Ed General Israel/Palestine discussion thread - Part 3

[Aridas]

I'm openly disgusted by the hardwired switcheroo that people have when it comes to Israel/Palestine.
For one, Palestinians are always equated with Hamas, so any concern expressed for Palestinians is automatically switch to "support for Hamas" in their brains.
And secondly, the IDF is equated with Israel, and any criticism of it is automatically antisemitic.

I wish it was so easy to put others in a box and never have to think about my priors and positions ever again.

I'll agree that that does get old really fast. Nuance takes much more time and energy to understand and communicate, which discourages it, and the lack of nuance can be corrosive to discussion.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I really wish people would be able to see how incredibly similar, and predictable, their response to this atrocity is to that of September 11: it is exactly the same playbook, and Israel is doing exactly the same thing that the US did.
And when people and countries, full of sympathy for their loss and shocked at the horror, try to warn them that they are doing exactly what the terrorists want, they are called haters, anti-semites, terrorist sympathizers, and told that "if you are not with us you are against us".

Bush's reaction to 9/11 cost trillions, tens of thousands of US and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and the result is that the Taliban are back in power and Iran indirectly controls Iraq.

Israel now has all the sympathy in the world, and they are going to piss it away in a month, trying to close the barn door with TNT after the horse has bolted.

 

[Nessie]

You want to leitmase people who take hostages, slughter civilians, and kill babies.
Nice.

Understanding why certain violent men act, is a step towards ending the violence.

Your lying about what I have been saying, is a step backwards.

 

[Nessie]

For those claiming (I think?) that Hamas would not exist or not be a problem without the mistreatment of the Palestinians: Would ISIS exist without Israel? Boko Haram? The Taliban? (Hezbollah too to a lesser extent, though it was originally formed to fight Israel in Lebanon)

I'm not honestly sure what the causative agents are for Hamas. But it seems to me that there are a fair number of Islamist organizations in nearby(ish) cultures that are perfectly willing commit horrible atrocities seemingly without being directly marginalized and oppressed by Israel.

When one people repress or otherwise have power and control over another group of people and that group has violent, evil men who are powerful enough to seize control of the group, then, they will fight back against their repressors, or to gain control.

When two or more groups of people compromise, live together, cooperate and all act to stop violent men from gaining power, then there is peace.

That is happening all over the world, right now, and has happened all throughout history.

When others have sympathy towards one group more than the other, they often fail to see and understand why the dynamic has developed.

 

[Nessie]

Yeah... this looks like it's born from the same root as your failed attempt to claim that Hamas has no army and no uniforms because Israel would consider that an act of war. The relationship to reality is tangential, at best.

The context was that Palestine is not generally recognised as a country, with a government and an army. That limits what they can do and makes it easier to brand their actions as terrorism. All existing, formally recognised countries can brand those who attack them, who are trying to establish their own country, as terrorists. Many countries have been established or seen regime change due to terrorism, though they tend to be rebranded as freedom fighters.

Personally, I'd say that the main reason that there's no Palestine is almost completely the Arabs, including the Palestinians. They've had a fair few real chances to come to an agreement with Israel and co-exist. They've blown them, repeatedly. At the beginning, for example. Had they abided by the arrangements made with the British, that'd be one thing. Instead, they tried the winner takes all military approach and lost. That significantly weakened their position at the negotiating table. That pattern was repeated a number of times and has much to do with the current situation. The Arab Conceit in play is pretty terrible.

How does maintaining that failure help?

This, I'll agree with. Hamas is not really interested in co-existence and the Palestinian people suffer because of that. It's worth remembering that the Gazans voted them into power, though, and not for pretty reasons. It wasn't really a surprise when they thoroughly abused the power they were given, honestly.

Like it or not, a terrorist organization remains a terrorist organization even when they're not committing war crimes and terrorism in that specific instance. Hamas quite earned that terrorist organization designation and hasn't done much to shed that which earned it such.

The Palestinians have been let down by Hamas, who are evil, violent men, who seek power for themselves. That makes the notion of negotiating with Hamas and seeking a peaceful solution impossible. So, Israel will retaliate in the only way it knows, which is to further repress and brutalise Palestinians.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

"Israel is telling everyone in north Gaza - about 1.1 million people - to relocate to the south of the Strip in the next 24 hours, according to the United Nations"

Imagine the country was Palestine and not Israel, and it was the Jewish people crammed into Gaza now being told to relocate to an even smaller area. Where would everyone's support be then? How many here would switch sides and support Jewish terrorism as freedom fighting?

 

[Shadowdweller]

When one people repress or otherwise have power and control over another group of people and that group has violent, evil men who are powerful enough to seize control of the group, then, they will fight back against their repressors, or to gain control.

When two or more groups of people compromise, live together, cooperate and all act to stop violent men from gaining power, then there is peace.

That is happening all over the world, right now, and has happened all throughout history.

When others have sympathy towards one group more than the other, they often fail to see and understand why the dynamic has developed.

Sure, you could totally get two populations to stop killing each other if you could get the entirety of both sides to live together and stop promoting violence against each other. Only problem is that first part.

 

[Nessie]

Sure, you could totally get two populations to stop killing each other if you could get the entirety of both sides to live together and stop promoting violence against each other. Only problem is that first part.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. That is how it works in Northern Ireland. There are still violent men and occasional acts of terrorism, but they are marginalised, have little power and the vast majority can live peacefully.

This thread has improved my understanding about the factors that are present in Northern Ireland, that are not there in Israel, that meant peaceful coexistence is possible in NI, but not in Israel, such as the dominance of violent men in society.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

No it isn't. Trail of Tears was a forced march where most of the Native Americans perished. Theres plenty of money in the wealthier Gulf States to setup the 2 million Palestinians in opulence if they felt like it.

Analogy fail.

Probably what would work is for Egypt to annex Gaza. And then allow those that want to immigrate to other Arab states to do so. Saudi, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait etc. The ones with wealth. And those that want to stay in Gaza (for whatever reason?) can stay in Gaza as Egyptian citizens. And the UN/EU/NGO's etc can send some money to help them out... as they already are. And Israel can put a 1km wide minefield around it and be done with it.

Of course it is. Forcing the Palestinians of their land of thousands of years to accomodate a bunch of settlers and to assuage the guilt of Westerners is still a death march. It is the trail of tears, it is endlosung it is a repeat of a thousands of years cycle of unpersonning the poor and weak to suit the wants of the mighty and rich.

 

[Cain]

Until last week, I understood that Israel was a defiant, lone democracy surrounded by almost two dozen Muslim dictatorships. That had been a frequently parroted talking point to justify atrocities against Palestinians, but I recently learned Gaza is also a democracy. Indeed, it's so democratic that residents deserve the mayhem and destruction visited upon them. At first I thought this was kind of weird because wasn't there the whole... civil war thing? Didn't Hamas execute, torture, and imprison political opponents? That's just reason #2349 to bomb them. Then there's the fact that half of Gaza's residents are under twenty years-old, but it turns out that means Gaza is so democratic that most people have been supporting Hamas since childhood. Bombs away.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

It only fails in the sense that all analogies fail because no two situations are exactly the same.

You are focusing on the parts that are different rather than the parts that are similar. The similarities are what the analogy is based on:

• Weaker party occupies land that the stronger party wants.
• Weaker party pushed to a small section of that land.
• Settlers from the stronger party encroach further on the land left to the weaker party.
• Weaker party involuntarily removed from their land, which is then given to the stronger party.
• Weaker party is given land somewhere else that is mostly uninhabited.

The removal of the Native tribes to Oklahoma was alos supposed to be "voluntary."


This is assuming that all the Palestinians really want is "out" so they can lead a prosperous life as a diaspora. It ignores their historical ties to the land that has been theirs for generations. Both parties want that particular piece of land, regardless of how crappy we consider it to be.

If you relocate the Palestinians, at some point in the future there will be a movement to return to their historical homeland. Similar to Zionism. History repeats itself.

I've always thought that an effective strategy for the Palestinians would be to stop the violent resistance and instead demand to be annexed with full equal citizenship and representation in government." This, Israel absolutely does not want, but cracking down on peaceful protesters demanding equality would be extremely hard for the rest of the world to support. It may actually be hard for most Israelis to support as well.
But that assumes that getting Israel (completely) out of Gaza and the West Bank would be enough of a goal.

That's been done for years and Israel's response has always been murderous violence. It's simply a fact that when Israel commits crimes against humanity nobody deigns to look.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I'm sure you realize that Hamas' core strategy is to maximize Palestinian civilian deaths. I'm also sure you realize they employee tactics in service of that strategy. One of the primary goals of this cowardly, brutal massacre was to provoke as brutal a reaction from Israel as possible, thereby producing the largest possible civilian death numbers for media consumption.

As much as you are aware that the goal of Israel's periodic massacres in Palestine is genocide.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

In addition to that, there's also the situational bit where it's not a war crime to execute hostile forces when a "surrender" being done as a tactic to get enemy soldiers to lower their guard so that they can be targeted more easily.

With that said, if the intended point of sharing such a video is to "prove" that Israel's committing war crimes and deserves to be hated, it's off the mark, given that 1) Hamas has created conditions with its war crimes and societal crimes that make it so that it's not actually reasonable to swiftly reach conclusions with very limited data, however emotion-provoking the data might be, and 2) I'm pretty sure that no one here is actually arguing that Israel's not committing war crimes.




Indeed. I'd go so far as to say that it's entirely fair to say that both sides are bad and that reducing it to a struggle for homeland isn't really wrong. It's just not fair to stop at that point. Hamas has long been known for its focus on specifically targeting civilians and celebrating when they succeed at doing so and Israel has long been known for going out of its way to reduce civilian casualties in its Gaza responses and at least officially aspires to loftier ideals. In practice, there is definitely a large gap in how bad each side is acting. Choosing the lesser of two evils is not a bad thing.

A "knowledge" whoch is wholly unsupported by Israel's actions. The simple fact of the matter is that Hamas is a result of Israeli state terrorism not the cause of it.

 

[Nessie]

The Israelis are presently trying to reduce civilian casualties, by trying to force over a million people to move out of the area they want to attack. Once that part of Gaza has been occupied, what about the rest of Gaza? Do the people then all move back to the northern part, so the Israelis can attack the southern part? Or will Israel demand the Gazans move into Egypt, clearing out Gaza for more Israeli settlements?

 

[trustbutverify]

As much as you are aware that the goal of Israel's periodic massacres in Palestine is genocide.

The most counterproductive genocide in modern history.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Because everyone wants to live in the same 20 square inches because "That's totally my sacred holy motherland upon which my ancestors have lived since God put the first soul into man" and not just spread out into the vast expanse of exactly equal desert scrubland that exists for light years in every direction like sane people operating under sane mentalities would just do without having to be asked.

Remember that episode of Star Trek where Worf's brother secretly beams a primitive culture onto the Holodeck and doesn't tell them and moves them to another planet? Can we do something like that?

If the world was run on the grounds you suggest, the thirteen colonies would still be English and all you Yankee rebels would be living on somewhere like Kergeulen.

 

[webfusion]

Watching the protests in American (and elsewhere) streets and campuses is like watching a bunch of football fans cheering against the other team.

 

[Aridas]

The context was that Palestine is not generally recognised as a country, with a government and an army. That limits what they can do and makes it easier to brand their actions as terrorism. All existing, formally recognised countries can brand those who attack them, who are trying to establish their own country, as terrorists. Many countries have been established or seen regime change due to terrorism, though they tend to be rebranded as freedom fighters.

That context is not the reality, though. The Palestinians have been recognized as a legitimate governing group that should be making an agreement with Israel on how to divide the land ever since the British left and have had a government since before the British left. On the terrorist front, Hamas' biggest political rival is Fatah, which shed their well earned terrorist designation a fair while ago when they took the necessary actions to do so.

Hamas remains a terrorist organization because they continue to engage in terrorism, not because they're Palestinian.

How does maintaining that failure help?

At no point have I suggested that I'm in favor of maintaining that failure. It's important to understand what's actually reality and why things are the way they are, though, and especially so when dealing with a situation as messy as this. Israel's figurative hands are certainly not clean, but that's not been the main force behind why the failure happened or continues.

The Palestinians have been let down by Hamas, who are evil, violent men, who seek power for themselves. That makes the notion of negotiating with Hamas and seeking a peaceful solution impossible.

Unfortunately, that does quite look to be the case with Hamas.

So, Israel will retaliate in the only way it knows, which is to further repress and brutalise Palestinians.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

"Israel is telling everyone in north Gaza - about 1.1 million people - to relocate to the south of the Strip in the next 24 hours, according to the United Nations"

This Israeli demand is fairly certainly over the top, yes, and does not receive my support. If Hamas was willing to fight more directly, there'd be better justification, but I don't trust Hamas to do so at all.

Imagine the country was Palestine and not Israel, and it was the Jewish people crammed into Gaza now being told to relocate to an even smaller area. Where would everyone's support be then? How many here would switch sides and support Jewish terrorism as freedom fighting?

Context remains important. Personally, I don't think that my positions have much relation to ethnicity or identification, but rather involve conduct and choices.

It's true that the Rapture Ready Christians in the US might support the Jews regardless, though, as they seek to set conditions for the end times that they seek.

A "knowledge" whoch is wholly unsupported by Israel's actions. The simple fact of the matter is that Hamas is a result of Israeli state terrorism not the cause of it.

A statement that simply ignores quite a lot of the situation in favor of an attempted gotcha, at very best. Moving on.

I really wish people would be able to see how incredibly similar, and predictable, their response to this atrocity is to that of September 11: it is exactly the same playbook, and Israel is doing exactly the same thing that the US did.
And when people and countries, full of sympathy for their loss and shocked at the horror, try to warn them that they are doing exactly what the terrorists want, they are called haters, anti-semites, terrorist sympathizers, and told that "if you are not with us you are against us".

Bush's reaction to 9/11 cost trillions, tens of thousands of US and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and the result is that the Taliban are back in power and Iran indirectly controls Iraq.

Israel now has all the sympathy in the world, and they are going to piss it away in a month, trying to close the barn door with TNT after the horse has bolted.

Israel taking actions like this supports your contention, I think.

Israel: White Phosphorus Used in Gaza, Lebanon

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

For those claiming (I think?) that Hamas would not exist or not be a problem without the mistreatment of the Palestinians: Would ISIS exist without Israel? Boko Haram? The Taliban? (Hezbollah too to a lesser extent, though it was originally formed to fight Israel in Lebanon)

I'm not honestly sure what the causative agents are for Hamas. But it seems to me that there are a fair number of Islamist organizations in nearby(ish) cultures that are perfectly willing commit horrible atrocities seemingly without being directly marginalized and oppressed by Israel.

The highlighted groups weren't (as far as we know) with the funding coming from Mossad, so your question isn't really valid.

 

[Planigale]

From the videos I have seen many of the Hamas terrorists appear to be wearing a uniform of sorts. It also appears some of those Israelis killed were armed and were either 'civilian' security, off duty IDF out of uniform, or military reservists out of uniform. Others were armed on duty military in uniforms.

If a Hamas was in a uniform and attacked armed on duty Israeli miltary does that entitle him to be considered a legitimate combatant, and to protection under the Geneva convention?

If Israelis were not in uniform and opened fire on 'uniformed' Hamas should they be regarded as terrorists?

If Hamas gave a warning to people in a bunker to come out within five minutes or they would throw in a grenade does that provide them with the same justification as the IDF saying people have 24 hours to get out of North Gaza?

To be clear I think the actions of Hamas were criminal.

 

[Planigale]

From the videos I have seen many of the Hamas terrorists appear to be wearing a uniform of sorts. It also appears some of those Israelis killed were armed and were either 'civilian' security, off duty IDF out of uniform, or military reservists out of uniform. Others were armed on duty military in uniforms.

If a Hamas was in a uniform and attacked armed on duty Israeli miltary does that entitle him to be considered a legitimate combatant, and to protection under the Geneva convention?

If Israelis were not in uniform and opened fire on 'uniformed' Hamas should they be regarded as terrorists?

If Hamas gave a warning to people in a bunker to come out within five minutes or they would throw in a grenade does that provide them with the same justification as the IDF saying people have 24 hours to get out of North Gaza?

To be clear I think the actions of Hamas were criminal.