Literal interpretations of Biblical text often lead to some very weird results. They gives us things like Creationism, Geocentrism and the flat earth. With that said, I should point out the the book of Joshua starts right out giving the borders of Israel. It lists the eastern border as the Euphrates river. How many settlers think they have a right to Baghdad?
Traditionally the reference to the Euphrates does not mean the Eastern border of biblical Israel is the whole of the Euphrates. Rather, the Euphrates forms part of the Northern border in what is now Syria (or possibly Turkey too, I don’t remember.) However, when Ezekiel allots land to tribes for the future kingdom, the allotments only go to Zedad (Sadad, Syria), a considerable distance short of the Euphrates.
~Max
FTR, I wasn’t lecturing you. You challenged my characterization without substantiation, I conceded your point and linked to news articles on the same. Fighting ignorance, you know.
I don’t frequent these threads, though given your linking to primary sources I gathered you were informed on the subject.
…if you haven’t read the South African submission to the ICJ then I would encourage you to read it in full. I’ve posted a link to it upthread. I wouldn’t rely on the reporting about it.
Because it’s damning.
And it got orders of magnitude worse since then.
But even back in 2023, just a couple of months after October the 7th, the extent of how Israel was systematically “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” was crystal clear.
It really is hard to reconcile your casual dismissal of an “actual genocide” and your claim that Palestinians are REALLY the ones doing a genocide because of a four-word phrase with the significant body of evidence that Israel is committing a genocide that was presented to the International Court of Justice, that the UN committee (that you dismissed because it was only three people) collated, reviewed and presented, along with all the other independent reports that I talked about earlier.
Intent is often the hardest thing to prove when we talk about genocide, but in this case, they just tweeted it out.
I honestly don’t understand your casual dismissal of this. I don’t understand how you can talk about Palestianians the way you do. The language that you use here, that there is “disinterest in democracy, self-rule and economic development”, as if it seem as if that was a choice they ever actually had. Do you talk about any other group of people like that?
What the ICJ ordered in January 2024 wasn’t for “Israel to play nice”. It was a direct response to the seriousness of the allegations.
Isreal were literally ordered to “take measures to prevent acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip”. They were ordered to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this convention.” They were ordered to “prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide”. They were ordered to “enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”. They were ordered to “prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence”.
This was not a case of “ordering Israel to play nice” but a case of “the evidence we were presented with was strong enough that we are telling you to stop the potentially genocidal actions, to stop the incitement to genocide, to let in food and aid, and to preserve the evidence.”
Of course that didn’t happen. They didn’t stand down. It got worse.
And we can’t downplay the significance of Isreal’s choice to ignore the courts. This was the start of the literal reshaping of the “world order”, where international law no longer applies. This was testing the boundaries. And we failed. It’s why the US was able to literally invade Venezuela, kidnap its president and steal its oil. Why Israel and the United States could get away with killing nearly the entire leadership in Yemen and Iran.
And to bring it back to the topic of this thread, for decades Israel has acted in open defiance of international law in its treatment of the Palestinian people. That includes the apartheid-like system that is the topic of this discussion. If you don’t know what that means, then these links will help.
This thread is about the best possible defence of these practices, and as I said up thread: I don’t know how anyone could defend this. Not even if the Palestinian people showed “disinterest in economic development”. (Which simply isn’t true.)
In Gaza right now Israel (after targeted assassinations of over 200 Palestinian journalists) won’t let in independent journalists. Won’t let in war crime investigators. Still have thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many held without charge, in what could only be described as torture camps. Israel will still only allow in a fraction of the aid they agreed to let in. They occupy, reportedly, over half of the strip while Palestinians are crammed into half the space they used to live in, and they didn’t used to have that much space anyway. Much of Gaza has been flattened, and barely any reconstruction work is going on.
And we allowed this to happen. I for one will always be ashamed that my country didn’t take a stance on this. I’m ashamed that for most of my life I simply had no idea what life was like for the Palestinian people. That I bought into the propaganda.
I had never noticed how casually people used dehumanising language about Palestinians before. Now I can’t unsee it. Even people I consider to be “moderate” and who have never said or posted anything controversial in their lives can’t seem to help themselves here.
It is often said that the Israelis and Arabs have been at war for thousands of years. After looking into the history in the 19th and 20th centuries, ISTM that the area had been fairly stable under the Ottoman empire until the Arab revolt of 1917 during WWI.
At about that time, Britain made three separate and conflicting promises for the area known as Palestine. One promise was for diplomatic recognition for the Arabs if they would start a rebellion. At the same time, they made another deal to split the area with France. The third promise was an idea to send the Jews back where they came from, the Balfour declaration.
The sudden influx of Jewish immigrants triggered a xenophobic response by the long-time residents. They British, who were in charge may not have set and enforced adequate ground rules. Tensions escalated from there into what has become about a century of warfare.
As an observer from the outside, it looks like a soldier, especially one with combat experience would have a hard time living with himself if he sees the other side as human. That is what war does to us.
ISTM that one could only say that if they didn’t pay attention to the long (though quite incomplete on this page) list of massacres that occurred under the Ottomans.
I mean I could say that just based on that timeline. 240 years between 1517 (middle of a war as the Ottomans are conquering Syria from the Mamluks) and 1757 (when the Ottoman state was seriously descending into decline and internal chaos) is remarkably stable from a historical perspective. That’s peak Roman hegemony-level stable, considering Syria has been a frequently fought over region. While acknowledging that in the 18th century incidents seriously started multiplying everywhere well beyond that list, it was still a relatively sleepy backwater for about the same time period as the United States has existed.
I think the 1917 narrative is challengeable as well, but let’s not go crazy here. The 18th century saw a lot of decay and disorder. The 19th some internal reform and recovery from that but also some war (in 1834 Muhammed Ali was in revolt and conquering Syria) and the rise of ethnic nationalism. Prior to that it may not of been the funnest place to live from the 16th to the 18th centuries, but it wasn’t anywhere near a pogrom-filled hellhole.
…but I wasn’t talking about Isrealis and Arabs.
I was talking about Palestinians. And how causally people used dehumanising language to talk about them.
For example: the way you decided to contextualise what I said. Why did you do that? Why Arabs instead of Palestinians? Why frame it in a historical context? You’ve chosen to use a political framing here, one that emphasises their regional roots rather than a distinct national identity. That’s a deliberate choice. And part of what I am talking about.
But we aren’t observers from the outside. When I talk about how casually people used dehumanising language to talk about Palestinians, I’m including how we talk about them in this very thread. We aren’t observers. We are participants. I’ve never taken part in a war. War hasn’t done anything to me.
This isn’t about why soldiers have a hard time seeing the other side as human. It’s why some people who are miles away from the conflict, many who don’t even know the historical context, but talk casually about Palestinians as if they aren’t just the same as the rest of us. There are analogues here about how historically groups of people are collectively treated as lesser people. That’s how we get atrocities and genocides and the Holocaust and how much of the world pretends it wasn’t happening at the time.
Right now people get punished for speaking out for the Palestinian people. In the US people were fired; they were doxxed. On college campuses they were beaten up, evicted, kicked out of school, and refused the chance to graduate. Speaking up for Palestine will get you censored on TV. Will have the news anchor interrupt you to give the other side of the story.
Agents of the International Criminal Court have been threatened. The US used their political influence so that judges and prosecutors had their credit cards and bank accounts cancelled by global financial institutions. Just because they indicted Netanyahu and Gallant.
I don’t see how any of this has anything to do with “history in the 19th and 20th centuries”. It has to do with irrational hatred and prejudice. I’m not accusing anyone here of ‘irrational hatred and prejudice’. But the reality is that these things filter down. I used to associate “Palestine” with terror and terrorism. Because that was all I had ever been shown.
You never did answer this question, @Jasmine. Care to?
Of course there are civilians, but civilians have always been collateral damage in warfare. That’s what happens when you fight wars and lose. Since terrorist groups make it a point to hide among civilians for just that reason, it makes civilian casualties inevitable and greater in number.
Personally, I blame the cowards who hide among women and children, not the wronged country that comes to root them out.
So you believe that Israel is at war with the Palestinians in the West Bank, and the toleration of theft and brutality against West Bank Palestinian civilians by Israeli settlers is a necessary or acceptable consequence of this war?
Presumably, then, you believe Israeli settlers in the West Bank should be seen as Israeli soldiers on the front line of this war?
Is the above an accurate representation of your position?
Well, no, because I haven’t accepted your blanket and unsupported statement regarding the overall treatment of the population. I guess it’s because I detect a significant current of antisemitism in all of these attacks against Israel.
In my mind, if you attack me and then run and hide in someone’s basement, I’m going to leave a crater where your house was because I’m going after them. Maybe you should take some responsibility harboring terrorists, and maybe that’s why I consider it warfare and not gratuitous brutality.
For some reason you keep bringing Gaza and military operations into this. My questions had nothing to do with Gaza or Israeli military operations.
I’ll ask again, and this is strictly about the West Bank: Is it your position that, in the name of security, Israel is justified in allowing settlers to brutalize and steal from Palestinian civilians without repercussions?
Then why is this excuse only one-sided? Why is indiscriminately attacking civilians okay when Israelis do it, but not okay when Palestinians do it?
When Israelis in settlements, at checkpoints, etc., attack and brutalize Palestinians and then “run and hide” in Israeli civilian society, why shouldn’t Palestinians lob missiles at them?
(I know why I think Palestinians should refrain from lobbing missiles at civilians even when under attack, but it’s the same reason why I think Israelis should refrain from bombing civilians even when under attack. What doesn’t make sense here is your double standard, where any Israeli violence is automatically “justifiable warfare”, but any Palestinian violence is automatically “illegitimate terrorism”.)
Take it up with the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, for example:
I think you’re going to have a hard time handwaving away criticisms not only from fellow Jews like @iiandyiiii and myself, but actual Israeli organizations like B’Tselem (whose “name expresses the universal and Jewish moral edict to respect and uphold the human rights of all people”) as mere antisemitic slander.
But that’s what chauvinistic bigotry does to people: it makes them very resistant to rational discourse that challenges their underlying axioms of “Group A is Good, Group B is Bad”.
The mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance involved with pretending that Israel is supporting settler violence because it sometimes doesn’t prosecute settlers hard enough while ignoring the fact that the Palestinian leadership has a literal Martyr Fund is truly astounding. But that’s what happens when you buy into this ideology that only the side with “more power” has any agency or responsibility for their behavior. Some real “Group A is Good, Group B is Bad” nonsense.
Is it your position that this Israeli government opposes settler violence? If so, do you have any evidence of this?
Settler violence is a big part of the point of the thread, but not the only part - I’m just as interested in the justification and rationalization for segregation and disparate justice systems (and highly disparate treatment and outcomes for accused criminal conduct in the West Bank).
I’ll be nice and not publicly tell you exactly what I think of your insults.
Instead, let me say that it’s not bigotry when you look at the decades of historical evidence that show what people have been committing act upon act upon act of terrorism and what people haven’t. My attitudes have been shaped by their behavior over time.
What does this have to do with whether Israel is justified in allowing settlers to brutalize and steal from Palestinian civilians without repercussions?
Noooooooo, you don’t understand, you’re supposed to disregard anything done by anyone on the Palestinian side because they are “oppressed victims of colonialism”, you can’t give them any agency whatsoever. Once you’ve disregarded absolutely everything ever done by one side, you can safely conclude the other side is pure evil.