Can someone living in Israel help me understand what is going on right now?
What does the political climate look like in Israel? Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this?
Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
I know that the media is all over the place and it's hard to figure out what is going on as an outsider.
Either way, I hope that this situation gets resolved. I don't think that it's good for anyone and is costing a lot of money and lives.
diggan · 2h ago
The settlers been at this for a long, long time. It was hard for me to understand their perspective as well, because surely they most be seeing what they do as something good, like everyone else. There is a BBC documentary that goes into more depth, but a short snippet of the documentary can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU which includes a short interview with Daniella Weiss, a Orthodox Zionist who founded a organization focusing on creating these civilian colonies for Israelis.
As far as I can tell, from talking with Israelis both living in Israel and outside, there really isn't one majority thinking a certain way, it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing
Speaking out of my ass here. But I’d guess most people don’t care. A minority cheers. A minority protests. Most go on with their lives.
Gud · 1h ago
No offense, but why would you speak about a topic you know little about?
KingMob · 1h ago
Possibly because smart people with expertise, usually hard-won through years of focus and study, make the common fallacy that they are experts in unrelated areas, even if they haven't put in the effort to become experts.
Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.
BigHatLogan · 1h ago
Really well said. I would even go further and say that the "smart people with expertise" even disagree on matters like this and are operating on imperfect, vague information. Knowing that, it seems even more ridiculous to ask passersby about their opinion on this. Of course you can have an opinion, but keep in mind you're likely operating in 99% fog. Just my two cents.
abirch · 21m ago
I love Tetlock's "Super Forecasting" Basically experts only do slightly better than random on predicting in their area of expertise.
JumpCrisscross · 49m ago
> why would you speak about a topic you know little about?
I have knowledge about adjacent topics. I add the caveat in case someone has a source that substantiates or refutes my hypothesis because I’m more interested in learning
zoklet-enjoyer · 1h ago
That's kind of how most things seem to be. People go about their lives and even if they have strong opinions about something like that, they probably aren't going to do much about it.
gosub100 · 14m ago
It makes sense to extrapolate based on what we know. In the US, the media and advocacy groups manufacture controversy and outrage. He's testing the possibility that maybe the same pattern applies there too.
Liron · 1h ago
Israeli here, can't directly answer your question since I've lived in the US for 99% of my adult life, but I consider myself pro-Israel and resent the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed. I see the key problem as people removing context: Context for why the current situation could easily be different if Hamas acted/acts differently, and context for why there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years.
brentm · 36m ago
The problem here though is what will ever give Israel confidence that Oct 7 will never happen again? We know that going after terrorists for years and killing them just creates more terrorists (Iraq, Afghanistan). The young children who do not end up dying of starvation will be men in 20 years, still in Gaza with no options to leave and resent Israel who they will consider to be effectively their jailer. The situation is just untenable. I don't like to think that the result of Oct 7 is a more open Gaza but I don't really know what other options Israel has.
Hamas obviously started this but Israel won the war a long time ago. The world deserves an end. The longer it goes on the more Hamas will actually have achieved some kind of lasting positive image of Gaza which is rooted in their actions on Oct 7th and that would be an incredibly bad outcome for all.
chimineycricket · 35m ago
>the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed
Israeli soldiers, politicians, and many civilians are portraying themselves this way. Soldiers post videos sniping a child in the head calling it a "legendary video", politicians say Palestinians should starve, civilians block aid trucks.
Do you resent the way they are portrayed or do you mean you resent what a lot of Israelis are doing?
18172828286177 · 28m ago
There is no point arguing with people who are pro-Israel any longer, you are wasting your time. Anyone still supporting Israel at this point is either an extremist or so ignorant that there is no point engaging with them: there is literally nothing Israel could do that would make them disagree with Israel.
cool_dude85 · 1h ago
This happened in the occupied West Bank. What would you like Hamas to do differently there?
Liron · 58m ago
I often don't endorse the behavior of Israeli settlers. I'm responding to the question of what Israelis think about the news in general, a question to which I wanted to contribute the context of Israel's precarious existential security as a sovereign Jewish state.
istjohn · 32m ago
It's the "Jewish" in Jewish state that lies at the root of the conflict, isn't it? There aren't many options to maintain a dominant ethnic identity in a democracy when the land the nation was founded on was already inhabited by people who don't share in that identity. The only option is to either cede that ethnic identity or to engage in mass displacement and disenfranchisement.
It's exceedingly subtle the way ethno-nationalism gets smuggled into the phrase "as a sovereign Jewish state," but it is no less terrible and ugly than the ethno-nationalism in other parts of the world and eras in history.
halflife · 4m ago
Jews were kicked out of all the Arab nations they lived in, were persecuted in Europe, and you think that they shouldn’t get a sovereign country for themselves? Should the Kurds get one? Tibetans? Catalonias? Scottish?
streptomycin · 26m ago
There are currently about 40 countries that have a higher Muslim percentage than Israel's Jewish percentage. Many of them much higher. Many of them kicked out all their Jews in recent history.
rafram · 35m ago
"Precarious" strikes me as a misleading way to describe a nuclear-armed state (and the only nuclear-armed state in its region).
tome · 30m ago
Do you believe Israel's continued existence is assured?
Der_Einzige · 16m ago
Even without nukes it would be because the arabs in the region are bad at fighting.
I suspect most Israelis think differently. Even if "the arabs in the region are bad at fighting" they still outnumber the Israeli population by something like 20 to 40 times, depending on how you count. About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective.
xorcist · 39m ago
Would you agree that "Palestinians should suffer for what Hamas did" is a decent summary of the view you describe, or would you take resentment against that?
Can you perhaps elaborate a bit on why and perhaps also what you see as the desirable terminating state of this process long term?
Apologies in advance if I stepped on someone's toes here. I do not pretend to have or be able to gain any knowledge that could help this thousand year conflict.
bawolff · 19m ago
> Would you agree that "Palestinians should suffer for what Hamas did" is a decent summary of the view you describe
I'm not the person you are responding to, but sheesh that is an unsympathetic reading of their comment. I do not know if the person you replied to does or does not believe that, but nothing in their comment would imply that.
> I do not pretend to have or be able to gain any knowledge that could help this thousand year conflict.
Well first step would be listening to what people say instead of adding your own interpretations.
xorcist · 8m ago
Yeah, I realize that was dangerously close to ragebait territory, sorry about that.
It's just that I saw it as an opportunity to glimpse into the reasoning made and I couldn't find myself with a charitable interpretation that didn't include something very similar to that statement, so why not pop it out there to find out more what the person disagrees with?
Feel free to ignore the question, it probably won't change anyone's view anyway.
18172828286177 · 34m ago
You are arguing here for collective punishment, which is morally repugnant and illegal under international law. Please, do some self-reflection
bawolff · 26m ago
Can you be more specific why you think so? I don't think what the commenter you are responding to said would meet the definition of collective punishment under international law.
18172828286177 · 21m ago
Israel is directly causing a mass starvation event in Gaza. Innocent children and women are dying every single day, and if nothing is done soon, scores more will in the near future.
The commenter’s position is that the situation in Gaza is justifiable because Israel had to take action against Hamas.
This is textbook collective punishment: causing suffering to a massive number of people due to the actions of a minority.
bawolff · 14m ago
> Israel is directly causing a mass starvation event in Gaza. Innocent children and women are dying every single day, and if nothing is done soon, scores more will in the near future.
Asuming all that is true, the person you are responding to never said they supported the policies that lead to that or that state of affairs.
It is possible to imagine that someone could both believe that Israel's continued military operation is neccessary and that changes could be made to relieve the humanitarian situation. I dont know if the person you are responding to actually believes that, but based on their comments there is no reason to think they dont.
lo_zamoyski · 2m ago
It's possible to be critical of both Hamas and Israel, while recognizing that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is evil and a war crime.
Just war principles are important to observe.
The Nazis were a thuggish and murderous regime with plenty of complicity from the German populace, but the firebombing of Dresden was evil, as were the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Targeting civilians is evil.
If we accept that these are evil, and we ought to, then we must accept that what Israel is doing is unacceptable. Bibi should be punished.
You can target Hamas, and you should, but just war does not allow for the means Israel has used.
bigyabai · 1h ago
> why there is no "just stop fighting" option
I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that, though I admit I'm not up-to-date on Israeli affairs. Don't the overwhelming majority of outsiders want a two-state solution, or failing that a more secular Israeli administration?
Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace. We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government, and there are simple ways to fix it if the willpower exists.
bawolff · 36m ago
> > why there is no "just stop fighting" option
> I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that
i live in Canada, literally half a world away. Every street light pole seems to have some sort of "Ceasefire now" sticker on it. I also see similar sentiment in online threads on the topic. I think there is a significant group of people who want Israel to commit to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
> We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government
When people talk about this topic, they are usually referring to the conflict with Palestine.
18172828286177 · 31m ago
People are arguing for an unconditional ceasefire because innocent people and children are literally starving to death.
Many of the people arguing for ceasefire probably wouldn’t be so animated about it if that wasn’t the case, i.e. if Israel was conducting a legal war with targeted strikes. That isn’t the case.
bawolff · 23m ago
You're responing to me as if my comment disagreed, but i didn't say anything about the "why", just that their exists people who advocate for an unconditional ceasefire. Which i'm sure you'd agree with.
ars · 11m ago
Why are they calling for a ceasefire instead of for Hamas to surrender?
empath75 · 15m ago
I am very much of the opinion that Hamas should not be allowed to continued to exist for Israel's benefit and for Palestine's, but there is a lot of space in between "just stop fighting" and "genocide", and Israel is way closer to one side of that than I would prefer.
> Can someone living in Israel help me understand what is going on right now?
You're not going to get an answer to that, because anyone who would do so will take one look at the comments, and will leave.
Someone actually had the courage to try - and was rewarded by being downvoted into oblivion. If you post anything positive about Israel here, people go in your profile and downvote ALL your comments, even unrelated tech ones. You also get all your comments flagged.
Adverblessly · 1h ago
> Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this?
If you are asking specifically about the Hilltop Youth, I believe most people understand them to be somewhere between extremists and jewish terrorists and do not support their actions. The government (well, Ben-Gvir) can continue to support them (within limits of plausible deniability) as long as they are in power and elections aren't until late next year.
If you are asking about Israeli Jews and the ongoing war, I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory. Everyone (in the mainstream) has either served in the IDF or has family there and so they know first-hand that claims that the IDF is participating in a genocide are absurd. If you're telling me my (in this case fictional) cousing Omri is participating in a genocide, I can very easily ignore that because I know he is a good kid that wouldn't do that, and I can call him up and ask him. Or maybe I'll ask my (fictional) coworker Daniel, the poor guy has been called into reserve duty for over 300 days since the war started.
They've also probably seen at least one of the many lies going around about the war. The documentary that the BBC tried to fake. The UN lying about the amount of aid going into Gaza (at the time when the american temporary pier plan was ongoing, the UN published numbers of trucks that they personally supervised going into Gaza. Conveniently, they had no one present to supervise in one of three checkpoints and "missed" about 1/3rd of the aid going in). UNWRA personnel participating in the OCT-7 attack. UNIFIL providing cover for Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israeli homes (including some Druze children which really shocked people around the country). Some blatant foreign media nonesense I've seen is showing footage of Israeli soccer fans being beaten and recontextualising it as if they are the ones doing the beating. Footage of an Israeli survivor of a terrorist attack (speaking Hebrew, in Israeli media!) being subtitled to describe her as a Palestinian survivor of an Israeli terror attack. Footage of Assad slaughtering his Syrian population broadcast as if it is a slaughter by the IDF, etc. Foreign media has proven itself to Israelis as liars, so they have no reason to listen to them.
They also see it as the #1 priority to return the hostages and see any call to stop the war before they are returned as ridiculous and evil (Though I do believe a majority support a deal of "everyone for everyone and a stop to the war").
In this light, even though many people believe the war could have already ended (with an aforementioned "everyone for everyone" deal) and Netanyahu is cruelly extending the war for his own personal interests, they also understand that any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas, both for starting the conflict, and for their use of civilians as human shields, their use of civilian infrastructure (schools, mosques, hospitals) as war resources and use of their children as soldiers. They may also be familiar with the data, which last time both sides published semi-reliable information (or equally unreliable information), showed that when compared to other historical conflicts, civilian casualties were actually a smaller part of overall casualties. And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war as the IDF is already doing their duty to fight as ethically as is reasonably possible.
While we're there, we also frequently see news of Israelis and Jews being attacked around the world with no one really giving a shit about it. If the UK shows me that they don't give a shit about the lives of Jews/Israelis in the UK, I'm definitely not going to care what the UK government thinks about the ongoing war.
> Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
If you are in Israel and know of Jews residing elsewhere, they are probably former Israelis, which don't neccesarily represent non-Israeli Jews in those countries. Those I've spoken to have spoken about a sharp rise in antisemitism. Some fear for their lives. From the news and other media I know some Jews feel like Israel is going too far, but they get their opinions from e.g. the BBC, so you can't really take them as well-informed opinions.
- Incidentally, one former UN employee I know has spoken about ingrained and casual antisemitism in the UN much earlier than OCT-7 (of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" kind), so I'd consider any opinion or intervention by the UN as deceitful and unwelcome.
istjohn · 15m ago
We have numerous first-hand reports from doctors of young children showing up at Gazan hospitals with gun shot injuries to the head. We have seen well-marked aid convoys blown up. Grutesque living skeleton children haunt our social media feeds. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared a genocide over a year and a half ago. A reply to OP's question that doesn't engage with these realities is, at best, deeply unserious.
ars · 5m ago
> Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared a genocide over a year and a half ago
Isn't that the point? They declared a genocide before Israel had even seriously responded to the attack. (Year and a half ago is Dec 2023, the attempted genocide by Palestinians was Oct 7, 2023.)
tguvot · 34m ago
people here don't understand and don't care about difference between 700k settlers, 500 hilltop youth idiots and where from they came.
trying to explain it, will get you downvoted and flagged. because people find it inconvenient when facts don't correlate with carefully cultivated media picture that they been consuming
It's important to note that a big part of Israeli society opposes the JahuNatan government, the illegal settlers and war crimes in Gaza. Even after the Hamas attack on Kibbutzim near Gaza in '23.
Quite important not to become part of the problem when you discuss this case. And the problem is that such a heated subject is prone to make people ideologically possessed and tribal. To a point where they become emotionally blinded and are unable to listen to people that don't share/fully support their beliefs.
alexisread · 2h ago
I agree there is a significant number opposed, given the protest sizes in Tel Aviv, but it is far from the majority.
Given Israeli education, support for settlers, the immigration policy which allows anyone with Jewish heritage to claim land there (regardless of any connection to the area, and of any outstanding arrest warrants) and Israelis using their kids to stop aid trucks and so on, there's a lot needed to show the majority what is actually humane and acceptable.
sc68cal · 2h ago
They may oppose the current arrangement of the government but they don't disagree with the occupation and ethnic cleansing.
> Eurasia
Poll: 82% of Israelis want to expel Palestinians from Gaza; 47% want to kill every man, woman, child
How many percent of the Palestinians in Gaza do you think want to expel the Jews from Israel? And how many do you want to kill every jewish man, woman and child?
viccis · 1h ago
"What percentage of the people being bombed out and starved want to destroy the specific group of people doing and supporting the bombing and starvation" is not the gotcha you think it is. I'd imagine if you asked Armenians about their opinions of Azeris in the NK region, you'd get answers that would give you chills.
sillyfluke · 1h ago
>How many percent of the Palestinians in Gaza do you think want to expel the Jews from Israel?
44% of Gaza was between the age of 0-14 in 2023. I leave how psychotic this comment reads within this context as an excercise for the reader.
graemep · 1h ago
Given the numbers who voted for Hamas I guess its a pretty high proportion.
I think (from the perspective of having lived in a country undergoing a civil war for many years) one of the problems the West has in dealing with issues like this is that people imagine that there is a bad side to oppose, and a good side you want to win. Very often the impacts on societies of lengthy conflicts means that there are no clear good guys to back.
If a significant proportion of one side wants to drive out or wipe out the other, that will encourage the other wide to believe that their best option is to be the ones doing the wiping out. It is very likely that a conflict like this will only end when one side wins to that extent.
sillyfluke · 53m ago
>Given the numbers who voted for Hamas
You mean of course, 20 years ago in 2006 when the last election was held in Gaza. In which they didn't even manage to break 50% I might add and with the Israeli government's blessing as Netanyahu was fond of boasting before Oct 7th --- a far lower number than the number of Israelis that still support the IDF's current military actions.
tptacek · 48m ago
Yes. Last I looked, a plurality of Gazans literally aren't old enough ever to have voted.
pydry · 27m ago
This is actually what the Nazis thought the Jews wanted - "if we dont exterminate them, theyll exterminate us".
Their actions made sense in this context.
It's one of several ways the zionists mirror the nazis.
WesolyKubeczek · 2h ago
Do you have the data from a similar poll that would ask Palestinians about their attitude towards killing all Jews? Maybe historic data too? It could be very enlightening. Somehow I doubt they are, or ever have been, live-and-let-live kind for their neighbor.
bjourne · 23m ago
PCPSR regularly polls Palestinians about various subjects: https://pcpsr.org/en From memory, around 15% supported one state for historical Palestine from which Jewish settlers would have to leave. Maybe polls about "killing all Jews" are conducted in your country, in other parts of the world they generally aren't...
viccis · 1h ago
Can't be "live-and-let-live" if the "live" part isn't happening.
This has been happening regularly over the course of decades on the West Bank but no-one is willing to call it "Terrorism" and therefore respond appropriately.
superzamp · 4h ago
Well, France just took a stance and officially qualified this as terrorism [1] for the first time.
Israeli jewish settlers murdered, on average, one Palestinian civilian per day in the west bank, for the entire year leading up to oct 11. The attacks on Palestinian civilians in the west bank have only accelerated, since then.
Israel is a terrorist organization, not a state.
gljiva · 1h ago
Do you perhaps have sources of those claims at hand?
if you will read the article, you will see that it talks about IDF and settlers. PA in fact called in IDF to suppress hamas and pij in areas that PA tried to clear out but failed.
Articles like this on purpose blur lines of what happening and meant to generate outrage. Once I traced back article that talked about 48 (or something) palestinians killed by settlers by going through listed sources in the article. when I got to original article (twice removed), I discovered that it talked about 47 killed by IDF and 1 killed in clashes between settlers and palestinians
istjohn · 4m ago
The PA is a puppet government of Israel. The last elections for PA leadership were in 2006. I don't think the distinction between settlers and the IDF is as salient to most outside observers as you think it is.
tguvot · 50s ago
so, when israel on pa requests going to mop up hamas, because otherwise it about to be overthrown, and IDF kills 999 hamas/pij/lions of whatever members, it's essentially "settler violence". do i get it right ?
SalmoShalazar · 31m ago
The word “terrorist” is strictly a political designation, one that allows for dehumanizing and condemning one’s enemies. Israel’s pager attack on Lebanon has all of the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, but the west won’t call it as it is because it’s inconvenient. It was inconvenient to acknowledge that Israel is conducting a full on genocide, so not until very recently did major western news orgs start using the dreaded G word.
A_D_E_P_T · 9h ago
It's even worse than that. Israel's minister of the security services is ideologically aligned with the terrorists, and has openly supported their causes all his life. A quite unprecedented situation, I think!
ml-anon · 6h ago
I guess if they are viewed as an occupying force, it’s much less unprecedented. In fact it’s exactly how you’d expect an occupation to act.
tedivm · 5h ago
This isn't an occupation, it's an ethnic cleansing.
echelon_musk · 4h ago
Deuteronomy 9:4
> After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
I think there is a common belief that Israel was "given" the land beyond the Jordan because they were God's chosen people based on their merits.
Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
Israel seems wicked to me now.
amirhirsch · 3h ago
The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings. Repeatedly. From Judges through 2 Kings, Israel repeatedly loses divine protection precisely because of its own wickedness. Being “chosen” meant bearing covenantal responsibility, not enjoying a blank moral check.
Deuteronomy 20:15-18 is more appropriate to the current conflict, as it relates to how the Jews should fight wars in the land of Israel. It commands the utter destruction of the inhabitants of the land, not sparing any that breathe (not just those who “pisseth-on-the-wall”)
Discussions about modern Israel/Palestine are full of shibboleths that reveal where people are drawing their information:
In the Hebrew the word in 20:16 for inheritance is “Nachala”. Worth Googling: Nachala is also the name of a present‑day Israeli settler movement led by Daniella Weiss, whose own literature says it’s “continuing the biblical mandate to settle the land.”
In other words, the same term that the Torah uses for a gift that can be forfeited is now used as branding for a modern political project—illustrating how ancient vocabulary still shapes today’s arguments about the land.
For an example from the Palestinian side: you do not have a full understanding of Hamas if you do not know about the Hadith about the Gharqad tree. Hamas charter writers alluded to this story; many Palestinians learn it young, while most Israelis have never heard of it.
Recognizing these code‑words doesn’t require agreeing with the theology behind them. It simply keeps us from talking past each other—and, one hopes, from letting someone else’s apocalyptic script dictate who lives and dies. I think we all agree that the other-sides’ eschatology is a dumb reason to die.
bjourne · 7m ago
For those that don't know the Old Testament/Torah it might be worthwhile to point out that what you refer to as "moral failings" is not the same as what modern people think are "moral failings". Uncleanliness (gay sex, touching menstruating women, eating pork, yadda, yadda) and worshiping other Gods are "moral failings", raping, pillaging, and exterminating enemies most definitely are not.
echelon_musk · 3h ago
This continues to be relevant:
> “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti
tremon · 2h ago
When you separate yourself by [insert tribalist rhetoric], it breeds violence
This may sound superficially true, but it is confusing cause and effect. It's more likely to be the other way around: people seeking violence need to separate themselves from their target. That does not automatically mean that every self-classification carries an implication of violence.
antonvs · 3h ago
> The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings.
Plus the general idea that humans in general are morally flawed, sinful, etc. But, "Good news!" If you follow the one true god, that'll all be sorted out. Following the classic marketing strategy of creating a need, and then filling it.
wds · 4h ago
Keep in mind this was written by man.
People are being murdered thousands of years later because of the ancient Judea equivalent of 'Harry Potter', and the batshit insane people who still believe it in earnest.
amirhirsch · 1h ago
Being dismissive of the Bible is not as cool as you think it is: those who do not study the Bible are doomed to repeat it.
I understand the instinct to treat Bronze‑Age literature like fanciful fiction: engineers are wired to put "myth" in one bucket and "hard data" in another. But for better or worse, the Bible isn't just an ancient novel. It's the source code for a huge fraction of the world's legal systems, ethics, holidays, and political claims, including the one we are discussing. Dismissing it as "Harry Potter" misses the point:
If we're serious about reducing violence, we need to debug the real code people are running in their heads, not the straw‑man version.
Apocryphon · 24m ago
Software engineers are notorious for bikeshedding and pointlessly subjective "holy wars." Any belief in higher capacity for reason than their fellow man is sheer hubris.
hn_go_brrrrr · 3h ago
No, they're being murdered thousands of years later because of the long history of bad blood between the two groups. The religious documents are just a pretext.
pyrale · 3h ago
> Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
As written by a member of "the least bad people". If you're going to have a historical look at events then, you need to take sources with a grain of salt.
cess11 · 6h ago
No, it's been the norm for Israel since its inception. To mention just a couple of examples, ben-Gurion was a founder of Haganah, of which Rabin, infamous for his "break-their-bones" policy, was a member.
+1, also Israel uses the Amalek doctrine that treats all Palestinians as the ethnic group to be completely eradicated, from babies to elderly.
Netanyahu publicly called Palestinians Amalek, calling for their complete ethnic cleansing
tptacek · 45m ago
No, this was a misquote, but it sounds juicy so it will never stop being passed around on the Internet. Netanyahu cited a completely different verse of the Torah, which was then mischaracterized.
Fraterkes · 20m ago
Bit of genuine advice: When you correct people, resist the urge to gloat or condescend with stuff like "but it sounds juicy so it will never stop being passed around on the Internet"
slt2021 · 11m ago
there is plenty of Israeli officials like smotrich bengvir and other invoking Amalek doctrine.
Also Israel officialy had "mowing the lawn" doctrine that is literal genocide
I'm really not so much interested in litigating the broader conflict; just, this is a factoid that gets brought into these threads, and it's worth knowing the quote people are referring to was mischaracterized.
mring33621 · 2h ago
gross and horrible
saubeidl · 5h ago
It's not unprecedented.
All over the Balkans of the 90s, right wing nationalist governments aligned themselves with paramilitaries murdering undesirables.
Going back further, fascist movements of the first half of the 20th century used similar tactics.
lotsofpulp · 4h ago
There is a lot of precedent for one tribe eliminating another tribe to gain land. The only way a conflict over land ends is if one side wins.
alexisread · 3h ago
Usually but not actually. Northern Ireland is a good example where if people are well-off enough, you can diffuse tensions. Many thanks to Brexit for stirring this up more recently, and having different US tariffs across the border will be interesting, but it's still a valid data point.
mc32 · 4h ago
The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
These days though, there is no unclaimed land or unpopulated place to move in to. Practically speaking anyway. No one would want to move into the Yucatan jungles or Boreal Siberia even if the host countries invited them in to settle land.
lotsofpulp · 4h ago
> The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
That is the same situation that exists today. Might makes right is the only rule of nature. Treaties are just hopes that someone will help with defending your borders.
See Russia expanding its borders into what was previously recognized as Ukraine.
mc32 · 4h ago
Right. But before you could “run away” if you were willing to. Today you don’t have places to run to without running into other people willing to defend their places.
In the past you had lots and lots of peoples who just got erased as modern concepts of fairness and justice didn’t work the same way. See the warring states period.
jcranmer · 4h ago
The last major landmass to be settled I believe is Madagascar, only settled ~1500 years ago, with only scattered, remote islands remaining unsettled past that point. Madagascar itself is an island, albeit one of the largest in the world, so enough to constitute 'major landmass' in my book; discount all island groups entirely, and the unsettled lands haven't existed for over 10,000 years.
What that means is that all of the "run[ning] away" you are talking about is still violently displacing native peoples. So for example, when the Boers flee the Cape Colony to the Transvaal, they aren't moving to virgin, empty land, but rather land inhabited by native Africans (Zulu, I think), who needed to be dispossessed of their land. And such dispossession tends to require violence.
jakelazaroff · 3h ago
Tangential to your main point (with which I agree) but New Zealand was only settled ~700 years ago.
Marsymars · 1h ago
There are people who, for various reasons, didn't need to displace the original inhabitants, e.g. the Hutterites.
mc32 · 1h ago
People also moved (were displaced) for other reasons beside war: drought, depletion of game, disease, pests, tribal splits, insufficient carrying capacity, ecological pressures, etc.
mc32 · 3h ago
Pop density before the 1870s was generally low in most places with a few exceptions.
After all there was no "industry" it was 95% + agrarian, pescatarian, pastoral. Many populations had a preference for coastal, riparian settlements and mountainous areas were less favored... but were where displaced peoples could move to. People clumped, they were not evenly distributed so any region would have unsettled areas --just like today you have vast areas in Alaska that are not populated -even Wyoming. There are towns here and there but most areas of those states are not "populated" though they are under local, state and federal control. Government did not work that way back a few hundred years ago.
The Zulu only relatively recently moved into ZA (around the same time as Europeans maybe a bit before --the Khoisan are the native peoples of ZA).
graemep · 1h ago
Not to many places. Even a thousand years ago most places were occupied - other than a few places like New Zealand.
The Western Roman Empire was invaded by people who were fleeing other invaders.
lotsofpulp · 4h ago
Maybe. I don’t know that there was a place to run to a few hundred years ago. That was when Native Americans were pushed out (in North and South), Aborigines in Australia, etc.
mc32 · 4h ago
When China expanded in the 1600 and 1700s the non Han ran to uninhabited Southeast Asia. One example are the Hmong who moved to mountains of SEA from interior China. Also lots of internal movement in Africa.
reverendsteveii · 4h ago
we're precedenting it in the united states. our government is deeply ideologically aligned with the people committing the vast majority of domestic terrorism in this country.
burnt-resistor · 3h ago
Christofascist white supremacy. Chris Hedges wrote a book about it: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
GuinansEyebrows · 16m ago
The Family by Jeff Sharlet is great for a look at the actual working process of the political Evangelical movement. i'll have to take a look at Hedges' book, thanks for recommending!
pc86 · 3h ago
Self-described socialist and anarchist Chris Hedges? Green Party candidate Chris Hedges?
In the context of this thread you might as well ask Israeli settlers what they think Israel's policy with Gaza and the West Bank should be.
pc86 · 3h ago
The vast majority of the government are full-time employees without any express political allegiance aside from whatever they happen to personally believe. I doubt they are "deeply ideologically aligned with...domestic terrorism" and most of them would probably physically assault you for suggesting they agreed with domestic terrorists in person.
tsol · 48m ago
Government employees don't have their own political alliances? Have you seen the american government anytime in the past 10 years? That's a very strange argument considering it's a commonly discussed issue in the current american political climate.
pyrale · 2h ago
> most of them would probably physically assault you for suggesting they agreed with domestic terrorists
Poe's law working overtime here.
reverendsteveii · 1h ago
I agree, but hackernews is evidently taking his side because any time I try to reply I get told I'm posting too often, even when its been hours since my last post.
Adverblessly · 30m ago
If you want to see someone refer to acts of the Hilltop Youth as Jewish Terrorism and condemn it, you need only switch to channel 12 (Israeli channel, that is).
cess11 · 9h ago
The perpetrator, Yinon Levy, has sanctions put on him by a few countries. The current regime in the White House lifted the US sanction a while ago.
Arguably it's worse than what is usually meant by terrorism, i.e. civilians or paramilitaries attacking a state by actions against civilians, since it's a state exterminating stateless civilians.
ml-anon · 6h ago
Yes, much more akin to loyalist paramilitaries backed by the British army in Northern Ireland, only on an industrial scale.
nashashmi · 4h ago
They lifted the sanctions on him and put sanctions on Francesca Albanese.
epolanski · 6h ago
You dare to say anything you're labeled as antisemitic.
What the world is allowing Israel to get away is a huge stain on us.
All of those remembrance days, etc, are all bogus. Rohingyas, many African conflicts, now Palestine clearly show that entire populations can and will engage in ethnic cleansings despite knowing history very well and even having been on the victim side of it.
Human nature is disgusting we talk a lot and do very little.
indy · 5h ago
"What the world is allowing Israel to get away is a huge stain on us." - perhaps replace "world" with "the United States and it's veto power at the United Nations"
actionfromafar · 5h ago
Just because there is an enabler, doesn't absolve the bystanders.
I'm glad this is being discussed on HN instead of getting flagged. If we're intellectually curious, then we need to be curious about phenomena that defy explanation and events that may define the future course of our civiliazation. I think what's happening in Gaza/Palestine/Israel counts as both. It certainly defies explanation in my mind.
To me, simply labeling somone as "evil" not feels like a premature termination of the chain of causality, but also circular reasoning (Why does X do evil things? Because X is evil. Why is X evil? Because X does evil things). There has to be more to it than that.
pphysch · 2h ago
> Why does X do evil things?
What is happening is definitely "evil" in its purest form, but there are many contributing explanations that don't rely on circular reasoning.
- long-term geopolitical goals of "the West" in the middle east
- a culture defined by a noxious combination of victim complex + ethnoreligious superiority
- a society pampered by foreign financial and military aid (not having to stand on its own)
- a long history of regional violence
hersko · 51m ago
Your middle two points apply to the Palestinians more than the Israelis IMHO.
bigtex88 · 38m ago
No but the Israelis are the evil ones, duh. /s
notyouraibot · 3h ago
Bunch of racist Israeli hooligans that were thrown into the Amsterdam Canals got more outrage from the international media and diplomats than a livestreamed cold blooded murder by a terrorist.
This is everything you need to know about the world we live in. Palestinian lives simply do not matter.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> Palestinian lives simply do not matter
Lives in Palestine get far more attention than Burma, West Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan [1].
The basic truth is lives far removed from us tend to be forgettable.
The duration (mostly over already) and death toll are less as well.
dgb23 · 56m ago
Let‘s not call people „animals“ in this negative sense. Dehumanization is at the root of these problems.
cultofmetatron · 38m ago
I've had way too many zionists call Palestinians "human animals" to my face while justifying their racism for me to care about these settlers being dehumanized. These settlers have shown that they are worthy of such a title through their actions and attitudes.
While we should absolutely be covering on-going civil wars and genocides across the world -- I personally listen to French news sources in order to understand what's going on across Africa -- the fact is that the US has provided Israel with over $300 billion since it's founding. For Sudan, that number is somewhere around $5 billion. So many of us here in the US are rightfully watching and questioning why our taxes are funding a genocide.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> many of us here in the US are rightfully watching and questioning why our taxes are funding a genocide
This is fair. Claiming Palestinians are being ignored is not.
slt2021 · 2h ago
>Claiming Palestinians are being ignored is not.
False. USA continues to ignore the plight of Palestinians and continues to fund and arm the regime that kills them
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> USA continues to ignore the plight of Palestinians and continues to fund and arm the regime that kills them
False monolith. To the extent there is a single foreign policy issue dominating the American public consciousness, it’s Gaza.
Palestinian lives are not being ignored. There isn’t universal compassion for them. But the average American has more developed views on this topic than for any comparable conflict around the world.
lostlogin · 46m ago
> Palestinian lives are not being ignored.
How do you square this view with the current situation? The US has poured resources and weapons into Israel. Gaza is levelled, tens of thousands of Gaza’s people are dead.
The US might care about Gaza, but it cares a lot more about Israel.
slt2021 · 2h ago
There is some vocal US population (like college campus crowd) that are against the genocide.
and there is official foreign policy stance of people in power (POTUS, Dept of State, DoD, etc).
The actual people in power all support the genocide of Palestinians and ethnic cleansing, because they are either ethnically jewish, or get financial support from lobby, or benefit in other ways, or simply dont benefit financially from defending the Palestinians.
The good thing is that public opinion is shifting, but I fear that it may shift so far to the other side, the jewish diaspora in US may not like the consequences and we will see the big FAFO moment
You can argue that American citizens aren't unaware, but the politicians are born and bred to ignore this catastrophe. We have laws to stop them from caring.
ImJamal · 7m ago
Laws against boycotting Israel is not related to supporting a Palestinian state. They are two completely different issues.
pydry · 1h ago
The last genocide aided and abetted by America was probably the genocide of native americans.
emsign · 2h ago
Depends on how you define "ignored". Maybe you mean "heard" while the only thing that counts in this matter is if they are being "helped".
74B5 · 2h ago
If ignorance was not an issue, how come that money went to israel for all this time?
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
How are these related?
I supported arming Ukraine. That didn’t rely on ignorance of Russia.
seydor · 58m ago
that is evident, the puzzling thing for average people is why
dingnuts · 1h ago
Tell me, where are Jews supposed to go if not to their historic homeland?
> Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with Iran and Turkey being home to the largest remaining Jewish populations, followed by Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. This was due to Zionist recruitment, religious beliefs, economic reasons, widespread persecution, antisemitism, political instability and curbing of human rights in Muslim-majority countries.
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Muslim," they say. Where then, should the Jews be allowed to live? Only in Brooklyn?
> Until the 1960s, approximately one million Jews lived in Iran and other Arab countries having arrived in the region more than 2,000 years before. Nowadays, it is estimated that only around 15,000 remain, as the majority of the Jewish population in Muslim lands were forced to flee their homes
Hamas could surrender at any time. They're to blame for everything.
throwforfeds · 46m ago
> The introduction of nationalist ideologies (including Zionism and Arab nationalism), the impact of colonial policies, and the establishment of modern nation-states altered the status and dynamics of Jewish communities in Muslim-majority countries.
From your source.
It's important to note that in a place like Algeria the French colonists granted Jewish populations citizenship to France, yet denied it to the Arab and Berber populations. [1] This fractured relations between the Sephardic population and the rest of the local population, which is exactly what the French wanted.
I'm not going to say relations were perfect before, or deny that Jewish populations weren't second class citizens, but there was a long history of being neighbors and having cities like Constantine be a place of refuge after the Spanish expulsion of Jews from Andalusia. I mean, in places like Mogador in Morocco, Jewish populations were explicitly invited by the king to settle and set up trading businesses [2].
The founding of Israel completely changed this and fractured relations that went back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. [3]
Judging by the British Raj, choosing to inhabit a former British colony probably wasn't a super informed decision. If you attended history class, you know what happened the moment Britian left.
Violence begets violence, if Israeli settlers want to fight to displace other people then they will die in that process. Thankfully for Jews, there are other states they can choose to inhabit that are both secular and respect international law. These are, statistically, safer places for Jewish individuals to live than a state that instructs their army on how to commit fratricide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
tim333 · 2h ago
In London there are pretty much daily pro Palestinian protests, not much for the other side.
asadm · 1h ago
not sure what would other side protest for? faster genocide?
slt2021 · 2h ago
could it be because advocating for the live-streamed genocide is not popular as one might think ?
hersko · 52m ago
You people would have been calling the US's war with Germany and Japan in WWII a genocide as well if there was social media.
pphysch · 2h ago
Why would the other side need to protest?
victorbjorklund · 1h ago
Maybe some people don't agree with Hamas massacre of civilians and the continued kidnapping of civilians (including children)?
KingMob · 1h ago
Nobody should agree with that.
The problem comes when they only focus on Hamas, and ignore Israel's kidnapping and detention of 10k Palestinians without being charged. AKA, "hostages".
tim333 · 1h ago
I saw some protests by the other side saying they'd like their hostages back.
> Odeh Muhammad Hadalin’s name was sometimes spelt as Awdah Muhammad Hathaleen.
steinvakt2 · 35m ago
Why comply with the idea of calling a colonialist a "settler"? It's a deliberate propaganda word choice that for some reason caught on outside Israel. Let's stop, please?
No comments yet
cm2012 · 34m ago
I am in full support of Israel's actions in Gaza, but think Israel is completely out of line and breaking the law with their settlers actions in the West Bank.
steinvakt2 · 18m ago
As a Norwegian, it is absolutely baffling how someone can seriously utter the words "I am in full support of Israel's actions in Gaza". Is the media coverage that different in USA than in Europe? How is it possible?
izzydata · 3m ago
As someone from the USA what I see from media coverage is genocide in Gaza. They would have to be truly ignorant and intentionally uninformed to say something like that or be in favor of genocide.
forinti · 3h ago
Once Gaza and the West Bank are taken care of, will Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria be next?
Israel very much depends on being the dominant power in the region. If they lose US support, things could get ugly indeed. And they are losing support rapidly now.
enahs-sf · 3h ago
I think if Israel went the lebensraum route, it would be WW3 for real.
diggan · 2h ago
What are they currently doing then? They're already supporting the "settlers" so territorial expansion is already in progress. They haven't expanded beyond that right now, but judging by their current actions, it seems to me they're already on that route, and only small parts of the world is currently trying to stop them.
buyucu · 2h ago
Israel has been on that route for decades now.
krapp · 3h ago
Nah, the world would let it happen.
Or more accurately, the world would let the US let it happen. And the US would probably fund it.
And the world would feel so, so sorry as they paved over the mass graves and built AI data centers and luxury hotels in what used to be Gaza.
hersko · 48m ago
You think Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria are candidates to be the "dominant power in the region?"
matteoraso · 2h ago
They've already attacked Syria and Lebanon multiple times already. There's no doubt that they're already planning for new wars once this one is over.
energy123 · 1h ago
I wonder why Israel is attacking Lebanon. It's a real mystery.
bigtex88 · 2h ago
Syria and Lebanon declared war in the distant past on Israel and there are no peace treaties that have been signed in that time. Israel is not the aggressor here. They would happily sign peace treaties with their neighbors, but this is not what their neighbors want.
robertoandred · 2h ago
Why should Israel allow themselves to be attacked by Syria and Lebanon? Did you miss what Lebanon did to people in northern Israel? Seems like you think Jews should just sacrifice themselves for some reason.
No comments yet
morkalork · 2h ago
Have they not taken a bite of Syria - sorry, "established a buffer zone" - recently?
buyucu · 2h ago
Israel bombs Syria and Lebanon on a daily basis. There is an Israeli puppet dictator in power in Jordan.
lifestyleguru · 3h ago
If US looks away for even half a year the whole region will turn into one massive sand storm.
alkyon · 4h ago
In ideal world international peacekeeping forces would be deployed in Gaza. The peace and two state solution could only be enforced by imposing severe sanctions on Israel including possibility of aerial NATO strikes like in the former Yugoslavia.
js8 · 3h ago
Is two-state solution possible? Just look at the map of the territories under palestinian control, they're bantustans. Israel/Palestine is factually one state, which simply doesn't accept half of its population as citizens.
You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. So support for 2-state is just a form of delaying the inevitable.
I am now firm believer in one-state solution as the most fair one. Peter Beinart has some good arguments in its favor.
And I think it would be a poetic justice for all the racist settlers (or islamists) to have the people they hate as their neighbors.
jdietrich · 31m ago
>You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out.
The Arab world overwhelmingly rejected the UN Partition Plan in principle, which led directly to the 1948 Palestine war and the first Arab-Israeli war. Likewise, the signing of the Oslo Accords (and the rejection of those accords by Hamas, PIJ and other factions within the PLO) led directly to the Second Intifada. Most of the Arab world has now conceded that Israel isn't going anywhere and huge steps have been made in normalising Arab-Israeli relations, but Palestinian politics is still dominated by a fundamentally futile anti-Zionist absolutism.
A credible option of full statehood and international recognition has been on the table for nearly eighty years, but Palestinians have consistently failed to establish a workable consensus on taking up that option. The PLO's intransigence has alienated most of their allies in the region, primarily because they instigated civil wars in both Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975).
A one-state solution is no solution at all while there remain extremists on both sides who are simply unwilling to coexist; unless Israel can reign in the religious right and the Palestinians can establish a political consensus in favour of coexistence, it's a straightforward path to war. There's no "poetic justice" in making people who hate each other live together, just an inevitable perpetuation of bloodshed.
The political debates about land rights are intractably complex, but the fundamental realpolitik question is about how much the Palestinians are willing to suffer for the principle of "from the river to the sea". Israel is militarily dominant and is likely to remain so regardless of how much international pressure is brought to bear. In simple practical terms, the ball is in the Palestinian court and it is for them to decide whether to seriously engage in a two (or three) state solution with international support, or whether to continue pursuing an unwinnable conflict. A post-Netanyahu Israel is highly likely to support a serious two-state solution, but simply isn't going to accept a one-state solution; even if you believe a one-state solution to be the only just outcome, it isn't a workable outcome.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> Is two-state solution possible?
More than a one-state solution.
Would it be nice if people could get along and not require militarised borders to keep them from killing each other? Sure. This was essentially the colonial assumption when the Middle East (and Africa’s) modern borders were drawn—that local preferences could be overcome by force of will.
In reality, where you draw borders on a map matters less than the people on the ground’s identities and guns.
sjapkee · 3h ago
In this region we actually need zero-state solution. It's beyond repairing
falcor84 · 2h ago
You reminded me of this interview with Harlan Ellison that was making the rounds a while ago [0]. I think there's some kernel of truth there. I've heard a lot of people from both sides say that they prefer to die than to leave the land. So following up on Harlan's proposal, I would be in favour of the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other to do so, until (hopefully) they sort out their differences and decide to declare peace and join the international community.
There is no such thing as an "international community". No other country wants to accept large numbers of Palestinian refugees. Regardless of whether this is fair or not, they are seen as a security risk.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other
This roughly describes the current situation. Israelis are internationally mobile. And while Palestinians are not, it’s hard to imagine enough of them emigrating to destabilise the current conflict conditions.
pyrale · 2h ago
So basically the international community should allow a genocide by "whoever" is stronger?
falcor84 · 34m ago
Here's my phrasing: the international community should not expend resources to support people who prefer to fight and die for their land than to live peacefully elsewhere.
alkyon · 3h ago
At the moment, the two sides only agree on wishing the other dead. So even in the ideal world it is a very remote possibility.
Balgair · 3h ago
I also think we passed the window for a two state solution.
Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse. Having them hate each other with centuries of history and territory claims is even worse still. Then giving them both, let alone one, access to the global arms market is asking for never ending wars of annihilation.
If you could design a situation that was maximally terrible for neighboring states, the two state solution would be it.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse
This is the history of the Levant going back millennia.
Apocryphon · 1h ago
Based on what? The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best. It is true that there are many differing groups of people living in that area, but they were often simply under the dominion of one imperial power or another. This pat caricature is the equivalent of shrugging one's shoulders and saying "well that's how it's always been."
dragonwriter · 15m ago
> The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best.
The modern model of statehood (which is probably what you are referring to) -- sometimes referred to as the "nation-state" model, but it is not actually particularly centered on the coextensiveness of the nations and states, and certainly orthogonal to states being ethnonationalist -- is at least ~300 years old (its often attributed to being ~400 years old and originating in the two peace settlements collectively known as the "Peace of Westphalia", but that's not really accurate.) OTOH, the concept of nations (which are basically the coextension of an ethnic community and a land) is much older.
But, in any case, it has not been the case at all that the history of the Levant is one of two local adjacent coexistent ethnonationalist polities, whether or not they look like modern states. That's just a simply false claim made upthread which needs no reference to the history of models of nations or states to rebut; before 1948, for a very long time, the Levant was more often either under one (multinational, imperial) polity or split between a couple of adjacent ones (often in the process of transitioning from unified control of one to the other), whether it was the British Empire, or the Ottoman Empire, a series of different Arab-led empires, the Eastern Roman Empire, the (pre-split) Roman Empire, various Greek-derived empires, the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, etc.
Apocryphon · 2m ago
I was actually referring to the concept of nationalism itself, which really got off the ground in the 1800s and after the Napoleonic Wars.
JumpCrisscross · 43m ago
> concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best
Concept of nation states. Nations and states, separately, are an older concept.
> they were often simply under the dominion of one imperial power or another
For millennia. Often because inter-ethnic conflicts required an external security guarantor to keep a lid on the chaos.
One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
Apocryphon · 30m ago
During the times there was an external security guarantor, conflict would by definition go down (assuming the external power was sufficiently potent and stable). So you can't say that both chaos and dominion were happening simultaneously at all times.
> One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
And one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani.
ckemere · 2h ago
It is unclear to me that Palestinians represent an “ethnonationalist” block. My understanding is that the definition of “Jewish” for the purposes of immigration to Israel is a somewhat precise combination of genealogical or religious criteria. But I don’t know of an equivalent definition for Palestinian. Can someone educate me on this? In the absence of such a definition, it seems that the primary conflict is whether Palestine should be specifically designated as a home for all “Jews” or merely as a home for the people that currently live there.
Again - I’d love further education about legal definitions.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
Any ethnonationalist definition is inherently subjective and thus inherently fuzzy. It’s an exercise that derives from a time when some thought one could scientifically classify races.
DrillShopper · 2h ago
The only reason the Palestinians are considered "ethno-nationalist" is that they are opposing a facist, genocidal, actually ethno-nationalist state that has spread its propaganda that any disagreement on any grounds is anti-semitism.
It's ridiculous and I know the moment I see someone dig into their bag of slander with that they are not arguing in good faith.
JIDF out in force again.
js8 · 2h ago
Honestly, I wouldn't ask Israelis or Palestinians for their opinion. I think the OSN should mandate and using peace forces:
- Establish a new, transitional government of Israel/Palestine, nominated by the UN
- Give citizenship to every Israeli and Palestinian for the whole territory
- Mandate a 50/50 ethnic quotas system in the military, police, judiciary and all government institutions, and minimum 30% ethnic quotas in every other employer
- Create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, modeled after JAR; it would figure out what reparations are needed to each citizen
- Mandate both hebrew and arabic as official languages, and teach every kid both in school
- Once things would settle down, after 1-2 years, run a new elections but with constitutional provisions (5-10 years) against dismantling the quotas
Heck, even US could do this unilaterally (just like British did), if they wanted to pursue human rights.
nradov · 1h ago
What a silly, unrealistic idea. No other country or coalition is going to launch a violent ground invasion of Israel and Palestine in order to impose peace terms on them. Protecting human rights in other countries is not our responsibility. They'll have to solve their own disputes one way or another.
js8 · 1h ago
No ground invasion is needed, not even serious economic sanctions for non-compliance. Just a simple phone call from American president, that Israelis are now free to fend themselves from "hostile Arabs", without US military aid (there's a precedent btw). After all, it's Israel's own responsibility to protect human rights, isn't it?
hersko · 45m ago
You think Israel would just collapse if the US stopped supporting them?
lostlogin · 42m ago
Who would support Israel? Who’s aircraft carriers would stand by?
I-M-S · 20m ago
The official doctrine of Israel is to nuke the whole region [1] rather than accept anything similar to what has been proposed above.
A one-state solution will just result in a civil war, followed swiftly by an actual genocide (i.e. 5,000,000+ dead).
js8 · 1h ago
They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Look at my proposal above. War didn't happen in postapartheid JAR, despite everybody saying it would. What would people fight for, after all? They are all citizens of the same (biethnic) country, that's the perspective the world "leaders" should bring to the table.
You need to bring some argument.
Adverblessly · 51m ago
> They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Okay, so in your opinion, there is exactly one state that is currently engaged in a civil war. How would world leaders telling them "You are actually one country engaged in a civil war" stop that war?
The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. The muslim arab majority would not accept a jewish minority living within them, they consider them foreign colonialists that need to be purged (and you may have heard of one or two groups currently leading those muslim arabs that have that exact official position).
> You need to bring some argument.
When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre (picked as an example because of the "humour" of having to disambiguate it from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks ) no one thinks going back to that is viable.
lordnacho · 32m ago
But South African apartheid, as well as American Jim Crow laws, were about people who didn't think they occupied different countries, and didn't think they should. It was about changing how the law saw people within the same country, with everyone agreeing they should be in the same state, under the same government.
Israel/Palestine seems to be two groups of people who really do not want to live together, and would prefer to be rid of the other side.
guelo · 2h ago
Besides, Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. A Palestinian state would be Lebanon x 1000, never ending war and no respect for borders. The real problem is Europe and America's funding and insane levels of political and diplomatic support for Israel, to the point that we are willing to gut international law and even our own citizen's civil rights to prop up the zionist invasion.
lostlogin · 38m ago
> Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will.
Who have they bombed recently? I make it Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Gaza (is this bombing themselves? Palestine?).
It’s darkly hilarious how terrible neighbouring Israel would be.
igsomething · 1h ago
In an ideal world none of the past 70 years of conflicts that led to this unrecoverable resentfulness would have happened. Unfortunately the only peaceful solution I can imagine is for Israel to let Gazans move to other Arab-world countries, let Israel annexate Gaza, and then imposing strict border controls and watches such that if Israel attempts any ethnic cleansing or illegal occupation they get severly sanctioned.
lordnacho · 25m ago
> Gazans move to other Arab-world countries
This is a problem for the neighbouring countries, isn't it? They don't want to deal with a bunch of new people any more than any other country does.
> let Israel annexate Gaza
This is just admitting that might makes right
> and then imposing strict border controls... severly sanctioned
You would need people to actually believe this
Even so, this plan does not address the fact that both parties really really want to live on the same land. You might as well ask the Israelis why they aren't content to resettle some other place, they wouldn't accept it anymore than the Palestinians would.
energy123 · 1h ago
Like the peacekeeping troops sent into South Lebanon after UNSC Resolution 1701? Oh, you didn't know about that one? Maybe there's a reason Israel does not trust diplomacy anymore.
ebiester · 4h ago
This happened in the West Bank, not Gaza. But if you are talking about peacekeeping forces in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, I think there's a good argument for it.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> international peacekeeping forces
To the extent there is consensus among today’s superpower and regional powers, it’s that international peacekeepers don’t work. At best they delay while incubating a conflict.
js8 · 1h ago
Actually, there are studies that show (by looking at past conflicts) that peacekeeping does work.
Apocryphon · 1h ago
Peacekeeping worked in the former Yugoslavia and many other places. It's more like these days it seems like the international aspect is lacking; the consensus of the so-called world community has really been in shambles for the past two decades. I think the one time where unanimous cooperation existed was against Somali piracy in the early '10s.
lostlogin · 37m ago
> international peacekeepers don’t work.
What’s the solution then? We keep wringing our hands and saying it’s impossible?
cm2012 · 27m ago
UN peace keepers were assigned to southern Lebanon after the 2006 war. They didnt do anything as Hezbollah remilitarized heavily. Israel cannot trust external peacekeepers.
ponector · 3h ago
Do you want to be a part of those troops sent to control Hamas?
Truth is no one wants to fight overseas anymore.
bryanrasmussen · 2h ago
Are you sure? There's still careers in combat.
alkyon · 3h ago
Both Hamas and Isreal to enforce peace
hersko · 43m ago
How can anyone view October 7th footage and think that Hamas should survive.
lostlogin · 35m ago
And how can anyone look at Gaza and think Israel should be allowed to carry on as it does?
Someone needs to actually try and improve things.
ponector · 18m ago
Ruzzia is bombing Ukrainian cities to the ground. No countries are actively trying to stop them, just minor help to Ukraine to keep them afloat.
rmah · 4h ago
Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza, but Hamas has rejected it. If I may quote Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, "We stress our people's rejection of the presence of any non-Palestinian actors on our land." [https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2024/04/02/hamas-says-no-to-i...]. They only accept aid organizations.
pyrale · 3h ago
> Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza
Given the history of Israel with the UNIFIL...
llm_nerd · 4h ago
>Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza
This is a bit misleading.
Israel proposed that it maintain absolute and total military control of Gaza, but that a "peacekeeping force" from three Arab nations, bizarrely to be controlled by the US, would "secure food distribution".
Israel has absolutely zero intention of handing over control of Gaza, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to vilify and delegitimize every international organization at every turn.
An actual peacekeeping force as described above would be about keeping Israel in check as much as ensuring Hamas doesn't re-appear.
zdragnar · 1h ago
> Israel has absolutely zero intention of handing over control of Gaza,
The charter for Hamas for years called for the total destruction of Israel. That's been recently removed, but their actions haven't changed.
Why would any nation allow such a government to be their neighbor? The best that anyone could hope for would be a North / South Korea or CCP/KMT divide, but those only work because both sides share a common identity.
cholantesh · 1h ago
Israeli administration of Gaza preceded Hamas' foundation. Its administration of the West Bank is characterized by regular IDF incursions into its settlements where homes are demolished, residents are kidnapped and tortured without cause, and armed, escorted settlers are let loose to assault the same residents and loot their businesses. Hamas' founders were all born either in settlements that have been forcefully depopulated by Israel or in refugee camps that still exist today because they keep getting filled up by people who lived in those settlements. I imagine most people would be miffed by this set of circumstances.
lostlogin · 31m ago
Israel is trying to destroy Gaza and its people - look at any recent photos.
There is some equivalence in the aims, and one group has begun to get close - Israel.
It’s time for aggressive outside intervention.
atoav · 2h ago
Question: Which miltary body other than any linked to one of the conflict parties did Israel propose to do the peacekeeping?
If the answer is "None" then Israel did not in fact propose peacekeeping forces.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> Which miltary body other than any linked to one of the conflict parties did Israel propose to do the peacekeeping?
Hamas didn’t counter with a preferred peacekeeping composition, they rejected peacekeeping to retain their monopoly on violence (and Gaza’s resources).
To the extent there are evils in this story, they’re the leadership of Hamas and Likud.
dijit · 5h ago
That's really sad.
The Isreali man really should not have been there, but I have to recognise a couple of things.
1) I don't know what anyone is saying except, ironically, plea's of someone near the camera man asking the Israeli man to "Shoot me".
2) I do not know what lead up to this confrontation
3) I have been in a circumstance before where a large group of people are acting frantic and in a threatening way and it's genuinely terrifying, so much so that you will act irrationally - this might be something others on this platform might not be familiar with.
The circumstance could have been avoided by Israel not having any settlers in the west bank, for sure, and it's a tragic situation.
However, I'm sitting here, in Sweden, behind a computer on a site about entrepreneurialism and technology.
I can't possibly say anything on the subject that's meaningful, none of us can. Why is it here?
echelon_musk · 5h ago
From watching the video it doesn't appear although anyone other than the settler was armed.
dijit · 5h ago
Being armed is not a requisite.
If anything being armed in that situation is incredibly stupid, because you'll still panic and now you're acting irrationally with a deadly weapon. The weapon can be used (as this example) or taken off you.
I speak from experience, I got mobbed upon by a local gang, thought it would be smart to arm myself with a prop sword in order to stop them advancing.
It didn't stop them, and in fact the sword was taken off me (because it was a prop, and I wouldn't have used it even if it wasn't to be honest) - and they proceeded to smash it over my head sending me to hospital.
All of this is only obvious with a clear head, and in hindsight. Being in that situation as a human being is just.. awful. I don't recommend it.
EDIT: I'm getting flagged a lot from emotional people; I think this is part of why I really dislike this topic, we know nothing except how we feel and refuse to look at things objectively - and we're not even qualified to do that anyway. So everything becomes pornography to confirm our biases and to drown out anyone who doesn't immediately call for the end of Israel.
dnemmers · 3h ago
You brought a fake sword for protection?
dijit · 2h ago
No, I grabbed a fake sword as a deterrent, it was on hand.
wouterjanl · 5h ago
As you ask why this is here. Copied from the guidelines of this site: “What to submit? On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. (…) anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” So it’s fair to say that this site is about more than entrepreneurship and tech.
ivape · 5h ago
Perhaps we need to make some mapbox visualizations about the devastation in Gaza. Then we'll be on theme, but the topic is not going to change. Maybe someone should make a game about it and put it on Steam. Maybe it'll get banned. Then we can have the PERFECT discussion on HN, as so many want:
- About tech
- About a current event
- About censorship
Genocide by itself, that's just not good enough apparently. That's very weird because there's tons of serious discussion on HN about history. This place cares a lot about history. Whatever is happening right now is just real-time history.
mardifoufs · 3h ago
The settler was in someone else's land, and actively participated in displacing the people that were "terrifying" them. An easy way would've been to just leave. It's not even controversial, almost every country on earth recognizes that the settlements are illegal.
If a Russian soldier in Ukrainian territory shot some civilian in the face, I guess you'd also have put yourself in their shoes and given them the benefit of the doubt? I mean, they were terrified!
blindriver · 28m ago
"Murdered" not "killed".
steinvakt2 · 27m ago
And by a colonialist, not a settler.
cultofmetatron · 41m ago
nothing makes more unsympathetic to the Israeli side than talking to zionists themselves. I had a guy threaten to doxx me to employer in instagram because I said that Israel is committing a genocide and that killing children is unjustifiable. I reported it to instagram, a clear case of malicious verbal intent and yet they decided it wasn't against community guidelines.
Quitschquat · 5h ago
All the x.com links to the videos are broken for me
The film could not find a U.S. distributor after being picked up for distribution in 24 countries and winning the Oscar, a situation that has been compared to soft censorship.
Impressive that it managed to win an Oscar all things considered.
viccis · 1h ago
Most likely cause is the Academy voters not watching the movies they vote for
gedy · 1h ago
I don't like these "experiments" as dang called them of allowing Reddit-like rage topics on HN. I can get that elsewhere.
lostlogin · 29m ago
It’s worth reading the thread - there is a lot here that was new to me and I follow the news and read the history of the region.
hersko · 38m ago
Notice the "experiments" only go one way. Where is the story of the NY Times viral starving child photo retraction on the front page?
BenGosub · 8h ago
Cold blooded murder on video and it is still not enough for our countries to take action.
piva00 · 8h ago
Not only our countries but the state of Israel itself, it's ongoing for decades, it has only further eroded Israel's security (who could've guessed that allowing your citizens to displace, and/or kill, people who already lived there would have consequences?).
The documentary "Checkpoint" is more than 20 years old by now, the treatment of West Bank's Palestinians has been fucked up for even longer than that, and Netanyahu's government only made it worse.
I wish to see in my lifetime Israel having to reckon with the fact they've become the monster, justifying their actions after the immense suffering their ancestors went through during the Holocaust is impossible...
Edit: according to Yuval Abraham[0], the killer instructed soldiers to arrest the other 4 family members of Awdah Hathaleen which are still in jail, while the murderer was released under house arrest, fucking insane.
Since I'm past the window to edit my comment, here's another example of the abhorrent behaviour from Israeli forces[0] which has been all too common for decades, not very different from Amon Göth, and just check the article's date (2018).
Out in the real world - how much "our countries take action" stuff actually happens when regular & systematic violence is occurring somewhere?
When it does happen, how often does well-intended foreign intervention actually "fix" things - vs. turning into a yet another "park our troops there 'till we finally run out of patience" occupation?
My read is that the many powerful factions which favor (overtly or not) the ongoing violent mess in/around Israel have (generally) very good understandings of the situation and its dynamics. And the benefits & costs - for them - of encouraging it to continue indefinitely. Vs. the opposing side is dominated by sincere but all-too-simple "make horrible things stop happening!!!" emotions.
:(
xdennis · 5h ago
Cold blooded? Have you seen the video? It's literally a Israeli guy defending himself from a crowd. The guy who films is literally shouting "shoot me" (in English). Not wise.
exasperaited · 3h ago
It's literally a guy who has no right building his home where he has built it on land he doesn't own, and has spent years aggressively and violently trying to drive other people out so his friends and family can build houses on land they don't own where they also don't have the right to build, defending himself from a crowd whose behaviour he provoked.
This is undeniable.
The man saying "shoot me" is saying it to a man who is a documented illegal aggressor. It's rhetoric, not actually an invitation to shoot him, and wouldn't excuse the man shooting him if it was.
BenGosub · 5h ago
It's pretty cold blooded if you ask me. Should I follow his example and do the same? And you are defending this killer.
dfedbeef · 5h ago
'Why are these people so upset I'm just bulldozing their home'
lifestyleguru · 5h ago
Boils down to free real estate. Humanity is able to suspend all non-violent instincts and go full violent in exchange for one free real estate.
gishglish · 1h ago
Cool! Justification to kill my neighbor! It was just primal instinct officer. Everyone does it.
lifestyleguru · 56m ago
Think about it. You are allowed to take over neighbour's real estate, raze it to the ground, and kill them as you wish without consequences. Would you resist?
sillystuff · 2h ago
Recently, the CBC was reporting on a realestate fair in a Canadian synagogue, where the only land on offer was illegally occupied land in the west bank.
Apparently, this is a thing at synagogues across the west.
Zionists, have made it clear for anyone paying attention, they intend to displace or exterminate every single Palestinian, to the person, to make way for zionist jews.
an0malous · 4h ago
It’s sickening that this is the whole reason for the genocide. They’re auctioning land in the West Bank in the US, Trump is talking about building resorts in Gaza, Israeli politicians are talking about building the “Greater Israel.” It was never about Hamas or the hostages, it’s just a land grab.
adhamsalama · 5h ago
It's literally an illegal settler. No excuses for that.
AlexandrB · 1h ago
What action did our countries take after the cold blooded murders on October 7th, 2023?
rhcom2 · 1h ago
My country (USA) gave them $10B+ in military aid
metalman · 8h ago
Odeh Mohammad Khalil al-Hathalin, 31, was murdered by Yinon Levi, durring the same attack, an excavator brought to destroy homes was used to strike other unarmed palisinians.
There is video that also documents the murderer ,Yinon Levi, directing soldiers to arrest his victims family, which they did.
hermitcrab · 9h ago
I am guessing that no-one ever gets convicted for this murder. One small part of state condoned ethnic cleansing (if we are being generous) / genocide (if we are being less generous).
_shadi · 9h ago
> I am guessing that no-one ever gets convicted for this murder.
He was arrested by Israeli police for questioning, but was later released on house arrest while an investigation continued.
About a dozen Israeli soldiers raided the mourning tent, pushing those attending out while keeping a thumb on the pin of a stun grenade. Soldiers declared the area a closed military zone and said only residents of the village could be present. They arrested two activists and threw stun grenades at journalists who were too slow to leave.
Was there ever a single serious arrest and conviction of anybody on Israel side in past 2 decades, be it civilians or IDF? Serious question, it doesn't seems so in similar attacks (and they are not that rare and will probably escalate)
ivann · 5h ago
A few, for example Meir Ettinger, an hilltop youth leader has served some time in jail.
The idea for Israel was to have its national criminal jurisdictions prosecute just enough to not be seen as failing by the ICC and meet its 'complementarity' criterion [0]. Even spying on ICC staff to see who it was investigating.
At least that's how it used to be, now they just threaten the ICC.
Israel is the textbook example of proverbs "you become what you're fighting with" and "if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you".
nahuel0x · 4h ago
Zionism didn't become nazism by fighting against it, there is a deep history of zionism collaborating with the Nazi regime. Both shared an ethno-nationalist worldview from the start and the objective of moving the Jewish people out of Germany.
sillystuff · 3h ago
This is true.
The original European Jews who founded Israel were even opposed to the German Nazis transferring thousands of Jewish children to other countries to save their lives.
These Zionist Jews thought it would be better for their state building project if these children were all murdered than if the children were sent anywhere except to Palestine.
But, some of the collaboration wasn't really the Zionist Jews' entire fault. E.g., the machine tools the Zionist Jews used to create weaponry to murder Palestinian civilians and ethnically cleans Palestine were all German made, and purchased from the Nazi regime, but this was because the Nazis only allowed the rich jews to leave with German made products, not with cash. So, when the minority of Jews fled to Israel/Palestine instead of to the United States (vast majority went to the US), they were instructed to purchase machine tools from the Germans to bring with them.
Good old German industrial lobbying with opponent with their fingers in a vise. I'm wondering in case of a conflict who will be better off, me with stock portfolio at "broker GmbH" or others with real estate within the range of Russian rockets and drones.
jojobas · 5h ago
If they were 10% as bad as their opposition Gaza would have been Arab-free for decades now.
lifestyleguru · 5h ago
I'm afraid "we're still not as bad as them" is part of that thinking.
mardifoufs · 3h ago
They have been settling the only territory that actually stopped the armed struggle against Israel. The West Bank has literally kicked out Hamas, stopped fighting for years, and given up their arms for the most part. And Israel has been relentlessly colonizing them since then, as a show of good faith I guess. The Palestinians there have absolutely 0 recourse, and will eventually lose all of their home land.
But I'm sure they wouldn't have done the same to Gaza if they would've just done the right thing by kicking off Hamas, and stopping any armed resistance !
I mean they didn't literally kill every single arab in Gaza yet so they are very progressive. They'd rather just slowly settle your land and kill you if you resist, as opposed to Hamas who would've done the same but faster. Let's not forget that they have killed tens of thousands of Muslims, but at least they could've killed even more!
tguvot · 50m ago
Actually hamas, pij and other organizations are alive and kicking in West Bank. There are areas that PA doesn't control because of them. Last year PA tried to deal with them, failed and called in Israel in order to take out hamas. PA in West Bank exists only because Israeli military supports it.
Also there is non stop attempts (some successful and some not) to execute terror attacks from West Bank. It just never appears in Western media
southernplaces7 · 4h ago
Not sure why you were downvoted. Though it's a disgustingly poor excuse to say "at least we're not as bad as the Nazis" in justifying your own country's crimes against humanity, it also gives a bit of perspective when people do actually compare the modern Israeli state's violence with the savagery of the political system that provoked its formation.
Workaccount2 · 4h ago
Lots of people clutching their pitchforks over the great rivalry of Israel and Palestine that began in October 2023.
wazoox · 9h ago
The tolerance for Israel's policy of racism, apartheid and genocide is really mind-blowing.
FranklinMaillot · 5h ago
Not just tolerance. You'll find many public figures in Western countries go out of their way to defend this murderous state.
hearsathought · 3h ago
It's not so shocking when you realize that israel is a european settler colony created and founded by europeans and settled by europeans. I don't think many european countries criticized the settlement of canada, us, australia, argentina, etc.
Israel isn't a semitic country. It is a european/western country just like australia. It's just that nobody calls out the obvious.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> israel is a european settler colony created and founded by europeans and settled by europeans
Speaking as someone who has heritage in a former European colony, this reductive framing strikes me as ringing closer to the remote oversimplifications Sykes and Picot engaged in than anything those on the ground would endorse.
American political science is obsessed with settler colonialism. Herego, every conflict distills through that lens.
Are there elements of this conflict that mirror that dynamic? Sure. Is it a useful model for making predictions and policy for the people on the ground? No. Will that impact the profitability of repeating it on social media? Probably not.
bigtex88 · 2h ago
You win Buzzword Bingo! Congratulations, please accept your reward on TikTok.
kelseyfrog · 4h ago
One day, everyone will have always been against this.
hearsathought · 3h ago
Only if israel loses in the end. There were tons of pro-germany collaborators during ww2 right up until germany lost.
kelseyfrog · 1h ago
And if Israel wins and ethnically cleanses Gaza: Sadly, there was nothing we could have done to stop it.
robertoandred · 2h ago
What race are you referring to?
cess11 · 9h ago
It's less mind-blowing when understood as a position that maintains the antisemitic drive to expel jews from christian countries.
The zionist movement consists mainly of christians.
xdennis · 5h ago
Most Jews in Israel are from Arab countries because they were expelled after Israel kept defending itself and winning.
sillystuff · 3h ago
Israeli jews and their supporters in places like Egypt, engaged in terrorist attacks like bombing bus/train stations. The goal was to turn the population against the jewish populations within these countries, so they would have no choice but to join the European Zionist Jews. Egypt even passed laws protecting Jews from reprisals. Zionists dishonestly call the reprisals to the jewish terrorist attacks "pogroms".
Once in Israel, the European jews who founded Israel called these Mizrahi jews "black animals" in the German pidgin, yiddish, these European Jews still spoke then. The white supremacist European Jews of Israel wanted to force these "black animals" to live in the desert, using them as cheap laborers. But, the Mizrahi forced their way into recently ethnically cleansed areas and took over the homes of the Palestinians who had been forced out by the European Jews (to make way for more European Jews). The Mizrahi even formed a Black Panther Party, but it was mostly cosplaying, as they just wanted stuff for themselves, there was no ideology against exploitation like the real Black Panthers in California.
slt2021 · 14m ago
also Ethiopian jewish women were forcefully sterilized because israelis want to keep their country "white"
Defending? You mean colonizing. And Israel literally did terrorist attacks on Jews in Arab countries to make them flee to the newly occupied land.
hn_go_brrrrr · 5h ago
Israel has both defended itself from literal invasions neighboring countries and violently seized ("colonized") land from people already living there. The two are not mutually incompatible.
cess11 · 4h ago
What do you mean by "literal invasion"? It seems to imply that Israel would have been attacked without provocation.
In 1948 the zionist paramilitaries had been at war with the indigenous population for quite some time, neighbouring states offering the palestinians military support once the british ended the mandate wasn't exactly out of the blue.
The 1956 Suez crisis was an attack by Israel and some of its allies.
The 1967 Six-Day-war was an attack by Israel.
The 1973 Yom Kippur war was an attempt to retake syrian and egyptian territory, and 'invading' occupied territory in an attempt to retake it is hardly a "literal invasion" of Israel, right?
In 1982 Israel attacked Lebanon and invaded its southern parts.
Quite consistently Israel has been the aggressor and very explicitly expansionist at the expense of its neighbours.
jobs_throwaway · 4h ago
You seem to believe that Israel is not a legitimate state, and have stated quite a bit of misinformation in your comment. Looking at it as someone without a dog in the fight, you seem comically one-sided in your analysis.
> In 1948 the zionist paramilitaries had been at war with the indigenous population for quite some time
As of May 1948, these were not 'zionist paramiltaries', they were the Israeli army.
>The 1956 Suez crisis was an attack by Israel and some of its allies.
From 1949 Egypt had repeatedly blocked Israeli‐flagged vessels from the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran. State-enabled terrorists were also doing armed raids into southern Israel, killing and wounding civilians (over 200 casualties in 1955 alone)
> The 1967 Six-Day-war was an attack by Israel
In May 1967 Egypt expelled the UN Emergency Force from Sinai, massed tens of thousands of troops on Israel’s border, and formally closed the Straits of Tiran
> The 1973 Yom Kippur war was an attempt to retake syrian and egyptian territory
On 6 October 1973 Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated, surprise attack across the 1967 cease‑fire lines on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar (Yom Kippur)
> In 1982 Israel attacked Lebanon and invaded its southern parts
From 1968 onward the PLO used southern Lebanon as a base for rocket and commando raids into northern Israel.
tptacek · 40m ago
Say whatever you will, but it remains the case that a plurality of Israeli Jewish people are of MENA origin --- Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia.
slt2021 · 19m ago
but not of Palestine origin. Keep in mind that relocation of arab jews to israel was organized by Mossad[1] and sometimes even coerced via terror [2].
Arab jews lived in peace in the middle east, and there was no problem of antisemitism, until ashkeNazis from Europe showed up in Palestine and brought terror[3] and antisemitism with them
The zionist movement more or less invented modern terrorism and the state of Israel has always been a fervent sponsor of terrorism in Palestine and abroad. It has also consistently been a supporter of criminal, particularly genocidal, states, like apartheid South Africa, the tyranny in El Salvador and Guatemala, the timorese genocide, and so on.
No comments yet
cess11 · 5h ago
I doubt it, 40% mizrahi and sephardic is the statistic I've come across.
It's a weird myth to bring up. This jewish exodus to Palestine has consistently been driven by rather nasty politics, starting with the Crémieux decree, via german nazi agitation to campaigning and terrorism by zionist organisations after the founding of the state of Israel.
Commonly mizrahi and sephardic jews were reluctant to do aliyah, in part because they were reached by rumours about how they were likely to be treated once in Israel.
Still, this has little to do with what I brought up, that the zionist movement is predominantly christian and deeply antisemitic.
bigtex88 · 2h ago
I'm sorry you're being downvoted. Any comment right now on this thread that attempts to push back on the narrative is being downvoted unfortunately.
briandear · 1h ago
Hamas to this day still has hostages. People were still butchered and raped by Hamas. The meme that Palestinians are blameless is just not accurate. Not defending either side, just saying this is like the Soviets and the Nazis on the Eastern Front.
kissickas · 1h ago
I'm sorry, what is Awdah Hathaleen's connection to Hamas?
OutOfHere · 5h ago
The game theory, as per recent events, is as follows:
1. Hamas doesn't accept a two-state solution.
2. Israel is therefore forced into implementing a one-state solution.
sjapkee · 3h ago
Why should they accept two-state solution when there shouldn't be Israel state in the first place?
greenpizza13 · 2h ago
Just wow. All these people crying out for Israel to show restraint and saying the quiet part out loud: Israel doesn't have a right to exist.
chimineycricket · 27m ago
Does Italy have a right to exist? Based on what do you answer this question?
SalmoShalazar · 21m ago
Do you think it does? Is that such an absurd take?
ImPostingOnHN · 5h ago
It looks like israel is the one rejecting 2-state solutions*
* - 2-state means 2 co-equal states, with equal people, and equal rights (including the equal right to be safe from the other)
hn_go_brrrrr · 4h ago
Neither Hamas nor Israel's current right-wing government wants the kind of solution you're proposing.
HDThoreaun · 4h ago
Hamas has quite literally never been open to anything like this. Israel no longer is, but they definitely were before the second intafada.
Hamas is willing to accept the 1967 borders as Palestine.
peterfirefly · 1h ago
> but they definitely were before the second intafada.
No. But some of the important people in Israel were smart enough to pretend they were.
OutOfHere · 4h ago
It is essential to pay attention to the timeline of events, to not distort the sequence and progression of events. First Hamas rejected the two-state solution. Israel has later, in effect, accepted their rejection.
Mordisquitos · 2h ago
Your argument is subtly biased in that you equivocating two different levels of entities: one of them is a political/militant/terrorist organisation and another is a state.
If we're dealing with the first level we should compare Hamas and Likud (+coalition); if we're dealing with the second level, we should compare Palestine and Israel. Elevating Hamas to represent the entirety of Palestine in the conflict is twisting the logic.
OutOfHere · 1h ago
Those with the guns (Hamas) are those that matter. The powerless puppet Palestinian government is irrelevant.
The Arab countries just called for Hamas to lay down their weapons, thereby proving my point.
hdririiij · 5h ago
There is a bulldoser in background. Those are forbidden in West Bank, and have very typical use!
Some context, how this event started would be nice!
No comments yet
wafflemaker · 7h ago
Last night I went to bed late and my wife had trouble sleeping. She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide that they will plannedly un-live whole other nation and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
We're both from the country where most of the planned un-living of the First Holocaust were performed. We recently discussed how in a street poll, half of Polish population couldn't solve a simple math task, a simple language task and one more simple task, placing Poland in the second last position from all the countries taking place. (For comparison, in Norway and Holland only 9%). And how it was likely a consequence of genetic holocaust performed on Poles by both German and Russian nazis during the 2WW. That systematic destruction of elites can behead a country for years to come.
I tried to calm her down, show her that it's just her Instagram bubble that makes her think so. That such things like planned un-living don't happen anymore in the civilized world where we are living, that last time something like that was about to happen, there was a UN action in the Balkans. Or that through the common effort we've managed to halt Russia's advance when they once again attempted to conquer Europe.
But now in the morning the next day I have my own doubts. That people have to use special language to talk about the Holy Land situation to avoid censorship on Youtube or other websites. That this thread got pulled down 30 minutes after posting (even though I was positively surprised when it was reinstated another 30 min later). That just like during the First Holocaust, even though the nations of civilized world are being informed about what's happening, people are ignoring the subject and not beliving that it actually happen.
praptak · 5h ago
You can say "murder" on HN.
kzrdude · 4h ago
I think you are right to have doubts. Europe was sincere when it said Russia must not be allowed to unilaterally invade and occupy other countries. Because that is the starting point to what you said, the unilateral murder or expulsion of whole peoples and nations.
If we look backwards in time, we come from a very violent history, but politics and technology has continuously reshaped how it happens. For example wars post industrialism were much more murderous than ever before.
The long arch view(?) seems to be that the post-WWII era has ended and something new is coming around the corner. It looks like an era of bigger empires but without the single superpower.
vagippona · 7h ago
Out of curiosity, are you referring to this "action" in the Balkans, where the UN soldiers basically stood up watching and doing absolutely nothing while 8k civilians where executed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre
nsksl · 4h ago
Ah sorry, I thought he may be talking about the bombing of Belgrade :)
wafflemaker · 5h ago
Nope, while I'm aware of Srebrenica (still have a history podcast on that in my backlog) I meant other actions like arms bans, two air campaign (Deliberate Force and Allied Force) that have prevented even more atrocities.
I've read up a little more about it now, didn't know it was that complex. (Pretty much 3 or more wars in the 10y period). Since I read up on it now, I noticed some connections to planned un-living of the current second holocaust in The Strip. Just like in Gaza, there were ~140k ppl killed and millions displaced.
laurent_du · 7h ago
Nothing in the message you are answering suggests this is what they are talking about.
I-M-S · 5h ago
That is precisely the point. OP cites "UN action in the Balkans" to soothe his wife, whereas UN's inaction led to the first legally recognized genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.
southernplaces7 · 4h ago
Why use this word, "un-live" multiple times? How does one confront or at all protest grotesque things if they can't so much as mention them without absurd, childish euphemisms? Kill, it's about killing, or maybe more accurately: exterminating, butchering, slaughtering, murdering. There, better to properly, crudely name things that are by nature crude and barbaric.
pelagicAustral · 5h ago
WTF is "un-live"? Had to double-check I wasn't on YouTube.
xdennis · 5h ago
Content creators use that language to avoid being de-monetized. Note, no platform actually censors "kill", "suicide", etc, but they do remove monetization. I have no idea why other people use it. It's not like you can monetize comments. I guess it just shows how much cultural pull "new media" have.
kzrdude · 4h ago
It's dystopic to say the least to see it escaping the social media bubbles and land here where it serves no purpose
gryfft · 4h ago
AIUI the tiktok algorithm actually does heavily punish overtly "adult" language
But thankfully HN is not TikTok; I thought it is a place for adults (and manchildren LARPing as adults).
idiotsecant · 5h ago
Good thing you removed all the double plus ungood badthink from your post citizen, your corporate owners thank you and remind you to reward yourself with a cool, refreshing Pepsi-Cola!
Are you suggesting that the 91% that can solve some tasks in the street are descendants of Jews or priests/nobles/landlords?
keybored · 3h ago
> We're both from the country where most of the planned un-living of the First Holocaust were performed. We recently discussed how in a street poll, half of Polish population couldn't solve a simple math task, a simple language task and one more simple task, placing Poland in the second last position from all the countries taking place. (For comparison, in Norway and Holland only 9%). And how it was likely a consequence of genetic holocaust performed on Poles by both German and Russian nazis during the 2WW. That systematic destruction of elites can behead a country for years to come.
Objecting to the Holocaust because it eugenicized the wrong way is a thing I guess.
pif · 4h ago
> She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide [...] and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
ImPostingOnHN · 4h ago
>> She said that she is afraid of the world where a state can decide that they will plannedly un-live whole other nation and nobody is willing to do anything about that.
> You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
Being upset at the world and unwilling to engage in diplomacy is, thankfully, not a valid justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
> What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
The ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians is definitely sadder than what preceded it.
pif · 4h ago
Being upset at the world is not a valid justification for terrorism, either.
ImPostingOnHN · 4h ago
Being upset at what you believe to be terrorism is, thankfully, not a valid justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide, either.
pif · 4h ago
It's not what I believe. What Israel has had to tolerate for so long is the definition of terrorism.
Check your dictionary.
slt2021 · 2h ago
not true, in fact, Israel was created via terrorism. The famous hanging of British officers in the mandate, the King David hotel bombing.
Fun fact that all of the Israel's prime ministers were terrorists and engaged in terrorism.
IDF was created out of terrorist organizations like Irgun.
One can make argument that it was in fact israelis who brought terrorism to the middle east, which didnt have terrorism problem before
nashashmi · 2h ago
This is what Israel has been willing to face, from their continuous settlement expansions, to occupation of resources, to negligence of international law.
Israel believes in (winning) conflicts. For as long as they have power and illusion of victory, they will brazenly ignore human suffering and wage war against anyone who stands in their way, and whatever fallout happens is what they
secretly want for justification of their belligerence.
Today a man who spotlighted settlement violence and behavior was killed by the same. That is terrorism. And Israel has been waging through settlers as their proxies.
ozgrakkurt · 28m ago
This kind of worldview is very common in religious extremists.
Unfortunately this kind of conflict only seems to create more religious extremism.
Kind of how rape victims can be abusers themselves maybe
darick · 3h ago
Hmm, based on the definition I read, sounds like both sides are doing it, Israel is just much more successful at terrorism and doing it on a much larger scale.
ImPostingOnHN · 1h ago
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, still not a valid justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
What does the political climate look like in Israel? Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this?
Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
I know that the media is all over the place and it's hard to figure out what is going on as an outsider.
Either way, I hope that this situation gets resolved. I don't think that it's good for anyone and is costing a lot of money and lives.
As far as I can tell, from talking with Israelis both living in Israel and outside, there really isn't one majority thinking a certain way, it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing.
Speaking out of my ass here. But I’d guess most people don’t care. A minority cheers. A minority protests. Most go on with their lives.
Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.
I have knowledge about adjacent topics. I add the caveat in case someone has a source that substantiates or refutes my hypothesis because I’m more interested in learning
Hamas obviously started this but Israel won the war a long time ago. The world deserves an end. The longer it goes on the more Hamas will actually have achieved some kind of lasting positive image of Gaza which is rooted in their actions on Oct 7th and that would be an incredibly bad outcome for all.
Israeli soldiers, politicians, and many civilians are portraying themselves this way. Soldiers post videos sniping a child in the head calling it a "legendary video", politicians say Palestinians should starve, civilians block aid trucks.
Do you resent the way they are portrayed or do you mean you resent what a lot of Israelis are doing?
It's exceedingly subtle the way ethno-nationalism gets smuggled into the phrase "as a sovereign Jewish state," but it is no less terrible and ugly than the ethno-nationalism in other parts of the world and eras in history.
But with nukes it for sure is because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Can you perhaps elaborate a bit on why and perhaps also what you see as the desirable terminating state of this process long term?
Apologies in advance if I stepped on someone's toes here. I do not pretend to have or be able to gain any knowledge that could help this thousand year conflict.
I'm not the person you are responding to, but sheesh that is an unsympathetic reading of their comment. I do not know if the person you replied to does or does not believe that, but nothing in their comment would imply that.
> I do not pretend to have or be able to gain any knowledge that could help this thousand year conflict.
Well first step would be listening to what people say instead of adding your own interpretations.
It's just that I saw it as an opportunity to glimpse into the reasoning made and I couldn't find myself with a charitable interpretation that didn't include something very similar to that statement, so why not pop it out there to find out more what the person disagrees with?
Feel free to ignore the question, it probably won't change anyone's view anyway.
The commenter’s position is that the situation in Gaza is justifiable because Israel had to take action against Hamas.
This is textbook collective punishment: causing suffering to a massive number of people due to the actions of a minority.
Asuming all that is true, the person you are responding to never said they supported the policies that lead to that or that state of affairs.
It is possible to imagine that someone could both believe that Israel's continued military operation is neccessary and that changes could be made to relieve the humanitarian situation. I dont know if the person you are responding to actually believes that, but based on their comments there is no reason to think they dont.
Just war principles are important to observe.
The Nazis were a thuggish and murderous regime with plenty of complicity from the German populace, but the firebombing of Dresden was evil, as were the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Targeting civilians is evil.
If we accept that these are evil, and we ought to, then we must accept that what Israel is doing is unacceptable. Bibi should be punished.
You can target Hamas, and you should, but just war does not allow for the means Israel has used.
I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that, though I admit I'm not up-to-date on Israeli affairs. Don't the overwhelming majority of outsiders want a two-state solution, or failing that a more secular Israeli administration?
Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace. We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government, and there are simple ways to fix it if the willpower exists.
> I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that
i live in Canada, literally half a world away. Every street light pole seems to have some sort of "Ceasefire now" sticker on it. I also see similar sentiment in online threads on the topic. I think there is a significant group of people who want Israel to commit to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
> We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government
When people talk about this topic, they are usually referring to the conflict with Palestine.
Many of the people arguing for ceasefire probably wouldn’t be so animated about it if that wasn’t the case, i.e. if Israel was conducting a legal war with targeted strikes. That isn’t the case.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world...
https://archive.ph/2025.07.19-181407/https://www.lrb.co.uk/t...
You're not going to get an answer to that, because anyone who would do so will take one look at the comments, and will leave.
Someone actually had the courage to try - and was rewarded by being downvoted into oblivion. If you post anything positive about Israel here, people go in your profile and downvote ALL your comments, even unrelated tech ones. You also get all your comments flagged.
If you are asking specifically about the Hilltop Youth, I believe most people understand them to be somewhere between extremists and jewish terrorists and do not support their actions. The government (well, Ben-Gvir) can continue to support them (within limits of plausible deniability) as long as they are in power and elections aren't until late next year.
If you are asking about Israeli Jews and the ongoing war, I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory. Everyone (in the mainstream) has either served in the IDF or has family there and so they know first-hand that claims that the IDF is participating in a genocide are absurd. If you're telling me my (in this case fictional) cousing Omri is participating in a genocide, I can very easily ignore that because I know he is a good kid that wouldn't do that, and I can call him up and ask him. Or maybe I'll ask my (fictional) coworker Daniel, the poor guy has been called into reserve duty for over 300 days since the war started.
They've also probably seen at least one of the many lies going around about the war. The documentary that the BBC tried to fake. The UN lying about the amount of aid going into Gaza (at the time when the american temporary pier plan was ongoing, the UN published numbers of trucks that they personally supervised going into Gaza. Conveniently, they had no one present to supervise in one of three checkpoints and "missed" about 1/3rd of the aid going in). UNWRA personnel participating in the OCT-7 attack. UNIFIL providing cover for Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israeli homes (including some Druze children which really shocked people around the country). Some blatant foreign media nonesense I've seen is showing footage of Israeli soccer fans being beaten and recontextualising it as if they are the ones doing the beating. Footage of an Israeli survivor of a terrorist attack (speaking Hebrew, in Israeli media!) being subtitled to describe her as a Palestinian survivor of an Israeli terror attack. Footage of Assad slaughtering his Syrian population broadcast as if it is a slaughter by the IDF, etc. Foreign media has proven itself to Israelis as liars, so they have no reason to listen to them.
They also see it as the #1 priority to return the hostages and see any call to stop the war before they are returned as ridiculous and evil (Though I do believe a majority support a deal of "everyone for everyone and a stop to the war").
In this light, even though many people believe the war could have already ended (with an aforementioned "everyone for everyone" deal) and Netanyahu is cruelly extending the war for his own personal interests, they also understand that any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas, both for starting the conflict, and for their use of civilians as human shields, their use of civilian infrastructure (schools, mosques, hospitals) as war resources and use of their children as soldiers. They may also be familiar with the data, which last time both sides published semi-reliable information (or equally unreliable information), showed that when compared to other historical conflicts, civilian casualties were actually a smaller part of overall casualties. And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war as the IDF is already doing their duty to fight as ethically as is reasonably possible.
While we're there, we also frequently see news of Israelis and Jews being attacked around the world with no one really giving a shit about it. If the UK shows me that they don't give a shit about the lives of Jews/Israelis in the UK, I'm definitely not going to care what the UK government thinks about the ongoing war.
> Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how?
If you are in Israel and know of Jews residing elsewhere, they are probably former Israelis, which don't neccesarily represent non-Israeli Jews in those countries. Those I've spoken to have spoken about a sharp rise in antisemitism. Some fear for their lives. From the news and other media I know some Jews feel like Israel is going too far, but they get their opinions from e.g. the BBC, so you can't really take them as well-informed opinions.
- Incidentally, one former UN employee I know has spoken about ingrained and casual antisemitism in the UN much earlier than OCT-7 (of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" kind), so I'd consider any opinion or intervention by the UN as deceitful and unwelcome.
Isn't that the point? They declared a genocide before Israel had even seriously responded to the attack. (Year and a half ago is Dec 2023, the attempted genocide by Palestinians was Oct 7, 2023.)
trying to explain it, will get you downvoted and flagged. because people find it inconvenient when facts don't correlate with carefully cultivated media picture that they been consuming
edit: just in case somebody cares
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articl...
https://www.jns.org/over-6300-terror-attacks-against-jews-in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Price_tag_attack_...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/letter-sanctio...
Quite important not to become part of the problem when you discuss this case. And the problem is that such a heated subject is prone to make people ideologically possessed and tribal. To a point where they become emotionally blinded and are unable to listen to people that don't share/fully support their beliefs.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-israelis-support...
Given Israeli education, support for settlers, the immigration policy which allows anyone with Jewish heritage to claim land there (regardless of any connection to the area, and of any outstanding arrest warrants) and Israelis using their kids to stop aid trucks and so on, there's a lot needed to show the majority what is actually humane and acceptable.
> Eurasia Poll: 82% of Israelis want to expel Palestinians from Gaza; 47% want to kill every man, woman, child
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/05/30/poll-israelis-exp...
44% of Gaza was between the age of 0-14 in 2023. I leave how psychotic this comment reads within this context as an excercise for the reader.
I think (from the perspective of having lived in a country undergoing a civil war for many years) one of the problems the West has in dealing with issues like this is that people imagine that there is a bad side to oppose, and a good side you want to win. Very often the impacts on societies of lengthy conflicts means that there are no clear good guys to back.
If a significant proportion of one side wants to drive out or wipe out the other, that will encourage the other wide to believe that their best option is to be the ones doing the wiping out. It is very likely that a conflict like this will only end when one side wins to that extent.
You mean of course, 20 years ago in 2006 when the last election was held in Gaza. In which they didn't even manage to break 50% I might add and with the Israeli government's blessing as Netanyahu was fond of boasting before Oct 7th --- a far lower number than the number of Israelis that still support the IDF's current military actions.
Their actions made sense in this context.
It's one of several ways the zionists mirror the nazis.
[1] https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/dossiers-pays/israel-terri...
Israel is a terrorist organization, not a state.
Articles like this on purpose blur lines of what happening and meant to generate outrage. Once I traced back article that talked about 48 (or something) palestinians killed by settlers by going through listed sources in the article. when I got to original article (twice removed), I discovered that it talked about 47 killed by IDF and 1 killed in clashes between settlers and palestinians
> After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
I think there is a common belief that Israel was "given" the land beyond the Jordan because they were God's chosen people based on their merits.
Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
Israel seems wicked to me now.
Deuteronomy 20:15-18 is more appropriate to the current conflict, as it relates to how the Jews should fight wars in the land of Israel. It commands the utter destruction of the inhabitants of the land, not sparing any that breathe (not just those who “pisseth-on-the-wall”)
Discussions about modern Israel/Palestine are full of shibboleths that reveal where people are drawing their information:
In the Hebrew the word in 20:16 for inheritance is “Nachala”. Worth Googling: Nachala is also the name of a present‑day Israeli settler movement led by Daniella Weiss, whose own literature says it’s “continuing the biblical mandate to settle the land.” In other words, the same term that the Torah uses for a gift that can be forfeited is now used as branding for a modern political project—illustrating how ancient vocabulary still shapes today’s arguments about the land.
For an example from the Palestinian side: you do not have a full understanding of Hamas if you do not know about the Hadith about the Gharqad tree. Hamas charter writers alluded to this story; many Palestinians learn it young, while most Israelis have never heard of it.
Recognizing these code‑words doesn’t require agreeing with the theology behind them. It simply keeps us from talking past each other—and, one hopes, from letting someone else’s apocalyptic script dictate who lives and dies. I think we all agree that the other-sides’ eschatology is a dumb reason to die.
> “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti
This may sound superficially true, but it is confusing cause and effect. It's more likely to be the other way around: people seeking violence need to separate themselves from their target. That does not automatically mean that every self-classification carries an implication of violence.
Plus the general idea that humans in general are morally flawed, sinful, etc. But, "Good news!" If you follow the one true god, that'll all be sorted out. Following the classic marketing strategy of creating a need, and then filling it.
People are being murdered thousands of years later because of the ancient Judea equivalent of 'Harry Potter', and the batshit insane people who still believe it in earnest.
I understand the instinct to treat Bronze‑Age literature like fanciful fiction: engineers are wired to put "myth" in one bucket and "hard data" in another. But for better or worse, the Bible isn't just an ancient novel. It's the source code for a huge fraction of the world's legal systems, ethics, holidays, and political claims, including the one we are discussing. Dismissing it as "Harry Potter" misses the point:
If we're serious about reducing violence, we need to debug the real code people are running in their heads, not the straw‑man version.
As written by a member of "the least bad people". If you're going to have a historical look at events then, you need to take sources with a grain of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-their-bones_policy
Netanyahu publicly called Palestinians Amalek, calling for their complete ethnic cleansing
Also Israel officialy had "mowing the lawn" doctrine that is literal genocide
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2025.2...
All over the Balkans of the 90s, right wing nationalist governments aligned themselves with paramilitaries murdering undesirables.
Going back further, fascist movements of the first half of the 20th century used similar tactics.
These days though, there is no unclaimed land or unpopulated place to move in to. Practically speaking anyway. No one would want to move into the Yucatan jungles or Boreal Siberia even if the host countries invited them in to settle land.
That is the same situation that exists today. Might makes right is the only rule of nature. Treaties are just hopes that someone will help with defending your borders.
See Russia expanding its borders into what was previously recognized as Ukraine.
In the past you had lots and lots of peoples who just got erased as modern concepts of fairness and justice didn’t work the same way. See the warring states period.
What that means is that all of the "run[ning] away" you are talking about is still violently displacing native peoples. So for example, when the Boers flee the Cape Colony to the Transvaal, they aren't moving to virgin, empty land, but rather land inhabited by native Africans (Zulu, I think), who needed to be dispossessed of their land. And such dispossession tends to require violence.
After all there was no "industry" it was 95% + agrarian, pescatarian, pastoral. Many populations had a preference for coastal, riparian settlements and mountainous areas were less favored... but were where displaced peoples could move to. People clumped, they were not evenly distributed so any region would have unsettled areas --just like today you have vast areas in Alaska that are not populated -even Wyoming. There are towns here and there but most areas of those states are not "populated" though they are under local, state and federal control. Government did not work that way back a few hundred years ago.
The Zulu only relatively recently moved into ZA (around the same time as Europeans maybe a bit before --the Khoisan are the native peoples of ZA).
The Western Roman Empire was invaded by people who were fleeing other invaders.
In the context of this thread you might as well ask Israeli settlers what they think Israel's policy with Gaza and the West Bank should be.
Poe's law working overtime here.
Arguably it's worse than what is usually meant by terrorism, i.e. civilians or paramilitaries attacking a state by actions against civilians, since it's a state exterminating stateless civilians.
What the world is allowing Israel to get away is a huge stain on us.
All of those remembrance days, etc, are all bogus. Rohingyas, many African conflicts, now Palestine clearly show that entire populations can and will engage in ethnic cleansings despite knowing history very well and even having been on the victim side of it.
Human nature is disgusting we talk a lot and do very little.
To me, simply labeling somone as "evil" not feels like a premature termination of the chain of causality, but also circular reasoning (Why does X do evil things? Because X is evil. Why is X evil? Because X does evil things). There has to be more to it than that.
What is happening is definitely "evil" in its purest form, but there are many contributing explanations that don't rely on circular reasoning.
- long-term geopolitical goals of "the West" in the middle east
- a culture defined by a noxious combination of victim complex + ethnoreligious superiority
- a society pampered by foreign financial and military aid (not having to stand on its own)
- a long history of regional violence
This is everything you need to know about the world we live in. Palestinian lives simply do not matter.
Lives in Palestine get far more attention than Burma, West Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan [1].
The basic truth is lives far removed from us tend to be forgettable.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...
Our tax dollars (as an american) are bankrolling these settler animal's bloodlust. can't say the same for the other examples you provided.
https://x.com/davidmryder/status/1746049132027150672
The duration (mostly over already) and death toll are less as well.
This is fair. Claiming Palestinians are being ignored is not.
False. USA continues to ignore the plight of Palestinians and continues to fund and arm the regime that kills them
False monolith. To the extent there is a single foreign policy issue dominating the American public consciousness, it’s Gaza.
Palestinian lives are not being ignored. There isn’t universal compassion for them. But the average American has more developed views on this topic than for any comparable conflict around the world.
How do you square this view with the current situation? The US has poured resources and weapons into Israel. Gaza is levelled, tens of thousands of Gaza’s people are dead.
The US might care about Gaza, but it cares a lot more about Israel.
and there is official foreign policy stance of people in power (POTUS, Dept of State, DoD, etc).
The actual people in power all support the genocide of Palestinians and ethnic cleansing, because they are either ethnically jewish, or get financial support from lobby, or benefit in other ways, or simply dont benefit financially from defending the Palestinians.
The good thing is that public opinion is shifting, but I fear that it may shift so far to the other side, the jewish diaspora in US may not like the consequences and we will see the big FAFO moment
In many US states it is criminalized to support Palestinian statehood past a certain point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
You can argue that American citizens aren't unaware, but the politicians are born and bred to ignore this catastrophe. We have laws to stop them from caring.
I supported arming Ukraine. That didn’t rely on ignorance of Russia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Mu...
> Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with Iran and Turkey being home to the largest remaining Jewish populations, followed by Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. This was due to Zionist recruitment, religious beliefs, economic reasons, widespread persecution, antisemitism, political instability and curbing of human rights in Muslim-majority countries.
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Muslim," they say. Where then, should the Jews be allowed to live? Only in Brooklyn?
> Until the 1960s, approximately one million Jews lived in Iran and other Arab countries having arrived in the region more than 2,000 years before. Nowadays, it is estimated that only around 15,000 remain, as the majority of the Jewish population in Muslim lands were forced to flee their homes
https://sephardicu.com/history/jewish-population-in-10-islam...
Hamas could surrender at any time. They're to blame for everything.
From your source.
It's important to note that in a place like Algeria the French colonists granted Jewish populations citizenship to France, yet denied it to the Arab and Berber populations. [1] This fractured relations between the Sephardic population and the rest of the local population, which is exactly what the French wanted.
I'm not going to say relations were perfect before, or deny that Jewish populations weren't second class citizens, but there was a long history of being neighbors and having cities like Constantine be a place of refuge after the Spanish expulsion of Jews from Andalusia. I mean, in places like Mogador in Morocco, Jewish populations were explicitly invited by the king to settle and set up trading businesses [2].
The founding of Israel completely changed this and fractured relations that went back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9mieux_Decree [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essaouira#Jewish_presence [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghrebi_Jews
Violence begets violence, if Israeli settlers want to fight to displace other people then they will die in that process. Thankfully for Jews, there are other states they can choose to inhabit that are both secular and respect international law. These are, statistically, safer places for Jewish individuals to live than a state that instructs their army on how to commit fratricide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
The problem comes when they only focus on Hamas, and ignore Israel's kidnapping and detention of 10k Palestinians without being charged. AKA, "hostages".
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if you dont wanna discuss, just move on to the next topic, you have no right to censor other people's speech
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/29/headlines/palestinian...
> Odeh Muhammad Hadalin’s name was sometimes spelt as Awdah Muhammad Hathaleen.
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Israel very much depends on being the dominant power in the region. If they lose US support, things could get ugly indeed. And they are losing support rapidly now.
Or more accurately, the world would let the US let it happen. And the US would probably fund it.
And the world would feel so, so sorry as they paved over the mass graves and built AI data centers and luxury hotels in what used to be Gaza.
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You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. So support for 2-state is just a form of delaying the inevitable.
I am now firm believer in one-state solution as the most fair one. Peter Beinart has some good arguments in its favor.
And I think it would be a poetic justice for all the racist settlers (or islamists) to have the people they hate as their neighbors.
The Arab world overwhelmingly rejected the UN Partition Plan in principle, which led directly to the 1948 Palestine war and the first Arab-Israeli war. Likewise, the signing of the Oslo Accords (and the rejection of those accords by Hamas, PIJ and other factions within the PLO) led directly to the Second Intifada. Most of the Arab world has now conceded that Israel isn't going anywhere and huge steps have been made in normalising Arab-Israeli relations, but Palestinian politics is still dominated by a fundamentally futile anti-Zionist absolutism.
A credible option of full statehood and international recognition has been on the table for nearly eighty years, but Palestinians have consistently failed to establish a workable consensus on taking up that option. The PLO's intransigence has alienated most of their allies in the region, primarily because they instigated civil wars in both Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975).
A one-state solution is no solution at all while there remain extremists on both sides who are simply unwilling to coexist; unless Israel can reign in the religious right and the Palestinians can establish a political consensus in favour of coexistence, it's a straightforward path to war. There's no "poetic justice" in making people who hate each other live together, just an inevitable perpetuation of bloodshed.
The political debates about land rights are intractably complex, but the fundamental realpolitik question is about how much the Palestinians are willing to suffer for the principle of "from the river to the sea". Israel is militarily dominant and is likely to remain so regardless of how much international pressure is brought to bear. In simple practical terms, the ball is in the Palestinian court and it is for them to decide whether to seriously engage in a two (or three) state solution with international support, or whether to continue pursuing an unwinnable conflict. A post-Netanyahu Israel is highly likely to support a serious two-state solution, but simply isn't going to accept a one-state solution; even if you believe a one-state solution to be the only just outcome, it isn't a workable outcome.
More than a one-state solution.
Would it be nice if people could get along and not require militarised borders to keep them from killing each other? Sure. This was essentially the colonial assumption when the Middle East (and Africa’s) modern borders were drawn—that local preferences could be overcome by force of will.
In reality, where you draw borders on a map matters less than the people on the ground’s identities and guns.
[0] https://youtu.be/P6gtHQGbXmM
This roughly describes the current situation. Israelis are internationally mobile. And while Palestinians are not, it’s hard to imagine enough of them emigrating to destabilise the current conflict conditions.
Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse. Having them hate each other with centuries of history and territory claims is even worse still. Then giving them both, let alone one, access to the global arms market is asking for never ending wars of annihilation.
If you could design a situation that was maximally terrible for neighboring states, the two state solution would be it.
This is the history of the Levant going back millennia.
The modern model of statehood (which is probably what you are referring to) -- sometimes referred to as the "nation-state" model, but it is not actually particularly centered on the coextensiveness of the nations and states, and certainly orthogonal to states being ethnonationalist -- is at least ~300 years old (its often attributed to being ~400 years old and originating in the two peace settlements collectively known as the "Peace of Westphalia", but that's not really accurate.) OTOH, the concept of nations (which are basically the coextension of an ethnic community and a land) is much older.
But, in any case, it has not been the case at all that the history of the Levant is one of two local adjacent coexistent ethnonationalist polities, whether or not they look like modern states. That's just a simply false claim made upthread which needs no reference to the history of models of nations or states to rebut; before 1948, for a very long time, the Levant was more often either under one (multinational, imperial) polity or split between a couple of adjacent ones (often in the process of transitioning from unified control of one to the other), whether it was the British Empire, or the Ottoman Empire, a series of different Arab-led empires, the Eastern Roman Empire, the (pre-split) Roman Empire, various Greek-derived empires, the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, etc.
Concept of nation states. Nations and states, separately, are an older concept.
> they were often simply under the dominion of one imperial power or another
For millennia. Often because inter-ethnic conflicts required an external security guarantor to keep a lid on the chaos.
One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
> One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
And one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani.
Again - I’d love further education about legal definitions.
It's ridiculous and I know the moment I see someone dig into their bag of slander with that they are not arguing in good faith.
JIDF out in force again.
- Establish a new, transitional government of Israel/Palestine, nominated by the UN
- Give citizenship to every Israeli and Palestinian for the whole territory
- Mandate a 50/50 ethnic quotas system in the military, police, judiciary and all government institutions, and minimum 30% ethnic quotas in every other employer
- Create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, modeled after JAR; it would figure out what reparations are needed to each citizen
- Mandate both hebrew and arabic as official languages, and teach every kid both in school
- Once things would settle down, after 1-2 years, run a new elections but with constitutional provisions (5-10 years) against dismantling the quotas
Heck, even US could do this unilaterally (just like British did), if they wanted to pursue human rights.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Look at my proposal above. War didn't happen in postapartheid JAR, despite everybody saying it would. What would people fight for, after all? They are all citizens of the same (biethnic) country, that's the perspective the world "leaders" should bring to the table.
You need to bring some argument.
Okay, so in your opinion, there is exactly one state that is currently engaged in a civil war. How would world leaders telling them "You are actually one country engaged in a civil war" stop that war?
The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. The muslim arab majority would not accept a jewish minority living within them, they consider them foreign colonialists that need to be purged (and you may have heard of one or two groups currently leading those muslim arabs that have that exact official position).
> You need to bring some argument.
When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre (picked as an example because of the "humour" of having to disambiguate it from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks ) no one thinks going back to that is viable.
Israel/Palestine seems to be two groups of people who really do not want to live together, and would prefer to be rid of the other side.
Who have they bombed recently? I make it Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Gaza (is this bombing themselves? Palestine?).
It’s darkly hilarious how terrible neighbouring Israel would be.
This is a problem for the neighbouring countries, isn't it? They don't want to deal with a bunch of new people any more than any other country does.
> let Israel annexate Gaza
This is just admitting that might makes right
> and then imposing strict border controls... severly sanctioned
You would need people to actually believe this
Even so, this plan does not address the fact that both parties really really want to live on the same land. You might as well ask the Israelis why they aren't content to resettle some other place, they wouldn't accept it anymore than the Palestinians would.
To the extent there is consensus among today’s superpower and regional powers, it’s that international peacekeepers don’t work. At best they delay while incubating a conflict.
What’s the solution then? We keep wringing our hands and saying it’s impossible?
Truth is no one wants to fight overseas anymore.
Someone needs to actually try and improve things.
Given the history of Israel with the UNIFIL...
This is a bit misleading.
Israel proposed that it maintain absolute and total military control of Gaza, but that a "peacekeeping force" from three Arab nations, bizarrely to be controlled by the US, would "secure food distribution".
Israel has absolutely zero intention of handing over control of Gaza, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to vilify and delegitimize every international organization at every turn.
An actual peacekeeping force as described above would be about keeping Israel in check as much as ensuring Hamas doesn't re-appear.
The charter for Hamas for years called for the total destruction of Israel. That's been recently removed, but their actions haven't changed.
Why would any nation allow such a government to be their neighbor? The best that anyone could hope for would be a North / South Korea or CCP/KMT divide, but those only work because both sides share a common identity.
It’s time for aggressive outside intervention.
If the answer is "None" then Israel did not in fact propose peacekeeping forces.
Hamas didn’t counter with a preferred peacekeeping composition, they rejected peacekeeping to retain their monopoly on violence (and Gaza’s resources).
To the extent there are evils in this story, they’re the leadership of Hamas and Likud.
The Isreali man really should not have been there, but I have to recognise a couple of things.
1) I don't know what anyone is saying except, ironically, plea's of someone near the camera man asking the Israeli man to "Shoot me".
2) I do not know what lead up to this confrontation
3) I have been in a circumstance before where a large group of people are acting frantic and in a threatening way and it's genuinely terrifying, so much so that you will act irrationally - this might be something others on this platform might not be familiar with.
The circumstance could have been avoided by Israel not having any settlers in the west bank, for sure, and it's a tragic situation.
However, I'm sitting here, in Sweden, behind a computer on a site about entrepreneurialism and technology.
I can't possibly say anything on the subject that's meaningful, none of us can. Why is it here?
If anything being armed in that situation is incredibly stupid, because you'll still panic and now you're acting irrationally with a deadly weapon. The weapon can be used (as this example) or taken off you.
I speak from experience, I got mobbed upon by a local gang, thought it would be smart to arm myself with a prop sword in order to stop them advancing.
It didn't stop them, and in fact the sword was taken off me (because it was a prop, and I wouldn't have used it even if it wasn't to be honest) - and they proceeded to smash it over my head sending me to hospital.
All of this is only obvious with a clear head, and in hindsight. Being in that situation as a human being is just.. awful. I don't recommend it.
EDIT: I'm getting flagged a lot from emotional people; I think this is part of why I really dislike this topic, we know nothing except how we feel and refuse to look at things objectively - and we're not even qualified to do that anyway. So everything becomes pornography to confirm our biases and to drown out anyone who doesn't immediately call for the end of Israel.
- About tech
- About a current event
- About censorship
Genocide by itself, that's just not good enough apparently. That's very weird because there's tons of serious discussion on HN about history. This place cares a lot about history. Whatever is happening right now is just real-time history.
If a Russian soldier in Ukrainian territory shot some civilian in the face, I guess you'd also have put yourself in their shoes and given them the benefit of the doubt? I mean, they were terrified!
https://x.com/basel_adra/status/1950202311168385309
The documentary "Checkpoint" is more than 20 years old by now, the treatment of West Bank's Palestinians has been fucked up for even longer than that, and Netanyahu's government only made it worse.
I wish to see in my lifetime Israel having to reckon with the fact they've become the monster, justifying their actions after the immense suffering their ancestors went through during the Holocaust is impossible...
Edit: according to Yuval Abraham[0], the killer instructed soldiers to arrest the other 4 family members of Awdah Hathaleen which are still in jail, while the murderer was released under house arrest, fucking insane.
[0] https://x.com/yuval_abraham/status/1950190191584419923
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/10/video-appears-...
When it does happen, how often does well-intended foreign intervention actually "fix" things - vs. turning into a yet another "park our troops there 'till we finally run out of patience" occupation?
My read is that the many powerful factions which favor (overtly or not) the ongoing violent mess in/around Israel have (generally) very good understandings of the situation and its dynamics. And the benefits & costs - for them - of encouraging it to continue indefinitely. Vs. the opposing side is dominated by sincere but all-too-simple "make horrible things stop happening!!!" emotions.
:(
This is undeniable.
The man saying "shoot me" is saying it to a man who is a documented illegal aggressor. It's rhetoric, not actually an invitation to shoot him, and wouldn't excuse the man shooting him if it was.
Apparently, this is a thing at synagogues across the west.
Zionists, have made it clear for anyone paying attention, they intend to displace or exterminate every single Palestinian, to the person, to make way for zionist jews.
He was arrested by Israeli police for questioning, but was later released on house arrest while an investigation continued.
About a dozen Israeli soldiers raided the mourning tent, pushing those attending out while keeping a thumb on the pin of a stun grenade. Soldiers declared the area a closed military zone and said only residents of the village could be present. They arrested two activists and threw stun grenades at journalists who were too slow to leave.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/palestinian-aw...
The idea for Israel was to have its national criminal jurisdictions prosecute just enough to not be seen as failing by the ICC and meet its 'complementarity' criterion [0]. Even spying on ICC staff to see who it was investigating.
At least that's how it used to be, now they just threaten the ICC.
[0]: https://www.pgaction.org/ilhr/rome-statute/complementarity.h...
The original European Jews who founded Israel were even opposed to the German Nazis transferring thousands of Jewish children to other countries to save their lives.
These Zionist Jews thought it would be better for their state building project if these children were all murdered than if the children were sent anywhere except to Palestine.
But, some of the collaboration wasn't really the Zionist Jews' entire fault. E.g., the machine tools the Zionist Jews used to create weaponry to murder Palestinian civilians and ethnically cleans Palestine were all German made, and purchased from the Nazi regime, but this was because the Nazis only allowed the rich jews to leave with German made products, not with cash. So, when the minority of Jews fled to Israel/Palestine instead of to the United States (vast majority went to the US), they were instructed to purchase machine tools from the Germans to bring with them.
But I'm sure they wouldn't have done the same to Gaza if they would've just done the right thing by kicking off Hamas, and stopping any armed resistance !
I mean they didn't literally kill every single arab in Gaza yet so they are very progressive. They'd rather just slowly settle your land and kill you if you resist, as opposed to Hamas who would've done the same but faster. Let's not forget that they have killed tens of thousands of Muslims, but at least they could've killed even more!
Also there is non stop attempts (some successful and some not) to execute terror attacks from West Bank. It just never appears in Western media
Israel isn't a semitic country. It is a european/western country just like australia. It's just that nobody calls out the obvious.
Speaking as someone who has heritage in a former European colony, this reductive framing strikes me as ringing closer to the remote oversimplifications Sykes and Picot engaged in than anything those on the ground would endorse.
American political science is obsessed with settler colonialism. Herego, every conflict distills through that lens.
Are there elements of this conflict that mirror that dynamic? Sure. Is it a useful model for making predictions and policy for the people on the ground? No. Will that impact the profitability of repeating it on social media? Probably not.
The zionist movement consists mainly of christians.
Once in Israel, the European jews who founded Israel called these Mizrahi jews "black animals" in the German pidgin, yiddish, these European Jews still spoke then. The white supremacist European Jews of Israel wanted to force these "black animals" to live in the desert, using them as cheap laborers. But, the Mizrahi forced their way into recently ethnically cleansed areas and took over the homes of the Palestinians who had been forced out by the European Jews (to make way for more European Jews). The Mizrahi even formed a Black Panther Party, but it was mostly cosplaying, as they just wanted stuff for themselves, there was no ideology against exploitation like the real Black Panthers in California.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-...
In 1948 the zionist paramilitaries had been at war with the indigenous population for quite some time, neighbouring states offering the palestinians military support once the british ended the mandate wasn't exactly out of the blue.
The 1956 Suez crisis was an attack by Israel and some of its allies.
The 1967 Six-Day-war was an attack by Israel.
The 1973 Yom Kippur war was an attempt to retake syrian and egyptian territory, and 'invading' occupied territory in an attempt to retake it is hardly a "literal invasion" of Israel, right?
In 1982 Israel attacked Lebanon and invaded its southern parts.
Quite consistently Israel has been the aggressor and very explicitly expansionist at the expense of its neighbours.
> In 1948 the zionist paramilitaries had been at war with the indigenous population for quite some time
As of May 1948, these were not 'zionist paramiltaries', they were the Israeli army.
>The 1956 Suez crisis was an attack by Israel and some of its allies.
From 1949 Egypt had repeatedly blocked Israeli‐flagged vessels from the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran. State-enabled terrorists were also doing armed raids into southern Israel, killing and wounding civilians (over 200 casualties in 1955 alone)
> The 1967 Six-Day-war was an attack by Israel
In May 1967 Egypt expelled the UN Emergency Force from Sinai, massed tens of thousands of troops on Israel’s border, and formally closed the Straits of Tiran
> The 1973 Yom Kippur war was an attempt to retake syrian and egyptian territory
On 6 October 1973 Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated, surprise attack across the 1967 cease‑fire lines on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar (Yom Kippur)
> In 1982 Israel attacked Lebanon and invaded its southern parts
From 1968 onward the PLO used southern Lebanon as a base for rocket and commando raids into northern Israel.
Arab jews lived in peace in the middle east, and there was no problem of antisemitism, until ashkeNazis from Europe showed up in Palestine and brought terror[3] and antisemitism with them
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yachin
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bomb...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_terrorism#Post-1948
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bomb...
Nowadays I think the Lavon affair is less known, but it happened a couple of years before the emigration of jews from Egypt peaked in 1956.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
The zionist movement more or less invented modern terrorism and the state of Israel has always been a fervent sponsor of terrorism in Palestine and abroad. It has also consistently been a supporter of criminal, particularly genocidal, states, like apartheid South Africa, the tyranny in El Salvador and Guatemala, the timorese genocide, and so on.
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It's a weird myth to bring up. This jewish exodus to Palestine has consistently been driven by rather nasty politics, starting with the Crémieux decree, via german nazi agitation to campaigning and terrorism by zionist organisations after the founding of the state of Israel.
Commonly mizrahi and sephardic jews were reluctant to do aliyah, in part because they were reached by rumours about how they were likely to be treated once in Israel.
Still, this has little to do with what I brought up, that the zionist movement is predominantly christian and deeply antisemitic.
1. Hamas doesn't accept a two-state solution.
2. Israel is therefore forced into implementing a one-state solution.
* - 2-state means 2 co-equal states, with equal people, and equal rights (including the equal right to be safe from the other)
Hamas is willing to accept the 1967 borders as Palestine.
No. But some of the important people in Israel were smart enough to pretend they were.
If we're dealing with the first level we should compare Hamas and Likud (+coalition); if we're dealing with the second level, we should compare Palestine and Israel. Elevating Hamas to represent the entirety of Palestine in the conflict is twisting the logic.
The Arab countries just called for Hamas to lay down their weapons, thereby proving my point.
Some context, how this event started would be nice!
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We're both from the country where most of the planned un-living of the First Holocaust were performed. We recently discussed how in a street poll, half of Polish population couldn't solve a simple math task, a simple language task and one more simple task, placing Poland in the second last position from all the countries taking place. (For comparison, in Norway and Holland only 9%). And how it was likely a consequence of genetic holocaust performed on Poles by both German and Russian nazis during the 2WW. That systematic destruction of elites can behead a country for years to come.
I tried to calm her down, show her that it's just her Instagram bubble that makes her think so. That such things like planned un-living don't happen anymore in the civilized world where we are living, that last time something like that was about to happen, there was a UN action in the Balkans. Or that through the common effort we've managed to halt Russia's advance when they once again attempted to conquer Europe.
But now in the morning the next day I have my own doubts. That people have to use special language to talk about the Holy Land situation to avoid censorship on Youtube or other websites. That this thread got pulled down 30 minutes after posting (even though I was positively surprised when it was reinstated another 30 min later). That just like during the First Holocaust, even though the nations of civilized world are being informed about what's happening, people are ignoring the subject and not beliving that it actually happen.
If we look backwards in time, we come from a very violent history, but politics and technology has continuously reshaped how it happens. For example wars post industrialism were much more murderous than ever before.
The long arch view(?) seems to be that the post-WWII era has ended and something new is coming around the corner. It looks like an era of bigger empires but without the single superpower.
I've read up a little more about it now, didn't know it was that complex. (Pretty much 3 or more wars in the 10y period). Since I read up on it now, I noticed some connections to planned un-living of the current second holocaust in The Strip. Just like in Gaza, there were ~140k ppl killed and millions displaced.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051231194586
Objecting to the Holocaust because it eugenicized the wrong way is a thing I guess.
You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
> You may explain her that this is a different face of the same world where a state has been targeted by hatred and terrorism for 80 years, and everybody insisted on them being patient and just live with it.
Being upset at the world and unwilling to engage in diplomacy is, thankfully, not a valid justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
> What's happening is sad, but it is not sadder than what preceded it.
The ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians is definitely sadder than what preceded it.
Check your dictionary.
Fun fact that all of the Israel's prime ministers were terrorists and engaged in terrorism.
IDF was created out of terrorist organizations like Irgun.
One can make argument that it was in fact israelis who brought terrorism to the middle east, which didnt have terrorism problem before
Israel believes in (winning) conflicts. For as long as they have power and illusion of victory, they will brazenly ignore human suffering and wage war against anyone who stands in their way, and whatever fallout happens is what they secretly want for justification of their belligerence.
Today a man who spotlighted settlement violence and behavior was killed by the same. That is terrorism. And Israel has been waging through settlers as their proxies.
Unfortunately this kind of conflict only seems to create more religious extremism.
Kind of how rape victims can be abusers themselves maybe