I read a book by an Israeli soldier, albeit deployed in Gaza, not Lebanon, that clearing areas was simply standard procedure. Say they needed an axis for heavy vehicles, or lines of sight around a firing position, whatever, they would raze everything around.
Settler violence has become so bad that fucking Mike Huckabee is calling it “a horrific act of terror”:
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/13/g-s1-138574/us-west-bank-settlers
On Thursday morning, the owner’s brother Qusai Abu Rida said that he and his teenage son had been evacuated by Israel’s military. It was unclear what would happen to the property and at least one other that has been targeted.
Israeli troops intervened in recent days to try to restore order. The military said that overnight Thursday its troops had dismantled “two illegal outposts” on the outskirts of Qusra and a nearby village, and detained one Israeli.
And returned the home owners and family to their home? And apologized and tidied the place up?
Naah. More like destroy their property including defacing their religious posessions.
It says that the army have kicked the residents out, and are using their houses as barracks (which, according to a book I read written by someone in Gaza, means the contents of the homes end up thoroughly and extensively trashed):
Not for nothing did we ratify the Third Amendment…
The IDF admits shooting at Hind Rajab (finally!) and is opening an investigation. Also for the killings of several paramedics in 2025.
What took them so long? Why now? And what are the chances these are good faith investigations?
A retired IDF veteran and a Jewish American journalist discuss why Israeli authorities are encouraging violence against Palestinian civilians:
Most of the military support the settlers. Most of the government, of course, does. But also the army and the police. They do not stand aside. They help them. They don’t just let them do what they want to do. They help them with money and roads. I will give you an example. There is a closed military zone, and the commander takes a map and claims no one can get in. And in this area, there are supposed to be no Israelis allowed—only Palestinians and the army itself. This happened in Qusra. No one could get in except the people who lived there, they said. But then the military commander allowed a lot of settlers to come in and build, and even to start committing crimes against Palestinians. When I was arrested, it was in a closed military zone, and they arrested me because I was there. But they left the settlers. These settlers had wanted to break a kind of water well that the Palestinians were using. But the army came and took me and arrested me and left the settlers there to break the gate to the well and allow their goats to drink from it. This is how the army helps the settlers with their crimes.
On the Palestinians, this IDF veteran says:
They are very worried about what is happening. There are many more people that need help than we are able to help. People call asking for help, but we cannot help everyone. What can I say? Many of them are very brave. I don’t have one good sentence to put in your piece. They are not violent people. They have families. And they don’t want to give up their homes.
So the IDF veteran says the Palestinians are largely brave and decent family people, and not violent.
On the other hand, @Wesley_Clark says:
I don’t think the Palestinian people collectively will ever live in peace. They want an ethnostate and they’re never getting one. Even if they did get one, they’d just turn on each other once they had it.
Are the Palestinians really irredeemable savages who can never live in peace, even with each other? Or are they just regular people, not that different from any other group, largely worried about the safety and prospect for their families?
The brown skinned people in Iran for the most part want to live in a secular country with human rights. The brown skinned people in Gaza and the west bank, for the most part, want to live in an authoritarian, theocratic ethnostate.
By comparison, the white skinned people in Vermont mostly want to live in a secular country with human rights. The white skinned people in mississippi, for the most part, want to live in an authoritarian, theocratic ethnostate.
I feel you guys don’t understand nuance.
Cite?
What nuance? What is remotely nuanced about this sweeping, hateful (and cite-free) declaration about an ethnicity of millions?:
I don’t think the Palestinian people collectively will ever live in peace. They want an ethnostate and they’re never getting one. Even if they did get one, they’d just turn on each other once they had it.
…this from the Israeli minister of national security is outrageous.
For those that don’t want to click, the minister has shared what appears to be an AI-generated video of Palestinian overweight prisoners who get shipped via a conveyor belt into a concentration camp, and they emerge on the other side skinny and crying.
This isn’t a joke any more. This isn’t funny. And we have to stop pretending that Ben-Gvir doesn’t have any power and we should ignore him. And we need to end the support of this regime, which allows people like this to be in government.
At the risk of coming across as unintentionally glib: One State, Two State
If you want a more detailed historical perspective: Righteous Victims
The books stand well on their own and I would do a great disservice to the subject they cover in an attempt to offer a just summary. Except maybe to say that neither side covers itself in glory. Not then, not now, and not in the foreseeable future.
That said, there is no defensible position to be had for the documented war crimes committed by the IDF in Gaza. Nor can there be any defense of the vile actions being committed by the Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
I’m not in the position to make an intelligent argument about proportionality of response to October 7. Reasonable people can agree that a response was necessary and that the response, as we see it today, has both gone too far and fallen far short in it’s objectives to punish those responsible.
But it is not unreasonable to argue that a sufficiently large proportion of the Palestinian population behaves in a way that supports the argument that they prefer to live in an authoritarian theocratic ethno-state. Just as it is not unreasonable to claim that a smaller, but no less fundamentalist messianic population of Israelis also prefer an authoritarian theocratic ethno-state.
So we can make all the idealistically naive appeals we want for stopping all forms of violence between the various factions of the Levant. It will all fall on deaf ears as long as the Parties of God have a say in how they wish to settle their generational grievances and ethnic blood feuds.
So you’re saying that you believe a “large proportion” of Palestinians would prefer to live in a Palestinian-controlled “authoritarian theocratic ethno-state” as compared to, say, an Israeli-controlled non-state region in which they have virtually no legal rights of their own and are subject to random acts of consequence-free brutality by Israelis?
Maybe these Palestinians also have red blood and breathe oxygen?
Welcome back, by the way!
Yes. It’s not like Hamas treated them kindly in 2005. Better the devil you know.
Adding: I think most would prefer none of the above, but that’s not an option they’ve ever been offered. Not by Hamas, not by the PLO, not by the PA, and not by any other faction.
Uncalled for.
Awww. Did you miss me? 
My point is that absolutely desperate people, subject to random brutality, theft, etc., with essentially no recourse or chance for rights and safety and a decent future are going to be a bit more likely to turn to desperate solutions and alternatives and means of resisting. Because they’re humans like any other.
The first step is for Israel to cease causing and allowing the brutality and violations of rights. That’s something that only the Israeli government can do.
https://bsky.app/profile/diplomatofnight.com/post/3mufalgoxws2i
Multiple Israeli former generals are now explicitly comparing Israeli behavior towards Palestinians to the Holocaust.
Of course Palestinians are humans. Of course the loss of every Palestinian child’s life is as tragic as the loss of an Israeli child’s life. Of course they deserve to live in dignity with human rights on par with Israelis. But I think your arguments on the whole suffer from a lack of a better informed historical perspective. Palestinians possess agency and they have often chosen poorly in exercising that agency at various pivotal points in modern history. (Cue the easy and cheap accusations of victim blaming.) Which in no way excuses Israel’s ongoing brutality and egregious violations of human rights in Gaza and West Bank.
And yes, I’m aware that Israelis are split in their opinions on the ‘Palestinian Question’. That sad irony is not lost on anyone paying attention.
There’s nothing Palestinians can do right now to change things. They’re not in control of anything. Israel is in control of everything (regarding the Palestinians), and Israeli leaders are consistently choosing to cause and tolerate brutality, theft, atrocities, routine violations of rights, and much more.
Whatever happened in the past doesn’t remotely justify this, nor does it change this fact.