I agree with you here. I feel anti-BDS laws should be ruled unconstitutional.
Similarly, absolutely none of the immigrants to Israel in the 19th and 20th centuries were the Israelites who were in Israel before the diaspora. So there goes the claim to ``return’'.
Nope. You can’t just arbitrarily decide to erase a convenient portion of the past in order to make the case that only one side in a conflict has any legitimate claims.
I have no time for anti-Zionists who sweepingly declare that all Israeli Jews (except, perhaps, for the descendants of the few who were living in the region in Ottoman times) should just pack up and leave Palestine because they had no right to be there in the first place, and I have no time for ultra-Zionists who declare, similarly sweepingly, that the Palestinians no longer have any legitimate territorial claims in the region because it’s been a whole seventy-seven years since they were expelled.
What about he ones who left before that (sometimes in a shroud), when Irgun and other Zionist terrorists were carrying out their pre-1948 terror activities? Pretending this was started sine causa by Arabs alone in 1948 is as transparently self-serving a ploy as pretending it started in late 2023.
Yes, Israel is guilty of genocide.
As just one piece of evidence (among many) in November of 2023 when the IDF entered and swept the Al Nasr Hospital and either killed or arrested all adults remaining in the hospital, including those caring for five premature babies still in the NICU that were deemed too fragile to move. The IDF left made zero attempt to help those babies, apparently just completely abandoning them. The babies were later found decomposing in their incubators, still attached to unpowered, untended medical equipment. Later they claimed the babies weren’t their problem, Hamas was responsible for them, or the staff at the hospital (you know, the people they had either killed or arrested and removed from the hospital). In fact, international treaty, agreements, and custom says says that IF it is necessary for armed forces to enter and take over a hospital then the patients of that hospital become the responsibility of the occupying force. When the IDF takes over a hospital in Gaza THEY become responsible for the care of all patients in those hospitals, because Al Nasr is not the only instance of abandoning people to die.
Given that the US has a long-standing practice of providing the same level of care to captured enemy combatants as they do to their own, much less babies in NICU’s, what the IDF has done (or rather, completely failed to do) is an abomination and proof of prejudice, attempted genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crime against humanity. This is how the average American views what happened in Al Nasr. You know, the nation that is arguably Modern Israel’s best buddy.
Then there is all the problem with supplies of food and water in Gaza, but I don’t feel like hashing through that morass.
Do atrocities happen in war in even the most well-run and disciplined militaries? Sure - but ethical countries NOT engaged in atrocities run actual investigations, guilty parties are punished, and apologies issued. But the IDF doesn’t do that. EVERY investigation comes with the IDF being completely innocent. Which defies common sense because soldiers aren’t saints. What happened at Abu Ghraib prison, which came to light in 2004, is an example of US troops mistreating captured Iraqi troops - you know, actual combatants and not helpless babies in NICU’s - but those responsible were punished, including sentences in military prison of up to 10 years. It doesn’t erase that mistreatment or un-rape anyone, but it at least shows acknowledgement of crimes being committed. But the IDF? They shrug their shoulders, at best say it was someone else’s problem (when they’ve killed or arrested every “someone else” they could reach) and don’t fucking care about who gets killed in their war. Babies in NICU’s are not threats to anyone. Sure, they were deemed to fragile to move, but if the choices are “certain death if they stay” and “maybe they can be moved” people with even a modicum of human decency will at least attempt the latter. The IDF are not decent.
Securing a lasting peace will not be possible until Israel acknowledges the wrong-doings during this war and owns up to its own failures. Including acknowledging that some part of their country is composed of racist, bigotted assholes who really do want to engage in ethnic cleansing and genocide, then getting that faction under control and rendered harmless to the rest of us who aren’t exactly like said assholes.
I have seen the solution for at least some of them: dissolve the state of Israel and leave the fate of its current citizens completely in the hands of “indigenous Palestinians”. (Advocating anything less is apparently Zionist, to bring this back to the original topic.)
I don’t want to be that guy just linking to wikipedia, but still, seems to me the world has quite some exemples of alleged genocides not involving jewish countries:
Amazingly, the Israelis seem more blind to the flaws and crimes committed by their country than even Americans are.
‘Well, when the President America does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition.’
The entire war started because Israel wanted a Jewish-only ethnostate and went pleading to the UN to get it. Zionists use religious texts to justify why they should have that land, and what they can do to get it, going all the way back to the Book of Joshua where they took land from the Canaanites. Restoration of the temple is part of the daily liturgy. So everyone knew exactly what Israel was going to do once it was granted a monopoly on state violence, that the strategy would shift from demographic expansion to outright violence.
It’s not like the Zionist vision of Israel ever included a harmonious multi-ethnic state with Arabs and Jews living in harmony. This was something that only emerged when Israel realized they weren’t getting away with a complete ethnic cleansing. Everyone knew exactly what was coming next if Israel wasn’t checked by outside powers.
I don’t know if you’re lying or ignorant, but either way, it’s disgusting.
Israel accepted the partition plan. The war didn’t start because Israel wanted a Jewish ethnostate, it started because that’s what the Palestinians and surrounding Arab states with pan Arab ambitions wanted. An Arab Ethnostate encompassing the whole Levant.
Israel accepted the deal to get a country with around 45% of the population being Palestinian. Israel wasn’t trying to form an Ethnostate. That’s a lie.
Israel has always wanted an ethnostate in the Levant since biblical times. They accepted 45% not as their desired end goal, but the best deal they could get at the time. Ever since then, at every turn, they’ve used wars as an excuse to progress the ethnic cleansing project. Thanks to Netanyahu’s purposeful neglect of the situation, October 7th happened, giving Israel the pretext to advance the ethnic cleansing goal much closer to the final solution, and it’s closer than ever now.
Genteel civilized Israelis act shocked and horrified as to what’s going on now. Maybe it’s sincere, I don’t know, but this was clearly always the goal of the hardliners. I do believe nobody really wanted to see Israeli artillery razing Gaza apartments to the ground with entire families inside. The Palestinians were supposed to stay meekly swept under the rug. The West was supposed to ignore the apartheid state, but the West had this brief period of liberal democracy that caused some mild, temporary advocacy on behalf of the Palestinians. This seems to have ended now, and the final cleansing of Palestinians is the predictable end result that we’re now seeing in progress.
This is incorrect. The generations of Zionists who fought for and eventually established the State of Israel were all staunch secularists who wanted to replace religion with nationalism, not combine the two. Accordingly, they were fervently opposed by the entire spectrum of religious Jews. It was only decades after the establishment of the State that the abomination known as “Religious Zionism”, combining the worst features of both, developed.
Your account seems perilously close to viewing Jews as mindless zombies bent on fulfilling the Book of Joshua, whose views can safely be dismissed as completely irrational. Dragging the fact that “restoration of the Temple is part of the daily liturgy” (which isn’t even universally true) into a discussion of Zionism smells just as anti-Semitic as bringing up “male genital mutilation”.
Gee, what insidious monsters the Jews are. They’ve been trying to create an Ethnostate since biblical times? What horrible creatures. What’s your final solution for that problem?
Amazing that your evidence for this is that they accepted the deal that would have given the Palestinians, but not them, an Ethnostate.
Truly the Jew is a master of reverse psychology! How did you come to be immune to the Jew’s wiles and see through their lies?
And when the Palestinians are not removed from Gaza, will you:
- Admit you were wrong
Or - Maintain that like agreeing to a two state solution in 1948 with a Palestinian Ethnostate and a multicultural state with a slight Jewish majority, this is actually just another cunning step in their long term plan to exterminate the Palestinians
Can someone explain to me why countries like Pakistan get a pass on this while coming down on Israel? Same time, same British Empire withdrawal, same thing with religious groups thrown back and forth across the border.
Hmmmm, I wonder… 
And no one ever proposes the one-state solution as a way to bring peace to South Asia!
Strange.
Yes, it was and it is sincere. Many millions of Jews just want to live in peace with others and wish no harm on other people regardless of what’s happened in the past.
Yes, it has been and continues to be the goal of hardliners to have a Jew-only enthnostate. Well, maybe they’ll allow a few others as second or third class citizens. Some of them even want to declare about 3-4 millions Jews as not-Jews because they aren’t Jewish enough. Says something when they want to disown so many of their own in pursuit of “purity”. Well, they’re violent fascists.
Nope, there were some people cheering that and celebrating, just as there were some people cheering and celebrating the 9/11 attacks on the US. Because some people are scum.
Decent people, of all ethnicitis and religions (or not religious) are appalled by that.
Ehud Olmert was on NPR this morning calling what Netanyahu is doing war crimes, and accusing him of having no desire to end this. FWIW, I assume he’s not an antisemite. I can’t recall if he used the word genocide or not.
In my opinion, what Israel does in the West Bank is evidence that a significant portion of Israel knows that given enough time, they’ll just take more and more of the Palestinian land.
I think the WB behavior is the biggest giveaway that this Israeli government has no real interest in long term peace and security. And if not, then there’s no chance of a good outcome in Gaza either under this government.
This is probably the slimiest aspect of Zionism, the knee-jerk twisting of even mild criticism of Israel into an accusation of anti-Semitism and a desire to pursue another Holocaust. Hiding behind the Holocaust is especially obscene coming from a faction that purposely herded Palestinians into a confined ghetto and is now firing indiscriminately into the captive population (actually “indiscriminately” would be an improvement over what’s happening now).
The miracle of the thought-stopping phrase “anti-Semitism” is that Israel never needs to hear criticism by civilized people, because all criticism of Israel is by definition barbaric and genocidal. Neat trick!