If I don’t clickbait the title people don’t click.
With the recent events happening in Gaza, I decided to first tackle this line of argument in my essay Zionism is antisemitism, and Palestine.
People were quick to say “yes Israel is bad, but Hamas…” (kidnapped 200 people, killed 1000, take your pick).
When you’re saying this, you’re actually saying that one israeli is worth 7 Palestinians. Read that again if you need to; it’s an ethnosupremacist position.
What is the logical conclusion of this argument? What is it supposed to achieve except convey empty platitudes and declaring to the world that you just don’t care enough to have any valuable input?
It’s fine not to care. I’m not your dad, I’m not going to try and change you.
But don’t declare it publicly. Don’t proudly say “well actually both sides are bad”. You don’t look smarter or wiser than anyone else who is taking a clear stance. You’re not taking the “middle ground”. Everyone who has taken sides and is trying to be productive about this (and not just the Gaza genocide, but really any situation where you can apply “both sides”) really doesn’t have time for this holier-than-thou bullshit.
Gaza “kidnapped” 200 settlers and that’s a war crime apparently. It’s not really, but whatever. Let’s say it is. Israel has killed 7000+ Palestinians in retaliation, now likely more than 10k as they cut off communications in Gaza last night.
Both sidesers: what’s your solution to this. If you say anything other than “I should not get involved” then you don’t actually believe both sides are bad and you are picking a side. It’s time you realize where you stand.
Because OP is scarecrowing a large group of people.
Killing one innocent Israeli is wrong. Killing one innocent Palestinian is wrong. Killing 7 Palestinians for every 1 Israeli is also wrong. Yet OP claims that if you agree with any one of these then you cannot agree with all of the others.
Maybe some people think like the scarecrow OP is criticising - there’s certainly been a fair few Israelis on TV frothing at the mouth and dehumanising Palestinians - but in reality they are a noisy minority, albeit one that those in power are encouraging to garner their support.
Thanks for writing out your thinking on this explicitly, and for inviting discussion in that way.
Public support in Israel for Israeli military operations is typically very high (70% or more, often even above 80%). The only sense in which those supporting massively disproportionate violence and indiscriminate killing of civilians are a minority is in terms of rhetorical style— not the substance of supporting the actual operations that kill people.
Moreover, many of the Israelis on TV ‘frothing at the mouth’ are current or former government officials. To characterize them as a ‘tiny minority’ is extremely misleading about their role in effecting this violence.
I’d question the nature of that support. I’m sure nearly every Israeli wants the military to step up their game in protecting them, however support for the recent bombings and ground assaults is significantly lower.
Absolutely, I rewrote that last statement a couple of times trying to find a good middle ground, but there are many in Israeli leadership roles behaving that way. It’s hard to say whether they genuinely feel that way themselves or if they’re just encouraging it for their own benefit - Netanyahu is probably the latter, in my opinion, but there have definitely been a few on TV that have clearly drunk the kool aid.
I still think that, over the entire population of Israel, people who think that way are in the minority. Most people in any nation just want peace and prosperity for themselves, rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
A bit optimistic. Do you think they would dismantle their own state over a desire for peace? This existence of the Israeli state is violence, it’s the opposite of peace. If people support that violence, they do not support peace. And if they are settling on Palestinian land, that is an act of war. The arbitrary desires of random people are superfluous.
Various cowardly historians have tirelessly tried to frame other genocides in a similar way, always seeking to excuse the atrocities because the historical figures involved, and the population at large didn’t always express intense desire to commit genocide. But it is superfluous, it’s a red herring, because they routinely hired people with a history of atrocity and reaped the benifits as if they expected them.
Well, a large supermajority of Israelis support continuing the current campaign, which is inarguably characterized by indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza, ‘until Hamas is completely eliminated’. This is a clear statement of support not just for the bombing which has so far taken place, but a claim that it must continue (indefinitely— until reaching a goal that is arguably impossible).
Are you familiar with the concept of strategic depth? Given Israel’s limited size and accessible terrain, its geography profoundly lacks this feature. This means Israel’s defensive capabilities have a virtual ceiling, and the ability to make strategic retreats against an invasion is very limited.
For this reason, Israel has a long history of preferring offensive action over defensive action. And indeed, a large plurality of those polled by IVP, as reported on in the article cited above, have come out and said that Israel’s biggest mistake leading up to October 7 was failing to carry out more offensive operations in Gaza prior to the attack.
Calls for Israel to ‘step up its military game’ are intimately tied to offensive action in Israel, and the pretense that they could conceivably relate only to defensive measures for ‘protection’ or ‘safety’ is unsustainable under any historical scrutiny.
Why such interest in the rhetoric when there is a growing pile of civilian corpses behind it? Who cares what is in Netanyahu’s heart when the evident fact is that his finger is pulling the trigger?
The demand for peace without justice is a demand to normalize violence. Are you familiar with the concept of ‘normalization’ in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, or in the BDS movement? If you aren’t, regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I urge you to take the time to review and at least consider this recent lecture on the concept. Peace is indeed vital for all human beings, but how peace is demanded is equally vital.
And yet Israel, a country in which conscription is mandatory for both sexes, military training typically begins at age 14, a large supermajority of the population serves in the military, and whose military and intelligence agencies are rooted in paramilitaries that antedate the formal state by decades, has been engaged continuously in exactly such a project of forceful expulsion for more than a hundred years, without pause.
If this history is unfamiliar to you, or Palestinian displacement has been presented to you primarily as very recent or unintentional, you may find some deeper engagement with the topic enlightening, if challenging (and you may not agree with all the analysis you read, of course).
There are a large number of books, including books by Jewish Israeli scholars, currently available for free on this topic.
If you’re interested in diving deeper, outside the context of this argument, please let me know. If you have preferences for audiobooks, videos, or other formats, I can help you find something that works for you.
I’m also willing to do a ‘reading exchange’ with you if you’re open to that— I’ll read one related book of your choosing if, after you give me a sense of what texts most interest you, you agree to read one book I recommend, and we can discuss both books together.
I understand that the latter is a big time commitment, so no big deal if you can’t do it.
I think the source of this is Israeli government polling figures, which are even less trustworthy right now.
It’s worthwhile to understand the motive behind pulling the trigger. I don’t think Netanyahu is striking Gaza out of vengeance for 7 October, I think he wanted something like that to happen to give him the excuse to unleash war. We can still only speculate on his true motives, but I believe understanding them is key to stopping it and preventing it in future.
You have made many good points, though, in particular framing things closer to how those living in the region see them, and I thank you for the extra reading/listening material. Suffice it to say, it is a deeply rooted issue with a complicated history, it’s hard to cover every facet of it all. I appreciate the offer for sharing more things to read, but for now I’ll stick with the links you and @Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml provided (still haven’t got all the way through that Hamas statement, but I’m hanging on to the tab).
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Noisy minority?
In a society where the following is normalised:
Calling regular bombing of civilian population in Gaza “mowing the lawn”
Organising large communal picnics atop a hill to watch the “fireworks” of aforementioned bombings for enjoyment
Crowds loudly cheering and celebrating fire breaking out in Palestine mosque
Calling restricting food inflow to Gaza to sustenance level “putting Arabs on diet”
that noisy minority still occupies the land, destroys buildings indicriminately, slaughters everyone left and right, checks every item in the genocide and war crime longlist.
This kind of functional role of ‘bad settlers’ is well-documented in settler-colonialism, and there are even instances of leaders and government officials in the United States case admitting the necessity of ‘unofficial’ settler violence, from paramilitaries to illegal settlements and more.
Can any comrades with more recent contact with this material than I’ve had help me out with a citation on this, ideally ‘from the horse’s mouth’?
Yes this is largely correct after the US was born. It was fairly routine for the US to make a treaty and then for squatters to invade, putting pressure to make another treaty that would cede the land squatters occupy.
Militias were also very important and we’re often funded by state and federal backing. Various settler nightmares of slave revolt and Native resistance could move the frontier rabble to violence quickly. Native groups with season rounds would arrive at a seasonal ground to harvest food and find settlers were squatting. The militia would respond to “native invasion” with violence and the US could play dumb or incompetent.
There were occasions were it would not workout for settlers tho. They would be executed, or otherwise punished, by a Tribe for squatting. Some treaties allowed for this and the US could not legally retaliate. But this isn’t always the way it worked.
In fact, situations like this even lead to civil war among some nations, including the Creek Civil War which happens around the time of the war of 1812 and the death of Tecumseh.
Some factions of Native aristocracy adopted accommodationist approaches toward the US, utilizing chattle enslavement of African captives. Tecumseh came around to many tribes seeking to build a confederation to halt US expansion. Some of his relatives among the Creeks were sympathetic but others viewed the US as a necessary ally. Tecumseh was disappointed and promised to stamp the ground when he arrived back home in Shawnee territory and thus predicted the New Madrid faultline earthquake of 1811 which further radicalized many Creeks called the red stick Creeks. They decided to attack white settlement and killed several settlers, but some were caught and executed by the aristocratic council which sparked a Civil War. Andrew Jackson intervened in the war and won for the US, securing the treaty of fort Jackson which ceded large portions of so called Georgia and Alabama, despite the apparent loyalty of Creek aristocrats.
So the pressure of squatting settlers and their militias worked in numerous ways.
Thanks very much for fleshing out my half-thought and also for complicating the picture a bit. :)
I’m reading though Gerald Horne’s book on US settler colonialism soon, so hopefully that will help me internalize some of these details!
It doesn’t matter what “you” (someone who thinks both Hamas and Israel are wrong) think you’re arguing, as you are arguing something beyond what you think you are.
These claims cannot be aligned like that together. “Everything is wrong” is the coward’s way out. The first two claims are still saying Killing 7 Palestinians for 1 israeli is acceptable. The resistance was wrong to kill or capture settlers. Israel was wrong to bomb Gaza. Still, objectively, 7000 Palestinians have died (maybe even 10k now) and only 900 Israelis died.
What is your solution then if you believe all three of those claims?
Source for death count if someone wants live figures: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker
Your core idea that when a conflict results in a 7-1 death ratio, the side with the least casualties is automatically wrong and the other automatically right, is childish.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. You made a brand new sentence.
You’re the one who’s saying the position that “both sides are wrong” is indefensible because that would mean “Killing 7 Palestinians for 1 israeli is acceptable”. Which then adds up to exposing your underlying assumption that both sides aren’t ‘equally wrong (?)’ because the death count is lopsided.
Straight away you jump to a scarecrow argument again. You do not have the authority to say what I’m thinking, and you’re explicitly wrong with your claims of what that is.
Just because I’m saying everything is wrong does not mean I’m saying it’s all equally wrong. They’re all different measures of wrong.
This is a bullshit way to argue, as you’re trying to put all the onus of finding a solution to a problem that no one has solved in over 100 years onto me - as if you have any kind of viable solution. You’re just moaning, you haven’t offered a single productive insight here. Nonetheless, I like trying to solve problems.
The solution might be to take all their toys away, separate the two peoples and put them in time out for a few generations. However, that doesn’t allow war mongers to make war and profits. This is, in my opinion, the root cause of ongoing conflict - people stirring up other people to fight, so that they can be sold weapons.
I explicitly said at several points that “you” meant someone who thinks both Hamas and Israel are wrong. I didn’t say that’s what you believed.
If you were doing the devil’s advocate, then ask yourself why it was important for there to be one.
This is inaccurate. This “problem” explicitly started in 1948 when Palestine was partitioned. Why did this happen? I think the Haavara Agreement between Zionist Jews and Nazi Germany in 1933 had a decent amount to do with it.
You do know what we propose though, and it’s a one-state solution. I personally don’t go as far as to say Jewish people shouldn’t be able to live there, but this Zionism thing where Jewish people have the sole right to live there and nobody else has to go.
As I understand it the Zionist movement and initial wave of Jews started around 1880, however back then it was more like normal legitimate immigration. (Edit: Actually, it seems Jewish migration can be traced back as far as ~1500). Then, after WW1 the Ottoman empire was disbanded, Britain established a path for Jewish people to more easily gain citizenship and also divided the country up in 1917. 1933 and 1947 were further steps in that direction. The war in 1948 led to what we have now.
I agree with a one state solution. However, I feel like the only way to make that happen is to literally remove almost everyone from the region and have an external government established that represents all sides neutrally. This would essentially require disbanding the Israeli government, which is all but impossible - there is no existing pathway to do it under international law. Basically, the region should be managed like Jerusalem is supposed to be managed, by a neutral entity that represents each religion and group of people that has a stake in the area.
Well, there’s always the wartime way. It’s pretty well established a government can be toppled by violence. The U.S. are experts in doing this.
In practice, Palestine succeeding in a military takeover of Israel is the most realistic good outcome.
In some sense, yes, but only if you ignore the fact that Palestinian armed forces explicitly want to kill all Israelis in their path. This was the goal in 1948, it was the goal 50 years ago in 1973 in the last Yom Kippur war, and it’s the same goal today. I don’t see that as better or worse than what we have now, it’s still one side set on killing everyone they oppose to achieve their goal. It wouldn’t be a true one-state solution, but genocide in the other direction.
For balance, I would say that Israeli forces also want to kill all Palestinians. The difference is they don’t openly say it - they’re more deceptive, which is a different kind of wrong. That, and assassinating impartial journalists or sinking allied ships, makes the Israeli side very guilty in their own right.
The good solution should be no genocide in either direction. Any solution that involves genocide is inherently wrong.
Sources?
I’ve provided mine elsewhere in this thread — Hamas has explicitly stated their target is not civilians, but the Zionist state.
Israel also state they’re not targeting civilians. Your sources before were official statements, just like Israel’s, as well as a survivor eye witness account that said the people they met were nice and reasonable. There are other witness accounts that weren’t so friendly.
Frankly, I’m reluctant to go digging for sources, because then it becomes a game of you discrediting whatever I present and me trying to find something else, without having a productive discussion. Forums are for discussions, links and citations are ancillary. Let’s discuss.
Hamas have not exclusively targeted military targets. Neither have Israel, but I’m trying to point out that flipping the coin doesn’t really make things any better. You, yourself, said that you “don’t think that a one-state solution should involve expelling all the Jews”, but that implies that there are people who do, and many of those people will kill any Israeli that doesn’t leave before they meet them. Many Israelis would do the same.
Both are generally in the wrong. It is perhaps less likely for a Palestinian to be in the wrong, because they’re the underdog defending, but just because you’re defending doesn’t mean nothing you do is wrong.
The wider issue is that no one is enforcing what is right and wrong. Israel is allowed to get away with atrocities, and Hamas is encouraged to comit atrocities of their own. None of this serves the general population living in the region, it only serves warmongers who don’t have to deal with the fallout.
Edit: lol, first you make your comment, then a little later my comment gets downvoted, then a little later your comment gets upvoted. It’s pretty clear that the two votes weren’t the same 3rd party account, even if it might be intended to be presented as such.
Edit2: Do you really think more votes on a comment thread completely buried in a sea of other comments, where the latest comment can only be found after digging through the rest, yet with no other comments or interactions in the thread, would be seen as legitimate? Come on.
How about the other way around? ie, Israel reaching their end goal of pushing out all resisting Palestinians?
I said “good outcome”
The main historic takeaway for me is that through the fall of the Ottoman empire and the period under the British mandate, everyone knew a vacuum would be created in '48, with substantial Arab and Jewish populations ready to seize it.
The UN tried the ‘clean’ solution of two states.
But both the nationalist Arabs as zionist Jews were ready to grab the entire territory for themselves, bullying the other side out or killing them if that was necessary.
If the zionists had lost that initial war, or any of the subsequent ones, we’d have seen the same but with the surpressor and oppressed reversed…
Zionists have no legitimate claim on Palestine. That was the reason for the wars. They were an occupier from day 1.
Zionists are funny, they have to twist reality every which way to get a flimsy, just barely coherent argument out.
“What would have happened to Zionists in Palestine if Israel had lost the war??” idk those who lived there before 1945 would have stayed and those that emigrated would have gone back home? Doesn’t seem as complicated as you make it seem.
Then do you think the Arab nationalists had a legitimate claim on Palestine? Why?
The difference between those two factions vying for land is the the Arabs already lived there, while the Zionists were trying to conquer it after leaving Europe.
And what about the zionists that already lived there? They don’t count?
Thank you for responding. I hope you don’t mind if we explain ourselves further.
Was it wrong for the slaves to fight back against their oppressors in the Haitian Revolution?
Is it wrong for the Palestinians to defend themselves against this onslaught, just as Jews commemorate their own self-defense every year on Purim?
Esther 3:13:
Esther 8:11:
There has to be a clear distinction between defending against oppression and indiscriminately attacking. Israel claims it is defending itself while it bombs Gaza - this is a ridiculous claim, they are clearly in an attacking posture, launching attacks into foreign territory while indiscriminately hitting civilians. Similarly, it is not right to claim that Hamas’ attack on 7 Oct was them defending themselves or fighting back against their oppressors as they mowed down civilians in the villages they lived in.
Nobody is saying Hamas (it was the whole resistance in Gaza but whatever I’m used to people reducing Gaza to Hamas) was “defending themselves”. “They have the right to defend themselves” is only ever said for “Israel”, because they don’t actually have the right to “defend themselves”. They’re allowed to defend against operations or individual attacks yes, but not retaliate or escalate these operations. Shooting back at the resistance attacking barracks = allowed, bombing Gaza or invading Gaza or taking resistance families hostage to stop the attack = not allowed.
Meanwhile Palestinians are allowed to liberate their country (or fight back against the oppressors as you said) including with violence.
This is recognized by UN Occupation Law.
Furthermore you claim Hamas “mowed down” civilians in the villages they lived in. But according to Occupation Law, the occupier (Israel) is not allowed to bring their population into the territory they occupy (Palestine). But they did. And so they place them in harm’s way.
Again this is recognized by Occupation Law. Attacking civilians in Germany when you’re the resistance in France = not allowed. Killing an accountant in Lyon working for the Nazis because he’s sending people to the camps = allowed.
All “civilians” in occupied Palestine are settlers, they are there illegally. Moreover, they all serve in the IOF at age 18, which makes them soldiers.
There is precedent for this, this is the whole basis of Occupation Law.
Not only that but Israel admitted that only 900 died on their side and 80% were military. Not only that, but survivors of Oct. 7 said that the IOF started shooting at them.
Please bring serious arguments. My central thesis remains strong.
Your argument falls apart because, while you’re using UN law to justify your position, the UN does not recognise the entire region of Palestine as occupied Palestinian territory.
I mean we can argue this from a position of personal morals if you prefer.
I don’t think settler lives matter. They knew what they were getting into and their “passport” gives them visa-free access to dozens of other countries in the world.
Let’s start from here.
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They get visa-free travel to most of Europe and America (both North and South), starting at a minimum of 90 days. From there it’s easier to find a job and once you do, you get covered like all expatriates.
Whether they are legally allowed to get a job will depend on the country but it’s probably not super difficult if you get 90 days visa free for tourism already.
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What about the lives of the children of settlers? People who were born into the situation and have no real say against it? Even if they speak out and vote against it, their voice is often drowned out. There have been several generations of Israelis now, they shouldn’t all be put to death over the actions of people before them.
I think taking the position that “xxx lives don’t matter” is deplorable, regardless of the target. The only morally right position is to weigh up the harm that a specific person may cause, if they will continue to cause excessive harm and have no possibility of rehabilitation then death may be objectively appropriate. Killing someone who is trying to kill someone else is appropriate, killing civilians and journalists is not.
You can literally convert to Judaism right now, move to Israel, get citizenship, and then go into any house in the West Bank and say “this is mine now”. And if the Palestinian family living there objects, you can call the IOF on them and they will arrest or shoot them. It’s your free house now. You used to be able to do this in Gaza too before Hamas drove out the occupation.
Then the IOF will patrol “your” neighbourhood and close off the street to your front door because it’s dangerous for you, obviously, if Palestinians are allowed to interact with you. Palestinians will not be allowed to use this street anymore and if their front door opens on it, it will be bolted and it’s up to them to find another way out of their house.
This is how “Israel” is built, there’s no saving it with voting for the “right people” or singling out the “one harmful person”. They’re all complicit, all “Israelis” benefit from this system on virtue of living in occupied territory.
Haha what a cop-out after your initial legal essay
You’re just parotting Arab nationalists claiming the entire territory belongs to the Arabs/muslims
The other person was trying to bait me into renouncing UN Law.
I don’t renounce UN law. I didn’t even sign it. I have nothing to renounce. I don’t represent a country, I don’t represent a government institution, I do not decide whether my country is a member of the UN or not.
But Israel is a member of the UN and as such recognizes UN law.
So take it up with them if you have a problem, not me.
Where did I say this? You have 4 hours to provide evidence before you get banned and your comments purged.
Yes, I can be an asshole too. But at least I don’t pretend I’m not one.
Your move.
The deadline’s over now. For the others watching, they’re equating Judaism = Zionism and read comments like this one:
This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an asshole, it just shows you’re a weak debater who’s tripping on her/his mod powers
Settlers are not civilians. They’re actively taking part in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by occupying stolen land. They do this willingly. And shame on them for involving their children in this.
Shame on them for having children? Shame on them for being born into a country that their parents/grandparents/great grandparents settled into?
Israelis have literally made the same argument in defence of killing Palestinian children. If one side is right in its argument, then so must the other - but they can’t both be right, so both statements can only be wrong.
I think they meant shame on them for knowingly living there with children when they know they would have to go into mandatory IDF service there
That and just bringing children into what is essentially an active conflict zone.
That’s a reasonable position. The IDF is something of a kool aid factory.
How many people are living in North-, Central- and South America? Do you know any (children) there? Do you believe they should all be killed? Where should they move to?
You’ve been banned and your comments are in the process of being purged by the admins, so I’ll try to be quick.
Nobody here is advocating for the death of all people in Israel, the US. That’s not what we mean when we say things like “Death to America”. We’re talking about the state.
Hamas and eyewitnesses say they were careful to avoid civilians, and what do you mean “in the villages they lived in”?
Source? There’s been plenty of evidence to the contrary, including videos directly from the attackers. Hell, they shot up a music festival.
I mean to navigate around the traps you’re so keen to land me in.
Hamas: https://twitter.com/Aldanmarki/status/1712738101108384185
Eyewitness: https://t.me/mangopress/15970
I’m just asking you to defend your claim…
That’s good to see. I’m still not convinced that the entire force that invaded were so restrained, and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I think any claim that they were all devout Muslims who wouldn’t hurt women and children is just as flawed as the claim that they were all inhuman monsters.
Your eyewitness video itself confirms that people lived there. I was careful not to call it “their” village, but as far as I’m aware the Kibbutzes were newly created settlements on previously uninhabitable land, in contrast to the West Bank where Israelis took over Palestinian homes after making them refugees.
Would you mind providing it since I provided mine?
I really don’t want to go digging through videos of killing, sorry. However I think most anything involving the music festival would show indiscriminate killing.