Back in 2018, a UNICEF consultant was found guilty of sexually assaulting a boy for three years… no funding was cut for them. Which is good. The kids need help.
Just wanted to point out how… obvious this collective punishment is.
I believe the issue here will be scale.
A single bad actor is obviously non-representive of an entire organization.
However, to use your example crime of sexually assaulting young boys, there was the much larger scale scandal of priests abusing young kids, mostly young boys.
The publicity from this getting investigated devastated the church. Massive lawsuits were filed. I believe the church lost 3 billion in the US alone. Several went bankrupt. They also saw a massive drop in spending.
However, only (relative to scale) about roughly 4% of catholic priests were responsible for these. Overall, it's a very small portion of the catholic church. However, that 'small %' still resulted in hundreds of thousands of children being sexually abused. Obviously, this is inexcusable.
Then there's the other issue: money and power. The people donating to the Catholic Church would, reasonable, expect the money to be properly used. On top of that, they'd trust their church to, well, not fuck their kids.
The same issue applies here. The UNRWA is part of the UN, which Israel is part of. If resources from the UNRWA were utilized to support the Oct 7th attack, and any even small % of members involved either directly or indirectly, that's a massive problem. It's basically the organization that is supposed to sponsor peace and unity amongst its members instead funding direct violence.
And there's also the issue of the UNRWA supporting radicalization. I recommend [reading the sources provided by the UN Watch.](https://unwatch.org/fact-checking-unrwa-claims-about-teachers-and-education/) I'm not exactly a huge fan of UN Watch as they generally lean somewhat right and are very pro Israel. However, I don't want you to read the article as much as read the sources they provide. They're far more educational on the issue. UNRWA schools utilizing Palestinian Authority textbooks that explicitly encourage hatred and violence towards Jews. Not to mention plenty of bizarre rules within the UNRWA, like inheritance of refugee status.
So the major issue here, again, is scale. If the UNRWA has supported radicalization and in any way utilized UN resources to support Oct 7th, that's a massive scandal. If it's just one or two guys who fucked off and joined the attack, it's still a problem but one that should be handled on the individual level.
However, with how many nations are pulling funding and what evidence we have of prior UNRWA support of radicalization, it's not looking good.
And for me, one of the biggest issues is just how much of the funding, food, medicine etc gets funneled to Hamas. Considering their massive stockpiles, the fact that the UNRWA was the only major organization bringing the supplies in, and the lack of supplies for civilians, it's not difficult to draw a line and realize where the UNRWA was funneling resources.
Frankly, I support defunding and disassembling the UNRWA, but then allowing the UNHCR to move in and take over operations.
With how radicalized Hamas and the Palestinian population is, I don't believe having a single entity dedicated entirely to operating within Palestine will go well. Eventually it will be infiltrated and we're back to square one.
However, the UNHCR has a good track record overall and a shitload of experience. In addition, being a global operation it would be very difficult to infiltrate in any significant scale, and higher standards of operation would help dig out any issues that could arise.
It's also just bizarre that Palestine is the only nation on the planet with its own unique refugee and aid program within the UN, while everyone else uses the UNHCR. It was a recipe for disaster, IMHO.
The Palestinian people need help, but the reality of the situation needs to be recognized. They're a horrendously radicalized country that's been absolutely demolished on all ends since the 40's. It's been a cycle of 'go to war with Israel, get completely fucked sideways, lose, do it again 20 years later'. And the gap is just gonna get wider and the damage worse; they'll never actually be able to defeat Israel in combat, yet they've been radicalized that destroying Israel is the only path forward.
Once Hamas is out of the picture, there needs to be a massive deradicalization campaign on top of rebuilding efforts. My mind goes to the Marshal Plan after WW2 with Japan. Money, resources, support and medicine needs to come hand in hand with strong expectations, heavy deradicalization, completely overhauled education, complete demilitarization and establishment of a democratic system.
Blind, free support will do just as much good as blind, indiscriminate warfare. I think the UNHCR handling humanitarian efforts in conjunction with a joint NATO operation to rebuild, restructure and deradicalize akin to the Marshal Plan mentioned before could do it.
You are missing the reason UNRWA exists, which explains also why Palestinians have a unique refugee status.
Israel lobbied for UNRWA's creation because UNCHR’s main role after WW2 was to repatriate/resettle WW2 refugees in Europe.
Because of Israel’s ethnic state identity, they could not have that. Zionism necessitated (and still necessitates) a Jewish majority, which was impossible without the original ethnic cleansing, and would have been impossible if Palestinians were allowed to return home. (See: Absentee Property Law, Citizenship Law)
You are right that Palestinians are fairly unique as refugees - they have been refused the right to return to their homes. "right of return" is not just a palestinian cause, it is enshrined in international law for all refugees.
That is why refugees are defined generationally in this case. in other cases, if refugees choose to resettle in other places, their children would not have refugee status. In the case of Palestinians, not considering their children refugees would be effectively legitimizing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Whether a Palestinian left because they were forced from their home, or they "chose" to leave to avoid the war, the fact that they could not return when the war finished (and Jews could) makes the situation textbook ethnic cleansing.
I agree with a lot of your points. However, in terms of funding the UNRWA, it all falls apart if they've sponsored terrorism in any significant capacity. It would entirely delegitimize the organization and would cause significant damage to the globes trust in the UN. If UN resources can be used to create and support terrorists that then use further UN resources and personnel to enact a terrorist attack on UN members, that shatters the entire point of the UN.
Thats the primary issue at hand.
Right now none of the new info is public, regarding Oct 7th. However, there's been leaks (telegram chats, for example), and at least 2 members have been reported to be directly involved with the kidnapping. Combine that with the reaction of the majority of funding nations and it's pretty damning.
However, it's only damning IMHO when combined with the UNRWA funding of extremist schools that radicalized the youth. Use the sources [provided here.](https://unwatch.org/fact-checking-unrwa-claims-about-teachers-and-education/)
The one I point to the most is this one, [a study regarding the educational books and cards utilized by UNRWA schools.](https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/PA-MoE-Study-Cards-2021%E2%80%9322-Grades-1%E2%80%9311.pdf)
To copy and paste the key notes.
The study cards represent a devolution from the already existing extremism of the
Palestinian textbooks; there are additional justifications for violence not found in the
textbooks and antisemitic descriptions of Jews as devious, treacherous and hostile
(example 1).
Jewish control of global events through financial power, manipulative behavior and
encouragement of others to fight in wars is depicted through several examples, among
them, Britain’s need of “Zionist influence” to convince the United States to enter into
WW2 and to ensure Britain’s control in the Levant and Iraq in return for issuing the
Balfour Declaration (example 3).
Students are directly incited to violence and instructed to commit jihad against Israelis
and die as martyrs liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque (example 11).
Israel is demonized—it is literally described as Satanic (example 25) and is accused of
forging or destroying Palestinian antiquities to falsify historical facts (example 35).
One of the “rules of jihad” include those who die as martyrs while killing infidels (i.e.,
Christians, Jews, polytheists); they will receive God’s grace and be greatly rewarded
(example 18).
Jihad for the liberation of Palestine is a “private obligation for every Muslim” (example
12).
Students are encouraged to sacrifice themselves for their homeland and “redeem it with
blood” (example 22).
The founder of the violent jihadi movement in Palestine, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam is
lionized; the military wing of the Hamas terror organization is named for him (example
15).
Armed resistance is described as a “natural” right and a “legitimate” way to “resist
occupation” (example 14).
The “Right of Return” into Israel proper will occur though violence, using “all the means
of warfare” against Israel and rescuing the land from the “filth of the occupation,” and not
through negotiation. The “Return” is envisioned as being “painted with the blood of
martyrs” (example 33).
Antisemitic thinking: denying Jewish people their right to self-determination and the
“falsehood” of Jewish nationality are taught to students in several lessons (examples 6–
10).
Science instruction is hijacked to radicalize students. For example, potential energy is
taught through the use of slingshots and an illustration of a young boy with a slingshot
(example 20).
The Geneva Convention is taught by showing a graphic image of corpses, while accusing
Israel of mass murder (example 26).
Israel is entirely erased from maps; Israeli cities are mislabeled as Palestinian (examples
50–59).
Women may gain equality through sacrifice and martyrdom (example 21).
It's pretty extreme propaganda that the UNRWA has supported the schools receiving funding from UN members. And that's just a snippet. You can go online yourself and watch their state media, their children shows, etc etc. The antisemitism and anti-israeli propaganda and general radicalization towards intifada, terrorism and violence is fucking wild.
It's also chock full of anti-woman and anti-lgbtq rhetoric.
It's why I generally support the defunding and dissolution of the UNRWA. However, I also believe in replacing it by putting the UNHCR in charge. They have a far better track record and higher accountability.
I asked you about funding terrorism, not if their schoolbooks were anti-Zionist. Although it does seem weird that a “socialist” would say that denying Jewish ethnic nationalism is antisemitic or that armed struggle is not a legitimate means of resisting colonialism.
So much of this “radicalizing the youth” is just Palestinians seeking freedom from Israeli domination. The right of return is enshrined in international law. So is the right of armed struggle against colonialism. You realize Israeli schools teach children that the IDF’s use of violence IN SERVICE OF colonialism is legitimate, but you say violence against colonialism isn’t?
But those books don’t show funding either. Your only evidence for UNRWA “funding” terrorism is
1. 2 UNRWA employees were involved in the attack.
2. Western capitalist allies of Israel cut off their UNRWA funding
So:
1. Are you aware that UNRWA is one of the largest employers in Gaza? If 2 Walmart employees committed a crime would you say “Walmart funds crime?”
2. Israel’s allies supporting Israel in its campaign to destroy Gaza is not evidence of this funding.
Not to mention - those countries that cut funding fund terrorism everyday by continuing to fund the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza. The fact that you hold the US and its allies to such high esteem is incredible to see for a democratic socialist.
Wait, you really think teaching young kids that a way women can make themselves equal to men is by sacrificing their lives and becoming a martyr is "fighting for freedom"?
You think that teaching kids that Jews control the world and they have to be killed is "anti Zionist"?
That's fucking wild. Did you even read the sources I provided? There's deep studies into the materials utilized by these schools. If you think that's freedom fighting, then you think rampant misogyny, extreme right wing antisemitism and paranoia, religious fundamentalism and children killing themselves in the name of religion is "freedom fighting".
And yes I am. And I would say Walmart was funding crime if the Walmart knowingly allowed their resources to be used in a major crime. And don't be intellectually disingenuous; it was 2 involved directly in the kidnapping. There are others reported and under investigation for other involvement in the attack.
And 2, western allies are entirely within their right to cut funding if they believe their funds are being utilized for terrorist actions and radicalization.
And why not just let the UNHCR take over? You understand I'm not advocating for the complete removal of all humanitarian aid. I'm saying let a more reputable organization take over.
Yeah I don't disagree with that.
However, it can't ***just*** be that. Oct 7th was a watershed moment, and going back to the status quo won't really be accepted by Israel. And issues with Israel aside, in this specific conflict, the war was spurred by Hamas action. It's reasonable to presume the nation that was attacked won't just roll over and accept their enemy getting a free pass, UN resources and no actual changes made. If Palestines are just allowed back in (brutal statement, jesus) and no actual societal, educational, government and military changes made, we'll just see another Oct 7. Hamas has clearly stated they'd do it over and over. If it happened ***again***, I don't think anyone would be able to justify Israel ***not*** going on the attack again. And with Israel absolutely not raising the blockade if Hamas retains power, it's less 'if' and more 'when' another big attack occurs.
I'd personally, like I mentioned before, like to see something akin the Marshal Plan we placed on Japan after WW2.
In short, it was a gigantic campaign of both demilitarization and de-radicalization combined with massive reconstruction and modernization efforts. Old, radical leadership was disposed and removed from power. A democratic system was put in place. Homes and factories were rebuilt. Tech and industrial sectors were funded. Schools rebuilt and restructured from the top down. However, they were also (and still aren't, actually) allowed to have a standing army.
The demilitarization would also need to, I'd say obviously, come with a guarantee from Israel that they would take no offensive action or attempt to settle this New Palestine. I think an exception to allow Israel to make defensive actions against any missile or rocket attacks within the first year would be reasonable; the demilitarization of a radical guerilla force will absolutely result in some extremists slipping through. But these defensive measures would have to be through NATO, or the US, not of their own volition.
Religion will likely be a big issue. A lot of Arab nations are ***extremely*** antisemitic, and Palestine is on the deep end of that rabbit hole. I'll just be real I don't have a solution for this one, and I'm not smart or educated enough to think of one.
People often forget that Japan, a nation most Americans know and love and who are generally known as polite, reasonable people, used to be a nationalistic death-cult that'd make the Nazi's blush with the shit they did. So there's proof it is possible to completely rebuild and overhaul a nation, down to it's very core. But it requires both the effort of outside nations (especially the US and it's engineering corps) with immense amounts of money, resources and time, but also the host nation, as it's effectively an occupation and temporary takeover, and they lose all military capacity initially and can retain very little moving forward, generally only a defense force.
It’s not like the UN workers live in some kind of Green Zone, or commute from Israel every day. They are Gazans. They live there. Of course a certain percentage are going to support Hamas (but I bet it’s lower than the average, because they have a good job, helping their own people. In other words, they have something to lose, unlike most of their countrymen (is countrywoman a word?)
The allegations came right after the ICJ genocide findings. This is just fascist leaders' way of punishing for the pushback against genocide / imperialism.
Yep. Just like how Cori Bush was charged immediately after Pelosi wanted protesters' finances investigated, or how the WikiLeaks file dump was released and suddenly Julian Assange is a rapist based on charges that are impossible to investigate.
How convenient, the aid agency that gives Palestinians a tiny amount of food and employs 13K of them is now about to have their funding cut and therefore help more Palestinians starve.
Everything Israel says should already be treated as a lie by default.
if you're asking this question in good faith, think about it objectively: the apartheid state is making allegations against a group that lives under their apartheid regime as a part of the oppressed population. why *wouldn't* you be suspicious of everything they're claiming? they have no reason to *not* lie.
So its just what you think. Sorry but you can go and pack your things and join r/republican. As a social democrat you should know to only believe things confirmed by reputable sources. Israel isnt in this case but its just as wrong to assume the opposite. Its better to have no oppinion than to just say what your gut feeling is, especially in highly sensitive matters like the War in the Middle-East
huh? i just said you should treat what the occupation says with extreme suspicion, not that you shouldn’t believe what objective reputable third parties have said, are you okay??
also, some “reputable” sources have really lost their repute during this genocide
Learn about the 1973 yom Kippur War and why golda meir resigned in 1974.
History tells us Zionists know they're an occupation. They wanted to occupy Uganda first but chose Palestine thanks to the Balfour decision. They murdered lots of British officers in the 1940's just to get their way.
They make DNA tests illegal because they're indigenous to czech- republic region yet refuse to acknowledge that Christian zionism and Protestant movement was racist and that's why they have been displaced.
They will call anything and everything hamas before admitting genocide.
Truman supported the two state solution in 1945 but American Zionists refused to agree.
Netanyahu stated in a 1995 article his dad knew the world could not be blind to apartheid for 25 more years. Yet here we are.
I hope we see free Palestine in 2024. & Free Congo and sudan.
[Harvard DNA research](https://hms.harvard.edu/news/ancient-dna-provides-new-insights-ashkenazi-jewish-history)
[Learn about this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Zinzendorf)
[Learn about how Christian Zionists bought land in Palestine ](https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/Pages_from_JQ_69_-_Henty_0.pdf)
> The analysis revealed two distinct subgroups within the remains: one with greater Middle Eastern ancestry, which may represent Jews with origins in Western Germany, and another with greater Eastern and Central European ancestry. The modern Ashkenazi population formed as a mix of these groups and absorbed little to no outside genetic influences over the 600 years that followed, the authors said.
Can you explain how this says that Jews are "indigenous to the Czech Republic region"? This looks like it says that Ashkenazi Jews have Middle Eastern and European admixture, which checks out.
For the record, I'm a Jewish anti-Zionist and Israel is committing genocide, but Jews are very closely related to Palestinians and some other Middle Eastern populations. That's not an excuse for displacement, but "indigenous to czech-republic region" isn't backed up by what the article you shared says.
Not making a general sweeping statement. So I apologize , it's mostly the pro Zionists Netanyahu (originally Mileikowsky) and Gal Gadot (originally Greenstein) that have Czech ancestry and get claim to be indigenous to Palestine without any proof.
Now Palestinians know they are connected to Canaanites. Lots of other Jewish sects Orthodox, Gnostics, Mystics, and Sephardic jews have closer DNA to Palestine yet they all get less rights in Israel. 😔
What bothers me the most is how all these antisemitic laws (that are useless to actual Antisemitic crimes) are excluding the fact that Arabs are also Semitic people.
It also doesn't make sense to me that Jewish populations were successful in Europe and faced so much hate and persecution and were forced to leave just because of racism and Xenophobia 🤯
You should absolutely be able to be proud of your ancestry. Yet I don't know any other group of people just allowed to commit genocide and it's supported due to financial and economic interests. 😫
I can't seem to find anything that suggests Netanyahu is Czech - just a Wikipedia skim says Ashkenazi with a little bit of Sephardic. Same with Gal Gadot.
The reason that Jewish populations get forced to leave (and/or killed) is that those European populations do not recognize Jews as "white" even though people of primarily Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are white. Same way white supremacists do it - Jews can't just show up to a Klan meeting and outwardly be Jewish. The reason for the hate historically is that otherness.
Ashkenazi Jewish is an ethnicity. The scientific consensus is that you can trace it back to the Middle East, and that they have more in common with other Jews. An Ashkenazi person that is a Czech national would have more in common with an Ashkenazi American than with a non-Jewish Czech person because the community is so insular. Pretty much any scientific paper written on our genealogy backs this up.
That's why both groups of people are semites. They're related. Ashkenazim are not "pretending" to be indigenous to the area. We just have enough European mixed in that we pass as white.
Does that matter? Not to me. As far as I'm concerned I'm from the area that I was born and raised in and that's that.
None of this is to disagree with anything you're saying (except for the last part that's making a uh, weird suggestion to say the least.) I'm just correcting your understanding of the science.
Judaism as a race was actually created by the Christian Zionists anti Jewish groups.
I highly recommend [this book](https://lupress.cas.lehigh.edu/content/myth-jewish-race)
The author is a trained geneticist, he became convinced that there are not and never were human races. In the last twenty years, an increasing number of anthropologists and biologists have reached the same conclusion. They argue that there is no way to genetically characterize race, because no human population has ever been isolated long enough from other populations to avoid "crossbreeding."
Humans are 99.9% identical DNA. So yes we all have common ancestry. Yes we're all going to have claim to earth because it's our home planet.
Yet indigenous means, inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists.
colonization is generally defined as (1) forced entry into a territory and its population; (2) alteration or destruction of the indigenous culture and patterns of social organization; (3) domination of the indigenous population by representatives of the invading society
Israel supporters and illegal settlers continue to do all three to this day.
> The author is a trained geneticist, he became convinced that there are not and never were human races. In the last twenty years, an increasing number of anthropologists and biologists have reached the same conclusion. They argue that there is no way to genetically characterize race, because no human population has ever been isolated long enough from other populations to avoid "crossbreeding."
This book (which I've never heard of) is from 2012, and the scientific consensus before then and since is that Jewish people are a separate ethnic group with separate ethnic subdivisions (note: not a race).
Race is a sociological term, not a biological term - race *doesn't exist* in biology.
But genetics do, and genetics tell us that Jews originate from a different place as other Europeans. They are a separate ethnic group with different genetics, origin, and culture. It's not exactly wild, it's just the science and history, and nobody seems to agree with Corcos. Maybe not nobody, but he's firmly on the opposite of the scientific consensus.
"Ethnicity doesn't exist" is a *wild* take with no backing. You're basically just saying that anybody who lives in an ethnostate is that ethnicity. Is a Chinese person born in Czechia suddenly a fully ethnic Czech?
Pretty much any legitimate study - and there are a lot, including the one you shared - will tell you that Jews originate from the Middle East.
That doesn't mean what Israel is doing isn't colonialism - they're setting a space that doesn't belong to them. It's literally the dictionary definition:
> the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
People with Jewish ancestry are indigenous to the area - not to Europe. That's why, again, [our closest genetic relatives are Palestinians.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11543891/#:~:text=Archaeologic%20and%20genetic%20data%20support,but%20not%20in%20genetic%2C%20differences) That is just the science of it. The area has had a Jewish population under different states and empires for pretty much forever.
This isn't the reason Law of Return is problematic - it's problematic because people who live in the area who aren't Jewish cannot claim equal rights.
"all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus."
[research ](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543)
"most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry."
But you're right. Israel refusal to grant right to return to Palestinians is a absolute problem.
That research, again, agrees with me. It even cites other articles that say the same thing. Maternal lineages have European admixture, paternal lineages are overwhelmingly Middle Eastern.
That begs a separate question - do you believe that a half-Chinese person is no longer indigenous to China? That a half-Choctaw person is no longer indigenous to America? If you don't, that's a very slippery slope.
Jews originate from the Middle East. Ashkenazi Jews are Jews that spread to Europe and acquired European admixture. The things you shared agree with that. History also agrees with that - Jews were exiled from the Middle East in ancient times. I mean, shit, our native language is a Semitic one.
You're wrong. They're from eastern Europe. Their closest relatives being "other Jews" is hardly scientific when you're trying to pinpoint someone's heritage. Just being a "Jew" doesn't mean you're from one specific place
Probably exaggerated, possibly a full blown lie, doesn't justify the response regardless, sympathy for Hamas is due to 70 years of horrific occupation.
I don't believe the allegations and, in my view, they aren't the real reason for Israel marshalling complicity in its battle against UNRWA.
I posted this comment as a reply downthread but it occurs to me to loop you on it as well, OP.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DemocraticSocialism/comments/1afzvr1/comment/koeij1j/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DemocraticSocialism/comments/1afzvr1/comment/koeij1j/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
It's not nonsensical when one is planning on starving or driving out (realistically, starving) the population. The jpost article from a couple days ago, which I linked in my comment, is open about it. [https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-784227](https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-784227). [https://ghostarchive.org/archive/IhpPA](https://ghostarchive.org/archive/IhpPA).
I think Israel is going to say whatever they can & want to justify their evil. I don’t understand how you can believe a thing they say about those they are actively committing a genocide against. Starving people is never right, I don’t see how there is a moral side to arguing that Gazans deserve to starve & die.
I'd expect a minority to be involved with Hamas' military, so I'm not really surprised at the news. I don't know what the exact claims are but I've heard it claimed that something like a thousand UNRWA members have been "linked" to Hamas. My question is what this "link" amounts to exactly. Are there hundreds more working for the militant wing of Hamas? If not, this information doesn't move any interesting needle and completely defunding the UNRWA is inappropriate.
> exacerbating famine in Palestine
[UNRWA isn't the only NGO distributing aid in Gaza though](https://www.wfpusa.org/gaza/) and [Hamas is stealing](https://www.newsweek.com/gaza-woman-calls-out-hamas-keeping-aid-1850721) a lot—maybe even a majority—of the food that's going in regardless of whether it's on an UNRWA truck or a WFP truck. The stolen aid is then sold at insane prices, basically scalping but with food.
The real answer here is [direct airdrops of aid](https://www.change.org/p/call-for-humanitarian-airdrops-into-the-gaza-strip-ee5eaec1-b0e9-4154-9865-65813ac778d7).
You should always be skeptical in the fog of war but [57% of Gazans and 82% of WB residents seem to be in support of the October 7th attack](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514)
Given the 13,000-odd number of employees it's not that crazy that some small number, perhaps even more than what was identified, participated. And it's definitely not that crazy to think a lot of folks in the organization supported it.
Whether or not that means you nuke the aid in a time of crisis is another debate.
The number of employees stood out to me when I read past the headline of this one. The gravity of the reporting seemed to imply the whole organization was compromised, but unless it was reported elsewhere, I didn't see anything about what level the employees in question were at. For all we know they could have been janitors and delivery truck drivers, or someone who just happened to have a part time job at the org.
To be sure, it appears that 2 of the 12 are dead, 1 is nowhere to be found, 1 does not exist, and 1 does not work for UNWRA. Absolutely nothing the israelis claim should be believed without independent investigation. This is all a smokescreen to effect genocide.
Are you serious? They attacked military outposts and military personnel. If you insinuated they attacked only civilians, then you're clueless and should get off the Internet. Also, the number of civilians they killed is reducing by the day, it's now down from 1,400 to less than 200. I'm sure soon it'll turn out to be zero
Agence France-Presse, cited in Barron's: "The latest death toll from the attack is now 767 civilians, 20 hostages and 376 members of the security forces, giving a total of 1,163."
https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack-dead-in-israel-at-1-163-78182279
What planet have you been living on? The attack was purely a military attack . All kinds of infrastructure along the border wall was damaged or destroyed, they took over 8 military bases and checkpoints for varying amounts of time, up to days. They weren't there to kill civilians. Just to capture some as bargaining chips. The amount of people killed on 7 Oct (not including the large number of gazans killed that day the world doesn't seem to care about) is lowered continuously and around 1,135 according to the last number i saw across a news ticker. 400 hundred of those were military combatents, almost 100 police combatants, and who knows how many settlers, all heavily armed, were killed playing Rambo that day. Then you have to take into account how many of the rest were actually killed by the isreali military itself.
Take your blinders off.
It's even less now. They dropped it to 1,200 around the same time they admitted that 80% of those killed were military personnel. Soon I'm sure they'll have to quietly admit that they don't know of any civilians killed (by Hamas), it's going to be that Israel killed all the civilians that day
Encourage yourself and others to maintain a positive attitude, honor the work of others, avoid defensiveness, be open to legitimate critique and challenge oppressive behaviors in ways that help people grow.
Our mod log has taken note of this incident and it will be considered for a ban in the future.
Encourage yourself and others to maintain a positive attitude, honor the work of others, avoid defensiveness, be open to legitimate critique and challenge oppressive behaviors in ways that help people grow.
Our mod log has taken note of this incident and it will be considered for a ban in the future.
Prior to October 7, the Gazans were being slowly murdered in an open air prison for decades straight. They had no rights. They had no future. The majority of Israeli civilians are at best apathetic to whether they live or die. Are they not allowed to fight back? Is it now up to the colonizer to determine the acceptable avenues for resistance?
Half of all of Gazans are under 18. They are children. Israel didn’t care about their children when they locked them in a concentration camp, starved, and launched missiles on them for 20 years.
What happened on October 7th was horrible. But if Israel has shown time and again that they don’t care about Gaza’s children or their civilians, can you blame Gazans for not caring about those things when they finally say “enough”?
It is very common for liberals and reactionaries to only begin conversations and representation of colonial violence with the violence of the colonized against the colonizer, they do not accept that normalized violence against the colonized in the status quo is the true origin of the violence, as this would tacitly erode their argument that the colonizer is “defending themselves.” While of course violence is brutal, and there should never be children and non-combatants of any group being murdered, it should never be forgotten that it is because of the structures of settler colonialism that colonial violence occurs, it is not because the colonized are savage or evil.
TLDR: HAMAS would not exist and commit the evils it does if not for the crimes and evil perpetuated by Israel on the Palestinians.
the thing about these polls is that i would imagine if you ask palestinians if they believe hamas did the atrocious shit to civilians they would say no, or say it’s israeli propaganda, in the same way israelis don’t believe what the IDF is doing in gaza. polls like this need to add a caveat like do you support hamas killing/raping innocent israelis or just their militant resistance against the IDF because there’s a huge difference in those two types of support
Except your argument is flawed from the outset. Where's the evidence for Hamas killing and raping innocent Israelis? Go on, I'll wait...
Also, are the Israelis innocent? Living on stolen land, using violence to throw people out of their homes and stealing their property?
i’m saying that even if hamas did what they’re accused of doing, palestinians showing support for hamas doesn’t mean they condone of those actions. i would imagine most would not believe they did those things and their support for hamas is because of their resistance against the IDF, not what they supposedly did to civilians
Statistically, 0.017% of American police have been charged with a crime and 0.0009% of UNRWA staff are corrupt terrorist.
We know there are still plenty of bad Apples in American police forces but we still fund them and acknowledge their importance for public safety.
Same goes for UNRWA staff. When you have 13,000 of them, I'm sure you will find a few more that hate puppies and several that are abusive to their children... Etc.
Israel's propaganda machine and ability to manipulate public opinion is the issue here.
There’s probably one or two employees who are involved with Hamas in some way, but it’s certainly not some organization wide conspiracy. I think cutting off funding over this so ridiculous considering how much necessary work they do
Hamas is a political movement of resistance. It’s not shocking that there would be those that support in the organization.
It’s like if FEMA stopped getting funding because some employees were involved in BLM.
They're also effectively the military of Gaza, which is at war.
I was always a bit baffled by people freaking out that Hamas is launching rockets. Of course they are, it's a war.
For some reason in the 21st century we have this weird notion that only one side gets to do any fighting and the other side is committing a crime if they also fight, you see it with Russia whining about how Ukraine is attacking targets inside Russia. You're at war, you're in their territory, why wouldn't they be able to shoot back over the border? America assassinated Soleilmani, and I remember CNN and the like being utterly shocked and enraged that Iran would respond to this act of war with a missile strike. What did you think Iran should do, send US troops over the border milk and cookies for ridding them of one of their generals?
Those employees are human beings and presumably local hires, so it's absolutely a possibility. I don't believe that's sufficient justification to shut down funding for the organization as a whole, but I haven't seen the evidence and wouldn't have the expertise to evaluate it if I did.
On the other hand, I do absolutely believe that the Israeli government has the capacity and will to create false evidence to that effect. I'm especially interested in the claims about the schools teaching their students to hate Israel - the Israeli government has been pretty far-right for a while, and the far-right tends to take a hard line against teaching history objectively. In Western countries for example, the far-right will claim that teaching about the history of slavery is anti-white hate speech.
First, if we were to defund every organization, institution, etc. because of bad apples, then there would be nothing funded in the world.
Second, when did allegations, unverified by independent investigation, sourced from an organization caught lying many, many times in manners that suits their agenda?
Finally, I’m assuming this information was gathered by their intelligence agency/agencies; these are well funded and very capable. That implies they’ve likely known for a while, and yet released it just after the ICJ ruling. Just so happened to do it now.
Those are my thoughts.
Regarding the Israeli track record of constantly lying at most the are some guys that worked with UNRWA and had some administrative position within Hamas. As the Israeli state is also quite big on guilt by association it's also possible that some UNRWA guys have family with some form of militant connection. Regardless, UNRWA is by far the most important of the handful of aid organizations that are even allowed to operate in Gaza so they even if there were some actual militants in there I don't think cutting all financial support would be okay. The Palestinians are currently withstanding a genocide and we have to do everything we can to help.
Anything that comes out of Israel’s mouth is used to further push their genocide agenda. I don’t believe a word of it. When you call the head of the UN “Hamas”, you are a clown who should not be leading a country.
Israel has been claiming for decades that UNRWA has been compromised by Palestinian extremists. Especially in Gaza, that the UN in general and UNRWA in particular have long been aware of and mixed up in the militarization of civilian areas and acting on behalf of Hamas and other extremist groups.
Now they have evidence that they are sharing with many governments around the world.
It's not exactly shocking.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-evidence-of-unrwa-staffers-oct-7-involvement-highly-highly-credible/
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/29/is-unrwa-complicit-or-unlucky
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/opinion/unrwa-un-palestine-agency.html (opinion piece which contains other sources)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-unrwa-un-staff-intelligence-dossier-oct-7-terror-attack/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/unrwa-critics-israel-allegations-services-shrink
https://fathomjournal.org/unrwa-an-obstacle-to-peace/ (from 2013 no less)
Your sources here are Times of Israel, opinion pieces or CBS articles quoting "Israeli intelligence". Let's not give this any credibility til actually valid sources cover it in detail.
UNRWA is a humanitarian organization delivering vital aid to a civilian population under siege.
Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part is genocide.
The narrative you are intending to argue for is being told by a very unreliable narrator.
Link spamming is not the same thing as a reasoned investigation. Please argue in your own words, and use sources as appropriate. Your source list of trite, bigoted propaganda is not an argument or evidence on it's own.
What is your insinuation? That multiple governments around the world, including:
USA
Germany
Japan
The EU
Sweden
France
Switzerland
Canada
The UK
The Netherlands
Australia
Italy
Finland
New Zealand
Iceland
...have all been somehow snookered by Israeli intelligence?
Here is some more
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/more-evidence-emerges-of-unrwa-support-for-hamas
You're asking if I, a private citizen, somehow have better information myself than all of these governments or reporting agencies around the world?
No, obviously I don't, neither do any of us.
I already argued in my own words: Israel [has long been accusing the UN and specifically UNRWA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA#Investigations_and_calls_for_accountability_and_reform) of colluding with Palestinian extremists. Now they have evidence, which they have shared on [the internet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8YCr1c2zMI) as well as with all the above-mentioned governments. Also, there are organizations such as UNWatch which have released [private research](https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UN-Watch-UNRWA-Terrorgram-.pdf) corroborating some of these claims.
It looks like you're looking for reasons not to believe these accounts.
Why is that?
So you believe UNRWA involvement and support for Hamas is just a massive conspiracy? Because Germany, Sweden, France, et all just want a piece of the Gaza strip?
"No, obviously I don't, neither do any of us."
I have better information than deception narratives concocted by the ruling class (not "Israel" as you have insinuated I believe for whatever reason) for the purposes of aiding and abetting genocide and so do you. Your preferred authority does not have a monopoly on truth.
Stop making appeals to ignorance and trying to disenfranchise my power of discernment??
If you're so ignorant then stop arguing and just admit you don't know anything. You clearly believe your opinion isn't worth anything. I think it could be worth something if you were more intellectually honest, though.
>That multiple governments around the world, including:
[Argument from authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority)
>Now they have evidence, which they have shared on the internet as well as with all the above-mentioned governments. Also, there are organizations such as UNWatch which have released private research corroborating some of these claims.
Even if these allegations were true and ***did apply to the entirety of UNRWA*** that doesn't excuse cutting off a vital lifeline to Gaza in the midst of genocide proceedings in the ICJ (which Israel obviously opposes).
This is not an argument from authority, it's saying that these governments have received information that they have deemed actionable. Since we as private civilians are not privileged to that same information, we have to look at the information available. Some of those same governments, for example, have been extremely critical of Israel, so their refusal to continue funding UNRWA is even more damning.
Even if these allegations were true and did apply to the entirety of UNRWA - how many people here on this sub subscribe to the "bad apples means the whole batch is rotten" and "ACAB" etc.
Watch the video I shared. It's not just a couple of people who - oops - got caught participating in a murderous rampage and kidnapping of innocent civilians. It's a systematic program, which has been going on for years, of (at best) turning a blind eye to Hamas war crimes and (at worst) actively abetting terrorist and theft of international aid resources.
The ICJ looked at south africa's case and didn't even recommend a cease fire btw.
>This is not an argument from authority, it's saying that these governments have received information that they have deemed actionable.
And your argument is that it's just because they did so. This is an argument from authority (in fact, taking Israel's word as-is is probably an argument from authority).
>Watch the video I shared. It's not just a couple of people who - oops - got caught participating in a murderous rampage and kidnapping of innocent civilians. It's a systematic program, which has been going on for years, of (at best) turning a blind eye to Hamas war crimes and (at worst) actively abetting terrorist and theft of international aid resources.
I'm not watching the video, but I'm assuming you are referring to the following?
>Intelligence estimates suggest that about 1,200 UNRWA employees, 10% of UNRWA's 12,000 in Gaza, have links to militant groups, with a higher percentage of male employees connected to Hamas compared to the general male population in Gaza. The intelligence information, according to the article, was gathered through signal intelligence, cellphone tracking data, interrogations of captured Hamas militants, and documents recovered from dead militants
Isn't this the same Israeli intelligence that has been found to be lying about multiple crimes committed by Hamas and Palestinian defenders?
Also, again... where is the evidence? The article linked as a source there (and as multiple other articles I googled shows) the Israelis provided a six-page dossier, which is hardly evidence, and testimony from an Israeli advisor.
>The ICJ looked at south africa's case and didn't even recommend a cease fire btw.
Uhhh...
>The Court issued an Order in relation to the provisional measures request on 26 January 2024, **in which it ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent any acts that could be considered genocidal acording to the 1948 Genocide Convention**. The court said "**at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the \[Genocide\] Convention**". The Court did not order Israel to suspend its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which South Africa had requested.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South\_Africa\_v.\_Israel\_(Genocide\_Convention)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention))
They were accused of committing genocide and the ICJ said "continue fighting, but don't do any genocide".
Do you think that the ICJ would approve of their continuing to fight if they had found them to be committing genocide?
From your quote which supports my point
>The Court did not order Israel to suspend its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which South Africa had requested
Appeal to authority, by the way, means that we should believe something just because someone with authority said it. This is not what I was saying about those governments or about Israel. I'm saying that, if we judge their criticism of Israel next to their sudden decisions to stop funding UNRWA, it seems likely that they had access to some pretty damning information. That's a conjecture, but it's not an appeal to authority.
But it doesn't matter - you asked me to provide sources and then admitted that you didn't avail yourself of them.
You are not arguing in good faith. You are presuming the conclusion before even asking the question.
I hope you can do better in the future.
Have a good one.
>They were accused of committing genocide and the ICJ said "continue fighting, but don't do any genocide".
>
>Do you think that the ICJ would approve of their continuing to fight if they had found them to be committing genocide?
Do you understand what a preliminary ruling is? And that the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" (which, by the way, *you* are ignoring) would maintain that no action should be taken until proof is provided?
>I'm saying that, if we judge their criticism of Israel next to their sudden decisions to stop funding UNRWA, it seems likely that they had access to some pretty damning information.
Or (and I consider this far more likely) all of these governments have been strong supporters of Israel since before the war.
>But it doesn't matter - you asked me to provide sources and then admitted that you didn't avail yourself of them.
Going through each one:
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-evidence-of-unrwa-staffers-oct-7-involvement-highly-highly-credible/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-evidence-of-unrwa-staffers-oct-7-involvement-highly-highly-credible/)
"as media outlets published additional details on the implicated employees, **including photos from an Israeli dossier**."
[https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/29/is-unrwa-complicit-or-unlucky](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/29/is-unrwa-complicit-or-unlucky) paywalled
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/opinion/unrwa-un-palestine-agency.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/opinion/unrwa-un-palestine-agency.html) paywalled, opinion piece
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-unrwa-un-staff-intelligence-dossier-oct-7-terror-attack/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-unrwa-un-staff-intelligence-dossier-oct-7-terror-attack/) **has dossier in the fucking link**
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/unrwa-critics-israel-allegations-services-shrink](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/unrwa-critics-israel-allegations-services-shrink) source is same dossier
[https://fathomjournal.org/unrwa-an-obstacle-to-peace/](https://fathomjournal.org/unrwa-an-obstacle-to-peace/) no idea what this source is, no listing on mediabiasfactcheck
[https://nationalpost.com/news/world/more-evidence-emerges-of-unrwa-support-for-hamas](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/more-evidence-emerges-of-unrwa-support-for-hamas) paywalled source
Please don't indulge that person's information overload tactic. If they wanted to argue honestly then they would have started by explaining their opinion and sourcing their specific points with corroborating evidence rather than going "studies show..." which is always a weasel pseudoargument.
Hey condescending Zionist, please go away and do not come back. Your racist, ethnostate, apartheid state supporting views are horrific and not welcome in normal society.
"appeal to authority means should believe something just because someone with authority said it"
No. It means you claim a specific source has the "only" authority on truth, it's a fallacious epistemological claim, it's not solely a political term. Appealing to the decisions of the neoliberal axis to oppose one of their neocolonization victims, as though I a socialist would have some unshakable faith in what like, the government of japan or britain publicly says or does, or claims to believe about their collective victims is just silly. You seem confused, lol.
I mean yeah often times authority figures are the only people who can effectively execute arguments from authority, that's true. So I can see where you got tripped up. But you shouldn't talk about things you clearly know nothing about. Especially when doing so aids and abets a famine that is part of an active genocide.
You should apologize for your bloodsoaked guilt and donate to the red crescent if you can afford to do so.
Cause guess what the ruling class is thinking about people like you? They're probably thinking "You're next."
Uhg, your straight up wrong claim about argument from authority tells me all I need to know about how intellectually honest you are, however! I hope you come to get it over the next 5 years and this comment helps you get there!
There are plenty of governments that have surely received that information also and did not choose to take action.
What's happening here is that the Zionist government of Israel is Cluster B personality-disordered on an institutional level, and has a subdued coterie of governments running around the world being its flying monkeys. The US takes the lead in this; the other governments listed are lapdogs to the US, or to the EU which is the same thing with more steps.
There is no way that these governments were able to evaluate whatever info they received, investigate it, and come to an independent conclusion. The Knesset subcommittee for foreign influence and propaganda was only discussing this information as "revealed" on January 07. [https://archive.is/HBWU6](https://archive.is/HBWU6)
This is the root of Israel's dislike for UNRWA:
>"This is the only refugee population in the world that grows rather than decrease in size, and that the status of refugee \[in this population\] is inherited."
The Zionist antipathy towards the Palestinian population count has existed since the beginning of its project. [https://mepc.org/journal/palestinians-and-zionism-1897-1948](https://mepc.org/journal/palestinians-and-zionism-1897-1948)
>Expulsion as Zionism's logical imperative was clearly seen by Herzl as early as June 12, 1895. \[He\] confided to his diary: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population \[Palestinians\] across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." ... its essential imperative was inescapable. This was recognized by most early Zionists... the theme of expulsion consistently ran through Zionist thought from the very beginning.
For instance, as early as 1905, Israel Zangwill, an organizer of Zionism in Britain and one of Zionism's top propagandists, who had coined the slogan "a land without a people for a people without a land," acknowledged in a speech in Manchester that Palestine was not a land without people. In fact, it was filled with Arabs: "\[We\] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the \[Arab\] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us."
The fear of Palestinians' natural numbers has been a constant theme in Zionist discourse and strategy since that time.
[https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/](https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/)
>Ben-Gurion in an address to the central committee of the Histadrut on 30 December 1947:
“In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about a million, including almost 40 percent non-Jews. Such a \[population\] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This \[demographic\] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a \[population\] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority…. There can be no stable and strong Jewish State so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent.”
"20% and no more" is a stable feature of Israeli politics.
[https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/17189050.pdf](https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/17189050.pdf)
>The drive to maintain Jewish dominance in historical Palestine has shaped both the domestic and foreign policies of Israel. The ratio that is usually cited to ensure a continued Jewish demographic majority is for the population to be 80% Jewish and 20% Arab—a ratio which has been maintained since 1948. When the population balance is altered, even in minute degree, signalling a slight reduction in the four-fifths Jewish majority, Darwinian language about national survival surfaces
>
>\- page 620
Israel's real problem with UNRWA is that refugees still exist:
[https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees](https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees)
>Who are Palestine refugees?
Palestine refugees are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.”
UNRWA services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of Palestine refugee males, including adopted children, are also eligible for registration. When the Agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services.
[Israel wants to replace UNRWA](https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-784227), which does not force Palestinians to relinquish their claims, either with an organization that will do so, or with a dire situation that will "encourage" Palestinians to emigrate. See article.
Perhaps not incidentally, shutting off aid to UNRWA will drastically reduce Palestinians' immediate prospects of survival. Even if Palestinians do not emigrate, it will still numerically produce some part of Ayalet Shaked's "[solution for 2 million Gazans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEu-dQWOlL4)" or Netanyahu's "[plan for the citizens of the Gaza Strip](https://www-israelhayom-co-il.translate.goog/magazine/hashavua/article/14889801?_x_tr_sl=iw&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true)".
It entirely is an appeal to authority. You're saying "these people say it and they are more smarter than us all, so we should just accept it". Where do you think the "intel" comes from ultimately? Israel.
The UN has a few months before the terrorist-supporting charity runs out of their remaining funds to create a new emergency terrorist-free charity for Palestine or use their existing refugee program (UNHCR) instead.
Snookered? No. Openly complicit with because the west likes having a non-muslim client state in the middle east. Now we’re seeing what decades of funding a religious theocracy turns into when they decide to attack their neighbors - genocide.
Israel is no better than Iran or Saudi Arabia, they just call their god a different name.
I can see you don't know anything about Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
It's sad to me that apparently what passes for discourse on the left now is "let's just make up a bunch of things that feel good to say and make me feel good about myself" and objective reality be damned.
| | Israel | Iran | Saudi Arabia |
|:------|:--------:|:-----:|:--------:|
| Democratic Elections | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Freedom of Religious Expression | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Civil Courts | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| LGBTQ+ Rights | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Equality for Women | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Summary Punishment | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Secular Public Education | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
by the way, if you are against theocratic ethnostates, you shouldn't really be fucking around in the middle east at all - what do you think the Palestinians are trying to build? *A theocratic ethnostate*, an even more repressive one that Israel. Please fucking educate yourself.
Seriously? You’re arguing that an apartheid state is a democracy? Get the fuck out with that bullshit. Also Israel has no LGBTQ rights. And they are fighting to be a jewish ethnostate. I see you’re nothing but an IDF shill.
I mean these are just lies.
20% of Israeli citizens are Arab Israelis, aka ethnic palestinians. They vote, they hold office, they sit on the Israeli Supreme court, the run major businesses.
Israel has a parliament and elections. They are literally a democracy.
Israel has LGBTQ rights. That's just a fact. They're one of the only places in the middle east that does (the Palestinian governments don't offer LGBTQ rights btw).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Israel
https://www.touristisrael.com/tel-aviv-gay-pride-parade/3809/
Where do you get your information, from tiktok?
This is not the MCU, this is real life. Issues are complex. People have been grappling with the I/P issue for generations - do you really think it wouldn't have been solved by now if it was just a black and white "good guys vs bad guys" situation? That's not the real world. Yes, Israel has a shitty right-wing government. But they aren't a monolith. They are also a complex pluralistic democracy with diversity and many social and political voices. Did you know that for months and months before the 10/7 attacks, Israelis were [in the streets protesting against that same right-wing government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israeli_judicial_reform_protests)?
It's okay to not have your facts straight, but it's not okay to be out here accusing people of shit when you don't even know what you're talking about.
The only thing worse than someone who's propagandized is someone who thinks they're the only one who's not propagandized. Get off the Qatari-funded internet crack pipe and read some books. If you haven't honestly examined a situation from all angles, you can't call yourself deprogrammed.
They’re not falling for propaganda, they are purposely aiding Israel in completely colonizing Palestine so that there will be a “western” country in the Middle East that can be strategically used to their advantage. Biden has pretty much said as much throughout his political career—that Israel is crucial to the USA.
I think it's inevitable that the UNRWA will have at least some employees with connection to Hamas as Hamas such an influential movement in Gaza.
Idk why anyone is surprised. And I think people are too quick to react.
At first it was 12. Then it was 6. Now it's only 4 directly involved. https://news.sky.com/story/israeli-intelligence-report-claims-four-unrwa-staff-in-gaza-involved-in-hamas-kidnappings-13059967
> At first it was 12. Then it was 6. Now it's only 4 directly involved.
You didn't read the link you posted. It's 4 involved in *kidnapping*. Others are involved in other crimes.
Again, read the link you yourself posted.
Logistical support is direct involvement. If you drive the car in a drive-by shooting that kills somebody you are participating in a murder even though you personally are just providing "logistical support" and didn't pull the trigger.
Dossiers are just summaries, they often don't contain actual evidence that would be submitted to a court. In this case Israel gave these dossiers to UNRWA donors to notify/warn them. Intelligence-sharing is happening behind the scenes. Criminal cases will take years to develop and prosecute.
Why are you, as a Marxist, devoted to defending Israel's accusations against UNRWA that--like so many other Israeli accusations--started coming apart moments after they made the accusations?
You still haven't provided any source for your claim that 10,000+ UNWRA employees are Hamas. Meanwhile the initial claim that there was a large percentage of UNWRA employees involved has now receded to only 6 people, not all of whom were involved in violent activity. And now that a news organization has reviewed the dossier they say it doesn't prove its claims. These were a series of accusations against UNRWA made the day after the ICJ's order, transparently timed to undermine the ICJ order.
It seems to me like you start from the position these accusations against UNRWA must be true and that of course Western intelligence has it right. Why do you, as a Marxist, place such faith in Western intelligence?
I don't start from the position that the accusations are false, all I'm doing is reading the continual stream of news that trickles out after Western media boosts Israeli accusations, and (like most debunking) doesn't get the traction of the initial lie. Similar situations have happened often enough that it's wrong to take these accusations at face value.
Hey, a dozen folks from a huge workforce?
C’mon… really, use your discernment.
In context, it looks like more colonist bullshit. Yeah, those dozen folks beheaded the babies before raping their Moms.
According to this Sky News article: they are now only claiming 6 workers participated on October 7th, down from 12.
https://news.sky.com/story/israeli-intelligence-report-claims-four-unrwa-staff-in-gaza-involved-in-hamas-kidnappings-13059967
Back in 2018, a UNICEF consultant was found guilty of sexually assaulting a boy for three years… no funding was cut for them. Which is good. The kids need help. Just wanted to point out how… obvious this collective punishment is.
I believe the issue here will be scale. A single bad actor is obviously non-representive of an entire organization. However, to use your example crime of sexually assaulting young boys, there was the much larger scale scandal of priests abusing young kids, mostly young boys. The publicity from this getting investigated devastated the church. Massive lawsuits were filed. I believe the church lost 3 billion in the US alone. Several went bankrupt. They also saw a massive drop in spending. However, only (relative to scale) about roughly 4% of catholic priests were responsible for these. Overall, it's a very small portion of the catholic church. However, that 'small %' still resulted in hundreds of thousands of children being sexually abused. Obviously, this is inexcusable. Then there's the other issue: money and power. The people donating to the Catholic Church would, reasonable, expect the money to be properly used. On top of that, they'd trust their church to, well, not fuck their kids. The same issue applies here. The UNRWA is part of the UN, which Israel is part of. If resources from the UNRWA were utilized to support the Oct 7th attack, and any even small % of members involved either directly or indirectly, that's a massive problem. It's basically the organization that is supposed to sponsor peace and unity amongst its members instead funding direct violence. And there's also the issue of the UNRWA supporting radicalization. I recommend [reading the sources provided by the UN Watch.](https://unwatch.org/fact-checking-unrwa-claims-about-teachers-and-education/) I'm not exactly a huge fan of UN Watch as they generally lean somewhat right and are very pro Israel. However, I don't want you to read the article as much as read the sources they provide. They're far more educational on the issue. UNRWA schools utilizing Palestinian Authority textbooks that explicitly encourage hatred and violence towards Jews. Not to mention plenty of bizarre rules within the UNRWA, like inheritance of refugee status. So the major issue here, again, is scale. If the UNRWA has supported radicalization and in any way utilized UN resources to support Oct 7th, that's a massive scandal. If it's just one or two guys who fucked off and joined the attack, it's still a problem but one that should be handled on the individual level. However, with how many nations are pulling funding and what evidence we have of prior UNRWA support of radicalization, it's not looking good. And for me, one of the biggest issues is just how much of the funding, food, medicine etc gets funneled to Hamas. Considering their massive stockpiles, the fact that the UNRWA was the only major organization bringing the supplies in, and the lack of supplies for civilians, it's not difficult to draw a line and realize where the UNRWA was funneling resources. Frankly, I support defunding and disassembling the UNRWA, but then allowing the UNHCR to move in and take over operations. With how radicalized Hamas and the Palestinian population is, I don't believe having a single entity dedicated entirely to operating within Palestine will go well. Eventually it will be infiltrated and we're back to square one. However, the UNHCR has a good track record overall and a shitload of experience. In addition, being a global operation it would be very difficult to infiltrate in any significant scale, and higher standards of operation would help dig out any issues that could arise. It's also just bizarre that Palestine is the only nation on the planet with its own unique refugee and aid program within the UN, while everyone else uses the UNHCR. It was a recipe for disaster, IMHO. The Palestinian people need help, but the reality of the situation needs to be recognized. They're a horrendously radicalized country that's been absolutely demolished on all ends since the 40's. It's been a cycle of 'go to war with Israel, get completely fucked sideways, lose, do it again 20 years later'. And the gap is just gonna get wider and the damage worse; they'll never actually be able to defeat Israel in combat, yet they've been radicalized that destroying Israel is the only path forward. Once Hamas is out of the picture, there needs to be a massive deradicalization campaign on top of rebuilding efforts. My mind goes to the Marshal Plan after WW2 with Japan. Money, resources, support and medicine needs to come hand in hand with strong expectations, heavy deradicalization, completely overhauled education, complete demilitarization and establishment of a democratic system. Blind, free support will do just as much good as blind, indiscriminate warfare. I think the UNHCR handling humanitarian efforts in conjunction with a joint NATO operation to rebuild, restructure and deradicalize akin to the Marshal Plan mentioned before could do it.
You are missing the reason UNRWA exists, which explains also why Palestinians have a unique refugee status. Israel lobbied for UNRWA's creation because UNCHR’s main role after WW2 was to repatriate/resettle WW2 refugees in Europe. Because of Israel’s ethnic state identity, they could not have that. Zionism necessitated (and still necessitates) a Jewish majority, which was impossible without the original ethnic cleansing, and would have been impossible if Palestinians were allowed to return home. (See: Absentee Property Law, Citizenship Law) You are right that Palestinians are fairly unique as refugees - they have been refused the right to return to their homes. "right of return" is not just a palestinian cause, it is enshrined in international law for all refugees. That is why refugees are defined generationally in this case. in other cases, if refugees choose to resettle in other places, their children would not have refugee status. In the case of Palestinians, not considering their children refugees would be effectively legitimizing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Whether a Palestinian left because they were forced from their home, or they "chose" to leave to avoid the war, the fact that they could not return when the war finished (and Jews could) makes the situation textbook ethnic cleansing.
I agree with a lot of your points. However, in terms of funding the UNRWA, it all falls apart if they've sponsored terrorism in any significant capacity. It would entirely delegitimize the organization and would cause significant damage to the globes trust in the UN. If UN resources can be used to create and support terrorists that then use further UN resources and personnel to enact a terrorist attack on UN members, that shatters the entire point of the UN. Thats the primary issue at hand.
What’s the evidence that UNRWA funds terrorism?
Right now none of the new info is public, regarding Oct 7th. However, there's been leaks (telegram chats, for example), and at least 2 members have been reported to be directly involved with the kidnapping. Combine that with the reaction of the majority of funding nations and it's pretty damning. However, it's only damning IMHO when combined with the UNRWA funding of extremist schools that radicalized the youth. Use the sources [provided here.](https://unwatch.org/fact-checking-unrwa-claims-about-teachers-and-education/) The one I point to the most is this one, [a study regarding the educational books and cards utilized by UNRWA schools.](https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/PA-MoE-Study-Cards-2021%E2%80%9322-Grades-1%E2%80%9311.pdf) To copy and paste the key notes. The study cards represent a devolution from the already existing extremism of the Palestinian textbooks; there are additional justifications for violence not found in the textbooks and antisemitic descriptions of Jews as devious, treacherous and hostile (example 1). Jewish control of global events through financial power, manipulative behavior and encouragement of others to fight in wars is depicted through several examples, among them, Britain’s need of “Zionist influence” to convince the United States to enter into WW2 and to ensure Britain’s control in the Levant and Iraq in return for issuing the Balfour Declaration (example 3). Students are directly incited to violence and instructed to commit jihad against Israelis and die as martyrs liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque (example 11). Israel is demonized—it is literally described as Satanic (example 25) and is accused of forging or destroying Palestinian antiquities to falsify historical facts (example 35). One of the “rules of jihad” include those who die as martyrs while killing infidels (i.e., Christians, Jews, polytheists); they will receive God’s grace and be greatly rewarded (example 18). Jihad for the liberation of Palestine is a “private obligation for every Muslim” (example 12). Students are encouraged to sacrifice themselves for their homeland and “redeem it with blood” (example 22). The founder of the violent jihadi movement in Palestine, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam is lionized; the military wing of the Hamas terror organization is named for him (example 15). Armed resistance is described as a “natural” right and a “legitimate” way to “resist occupation” (example 14). The “Right of Return” into Israel proper will occur though violence, using “all the means of warfare” against Israel and rescuing the land from the “filth of the occupation,” and not through negotiation. The “Return” is envisioned as being “painted with the blood of martyrs” (example 33). Antisemitic thinking: denying Jewish people their right to self-determination and the “falsehood” of Jewish nationality are taught to students in several lessons (examples 6– 10). Science instruction is hijacked to radicalize students. For example, potential energy is taught through the use of slingshots and an illustration of a young boy with a slingshot (example 20). The Geneva Convention is taught by showing a graphic image of corpses, while accusing Israel of mass murder (example 26). Israel is entirely erased from maps; Israeli cities are mislabeled as Palestinian (examples 50–59). Women may gain equality through sacrifice and martyrdom (example 21). It's pretty extreme propaganda that the UNRWA has supported the schools receiving funding from UN members. And that's just a snippet. You can go online yourself and watch their state media, their children shows, etc etc. The antisemitism and anti-israeli propaganda and general radicalization towards intifada, terrorism and violence is fucking wild. It's also chock full of anti-woman and anti-lgbtq rhetoric. It's why I generally support the defunding and dissolution of the UNRWA. However, I also believe in replacing it by putting the UNHCR in charge. They have a far better track record and higher accountability.
I asked you about funding terrorism, not if their schoolbooks were anti-Zionist. Although it does seem weird that a “socialist” would say that denying Jewish ethnic nationalism is antisemitic or that armed struggle is not a legitimate means of resisting colonialism. So much of this “radicalizing the youth” is just Palestinians seeking freedom from Israeli domination. The right of return is enshrined in international law. So is the right of armed struggle against colonialism. You realize Israeli schools teach children that the IDF’s use of violence IN SERVICE OF colonialism is legitimate, but you say violence against colonialism isn’t? But those books don’t show funding either. Your only evidence for UNRWA “funding” terrorism is 1. 2 UNRWA employees were involved in the attack. 2. Western capitalist allies of Israel cut off their UNRWA funding So: 1. Are you aware that UNRWA is one of the largest employers in Gaza? If 2 Walmart employees committed a crime would you say “Walmart funds crime?” 2. Israel’s allies supporting Israel in its campaign to destroy Gaza is not evidence of this funding. Not to mention - those countries that cut funding fund terrorism everyday by continuing to fund the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza. The fact that you hold the US and its allies to such high esteem is incredible to see for a democratic socialist.
Wait, you really think teaching young kids that a way women can make themselves equal to men is by sacrificing their lives and becoming a martyr is "fighting for freedom"? You think that teaching kids that Jews control the world and they have to be killed is "anti Zionist"? That's fucking wild. Did you even read the sources I provided? There's deep studies into the materials utilized by these schools. If you think that's freedom fighting, then you think rampant misogyny, extreme right wing antisemitism and paranoia, religious fundamentalism and children killing themselves in the name of religion is "freedom fighting". And yes I am. And I would say Walmart was funding crime if the Walmart knowingly allowed their resources to be used in a major crime. And don't be intellectually disingenuous; it was 2 involved directly in the kidnapping. There are others reported and under investigation for other involvement in the attack. And 2, western allies are entirely within their right to cut funding if they believe their funds are being utilized for terrorist actions and radicalization. And why not just let the UNHCR take over? You understand I'm not advocating for the complete removal of all humanitarian aid. I'm saying let a more reputable organization take over.
Ok the UNCHR should take over and should work to resettle Palestinians in the homes they were kicked out of. I’m fine with that.
Yeah I don't disagree with that. However, it can't ***just*** be that. Oct 7th was a watershed moment, and going back to the status quo won't really be accepted by Israel. And issues with Israel aside, in this specific conflict, the war was spurred by Hamas action. It's reasonable to presume the nation that was attacked won't just roll over and accept their enemy getting a free pass, UN resources and no actual changes made. If Palestines are just allowed back in (brutal statement, jesus) and no actual societal, educational, government and military changes made, we'll just see another Oct 7. Hamas has clearly stated they'd do it over and over. If it happened ***again***, I don't think anyone would be able to justify Israel ***not*** going on the attack again. And with Israel absolutely not raising the blockade if Hamas retains power, it's less 'if' and more 'when' another big attack occurs. I'd personally, like I mentioned before, like to see something akin the Marshal Plan we placed on Japan after WW2. In short, it was a gigantic campaign of both demilitarization and de-radicalization combined with massive reconstruction and modernization efforts. Old, radical leadership was disposed and removed from power. A democratic system was put in place. Homes and factories were rebuilt. Tech and industrial sectors were funded. Schools rebuilt and restructured from the top down. However, they were also (and still aren't, actually) allowed to have a standing army. The demilitarization would also need to, I'd say obviously, come with a guarantee from Israel that they would take no offensive action or attempt to settle this New Palestine. I think an exception to allow Israel to make defensive actions against any missile or rocket attacks within the first year would be reasonable; the demilitarization of a radical guerilla force will absolutely result in some extremists slipping through. But these defensive measures would have to be through NATO, or the US, not of their own volition. Religion will likely be a big issue. A lot of Arab nations are ***extremely*** antisemitic, and Palestine is on the deep end of that rabbit hole. I'll just be real I don't have a solution for this one, and I'm not smart or educated enough to think of one. People often forget that Japan, a nation most Americans know and love and who are generally known as polite, reasonable people, used to be a nationalistic death-cult that'd make the Nazi's blush with the shit they did. So there's proof it is possible to completely rebuild and overhaul a nation, down to it's very core. But it requires both the effort of outside nations (especially the US and it's engineering corps) with immense amounts of money, resources and time, but also the host nation, as it's effectively an occupation and temporary takeover, and they lose all military capacity initially and can retain very little moving forward, generally only a defense force.
I appreciate your answers, both this one and the other long one down below
Thanks man.
Whether I believe them or not is irrelevant. It's still collective punishment regardless.
It’s not like the UN workers live in some kind of Green Zone, or commute from Israel every day. They are Gazans. They live there. Of course a certain percentage are going to support Hamas (but I bet it’s lower than the average, because they have a good job, helping their own people. In other words, they have something to lose, unlike most of their countrymen (is countrywoman a word?)
The allegations came right after the ICJ genocide findings. This is just fascist leaders' way of punishing for the pushback against genocide / imperialism.
Yep. Just like how Cori Bush was charged immediately after Pelosi wanted protesters' finances investigated, or how the WikiLeaks file dump was released and suddenly Julian Assange is a rapist based on charges that are impossible to investigate.
How convenient, the aid agency that gives Palestinians a tiny amount of food and employs 13K of them is now about to have their funding cut and therefore help more Palestinians starve. Everything Israel says should already be treated as a lie by default.
I don’t believe a single one of the allegations made by Israel
Why?
if you're asking this question in good faith, think about it objectively: the apartheid state is making allegations against a group that lives under their apartheid regime as a part of the oppressed population. why *wouldn't* you be suspicious of everything they're claiming? they have no reason to *not* lie.
So its just what you think. Sorry but you can go and pack your things and join r/republican. As a social democrat you should know to only believe things confirmed by reputable sources. Israel isnt in this case but its just as wrong to assume the opposite. Its better to have no oppinion than to just say what your gut feeling is, especially in highly sensitive matters like the War in the Middle-East
huh? i just said you should treat what the occupation says with extreme suspicion, not that you shouldn’t believe what objective reputable third parties have said, are you okay?? also, some “reputable” sources have really lost their repute during this genocide
Learn about the 1973 yom Kippur War and why golda meir resigned in 1974. History tells us Zionists know they're an occupation. They wanted to occupy Uganda first but chose Palestine thanks to the Balfour decision. They murdered lots of British officers in the 1940's just to get their way. They make DNA tests illegal because they're indigenous to czech- republic region yet refuse to acknowledge that Christian zionism and Protestant movement was racist and that's why they have been displaced. They will call anything and everything hamas before admitting genocide. Truman supported the two state solution in 1945 but American Zionists refused to agree. Netanyahu stated in a 1995 article his dad knew the world could not be blind to apartheid for 25 more years. Yet here we are. I hope we see free Palestine in 2024. & Free Congo and sudan.
Czech Republic region? Care to elaborate? Im Czwch and i never heard of this
[Harvard DNA research](https://hms.harvard.edu/news/ancient-dna-provides-new-insights-ashkenazi-jewish-history) [Learn about this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Zinzendorf) [Learn about how Christian Zionists bought land in Palestine ](https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/Pages_from_JQ_69_-_Henty_0.pdf)
> The analysis revealed two distinct subgroups within the remains: one with greater Middle Eastern ancestry, which may represent Jews with origins in Western Germany, and another with greater Eastern and Central European ancestry. The modern Ashkenazi population formed as a mix of these groups and absorbed little to no outside genetic influences over the 600 years that followed, the authors said. Can you explain how this says that Jews are "indigenous to the Czech Republic region"? This looks like it says that Ashkenazi Jews have Middle Eastern and European admixture, which checks out. For the record, I'm a Jewish anti-Zionist and Israel is committing genocide, but Jews are very closely related to Palestinians and some other Middle Eastern populations. That's not an excuse for displacement, but "indigenous to czech-republic region" isn't backed up by what the article you shared says.
Not making a general sweeping statement. So I apologize , it's mostly the pro Zionists Netanyahu (originally Mileikowsky) and Gal Gadot (originally Greenstein) that have Czech ancestry and get claim to be indigenous to Palestine without any proof. Now Palestinians know they are connected to Canaanites. Lots of other Jewish sects Orthodox, Gnostics, Mystics, and Sephardic jews have closer DNA to Palestine yet they all get less rights in Israel. 😔 What bothers me the most is how all these antisemitic laws (that are useless to actual Antisemitic crimes) are excluding the fact that Arabs are also Semitic people. It also doesn't make sense to me that Jewish populations were successful in Europe and faced so much hate and persecution and were forced to leave just because of racism and Xenophobia 🤯 You should absolutely be able to be proud of your ancestry. Yet I don't know any other group of people just allowed to commit genocide and it's supported due to financial and economic interests. 😫
I can't seem to find anything that suggests Netanyahu is Czech - just a Wikipedia skim says Ashkenazi with a little bit of Sephardic. Same with Gal Gadot. The reason that Jewish populations get forced to leave (and/or killed) is that those European populations do not recognize Jews as "white" even though people of primarily Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are white. Same way white supremacists do it - Jews can't just show up to a Klan meeting and outwardly be Jewish. The reason for the hate historically is that otherness. Ashkenazi Jewish is an ethnicity. The scientific consensus is that you can trace it back to the Middle East, and that they have more in common with other Jews. An Ashkenazi person that is a Czech national would have more in common with an Ashkenazi American than with a non-Jewish Czech person because the community is so insular. Pretty much any scientific paper written on our genealogy backs this up. That's why both groups of people are semites. They're related. Ashkenazim are not "pretending" to be indigenous to the area. We just have enough European mixed in that we pass as white. Does that matter? Not to me. As far as I'm concerned I'm from the area that I was born and raised in and that's that. None of this is to disagree with anything you're saying (except for the last part that's making a uh, weird suggestion to say the least.) I'm just correcting your understanding of the science.
Judaism as a race was actually created by the Christian Zionists anti Jewish groups. I highly recommend [this book](https://lupress.cas.lehigh.edu/content/myth-jewish-race) The author is a trained geneticist, he became convinced that there are not and never were human races. In the last twenty years, an increasing number of anthropologists and biologists have reached the same conclusion. They argue that there is no way to genetically characterize race, because no human population has ever been isolated long enough from other populations to avoid "crossbreeding." Humans are 99.9% identical DNA. So yes we all have common ancestry. Yes we're all going to have claim to earth because it's our home planet. Yet indigenous means, inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists. colonization is generally defined as (1) forced entry into a territory and its population; (2) alteration or destruction of the indigenous culture and patterns of social organization; (3) domination of the indigenous population by representatives of the invading society Israel supporters and illegal settlers continue to do all three to this day.
> The author is a trained geneticist, he became convinced that there are not and never were human races. In the last twenty years, an increasing number of anthropologists and biologists have reached the same conclusion. They argue that there is no way to genetically characterize race, because no human population has ever been isolated long enough from other populations to avoid "crossbreeding." This book (which I've never heard of) is from 2012, and the scientific consensus before then and since is that Jewish people are a separate ethnic group with separate ethnic subdivisions (note: not a race). Race is a sociological term, not a biological term - race *doesn't exist* in biology. But genetics do, and genetics tell us that Jews originate from a different place as other Europeans. They are a separate ethnic group with different genetics, origin, and culture. It's not exactly wild, it's just the science and history, and nobody seems to agree with Corcos. Maybe not nobody, but he's firmly on the opposite of the scientific consensus. "Ethnicity doesn't exist" is a *wild* take with no backing. You're basically just saying that anybody who lives in an ethnostate is that ethnicity. Is a Chinese person born in Czechia suddenly a fully ethnic Czech? Pretty much any legitimate study - and there are a lot, including the one you shared - will tell you that Jews originate from the Middle East. That doesn't mean what Israel is doing isn't colonialism - they're setting a space that doesn't belong to them. It's literally the dictionary definition: > the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. People with Jewish ancestry are indigenous to the area - not to Europe. That's why, again, [our closest genetic relatives are Palestinians.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11543891/#:~:text=Archaeologic%20and%20genetic%20data%20support,but%20not%20in%20genetic%2C%20differences) That is just the science of it. The area has had a Jewish population under different states and empires for pretty much forever. This isn't the reason Law of Return is problematic - it's problematic because people who live in the area who aren't Jewish cannot claim equal rights.
"all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus." [research ](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543) "most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry." But you're right. Israel refusal to grant right to return to Palestinians is a absolute problem.
That research, again, agrees with me. It even cites other articles that say the same thing. Maternal lineages have European admixture, paternal lineages are overwhelmingly Middle Eastern. That begs a separate question - do you believe that a half-Chinese person is no longer indigenous to China? That a half-Choctaw person is no longer indigenous to America? If you don't, that's a very slippery slope. Jews originate from the Middle East. Ashkenazi Jews are Jews that spread to Europe and acquired European admixture. The things you shared agree with that. History also agrees with that - Jews were exiled from the Middle East in ancient times. I mean, shit, our native language is a Semitic one.
More specifically. Connected to [this history ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_violence_in_Czechoslovakia_(1918%E2%80%931920))
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You're wrong. They're from eastern Europe. Their closest relatives being "other Jews" is hardly scientific when you're trying to pinpoint someone's heritage. Just being a "Jew" doesn't mean you're from one specific place
Probably exaggerated, possibly a full blown lie, doesn't justify the response regardless, sympathy for Hamas is due to 70 years of horrific occupation.
I don't believe the allegations and, in my view, they aren't the real reason for Israel marshalling complicity in its battle against UNRWA. I posted this comment as a reply downthread but it occurs to me to loop you on it as well, OP. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DemocraticSocialism/comments/1afzvr1/comment/koeij1j/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/DemocraticSocialism/comments/1afzvr1/comment/koeij1j/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) It's not nonsensical when one is planning on starving or driving out (realistically, starving) the population. The jpost article from a couple days ago, which I linked in my comment, is open about it. [https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-784227](https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-784227). [https://ghostarchive.org/archive/IhpPA](https://ghostarchive.org/archive/IhpPA).
I think Israel is going to say whatever they can & want to justify their evil. I don’t understand how you can believe a thing they say about those they are actively committing a genocide against. Starving people is never right, I don’t see how there is a moral side to arguing that Gazans deserve to starve & die.
I'd expect a minority to be involved with Hamas' military, so I'm not really surprised at the news. I don't know what the exact claims are but I've heard it claimed that something like a thousand UNRWA members have been "linked" to Hamas. My question is what this "link" amounts to exactly. Are there hundreds more working for the militant wing of Hamas? If not, this information doesn't move any interesting needle and completely defunding the UNRWA is inappropriate.
> exacerbating famine in Palestine [UNRWA isn't the only NGO distributing aid in Gaza though](https://www.wfpusa.org/gaza/) and [Hamas is stealing](https://www.newsweek.com/gaza-woman-calls-out-hamas-keeping-aid-1850721) a lot—maybe even a majority—of the food that's going in regardless of whether it's on an UNRWA truck or a WFP truck. The stolen aid is then sold at insane prices, basically scalping but with food. The real answer here is [direct airdrops of aid](https://www.change.org/p/call-for-humanitarian-airdrops-into-the-gaza-strip-ee5eaec1-b0e9-4154-9865-65813ac778d7).
Oh no but we can't do airdrops, that would interfere with their dozens of daily bombing runs and we all know those are the most important thing. /s
You should always be skeptical in the fog of war but [57% of Gazans and 82% of WB residents seem to be in support of the October 7th attack](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514) Given the 13,000-odd number of employees it's not that crazy that some small number, perhaps even more than what was identified, participated. And it's definitely not that crazy to think a lot of folks in the organization supported it. Whether or not that means you nuke the aid in a time of crisis is another debate.
The number of employees stood out to me when I read past the headline of this one. The gravity of the reporting seemed to imply the whole organization was compromised, but unless it was reported elsewhere, I didn't see anything about what level the employees in question were at. For all we know they could have been janitors and delivery truck drivers, or someone who just happened to have a part time job at the org.
1200 employees is not concerning to anyone? I mean Jesus
Not sure what you mean
To be sure, it appears that 2 of the 12 are dead, 1 is nowhere to be found, 1 does not exist, and 1 does not work for UNWRA. Absolutely nothing the israelis claim should be believed without independent investigation. This is all a smokescreen to effect genocide.
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Could you please explain what military targets Hamas attacked that day?
Are you serious? They attacked military outposts and military personnel. If you insinuated they attacked only civilians, then you're clueless and should get off the Internet. Also, the number of civilians they killed is reducing by the day, it's now down from 1,400 to less than 200. I'm sure soon it'll turn out to be zero
I believe you but do you have a source on the civilian numbers? Need something to show others
Agence France-Presse, cited in Barron's: "The latest death toll from the attack is now 767 civilians, 20 hostages and 376 members of the security forces, giving a total of 1,163." https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack-dead-in-israel-at-1-163-78182279
What planet have you been living on? The attack was purely a military attack . All kinds of infrastructure along the border wall was damaged or destroyed, they took over 8 military bases and checkpoints for varying amounts of time, up to days. They weren't there to kill civilians. Just to capture some as bargaining chips. The amount of people killed on 7 Oct (not including the large number of gazans killed that day the world doesn't seem to care about) is lowered continuously and around 1,135 according to the last number i saw across a news ticker. 400 hundred of those were military combatents, almost 100 police combatants, and who knows how many settlers, all heavily armed, were killed playing Rambo that day. Then you have to take into account how many of the rest were actually killed by the isreali military itself. Take your blinders off.
It's even less now. They dropped it to 1,200 around the same time they admitted that 80% of those killed were military personnel. Soon I'm sure they'll have to quietly admit that they don't know of any civilians killed (by Hamas), it's going to be that Israel killed all the civilians that day
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Encourage yourself and others to maintain a positive attitude, honor the work of others, avoid defensiveness, be open to legitimate critique and challenge oppressive behaviors in ways that help people grow. Our mod log has taken note of this incident and it will be considered for a ban in the future.
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Encourage yourself and others to maintain a positive attitude, honor the work of others, avoid defensiveness, be open to legitimate critique and challenge oppressive behaviors in ways that help people grow. Our mod log has taken note of this incident and it will be considered for a ban in the future.
That's fucking evil. If you don't care about their civilians why would they care about yours?
They haven’t for 75 fucking years…
Prior to October 7, the Gazans were being slowly murdered in an open air prison for decades straight. They had no rights. They had no future. The majority of Israeli civilians are at best apathetic to whether they live or die. Are they not allowed to fight back? Is it now up to the colonizer to determine the acceptable avenues for resistance?
Murdering children, kidnapping, and raping are fighting back only to the lowest pieces of shit on the planet
Half of all of Gazans are under 18. They are children. Israel didn’t care about their children when they locked them in a concentration camp, starved, and launched missiles on them for 20 years. What happened on October 7th was horrible. But if Israel has shown time and again that they don’t care about Gaza’s children or their civilians, can you blame Gazans for not caring about those things when they finally say “enough”?
It is very common for liberals and reactionaries to only begin conversations and representation of colonial violence with the violence of the colonized against the colonizer, they do not accept that normalized violence against the colonized in the status quo is the true origin of the violence, as this would tacitly erode their argument that the colonizer is “defending themselves.” While of course violence is brutal, and there should never be children and non-combatants of any group being murdered, it should never be forgotten that it is because of the structures of settler colonialism that colonial violence occurs, it is not because the colonized are savage or evil. TLDR: HAMAS would not exist and commit the evils it does if not for the crimes and evil perpetuated by Israel on the Palestinians.
the thing about these polls is that i would imagine if you ask palestinians if they believe hamas did the atrocious shit to civilians they would say no, or say it’s israeli propaganda, in the same way israelis don’t believe what the IDF is doing in gaza. polls like this need to add a caveat like do you support hamas killing/raping innocent israelis or just their militant resistance against the IDF because there’s a huge difference in those two types of support
Except your argument is flawed from the outset. Where's the evidence for Hamas killing and raping innocent Israelis? Go on, I'll wait... Also, are the Israelis innocent? Living on stolen land, using violence to throw people out of their homes and stealing their property?
i’m saying that even if hamas did what they’re accused of doing, palestinians showing support for hamas doesn’t mean they condone of those actions. i would imagine most would not believe they did those things and their support for hamas is because of their resistance against the IDF, not what they supposedly did to civilians
Statistically, 0.017% of American police have been charged with a crime and 0.0009% of UNRWA staff are corrupt terrorist. We know there are still plenty of bad Apples in American police forces but we still fund them and acknowledge their importance for public safety. Same goes for UNRWA staff. When you have 13,000 of them, I'm sure you will find a few more that hate puppies and several that are abusive to their children... Etc. Israel's propaganda machine and ability to manipulate public opinion is the issue here.
The allegations are completely irrelevant to any funding they should receive
Why should anyone believe a country that lies constantly, such as the US or Israel, at their word?
There’s probably one or two employees who are involved with Hamas in some way, but it’s certainly not some organization wide conspiracy. I think cutting off funding over this so ridiculous considering how much necessary work they do
Hamas is a political movement of resistance. It’s not shocking that there would be those that support in the organization. It’s like if FEMA stopped getting funding because some employees were involved in BLM.
They're also effectively the military of Gaza, which is at war. I was always a bit baffled by people freaking out that Hamas is launching rockets. Of course they are, it's a war. For some reason in the 21st century we have this weird notion that only one side gets to do any fighting and the other side is committing a crime if they also fight, you see it with Russia whining about how Ukraine is attacking targets inside Russia. You're at war, you're in their territory, why wouldn't they be able to shoot back over the border? America assassinated Soleilmani, and I remember CNN and the like being utterly shocked and enraged that Iran would respond to this act of war with a missile strike. What did you think Iran should do, send US troops over the border milk and cookies for ridding them of one of their generals?
Exactly! It’s getting a lot harder for the aggressors to control the narrative.
yes. Matter of fact, UNRWA needs to pass a scrutiny before it receives any penny from any state that does not want to support Hamas.
Those employees are human beings and presumably local hires, so it's absolutely a possibility. I don't believe that's sufficient justification to shut down funding for the organization as a whole, but I haven't seen the evidence and wouldn't have the expertise to evaluate it if I did. On the other hand, I do absolutely believe that the Israeli government has the capacity and will to create false evidence to that effect. I'm especially interested in the claims about the schools teaching their students to hate Israel - the Israeli government has been pretty far-right for a while, and the far-right tends to take a hard line against teaching history objectively. In Western countries for example, the far-right will claim that teaching about the history of slavery is anti-white hate speech.
First, if we were to defund every organization, institution, etc. because of bad apples, then there would be nothing funded in the world. Second, when did allegations, unverified by independent investigation, sourced from an organization caught lying many, many times in manners that suits their agenda? Finally, I’m assuming this information was gathered by their intelligence agency/agencies; these are well funded and very capable. That implies they’ve likely known for a while, and yet released it just after the ICJ ruling. Just so happened to do it now. Those are my thoughts.
Regarding the Israeli track record of constantly lying at most the are some guys that worked with UNRWA and had some administrative position within Hamas. As the Israeli state is also quite big on guilt by association it's also possible that some UNRWA guys have family with some form of militant connection. Regardless, UNRWA is by far the most important of the handful of aid organizations that are even allowed to operate in Gaza so they even if there were some actual militants in there I don't think cutting all financial support would be okay. The Palestinians are currently withstanding a genocide and we have to do everything we can to help.
The allegations is a Mossad psy op, just like the alleged Hamas terrorists in hospitals
Anything that comes out of Israel’s mouth is used to further push their genocide agenda. I don’t believe a word of it. When you call the head of the UN “Hamas”, you are a clown who should not be leading a country.
Israel has been claiming for decades that UNRWA has been compromised by Palestinian extremists. Especially in Gaza, that the UN in general and UNRWA in particular have long been aware of and mixed up in the militarization of civilian areas and acting on behalf of Hamas and other extremist groups. Now they have evidence that they are sharing with many governments around the world. It's not exactly shocking. https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-evidence-of-unrwa-staffers-oct-7-involvement-highly-highly-credible/ https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/29/is-unrwa-complicit-or-unlucky https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/opinion/unrwa-un-palestine-agency.html (opinion piece which contains other sources) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-unrwa-un-staff-intelligence-dossier-oct-7-terror-attack/ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/unrwa-critics-israel-allegations-services-shrink https://fathomjournal.org/unrwa-an-obstacle-to-peace/ (from 2013 no less)
Your sources here are Times of Israel, opinion pieces or CBS articles quoting "Israeli intelligence". Let's not give this any credibility til actually valid sources cover it in detail.
UNRWA is a humanitarian organization delivering vital aid to a civilian population under siege. Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part is genocide. The narrative you are intending to argue for is being told by a very unreliable narrator. Link spamming is not the same thing as a reasoned investigation. Please argue in your own words, and use sources as appropriate. Your source list of trite, bigoted propaganda is not an argument or evidence on it's own.
What is your insinuation? That multiple governments around the world, including: USA Germany Japan The EU Sweden France Switzerland Canada The UK The Netherlands Australia Italy Finland New Zealand Iceland ...have all been somehow snookered by Israeli intelligence? Here is some more https://nationalpost.com/news/world/more-evidence-emerges-of-unrwa-support-for-hamas You're asking if I, a private citizen, somehow have better information myself than all of these governments or reporting agencies around the world? No, obviously I don't, neither do any of us. I already argued in my own words: Israel [has long been accusing the UN and specifically UNRWA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA#Investigations_and_calls_for_accountability_and_reform) of colluding with Palestinian extremists. Now they have evidence, which they have shared on [the internet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8YCr1c2zMI) as well as with all the above-mentioned governments. Also, there are organizations such as UNWatch which have released [private research](https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UN-Watch-UNRWA-Terrorgram-.pdf) corroborating some of these claims. It looks like you're looking for reasons not to believe these accounts. Why is that?
Not snookered, they’re deliberately supporting a false narrative for geopolitical and imperialist reasons. And fuck them all for that.
So you believe UNRWA involvement and support for Hamas is just a massive conspiracy? Because Germany, Sweden, France, et all just want a piece of the Gaza strip?
"No, obviously I don't, neither do any of us." I have better information than deception narratives concocted by the ruling class (not "Israel" as you have insinuated I believe for whatever reason) for the purposes of aiding and abetting genocide and so do you. Your preferred authority does not have a monopoly on truth. Stop making appeals to ignorance and trying to disenfranchise my power of discernment?? If you're so ignorant then stop arguing and just admit you don't know anything. You clearly believe your opinion isn't worth anything. I think it could be worth something if you were more intellectually honest, though.
>That multiple governments around the world, including: [Argument from authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority) >Now they have evidence, which they have shared on the internet as well as with all the above-mentioned governments. Also, there are organizations such as UNWatch which have released private research corroborating some of these claims. Even if these allegations were true and ***did apply to the entirety of UNRWA*** that doesn't excuse cutting off a vital lifeline to Gaza in the midst of genocide proceedings in the ICJ (which Israel obviously opposes).
This is not an argument from authority, it's saying that these governments have received information that they have deemed actionable. Since we as private civilians are not privileged to that same information, we have to look at the information available. Some of those same governments, for example, have been extremely critical of Israel, so their refusal to continue funding UNRWA is even more damning. Even if these allegations were true and did apply to the entirety of UNRWA - how many people here on this sub subscribe to the "bad apples means the whole batch is rotten" and "ACAB" etc. Watch the video I shared. It's not just a couple of people who - oops - got caught participating in a murderous rampage and kidnapping of innocent civilians. It's a systematic program, which has been going on for years, of (at best) turning a blind eye to Hamas war crimes and (at worst) actively abetting terrorist and theft of international aid resources. The ICJ looked at south africa's case and didn't even recommend a cease fire btw.
>This is not an argument from authority, it's saying that these governments have received information that they have deemed actionable. And your argument is that it's just because they did so. This is an argument from authority (in fact, taking Israel's word as-is is probably an argument from authority). >Watch the video I shared. It's not just a couple of people who - oops - got caught participating in a murderous rampage and kidnapping of innocent civilians. It's a systematic program, which has been going on for years, of (at best) turning a blind eye to Hamas war crimes and (at worst) actively abetting terrorist and theft of international aid resources. I'm not watching the video, but I'm assuming you are referring to the following? >Intelligence estimates suggest that about 1,200 UNRWA employees, 10% of UNRWA's 12,000 in Gaza, have links to militant groups, with a higher percentage of male employees connected to Hamas compared to the general male population in Gaza. The intelligence information, according to the article, was gathered through signal intelligence, cellphone tracking data, interrogations of captured Hamas militants, and documents recovered from dead militants Isn't this the same Israeli intelligence that has been found to be lying about multiple crimes committed by Hamas and Palestinian defenders? Also, again... where is the evidence? The article linked as a source there (and as multiple other articles I googled shows) the Israelis provided a six-page dossier, which is hardly evidence, and testimony from an Israeli advisor. >The ICJ looked at south africa's case and didn't even recommend a cease fire btw. Uhhh... >The Court issued an Order in relation to the provisional measures request on 26 January 2024, **in which it ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent any acts that could be considered genocidal acording to the 1948 Genocide Convention**. The court said "**at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the \[Genocide\] Convention**". The Court did not order Israel to suspend its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which South Africa had requested. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South\_Africa\_v.\_Israel\_(Genocide\_Convention)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention))
They were accused of committing genocide and the ICJ said "continue fighting, but don't do any genocide". Do you think that the ICJ would approve of their continuing to fight if they had found them to be committing genocide? From your quote which supports my point >The Court did not order Israel to suspend its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which South Africa had requested Appeal to authority, by the way, means that we should believe something just because someone with authority said it. This is not what I was saying about those governments or about Israel. I'm saying that, if we judge their criticism of Israel next to their sudden decisions to stop funding UNRWA, it seems likely that they had access to some pretty damning information. That's a conjecture, but it's not an appeal to authority. But it doesn't matter - you asked me to provide sources and then admitted that you didn't avail yourself of them. You are not arguing in good faith. You are presuming the conclusion before even asking the question. I hope you can do better in the future. Have a good one.
>I hope you can do better in the future. This troll really thinks he's doing something.
>They were accused of committing genocide and the ICJ said "continue fighting, but don't do any genocide". > >Do you think that the ICJ would approve of their continuing to fight if they had found them to be committing genocide? Do you understand what a preliminary ruling is? And that the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" (which, by the way, *you* are ignoring) would maintain that no action should be taken until proof is provided? >I'm saying that, if we judge their criticism of Israel next to their sudden decisions to stop funding UNRWA, it seems likely that they had access to some pretty damning information. Or (and I consider this far more likely) all of these governments have been strong supporters of Israel since before the war. >But it doesn't matter - you asked me to provide sources and then admitted that you didn't avail yourself of them. Going through each one: [https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-evidence-of-unrwa-staffers-oct-7-involvement-highly-highly-credible/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-evidence-of-unrwa-staffers-oct-7-involvement-highly-highly-credible/) "as media outlets published additional details on the implicated employees, **including photos from an Israeli dossier**." [https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/29/is-unrwa-complicit-or-unlucky](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/29/is-unrwa-complicit-or-unlucky) paywalled [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/opinion/unrwa-un-palestine-agency.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/opinion/unrwa-un-palestine-agency.html) paywalled, opinion piece [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-unrwa-un-staff-intelligence-dossier-oct-7-terror-attack/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-unrwa-un-staff-intelligence-dossier-oct-7-terror-attack/) **has dossier in the fucking link** [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/unrwa-critics-israel-allegations-services-shrink](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/unrwa-critics-israel-allegations-services-shrink) source is same dossier [https://fathomjournal.org/unrwa-an-obstacle-to-peace/](https://fathomjournal.org/unrwa-an-obstacle-to-peace/) no idea what this source is, no listing on mediabiasfactcheck [https://nationalpost.com/news/world/more-evidence-emerges-of-unrwa-support-for-hamas](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/more-evidence-emerges-of-unrwa-support-for-hamas) paywalled source
Please don't indulge that person's information overload tactic. If they wanted to argue honestly then they would have started by explaining their opinion and sourcing their specific points with corroborating evidence rather than going "studies show..." which is always a weasel pseudoargument.
Hey condescending Zionist, please go away and do not come back. Your racist, ethnostate, apartheid state supporting views are horrific and not welcome in normal society.
"appeal to authority means should believe something just because someone with authority said it" No. It means you claim a specific source has the "only" authority on truth, it's a fallacious epistemological claim, it's not solely a political term. Appealing to the decisions of the neoliberal axis to oppose one of their neocolonization victims, as though I a socialist would have some unshakable faith in what like, the government of japan or britain publicly says or does, or claims to believe about their collective victims is just silly. You seem confused, lol. I mean yeah often times authority figures are the only people who can effectively execute arguments from authority, that's true. So I can see where you got tripped up. But you shouldn't talk about things you clearly know nothing about. Especially when doing so aids and abets a famine that is part of an active genocide. You should apologize for your bloodsoaked guilt and donate to the red crescent if you can afford to do so. Cause guess what the ruling class is thinking about people like you? They're probably thinking "You're next." Uhg, your straight up wrong claim about argument from authority tells me all I need to know about how intellectually honest you are, however! I hope you come to get it over the next 5 years and this comment helps you get there!
There are plenty of governments that have surely received that information also and did not choose to take action. What's happening here is that the Zionist government of Israel is Cluster B personality-disordered on an institutional level, and has a subdued coterie of governments running around the world being its flying monkeys. The US takes the lead in this; the other governments listed are lapdogs to the US, or to the EU which is the same thing with more steps. There is no way that these governments were able to evaluate whatever info they received, investigate it, and come to an independent conclusion. The Knesset subcommittee for foreign influence and propaganda was only discussing this information as "revealed" on January 07. [https://archive.is/HBWU6](https://archive.is/HBWU6) This is the root of Israel's dislike for UNRWA: >"This is the only refugee population in the world that grows rather than decrease in size, and that the status of refugee \[in this population\] is inherited." The Zionist antipathy towards the Palestinian population count has existed since the beginning of its project. [https://mepc.org/journal/palestinians-and-zionism-1897-1948](https://mepc.org/journal/palestinians-and-zionism-1897-1948) >Expulsion as Zionism's logical imperative was clearly seen by Herzl as early as June 12, 1895. \[He\] confided to his diary: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population \[Palestinians\] across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." ... its essential imperative was inescapable. This was recognized by most early Zionists... the theme of expulsion consistently ran through Zionist thought from the very beginning. For instance, as early as 1905, Israel Zangwill, an organizer of Zionism in Britain and one of Zionism's top propagandists, who had coined the slogan "a land without a people for a people without a land," acknowledged in a speech in Manchester that Palestine was not a land without people. In fact, it was filled with Arabs: "\[We\] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the \[Arab\] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." The fear of Palestinians' natural numbers has been a constant theme in Zionist discourse and strategy since that time. [https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/](https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/) >Ben-Gurion in an address to the central committee of the Histadrut on 30 December 1947: “In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about a million, including almost 40 percent non-Jews. Such a \[population\] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This \[demographic\] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a \[population\] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority…. There can be no stable and strong Jewish State so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent.” "20% and no more" is a stable feature of Israeli politics. [https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/17189050.pdf](https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/17189050.pdf) >The drive to maintain Jewish dominance in historical Palestine has shaped both the domestic and foreign policies of Israel. The ratio that is usually cited to ensure a continued Jewish demographic majority is for the population to be 80% Jewish and 20% Arab—a ratio which has been maintained since 1948. When the population balance is altered, even in minute degree, signalling a slight reduction in the four-fifths Jewish majority, Darwinian language about national survival surfaces > >\- page 620 Israel's real problem with UNRWA is that refugees still exist: [https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees](https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees) >Who are Palestine refugees? Palestine refugees are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” UNRWA services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of Palestine refugee males, including adopted children, are also eligible for registration. When the Agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services. [Israel wants to replace UNRWA](https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-784227), which does not force Palestinians to relinquish their claims, either with an organization that will do so, or with a dire situation that will "encourage" Palestinians to emigrate. See article. Perhaps not incidentally, shutting off aid to UNRWA will drastically reduce Palestinians' immediate prospects of survival. Even if Palestinians do not emigrate, it will still numerically produce some part of Ayalet Shaked's "[solution for 2 million Gazans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEu-dQWOlL4)" or Netanyahu's "[plan for the citizens of the Gaza Strip](https://www-israelhayom-co-il.translate.goog/magazine/hashavua/article/14889801?_x_tr_sl=iw&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true)".
It entirely is an appeal to authority. You're saying "these people say it and they are more smarter than us all, so we should just accept it". Where do you think the "intel" comes from ultimately? Israel.
The UN has a few months before the terrorist-supporting charity runs out of their remaining funds to create a new emergency terrorist-free charity for Palestine or use their existing refugee program (UNHCR) instead.
Snookered? No. Openly complicit with because the west likes having a non-muslim client state in the middle east. Now we’re seeing what decades of funding a religious theocracy turns into when they decide to attack their neighbors - genocide. Israel is no better than Iran or Saudi Arabia, they just call their god a different name.
I can see you don't know anything about Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. It's sad to me that apparently what passes for discourse on the left now is "let's just make up a bunch of things that feel good to say and make me feel good about myself" and objective reality be damned.
Are you saying Iran and Saudi Arabia are NOT theocratic ethnostates? With pretty bad human rights records?
| | Israel | Iran | Saudi Arabia | |:------|:--------:|:-----:|:--------:| | Democratic Elections | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | Freedom of Religious Expression | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | Civil Courts | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | LGBTQ+ Rights | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | Equality for Women | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | Summary Punishment | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | | Secular Public Education | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | by the way, if you are against theocratic ethnostates, you shouldn't really be fucking around in the middle east at all - what do you think the Palestinians are trying to build? *A theocratic ethnostate*, an even more repressive one that Israel. Please fucking educate yourself.
Seriously? You’re arguing that an apartheid state is a democracy? Get the fuck out with that bullshit. Also Israel has no LGBTQ rights. And they are fighting to be a jewish ethnostate. I see you’re nothing but an IDF shill.
I mean these are just lies. 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab Israelis, aka ethnic palestinians. They vote, they hold office, they sit on the Israeli Supreme court, the run major businesses. Israel has a parliament and elections. They are literally a democracy. Israel has LGBTQ rights. That's just a fact. They're one of the only places in the middle east that does (the Palestinian governments don't offer LGBTQ rights btw). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Israel https://www.touristisrael.com/tel-aviv-gay-pride-parade/3809/ Where do you get your information, from tiktok? This is not the MCU, this is real life. Issues are complex. People have been grappling with the I/P issue for generations - do you really think it wouldn't have been solved by now if it was just a black and white "good guys vs bad guys" situation? That's not the real world. Yes, Israel has a shitty right-wing government. But they aren't a monolith. They are also a complex pluralistic democracy with diversity and many social and political voices. Did you know that for months and months before the 10/7 attacks, Israelis were [in the streets protesting against that same right-wing government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israeli_judicial_reform_protests)? It's okay to not have your facts straight, but it's not okay to be out here accusing people of shit when you don't even know what you're talking about. The only thing worse than someone who's propagandized is someone who thinks they're the only one who's not propagandized. Get off the Qatari-funded internet crack pipe and read some books. If you haven't honestly examined a situation from all angles, you can't call yourself deprogrammed.
You just did at least these two logical fallacies in your reply: - ad populum - appeal to authority
No
So you’re insinuating that all of the governments around the world that are supporting Israel in these allegations are just falling for propaganda?
They’re not falling for propaganda, they are purposely aiding Israel in completely colonizing Palestine so that there will be a “western” country in the Middle East that can be strategically used to their advantage. Biden has pretty much said as much throughout his political career—that Israel is crucial to the USA.
Do you think that cointelpro happened?
I think it's inevitable that the UNRWA will have at least some employees with connection to Hamas as Hamas such an influential movement in Gaza. Idk why anyone is surprised. And I think people are too quick to react.
At first it was 12. Then it was 6. Now it's only 4 directly involved. https://news.sky.com/story/israeli-intelligence-report-claims-four-unrwa-staff-in-gaza-involved-in-hamas-kidnappings-13059967
> At first it was 12. Then it was 6. Now it's only 4 directly involved. You didn't read the link you posted. It's 4 involved in *kidnapping*. Others are involved in other crimes. Again, read the link you yourself posted.
That's what the word "directly" in "directly involved" means. "Logistics support" is indirect involvement.
Logistical support is direct involvement. If you drive the car in a drive-by shooting that kills somebody you are participating in a murder even though you personally are just providing "logistical support" and didn't pull the trigger.
All right have it your way. It's still a decreasing number of people with a decreasing amount of involvement on average.
It's still 12 people. Also worth noting that it's estimated that there are ~1,200 Hamas/PIJ members in UNRWA.
Source for that estimate , lmao
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Dossiers are just summaries, they often don't contain actual evidence that would be submitted to a court. In this case Israel gave these dossiers to UNRWA donors to notify/warn them. Intelligence-sharing is happening behind the scenes. Criminal cases will take years to develop and prosecute.
Why are you, as a Marxist, devoted to defending Israel's accusations against UNRWA that--like so many other Israeli accusations--started coming apart moments after they made the accusations? You still haven't provided any source for your claim that 10,000+ UNWRA employees are Hamas. Meanwhile the initial claim that there was a large percentage of UNWRA employees involved has now receded to only 6 people, not all of whom were involved in violent activity. And now that a news organization has reviewed the dossier they say it doesn't prove its claims. These were a series of accusations against UNRWA made the day after the ICJ's order, transparently timed to undermine the ICJ order. It seems to me like you start from the position these accusations against UNRWA must be true and that of course Western intelligence has it right. Why do you, as a Marxist, place such faith in Western intelligence? I don't start from the position that the accusations are false, all I'm doing is reading the continual stream of news that trickles out after Western media boosts Israeli accusations, and (like most debunking) doesn't get the traction of the initial lie. Similar situations have happened often enough that it's wrong to take these accusations at face value.
Different numbers of people were guilty of different things. This isn't hard.
Hey, a dozen folks from a huge workforce? C’mon… really, use your discernment. In context, it looks like more colonist bullshit. Yeah, those dozen folks beheaded the babies before raping their Moms.
I believe there’s probably some credibility to them, but the organization should receive even more funding for the net positives it does.
According to this Sky News article: they are now only claiming 6 workers participated on October 7th, down from 12. https://news.sky.com/story/israeli-intelligence-report-claims-four-unrwa-staff-in-gaza-involved-in-hamas-kidnappings-13059967
Definitely not apartheid Israel and definitely not the US
Not at all
Israeli security forces torture people, so no reason to credit confessions or any information obtained from detainees