.

Sure I do. One side supports genocide and tries to enact it, and tries to conquer territories that it has no claim to under international law; the other side does not. Israel has had the moral high ground for the entirety of its existence and continues to have it now. Not complicated at all, and no reasonable person disputes this or feels sympathy for Palestinian liberationism.

Israel's very existence is owed to massive ethnic cleansing of the native population it carried out in 1947-48.

No, this is a lie which has been debunked many times.

Even if it wasn't long proven (including by Israeli historians) that most  Palestinians were either forced out by the Israeli army or fled out of fear of Israeli attacks, Israel's refusal to allow them to return once the war was over was without any doubt ethnic cleansing.

It has held - against international law  - Palestinian majority territories for decades while oppressing the locals.

It has not held Palestinian-majority territories against international law. One can argue about the propriety of its hold on the Golan, but there is no recognized state with any claim to territories within the former Mandate other than Israel itself.

The Mandate has not been operative since 1948. Israel has no rights under that Mandate (and good for them, because the Mandate also provided for respecting the rights of the Palestinians). No country has ever recognized Israel's right to any claim to the West Bank and in fact Israel has refused to make such a claim because then they'd have to treat the local Palestinians as citizens. Instead they have held the West Bank as a military occupation and massively violated the provisions of military occupations in international law (most obviously by allowing their citizens to settle there).

Is that what you call the moral high ground?

…yes, I already said that. I think not recognizing the overwhelming moral superiority of the Israeli side is preposterous and comically blind.

A country that would never have existed without ethnic cleansing and which claims that it needs to indefinitely hold millions under blockade or under occupation for its security can't hold the moral high ground, it can merely claim to be the lesser evil. Only someone who assumes that Palestinians deserve less rights than Israelis in principle can support such views.

That the Palestinians have also committed many terrible crimes against Israel over the years doesn't make Israel righteous.

And what does a "reasonable" person want to happen with the Palestinians if "liberationism" is unreasonable? Expulsion or apartheid?

The solution is post-apartheid: Palestinian liberationist organizations like Fatah and Hamas, like the apartheid National Party before them, should enter a coalition with the Israeli state as its junior partners and act in good faith towards Zionism and the furtherance of the goals of the Israeli state. The alternative is the fate of the National Socialist Party in Germany — nonexistence.

The Germans and white South Africans still exist, but the goals which their governments worked for have been utterly proscribed and cast out of the souls of the people living there. This is what any moral person demands of Palestinian leadership: the total abandonment of their current goals and deliberate action to aid those they have been fighting against. Also to feel sincere happiness about this outcome and to celebrate it for generations.

So you're arguing for a one state solution where everyone has equal rights, which is what happened in South Africa after the fall of the Apartheid regime? Good for your if this is true. As difficult as making it work, it would be better than the present situation.

[GMantis]

Even if it wasn't long proven (including by Israeli historians) that most  Palestinians were either forced out by the Israeli army or fled out of fear of Israeli attacks, Israel's refusal to allow them to return once the war was over was without any doubt ethnic cleansing.

No, people fleeing because of enemy propaganda does not count as ethnic cleansing. (Ethnic cleansing is what happened to the Israeli settlers in Gaza in 2004, who were moved out by force; by no means here is my position that the Israeli state is totally innocent). Countries also have a right to set their own immigration policy even if that results in ethnic changes; saying otherwise is the preserve of insane Eurabia conspiracy theorists.

No, people fleeing to escape state-sanctioned massacres (unless you claim that Deir Yassin was an invention of Arab propaganda) is very much ethnic cleansing. People being forced out of their homes (it's well documented to have happened) is ethnic cleansing. And not allowing people to return to their homes is also ethnic cleansing. Also, please don't insult my intelligence by pretending that people returning to their homes are immigrants.

It has held - against international law  - Palestinian majority territories for decades while oppressing the locals.

It has not held Palestinian-majority territories against international law. One can argue about the propriety of its hold on the Golan, but there is no recognized state with any claim to territories within the former Mandate other than Israel itself.

The Mandate has not been operative since 1948.

Yes, this is how decolonization works. The Mandate came to an end and Israel is its legal successor entity.

Absolutely not. Israel has never been recognized as the legal successor of the Mandate.

And do you know what decolonization would be? Giving independence to the Arab lands conquered by Britain in WWI. Israel would never have existed without British colonialism.

Israel has no rights under that Mandate (and good for them, because the Mandate also provided for respecting the rights of the Palestinians). No country has ever recognized Israel's right to any claim to the West Bank and in fact Israel has refused to make such a claim because then they'd have to treat the local Palestinians as citizens.

Yes, but the thing is that it belongs to Israel under international law and Israel has never renounced its claim; its final status remains pending a peace agreement. But there is actually no generally recognized existing entity other than Israel that has a claim to it under international law (although there is a partially-recognized Palestinian state, also with ill-defined boundaries); this is why the occupation is legal.

Israel hasn't renounced its claim because it doesn't have one.

Instead they have held the West Bank as a military occupation and massively violated the provisions of military occupations in international law (most obviously by allowing their citizens to settle there).

Right, so they have a claim to the area under international law and since they control the immigration policy they can let their citizens live there, and in fact some of the circumstances in which they’ve denied that right to their citizens actually are violations of international law. My main problem with the Israeli state is that they are far too hostile towards the settlers, in ways that should not be permitted. This pales next to the existence of Palestinian liberationism but ultimately there is a set of crimes the state will have to pay for.

Absolutely not. Israel holds Palestine under military law (this is how they justify trying Palestinians in military courts, for example) and under international law, an occupying power must not settle its own citizens in occupied territory. If Israel were to annex the West Bank, this would be different but then Israel would have to actually treat the Palestinians equally.

Is that what you call the moral high ground?

…yes, I already said that. I think not recognizing the overwhelming moral superiority of the Israeli side is preposterous and comically blind.

A country that would never have existed without ethnic cleansing and which claims that it needs to indefinitely hold millions under blockade or under occupation for its security can't hold the moral high ground, it can merely claim to be the lesser evil. Only someone who assumes that Palestinians deserve less rights than Israelis in principle can support such views.

Yeah, I mean, I have made it very clear that my position is that Palestinian liberationism should not exist at all; foreign support for it should not exist at all; and the goal should be to get the Palestinian people to a point of cultural development where they celebrate and revel in its demise. I think the movement is cartoonishly evil and if North Korea attacked the Palestinian liberationists they would also hold the moral high ground; my opinion of this entire political tendency is very low. Just in this conversation I have compared it to apartheid and Nazism; my point is that extreme violence is justified in destroying it and there can be peace only when its former adherents and international allies recognize the totality of its evil, depravity, and unjustifiability.

Foreign support for a two state solution exists because the alternative - the one-state solution - is even less likely to ever work. For one, Israel has decried such a solution as being de-facto Palestinian supremacy. The Palestinian people might celebrate the end of a two state solution if they get equal rights with Israelis, but Israel is never realistically going to allow that.

That the Palestinians have also committed many terrible crimes against Israel over the years doesn't make Israel righteous.

And what does a "reasonable" person want to happen with the Palestinians if "liberationism" is unreasonable? Expulsion or apartheid?

The solution is post-apartheid: Palestinian liberationist organizations like Fatah and Hamas, like the apartheid National Party before them, should enter a coalition with the Israeli state as its junior partners and act in good faith towards Zionism and the furtherance of the goals of the Israeli state. The alternative is the fate of the National Socialist Party in Germany — nonexistence.

The Germans and white South Africans still exist, but the goals which their governments worked for have been utterly proscribed and cast out of the souls of the people living there. This is what any moral person demands of Palestinian leadership: the total abandonment of their current goals and deliberate action to aid those they have been fighting against. Also to feel sincere happiness about this outcome and to celebrate it for generations.

So you're arguing for a one state solution where everyone has equal rights, which is what happened in South Africa after the fall of the Apartheid regime? Good for your if this is true. As difficult as making it work, it would be better than the present situation.

Yes, but I think to have that happen would require enormous changes in people’s souls. These are not impossible and have happened before, but the current circumstances are such that I really do not expect them.

I think both sides recognizing that the others have just as much right to the land and just as worthy of having basic rights there would be a good start.

[GMantis]

Why should maintaining a Jewish majority even be a factor? Nobody cared about maintaining a white majority in Rhodesia or South Africa. Israel should be held to the exact same standard.

Israel is not a colony. Israel is a nation run by its indigenous people. You will never disperse or overrun them again.

The Palestinians are indigenous to the area but were forced out by Israeli settlers during Nakba.

the Palestinian identity is a 20th century construct and a lot of modern day Palestinians are descended from people that migrated to the area in the late 19th and early 20th century, the development created by Jewish pioneers ironically contributed to that.

The first claim is completely irrelevant - it doesn't matter whether there was a specific Palestinian identity, the people living there still were indigenous. The second is an outright lie - there is no evidence of any significant Arab emigration to Palestine in this period. It's telling that Israeli propaganda has to resort to such preposterous arguments to deny the rights of the Palestinians.

[GMantis]

To highlight the barbaric scale of destruction in Gaza, nearly 70% of all homes there are either destroyed or damaged. Yes, 70%.

Let's be clear about what is happening.

Hamas chose to invade Israel for the distinct purpose of........the kidnap, murder, rape, beheading and burning of families including women and children.

Choose your action. Choose your consequences.

Do you just ever like...acknowledge the 50+ years of occupation, colonization, and economic repression of Palestine or do you just not care?

This is the most disgusting and open lie pushed by the pro-Palestine faction: that Palestine has no choice but to respond to "the occupation" with terror and radical Islam. In reality, the occupation exists because Palestine keeps choosing terror. In reality, peoples all over the world have dealt with land losses and population transfers, and have not responded by electing terrorists, teaching their children to be martyrs, and starting suicidal wars over and over again. Palestinian culture is deeply sick, and is egged on by the rest of the world and the UN, who affirm the lie that "they have no choice".

In reality, no Israeli government has ever committed to ending the occupation under any condition. There was no significant violence in the Palestinian territories between 1967 and 1987 and yet the Israeli government refused to even consider giving the Palestinians sovereignty. After the First Intifada forced Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, the Rabin government agreed to give them some self-rule, however the Palestinian state which they envisioned would not actually control its own borders or airspace, meaning that the occupation would continue under another name. Now under Netanyahu the Israeli government has openly stated that its objective is to permanently prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. So to claim that the occupation is there because of the terror is simply disingenuous - there will be an occupation regardless of what the Palestinians do.

And the Palestinians are hardly unique in not giving up their struggle for self-determination. How many people under colonial rule - because this is what Israel's rule in Palestine amounts to in practice - have given up the struggle for independence? So while one can certainly deplore Palestinian terrorism, it's preposterous to claim the Palestinians are somehow sick for not giving up their desire for self-determination.

[GMantis]

There was no significant violence in the Palestinian territories between 1967 and 1987 and yet the Israeli government refused to even consider giving the Palestinians sovereignty.

There was plenty of significant violence in other places against Israelis and Jews, including in Israel itself. Including many hostage-takings.

So basically any Palestinian violence against Israel and Jews anywhere in the world is justification for the denial of Palestinian sovereignty? You have effectively reiterated my point - if Israel will end the occupation only under the impossible condition that no Palestinian will ever be a threat to any Israelis, then this means that in practice that they don't ever plan to end the occupation.

[GMantis]

So basically any Palestinian violence against Israel and Jews anywhere in the world is justification for the denial of Palestinian sovereignty? You have effectively reiterated my point - if Israel will end the occupation only under the impossible condition that no Palestinian will ever be a threat to any Israelis, then this means that in practice that they don't ever plan to end the occupation.

I was merely pointing out that your statement was incorrect. Indeed, that 1970s violence was frequently done by organisations under the PLO's umbrella or at least with their approval.

We're currently a long way off from even a possible condition i.e. a Palestinian state would not be a basing point for organisations to attack Israel.

@Pericles: Yes, Palestinians have legitimate security needs - this war has given a pretext for armed violence against civilians in the West Bank by settlers, which is just as wrong.

The PLO was based outside Palestine, so in effect you're arguing that Palestine should not be allowed sovereignty because a foreign organization was threatening Israel, so the Palestinians within Palestine could do nothing to stop its activities, meaning that the occupation wasn't in fact carried because of actions of the inhabitants of Palestine.

As for your claim that we're far off from even a possible condition, you're wrong: we're never going to reach that condition since an independent Palestinian state could always be a potential point for organization to attack Israel. The only way for Israel to prevent this would be for them control the borders of this Palestinian state, ie to de-facto continue the occupation. Therefore Israel's demands to remove any possibility of Palestine being a base against Israel is an obvious indication of the fact that Israel doesn't ever plan to allow the formation of an independent Palestinian state.

Regarding legitimate security needs, an obvious one is to not be under constant interference in their daily life by a foreign power. Unlike Israel's nebulous and unfulfilled security needs, this is something entirely within the power and obligation of Israel to carry out - by ending the occupation and removing the illegal settlers.

[GMantis]

There was no significant violence in the Palestinian territories between 1967 and 1987 and yet the Israeli government refused to even consider giving the Palestinians sovereignty.

...have you heard of the Munich Olympics massacre?

Yes, but I don't believe in collective punishment. Particularly in the case where the bombing was organized by people outside Palestine, so even the argument that the occupation was needed to stop terror was invalid.

[GMantis]

To highlight the barbaric scale of destruction in Gaza, nearly 70% of all homes there are either destroyed or damaged. Yes, 70%.

Let's be clear about what is happening.

Hamas chose to invade Israel for the distinct purpose of........the kidnap, murder, rape, beheading and burning of families including women and children.

Choose your action. Choose your consequences.

Do you just ever like...acknowledge the 50+ years of occupation, colonization, and economic repression of Palestine or do you just not care?

This is the most disgusting and open lie pushed by the pro-Palestine faction: that Palestine has no choice but to respond to "the occupation" with terror and radical Islam. In reality, the occupation exists because Palestine keeps choosing terror. In reality, peoples all over the world have dealt with land losses and population transfers, and have not responded by electing terrorists, teaching their children to be martyrs, and starting suicidal wars over and over again. Palestinian culture is deeply sick, and is egged on by the rest of the world and the UN, who affirm the lie that "they have no choice".

In reality, no Israeli government has ever committed to ending the occupation under any condition. There was no significant violence in the Palestinian territories between 1967 and 1987 and yet the Israeli government refused to even consider giving the Palestinians sovereignty.

There was no declaration of Palestinian independence until 1988, so sovereignty was not what was being asked for; instead there was a negative anti-Zionist demand.

The PLO did in fact proclaim as its goal an independent Palestinian state. Of course they demanded all of historical Palestine, but it's not as if Israel showed any willingness to compromise either. All the Israeli governments in this period explicitly denied the rights of the Palestinians to have their own state. See for example, Golda Meir with her insistence that there were no Palestinians or the Likud party which outright declared that only Israeli sovereignty would exist between the river and the sea.

After the First Intifada forced Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians the Rabin government agreed to give them some self-rule, however the Palestinian state which they envisioned would not actually control its own borders or airspace, meaning that the occupation would continue under another name. Now under Netanyahu the Israeli government has openly stated that its objective is to permanently prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. So to claim that the occupation is there because of the terror is simply disingenuous - there will be an occupation regardless of what the Palestinians do.

The Israeli demand has always been for a Palestinian nationalism which is not anti-Zionist; that is, one which does not have as a goal changing Israel's immigration policy. This is a perfectly reasonable demand -- democratic and authoritarian countries routinely enact immigration policies their neighbors dislike, and for that matter democratic and authoritarian countries routinely prevent 'expellees' from returning -- but one that Palestinian nationalists have been unable to meet, because, one suspects, the terminal goal is not Palestine but the nonexistence of Israel. The occupation must obviously continue until a Palestinian nationalism emerges which is not anti-Zionist; a prerequisite for this is probably the destruction of the Palestinian movement abroad, which does things like funding anti-Zionist education or pressuring governments to hold anti-Zionist stances. Hamas would not rule Gaza if not for the UNRWA.

Not going to go into the whole question of the right of return (though of course Israel's position isn't nearly as reasonable as you make it out to be, starting with labeling the descendants of the people expelled by Israel "immigrants") since it doesn't really disprove my argument: even if the Palestinians accepted this condition, Israel has insisted that the Palestine  they would allow to exist is one whose borders were controlled by Israel, ie for a Palestinian state controlled de-facto by Israel. The only Israeli leader who came even close to abandoning this demand was Ehud Barak after the failure of Camp David and at a time when his government was fallen, so he arguably had no mandate to reach an agreement.

And the Palestinians are hardly unique in not giving up their struggle for self-determination. How many people under colonial rule - because this is what Israel's rule in Palestine amounts to in practice - have given up the struggle for independence? So while one can certainly deplore Palestinian terrorism, it's preposterous to claim the Palestinians are somehow sick for not giving up their desire for self-determination.

I mean, 'colonial rule' has a very specific meaning and Palestine does not meet it. In terms of 'how many people have given up on a struggle for independence'...objectively lots? This happened in Khalistan and Biafra and Katanga and Ambazonia. But this is besides the point because most of the Israeli political system is on board with a Palestinian state in theory, so long as it is not anti-Zionist.

In fact Palestine meets the definition perfectly. It's a territory controlled by Israel, but ruled separately and under different laws from Israel's main territory. The presence of the autonomous Palestinian territory doesn't change this fact - after all, India had the principle states, but no one denies that India was a colony. Similarly the fact that it's adjacent to Israeli territory is not relevant either - see for example Central Asia, definitely considered a colony of Tsarist Russia. 

As for your examples, none of these were colonies - they tried to break or did break away from the states in which they were incorporated - and their independence efforts ended with their re-incorporation in the country of which they were part (with methods, particularly in Biafra, that I imagine even the US wouldn't swallow if Israel tried to carry out). The major difference with the Palestinians is that Israel doesn't want to incorporate them, yet proposes to continue ruling them as a de-facto colony. And the number of colonized people who've voluntarily remained under the ruler of the colonial ruler is short indeed - not to mention that their conditions are incomparably better than the ones under which the Palestinians are ruled. For example, the inhabitants of all current dependent territories have the free right to move to the ruling country -  something Israel would never allow.

[GMantis]

heres the solution, make the UK sort this out. they got us into this mess, they can fix the mess that they started

That's a bit of a stretch. Like yes, if the British government in the 1930s hadn't pandered to Arab xenophobia and restricted Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany from seeking refuge in the Levant, then far more Jews would have survived and ended up in Israel, and it is unlikely that a Palestinian state would have ever been considered viable. But any other colonial administrator like the Ottomans would have probably made the same decision that the UK did there.

And if Britain had actually self-determination in the Middle East in 1918 rather than turning the region into a number of a de facto colonies, the resulting independent state (or states) would never have allowed Jewish immigration to the level that an Israeli state was ever viable, avoiding the whole conflict in the first place.

[GMantis]

If the West Bank were formally annexed then by definition it wouldn't be composed of "reservations", whatever that even means. I suspect the likely route they'd take in the event of proceeding with annexation is allowing some people there to gain Israeli citizenship but with restrictions, much like Latvia's restrictions on their Russian population gaining citizenship.

This would never work. As dubious as the Latvian actions against the local Russians are, they at least have the excuse of the exclusion of citizenship being restricted only to immigrants (and their descendants) who arrived in Latvia while the country was occupied. In Israel's case, the Palestinians would be people becoming inhabitants through the conquest of foreign territory, in other words without any choice of their own. To deny them citizenship, would be undoubtedly Apartheid with no ambiguities possible and it would be universally seen as such abroad. Israel's image would be irretrievably tarnished and there would be immense pressure for the Palestinians to be granted citizenship. For this reason, Israel will never take this step, rather continuing the current de facto one state solution, which combines effective Israeli control over the Palestinian territories with no obligation towards the Israeli government. Meanwhile, they can continue to pretend that the situation is a temporary one and will be resolved as soon as the Palestinian come to the negotiating table. And considering the endlessly indulgent US attitude towards Israel, they have good reason to believe that they can maintain the status quo indefinitely.

Not at all.

I'd say the Palestinian Arab population had about as much right to a state as the Sudetenland Germans did.

Bohemia/Moravia: colonization many csnturies ago resulted in a substantial German population existing there; they were unhappy when the native population reasserted independence in the 20th century; they partitioned the state on arbitrary lines to ensure that they had at least part of it but this only served to weaken the Czechoslovak state and it was obviously only a first step towards the German desires of full annexation

The analogies with the desire of the Arab states to conquer Israel is obvious. When a desire for national autonomy is directly linked to imperialism you have to ask questions about to what extent said desire should be supported.

There are so many things wrong with this argument that one doesn't know where to start.

First, the Czechs were themselves invaders who displaced the ancestors of the Germans in the 6th century. So if anyone should have been denied self-determination, it should have been them, not the Sudeten Germans.

Second, even if we accept the Czech as the indigenous inhabitants, they at least lived there. The vast majority of Jews arrived in Palestine only a scant two decades before Israeli independence. It would be preposterous to regard the two situations as comparable.

Third, if self-determination was denied to the Sudeten Germans, they were at least citizenship of Czechoslovakia and equal treatment. This Israel can never allow. In fact, if it had been implemented in 1948 it would have lead to an Arab majority in Palestine. Therefore, even if only by necessity the Arabs would have to have at least some right to self-determination.

Fourth, the whole idea that some abstract "ingenuousness" would deny self-determination to some people while granting it to others is fundamentally unjust. Even leaving aside the difficulty of determining who came first, this principle essentially gives certain groups less rights solely on the principle of their ancestry. In other words, this is a form of collective punishment - something abhorred by all civilized countries. By the way, this is true of the Sudeten Germans as well. Even Woodrow Wilson who promoted the principle of self determination remarked later that he wouldn't have given the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia if he knew how many Germans lived there. That Hitler later abused the demands of the Sudeten German doesn't mean that they were illegitimate.

You know, I've wondered this question myself -- what if Palestine became a democracy after WWI instead of a British colony? On the one hand, both polling and reports from that era confirm that the Palestinian Arabs were overwhelmingly against Jewish immigration, but on the other hand Jews were already 10-15% of the population, including majorities in their own settlements, and were significantly wealthier; in a real democracy they would've had significant influence and been single-issue pro-immigration voters. Immigration is moderately hard for democracies to stop once it starts, particularly if you have communities colluding with it (...particularly since it tends to raise tax revenue), and if a two-party system emerged then you could very easily see one of the sides making common cause with Zionist immigration. It's not like Americans weren't very hostile to Latin American immigration in the 1990s, but it continued. (And this kind of thing does happen in very poor countries too: consider Zimbabwean or Somalian migration to modern South Africa, which the central government also struggles to stop.)

There's also just the greater global situation -- Iraq became independent earlier than other Middle Eastern states but joined the Axis and was reconquered by Britain in 1941. In the situation where something like that happens you could see Zionist rule emerge earlier (and actually be overtly Kagame-style minoritarian, in a way that the real 1947-1949 was calculated to avoid).

The depressing varieties of this are that it could easily fall to some populist dictator like Nasser (who might have just been authoritarian enough to stop immigration), or alternatively eventual Lebanonization and civil war. But the thing is that by the end of WWI there were enough Zionists in Palestine that they were going to be a significant part of the political calculus no matter what.

It's very unlikely that anything of what you describe what happen. Even the most indulgent democracy would act against the level of immigration that would be needed to raise the Jewish population to a level where they could establish their own state (it would be the equivalent of 160 million people immigrating to the US in 20 years). Especially if the immigrants were obviously trying to create their own state.

In any case, it's rather likely that absent European imperialism Palestine would be just part of a larger Arab state, making Jewish immigrants managing to any influence even less plausible.

No? Israel declared independence as the legal successor to the British Mandate of Palestine, and then it was attacked by a coalition of neighboring states.

This claim might not be as outrageous as some of your other statements, but it's certainly annoying in its sheer separation from reality. No one recognizes Israel as the successor of the British Mandate of Palestine. But more importantly, there is no legal mechanism by which Israel could possibly claim to be such a successor. The Palestinian mandate expired without a successor being appointed by the British who were administering the territory. In fact, they had explicitly given up the right to by asking the UN to it instead. However, the partition plan was never implemented (and of course under that plan Israel could not even claim the entirety of its current recognize territory, let alone the whole of Palestine). So with the end of the Mandate the territory was left in a legal vacuum and in this situation Israel declared independence unilaterally. That Israel today is accepted as a sovereign state by most of the world is due to international consensus - the same consensus that gives them no right over the rest of the mandate territory.

Also, if Israel is the legal owner of the whole former Palestinian Mandate, doesn't that give some obligations towards the inhabitants there? After all, the Mandate established that the civil rights of native inhabitants would not be infringed. Or does Israel have only privileges and no responsibilities?

https://twitter.com/AmichaiChikli/status/1753376889232662889

This ridiculous comparison is a good indication of the true attitude of the majority of Israeli society. One that does not believe in any solution to the conflict but full Israeli dominance, where Palestinians have no rights but only obligations and where they might collectively be punished for the actions of some of them (despite this being considered blatant anti-semitism when used against Jews).

[GMantis]

B) The fact that more than half of the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine in 1948 were recent immigrants who immigrated there largely because of the benefits of a Jewish presence substantially undermines the notion that all or even most of the Arabs of 1948 were indigenous peoples of the region, or people who were threatened or cheated by the Jewish presence, or people who had the land stolen from them by immigrating Jews.

Not even most Israeli historians would subscribe today to such a ridiculous falsification of history. Even the Jewish Virtual Library which you yourself cited, only claims that 37% of immigrants during the Mandate period were Arabs, which would mean that about 216 thousand of about 1324 Palestinians in 1947 were immigrants. In reality, the number of immigrants was much lower - 33 thousands officially, with an undetermined number of illegal immigrants, but hardly likely to be many times higher than the legal immigration. Also there not insignificant emigration from Palestine. An estimate that is widely accepted is that 4% of the Arabs in 1931 were immigrants, so all in all, it's unlikely that even 10% of the Arabs living in Palestine in 1948 immigrated there during the Mandate period.

Basically, this pernicious propaganda version of history says more about the people who created it. Certainly nothing could serve as a better example of projection, but it's also notable how divorced from reality it is. It seems indeed true that Israel has so long been shielded from the consequences of their actions that their propagandists aren't even trying to build a believable narrative.

[GMantis]

Multiple charities have announced that they're suspending deliveries after the attack on the WCK convoy:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/charities-halt-gaza-operations-after-israeli-drones-kill-aid-workers

So I guess that attack worked out as intended.

[GMantis]

Multiple charities have announced that they're suspending deliveries after the attack on the WCK convoy:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/charities-halt-gaza-operations-after-israeli-drones-kill-aid-workers

So I guess that attack worked out as intended.

Let's not jump the gun and assume that was the intent here. While I do have quite a few issues with how Israel has conducted itself, I doubt that it's official IDF doctrine to target aid workers.

That said, I doubt this was just some random soldier. The order for strikes like this would have to come for middle-ranking officers at the lowest, as would the follow-up strikes, which are far less defensible.

Very reasonable advice, but unfortunately based on the incorrect assumption that the "gun" will go off. Israel won't allow an independent investigation and if the attack was deliberate, their internal investigation will of course "prove" otherwise. So we're left with the publicly available evidence and that, along with Israel's obvious motive (after all, they wanted to block the supply of food to Gaza from the start), points very strongly towards a deliberate attack

[GMantis]

https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1781736713720565847?t=0AhANB3Fs_eT397r-x56...

I guess the revelation that Blinken had done nothing under similar circumstances, despite being advised to do so, has prompted him to finally take action...