Israel-Gaza war

[Vosem]

You're not gonna change the mind of someone who, at best, is ambivalent to 20,000+ Palestinian civilians dying. There's no arguing that.  Plus, if you try, you'll just get a 10 paragraph response that could be shortened to "Palestinians deserve no rights or security."

Yeah, I also think it would be silly for Ukraine to stop fighting because of civilian deaths (of which, 27,000 just in Donetsk Oblast). Somebody demanding that it do so would be seen as disingenuous, and frankly out of touch with basic reality.

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.

Imagine if for some reason, the UN decided to create a Jewish homeland in Nicaragua, and the people of Nicaragua - understandably and predictably - were not okay with this.

Would your response be, "Oh well you should just go live in El Salvador or Mexico or Honduras. Guatemalans aren't a "real" people anyway. You all speak Spanish and look alike. What difference does it make?" Those
This is one of two questions raised by this comment nest to which I've never thought the "roll back Israel's existence" crowd* has a good answer. The other is whether people really think that Israel's geographic placement in the Southern Levant is as arbitrary as the Nicaragua analogy suggests. It's not some sheer accident of modern history that this situation had more staying power than Zionism-adjacent ideas involving Uganda or the Alaska Panhandle or the Jewish Autonomous Oblast or Madagascar-as-SS-ruled-prison-state.

*It's astounding how fast the Overton window on this has shifted in American leftist discourse as well; not advancing it is now completely unacceptable in certain (admittedly fringe) circles, even if your position is "1947 UN arbitration verdict borders with no land swaps" or something similar.

What if, by virtue of the way history has unfolded over the centuries, there are actually more than one group of people who can claim some sort of relationship to a particular geographic area?

If you think Palestinians whose families have lived in that area for hundreds of years do not have a right to remain there because they cannot document an ancestral presence contemporaneous to or preceding the Second Temple Period, what are your thoughts on our rights as Americans to live in and remain in the United States? After all, our ancestors have "only" lived here for 400 or so years at best. Would it be acceptable for indigenous Americans to displace us if they acquired the political and military means to do so?

But the right to live in a particular country comes from citizenship (or permanent residency status), not indigeneity or the quality of your ancestors having lived somewhere. Countries are not generally understood to have responsibilities towards those who voluntarily leave it, much less their descendants, which is why Vicente Fox has no claim to American citizenship, and why Serbs who once lived Eastern Slavonia do not get the benefits of EU citizenship.

I think the descendants of the 1948 emigration wave don't get to return (unless they lobby the Israeli government for it, much as the Zionists once lobbied the British colonial authorities) because nothing in the world works that way, and the demand that it work that way in this case is strange and isolated.

An interesting analogy to your "what if the Native Americans pushed white Americans out" scenario would be the modern history of Kazakhstan: a majority of the population were white European settlers/expellees from the mid-1930s to the mid-1990s. After independence in 1991, an authoritarian government arose dominated by the native Kazakh minority, which worked to promote white European emigration to Russia and Germany (...and FTR Israel); but in that case the white Europeans were generally happy to cooperate because they would've enjoyed higher standards of living in those countries than Kazakhstan. This isn't generally regarded as a crime of any sort.

[Mechavada]

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. But in principle, I think if Hamas fought in a way that meant that they could not be defeated except by killing every person in Gaza, then I think that should be done (and if they fought in a way that meant that they could not be defeated except by killing every person on Earth, my very strong instinct would be to call their bluff). Fiat iustitia, ruat caelum.

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.)

So 20,000 dead, the majority of which you've just admitted are civilians, are acceptable casualties to you?

In order to even take your argument seriously, we have to start from the viewpoint that Palestinians are less than human.

Edit: Just saw the part I bolded. Holy s**t you're evil.

I mean, to defeat Hamas, yes, absolutely. But I don't think this means Palestinians are less than human: I would say the same about any other people in that position. The people who raised me fought in years-long wars with orders of magnitude more civilian casualties in every battle, and I think they were right to do so. (My great-grandfather was part of a partisan group which relayed information to a government bombing the area where most of that partisan group's homes were, and most of the people in that group belonged to an ethnicity that government had deliberately starved less than a decade earlier. And they were right to do so.) The struggle against evil will always be with us, but by not giving in to the propaganda that makes you think that you should give up on a war because of civilian casualties, you can at least reduce the number of civilian casualties in the long run.

Also, really, I would've thought the sentence immediately after the bolded one would've upset you more than the one you bolded.

So now civilian causalities are propaganda?

Bloody hell.

Acid is a hell of a drug.

[Pres Mike]

Fun fact, most Palestinians are actually fine with a one state solution

You see, 20% of Israel are Arabs. Combined with the Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, its equals the entire Jewish population. But Arabs have a much higher birth rate. In 10-25 years, there will be more Palestinians between the river and sea.

So yeah, let Israel annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give Israeli citizenship to everyone. You will have a Arab majority state in the near future.

Pretty sure the Jewish birth rate is now higher than the Arab birth rate thanks to Haredim.

But thats not Netanyahu's plan. He plans to annex the West Bank and keep the Palestinians on reservations without Israeli citizenship. Thats basically the reality now. I've been to the West Bank to visit family. The IDF has checkpoints on all roads. You can't leave Ramallah to go to Jericho or any village/town without the right papers. Soemtimes the IDF closes roads "just because".

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.

If a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF, they get no trial. They are just sent to a military prison. Even kids! My father was a teenager in the 80s and was arrested during the First Intifada, just for throwing rocks at a Israeli tank. He was never given a trial and was sent to prison for a year. He was 16, his parents had no idea where he was. Is that a democracy?

A year sounds incredibly lenient for attempted murder, to me. Most democracies would give far longer sentences than that surely.

1. The actual birthrate is irrelevent. The Israeli right wing will never allow Arabs to have a majority or close to a majority. Or even the potential to have a majority. Goes against the whole "Jewish state" idea.

2. Giving citizenship to some but not others isn't a democracy

3. No, not "attempted murder". Kids throwing rocks is not attempted murder. Would you say that about black kids in apartheid South Africa? Or Chinese kids in Tiananmen Square? Or about East Berlin? Funny how you don't bring up that my dad wasn't given a trial, no Palestinian is when arrested by the IDF. Or how he was a minor and his family did not know where he was.

[Vosem]

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.

Fun fact, most Palestinians are actually fine with a one state solution

You see, 20% of Israel are Arabs. Combined with the Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, its equals the entire Jewish population. But Arabs have a much higher birth rate. In 10-25 years, there will be more Palestinians between the river and sea.

So yeah, let Israel annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give Israeli citizenship to everyone. You will have a Arab majority state in the near future.

But thats not Netanyahu's plan. He plans to annex the West Bank and keep the Palestinians on reservations without Israeli citizenship. Thats basically the reality now. I've been to the West Bank to visit family. The IDF has checkpoints on all roads. You can't leave Ramallah to go to Jericho or any village/town without the right papers. Soemtimes the IDF closes roads "just because".

If a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF, they get no trial. They are just sent to a military prison. Even kids! My father was a teenager in the 80s and was arrested during the First Intifada, just for throwing rocks at a Israeli tank. He was never given a trial and was sent to prison for a year. He was 16, his parents had no idea where he was. Is that a democracy?

I don't think the one-state solution meaning a Palestinian victory is actually true; the issue with an immediate one-state solution would be that there would still be Jewish rule for several decades, during which immigration policy would not change, and the lifting of various restrictions on exit and behavior (right now you can be sentenced to death for selling land to Israelis; in a one-state solution this would not be the case) which would have the consequence of just entrenching Jewish rule. This is why calls for OMOV are unusual in pro-Palestinian rhetoric.

The country my grandparents and parents come from would have summarily executed someone trying to damage a military vehicle in an occupation; intentionally trying to damage a military vehicle by any reasonable standard makes you a combatant*. (IMO the fact that Israel merely imprisoned him goes a very long way towards showing that it is a Western society which values people's rights, and this story goes a long way towards explaining why Germany and eastern Europe tend towards sympathy towards Israel -- the reaction to this story, which is meant to highlight the plight of the Palestinians, would not be "wow, Israel is so cruel" but "wow, Israel must be amazingly liberal".)

I think Palestine is under military occupation until a proposed government arises which is not anti-Zionist, but I don't know that "someone who tried to damage a tank was sent to jail for a year" even makes it not a democracy. In the United States, the penalty for just attempting to cause damage worth over $100 to government property -- literally anything that might require you to take a vehicle to a body shop -- is 10 years imprisonment on top of various fines.

*And an underage person doing this would've brought severe consequences on their family.

[Pres Mike]

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.

Imagine if for some reason, the UN decided to create a Jewish homeland in Nicaragua, and the people of Nicaragua - understandably and predictably - were not okay with this.

Would your response be, "Oh well you should just go live in El Salvador or Mexico or Honduras. Guatemalans aren't a "real" people anyway. You all speak Spanish and look alike. What difference does it make?" Those
This is one of two questions raised by this comment nest to which I've never thought the "roll back Israel's existence" crowd* has a good answer. The other is whether people really think that Israel's geographic placement in the Southern Levant is as arbitrary as the Nicaragua analogy suggests. It's not some sheer accident of modern history that this situation had more staying power than Zionism-adjacent ideas involving Uganda or the Alaska Panhandle or the Jewish Autonomous Oblast or Madagascar-as-SS-ruled-prison-state.

*It's astounding how fast the Overton window on this has shifted in American leftist discourse as well; not advancing it is now completely unacceptable in certain (admittedly fringe) circles, even if your position is "1947 UN arbitration verdict borders with no land swaps" or something similar.

What if, by virtue of the way history has unfolded over the centuries, there are actually more than one group of people who can claim some sort of relationship to a particular geographic area?

If you think Palestinians whose families have lived in that area for hundreds of years do not have a right to remain there because they cannot document an ancestral presence contemporaneous to or preceding the Second Temple Period, what are your thoughts on our rights as Americans to live in and remain in the United States? After all, our ancestors have "only" lived here for 400 or so years at best. Would it be acceptable for indigenous Americans to displace us if they acquired the political and military means to do so?

General McArthur is using the "interchangeable Arab" trope, according to which Palestinians aren't a people and lack a proper national identity (or at best, it's an artificial construct). Such trope us used to argue that only Jewish Israelis are entitled to live in the lands that once were part of David's Kingdom. Palestinians are depicted as alien invaders that should be relocated in the Arab countries. Sunni Arabs are a broad religious group. Saying that Palestinians are "Sunni Arabs" is as imprecise as saying Italians are "European Catholics". The fact is that the Palestinians have been living there for centuries and the occupied Palestine is their land.

On the other hand, the Jews are an ancient people, but the State of Israel is a modern construct. However, it's pointless to argue Israel or Palestine don't deserve to exist on the basis that they are artificial constructs. All political entities throughout human history have been artificial constructs and not even a single one will last forever.

The big issue here is the existence of two confronted
peoples living in the same land. Due to a great imbalance in strength and military power, one of the peoples have subjugated and dispossesed the other. This situation of injustice has created a lot of pain and suffering, as well as violent and non-violent forms of resistance. As said repeatedly by countless people, the only way to put an end to endless cycles of violence is finding the ways to repair injustice and organize peaceful coexistence

The Palestinians aren't invaders. They are the same Levant people. When the Romans expelled the Jewish people, some stayed. Some remained Jewish until modern day. Some converted to Christanity. Some converted to Islam. Plus, not everyone in David's Kingdom or Roman Palestine was Jewish to begin with.

My people, the Palestinians, are the same people that haved lived there for thousands of years. I'm not the same as someone from Egypt or Saudi Arabia. My people converted to Islam and intermarried with Arabs. So yes, I am Arab now. The Jewish dispora intermarried with Europeans, so they are European now. They hasn't been pure "Levant" people for a thousand years.

[Pres Mike]

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.

Fun fact, most Palestinians are actually fine with a one state solution

You see, 20% of Israel are Arabs. Combined with the Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, its equals the entire Jewish population. But Arabs have a much higher birth rate. In 10-25 years, there will be more Palestinians between the river and sea.

So yeah, let Israel annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give Israeli citizenship to everyone. You will have a Arab majority state in the near future.

But thats not Netanyahu's plan. He plans to annex the West Bank and keep the Palestinians on reservations without Israeli citizenship. Thats basically the reality now. I've been to the West Bank to visit family. The IDF has checkpoints on all roads. You can't leave Ramallah to go to Jericho or any village/town without the right papers. Soemtimes the IDF closes roads "just because".

If a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF, they get no trial. They are just sent to a military prison. Even kids! My father was a teenager in the 80s and was arrested during the First Intifada, just for throwing rocks at a Israeli tank. He was never given a trial and was sent to prison for a year. He was 16, his parents had no idea where he was. Is that a democracy?

I don't think the one-state solution meaning a Palestinian victory is actually true; the issue with an immediate one-state solution would be that there would still be Jewish rule for several decades, during which immigration policy would not change, and the lifting of various restrictions on exit and behavior (right now you can be sentenced to death for selling land to Israelis; in a one-state solution this would not be the case) which would have the consequence of just entrenching Jewish rule. This is why calls for OMOV are unusual in pro-Palestinian rhetoric.

The country my grandparents and parents come from would have summarily executed someone trying to damage a military vehicle in an occupation; intentionally trying to damage a military vehicle by any reasonable standard makes you a combatant*. (IMO the fact that Israel merely imprisoned him goes a very long way towards showing that it is a Western society which values people's rights, and this story goes a long way towards explaining why Germany and eastern Europe tend towards sympathy towards Israel -- the reaction to this story, which is meant to highlight the plight of the Palestinians, would not be "wow, Israel is so cruel" but "wow, Israel must be amazingly liberal".)

I think Palestine is under military occupation until a proposed government arises which is not anti-Zionist, but I don't know that "someone who tried to damage a tank was sent to jail for a year" even makes it not a democracy. In the United States, the penalty for just attempting to cause damage worth over $100 to government property -- literally anything that might require you to take a vehicle to a body shop -- is 10 years imprisonment on top of various fines.

*And an underage person doing this would've brought severe consequences on their family.

Your ignoring two very important points here

1. He was never given a trial. Which is the norm to this day when a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF. This would never happen to a Jewish person in Israel.

2. This is a common protest in other unfree areas around the world. But history is written by the victors right? The East Berliners who threw rocks at military equiment are remembered as heros because the wall fell. Nelson Mandela threw quite a bit of rocks himself.

[Vosem]

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.

Fun fact, most Palestinians are actually fine with a one state solution

You see, 20% of Israel are Arabs. Combined with the Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, its equals the entire Jewish population. But Arabs have a much higher birth rate. In 10-25 years, there will be more Palestinians between the river and sea.

So yeah, let Israel annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give Israeli citizenship to everyone. You will have a Arab majority state in the near future.

But thats not Netanyahu's plan. He plans to annex the West Bank and keep the Palestinians on reservations without Israeli citizenship. Thats basically the reality now. I've been to the West Bank to visit family. The IDF has checkpoints on all roads. You can't leave Ramallah to go to Jericho or any village/town without the right papers. Soemtimes the IDF closes roads "just because".

If a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF, they get no trial. They are just sent to a military prison. Even kids! My father was a teenager in the 80s and was arrested during the First Intifada, just for throwing rocks at a Israeli tank. He was never given a trial and was sent to prison for a year. He was 16, his parents had no idea where he was. Is that a democracy?

I don't think the one-state solution meaning a Palestinian victory is actually true; the issue with an immediate one-state solution would be that there would still be Jewish rule for several decades, during which immigration policy would not change, and the lifting of various restrictions on exit and behavior (right now you can be sentenced to death for selling land to Israelis; in a one-state solution this would not be the case) which would have the consequence of just entrenching Jewish rule. This is why calls for OMOV are unusual in pro-Palestinian rhetoric.

The country my grandparents and parents come from would have summarily executed someone trying to damage a military vehicle in an occupation; intentionally trying to damage a military vehicle by any reasonable standard makes you a combatant*. (IMO the fact that Israel merely imprisoned him goes a very long way towards showing that it is a Western society which values people's rights, and this story goes a long way towards explaining why Germany and eastern Europe tend towards sympathy towards Israel -- the reaction to this story, which is meant to highlight the plight of the Palestinians, would not be "wow, Israel is so cruel" but "wow, Israel must be amazingly liberal".)

I think Palestine is under military occupation until a proposed government arises which is not anti-Zionist, but I don't know that "someone who tried to damage a tank was sent to jail for a year" even makes it not a democracy. In the United States, the penalty for just attempting to cause damage worth over $100 to government property -- literally anything that might require you to take a vehicle to a body shop -- is 10 years imprisonment on top of various fines.

*And an underage person doing this would've brought severe consequences on their family.

Your ignoring two very important points here

1. He was never given a trial. Which is the norm to this day when a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF. This would never happen to a Jewish person in Israel.

2. This is a common protest in other unfree areas around the world. But history is written by the victors right? The East Berliners who threw rocks at military equiment are remembered as heros because the wall fell. Nelson Mandela threw quite a bit of rocks himself.

1. Per the Red Cross, captured combatants are normally not given trials, and they're usually tried only if they are being accused of additional crimes beyond 'being a combatant', which I think was not the case for your father.

2. Sure; my great-grandfather bombed railroads when he was under military occupation. He didn't throw rocks at tanks, because that would've been foolish: it would've been a path to an instant bullet to the head from Nazi Germany. (Notably, at the peak of Soviet military discipline in 1942, when Order number 227 was in force, a Soviet soldier who merely damaged his own equipment by mistake was under serious risk of summary execution for damaging morale.) It isn't realistic to try to damage military equipment and not be treated as a combatant (and the Israeli treatment you describe is really quite nice compared to most warzones). My problem, as I've laid out in this thread, is that I think Palestinian liberationism in the service of bringing Palestinian political parties to power is an evil movement which deserves to be destroyed.

(Please do not interpret this as a personal attack: I've been pretty open about many of my ancestors on multiple sides having once been Bolsheviks. They also belonged to a substantively evil movement, and one that claimed orders of magnitude more victims than Palestinian liberationism. I don't think being descended from people who fought for bad causes makes one a bad person; otherwise eastern Europe would be a burning hell. I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with Palestinians or Palestinian nationalism: my quarrel is with anti-Zionist Palestinian liberationism as represented by the PLO, in the Intifadas, or in the current Gazan conflict.)

[Horus]

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1748395307354771779?t=ukeSCEnSvoDhI3Xf-eh...

Fascinating interview with a very brave young Israeli man.

[Pres Mike]

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.

Fun fact, most Palestinians are actually fine with a one state solution

You see, 20% of Israel are Arabs. Combined with the Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, its equals the entire Jewish population. But Arabs have a much higher birth rate. In 10-25 years, there will be more Palestinians between the river and sea.

So yeah, let Israel annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give Israeli citizenship to everyone. You will have a Arab majority state in the near future.

But thats not Netanyahu's plan. He plans to annex the West Bank and keep the Palestinians on reservations without Israeli citizenship. Thats basically the reality now. I've been to the West Bank to visit family. The IDF has checkpoints on all roads. You can't leave Ramallah to go to Jericho or any village/town without the right papers. Soemtimes the IDF closes roads "just because".

If a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF, they get no trial. They are just sent to a military prison. Even kids! My father was a teenager in the 80s and was arrested during the First Intifada, just for throwing rocks at a Israeli tank. He was never given a trial and was sent to prison for a year. He was 16, his parents had no idea where he was. Is that a democracy?

I don't think the one-state solution meaning a Palestinian victory is actually true; the issue with an immediate one-state solution would be that there would still be Jewish rule for several decades, during which immigration policy would not change, and the lifting of various restrictions on exit and behavior (right now you can be sentenced to death for selling land to Israelis; in a one-state solution this would not be the case) which would have the consequence of just entrenching Jewish rule. This is why calls for OMOV are unusual in pro-Palestinian rhetoric.

The country my grandparents and parents come from would have summarily executed someone trying to damage a military vehicle in an occupation; intentionally trying to damage a military vehicle by any reasonable standard makes you a combatant*. (IMO the fact that Israel merely imprisoned him goes a very long way towards showing that it is a Western society which values people's rights, and this story goes a long way towards explaining why Germany and eastern Europe tend towards sympathy towards Israel -- the reaction to this story, which is meant to highlight the plight of the Palestinians, would not be "wow, Israel is so cruel" but "wow, Israel must be amazingly liberal".)

I think Palestine is under military occupation until a proposed government arises which is not anti-Zionist, but I don't know that "someone who tried to damage a tank was sent to jail for a year" even makes it not a democracy. In the United States, the penalty for just attempting to cause damage worth over $100 to government property -- literally anything that might require you to take a vehicle to a body shop -- is 10 years imprisonment on top of various fines.

*And an underage person doing this would've brought severe consequences on their family.

Your ignoring two very important points here

1. He was never given a trial. Which is the norm to this day when a Palestinian is arrested by the IDF. This would never happen to a Jewish person in Israel.

2. This is a common protest in other unfree areas around the world. But history is written by the victors right? The East Berliners who threw rocks at military equiment are remembered as heros because the wall fell. Nelson Mandela threw quite a bit of rocks himself.

1. Per the Red Cross, captured combatants are normally not given trials, and they're usually tried only if they are being accused of additional crimes beyond 'being a combatant', which I think was not the case for your father.

2. Sure; my great-grandfather bombed railroads when he was under military occupation. He didn't throw rocks at tanks, because that would've been foolish: it would've been a path to an instant bullet to the head from Nazi Germany. (Notably, at the peak of Soviet military discipline in 1942, when Order number 227 was in force, a Soviet soldier who merely damaged his own equipment by mistake was under serious risk of summary execution for damaging morale.) It isn't realistic to try to damage military equipment and not be treated as a combatant (and the Israeli treatment you describe is really quite nice compared to most warzones). My problem, as I've laid out in this thread, is that I think Palestinian liberationism in the service of bringing Palestinian political parties to power is an evil movement which deserves to be destroyed.

(Please do not interpret this as a personal attack: I've been pretty open about many of my ancestors on multiple sides having once been Bolsheviks. They also belonged to a substantively evil movement, and one that claimed orders of magnitude more victims than Palestinian liberationism. I don't think being descended from people who fought for bad causes makes one a bad person; otherwise eastern Europe would be a burning hell. I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with Palestinians or Palestinian nationalism: my quarrel is with anti-Zionist Palestinian liberationism as represented by the PLO, in the Intifadas, or in the current Gazan conflict.)

Its not just protests. Any Palestinian arrested in the West Bank by the IDF, even for minor crimes have a high probablity of not having a trial even for minor crimes

[Meclazine for Israel]

Survivor talks about the NOVA music festival as the Palestinians arrived.

NOVA Music Festival

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2SnTJIrzp2/

Noa Tishby has been nothing short of amazing offering her full support for her brothers and sisters in their hour of need.

It's not an easy weight to carry.

[Comrade Funk]

This is where I see things going at this point. Israel is either forced to comply or they become South Africa.
EU’s top diplomat: Palestinian state may need to be imposed on Israel from outside

[Vosem]

This is where I see things going at this point. Israel is either forced to comply or they become South Africa.
EU’s top diplomat: Palestinian state may need to be imposed on Israel from outside

We can check back on this in a few years: my guess is that the world will continue backing Israel, and most of the West will gradually adopt its military techniques (inasmuch as they are not already of American origin) and substantial parts of its worldview, as religions which sacralize it continue to spread.

One of the most interesting things about I/P discourse is that both sides seem convinced that everyone is on their side, though I think the answer is that very different kinds of rhetoric are used in different forums. I think the sort of forums in which Palestinian rhetoric holds sway are basically fake and dying, but obviously not everyone agrees.

(The conflict will actually move forward when the 'humanitarian' networks are destroyed, which isn't going to happen under a Democratic Administration but which I think is inevitable in 10-20 years or so.)

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This is where I see things going at this point. Israel is either forced to comply or they become South Africa.
EU’s top diplomat: Palestinian state may need to be imposed on Israel from outside

Imagine actually believing this

[Vosem]

e-fire-gaza-israel-hamas-war/]Yesterday, the European Parliament called for Hamas's total disarmament as a precondition for ceasefire, which isn't quite as strident as my demand ("Hamas must agree to implement Israeli policies in good faith"), but also constitutes a demand for Israeli military victory, basically.

“I would say this is a moral failure of the European Parliament,” said Palestine’s Deputy Head of Mission Adel Atieh. “With this vote, Europe is losing credibility,” he said. However, he said there are “positive” aspects of the vote, such as its call to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and support for the work of the International Court of Justice, where Israel is facing accusations of genocide.

Israel’s Ambassador to the EU Haim Regev said: “We are happy to see that the European Parliament understands the need to release the hostages and disarm Hamas before any cease-fire.”

The 'credibility' comment from the Palestinian diplomat is so strange -- surely nothing imparts credibility more than military victories, and takes away from it more than military defeats? Whose opinion is possibly being referred to here?

Hopefully in its next vote the EU will recognize that the occupation must not end until the mainstream of Palestinian nationalism adopts a pro-Zionism stance.

[GoTfan]

e-fire-gaza-israel-hamas-war/]Yesterday, the European Parliament called for Hamas's total disarmament as a precondition for ceasefire, which isn't quite as strident as my demand ("Hamas must agree to implement Israeli policies in good faith"), but also constitutes a demand for Israeli military victory, basically.

“I would say this is a moral failure of the European Parliament,” said Palestine’s Deputy Head of Mission Adel Atieh. “With this vote, Europe is losing credibility,” he said. However, he said there are “positive” aspects of the vote, such as its call to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and support for the work of the International Court of Justice, where Israel is facing accusations of genocide.

Israel’s Ambassador to the EU Haim Regev said: “We are happy to see that the European Parliament understands the need to release the hostages and disarm Hamas before any cease-fire.”

The 'credibility' comment from the Palestinian diplomat is so strange -- surely nothing imparts credibility more than military victories, and takes away from it more than military defeats? Whose opinion is possibly being referred to here?

Hopefully in its next vote the EU will recognize that the occupation must not end until the mainstream of Palestinian nationalism adopts a pro-Zionism stance.

So not only do you consider Palestinians less than human; not only do you accuse me of supporting slavery; not only is any amount of civilian casualties acceptable to you; you also seem to support right of conquest.

You are a thoroughly evil human being.

[GeneralMacArthur]

There's a reason I have GoTFan on ignore and I would highly suggest the rest of you follow suit.

[GeneralMacArthur]

dumb tweet

Can we please avoid engaging in these kinds of posts where the entire posts is just a drive-by cheap-shot tweet copied+pasted without any context or elaboration.  If I wanted that I would go to Facebook.

Edit:  I see it was removed, bless the mods

[GoTfan]

There's a reason I have GoTFan on ignore and I would highly suggest the rest of you follow suit.

I generally don't like associating with people who accuse me of supporting slavery

[Vosem]

e-fire-gaza-israel-hamas-war/]Yesterday, the European Parliament called for Hamas's total disarmament as a precondition for ceasefire, which isn't quite as strident as my demand ("Hamas must agree to implement Israeli policies in good faith"), but also constitutes a demand for Israeli military victory, basically.

“I would say this is a moral failure of the European Parliament,” said Palestine’s Deputy Head of Mission Adel Atieh. “With this vote, Europe is losing credibility,” he said. However, he said there are “positive” aspects of the vote, such as its call to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and support for the work of the International Court of Justice, where Israel is facing accusations of genocide.

Israel’s Ambassador to the EU Haim Regev said: “We are happy to see that the European Parliament understands the need to release the hostages and disarm Hamas before any cease-fire.”

The 'credibility' comment from the Palestinian diplomat is so strange -- surely nothing imparts credibility more than military victories, and takes away from it more than military defeats? Whose opinion is possibly being referred to here?

Hopefully in its next vote the EU will recognize that the occupation must not end until the mainstream of Palestinian nationalism adopts a pro-Zionism stance.

So not only do you consider Palestinians less than human; not only do you accuse me of supporting slavery; not only is any amount of civilian casualties acceptable to you; you also seem to support right of conquest.

You are a thoroughly evil human being.

I consider Palestinians as human as anyone else. (Just as human as the people who raised me and their comrades-in-arms, for instance.) Nobody expects Ukraine to stop fighting to save civilians, because that is obviously ridiculous. (And, for the record, if your political position really is such an absolute pacifism that you think fighting authoritarians is not justified if it causes civilian casualties, then you are simply a naive person who knows nothing of the world. But I don't think this is true: I think you refuse to see how evil Palestinian liberationist organizations are, so you would prefer not to live in a world where they are destroyed.)

Yes, if you want Palestinian liberationist organizations to come to power, you support slavery. This is a very important under-discussed point; if you are against slavery, you essentially must oppose Palestinian liberationism. (Even beyond Hamas itself, setting the precedent that anti-authoritarians should step back if civilian casualties get too high would radically empower political organizations who don't care much about civilian casualties -- y'know, slavers, like the Houthis or the RSF.)

I don't think that organizations like Hamas should get a ceasefire card if the civilian casualty count gets too high. Sticking to that standard is how you reach the world run by slavers.

Please learn to think about the consequences of your beliefs, GoTfan, particularly if (I will delete this section if you ask me to, since it is partially a response to your DMs) you or your family has some specific experience with slavery.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It's hard to see any lasting resolution occur without outside pressure. Excess and killing on both sides is enabled by team politics where people will stand up for members of their "side" no matter how awful they are. Peace is either forced on a population unwilling to accept compromise or reached consensually. The latter is much better than the former, but if things degenerate, the former might become necessary.
In Northern Ireland the latter was miraculously achieved. Can that happen here? Not until the wings of extremists on both sides get clipped.

[GeneralMacArthur]

There have been a lot of big post chains in this thread since I last checked it but one thing I would like to say is that I do think it is bad to arrest a 16-year-old for throwing rocks at a tank and detain them in prison for a year without trial.

The fact that Israel does bad things like this is pretty common knowledge and something they need to be better at.  However I am not going to stop supporting Israel in their struggle against evil forces who seek to annihilate the Jews from the face of the planet over comparatively minor human rights issues like this.

I also wish the Palestinians in the West Bank could be treated better by Israel in general, but it must be said that the West Bank is almost completely pacified and the Jews of Israel do not face a daily genocidal threat from their eastern border the way they do from Gaza.  So all-in-all I think it is a better situation and that Israel could reasonably aspire to treat Gaza the same way they do the West Bank.  Especially given that the unfolding of that genocidal threat in Gaza has now led to the complete demolition of Gaza and a far worse situation for Palestinians there than that faced in the West Bank.

Naturally I would prefer if none of this was necessary whatsoever, but I don't think it's fair for the world to demand that of Israel until Israel can be assured that a loosening of restrictions on the Palestinians won't just result in the empowering of that same genocidal threat.  I don't think we are very far away from that in the West Bank, to be honest.  

[GoTfan]

e-fire-gaza-israel-hamas-war/]Yesterday, the European Parliament called for Hamas's total disarmament as a precondition for ceasefire, which isn't quite as strident as my demand ("Hamas must agree to implement Israeli policies in good faith"), but also constitutes a demand for Israeli military victory, basically.

“I would say this is a moral failure of the European Parliament,” said Palestine’s Deputy Head of Mission Adel Atieh. “With this vote, Europe is losing credibility,” he said. However, he said there are “positive” aspects of the vote, such as its call to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and support for the work of the International Court of Justice, where Israel is facing accusations of genocide.

Israel’s Ambassador to the EU Haim Regev said: “We are happy to see that the European Parliament understands the need to release the hostages and disarm Hamas before any cease-fire.”

The 'credibility' comment from the Palestinian diplomat is so strange -- surely nothing imparts credibility more than military victories, and takes away from it more than military defeats? Whose opinion is possibly being referred to here?

Hopefully in its next vote the EU will recognize that the occupation must not end until the mainstream of Palestinian nationalism adopts a pro-Zionism stance.

So not only do you consider Palestinians less than human; not only do you accuse me of supporting slavery; not only is any amount of civilian casualties acceptable to you; you also seem to support right of conquest.

You are a thoroughly evil human being.

I consider Palestinians as human as anyone else. (Just as human as the people who raised me and their comrades-in-arms, for instance.) Nobody expects Ukraine to stop fighting to save civilians, because that is obviously ridiculous. (And, for the record, if your political position really is such an absolute pacifism that you think fighting authoritarians is not justified if it causes civilian casualties, then you are simply a naive person who knows nothing of the world. But I don't think this is true: I think you refuse to see how evil Palestinian liberationist organizations are, so you would prefer not to live in a world where they are destroyed.)

Yes, if you want Palestinian liberationist organizations to come to power, you support slavery. This is a very important under-discussed point; if you are against slavery, you essentially must oppose Palestinian liberationism. (Even beyond Hamas itself, setting the precedent that anti-authoritarians should step back if civilian casualties get too high would radically empower political organizations who don't care much about civilian casualties -- y'know, slavers, like the Houthis or the RSF.)

I don't think that organizations like Hamas should get a ceasefire card if the civilian casualty count gets too high. Sticking to that standard is how you reach the world run by slavers.

Please learn to think about the consequences of your beliefs, GoTfan, particularly if (I will delete this section if you ask me to, since it is partially a response to your DMs) you or your family has some specific experience with slavery.

Do. Not. Accuse. Me. Of. Supporting. Slavery.

[GoTfan]

There have been a lot of big post chains in this thread since I last checked it but one thing I would like to say is that I do think it is bad to arrest a 16-year-old for throwing rocks at a tank and detain them in prison for a year without trial.

The fact that Israel does bad things like this is pretty common knowledge and something they need to be better at.  However I am not going to stop supporting Israel in their struggle against evil forces who seek to annihilate the Jews from the face of the planet over comparatively minor human rights issues like this.

I also wish the Palestinians in the West Bank could be treated better by Israel in general, but it must be said that the West Bank is almost completely pacified and the Jews of Israel do not face a daily genocidal threat from their eastern border the way they do from Gaza.  So all-in-all I think it is a better situation and that Israel could reasonably aspire to treat Gaza the same way they do the West Bank.  Especially given that the unfolding of that genocidal threat in Gaza has now led to the complete demolition of Gaza and a far worse situation for Palestinians there than that faced in the West Bank.

Naturally I would prefer if none of this was necessary whatsoever, but I don't think it's fair for the world to demand that of Israel until Israel can be assured that a loosening of restrictions on the Palestinians won't just result in the empowering of that same genocidal threat.  I don't think we are very far away from that in the West Bank, to be honest.  

The problem is that it's a Catch 22. The extremes on both sides believe that moderates on both sides want to wipe the other aide of the map. Israel does have right of retaliation; my concern is for what comes after on both sides.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Crunch time approaching for Hezbollah according to the Times of Israel.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-warns-crunch-time-with-lebanon-nearing-as-hezbollah-attacks-persist/


An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell from northern Israel towards Lebanon, January 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

"Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told his American counterpart Lloyd Austin on Thursday night that Israel was nearing a decision point on Lebanon and the conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah, as the terror group pressed its daily attacks on the northern border."

[Horus]

Van Hollen's bill to put human rights conditions on all foreign aid is picking up momentum in the Senate. Both of my senators disappointed me the other day, but at least they have signed onto this.

Still probably not enough votes to pass but it may get close.

https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1748398277387518171?t=6hydFni-39Mxmtt...