Slaughtering people and occupying their land makes people mad - who knew?
You didn’t ask me, but:
Allow free and uninterrupted flow of humanitarian aid. That’s just the basic minimum requirement of human decency.
Most importantly, start establishing a Palestinian civilian infrastructure capable of governing the country when the IDF withdraws. All they’ve done by crippling Hamas has been to create a power vacuum. The fact that they aren’t doing this suggests that Israel isn’t at all interested in creating a peaceful Gaza, but are bent on ethnic cleansing.
As to whether they should withdraw their troops, there are legitimate security concerns about doing so. Moreover, the civilian population will never accept the IDF as legitimate occupiers and will likely reject any government created by Israel as collaborationist.
For these reasons, what Israel should be doing is pleading with the rest of the world to establish some sort of multinational peacekeeping force to take over the dual tasks of fighting Hamas and rebuilding Palestinian civil society, so that Israel can then withdraw its troops. But instead Israel is declaring that all the multinational institutions that might credibly lead such an effort are part of the Great Anti-Semitic Conspiracy because they have denounced Israeli human rights violations. (I think the best candidates for such a peacekeeping force would be troops from Arab countries which have recognized Israel)
I’ll admit that I always thought the ordinary meaning of Zionism was calling for the establishment of a Jewish nation - which means Zionism is a historical movement because their goal was achieved back in 1948.
But it appears some people use a different meaning for Zionism. They see Zionism as a movement seeking expansion into territories that currently lie outside Israel. This meaning makes Zionism an active movement rather than a historical one.
I appreciate the dialogue.
I agree.
I can see where Israel has valid concerns about this. They handed Gaza over to a local government. But then Hamas moved in and took over and turned Gaza into a base for attacking Israel.
So Israel can legitimately ask what would be different if another local government was established. Would Hamas or some other similar organization once again take over?
It’s true that the Gazans will never be happy under an Israeli occupation. But Israel may see that Gazan unhappiness is preferable to Hamas returning to power.
Are countries like Egypt and Jordan offering troops for a peacekeeping force?
Not that I’m aware of. I think it would be to Israel’s advantage to propose such a plan, but obviously it’s not up to them whether others are willing.
So what are you saying? That there can never be peace as long as there are any Israelis living in territory which Palestinians claim as their own? Because there are Palestinians claims on all of the territory.
Or do you feel that Israel has some right to exist and Palestinians need to recognize this and give up their claims to some territory? If so, how do you feel the borders should be drawn?
Exactly. And would the next Israeli government help Hamas and starve rival Palestinian organizations of power, like this one did? How can Israel ensure that Israel won’t help future death cults hold power and build resources for attacks?
Better to flatten and occupy Gaza indefinitely, perhaps. At least that will protect it from the machinations of the likes of Netanyahu!
Huh. Your profile doesn’t list your location, but I’m going to assume it’s not the US because we don’t have “leader of our national Jewish community” here. So… different circumstances.
Despite Judaism not having “a hierarchy like that” there are a number of nations that do have a “Chief Rabbi” (sometimes more than one, such as one Ashkenazi and one Sephardic rabbie, or major cities each having their own.) that purport to speak for the Jews in that country. These are often appointed NOT by Jews but by gentile authorities in those nations, probably because the governments there prefer to consult just one person rather than a dozen from all the various factions within a Jewish community.
The downside is that doing this often means everyone in that country assume all Jews think alike and have the same opinions/political leanings/etc.
Israel has two chief national rabbis and chief rabbis for Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba. There is also a “military rabbinate” as well.
Having “chief rabbis” seems to be most common in Europe, South America, and the Middle East. I’m assuming (because haven’t researched it) that the South American phenomena might be connected to European colonial influences.
Judaism in the US is generally congregationalist (the link describes that form of organization in Protestant Christian terms, but it’s pretty close to how the Jews operate, too and sufficient for illustrating the structure), that is, every community and synagogue supported by those communities is an independent entity.
Different Jewish communities in the US will help each other out, but what projects they work together on is at the discretion of individual congregations/synagogues. For example, it’s not uncommon for different communities to share a mikvah and contribute to its upkeep among multiple communities.
But, bottom line, how Jews are organized (or not) in North America can differ significantly from how nations on other continents run things.
This is part of the reason some of the more Right Wing/Orthodox parties in Israel are not entirely keen on unrestricted immigration of Jews from North America, particularly the much less conservative in practice groups like Reform Jews. Israel and the US have roughly the same number of Jews (if you include the Liberal ones). If every Jew in the US suddenly exercised their Right of Return and moved to Israel that would greatly impact the politics of Israel, possibly tipping the balance to much more Liberal practices and a desire to change how things operate. This is why people like Smotrich and ben Gvir want Reform Jews to be declared non-Jews. stripped of Right of Return, and so forth - they fear liberal US Jews because if they all showed up those evil men might well be out of a job.
What would you say to all of the Palestinians who still carry keys to the homes they were expelled from not so long ago? Does that matter, or are Jews the only people who get to come home after ethnic cleansing?
- Do you think there would be a charter calling for Israel’s destruction if Israel hadn’t ethnically expelled 750k people out of their homes where they were currently living, and then shrugged “they’re Arabs, they can live anywhere else.” Do you think that might have had something to do with it?
- It’s simply obscene to suggest Israel is held to any standard of perfection while it’s actively conducting a genocide against a captive population while the rest of the world sits on its thumbs. You are not held to any standard, much less a standard of perfection. Your complaint is that people aren’t using your “earning our freedom” euphemisms for ethnic cleansing and genocide", and you have no defense except “well, everyone else is doing it.”
If anyone on earth has a right to a victim complex, certainly it’s the Jews, but you have to realize that it can’t excuse literally anything and everything. Certainly not while you’re busy doing comparable things to Palestinians in Gaza.
I don’t necessarily base my opinions on whether Bibi agrees or not… I expect we mostly differ on how aggressively we think Israel should pursue an offer ramp with regards to the occupation of Gaza, and on how picky we should be with regards to finding foreign partners (including in the Arab world) who’d be willing to work with us on an interim solution until a Palestinian state can ultimately be founded without destroying Israel’s security.
The same exact thing I’d say to Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria: “tough luck, go home to the part of the country that IS yours and be happy you have that.”
Considering how those people left their homes in the course of a war the Arab States started in order to wipe out Israel, yes, of course? They were never prepared to accept any Jewish state in Israel, not even the one proposed by the Mandate and accepted by the Yeshuv that had a 45% Palestinian population.
If we accept your assertion that Israel is “committing a genocide”, you might have a point; but that’s begging the question.
If Israel is not committing a genocide, then all the bitching and moaning and lying claiming it is is probably motivated by something. Or it’s just random chance that the country that attracts false claims of genocide also happens to be the only Jewish country…
South Africa is a Jewish country?
And the damage Israel is doing to Gazans since is worse than Oct. 6 by a couple of orders of magnitude. 9/11 caused a lot of people here in the US to go ape shit against Muslims, calls for nuking Mecca were common. Fortunately for all of Bush’s flaws he did try to tamp down the anti-Muslem racism, but even then he used it as an excuse to launch and entirely unjustified war against Iraq who wasn’t involved. I’d hate so see what would have happened if we had had a president like Netanyahu who needs perpetual war and bloodshed to protect him form the consequence of his crimes. Which is to say that while extreme emotions of anger, fear and a desire for revengeare entirely understandable given what went on that day it doesn’t justify atrocities driven by those emotions.
“Left”, as in “expelled”, in most cases. They didn’t want to leave, and they want to go back, and yes, that makes them still “local people”.
Whether and to what extent that argument can be validly extended from a period of less than a century to a period of a couple millennia is a legitimate topic for debate. But no, I’m not buying the specious and self-contradictory argument that the Palestinians automatically don’t count as “local people” because (a) they left there so long ago and (b) they got there so recently.
The point I was making is that the Palestinians who are alive today are, for the most part, not the Palestinians who were expelled from Israel in 1948. Probably less than five percent of current Palestinians were alive seventy-seven years ago.
And by the same token, the Israelis who are alive today are, for the most part, not the Israelis who colonized Israel and expelled the Palestinians.
At some point, the Israelis became the local people living in Israel.
The problem with this hypothesis of yours is that there’s this territory called the West Bank, that Israel encourages settlers to take over with violence. The Israeli/US stooges called the PA, the ‘non-radicals’ preside there, and they get walked all over. It’s not that hard to see why Gazans said we’re not going to be governed by US/Israeli stooges.
To be clear, I think Hamas is shit. Just my opinion, but they planned this massacre of Israelis on October 7th knowing 100% that the Israelis would massively respond. They miscalculated. They believed that things would get messy like they did in Southern Lebanon in 2006 and that international pressure would eventually compel the US to pressure Bibi to call the dogs off. Didn’t happen that way. They fucked around and found out - I get that part. If I believed that Israel was all about neutralizing Hamas, I’d probably have a slightly less jaded view in the present, though the history is the history.
But Israel is using Hamas’ killing of hundreds (and it was awful I agree) to completely annihilate an entire population and drive them out, and to be completely candid, I think there’s an element within Israel that has always envisioned just that: driving Arab nationalists (Palestinians) out completely so that they could form Greater Israel. And that is what we are seeing.
My bigger beef with Zionists is that they use the legal system to attack expressions of protest against Israel’s actions. There are laws against boycotting Israel, and now they are using antidiscrimination laws to argue that protest equals antisemitism, effectively stifling expressions of condemnation on college campuses and elsewhere. When Israel becomes the 51st state, maybe then they can use the American legal system to protect their interests. Until then they can fuck right off.
Also worth pointing out that, at one time, Israel actually kinda, sorta countenanced Hamas when the PLO was the bigger devil. There’s’ that. Blowback happens. The US, of all countries, would (or should) know.
Yes, that was a bad call. The theory was that the PLO was a political organization but Hamas was a religious organization. So they figured Hamas would offer fewer secular problems.
As you noted, the United States made a similar mistake in Afghanistan. A secular terrorist group is bad but a theocratic terrorist group is worse.
My opinion is that Hamas welcomed the Israeli counter-attack. They have intentionally hid their assets in areas with civilian populations because they know that Israel will inflict collateral civilian casualties when they attack Hamas assets. The idea is that the survivors of these collateral attacks will be easy to recruit as new members.