Israel-Gaza war

[Wiswylfen]

Could any of the people changing their avatars and/or usernames in support of Israel despite having no connection to it explain their reasoning for me? Doing it for Gaza makes some sense if you believe that Israel is committing a genocide (see also: the outpouring of support in the form of such changes for the Armenians over the past few years). But there’s neither that nor a ‘plucky little Belgium’ sort of thing going for it. Anyway: please?

Israel supporters would say that Israel was the victim of a genocidal attack on 10/7, so it’s the same logic.

Sure, that makes sense. At which point they would also be counting the Israeli intervention in Gaza as genocidal. So then it becomes a matter of supporting a government that is, by such logic, committing genocide against a people who did not (unless by such logic 9/11 was a legitimate military attack against legitimate military targets) (so "you started it!", if someone thought that was an excuse, wouldn't work anyway) during a war against a group that did. On second thought, I don't think it makes sense at all.

They don't count the Israeli intervention in Gaza as genocidal though.

I'm being generous and assuming consistency in their logic rather than it being an afterthought to supporting a particular 'team' because ??.

Hamas clearly states and acts on its intentions to kill Jews. Israel is fighting to eliminate Hamas whilst protecting civilian lives as much as possible. It's not even close to moral equivalency between the two. Accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians is like accusing the WW2 Allies of genocide against Germans...

We did. After the end of the war, two million Germans were killed and many millions more displaced without regard for whether or not they had supported the Nazis. There is little point arguing over whether or not Israel is 'protecting civilian lives' (or even attempting to) when that is clearly not the case and I doubt even Israel's supporters sincerely believe it (though there do seem to be some true believers, generally those who will also go so far as to defend the murder of released hostages surrendering--if that's the right word--to the IDF).

At that point it becomes a question of intent. And it is a perfectly legitimate point of view to look at the statements public and private of the government and military and conclude that, yes, Israel is in fact committing a genocide.

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

This is another one of those linguistic games where, similar to "genocide", you guys are going to speak out of one side of your mouth to say that "human rights abuse" means the wanton slaughter of innocents, torture, rape, and whatever other heinous and deplorable crime you want to accuse Israel of committing, but then out the other side of your mouth you'll say that, like, Israel refusing to release aid packages of food on one occasion (regardless of context) is a "human rights abuse."  And the point is to get us to say "well yes that does meet the technical definition of a human rights abuse, so Israel is committing a human rights abuse" so you can go "AHA!  You admit we were right all along, Israel IS committing human rights abuses!" where now you're using "human rights abuse" to refer to the heinous crimes Israel isn't committing, but which you're grouping under the same definition.

Again, again, again, I have been saying this again and again and again, over and over again, once more, again and again, throughout this thread.  Can we please stop with the pseudo-lawyer crap where you guys are just trying to twist Israel's actions to meet some definition of some loaded thought-terminating term or another?  Can you talk about what Israel is actually doing?  Can you discuss those activities on their actual merits rather than bickering about whether or not they meet some definition of some term that, under some other circumstances, can be used to indicate that a heinous crime has been committed?  Can you just say "Israel is doing X and that's bad because Y" rather than trying to hide behind layer after layer of obfuscation and dictionary game?

[GoTfan]

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

This is another one of those linguistic games where, similar to "genocide", you guys are going to speak out of one side of your mouth to say that "human rights abuse" means the wanton slaughter of innocents, torture, rape, and whatever other heinous and deplorable crime you want to accuse Israel of committing, but then out the other side of your mouth you'll say that, like, Israel refusing to release aid packages of food on one occasion (regardless of context) is a "human rights abuse."  And the point is to get us to say "well yes that does meet the technical definition of a human rights abuse, so Israel is committing a human rights abuse" so you can go "AHA!  You admit we were right all along, Israel IS committing human rights abuses!" where now you're using "human rights abuse" to refer to the heinous crimes Israel isn't committing, but which you're grouping under the same definition.

Again, again, again, I have been saying this again and again and again, over and over again, once more, again and again, throughout this thread.  Can we please stop with the pseudo-lawyer crap where you guys are just trying to twist Israel's actions to meet some definition of some loaded thought-terminating term or another?  Can you talk about what Israel is actually doing?  Can you discuss those activities on their actual merits rather than bickering about whether or not they meet some definition of some term that, under some other circumstances, can be used to indicate that a heinous crime has been committed?  Can you just say "Israel is doing X and that's bad because Y" rather than trying to hide behind layer after layer of obfuscation and dictionary game?

We have people on this thread advocating for starving civilians.

I have not once claimed what's happening is a genocide because it's a loaded term that is thrown around way too freely, but surely we can admit that Israel has been too free in its use of weapons and that some of the statements made by mainstream Israeli leaders are quite alarming, right?

Surely calling for some restraint is not anti-Israel, right?

[GeneralMacArthur]

AFE, you're from Chicago, right?

Suppose it happened to be a matter of public knowledge that Brandon Johnson spanked his child once (Thing A).

Now suppose I was trying to make the argument that the City of Chicago is engaged in female genital mutilation and sexual violence against children (Thing B).

Suppose at some point I started using "The City of Chicago commits violence against children!" and by "violence against children" everyone knew I was referring to my tinpot claims that Chicago rapes little girls and cuts out their vulvas.  And before long I was running around the forum trying to get everyone else to agree with  me that Chicago "commits violence against children."

Now suppose you disagreed with me.  And I came up to you and said "well you agree that Brandon Johnson spanks his kid right?"  and then I showed you the United Nations Study on Violence Against Children:

all forms of violence against children, in all settings, including all corporal punishment, harmful traditional practices, such as early and forced marriages, female genital mutilation and so-called honour crimes, sexual violence, and torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

and then I said, "spanking is corporal punishment, so according to the United Nations, the mayor of Chicago is committing violence against children."

and started trying to get you to agree with this statement.

You can see what I'm doing here right?  I'm trying to abuse the fact that the definition of "violence against children" includes Thing A (relatively innocuous) as well as Thing B (heinous and deplorable), by getting you to agree that my target does Thing A, so I can then use the definition as an obfuscation tool to pretend I've acquired agreement that my target is doing Thing B.

[Wiswylfen]

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

This is another one of those linguistic games where, similar to "genocide", you guys are going to speak out of one side of your mouth to say that "human rights abuse" means the wanton slaughter of innocents, torture, rape, and whatever other heinous and deplorable crime you want to accuse Israel of committing, but then out the other side of your mouth you'll say that, like, Israel refusing to release aid packages of food on one occasion (regardless of context) is a "human rights abuse."  And the point is to get us to say "well yes that does meet the technical definition of a human rights abuse, so Israel is committing a human rights abuse" so you can go "AHA!  You admit we were right all along, Israel IS committing human rights abuses!" where now you're using "human rights abuse" to refer to the heinous crimes Israel isn't committing, but which you're grouping under the same definition.

Again, again, again, I have been saying this again and again and again, over and over again, once more, again and again, throughout this thread.  Can we please stop with the pseudo-lawyer crap where you guys are just trying to twist Israel's actions to meet some definition of some loaded thought-terminating term or another?  Can you talk about what Israel is actually doing?  Can you discuss those activities on their actual merits rather than bickering about whether or not they meet some definition of some term that, under some other circumstances, can be used to indicate that a heinous crime has been committed?  Can you just say "Israel is doing X and that's bad because Y" rather than trying to hide behind layer after layer of obfuscation and dictionary game?

Setting aside the fact that all of those count as human rights abuses ("grouping under the same definition", as you say) and nobody can seriously deny that Israel is committing the first two, not that it deserves to be set aside, linguistic games? I think definitions are pretty important things, actually. Otherwise you throw serious (hardly 'thought-terminating' in my opinion) terms like 'genocide' around without actually understanding what it means and making bizarre exceptions that don't even have "I like them, so, you know" going for them.

[patzer]

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

Pretty much all war involves some wrongdoing as it's always the case that some civilians get caught up in the crossfire, and so on.

In the case of this war, however, there's a massive amount of focus on criticism of Israel because Israel is always held to a double standard. For example, Egypt forcibly prevented refugees from leaving, leaving a higher death rate because they're in the middle of a warzone, but this is twisted to be seen as Israel's fault. Hamas encourages civilians to endanger themselves by staying in areas with evacuation orders whilst Israel tries to warn civilians away from areas of fighting– but again this is somehow Israel's fault. Hamas started the war off by carrying out the largest indiscriminate massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and yet too many people internationally would want Israel to cease fighting against them.

I reject the notion that just because Israel's handling of the war hasn't managed to protect literally every civilian (as is the case with every significant war in history), the anti-Israel crowd is somehow right. No, it's pretty clear to me that the arguments against supporting Israel to finish conducting the war as it sees fit are just a thinly veiled rehash of antisemitic tropes which have been around for centuries– always cast blame on the Jewish side even if someone else is more at fault, etc.

Sadly I've been convinced in the last few months that antisemitism will never go away, given how much it seems to be resurging now.

[Silent Hunter]

This does not mean that Israel is without fault in other areas. Their actions with regards to West Bank settlements are particularly egregious.

[Vosem]

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

No -- I think I've acknowledged historical crimes elsewhere in this thread. The reason I think this action from the Senate is heinous is that I think supporting Israel's current military campaign in Gaza is such an obviously correct action morally that trying to muddy the waters about it is supremely unhelpful. (In the thread about continuing US foreign aid to Israel I think I was significantly less enthusiastic about it than most pro-Israel posters, but I noted that certainly aid should not be cut off in response to Israel's actions during this conflict, because those are exactly the actions we should want governments to take in response to organizations that use strategies like Hamas's.)

The reason for that is that many militant groups have attempted 'elevate the body count for clicks', and a world where that successfully delivers sympathy is a world where every future war anywhere is much more lethal. Sympathy for Gaza in this war directly results in a near-future world which is much worse in many ways, and exactly for this reason it shouldn't be treated as a legitimate or respectable opinion.

(More generally, beyond this, I think Zionism is ideologically good and I think more religions, ethnicities, and ideologies should try to set up 'homelands' on similar lines, but I think my stance here would be the same if Israelis were not the descendants of recent immigrants. That does make it seem more rather than less sympathetic to me, which I think is a reversal of the take of most people in this thread.)

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

This is another one of those linguistic games where, similar to "genocide", you guys are going to speak out of one side of your mouth to say that "human rights abuse" means the wanton slaughter of innocents, torture, rape, and whatever other heinous and deplorable crime you want to accuse Israel of committing, but then out the other side of your mouth you'll say that, like, Israel refusing to release aid packages of food on one occasion (regardless of context) is a "human rights abuse."  And the point is to get us to say "well yes that does meet the technical definition of a human rights abuse, so Israel is committing a human rights abuse" so you can go "AHA!  You admit we were right all along, Israel IS committing human rights abuses!" where now you're using "human rights abuse" to refer to the heinous crimes Israel isn't committing, but which you're grouping under the same definition.

Again, again, again, I have been saying this again and again and again, over and over again, once more, again and again, throughout this thread.  Can we please stop with the pseudo-lawyer crap where you guys are just trying to twist Israel's actions to meet some definition of some loaded thought-terminating term or another?  Can you talk about what Israel is actually doing?  Can you discuss those activities on their actual merits rather than bickering about whether or not they meet some definition of some term that, under some other circumstances, can be used to indicate that a heinous crime has been committed?  Can you just say "Israel is doing X and that's bad because Y" rather than trying to hide behind layer after layer of obfuscation and dictionary game?

We have people on this thread advocating for starving civilians.

I have not once claimed what's happening is a genocide because it's a loaded term that is thrown around way too freely, but surely we can admit that Israel has been too free in its use of weapons and that some of the statements made by mainstream Israeli leaders are quite alarming, right?

Surely calling for some restraint is not anti-Israel, right?

No, because of Hamas's tactics calling for restraint is not just anti-Israel but anti-human. That's why I keep saying the scandal is not the conduct of Israel's campaign, but the fact that ~192 countries besides Israel (your count may vary depending on exact definition) have not joined the effort and also bombed Gaza.

[Vosem]

Right; the aid is being packaged with fuel which is permitting Hamas to continue its war. We should not permit any authorities except the IDF and open, explicit collaborators to distribute any aid in the Gaza Strip, and it's horrible that we have an international community which is permitting shipments of aid to continue.

https://twitter.com/HeTows/status/1744613147028185501

Instead of just families of hostage victims, we should build the world where eight billion people, of all races and religions, block the path and prevent anything from entering not distributed by the IDF; where the figure of the useful fool who calls for supplies to be sent to the enemies of humanity has been completely eliminated from the human consciousness. And the happy thing is that I think that really is the world that is very slowly being built, but it's disappointing to be reminded that it's nowhere near built yet.

You are a uniquely evil person. I wonder what Gazan civilians did in your eyes to be forced to starve to death. Then again, it's not out of the ordinary for you.

I don't actually think he's evil. His Soviet upbringing mixed with Randian ethics has just led to a completely upside down view of existence that I will never understand. He really, really thinks he's doing the right thing. I can relate to almost every poster here in some way, but not Vosem. I find him very interesting, but I don't waste my time trying to have conversations with him as there's no point.

Isn't the point of discussing politics discussing it with the people you disagree with most? Might just be another thing where we differ, I guess.

Also, my upbringing was very much post-Soviet (strongly informed by the history of the Soviet Union; rise, triumph, decline, and fall), not Soviet

[Indy Texas]

(More generally, beyond this, I think Zionism is ideologically good and I think more religions, ethnicities, and ideologies should try to set up 'homelands' on similar lines, but I think my stance here would be the same if Israelis were not the descendants of recent immigrants. That does make it seem more rather than less sympathetic to me, which I think is a reversal of the take of most people in this thread.)

Except Palestinians, for some reason.

[Vosem]

(More generally, beyond this, I think Zionism is ideologically good and I think more religions, ethnicities, and ideologies should try to set up 'homelands' on similar lines, but I think my stance here would be the same if Israelis were not the descendants of recent immigrants. That does make it seem more rather than less sympathetic to me, which I think is a reversal of the take of most people in this thread.)

Except Palestinians, for some reason.

What would make you think that?

[GeneralMacArthur]

(More generally, beyond this, I think Zionism is ideologically good and I think more religions, ethnicities, and ideologies should try to set up 'homelands' on similar lines, but I think my stance here would be the same if Israelis were not the descendants of recent immigrants. That does make it seem more rather than less sympathetic to me, which I think is a reversal of the take of most people in this thread.)

Except Palestinians, for some reason.

I don't agree with Vosem, but:

Do Palestinians consider themselves an "ethnicity" even today?  If you went back to 1924 and asked the Arabs living in Acre whether they considered themselves a wholly separate ethnicity from the Arabs living in Tyre, would they have said yes?  Would they also have said yes if you then asked them if they, concordantly, considered themselves the same ethnicity as the Arabs living in Gaza?  What if you asked Arabs living in Jericho whether they considered themselves a separate ethnicity from Arabs living in Amman?  After all, in the 19th century these were all part of the same administrative subregion within the Ottoman Empire.  Do ethnicities start and stop at the Sykes-Picot borders?

Is "Palestinianism" a distinct ideology?  Did "Palestinianism" exist before 1948?  Does the Palestinian ideology encompass anything more than the desire to conquer Israel, drive out the Jews and resettle the land?  In which case, if the Jews were all killed, would Palestinianism as an ideology continue to exist in a generation?  What, people want a country, therefore their desire for a country is a distinct ideology, and distinct ideologies deserve a homeland, so simply by wanting a country they deserve that country?

Certainly I don't think you would argue the Palestinians have a distinct religion from Egypt or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan.

If you were to ask me, I would say that Palestinians are just Arabs, mostly Sunni Muslim Arabs, and they already have plenty of states that are basically Sunni Arab ethnically monogamous theocracies:  Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, etc.  and I would further say that the concept of "Palestinians" as some wholly distinct and unique ethnicity deserving of their own unique state was created out of wholecloth in the 1950s as a rationalization for Palestinian nationalism, which itself was just a thin rationalization for the genocidal pursuits of the Arab states.  Furthermore I would say that "Palestinians are an ethnicity" is mostly a Western notion even today, as such a notion was subsumed by Pan-Arabism in the mid-century and by Pan-Islamism today.

Prior to the Six-Day War, Gaza was occupied and administered by Egypt, and the West Bank was officially part of Jordan after the 1950 annexation, done at the behest of Palestinian leaders.  In both cases, peoples freely moved within their states.  Nobody considered this to be ethnic cleansing or any other sort of travesty.  The Arabs in the parts of Egypt/Jordan that would later become Gaza and the West Bank did not by-and-large consider themselves to be occupied or oppressed peoples, denied a state representing their distinct and unique ethnicity.

...because of course they didn't!  At the time, West Bank Palestinians and Jordanians saw themselves as identical peoples, two parts of the whole -- and why not, since Jordan is the eastern half of Mandatory Palestine!

So please, tell me more about how the Palestinians are a unique ethnicity deserving of their own homeland in Israel.

[Vosem]

All ethnicities are made up in some sense, GeneralMacArthur. That nobody identified as Palestinian in 1924 doesn't mean that identifying as Palestinian in 2024 is invalid, or that there isn't a place for Palestinian nationalism. The fall of colonialism caused many new identities to emerge (and "Israeli" as an identity sort of presupposes that Zionism has already been successful).

The problem is anti-Zionism; it is saying that states are illegitimate if their inhabitants are not "indigenous" or if they are descended from migrants, or that attacks on those states are justified, or applying absolutely bizarre standards to argue that there is some right to independence from those states. The difference is that the original Zionists lobbied for changes to immigration policy (or changes to immigration enforcement policy) rather than attacking the British Empire, and certainly didn't use attacks calculated to increase the death toll in every war.

Palestinian nationalism is fine (and it's fine whether applied to Palestine or some other place; there are Little Palestines in Chicago and New Jersey). What isn't fine is violence or the denial of the authority of existing countries on completely deranged grounds. The consequence of this has been countries around the world gradually losing sympathy to the Palestinian movement, to the point that there are multiple countries which want to push Israel to forcibly resettle Gaza which shouldn't logically care about the conflict at all. The only immediate solution is the emergence of a Palestinian nationalism which is not anti-Zionist. Until that comes about I don't think there are really any scenarios (except ones involving world opinion becoming much more hostile to the Palestinians or sci-fi scenarios) where the occupation does not continue.

[kwabbit]

(More generally, beyond this, I think Zionism is ideologically good and I think more religions, ethnicities, and ideologies should try to set up 'homelands' on similar lines, but I think my stance here would be the same if Israelis were not the descendants of recent immigrants. That does make it seem more rather than less sympathetic to me, which I think is a reversal of the take of most people in this thread.)

Except Palestinians, for some reason.

I don't agree with Vosem, but:

Do Palestinians consider themselves an "ethnicity" even today?  If you went back to 1924 and asked the Arabs living in Acre whether they considered themselves a wholly separate ethnicity from the Arabs living in Tyre, would they have said yes?  Would they also have said yes if you then asked them if they, concordantly, considered themselves the same ethnicity as the Arabs living in Gaza?  What if you asked Arabs living in Jericho whether they considered themselves a separate ethnicity from Arabs living in Amman?  After all, in the 19th century these were all part of the same administrative subregion within the Ottoman Empire.  Do ethnicities start and stop at the Sykes-Picot borders?

Is "Palestinianism" a distinct ideology?  Did "Palestinianism" exist before 1948?  Does the Palestinian ideology encompass anything more than the desire to conquer Israel, drive out the Jews and resettle the land?  In which case, if the Jews were all killed, would Palestinianism as an ideology continue to exist in a generation?  What, people want a country, therefore their desire for a country is a distinct ideology, and distinct ideologies deserve a homeland, so simply by wanting a country they deserve that country?

Certainly I don't think you would argue the Palestinians have a distinct religion from Egypt or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan.

If you were to ask me, I would say that Palestinians are just Arabs, mostly Sunni Muslim Arabs, and they already have plenty of states that are basically Sunni Arab ethnically monogamous theocracies:  Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, etc.  and I would further say that the concept of "Palestinians" as some wholly distinct and unique ethnicity deserving of their own unique state was created out of wholecloth in the 1950s as a rationalization for Palestinian nationalism, which itself was just a thin rationalization for the genocidal pursuits of the Arab states.  Furthermore I would say that "Palestinians are an ethnicity" is mostly a Western notion even today, as such a notion was subsumed by Pan-Arabism in the mid-century and by Pan-Islamism today.

Prior to the Six-Day War, Gaza was occupied and administered by Egypt, and the West Bank was officially part of Jordan after the 1950 annexation, done at the behest of Palestinian leaders.  In both cases, peoples freely moved within their states.  Nobody considered this to be ethnic cleansing or any other sort of travesty.  The Arabs in the parts of Egypt/Jordan that would later become Gaza and the West Bank did not by-and-large consider themselves to be occupied or oppressed peoples, denied a state representing their distinct and unique ethnicity.

...because of course they didn't!  At the time, West Bank Palestinians and Jordanians saw themselves as identical peoples, two parts of the whole -- and why not, since Jordan is the eastern half of Mandatory Palestine!

So please, tell me more about how the Palestinians are a unique ethnicity deserving of their own homeland in Israel.

Isn't the answer that Israeli occupation led to the ethnogenesis of the Palestinian people? Maybe in 1948 all of the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine were just Arabs, but the Nakba (using the term for convenience) subjected those Arabs within I/P to an event that separated them from trans-Jordanians and Egyptians, and then in 1967 Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank further set them apart from Jordanians and Egyptians. Sure, they still are similar to other Arabs but there are many Arab states that are quite similar to each other and they meet the threshold to be their own nation. Palestinians are perhaps the most dissimilar in the Arab world because they do not have their own state and have formed their modern identity around their relationship to Israel, so if they were to become independent from Israel it's only natural for Palestine to be its own state. To extend this, if Sinai was still occupied by Israel I would wager that it would be part of a hypothetical Palestinian state and would not be viewed as something to be returned to Egypt, just as the West Bank wouldn't be returned to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.

[Comrade Funk]

People like Vosem don't consider military dictatorship in the West Bank or 20,000 dead women/children "violence" because Palestinian lives don't really matter to them. Just a statistic or a nuisance.

[Vosem]

(More generally, beyond this, I think Zionism is ideologically good and I think more religions, ethnicities, and ideologies should try to set up 'homelands' on similar lines, but I think my stance here would be the same if Israelis were not the descendants of recent immigrants. That does make it seem more rather than less sympathetic to me, which I think is a reversal of the take of most people in this thread.)

Except Palestinians, for some reason.

I don't agree with Vosem, but:

Do Palestinians consider themselves an "ethnicity" even today?  If you went back to 1924 and asked the Arabs living in Acre whether they considered themselves a wholly separate ethnicity from the Arabs living in Tyre, would they have said yes?  Would they also have said yes if you then asked them if they, concordantly, considered themselves the same ethnicity as the Arabs living in Gaza?  What if you asked Arabs living in Jericho whether they considered themselves a separate ethnicity from Arabs living in Amman?  After all, in the 19th century these were all part of the same administrative subregion within the Ottoman Empire.  Do ethnicities start and stop at the Sykes-Picot borders?

Is "Palestinianism" a distinct ideology?  Did "Palestinianism" exist before 1948?  Does the Palestinian ideology encompass anything more than the desire to conquer Israel, drive out the Jews and resettle the land?  In which case, if the Jews were all killed, would Palestinianism as an ideology continue to exist in a generation?  What, people want a country, therefore their desire for a country is a distinct ideology, and distinct ideologies deserve a homeland, so simply by wanting a country they deserve that country?

Certainly I don't think you would argue the Palestinians have a distinct religion from Egypt or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan.

If you were to ask me, I would say that Palestinians are just Arabs, mostly Sunni Muslim Arabs, and they already have plenty of states that are basically Sunni Arab ethnically monogamous theocracies:  Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, etc.  and I would further say that the concept of "Palestinians" as some wholly distinct and unique ethnicity deserving of their own unique state was created out of wholecloth in the 1950s as a rationalization for Palestinian nationalism, which itself was just a thin rationalization for the genocidal pursuits of the Arab states.  Furthermore I would say that "Palestinians are an ethnicity" is mostly a Western notion even today, as such a notion was subsumed by Pan-Arabism in the mid-century and by Pan-Islamism today.

Prior to the Six-Day War, Gaza was occupied and administered by Egypt, and the West Bank was officially part of Jordan after the 1950 annexation, done at the behest of Palestinian leaders.  In both cases, peoples freely moved within their states.  Nobody considered this to be ethnic cleansing or any other sort of travesty.  The Arabs in the parts of Egypt/Jordan that would later become Gaza and the West Bank did not by-and-large consider themselves to be occupied or oppressed peoples, denied a state representing their distinct and unique ethnicity.

...because of course they didn't!  At the time, West Bank Palestinians and Jordanians saw themselves as identical peoples, two parts of the whole -- and why not, since Jordan is the eastern half of Mandatory Palestine!

So please, tell me more about how the Palestinians are a unique ethnicity deserving of their own homeland in Israel.

Isn't the answer that Israeli occupation led to the ethnogenesis of the Palestinian people? Maybe in 1948 all of the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine were just Arabs, but the Nakba (using the term for convenience) subjected those Arabs within I/P to an event that separated them from trans-Jordanians and Egyptians, and then in 1967 Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank further set them apart from Jordanians and Egyptians. Sure, they still are similar to other Arabs but there are many Arab states that are quite similar to each other and they meet the threshold to be their own nation. Palestinians are perhaps the most dissimilar in the Arab world because they do not have their own state and have formed their modern identity around their relationship to Israel, so if they were to become independent from Israel it's only natural for Palestine to be its own state. To extend this, if Sinai was still occupied by Israel I would wager that it would be part of a hypothetical Palestinian state and would not be viewed as something to be returned to Egypt, just as the West Bank wouldn't be returned to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.

Your point about whether Sinai should be included or not is important, because it gets to the actual origin of Palestinian identity: when refugees fled in 1948, they were not granted citizenship in countries they fled to and were instead held apart as belonging to a place they no longer lived in. (Compare and contrast refugee flows in the Balkans in the 1990s, or India/Pakistan, or so on.) The worst offender here was Egypt, which maintained the border between Sinai and the section of Mandatory Palestine it controlled (the city of Gaza), and prohibited Gazans from moving to metropolitan Egypt in search of work. (Gaza remained horrifically under-developed until it was occupied by Israel, which built the infrastructure for the modern city which existed until a few months ago.) Of course, if you tell people "we will discriminate against you and your children because you are not authentic Syrians/Lebanese/Egyptians, you are actually Palestinians", then you will tend to believe this: the easiest way to convince people to belong to an identity is to persecute them for that reason.

Regardless, the Palestinian national movement is legitimate, because any people can have a legitimate national movement. Disputing territory with the Israeli state, in fact, is legitimate. What is not legitimate is anti-Zionism, and the negation of the Israelis' national movement. There is no particular reason that the Palestinian national movement particularly needs to be anti-Zionist; this only causes more war and destruction and is not replicated by other movements elsewhere. (I harp on Khalistan and Ambazonia and Biafra as examples of independence movements that post-colonial states destroyed, but none of those movements actually intended to wholly destroy the country they were breaking away from. Palestinian liberationism is a very uniquely evil thing.)

[GeneralMacArthur]

Isn't the answer that Israeli occupation led to the ethnogenesis of the Palestinian people? Maybe in 1948 all of the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine were just Arabs, but the Nakba (using the term for convenience) subjected those Arabs within I/P to an event that separated them from trans-Jordanians and Egyptians, and then in 1967 Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank further set them apart from Jordanians and Egyptians. Sure, they still are similar to other Arabs but there are many Arab states that are quite similar to each other and they meet the threshold to be their own nation. Palestinians are perhaps the most dissimilar in the Arab world because they do not have their own state and have formed their modern identity around their relationship to Israel, so if they were to become independent from Israel it's only natural for Palestine to be its own state. To extend this, if Sinai was still occupied by Israel I would wager that it would be part of a hypothetical Palestinian state and would not be viewed as something to be returned to Egypt, just as the West Bank wouldn't be returned to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.

Simply having a common shared experience, no matter how formative, does not suddenly create a separate ethnic group.

You can form a nationalism movement behind that since what constitutes a national group is totally arbitrary and subjective.  But that does not make you a separate ethnic group.  Just look at America.  Even today people may identify as American, but ethnically they remain Anglo-Saxon, German, Irish, Spanish, etc. or some combination of these things.

None of this is to deny the existence of Palestinian nationalism, nor to deny its right to exist (a nationalism movement may have a right to exist even if I don't agree that it has the right to succeed).  Rather it's just to say that if you do as Vosem did and try to ascribe the rights of nations to exist on ethnic, religious or ideological grounds, then I don't think the Palestinians meet that definition.

Frankly, I think that if the entire Arab world had quietly accepted the results of the Six-Days War and worked towards a peaceful, cooperative co-existence with Israel, a Palestinian state consisting of Gaza and the West Bank would have been established within a decade or two, and would have quickly ceased to exist within a generation as the West Bank was again agreeably annexed by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip by Egypt.  This is unlikely to happen today, because the creation of a Palestinian state would be seen as such a victory that it would have to continue to exist, if for no other reason than as a totem of the struggle against Israel, and Gaza in particular has become such a mess in every conceivable way that Egypt would never want to bear responsibility for it (Gaza minus the West Bank, incidentally, would immediately be the world's most deplorable, irrecoverable failed state, and require massive aid from the Arab League every year to avert humanitarian catastrophe).

[Horus]

Hmm

https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/1748049326595510356?t=e1ynSqCV31QKLZClHnj...

[Vosem]

People like Vosem don't consider military dictatorship in the West Bank or 20,000 dead women/children "violence" because Palestinian lives don't really matter to them. Just a statistic or a nuisance.

Yeah, the issue is that if Hamas wins then participants in the next dozen conflicts will be incentivized to make those bigger statistics.

Wars with many more than 20,000 dead have been justified in the past, and wars with many more than 20,000 dead will be justified in the future. But we can try to set up norms today which will make future bloody wars less likely. (This is why Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree in good faith to carry out Israeli policies.)

[GoTfan]

People like Vosem don't consider military dictatorship in the West Bank or 20,000 dead women/children "violence" because Palestinian lives don't really matter to them. Just a statistic or a nuisance.

Yeah, the issue is that if Hamas wins then participants in the next dozen conflicts will be incentivized to make those bigger statistics.

Wars with many more than 20,000 dead have been justified in the past, and wars with many more than 20,000 dead will be justified in the future. But we can try to set up norms today which will make future bloody wars less likely. (This is why Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree in good faith to carry out Israeli policies.)

Does the life of any Palestinian matter to you at all? Or is this just an extension of your Social Darwinism?

[Vosem]

People like Vosem don't consider military dictatorship in the West Bank or 20,000 dead women/children "violence" because Palestinian lives don't really matter to them. Just a statistic or a nuisance.

Yeah, the issue is that if Hamas wins then participants in the next dozen conflicts will be incentivized to make those bigger statistics.

Wars with many more than 20,000 dead have been justified in the past, and wars with many more than 20,000 dead will be justified in the future. But we can try to set up norms today which will make future bloody wars less likely. (This is why Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree in good faith to carry out Israeli policies.)

Does the life of any Palestinian matter to you at all? Or is this just an extension of your Social Darwinism?

I think letting Hamas win (even in some symbolic way; they must either be destroyed or repudiate their beliefs and work towards letting their former enemies win) would create a world where there are many more wars and those wars are much more deadly; even beyond this, Palestinian liberationism as an ideology offensive to ordinary principles of justice, for much the same reasons fascism was. Nationalism is acceptable, for any nation, but for peace to be preserved it can never come at the expense of an existing nation. Palestinian nationalism may not be anti-Zionist for the same reason German nationalism may not be anti-Polish, or Argentine nationalism anti-Falklander.

I think that Israel should fight in a way that minimizes civilian casualties where possible; that there have been only 20,000 deaths total out of a population of 2 million (of whom something like 7,000 are estimated to be militants), where their enemy openly uses human shields, suggests very strongly to me that this is happening.

The idea that we should give in to the demands of militant groups if not doing so would cause many death is evil, and needs to die. I don't know whether this codes as a 'yes' or 'no' answer to your question ("Do the lives of any Palestinian matter to you at all?" -- they matter as much as that of any other person, so a lot but not more than humanity's future ability to thrive in peace). Your question, fundamentally, codes to me pretty strongly as 'this is the wrong question to ask, to a degree which implies that the person asking it is confused about basic aspects of reality, or is living in a different reality from me'.

(Also, what do you mean by 'Social Darwinism'? Do you mean that I think people should be permitted to purchase access to healthcare instead of forcing them to live in societies where access to healthcare is impossible in principle? I also think that is just, yes, and in principle worth fighting and dying for.)

[GeneralMacArthur]

BTW that Netanyahu quote that's making the rounds on social media is taken very out of context.  And you know I'm not at all a Netanyahu defender.

[Velasco]

Hmm

https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/1748049326595510356?t=e1ynSqCV31QKLZClHnj...

Israel already controls everything between the River and the Sea. The meaning of Netanyahu's statement is probably that Israel will occupy the Gaza Strip and formalize the annexation of the West Bank in the near future, which implies the establishment of a more overt Apartheid State

[patzer]

Full incorporation of the West Bank is almost certainly the only way to ensure Israel's long term survival– if another state were allowed to form in the West Bank, even if there is a peace treaty in the short term, the geographic reality would effectively make it a Sudetenland striking at the heart of a much more indefensible Israel. There's no way that the creation of a state on high ground within ten miles of almost all Israeli cities should even be seen as an option to be contemplated, really.

The question is what the best way of going about West Bank annexation would be. That's hard to say.