To Palestinians, Gaza is a symbol of resistance. To Israel, Gaza is a template to pummel and isolate that resistance.
On June 19, Israeli combat helicopters fired missiles into the camp, ostensibly as part of an arrest operation that ended up killing five Palestinians, including a 15-year-old girl named Sadeel Naghniyeh.
Then in early July, in the worst attack on the West Bank since 2002, the Israeli armed forces terrorised the inhabitants of Jenin for two days and killed at least 12 people, including children. The massive aerial and ground assault involved helicopter gunships, missiles, drones, armoured vehicles, bulldozers and more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers.
That is what happens, it seems, when Palestinians keep rebuilding – and keep existing. Indeed, Al Jazeera quoted 56-year-old camp resident Ahmed Abu Hweileh on the takeaway from the bloody escapade: “The message to the world and the occupation is that this camp will keep on going. They tried to destroy it and it came back up.”
Israel’s recent comportment in Jenin – and particularly the sudden use of air strikes in the West Bank for the first time in years – has invited comparisons to the Israeli modus operandi in the Gaza Strip, another location that has come to symbolise Palestinian resistance.
I’m all over this specific comment thread which I started, but whatever.
I’ll be honest, I got kinda pissed off cause people kept assuming things about me and not really responding to what I wrote.
Obviously I disagree with your opinion about the dynamic of oppression, I have various views about different parts of this conflict and different periods of it (I think people tend to over focus on Israel and Palestine (and maybe Gaza) as units and disregard the fact that there many different people with many different ideas and ambitions who made their mark along the way).
I live in the region (you can probably guess which “side” I’m on), and I truly do want this conflict to end (and end peacefully, while respecting both groups of people and their history), but obviously that makes me extremely biased in my views.
I’ve also seen a lot of bullshit online about this conflict (from both sides, although honestly more from the Palestinian side) and a lot of biased reporting, and I truly believe this serves to perpetuate the conflict.
You’re an Israeli depending the apartheid state you live in? Imagine my shock.
As for misinformation, the Israeli state has accused Amnesty International - arguably one of the most trustworthy NGOs in the world - of antisemitism because they correctly identify Israel as an apartheid state. That’s blatant misinformation.
And you want to talk about respect for both people while one is a group of settler colonists and the other their victims? Yeah ok.
Fuck off man, I’m done with stupid argument.
I really tried to be respectful, but at this point you’re just arguing in bad faith; you don’t really respond to my comments, I’m guessing you don’t read them all the way through at this point.
You parrot talking points which show me you’ve been fed misinformation and you didn’t question it at all.
You can disagree all you like, I support your right to hold all the wrong beliefs, but I also support my right to tell you to fuck off.
You type a lot of words but actually say very little. So yeah, I completely read all of your comments but it’s not like you actually made any real arguments apart from some appeal to moderation and some vague allusions about bullshit on all sides.