news Israel-Palestine Conflict 2023/ 2024 Mega Thread

[Aethereal]

Both-sides is an acceptable position as long as they need to acknowledge:

1.)  Israel started the conflict by mass displacement of Palestinians.

2.) Palestinians' number of dead victims is astronomically higher than that of Israelis.

3.) Israel has more power to soften this conflict than Palestine does and they have nothing for it. 

4.) The life of the average Israeli is like day and night compared to that of a Gazan.

 

[Ash12345]

 

[Letemtalk]

Devastation in Gaza is approaching World War II bombing levels for German cities.

 

[Harrier]

6 hours ago, Communion said:

Part of this is why it is deeply uncomfortable seeing users like @Harrier and Kassi try and - for some reason - dunk on @welham and their hopelessness over the growing hatred and anti-Arab racism flooding Israel despite them being a literal Arab citizen of Israel?? Seeing people go "you just want all of them dead!" to someone who lives amongst, with and alongside Jewish Israelis just because they feel Israeli nationalism is growing is so??? 

I am asking valid questions about people's motives for attempting to villainise civiliians, and what the potential goals for doing so might be. I understand emotionally why someone might feel hopeless right now - and perhaps that user does not have any particular goals in mind - but hopelessness is a place where some pretty dark politics can emerge. We have to vigilant against any attempt to dehumanise Palestinians, Israelis or anyone else, because that is how radical movements have justified their violence historically and is certainly how Israelis are justifying the genocide in Gaza.

 

You would have absolutely no problem calling out a Westerner member participating in rhetoric that you deem potentially dangerous - and you do constantly. You've called me a Western chauvinist, an unhinged racist etc etc over my critiques of the online left's behavior during this war. You have recently asked users in the threads about Islam in Europe, what do you support then? What parties would you vote for? Essentially the same line of argumentation I've used here. But in this case, you emotionally identity with that user and so you feel uncomfortable with me challenging their rhetoric, even though I manage to do so without being rude to them. And that isn't really an argument.

[FOCK]

Morally depraved vultures. 

[ClashAndBurn]

5 minutes ago, FOCK said:

Morally depraved vultures. 

It's almost like it was never about Hamas to begin with!

[Kassi]

6 hours ago, Communion said:

"The European expulsion of Ashkenazi Jews from their homes justifies the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes by settler Ashkenazi Jews"

 

 

6 hours ago, Communion said:

But when pointed out how this resulted in the formation of a settler colony and the documented plans for mass expulsion of Palestinians living there, it's now:

So what is it? Do Zionists desire to be diasporic migrant communities living within Palestine or the creation of the Jewish ethno-state of Israel (on top of Palestine)?

These things cannot both be true. They are directly at odds. Trying to convince people Zionists really wanted the former does not work with historical record.

 

Let alone... why would people who then make up less than one-third of the population and who owned not even 10% of the land then be justified to take 50% of the land that then also dramatically altered and fragmented key Palestinian agriculture and industry? Why would the 45% of Arabs set to live in the future borders of Israel be fine with the establishment of a state whose developing government leaders were vocally saying must lead to a land where no Arabs are welcome?  

I've already addressed this entire point in parts:

On 12/3/2023 at 1:43 PM, Kassi said:

There were also talks between Ben-Gurion and Musa Alami for an autonomous Jewish “state” around Tel-Aviv as part of a larger Arab Federation (similar to Native American reservations in the US). That also fell apart because, at the end of the day, it was always the demography (read: anti-semitism) that arguably drove the Arabs’ anxiety and angst.

 

The Jewish population doubled in the first half of the 1930s, and the Arabs were perceptive enough to realize that if things continued this way, the Jews would naturally become the majority in Palestine since they had nowhere else to go. 
 

On 12/6/2023 at 2:17 PM, Kassi said:

In "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), Hertzl, the father of political Zionism, outlined his vision for a Jewish state. His writings and advocacy were rooted in the idea of creating a safe haven for Jews, emphasizing self-determination and security rather than conquest or forced displacement.

 

Israel was partially chosen because it had a sizable and relatively tolerated Jewish population. It was assumed it would be peaceful. Jewish immigration to Ottoman/Mandate Palestine was about 75 years in by the time the Holocaust happened.

But I guess you need me to spell it out for you.

 

The core Zionist plan, under threat of extinction, was always to immigrate to Palestine and, over-time, come to constitute the majority naturally. In 1934, Ben-Gurion wrote:

 

The Palestinian Arabs will not be sacrificed so that Zionism might be realized. According to our conception of Zionism, we are neither desirous nor capable of building our future in Palestine at the expense of Arabs. The Zionism of the Jewish people does not strive for the conquest of land, for domination, or for hegemony. Its aim is the realization of the Jewish people's creative potentialities, the revival of its spiritual and cultural values, the enhancement of its social and economic position, and the securing of its national independence in its own land.

 

He then negotiated with the British and Palestinians on this basis in the 10-20 years leading up to the partition.

 

In his own recount in a letter to Charles De Gaulle in 1967:

 

I never had the slightest doubt that millions of Jews could be settled in it on both sides of the Jordan without depriving a single Arab of his land, for less than ten percent of the country was then inhabited. 

 

But this country was not uninhabited [...] Obviously, the Arab residents of Palestine deserved all the rights that any citizen of a democratic country should lay claim to, nor was a Jewish State imaginable in any other form than that of a democracy.  And so I told the first Arab leader with whom I held talks, Auni Abdul Hadi, the head of the Palestinian Arstikla (Independence) Party: “We will help the Arab people to gain their independence and unite in a single Arab federation, if you in turn agree to assist us in establishing a Jewish State in Palestine on both sides of the Jordan, which would then enter into a Semitic (Arab-Jewish) federation as a sovereign state.” After discussing certain fundamental questions, Auni Abdul Hadi asked me: “How many Jews do you propose bringing to Palestine?”  “In the course of twenty years,” I answered (this was in 1934), “we will be able to bring 4 million Jews.” 

 

After protracted negotiations lasting several months, we finally reached an agreement on the basis that I had suggested.  The Mufti, however, insisted that I meet with the Syrian-Palestinian Arab Committee, whose headquarters were in Geneva, next door to the League of Nations.  If the members of the Committee were amenable, he proposed to convoke the kings of the Arab countries – Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iraq (Egypt was not then considered an Arab country) – in order to sign an agreement with the Zionist leadership (the Jewish Agency) that could be presented to the Mandate government.

 

That same year I traveled to Europe in order to meet with the Arab Committee in Geneva. [...]  After I had briefly explained the basis of the agreement, he said to me: “You want a Jewish majority in Palestine, followed by a Jewish state; but the British will never permit you to become a majority – how then can you expect it of us Arabs?”  After further discussion of this point, during which I saw that he was not to be budged, we parted.

 

[...]

 

Meanwhile, as the Second World War drew closer, the British government changed the policies of the Mandate: after a meeting of Arabs and Jews that took place in London in 1939, it issued a white paper whose contents in effect abrogated the Mandate’s commitments by putting an end to Jewish immigration and promising the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within ten years.  But before the ten years were over, six million Jews – Jews who had needed a Jewish State more than anyone else and who had been eager and able to build it – perished at the hands of the Nazis.

 

=====

 

By concentrating exclusively on Ben Gurion's rhetoric in Israel's founding year, you're deliberately choosing to highlight the intense desperation faced by the survivors of the most extensive extermination campaign in the modern recorded history (not to speak of everything that had preceded it up to that point). And, further, using that desperation to frame Jewish asylum seekers as ontologically evil as a justification for their eradication. 

 

Think about that and ask yourself, "Why?". Maybe you don't actually believe that "A Jewish person from Antartica of all places should have the right to live in anywhere in the Middle East". Maybe you are in fact more drawn to militant nativism than you think. 

[Kassi]

TLDR; 

 

Jewish Immigrants were going to outnumber the local population, just by virtue of there being nowhere else to go. 

 

 

And the Arabs freaked out.

 

That's the entire story. 

[FOCK]

Israel is ISIS.

 

 

 

[welham]

 s

[ClashAndBurn]

 

[ClashAndBurn]

People who wear American flag dresses are embarrassing enough but this is on a whole other level.  

[Kassi]

 

 

[Communion]

37 minutes ago, Kassi said:

 

 

Even more evidence why electing Joe Biden was the worst thing a progressive could do, moving not only the White House but even America's most progressive senators to the right:

 

 

gives a pretty compelling case for why Biden must not be re-elected and reformist progressive Democrats realize tying themselves to the centrist institution only made their hands covered in blood too. 

[Aethereal]

12 hours ago, FOCK said:

Israel is ISIS.

 

 

 

Don't believe everything that is posted in Twitter. 

[Communion]

17 hours ago, Harrier said:

I am asking valid questions about people's motives for attempting to villainise civiliians, and what the potential goals for doing so might be. I understand emotionally why someone might feel hopeless right now - and perhaps that user does not have any particular goals in mind - but hopelessness is a place where some pretty dark politics can emerge. We have to vigilant against any attempt to dehumanise Palestinians, Israelis or anyone else, because that is how radical movements have justified their violence historically and is certainly how Israelis are justifying the genocide in Gaza.

 

You would have absolutely no problem calling out a Westerner member participating in rhetoric that you deem potentially dangerous - and you do constantly. You've called me a Western chauvinist, an unhinged racist etc etc over my critiques of the online left's behavior during this war. You have recently asked users in the threads about Islam in Europe, what do you support then? What parties would you vote for? Essentially the same line of argumentation I've used here. But in this case, you emotionally identity with that user and so you feel uncomfortable with me challenging their rhetoric, even though I manage to do so without being rude to them. And that isn't really an argument.

The entire issue is that you see it as a "villainization" *despite* the person you're interrogating being themselves a civilian of Israel too!! Let alone someone institutionally discriminated against within the place they call their home! Tell me what you think happens if an Israeli Arab tried to move to a Jewish settlement in the West Bank? Can a Palestinian citizen of Israel marry a fellow Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza and transfer their citizenship to their partner? Would you accept living in these conditions?

 

You are not operating with any sense of the material conditions of people's realities and how your presumptions differ from this reality.

That is largely my issue with liberals who seem to - at best - get close to doing standpoint theory instead of any material analysis. 

 

Your posts show you know xenophobia, nationalism, white supremacy, etc. to be wrong. I genuinely believe you're outraged and upset to being told your pro-Israel arguments contribute to such. But instead of replying with some retort showing why my claims are materially untrue, you instead resort to empty snarl terms or dismissing the criticisms as anti-Americanism (despite no material argument backing up said claims).

 

I criticize those in the imperial core like fellow Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc. as being complicit in war crimes because the material reality of not disavowing both economic and military aid from our countries to Israel materially constitutes that. It does not matter how much you say you feel bad for Palestinians or how much you claim to support a 2 state solution; those who prop up the baseless idea that Israel has the right to "defend" itself and who are from countries supplying Israel with the very weapons to carry out these mass murder campaigns are complicit with the genocide of Palestinians.

 

My criticisms of European nationals fanning the flames of xenophobia are rooted in how their claims don't line up to the material reality of migrants' lives in Europe vs what far-right nationalists claim.

 

Me telling a user from Poland that his claims that "migrants are over-flooding [his] homeland to destroy [his] people's culture" are patently untrue and part of a greater institutional movement of white supremacy to demonize non-white migrants in Europe *is not the same* as you telling an Israeli Arab user that their lived experiences under the institutional caste system perpetuated by the Israeli government is them then "villainizing" Israeli Jews. 

[Mezik]

3 hours ago, ClashAndBurn said:

People who wear American flag dresses are embarrassing enough but this is on a whole other level.  

This chick is embarrassing. Can she not read the room? How can she be terrified when she is the oppressor?  

[Communion]

"You're demonizing Israelis and are thus becoming an obstacle to peace"

"You're demonizing the only Jewish state in the world - ask yourself why that is"

 

 

[FOCK]

“More specifically, pampers.” 
 

 

 

[Harrier]

5 hours ago, Communion said:

The entire issue is that you see it as a "villainization" *despite* the person you're interrogating being themselves a civilian of Israel too!! Let alone someone institutionally discriminated against within the place they call their home! Tell me what you think happens if an Israeli Arab tried to move to a Jewish settlement in the West Bank? Can a Palestinian citizen of Israel marry a fellow Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza and transfer their citizenship to their partner? Would you accept living in these conditions?

 

You are not operating with any sense of the material conditions of people's realities and how your presumptions differ from this reality.

That is largely my issue with liberals who seem to - at best - get close to doing standpoint theory instead of any material analysis. 

 

Your posts show you know xenophobia, nationalism, white supremacy, etc. to be wrong. I genuinely believe you're outraged and upset to being told your pro-Israel arguments contribute to such. But instead of replying with some retort showing why my claims are materially untrue, you instead resort to empty snarl terms or dismissing the criticisms as anti-Americanism (despite no material argument backing up said claims).

 

I criticize those in the imperial core like fellow Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc. as being complicit in war crimes because the material reality of not disavowing both economic and military aid from our countries to Israel materially constitutes that. It does not matter how much you say you feel bad for Palestinians or how much you claim to support a 2 state solution; those who prop up the baseless idea that Israel has the right to "defend" itself and who are from countries supplying Israel with the very weapons to carry out these mass murder campaigns are complicit with the genocide of Palestinians.

 

My criticisms of European nationals fanning the flames of xenophobia are rooted in how their claims don't line up to the material reality of migrants' lives in Europe vs what far-right nationalists claim.

 

Me telling a user from Poland that his claims that "migrants are over-flooding [his] homeland to destroy [his] people's culture" are patently untrue and part of a greater institutional movement of white supremacy to demonize non-white migrants in Europe *is not the same* as you telling an Israeli Arab user that their lived experiences under the institutional caste system perpetuated by the Israeli government is them then "villainizing" Israeli Jews. 

But the thing is, what that user was posting was not "their lived experience", it was messages in group chats from a tweet. Nevermind the fact that I had no idea the user is an Israeli Arab as I don't use this site socially, their arguments are no different to the arguments being posted by many other, non-Israeli Arab users - would it be somehow less problematic for me to challenge those users with the same line of argument? An argument is an argument, and I wouldn't change what I said regardless of who I was telling to stop villainising an entire group of 7 million people.

 

I don't think anything you said here actually undermines the very clear parellel between my argument and the one you made in the other thread. It is simply the Western\non Western difference, which you attempt to explain away using leftist jargon (material conditions !!!). But to me, this doesn't speak to the entire reality of political movements and is instead a way to explain why some people's bad behaviour is okay, while other's isn't. I think about politics as emotions, identification, culture, momentum - as well as being about materiall conditions. As cliche as it sounds, we are all human, and therefore poor people from the global south are in no way immune to the political impulses we might malign in the global north, to pick one example. This is the fundamental error of the simplistic, black and white narratives of the online left, where every possible situation is analysed through the lens of power and global systems: sometimes, it's just not about that. We're supposed to pick a "side" based on whichever group that analysis deems as oppressed, sometimes completely irregardless of their actions, and should be prepared to ignore what to less ideaological people are straightforward, obvious observations. This is where the majority of our disagreements come from.

[ClashAndBurn]

There’s a reason his supporters have moved on from this failed garbage fire of a politician.

[Mean Trees]

32 minutes ago, ClashAndBurn said:

There’s a reason his supporters have moved on from this failed garbage fire of a politician.

He was over since he announced his 2020 run and completely changed his strategy but ultimately this is who Bernie is. He had to be shouted down by his constituents in 2014 about his stance on Israel-Palestine.

[family.guy123]

8 hours ago, Aristotle said:

Don't believe everything that is posted in Twitter. 

anything***

[Communion]

3 hours ago, Harrier said:

But the thing is, what that user was posting was not "their lived experience", it was messages in group chats from a tweet. Nevermind the fact that I had no idea the user is an Israeli Arab as I don't use this site socially, their arguments are no different to the arguments being posted by many other, non-Israeli Arab users - would it be somehow less problematic for me to challenge those users with the same line of argument? An argument is an argument, and I wouldn't change what I said regardless of who I was telling to stop villainising an entire group of 7 million people.

 

I don't think anything you said here actually undermines the very clear parellel between my argument and the one you made in the other thread. It is simply the Western\non Western difference, which you attempt to explain away using leftist jargon (material conditions !!!). But to me, this doesn't speak to the entire reality of political movements and is instead a way to explain why some people's bad behaviour is okay, while other's isn't. I think about politics as emotions, identification, culture, momentum - as well as being about materiall conditions. As dumb as it sounds, we are all human, and therefore poor people from the global south are in no way immune to the political impulses we might malign in the global north, to pick one example. This is the fundamental error of the simplistic, black and white narratives of the online left, where every possible situation is analysed through the lens of power and global systems: sometimes, it's just not about that. We're supposed to pick a "side" based on whichever group that analysis deems as oppressed, sometimes completely irregardless of their actions, and should be prepared to ignore what to less ideaological people are straightforward, obvious observations. This is where the majority of our disagreements come from.

Again, you keep thinking I am doing identity politics. Having a historical, material understanding of how societies work is not "jargon". 

 

Their reality is important given their posts in this thread detailing their own experiences over the last 2 months of having to censor their own social media and be afraid for their own safety for how Jewish Israeli friends and co-workers were speaking of not just Palestinians in Gaza but Arab citizens of Israel. Let alone my discomfort was with your tone, explicitly mentioning to you where the user you were quoting is from.

 

You've convinced me you don't get *why* white supremacy or nationalism is harmful. You feel hatred is bad and that critical analysis of something denotes a hatred of it, and snicker at this "online left" you've imagined. You've dug your heels into some paternalistic attitude and pigeon-hole everyone critical of *systems* in your mind as "inherently good" as self-hating Westerners or identity fetishists, but you're the only one seeing *identity*.

 

None of my views you've referenced have anything to do with adorning someone for having a "global south identity". Why would I make 99% of my interest in politics on here be about *working class Americans* as a *white working class American* if I thought the way you claim I do? 

 

My criticisms of Europeans scapegoating Muslim migrants comes from the *material* suffering these migrants at large in Europe face, be it from living in poverty, atomization, work place discrimination, police harassment, or ghettoization. None of this is "identity". It is the material conditions we speak of. And how the delusions of white supremacist who claim MIGRANTS pose an existential threat to their lives are directly at odds with material reality. That it is not the Moroccan health aide who lives in poverty next door for why their own lives are collapsing under capitalism but their own elites orchestrating their suffering. The same cannot be said for Palestinians who fear the Israeli desire for their destruction.

 

The person you scolded lives in a system where non-Jews essentially exist as second class citizens - let alone that inequality within Israel being a *step up* from the *APARTHEID SYSTEM* that those on the other side of the border wall must face.

 

We're not talking about "feelings". We're talking about people being denied access to water, shelter, food, and more by a system that rains down constant death. That the Israeli state institutes a blockade to restrict how many calories a Gazan can consume. Why avoid addressing things like Israeli law dictating Arab citizens cannot marry non-citizens? The restriction on movement? This is not "oppression" in the "abstract" like some point system. It is the literal material conditions that those you've scolded as "Islamists" must live within *explicitly* due to the legal framework of Israel.

 

"It's not about who is oppressed" sounds like a way to avoid addressing that the existence of Israel as a nation state causes the subjugation of Palestinians and thus anyone who wants to end the subjugation of Palestinians must commit also to the end of Israel.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Communion

[Ash12345]

Maybe the Burlington shooter was mentally ill after all.

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/news/driven-by-hate-man-charged-in-burlington-shooting-was-a-volunteer-with-a-troubled-personal-life-39673363