And that insane claim is part of what’s being used as justification by some Israelis to justify ethnic cleansing. No, of course “from the River to the Sea” doesn’t inherently mean genocide. Some people who want genocide say it, but then, some people who want genocide also say “I’d like a falafel pita with extra tzaziki sauce, please”. That doesn’t mean genocide, either.
…from Paula Gaviria Betancur, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons:
Over the last 80 days we have seen Israel order the evacuation of the north of Gaza, and where some parts now look like this:
Beit Lahia
Beit Hanoun
1.9 million out of 2.3 million are now displaced. The UN estimates that half of those displaced are now in Rafah. Many people have been displaced multiple times.
23 hospitals have been shut down by the IDF. None operating at all in the north. The ones that are still operating have been targeted over and over again by the IDF. The system is overloaded and barely functional.
Gaza has been under siege for 80 days. Israel are literally starving the people. The UN estimates that if this continues for another month, there will be famine. Infection and disease are already running rampant.
And Israel has just announced the next phase of the war, the evacuation of Central Gaza. Telling people to move to areas that are already targets of heavy bombing. If this next phase lasts as long as the first phase, then we are looking at least another 3 months. And there is no indication that they will stop there. Once they do what they did to the north to central Gaza, they will move to the south.
It really is time to stop pretending that Israel are not doing this. Every accusation is a confession. Israeli leadership are openly talking about “re-education” camps, about “voluntary” migration.
The starting point must be to recognize that Israel’s strategy isn’t targeting Hamas. It’s targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians in Gaza. Its making the place uninhabitable. Its destoryed apartment blocks, government buildings, churches, Mosques, cemeteries, razed crops, have driven millions of people from the north to the southernmost point of the strip. They are starving Gaza, they are bombing Gaza. No place in Gaza is safe.
Ummm, the people who just slaughtered 20,000 Palestinians and admitted that they kill two civilians for every fighter are absolutely committing ethnic cleansing.
Take it from the guy who’s been in three wars and sees what Israel is doing for what it is.
Who are the radicals?
What are the Zionist alternatives to Netanyahu, or Rabin, for that matter, who expanded settlements under his ministry and declared, “a Palestinian entity which is less than state.”?
It isn’t a choice between a or b, it’s both.
Yep, that’s definitely what a war looks like.
Rabin wasn’t much different than Netanyahu. What are the Zionist alternatives?
No it doesn’t. The phrase “from the river to the sea,” is entirely context dependent. It means a Palestine free of the Zionist regime that to exist must necessarily oppress the Palestinian people. Such an entity must not exist, let alone have a right to exist.
Do tell, what is your experience?
…war doesn’t look like 80% of people driven out of the homes, into UN shelters that are regularly bombed, forced to move again and again like some sort of checkerboard, it doesn’t look like the complete destruction of all civilian infrastructure, nor does it typically involve destroying the hospital system, and a siege that is driving the population into starvation.
What is happening here involves multiple breaches of international law and the Geneva Conventions. There are some people who don’t care about those things. But these things matter.
Tell that to Tokyo, Dresden, Stalingrad, Kyiv, or Atlanta.
Those were cities in countries. Gaza is not a country, it’s an open air prison under the uter control of Israel with prison self-administration allowed as the bone tossed to the Palestinians in Gaza.
Of course it is. It has its own government and its population are not citizens of Israel. That’s just about the one thing that Israel and Hamas agree on.
Oh goodie.
For context, the OP’s last thread on Israel, which ended with him insisting “One state is the only compromise solution that takes into account both parties’ claims in regard to Palestine” despite being told too many times to bother counting that neither side considers that an acceptable solution.
Palestine could have been a country in 1948, had the Arab leadership (it wasn’t even really up to the Palestinians yet) been able to stomach the idea of Jews living unmassacared next door. But I guess we are ignoring that.
“Zionist” is being used as a slur, here. Like most slurs, don’t expect the usage to be logical.
Of course, there is nothing pejorative about believing that the Jewish people have the right to live freely in their homeland. I think that is a right that all people should enjoy, including Palestinians, which is why I am in favor of a two state solution, which makes me a Palonist in addition to a Zionist, I guess.
But the fact that some people see nationalism for the Jewish people specifically as worthy of scorn is quite telling.
Do you really need to ask a question that we all already know the answer to?
No it’s not. It’s government is a prison self-administration.
Years ago I read an NYT op-ed that advocated for a one-state solution. It was eloquently written and seemed like a reasonable proposal.
Then I read the byline and saw that the author was Moammar Gadhafi, which caused me to change my mind about the sensibility of the idea altogether.
It’s the solution they need.
That’s the fault of its government. If Hamas wanted to improve the lives of its citizens and stop the destruction, it could do so today by surrendering.
But Hamas doesn’t care about its people or about stopping the destruction.