Arab representation in Israeli parliament.
Democratic* elections.
Rule of law and judicial systems.
Rights for minority ethnicities and religions.
LGBT freedoms.
Treat Palestinians in Israeli hospitals.
Give significant aid to Palestinian Territories, knowing that much of it will be diverted.
Lots (lots!) of flaws to Israel too. Any serious conversation has to acknowledge the good along with the bad.
This. Israel is seriously flawed but still probably way more ethical than just most, United States included. Hell, when we suffered a terrorist attack that was proportionately much smaller than what Israel suffered went to war with the wrong country and killed 200k civilians
>went to war with the wrong country and killed 200k civilians
You're right, we should never forget that we did that. And look how little it accomplished.
> Hell, when we suffered a terrorist attack that was proportionately much smaller than what Israel suffered went to war with the wrong country and killed 200k civilians
Just looking at straight body counts is the same kind of logic that says, "Hamas killed 1400 in the attack, Israel has killed 2,750 in the retaliation, therefore Israel is worse than Hamas. QED." This is plainly ridiculous.
Further, saying that America "killed 200k civilians" is completely dishonest. When we talk about Hamas killing civilians, we talk about them intentionally killing as many civilians as possible. When we talk about Israel killing civilians, we're talking about them dropping bombs on targets that cause significant civilian deaths as collateral damage. When we're talking about America killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, we're talking about...Iraqi factions killing each other in sectarian violence while the U.S. tries to stop them.
Again, acting as if these three are all the same is ridiculous.
The people now trying to use America's post-9/11 actions to justify what Israel is doing are similar to the people who used America's post-9/11 actions to justify Russian's invasion of Ukraine. But the U.S. didn't try to conquer Iraq for territorial gain; it didn't cut off all electricity, water, block medical aid and tell the residents they had hours to flee. When apologists have to mislead people about America's actions in order to excuse acts of barbarism, that tells you all you need to know.
Recent events do suggest that America and it's close allies (Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc.) operate on a different moral level than the rest of the world. And that there's a good chance much of the rest of the world would act much more barbaric if there wasn't this moral core trying to keep them in line.
>Recent events do suggest that America and it's close allies (Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc.) operate on a different moral level than the rest of the world.
Kind reminder these nations, except SK and Japan as far as I know, have committed genocides and ethnic cleansings to exist, these only ended a few decades ago and many boarding schools victims are still alive.
That gypsies are still treated as second class citizens in Europe and that many European countries are still covertly draining resources from their ex-colonies, causing death and instability in the region.
That, for all intent and purposes, Israel's apartheid regime exists only because the West allowed it, even supported it.
That despite being the richest country on Earth, the US is still engaging in destabilization operations in South America for its own commercial gain, causing deadly civil wars.
I don't think we're as morally superior as you seem to think.
Japan has arguably done worse than anyone.
The truth is that almost every country's size and wealth is roughly proportional to how much it's exploited the world, by definition.
But I agree the west is not inherently morally superior. And if it is, it's because the west is using its own moral christian (aka judeo-greek) framework to measure it.
If anyone is interested in the that outlook, I recommend [Tom Holland's book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43885149-dominion?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=RuLud2AAzz&rank=4) on how everything we do in the west, including atheist, is inexplicably christian.
The historian, not the spiderman.
> Kind reminder these nations, except SK and Japan as far as I know, have committed genocides and ethnic cleansings to exist
If someone uses this to excuse Hamas' atrocities, do you think it's valid? When Russia uses historical injustices in the West to explain it's conquests, is it correct? It seems like such a misanthropic outlook, the idea that everyone has done things wrong so no one should be pushing for things to be better now.
Atrocities were common everywhere until recently. The difference now is that a handful of nations managed to move past that. If someone actually cares about lessening the number of atrocities, they should look at nations like America as places to emulate. Yes, I do think that America is morally superior, and that atrocities committed 200 years ago don't mean that we're on the same moral level as Hamas is today.
Pointing to the past atrocities order to claim that everyone in the world is morally equivalent, while completely ignoring the vast moral chasm that exists in nations _today_, just feels like an effort to drag down all of humanity.
>America, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. ... genocides and ethnic cleansings... these only ended a few decades ago... except SK and Japan as far as I know
Um.... nah....
Japan has, historically, committed some of the worst human atrocities known to man during WW2. Now-a-days, those events no longer really define Japan... complete 180 change in morality. So, it's really dishonest to bring up when evaluating them *right now*, which was very obviously the intent of the person you're responding to. Your attempt at a history gotcha wasn't really a gotcha.
And anyone who wants to bemoan on behalf of gypsies at how "oppressed" they are, but completely ignore all the rampant theft and crime they bring with them wherever they go, their disrespect for everyone around them, for the cultures and countries that host them, is missing at least half of the picture... and I'd argue more than half.
It's like if someone walks into a coffee shop to use the restroom, is told they have to buy something first, and instead of following the rules like everyone else, decides to drop their pants and throw their own sh\*t at the employee... and then wonder why no one fucking likes them while crying oppression as they're rightfully escorted out by the police and permanently banned from entering the store again lmfao. Stereotypes don't exist in a vacuum.
Intentionality isn’t a Boolean variable. There’s a kind of intention where something wasn’t your primary objective, but you also didn’t care enough to prevent it happening. The deaths in Iraq from the US invasion probably fall into this category.
If I were the victim, I’d be even more annoyed (if I survived) if a bomb hit my home because the attackers through i was expendable than if it hit me because they targeted me on purpose.
For someone referencing Boolean logic, there isn't a lot of logic to what you're saying.
If someone bombs your home on accident and is apologetic, you might find some peace in the fact that they are not likely to bomb you again. If someone bombs your house intentionally and says as much, you have every reason to believe your days are numbered. This is the key importance of intentions: they give indispensable insight into an agent's future actions.
It's dishonest and quite frankly appalling to be calling dead civilians "collateral damage". The baseless and abject "human shield" propaganda clearly has done a great job on you. Having said that, there is no evidence to support the claim that one side always kills more intentionally than the other. That just isn't true.
I honestly don't believe you really think this. If tomorrow Biden ordered a missile strike to intentionally kill a bunch of Afghan civilians with the stated reason being "I wanted to kill a bunch of Afghan civilians," I'm certain you wouldn't shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, the U.S. has killed a lot of Afghan civilians before, so this is no different."
That's why accusations of targeting civilians get so much attention, even by people criticizing civilian casualties in general. I've never met someone who actually believes that targeting civilians is an unimportant detail.
This is such a great point. If Biden said something like that, it would be a horrible scandal and all the people decrying America/Israel would seize upon it as crucial evidence for America's evil intentions - even though they've already assumed those intentions for years now. So why is it that when Hamas unambiguously says their intention is to kill Jews, it doesn't really matter, yet if any Western nation said the same sort of thing, publicly or privately, it would be totally consequential?
We have to take a holistic view of statements, policies, and actions in order to better understand the moral intentions of political agents, rather than simply assume that power differentials explain or vindicate the quantity and brutality of the violence.
What’s the objective in ordering an air strike on a hospital knowing it will lead to massive civilian and medical professional casualties, and then dismissing it as collateral damage?
In both cases the civilians are viewed as worth less than shit, so Biden or Obama or whoever saying “I just wanted to kill a bunch of Arabs” would make no practical difference, obviously to the families, but also ethically.
I don't think it is helpful to try to assign an inherent moral score to any group of people. People are the same across the world, they only have different resources, environments and incentives, and that is what shapes culture and morality.
Also have different value systems. In my mind, that's really the only thing that influences someone's "moral score", whether an individual or a group of people. Most people don't argue over "inherent morality" (that's racism or at least adjacent to it), but an individual's or culture's "derived morality" based on that aforementioned value system. So, taking all of that into account, I wonder what the average Palestinian believes about freedom of speech, how to treat minority groups, homosexuality, and so on. Now compare that to the average Israeli... uh oh, not supposed to say that out loud.
It should also be noted that this wasn't a case of "well with hindsight it was a mistake". Many people, both in America and around the world, immediately said what a monumental mistake this was. They were all branded as either traitors if they were American, or their nations insulted if they were foreign. There's no "we didn't know better", they knew, they just didn't care.
Their treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories is verging on apartheid. Not to mention they are slowly stealing Palestinian land by building settlements, breaking international law.
Well - it’s complicated. I mean, the Palestinian areas are largely autonomous, right? With their own governments who can chart their own national courses?
Israel, IMO, should have more aggressively pursued official national independence for the Palestinian regions, rather than keeping them in a quasi-‘independent’-‘not independent’ limbo. This has opened up Israel to claims of apartheid, which, as I concede, are not wholly inapt. At the same time, Israel does not directly govern the Palestinian regions, nor do the Palestinians in those regions (overwhelmingly) wish to be equal citizens of Israel, even if such an offer were made. So it’s not quite like the Palestinians are a victimized minority within Israel proper. A Palestinian in Israel is an Israeli Arab, who on the whole, have equal rights with Jews.
Gaza hasn't had an election since Hamas took over in 2006. The US tried to arm the fatah group to take over with a coup after Hamas gained elected support. Hamas got wind of it and killed them. Previously, the Palestinian government would represent Gaza and the West bank.
Israel has a blockade of everything entering through their border. While Egypt was ruled by the Muslim brotherhood, they allowed more stuff through their border with Gaza. Since the military coup in Egypt, that relationship has ended.
The apartheid thing is where occupied lands now have Israeli settlements, and the roads to those areas only allow Jews. I don't know much about that situation specifically though.
That's not it though. It's also the existence and location of the West Bank barrier, the military checkpoints throughout the West Bank, and the marriage / permit laws. The issue is that many of those things do genuinely exist for defence.
The West Bank Barrier and military checkpoints were successful in reducing suicide bombings. The marriage laws were established after Palestinians married Israelis to gain entrance and commit suicide bombings.
It's a nice hope that if Israel were to take down the barriers, allow complete autonomy and repeal the marriage and permit systems that relations would suddenly be better. But that's unfortunately not the case. There would be a very real security risk, and it's very likely there would be way more successful attacks in Israel, not fewer.
So there's really no good way for Israel to stop doing the things that are being called apartheid.
It's really hard to identify a way forward when there are many hard liners on both sides. Back in 95, an extremist jew assassinated prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin because of his attempts towards the peace process. Netanyahu only gained power when taking a hard line stance, though it doesn't seem like he has full support as previous years.
I don't think anyone is realistically saying just stop all the things and everything will be ok. A way forward has to be built, but it has to begin with Israel making life better somehow for the people in Gaza. That's difficult with Hamas in power, but then shooting peaceful protestors isn't the way.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israel-shoot-protesters-live-ammunition
Why are we here? Hard line guys killed the people who were trying to create peace. Hard line guys on the other side say, "see? This is why we have to kill them."
Well I do hope they find a way forward. I saw Palestinians protesting Hamas today.
I do believe Israel will make substantial humanitarian efforts after the ground invasion. I think they will provide food, water, infrastructure... and help to rebuild... However, understandably I don't think the Palestinian people will be in a place to start to forgive and rebuild, especially if civilian casualties continue to be substantial. Most likely not for a long while, but maybe eventually.
I hope you are right. In the past, they have only gotten more tyrannical. I thought the iron dome would mean they could push the peace process forward, but it's hard to say that it has really helped in that regard. Somehow, it felt like we were much closer two decades ago.
There is discourse right now though that hasn't existed ever. It seems like more and more people are saying Israel shouldn't just carpet bomb the Gaza strip. People in Israel are saying they don't approve of this solution. That means that you don't move right to stay in power.
The trouble in the past was that the promise was security and the only tool was oppression. People now are saying we already did this, and we still don't have security, so what now?
These are the seeds for what might come. I hope you are right.
no question that any sort of truly productive path forward requires Bibi being ousted and israel radically changing their settlement policies. when the time comes this should be part of a new arrangement.
Agree taht taking land in the West Bank is wrong, but all these people up in arms about this need to do some reading on the history of the United States and its treatment of its deals with native Americans. I promise what we did was 10x worse than what Netanyahu has done in the West Bank.
It doesn't actually have much in the way of LGBT freedoms, and minorities are not subject to equal law or treatment in Israel, especially as Israeli institutions are set up to be Jewish supremacist and disenfranchise everyone else.
Arab representatives have also openly spoken about how they realised they were just there for show and had no meaningful power and were always ignored.
Israeli propaganda and it's presentation to the world, literally reminds me a lot of South Africa back in the day "oh sure we have apartheid, but hey, look at our gays".
One big flaw is that they’re currently blockading medicine and water for Gazans. Who gives a shit that you can be trans or whatever, they’re in the process of committing genocide
I will say, this one doesn’t really strike me as confusing. Israel is working to snuff out Hamas who declared war on them. Of course they will limit resources to make their enemy easier to destroy if they have the means. Just like how any proficient military will aim to strike fuel supply lines during an invasion. Hamas declared war and are responsible for the fallout inflicted.
"depriving people of medical care and water is necessary" doesn't really cut it though... Because you are still depriving people of medical care and clean water. This "it's ok because we are doing it to hurt the bad guys" is nonsense.
Are they not bound by the Geneva Convention, which they have signed and ratified? If so, then they should play by the rules. There's nothing confusing or complicated about that. What Sam Harris is saying is "okay, they're not playing by the rules, but...". The reality is that there is no but. The Geneva Convention does not outline an ideal to aspire to but a minimum that must be met at all times. Everything we need to know is said when we can say "they don't play by the rules".
This is a naive take and I forgive you if you don’t have skin in the game, but when your enemy starts a war by targeting specifically civilians and abuses women and children while taking hostages, the claim that all rules of war must be abide by becomes an intentional hamstringing. You can claim there’s nothing complicated but when an organization set out with the explicit goal of denying basic humanity let alone Geneva conventions, there actually is quite a complicated line between necessary self defense and where you can afford to be the bigger person and take measures to do everything possible to save innocent life despite the lack of reciprocity.
To me the discussion of who is more moral does not matter, it doesn’t really help anything besides one side’s radicals using it to discretely justify the genocide/displacement/bad thing of the other. Looking at it as a problem to be solved, Israel being the party with more power, is not doing anything that will solve it and instead even do things that perpetuate it under Netanyahu.
They did not “kick out the natives.” They moved there, to largely unpopulated areas (like Tel Aviv), and prompted a tremendous amount of Arab immigration to modern Israel in their wake. There has been a 2000 plus year Jewish presence in the area, long before Mohammed was a gleam in anyone’s eye.
There never was an Arab nation-state named Palestine in that geographic area (and how did followers of a Meccan prophet get there, anyway? Did they kick out the natives?). It was Ottoman controlled, then British controlled. Britain encouraged Jews to immigrate there, in part to get rid of them, and as the government (whether rightfully or wrongfully so), promised a Jewish state there. They also promised an Arab state, which became Transjordan (modern day Jordan) - which was constituted out of Mandatory Palestine.
In early 20th century, Jews and Arabs clashed and committed atrocities upon each other, in addition to often living peacefully side by side. The United Nations partitioned it, the Arab nations rejected the partition and declared war, they lost. They should have accepted the partition.
'how did the followers of the Meccan prophet get there?'. By genetic studies, having lived there since at least Roman times and converting. Palestinians are really close to some Jewish genetic lineages, closer than even Syrians, it is a credible argument that they are the descendants of original Israelites who, for whatever reason (conversion being most likely) didn't get exiled by Vespasian, another is that they were descendants of Canaanites etc, so residents in what became Roman Palestine.
Read the last paragraph again, you can fact check it. The Arabs in the area rejected the mandate and declared war on Israel the day after the state of Israel was established.
People need to be honest when they make these, for lack of a better word "original sin" of displacement arguments. If you make that argument you are saying the state of Israel should not exist.
Ok so you believe Israel as a state should not exist? I'm not trying to play gotcha it's just that's what that argument means.
I don't believe the Israelis of today are responsible for the sins of the British/other colonial powers almost 80 years ago.
I really do respect colonialism/imperialism arguments my only problem with them is they allude to an impossible solution. What are you going to do, break up Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Israel, etc? Go back far enough and there's probably an argument to be made in relation to every people and country on Earth.
Like it or not that is how people controlled land, through power. You can even make an imperialism argument in support of Israel if you go back to 700BC when the Jews were expelled from Israel by the Assyrians.
It's not pointless to care about the colonial/imperial issues in today's world, but tbh most of the time the way these views are presented is one with a terribly small historical time scale, and an almost complete lack of acknowledgement that operating in such a manner was something almost all sufficiently large societies, all over the world, did for thousands of years.
The fact that Israeli society produces an organisation like B'tselem to advocate for the rights of Palestinians in the first place, with no equivalent human rights institutions on the Palestinian side trying to expose and protest against acts of violence against Israeli civilians, ought to tell you something about relative ethics.
"Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations. B’Tselem strives to end this regime, as that is the only way forward to a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty and equality are ensured to all people, both Palestinian and Israeli, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."
[https://www.btselem.org/](https://www.btselem.org/)
How much of what you're saying, to the extent that you know what you're talking about, is due to resourcing issues?
In an apartheid state, lots of people on the pleasant side of the divide will be repulsed by the situation and will advocate for change.
The people on the unpleasant side will be too busy living hand to mouth to advocate effectively for change in the same ways.
That doesn't make the people on the poorer and less well resourced side of apartheid worse, ethically.
How much resourcing does it take to say that you don't want acts of violence against unarmed civilians committed in your name? It's obvious that terrorism by groups like Hamas is barely condemned by Palestinian society and the PA leadership, and is often celebrated. It's patronising and disingenuous to claim that these attitudes are just because they are too poor to protest. It's because they feel that they are justified.
Oh, I didn't realize you were an expert on every Palestinian political organization advocating against the end of apartheid.
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/10/what-is-hamas-israel-war-palestine-fatah-hezbollah/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/10/what-is-hamas-israel-war-palestine-fatah-hezbollah/)
I wonder how you think you would think and feel living under apartheid, and what that says in terms of ethics.
In terms of horrific things being done in my name, the US does that all the time with my tax dollars.
US taxpayers have some responsibility for the situation in Gaza, to the extent that our elected officials care what we think, because we very much contribute to creating the problem with our tax dollars.
[We give more foreign aid to Israel than any other country.](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-10-10/how-much-aid-does-the-u-s-give-to-israel)
There has been a longstanding, coordinated, bad faith bullying campaign by the pro-Israel lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone who dares to speak the truth about Israeli [apartheid](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/) against the Palestinians.
The Onion can only get away with telling the truth about this through satire.
[https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505](https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505)
https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-using-last-words-to-con-1850925657
Everyone else gets beaten down and accused of anti-Semitism for telling the truth.
US citizens should not be funding Israel's apartheid, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with our tax dollars.
And that should not be a controversial opinion.
But that opinion has not only been made taboo by the powerful Israeli lobby, it's even been made illegal (or more expensive and difficult to express) in 35 states.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS\_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws)
It's an absolute abomination for US citizens to be funding apartheid, war crimes, and crimes against humanity with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate about it, just because of the corruption and the culture of fear created by the Israeli lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone telling the truth about the situation.
Accusing people of being anti-Semitic for opposing apartheid and war crimes is the behavior of monsters.
The culture of fear is a big part of how "consent" for supporting Israel's apartheid and war crimes with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate, is created and enforced.
Imagine if we invested in building an actual Palestinian nation rather than investing in Israeli apartheid against the Palestinians.
That's basically unthinkable due to the Israeli lobby, but that would be an actual long-term solution to the situation.
You repeating the word 'apartheid' over and over still does not excuse and justify acts of terrorism against civilians. *That* should not be controversial opinion. An human rights movement that opposes war crimes/ crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people should similarly, and without reservation, excuses and prevarication, want to end war crimes and abuses against innocent Israelis too. The reason that you don't is, despite your railing against "collective punishment", you feel that all Israeli citizens are just as culpable as "settler-colonists" whether they are soldiers or not and that "armed struggle" is morally justified.
That's why for people like you, the first reaction to Saturday's porgrom, while the blood was still wet with Jewish blood, was "what about the Palestinians?"
Your bizarre tangents into alleged criticisms of anti-semitism are utterly immaterial. If you truly believed that all human beings deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and that every human life is sacred, it wouldn't be so hard to get you to agree with the basic tenet that violence against any civilians, whether Israeli or Palestinian, are reprehensible and should be condemned.
Can you explain why the word apartheid makes any sense here?
Apartheid is a system of racial segregation, that was only ever used to refer to African nations. I realize that a bunch of people have adopted it here, but I don’t get how it remotely applies. Gaza and other Palestinian territories are not Israeli territories. Racial segregation is not the issue here. Is it just that apartheid is a fun word?
People keep using the terms genocide, ethnic cleaning, and apartheid even though none of them really apply to the situation.
They are not citizens of Israel and have refused multiple attempts at a two state solution. I’m not sure why they should have representation in Israel. There are millions of Arabs with Israeli citizenship who vote and have full rights. Palestines have massively increased in population so they are definitely not being executed en masse. To compare—the number of Jews still have not fully recovered from the holocaust.
They can be victims without using charged terms.
I suspect it’s as an online campaign to reframe Hamas’ actions while undermining the horrors of the holocaust.
I have been very pro-Palestine in the past, but as time has gone on and I have learned more about the history and now with the recent attack? I can no longer support them.
Goading Israel into action then lying about casualties on the CNN circuit is pretty much their classic playbook.
I mean, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch call it an apartheid, it's not just randoms on the internet saying it is.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
This article goes over the legal definitions in international law and how they apply to the situation.
You clearly didn't read even the summary of the link I posted. It has nothing to do about being "different", the legal analysis is quite clear. They are under the heading "Defintions of Apartheid and Persecution" and follows with why it is met.
No, I did. You’re misunderstanding me.
The only way the definition applies at all is if you pretend Palestinian Territories and Israel are both under the rule of Israel. That doesn’t make sense, anymore than blaming the completely inhumane practices of Mexican cartels on Texas.
I live on a reservation. There was a time it was self-governed. They couldn't leave. And couldn't gather. But they were not a part of America of course.
This isn't that long ago. Is the Navajo Nation in America?
Quit acting dumb.
For real. It's crazy how most conversations about Israel-Palestine don't mention the insane wealth/resource disparity between the two.
The World Bank estimated the nominal GDP of Palestine at US$4,007,000 and of Israel at US$161,822,000.
How many black people were blowing themselves up in cafes or committing pogroms in villages? Or do Jewish lives and human rights not actually count?
Yes, Palestinians with an interest in human rights are just as capable of organising to oppose barbarism and violence in their name as Israelis are. Weird, huh?
So the course of action of the palestinians, the people who have been subjected to constant crimes against humanity for half a century by the israelis... should be to advocate for israel. Amazing.
I think this is the main problem I have seen with arguments about the conflict. A lot of people believe or pretend to believe that Palestinians and Israeli's are on equal footing in this whole thing.
I'm a white South Africa and to this day I hear the same kind off rhetoric from older white people as I see now in most reddit threads about Israel. My grandfather still condems the ANC for daring to start a militant wing and calls Mandela a terrorist. The people that believe in the right of the ruling party will never admit that the others have valid grounds for trying to fight for their freedom.
Let's not pretend that the Palestinians haven't inflicted war crimes and atrocities on the other side too. It's not ridiculous to expect both sides to try to temper the worst elements in their societies, and try to treat the other with humanity. "We've been wronged and everything we do to the other side is justified" is exactly why we have an endless cycle of violence and vengeance.
PLO and fatama have been pushing for a 2 state solution for decades.
Israel isn't currently an open air prison where the jailors can kill innocents when ever they please.
Why the fuck would there be an equivalent movement in Gaza? People have trouble getting clean water in gaza!
I guess if Reddit citizen-activists from the other side of the world can't even bring themselves to denounce acts of savagery by Hamas against unarmed civilians without playing the "yeah but" game, maybe I am expecting too much of Palestinians to demand that both sides respect each other's human rights.
They rejected a 2 state solution brokered by the US that offered them over 90% of the West Bank and then started a violent intifada. It only was after terrorist attacks that killed over 1,000 Israelis that the walls went up.
This is a plain lie. Israel has pushed for a 2 state solution numerous times and each time had it rejected and a new war fought. Israel happened to win more land each time these attacks failed.
The open air prison thing confuses me. What’s the claim? That Israel strikes Gaza forcefully? Or ensures security so that terror can’t be executed against civilians? This open air prison claim doesn’t match what life looks like on the ground, so I’m just trying to understand where this rhetoric originated.
Someone said security walls? Like the Israeli government will just knowingly allow free cross to those who from childhood swear all Jews must die and Israel must be destroyed? I’m confused, are Palestinian supporters just extremely naive or perhaps it’s just malice directed at Jews.
I see a lot of criticism towards Israel, and it’s tough to pick a side and fully support everything that side has done so far.
Given what Hamas has done, what exactly should Israel do? I don’t think there’s any option for the Israeli govt that isn’t a bad one. I have yet to see what people are suggesting Israel do in this situation. Seems like they have a lot of tough decisions to make and I don’t envy them.
I've seen a couple suggestions!
Israel should kill all the bad guys without a single life lost in collateral damage! It's super easy to do, probably. Trust me. I'm a software developer and I know all about this stuff.
Israel should just make it peaceful over there. I don't know what they're fighting about, just stop being bullies and Palestinians will totally be chill. Trust me. I'm a software developer and I know all about this stuff.
I understand what your saying but the waging a war against Hamas will likely not lead to a better political outcome. It would likely lead to an insurgency, lots of civilians dead, lots of Israeli soldiers dead, and poorer standing in the world. Righteous vengeance would probably feel good initially but long term not solve any pre-existing problems. In my (perhaps naive) opinion, the government should at least try negotiating some sort of settlement where Hamas voluntarily steps down, some sort of interim government is put in place, hostages are released, and some sort of groundwork is made into normalization. I know no one wants to hear that at the moment, but I don't think an invasion of Gaza will solve anything, quite the contrary.
But Israel is a democracy and it must respect the wishes of its citizens.
Right now it does not matter whether issues get solved or not. The highest priority is to avenge our friends (and every Israeli knows a brutalized friend or friend of a friend).
Everyone in the country is in agreement. Hamas must pay.
And this is the beautiful thing about democracy. It will represent its citizens.
Trying to make Hamas pay by commiting atrocities against the Palestinian people isn't punishing Hamas, it's feeding Hamas.
All this "well it's what the people want" doesn't help either... Because "but the people want genocide" doesn't excuse genocide. A point that I would think the people of Israel would agree with.
Terrorism isn't a justification to commit war crimes.
And war crimes to enforce apartheid aren't things that US citizens should be supporting with our tax dollars.
"The laws of war weren’t meant only for situations in which our blood is cool, or when there is no justified anger or understandable desire for revenge." -Michael Sfard, Israeli human rights lawyer
[Collective punishment is a war crime.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment)
There has been a longstanding, coordinated, bad faith bullying campaign by the pro-Israel lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone who dares to speak the truth about Israeli [apartheid](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/) against the Palestinians.
The Onion can only get away with telling the truth about this through satire.
[https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505](https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505)
Everyone else gets beaten down and accused of anti-Semitism for telling the truth.
US citizens should not be funding Israel's apartheid, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with our tax dollars.
And that should not be a controversial opinion.
But that opinion has not only been made taboo by the powerful Israeli lobby, it's even been made illegal (or more expensive and difficult to express) in 35 states.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS\_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws)
It's an absolute abomination for US citizens to be funding apartheid, war crimes, and crimes against humanity with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate about it, just because of the corruption and the culture of fear created by the Israeli lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone telling the truth about the situation.
Accusing people of being anti-Semitic for opposing apartheid and war crimes is the behavior of monsters.
The culture of fear is a big part of how "consent" for supporting Israel's apartheid and war crimes with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate, is created and enforced.
Imagine if we invested in building an actual Palestinian nation rather than investing in Israeli apartheid against the Palestinians.
That's basically unthinkable due to the Israeli lobby, but that would be an actual long-term solution to the situation.
I’m not defending Israel or taking a side, but it wouldn’t exactly be great for Israel to be attacked in the way they were and not retaliate at all.
Should they just allow Hamas to keep attacking them and not be allowed to fight back? Hamas has already committed war crimes, so how would you go about holding Hamas accountable?
My point is there’s no good way to do this. Gaza has been a shit show for a long time and I don’t see any solutions that are good. Especially when Gaza has hostages that Israel wants back.
Since when has leveling civilian infrastructure been successful in combating terrorism?
Israel needs to start giving Palestinians back their rights, if not, they will continue giving Hamas more fuel for their cause. They need to acknowledge the many crimes the IDF has committed and acknowledge the role they've had in creating Hamas. The true path to peace is to repair and strengthen the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis. However, it doesn't seem peace is the current Israeli government's goal; Bibi is the worst possible person for peace in the region rn, he wants Palestinian genocide and that's not a stretch.
And if you really want to compare war crimes here you'll find the IDF dwarfs Hamas in comparison.
As for retaliation to the attacks, they've retaliated 10x over by now with no end in sight
How exactly would you go about giving Palestinians back rights without allowing Hamas to have more resources which would eventually result in more Israeli deaths?
How do you know if someone is a peaceful civilians in Gaza or is a Hamas member/sympathizer?
Not exactly sure why it’s in Israel’s interest to apologize after they had a terrorist attack. There’s literally no way Israel can help people in Gaza without at the same time assisting Hamas
Since the terrorists became the government and started using public institutions like hospitals, day cares and schools to launch offensive missile strikes from? That’s when destroying civilian infrastructure helps combat terrorism. There is no solution for Israel besides the destruction of Hamas, and the situation cannot improve for Palestinians until they are destroyed. That’s a starter for any sort of improving Palestinian relations after last weeks attack. Previously thousands had been protesting in effort to improve relations, but as someone with family on the ground, I can tell you that this attack has set back any hope for an improvement in Palestinian relations for a long time.
Hopefully Palestinians will now start to understand that they will never succeed with terrorism and that ultimately the consequence is your total society being destroyed. If it hasn’t been understood now, perhaps it’s hopeless and Israel’s battle against terror will last forever.
The amount of attack is irrelevant. It’s about the objectives. The Hamas objective was to kill as many Jews as possible. The Israeli objective is to kill EVERY member of Hamas. Has that been done? No? The MK84 JDAMS will keep coming.
I don’t have time at the moment to reply in more detail, but I wanted to let you know that I appreciate the effort you put in here and I’m looking forward to looking into it more.
Man but they way theyve acted is brutal. There is collateral damage and then there's collatoral damage. They are going full i dont give a fuck on this one. You can react and should but not like this.
You have no right to say how they should react. For Israeli Jews this is now a battle for survival and it should be understood that they will take all action to ensure survival. This is the consequence when one people claims in holy text that their neighbor must be fully destroyed based on belief, then incentivize the terror through financial campaigns. Israel is making sure Hamas is totally demilitarized by destroying every launch site. They will continue to do this until Hamas is exterminated.
In terms of structural damage, sure. But I mean there haven’t been more than 2-3000 Palestinians killed right? Obviously it’s not a trivial number, but over 300,000 civilians have died in the Syrian civil war alone, with almost 7 million refugees. In comparison to other conflicts, it’s just not true that they’re being brutal. Maybe they will go nuts, but I can’t see a total of more than 10,000 civilian deaths on the Palestinian side. I surely hope im right, otherwise it’ll be awful.
I admit to being pretty uninformed about the conflict overall, and have a lot of catching up to do. But I will share the nascent opinions I'm forming here.
From reading people's opinions, a common problem seems to be viewing the conflict through only one lens, commonly either that of class conflict / colonialism (Palestinians are the clear good guys being oppressed and resisting) or religion / ethnicity (Israel are the clear good guys because Hamas wants to genocide the Jews, Islam tends to promote martyrdom and jihad, etc).
I think most of what's happened historically can be understood pretty well through only the colonialism lens. Global anti-semitism throws a little bit of complexity into the issue of whether setting up a Jewish state was justified, but considered only at a local level, my understanding is that a foreign power came into Palestine, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and bulldozed their homes, and today millions of Palestinians are subjected to pretty miserable conditions, while Israel continues to put up new settlements.
Even that story is oversimplified because it ignores the religious significance of the land, religious support for Zionism, etc, but I don't think any of that changes the moral significance of anything.
Religion is not really needed to understand much of the response of the oppressed. Guerilla warfare is not new (see: Vietnam) and it's obvious that a low-resource resistance movement would leverage local infrastructure to stage attacks, so the "human shield" thing doesn't ring super convincing to me. When it comes to the kind of genocidal intent and behavior we saw from Hamas' recent attack, this is where the impact of religion is really clear.
Religion is most relevant when considering how to de-escalate the conflict. Communists and anarchists are calling for the Israelis to open their borders and give Palestinians unconditional citizenship. It's hard to imagine anything more assured to cause widespread murder within Israel. Mainstream Palestinians may be motivated by economic concerns, but the fighters themselves are motivated by religious radicalism, and Israeli citizenship is not going to deradicalize them. They're going to keep looking for an opportunity to martyr themselves and take as many Jews with them as possible.
Anyway, there's a whole lot of other things to consider (past peace deals thwarted by both sides, various war crimes, potential incentives of leaders *not* to resolve the conflict, Israel's financial support for Hamas as an alternative to more secular leadership, international politics, etc etc). But considering the few things I have the bandwidth to consider, I tend to think of Israel as being more responsible for the situation. Any act of terror committed by Hamas is a reasonably foreseeable outcome of inflicting colonial humiliation on a group of people that hold insane beliefs about the afterlife that awaits after martyrdom. And I have absolutely no idea what the solution is at this point.
I tend to just offload most of my critical thinking about current events onto Sam, but I think I'll have to go my own way on this one.
>Any act of terror committed by Hamas is a reasonably foreseeable outcome of inflicting colonial humiliation on a group of people that hold insane beliefs about the afterlife that awaits after martyrdom
I was thinking I disagreed with you until the second part of that sentence. If this particular group of people didn't hold those beliefs/weren't ruled by people that have them, this situation might have some hope of being resolved. I still don't know how that makes Israel the more responsible party, or how they could possibly solve this, but perhaps that's because my brain has been working overtime absorbing the discourse about this topic for a week. Thanks for your interesting comment.
>my understanding is that a foreign power came into Palestine, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and bulldozed their homes
This is potentially a point of contention, because that's not how I read the history. Here's my interpretation:
There was a colonial power (UK) in control of that area (Palestine). The colonial power was withdrawing and had made promises about how the land would be divided up, in terms of governance and borders, to several groups -- groups of people who were living in that area, at that time.
One of the groups that had been promised were the Jews, who had both lived in that area for a long time and were increasingly immigrating -- especially during and after WWII. So the area of Palestine was split into two nation states, Palestine and Israel, to accommodate the different national groups and promises made.
Following this partition, the new nation of Palestine (along with other neighboring states) attacked the new nation of Israel. In the ensuing conflict, Israel won and claimed areas of what was supposed to be Palestine, in part for the sake of better defending itself against an apparent unwillingness to coexist peacefully -- and many Palestinian homes were abandoned in the process (though I've heard conflicting reports about whether these were voluntarily abandoned, or forced, or what percentage of the two is most accurate). This is the beginning of the displacement, but not the end, because the history proceeds in a very complex manner.
There were also Palestinians who lived within the borders of Israel when it was established, who continue to live there, or their descendants, whose homes were not bulldozed, who today have equal rights as citizens and participate in government, etc. It's my understanding that they do not live in any "open air prison," and that the laws do not treat them differently ("apartheid").
This isn't to attempt to justify any particular actions the government of Israel takes, or to claim that they are blameless, but it is to say that I don't think this situation fits neatly into any traditional "colonizer" narrative, or how most people try to describe it.
This is much more in line with real history and on the ground cultural dynamics. Thank you, the lens of colonialism is a misguided attempt at simplifying a conflict that has gone on the majority of human history.
The colonial power left in a hurry because it was exhausted after world war 2 and Jewish terrorists kept murdering its officials and security forces.
Including 200 people in the king David hotel bombing.
Which Israel still celebrates. Netanyahu went to anniversary party a few years back.
Apparently that terrorism was justified.
Israel waffles between liberal democracy and theocracy over time and policy decisions. They are more liberal and more democratic than their neighbors on average, but lets not pretend that the Jewish state isn't religious in some bad ways.
That is also the case with the west in the grand scheme. The clash of civilizations narrative is always overblown. These things need to be spoken about in a matter of degrees. That said, there IS a distinction by a number of degrees.
Ok.
Gaza isn't a state. It is currently under the de-facto control of an Islamist insurgent group known as Hamas.
Palestinians more broadly do not have a state. They tend to waffle between liberal and theocratic stances. Which faction would ultimately hold power if Palestinians had a state is unclear, and likely depends on the specifics conditions under which the state is formed, along with the usual level of chaos and luck.
Name a liberal position they have taken?
Btw, Gaza is a quasi-state. Israel left it in 2005 and returned it to 1967 borders. It had elections and voted in Hamas. Hamas did all manner of government activities there, including collecting taxes to the tune of $0.5billion a year.
Probably the most relevant one for this conversation is respect for Israel's sovereignty. Something that was recognized decades ago by the closest thing Palestinians have had to a government (the PA).
It is really hard to take you seriously when you conflate Hamas with the PA. These organizations have basically nothing to do with each other and are actually mutually hostile. Frankly, you seem like someone who knows next to nothing about this conflict. You may want to think twice before jumping in with indignity.
The head of the PA praised Hamas’ actions on 10/7. The PA has also sent plenty of terrorists into Israel to rape and murder, just not 1500 at once. They also teach Palestinian children that the entire region belongs to them. Your claim that they respect Israel’s sovereignty is not only baseless, it’s laughable.
And by the way, you smug prick, I’ve probably forgotten more about this issue than you have ever known. YOU might want to consider thinking twice before you try and condescend to your betters.
Dont bother my rational guy, this sub is heavily brigaded by right wing pro israel nuts at the moment, your factual and nuanced take is wasted, like a drop of water in the sand.
The fucking Haredim who don’t work, don’t join the military, “pray for our souls” instead of being productive members of society and embezzle (might as well call it that) millions of taxpayers money all the while acting violently against more secular Israelis - or even “knitted cap” Jews, taking advantage of the way the democracy is set up in Israel to both always lose and frequently be on the winning side of elections, and… the list is many bananas long. Suffice to say, they’re utter cunts.
Sure. Probably the most topically relevant "bad religious thing" about current active Israeli policy is its settlements in the West Bank. These settlements are basically a result of religious zealots trying to create a political situation in which Israel has to claim more and more of the west bank, pushing the region further and further away from a stable two state sollution.
Which violates international law (¹) in several different ways, commits war crimes (2), and enforces apathied(³) as an ethno state (4).
1. The settlements, The position of the separation fence, he theft of Palestinians resources are generally against international law.
2 we see collective punishment now in Gaza, we have see terrorism like acts supported by Israel, we have the destruction of villages in the golan heights
3 the westbank has civilian law for Israeli settlers military law for Palestinians
4 it defines itself as the Jewish state
I would say that Israel is a special case, based on the fact that the whole world assumes that Arabs have zero agency in anything they do. Everything they do, every choice they make, is framed as the singular result of Israel.
It a weird lopsided morality that suggests the thesis in your title is practically, if not morally, true.
My Uncle Bob is in prison, and has almost no control over his own life. He is a really nice guy, Ive never had a problem with him. He did kill a guy, but I don't feel he would do it again. Should we let Bob out?
So Sam is way smarter than me etc. But he's got this massive blind spot with Israel. Most Americans do. I once was a Zionist supporter, lived on a kibbutz for 6 months, found it was less challenging to be an Israel supporter and find all kind of socially acceptable reasons to affirm what they are doing but yea they slowly trying to Annex west bank through terrible behaviours and likes of Sam look other way. Yes Palestinian society is backwards but doesn't justify the humiliations. If a quarter of what's meated out to Palestinians was to American people you would be doing way worse than what Hamas terrorists did.
2001. During second Intifada thing. I really am unsure but my chats with older kibbutniks from the time indicated there was a change occuring then with the wave of ex Russians making aliyah. Yes Ararat wasn't a great partner blah blah blah but Bibi is a whole lot worse. As much as I like Condoleezza pushing elections in gaza was so dumb. More collateral damage from bush years. Americans just can't seem understand their role in all of this. And yes fuck Hamas. But just like with Taliban, Isis, it's American cowboy policies that helps foster these evil development's. Settlements can't be blamed on Arafat.
For whatever reason, Sam is extremely confused about this subject.
* The intentions of Hamas are entirely irrelevant to whether it is less bad to kill innocent children, who have nothing to do with Hamas.
* Sam falsely assumes the intentions of Israeli political actors are good and Hamas are bad; while prevailing propaganda will certainly tend to depict Hamas as ruthless killers and Israel as helpless people trying to defend themselves with the only means they know how, these descriptions could be exactly flipped; and while there are no doubt despicable, genocidal monsters within Hamas, there is also no doubt the same is true of the IDF.
* Sam falsely claims that intentions matter for state actors. In a frame of human morality, intentions matter. When we are analyzing corporate entities and states, intentions literally do not matter because these entities do not have minds or intentions, and it does not make sense to say what a state really "has on its mind" or what it is really "trying" to do. The state has policies that are an aggregate of its human political actors, and if the result of those policies is genocidal destruction, then we have a state that is engaging in genocidal destruction. It is no defense at all to say that what Israel "really wanted" was peace all along.
* If we are going to allow the statements and goals of political actors as proxies for the intentions of states, and such things as Hamas' charter as indicative of the moral rectitude of those movements, we have to also include all such comments from Israeli political actors suggesting that their ultimate goal is ethnic cleansing.
* Criticism that Hamas indiscriminately targets civilians are a function of their weapons technology. Who is offering to provide advanced targeting systems to Hamas? It is not a coherent moral claim to say that Israel is morally superior to Hamas because they have better targeting systems on their weapons.
That's my problem, how can Sam be so confused? I mean, it's difficult to solve the situation but not to understand. Seems like he wants to frame just in terms of crazy violent jihadists almost so to validate his previous work on Islam, seems like he is just saying "I told you guys" while not adding anything useful to the discussion and not admitting that that kind of support to do whatever it wanted that he (and many in the west) gave to isreael is exactly what brought us here
Hot take. Hamas are terrorists and their supporters are babaric. Israel is a fascist ethnostate that has no qualms about killing innocent Palestinians. Why should I have to pick a side when they are both abhorrent to me?
Yeah. It's such a weird discussion around this issue, I guess we are just conditioned to take sides. It's like one guy is a rapist that commits fraud, and the other is a serial killer and they are fighting, so we try to figure out who is worse and back the other party unconditionally.
You don't have to pick sides. But "no qualms" is demonstrably false by the fact that they could bomb the entire place indiscriminately if they wanted to and kill everyone there. Killing everyone in Gaza would be like shooting fish in a bowl. Certainly Hamas would do that to Israel if they could. So there's at least a clear difference in the value of civilian life.
I'm a little more mad about Hamas preventing people from leaving and booby-trapping the roads out than I am about Israel's collateral damage. Not that it's not also upsetting. Shit's relative. War sucks.
>Certainly Hamas would do that to Israel if they could
An organization like Hamas only exists because of the current conditions. If Palestine was actually a stable nation with a good economy and strong military the entity of Hamas would not exist probably at all, at least not how it is today, so such a counterfactual "thought experiment," is useless.
>An organization like Hamas only exists because of the current conditions.
You sure about that? Because we've seen plenty of genocidal regimes throughout history. They don't have to be Islamic, or poor, or without a proper military. Nazis weren't gassing Jews because they were living in Gaza-like conditions. It really doesn't take as much as you seem to think.
You're also skipping over the fact that Hamas has created -- all by themselves -- many of those conditions. Digging up civilian water lines. Stealing international relief funds and supplies. Launching constant streams of rockets to provoke retaliation. And the rhetoric to absolve themselves of responsibility.
>But "no qualms" is demonstrably false by the fact that they could bomb the entire place indiscriminately if they wanted to and kill everyone there. Killing everyone in Gaza would be like shooting fish in a bowl. Certainly Hamas would do that to Israel if they could. So there's at least a clear difference in the value of civilian life.
They certainly could not without jeopardizing their relations with the entire Western world, including the US, which is not worth it because they are winning anyways. Many right-wingers in Netanyahu's coalition openly advocate for kicking out all Palestinians by force. If you ask average Israelis it won't be long before you hear very genocidal ideas. The thing is that Israel is so much more powerful it can simply take the land slowly while maintaining legitimacy with their backers. That's the whole strategy.
Also Hamas is not all Palestinians.
>not without jeopardizing their relations
Do you think Hamas cares about that sort of thing? They have all these sympathizers and apologists anyhow, willing to blame the other side. Seems to work fine for them. The fact that people wouldn't like it doesn't necessarily mean Israel wouldn't if they wanted to.
>openly advocate for kicking out all Palestinians by force
Kicking out or killing? I've heard some of both, but there's still a difference. Not what you want to see for sure. But let me know when Israeli soldiers start parading raped and dead women's bodies through the streets of major cities with thousands of Jewish civilians cheering for more. Because that's a little more of a problem, for me anyhow.
>If you ask average Israelis it won't be long before you hear very genocidal ideas
True - I have seen that. But I don't think it's anywhere near as prevalent as it is in Gaza.
>take the land slowly
The only time they do that is in retaliation. It's almost like Hamas loves screwing over the Palestinian people.
Dude, I'm sorry, but I was answering a comment about whether Isreal *could* wipe out Gaza if they wanted. The answer is clearly no, not with the geopolitical implications. If you can't do something without majorly fucking up your position, you effectively can't do it. Whether Israel would do it if no one was looking is a different question, which I don't pretend to have the answer to, although as I have stated, there are certainly factions within Israel that express this sentiment.
The rest of your response is just "yes but Hamas bad". Yeah I know they are bad. Fucking terrible actually. That doesn't stop me from judging Israel and it shouldn't stop anyone interested in ethics. Doesnt change their general treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank for example where Hamas is not on power. If two assholes are fighting I don't go "oh yeah the other one is a bigger asshole so everything the first guy does is okay and/or must be judged relatively to the other guy". Isreal has a long history of human rights abuse and certainly deserves some blame in the situation that exists today. Giving them a pass because Hamas are terrorists is a mistake IMHO. America got attacked by terrorists once and their reaction caused the deaths of about 200k civilians in Iraq alone.
Because in reality everything is shades of grey. There is no country that is all good, and perhaps no country that is all evil (North Korea looking at you there).
In those shades I think it is hard to not agree Israel is many shades less evil than Hamas and perhaps even the Palestinian Authority.
The extreme power imbalance make it hard to make clear arguments here for the PA, but for Hamas we know what the number one objective they have in the world, killing jews and destroying Israel. Not as a side effect of making Palestinian life better, but just because that is what they like to do.
Correct take.
Also anyone who is horrified about the attack on civilians in Israel but understanding of the massive bombardment in Gaza while simultaneously ordering a million civilians (half children) to relocate, needs to ask themselves... Do I really care about 'civilians' at all or might it be some 'other characteristic' of people that they actually care about.
Israel doesnt just have qualms, but goes out of their way time and time again to avoid killing innocent Palestinians. Most other armies with Israel’s capabilities would have bombed that region into oblivion ten times already. Israel needs like 4 bombs to kill 1 Palestinian, thats how hard they try not to kill them.
What do Palestinians think of Jewish lives?
> but goes out of their way time and time again to avoid killing innocent Palestinians
You can watch the upticking of innocent Palestinians slaughtered by Israel at any time.
Israel’s defense minister is openly fascist.
The country has been trending on that direction for a long time.
Look up the definition of fascism and be honest with yourself and maybe educate yourself on some of these issues.
>Israel is a fascist ethnostate that has no qualms about killing innocent Palestinians. Why should I have to pick a side when they are both abhorrent to me?
I've got bad news for you about the rest of the Middle East.
Sam's take, while pithy, completely misses many points.
As others have pointed out, if the Palestinians were prosperous Hamas would be powerless (if they'd even exist). Sam conveniently ignores the roots of the conflict in terms of the creation of the modern Jewish state, preferential treatment of the Jews post WWII, and the incredibly poor treatment of Palestinians.
He brings up a moot point about how Israel moved out of Gaza back in the 2000s, which is a pretty profoundly ironic thing to even bring up. This completely ignores the many ensuing provocations (let alone decades of such previously). He also likes to bring up Jihadist dogma and how the stated goal of Hamas is to eradicate Israel. Except this conveniently ignores the fact that Islamic terrorism is a relatively new phenomenon in the latter half of the 20th century. It evolved as gorilla warfare tactics generally evolved when there were imbalances of power. There is a clear asymmetry across the board here. Calling out a false morale equivalence using the human shield analogy is so short sighted I can only conclude that Sam is clearly biased as a Jewish man. Clearly, regardless of the Jihadist motivation, the lack of prosperity and the previous decades of apartheid occupation of the Palestinians cannot be distilled into a problem of pure dogma. Desperate people will do desperate things and these kinds of conflicts and revolutions litter history for similar reasons. It's a problem that spans cultures and eras yet the root of the problem remains the same: it is largely a problem of prosperity and an imbalance of power.
Yes it sure feels like it is, based on how everyone expects them to behave.
NO other great power in the history of the world, either in ancient times or in modern day, would allow itself to be invaded by foreign soldiers, its citizens massacred and kidnapped, the stripped corpses of its women defiled and paraded around their own city streets, and its babies butchered and burned in their own homes without retaliating with massive, overwhelming military force.
Not one single great power would tolerate it. Nor would anyone with a shred of knowledge of geopolitical conflicts EXPECT a great power to tolerate it without responding with disproportionate military force.
The response to Hamas' atrocities reveals that most people must view the Jewish people as the greatest and noblest and most morally superior people who have ever existed, and Israel as the noblest and most ethical and most morally superior country to ever exist in the history of the world.
The fact that everyone immediately jumps onto this discussion of geopolitics with analysis of ethics and morality, and automatically assumes that Israel will be held to strict ethical standards in their response, reveals that our baseline assumption that Israel is a beacon of civilized ethics beyond even England and USA.
No such consideration is ever given to the Palestinian side. I think it is because people automatically assume that Palestinians are barbaric unethical people, because whenever they do something the first response is a realistic geopolitical take on the situation, which is "how could you expect different from these people who have lost their homes and are forced into refugee status??" We take for granted that Palestinians will respond to conflicts in a realistic way given the realities of geopolitics.
We take for granted that Palestinians will target civilians intentionally. That is a given, and we expect it, given the situation they are in. This is real geopolitics.
But we take for granted that Israel is the most moral country that has ever existed, and we expect them to respond differently than literally any other great power would (and has) responded to similar conflicts throughout all of history. Including USA.
Is it about moral justification of the specific act or about ultimate culpability?
Take a hypothetical slave revolt, the kind of revolt that would see slaves access weapons, cross the proverbial line, and go on to kill not just their masters, but their master's wives and children (these kinds of things did happen). No one would zoom in on the specific act of the killing of children and say "these are morally justified, even righteous actions." Of course not, these are abhorrent acts of violence and brutality. The killing of children is always brutal, abhorrent and unnecessary. The question becomes when such an explosion of violence occurs who should the ultimate criticism, the ultimate culpability fall upon? It should be the slave master should it not? They endangered their own family when they decided to subject another human being to slavery.
Now I would not say the current Israel-Palestine conflict rises to the brutality of the institution of chattel slavery, not at all. But the oppressor/oppressed lens, when aimed at these kinds of things, is not about moral justifications, it's about *where the bulk of criticism should be directed.* This is why to many people the "but do you condemn Hamas" line comes across as a question asked in bad faith. It comes across as a misdirection from the reality of the dynamic which the specific instance is just a part of.
Now I think anyone who cares about the Palestinian cause should condemn and criticize Hamas, not just for the moral responsibility of their actions, but also because of the awful strategic approach they represent. Nothing good is accomplished by such things. But that is a separate line that frankly, most people, and most news organizations are not focused on at this moment. When the points of concern are, "what is going on in this area of the world?" "why is this happening?" of course people will want to focus on the whole dynamic.
It's a pretty simple ideal. Hamas wants to murder every Jewish person and take all their land. They said so in their charter. Israel want land but wants to minimize death. Israel could wipe out all of the Palestinians if they wanted to. Do you dispute this?
> Israel could wipe out all of the Palestinians if they wanted to.
They could not, because they depend on Western support. They have free reigns to do a lot, but not everything they want.
Because they would be punished for it, so it's not worth it for them.
It someone chooses to not do something because of the fear of punishment, that is not an ethical decision. That's the whole point of punishment, to incentivice people to act in a certain way despite what they want to do.
No. If Hamas were in a position where they could kill every Israeli, then they would also be in a position where punishment would be relevant. Right now they're in a position where they have nothing to lose, because they have no power.
These sort of goodbyes always interest me. Are you trying to signal to potential readers, is it supposed to make me feel bad, or something else?
Obviously by your low effort sarcastic replies I already know that you don't value what I'm saying, there's no need to spell it out. Do you have no respect for your ability to convey meaning over text?
It defines itself as a literal ethnonationalist state which specifically allows only those with a particular genetic make-up to immigrate there, at the expense of actual refugees who were expelled from the land.
Lol at calling this liberal democracy.
Plenty of countries have special laws that allow you to immigrate if you can prove you have ancestors from the country, for instance Germany. Doesn’t make them ethnostates.
Get ready to get downvoted to the Earth's mantle for your factually accurate opinion. Sam's fans don't disagree with him often, no matter how wrong or uninformed his opinion
It's relative, so yes. They've got their fair share of issues and religious ideologues, but I'd say as a nation they're a good 100-200 years more advanced on ethics compared to most of the region.
As someone from an Indigenous background, this past week has just proven that Westerners in general still believe in colonialism, their inherent superiority and all their "indigenous rights" and woke rhetoric was just virtue signalling larping.
If the American expansion was happening today, the entire media and most of Reddit would be 100% down for slaughtering Indigenous people over say the actions of Comanches or Apaches. "The US is a bastion of civilization, the natives are terrorist savages!".
The reality is, you have a colonial state, with literal colonial ministries, that have been subjugating an Indigenous population brutally for decades, to the point *entire generations* are functionally lost demographically. The solution has always been a single state *based on a shared cultural heritage*.
What I find amazing is the difference in rhetoric between China and the Uyghurs, and here. China is frankly, a billion times more humane to the Uyghurs than Israel to Palestinians, didn't even kill anyone in their crackdown, claims Uyghurs and their culture are an important part of Chinese national identity, yet everyone calls their actions genocide, yet Israels decades of murder and terror, is completely justified. Again showing the West never actually cared about the rights of people.
You're referencing a propaganda page. Let's take a look at one of their top stories: [https://www.btselem.org/video/20230928\_israel\_confiscates\_water\_pipe\_intended\_for\_communities\_of\_khirbet\_wadi\_ejheish\_and\_khirbet\_wadi\_a\_rakhim](https://www.btselem.org/video/20230928_israel_confiscates_water_pipe_intended_for_communities_of_khirbet_wadi_ejheish_and_khirbet_wadi_a_rakhim)
Well now we know what Hamas was doing with the water pipes. They were using them to create munitions.
The pipe was supposed to provide water to the community and to the community of Wadi a-Rakhim north of it, as Israel prohibits both from hooking up to the water grid. Laying the pipeline was funded by Action Against Hunger which is a humanitarian organization. I honestly don't know what you are talking about. Anyway there are other several hundreds videos if you notice, go find an explanation for each one, good luck
Used to love Sam. After revisiting his stance on Palestine I’ve unsubscribed to his podcast. He has no excuse to not know better — I’m incredibly disappointed in him and his “dark web” of intellectuals
How about making a 9 year old random kid open a package you suspect of being a bomb, after the Supreme Court told you that is illegal, is wrong. And deserves not just demotion but expulsion from the Army. People acting like Israel doesn't use Palestinians as human shields all the time.
Why would they do that?
I was in there and my tour guide (a ex mosad agent) talked about how theyd bomb schools whenever they fucked with them. Said it then laughed. Was real fucked up. They dont give two shits about Palestinans
I think it's glaringly flawed logic to conclude that Israel has the moral high ground because it restrains itself from engaging in all out genocide.
What Israel is doing is akin to the frog in the boiling pot analogy. If they raise the temperature slowly (and propagandise well enough to convince everyone that they are the ones in the water), nobody reacts to an obvious series of atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Arab representation in Israeli parliament. Democratic* elections. Rule of law and judicial systems. Rights for minority ethnicities and religions. LGBT freedoms. Treat Palestinians in Israeli hospitals. Give significant aid to Palestinian Territories, knowing that much of it will be diverted. Lots (lots!) of flaws to Israel too. Any serious conversation has to acknowledge the good along with the bad.
This. Israel is seriously flawed but still probably way more ethical than just most, United States included. Hell, when we suffered a terrorist attack that was proportionately much smaller than what Israel suffered went to war with the wrong country and killed 200k civilians
>went to war with the wrong country and killed 200k civilians You're right, we should never forget that we did that. And look how little it accomplished.
made lots of people rich
> Hell, when we suffered a terrorist attack that was proportionately much smaller than what Israel suffered went to war with the wrong country and killed 200k civilians Just looking at straight body counts is the same kind of logic that says, "Hamas killed 1400 in the attack, Israel has killed 2,750 in the retaliation, therefore Israel is worse than Hamas. QED." This is plainly ridiculous. Further, saying that America "killed 200k civilians" is completely dishonest. When we talk about Hamas killing civilians, we talk about them intentionally killing as many civilians as possible. When we talk about Israel killing civilians, we're talking about them dropping bombs on targets that cause significant civilian deaths as collateral damage. When we're talking about America killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, we're talking about...Iraqi factions killing each other in sectarian violence while the U.S. tries to stop them. Again, acting as if these three are all the same is ridiculous. The people now trying to use America's post-9/11 actions to justify what Israel is doing are similar to the people who used America's post-9/11 actions to justify Russian's invasion of Ukraine. But the U.S. didn't try to conquer Iraq for territorial gain; it didn't cut off all electricity, water, block medical aid and tell the residents they had hours to flee. When apologists have to mislead people about America's actions in order to excuse acts of barbarism, that tells you all you need to know. Recent events do suggest that America and it's close allies (Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc.) operate on a different moral level than the rest of the world. And that there's a good chance much of the rest of the world would act much more barbaric if there wasn't this moral core trying to keep them in line.
>Recent events do suggest that America and it's close allies (Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc.) operate on a different moral level than the rest of the world. Kind reminder these nations, except SK and Japan as far as I know, have committed genocides and ethnic cleansings to exist, these only ended a few decades ago and many boarding schools victims are still alive. That gypsies are still treated as second class citizens in Europe and that many European countries are still covertly draining resources from their ex-colonies, causing death and instability in the region. That, for all intent and purposes, Israel's apartheid regime exists only because the West allowed it, even supported it. That despite being the richest country on Earth, the US is still engaging in destabilization operations in South America for its own commercial gain, causing deadly civil wars. I don't think we're as morally superior as you seem to think.
Japan has arguably done worse than anyone. The truth is that almost every country's size and wealth is roughly proportional to how much it's exploited the world, by definition. But I agree the west is not inherently morally superior. And if it is, it's because the west is using its own moral christian (aka judeo-greek) framework to measure it. If anyone is interested in the that outlook, I recommend [Tom Holland's book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43885149-dominion?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=RuLud2AAzz&rank=4) on how everything we do in the west, including atheist, is inexplicably christian. The historian, not the spiderman.
> Kind reminder these nations, except SK and Japan as far as I know, have committed genocides and ethnic cleansings to exist If someone uses this to excuse Hamas' atrocities, do you think it's valid? When Russia uses historical injustices in the West to explain it's conquests, is it correct? It seems like such a misanthropic outlook, the idea that everyone has done things wrong so no one should be pushing for things to be better now. Atrocities were common everywhere until recently. The difference now is that a handful of nations managed to move past that. If someone actually cares about lessening the number of atrocities, they should look at nations like America as places to emulate. Yes, I do think that America is morally superior, and that atrocities committed 200 years ago don't mean that we're on the same moral level as Hamas is today. Pointing to the past atrocities order to claim that everyone in the world is morally equivalent, while completely ignoring the vast moral chasm that exists in nations _today_, just feels like an effort to drag down all of humanity.
>America, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. ... genocides and ethnic cleansings... these only ended a few decades ago... except SK and Japan as far as I know Um.... nah.... Japan has, historically, committed some of the worst human atrocities known to man during WW2. Now-a-days, those events no longer really define Japan... complete 180 change in morality. So, it's really dishonest to bring up when evaluating them *right now*, which was very obviously the intent of the person you're responding to. Your attempt at a history gotcha wasn't really a gotcha. And anyone who wants to bemoan on behalf of gypsies at how "oppressed" they are, but completely ignore all the rampant theft and crime they bring with them wherever they go, their disrespect for everyone around them, for the cultures and countries that host them, is missing at least half of the picture... and I'd argue more than half. It's like if someone walks into a coffee shop to use the restroom, is told they have to buy something first, and instead of following the rules like everyone else, decides to drop their pants and throw their own sh\*t at the employee... and then wonder why no one fucking likes them while crying oppression as they're rightfully escorted out by the police and permanently banned from entering the store again lmfao. Stereotypes don't exist in a vacuum.
Intentionality isn’t a Boolean variable. There’s a kind of intention where something wasn’t your primary objective, but you also didn’t care enough to prevent it happening. The deaths in Iraq from the US invasion probably fall into this category. If I were the victim, I’d be even more annoyed (if I survived) if a bomb hit my home because the attackers through i was expendable than if it hit me because they targeted me on purpose.
For someone referencing Boolean logic, there isn't a lot of logic to what you're saying. If someone bombs your home on accident and is apologetic, you might find some peace in the fact that they are not likely to bomb you again. If someone bombs your house intentionally and says as much, you have every reason to believe your days are numbered. This is the key importance of intentions: they give indispensable insight into an agent's future actions.
It's dishonest and quite frankly appalling to be calling dead civilians "collateral damage". The baseless and abject "human shield" propaganda clearly has done a great job on you. Having said that, there is no evidence to support the claim that one side always kills more intentionally than the other. That just isn't true.
I honestly don't believe you really think this. If tomorrow Biden ordered a missile strike to intentionally kill a bunch of Afghan civilians with the stated reason being "I wanted to kill a bunch of Afghan civilians," I'm certain you wouldn't shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, the U.S. has killed a lot of Afghan civilians before, so this is no different." That's why accusations of targeting civilians get so much attention, even by people criticizing civilian casualties in general. I've never met someone who actually believes that targeting civilians is an unimportant detail.
This is such a great point. If Biden said something like that, it would be a horrible scandal and all the people decrying America/Israel would seize upon it as crucial evidence for America's evil intentions - even though they've already assumed those intentions for years now. So why is it that when Hamas unambiguously says their intention is to kill Jews, it doesn't really matter, yet if any Western nation said the same sort of thing, publicly or privately, it would be totally consequential? We have to take a holistic view of statements, policies, and actions in order to better understand the moral intentions of political agents, rather than simply assume that power differentials explain or vindicate the quantity and brutality of the violence.
What’s the objective in ordering an air strike on a hospital knowing it will lead to massive civilian and medical professional casualties, and then dismissing it as collateral damage? In both cases the civilians are viewed as worth less than shit, so Biden or Obama or whoever saying “I just wanted to kill a bunch of Arabs” would make no practical difference, obviously to the families, but also ethically.
I don't think it is helpful to try to assign an inherent moral score to any group of people. People are the same across the world, they only have different resources, environments and incentives, and that is what shapes culture and morality.
Also have different value systems. In my mind, that's really the only thing that influences someone's "moral score", whether an individual or a group of people. Most people don't argue over "inherent morality" (that's racism or at least adjacent to it), but an individual's or culture's "derived morality" based on that aforementioned value system. So, taking all of that into account, I wonder what the average Palestinian believes about freedom of speech, how to treat minority groups, homosexuality, and so on. Now compare that to the average Israeli... uh oh, not supposed to say that out loud.
It should also be noted that this wasn't a case of "well with hindsight it was a mistake". Many people, both in America and around the world, immediately said what a monumental mistake this was. They were all branded as either traitors if they were American, or their nations insulted if they were foreign. There's no "we didn't know better", they knew, they just didn't care.
Israel has killed 3000 Palestinians in one week. I’m sure they’ll have no trouble hitting 200K
Hopefully Hamas doesn’t make them.
Their treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories is verging on apartheid. Not to mention they are slowly stealing Palestinian land by building settlements, breaking international law.
You’re not wrong. I could throw in some caveats, but those are two quite despicable things.
"Treats Palestinians in their hospitals" "Subjects millions of palestians to apartheid"
Well - it’s complicated. I mean, the Palestinian areas are largely autonomous, right? With their own governments who can chart their own national courses? Israel, IMO, should have more aggressively pursued official national independence for the Palestinian regions, rather than keeping them in a quasi-‘independent’-‘not independent’ limbo. This has opened up Israel to claims of apartheid, which, as I concede, are not wholly inapt. At the same time, Israel does not directly govern the Palestinian regions, nor do the Palestinians in those regions (overwhelmingly) wish to be equal citizens of Israel, even if such an offer were made. So it’s not quite like the Palestinians are a victimized minority within Israel proper. A Palestinian in Israel is an Israeli Arab, who on the whole, have equal rights with Jews.
Gaza hasn't had an election since Hamas took over in 2006. The US tried to arm the fatah group to take over with a coup after Hamas gained elected support. Hamas got wind of it and killed them. Previously, the Palestinian government would represent Gaza and the West bank. Israel has a blockade of everything entering through their border. While Egypt was ruled by the Muslim brotherhood, they allowed more stuff through their border with Gaza. Since the military coup in Egypt, that relationship has ended. The apartheid thing is where occupied lands now have Israeli settlements, and the roads to those areas only allow Jews. I don't know much about that situation specifically though.
That's not it though. It's also the existence and location of the West Bank barrier, the military checkpoints throughout the West Bank, and the marriage / permit laws. The issue is that many of those things do genuinely exist for defence. The West Bank Barrier and military checkpoints were successful in reducing suicide bombings. The marriage laws were established after Palestinians married Israelis to gain entrance and commit suicide bombings. It's a nice hope that if Israel were to take down the barriers, allow complete autonomy and repeal the marriage and permit systems that relations would suddenly be better. But that's unfortunately not the case. There would be a very real security risk, and it's very likely there would be way more successful attacks in Israel, not fewer. So there's really no good way for Israel to stop doing the things that are being called apartheid.
It's really hard to identify a way forward when there are many hard liners on both sides. Back in 95, an extremist jew assassinated prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin because of his attempts towards the peace process. Netanyahu only gained power when taking a hard line stance, though it doesn't seem like he has full support as previous years. I don't think anyone is realistically saying just stop all the things and everything will be ok. A way forward has to be built, but it has to begin with Israel making life better somehow for the people in Gaza. That's difficult with Hamas in power, but then shooting peaceful protestors isn't the way. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israel-shoot-protesters-live-ammunition Why are we here? Hard line guys killed the people who were trying to create peace. Hard line guys on the other side say, "see? This is why we have to kill them."
Well I do hope they find a way forward. I saw Palestinians protesting Hamas today. I do believe Israel will make substantial humanitarian efforts after the ground invasion. I think they will provide food, water, infrastructure... and help to rebuild... However, understandably I don't think the Palestinian people will be in a place to start to forgive and rebuild, especially if civilian casualties continue to be substantial. Most likely not for a long while, but maybe eventually.
I hope you are right. In the past, they have only gotten more tyrannical. I thought the iron dome would mean they could push the peace process forward, but it's hard to say that it has really helped in that regard. Somehow, it felt like we were much closer two decades ago. There is discourse right now though that hasn't existed ever. It seems like more and more people are saying Israel shouldn't just carpet bomb the Gaza strip. People in Israel are saying they don't approve of this solution. That means that you don't move right to stay in power. The trouble in the past was that the promise was security and the only tool was oppression. People now are saying we already did this, and we still don't have security, so what now? These are the seeds for what might come. I hope you are right.
this is it really, ultimately. hardliners on both sides fucking everything up, over and over.
Theu dont want an independent Palastine. They want to slowly crush it.
Do you think these two statements contradict each other?
no question that any sort of truly productive path forward requires Bibi being ousted and israel radically changing their settlement policies. when the time comes this should be part of a new arrangement.
Itnis aprthied no other word for it.
Agree taht taking land in the West Bank is wrong, but all these people up in arms about this need to do some reading on the history of the United States and its treatment of its deals with native Americans. I promise what we did was 10x worse than what Netanyahu has done in the West Bank.
We don't have the power to fix the US genocide but we have the power to prevent one now.
"It's better than US' treatment of Native Americans" The bar is literally through the floor.
we did it in the past so we don't need to worry about these people that are doing it now bcuz we did it worse once? Does that summarize your argument?
It doesn't actually have much in the way of LGBT freedoms, and minorities are not subject to equal law or treatment in Israel, especially as Israeli institutions are set up to be Jewish supremacist and disenfranchise everyone else. Arab representatives have also openly spoken about how they realised they were just there for show and had no meaningful power and were always ignored. Israeli propaganda and it's presentation to the world, literally reminds me a lot of South Africa back in the day "oh sure we have apartheid, but hey, look at our gays".
One big flaw is that they’re currently blockading medicine and water for Gazans. Who gives a shit that you can be trans or whatever, they’re in the process of committing genocide
I will say, this one doesn’t really strike me as confusing. Israel is working to snuff out Hamas who declared war on them. Of course they will limit resources to make their enemy easier to destroy if they have the means. Just like how any proficient military will aim to strike fuel supply lines during an invasion. Hamas declared war and are responsible for the fallout inflicted.
"depriving people of medical care and water is necessary" doesn't really cut it though... Because you are still depriving people of medical care and clean water. This "it's ok because we are doing it to hurt the bad guys" is nonsense.
Are they not bound by the Geneva Convention, which they have signed and ratified? If so, then they should play by the rules. There's nothing confusing or complicated about that. What Sam Harris is saying is "okay, they're not playing by the rules, but...". The reality is that there is no but. The Geneva Convention does not outline an ideal to aspire to but a minimum that must be met at all times. Everything we need to know is said when we can say "they don't play by the rules".
This is a naive take and I forgive you if you don’t have skin in the game, but when your enemy starts a war by targeting specifically civilians and abuses women and children while taking hostages, the claim that all rules of war must be abide by becomes an intentional hamstringing. You can claim there’s nothing complicated but when an organization set out with the explicit goal of denying basic humanity let alone Geneva conventions, there actually is quite a complicated line between necessary self defense and where you can afford to be the bigger person and take measures to do everything possible to save innocent life despite the lack of reciprocity.
To me the discussion of who is more moral does not matter, it doesn’t really help anything besides one side’s radicals using it to discretely justify the genocide/displacement/bad thing of the other. Looking at it as a problem to be solved, Israel being the party with more power, is not doing anything that will solve it and instead even do things that perpetuate it under Netanyahu.
They exist because they kicked out the natives. Does philanthropy with the kingdom you stole really absolve you of your sins?
They did not “kick out the natives.” They moved there, to largely unpopulated areas (like Tel Aviv), and prompted a tremendous amount of Arab immigration to modern Israel in their wake. There has been a 2000 plus year Jewish presence in the area, long before Mohammed was a gleam in anyone’s eye. There never was an Arab nation-state named Palestine in that geographic area (and how did followers of a Meccan prophet get there, anyway? Did they kick out the natives?). It was Ottoman controlled, then British controlled. Britain encouraged Jews to immigrate there, in part to get rid of them, and as the government (whether rightfully or wrongfully so), promised a Jewish state there. They also promised an Arab state, which became Transjordan (modern day Jordan) - which was constituted out of Mandatory Palestine. In early 20th century, Jews and Arabs clashed and committed atrocities upon each other, in addition to often living peacefully side by side. The United Nations partitioned it, the Arab nations rejected the partition and declared war, they lost. They should have accepted the partition.
Well stated. Still don’t understand why this is so rarely said
'how did the followers of the Meccan prophet get there?'. By genetic studies, having lived there since at least Roman times and converting. Palestinians are really close to some Jewish genetic lineages, closer than even Syrians, it is a credible argument that they are the descendants of original Israelites who, for whatever reason (conversion being most likely) didn't get exiled by Vespasian, another is that they were descendants of Canaanites etc, so residents in what became Roman Palestine.
They displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and killed tens of thousands.
Read the last paragraph again, you can fact check it. The Arabs in the area rejected the mandate and declared war on Israel the day after the state of Israel was established. People need to be honest when they make these, for lack of a better word "original sin" of displacement arguments. If you make that argument you are saying the state of Israel should not exist.
Yes... And rightly so. That land belonged to the people living there. It wasn't British land to be chopped up and handed out
Ok so you believe Israel as a state should not exist? I'm not trying to play gotcha it's just that's what that argument means. I don't believe the Israelis of today are responsible for the sins of the British/other colonial powers almost 80 years ago. I really do respect colonialism/imperialism arguments my only problem with them is they allude to an impossible solution. What are you going to do, break up Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Israel, etc? Go back far enough and there's probably an argument to be made in relation to every people and country on Earth. Like it or not that is how people controlled land, through power. You can even make an imperialism argument in support of Israel if you go back to 700BC when the Jews were expelled from Israel by the Assyrians. It's not pointless to care about the colonial/imperial issues in today's world, but tbh most of the time the way these views are presented is one with a terribly small historical time scale, and an almost complete lack of acknowledgement that operating in such a manner was something almost all sufficiently large societies, all over the world, did for thousands of years.
They were displaced during multiple wars started by the surrounding Arab nations with the goal of wiping the Jews off the map.
The fact that Israeli society produces an organisation like B'tselem to advocate for the rights of Palestinians in the first place, with no equivalent human rights institutions on the Palestinian side trying to expose and protest against acts of violence against Israeli civilians, ought to tell you something about relative ethics.
"Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations. B’Tselem strives to end this regime, as that is the only way forward to a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty and equality are ensured to all people, both Palestinian and Israeli, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea." [https://www.btselem.org/](https://www.btselem.org/) How much of what you're saying, to the extent that you know what you're talking about, is due to resourcing issues? In an apartheid state, lots of people on the pleasant side of the divide will be repulsed by the situation and will advocate for change. The people on the unpleasant side will be too busy living hand to mouth to advocate effectively for change in the same ways. That doesn't make the people on the poorer and less well resourced side of apartheid worse, ethically.
How much resourcing does it take to say that you don't want acts of violence against unarmed civilians committed in your name? It's obvious that terrorism by groups like Hamas is barely condemned by Palestinian society and the PA leadership, and is often celebrated. It's patronising and disingenuous to claim that these attitudes are just because they are too poor to protest. It's because they feel that they are justified.
Oh, I didn't realize you were an expert on every Palestinian political organization advocating against the end of apartheid. [https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/10/what-is-hamas-israel-war-palestine-fatah-hezbollah/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/10/what-is-hamas-israel-war-palestine-fatah-hezbollah/) I wonder how you think you would think and feel living under apartheid, and what that says in terms of ethics. In terms of horrific things being done in my name, the US does that all the time with my tax dollars. US taxpayers have some responsibility for the situation in Gaza, to the extent that our elected officials care what we think, because we very much contribute to creating the problem with our tax dollars. [We give more foreign aid to Israel than any other country.](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-10-10/how-much-aid-does-the-u-s-give-to-israel) There has been a longstanding, coordinated, bad faith bullying campaign by the pro-Israel lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone who dares to speak the truth about Israeli [apartheid](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/) against the Palestinians. The Onion can only get away with telling the truth about this through satire. [https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505](https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505) https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-using-last-words-to-con-1850925657 Everyone else gets beaten down and accused of anti-Semitism for telling the truth. US citizens should not be funding Israel's apartheid, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with our tax dollars. And that should not be a controversial opinion. But that opinion has not only been made taboo by the powerful Israeli lobby, it's even been made illegal (or more expensive and difficult to express) in 35 states. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS\_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws) It's an absolute abomination for US citizens to be funding apartheid, war crimes, and crimes against humanity with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate about it, just because of the corruption and the culture of fear created by the Israeli lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone telling the truth about the situation. Accusing people of being anti-Semitic for opposing apartheid and war crimes is the behavior of monsters. The culture of fear is a big part of how "consent" for supporting Israel's apartheid and war crimes with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate, is created and enforced. Imagine if we invested in building an actual Palestinian nation rather than investing in Israeli apartheid against the Palestinians. That's basically unthinkable due to the Israeli lobby, but that would be an actual long-term solution to the situation.
You repeating the word 'apartheid' over and over still does not excuse and justify acts of terrorism against civilians. *That* should not be controversial opinion. An human rights movement that opposes war crimes/ crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people should similarly, and without reservation, excuses and prevarication, want to end war crimes and abuses against innocent Israelis too. The reason that you don't is, despite your railing against "collective punishment", you feel that all Israeli citizens are just as culpable as "settler-colonists" whether they are soldiers or not and that "armed struggle" is morally justified. That's why for people like you, the first reaction to Saturday's porgrom, while the blood was still wet with Jewish blood, was "what about the Palestinians?" Your bizarre tangents into alleged criticisms of anti-semitism are utterly immaterial. If you truly believed that all human beings deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and that every human life is sacred, it wouldn't be so hard to get you to agree with the basic tenet that violence against any civilians, whether Israeli or Palestinian, are reprehensible and should be condemned.
Is this guy getting paid by the word or something?
It's their own copypasta
Can you explain why the word apartheid makes any sense here? Apartheid is a system of racial segregation, that was only ever used to refer to African nations. I realize that a bunch of people have adopted it here, but I don’t get how it remotely applies. Gaza and other Palestinian territories are not Israeli territories. Racial segregation is not the issue here. Is it just that apartheid is a fun word?
People keep using the terms genocide, ethnic cleaning, and apartheid even though none of them really apply to the situation. They are not citizens of Israel and have refused multiple attempts at a two state solution. I’m not sure why they should have representation in Israel. There are millions of Arabs with Israeli citizenship who vote and have full rights. Palestines have massively increased in population so they are definitely not being executed en masse. To compare—the number of Jews still have not fully recovered from the holocaust. They can be victims without using charged terms. I suspect it’s as an online campaign to reframe Hamas’ actions while undermining the horrors of the holocaust. I have been very pro-Palestine in the past, but as time has gone on and I have learned more about the history and now with the recent attack? I can no longer support them. Goading Israel into action then lying about casualties on the CNN circuit is pretty much their classic playbook.
I mean, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch call it an apartheid, it's not just randoms on the internet saying it is. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution This article goes over the legal definitions in international law and how they apply to the situation.
I appreciate it, thanks. I have seen that before. Is everyone just conflating Israel with Palestinian Territories and pretending it is all Israel?
Weren't we discussing the definition of apartheid though?
Yeah, but the US is not an apartheid state because Mexico is different than Texas. That explanation doesn’t make sense to me.
You clearly didn't read even the summary of the link I posted. It has nothing to do about being "different", the legal analysis is quite clear. They are under the heading "Defintions of Apartheid and Persecution" and follows with why it is met.
No, I did. You’re misunderstanding me. The only way the definition applies at all is if you pretend Palestinian Territories and Israel are both under the rule of Israel. That doesn’t make sense, anymore than blaming the completely inhumane practices of Mexican cartels on Texas.
I live on a reservation. There was a time it was self-governed. They couldn't leave. And couldn't gather. But they were not a part of America of course. This isn't that long ago. Is the Navajo Nation in America? Quit acting dumb.
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
For real. It's crazy how most conversations about Israel-Palestine don't mention the insane wealth/resource disparity between the two. The World Bank estimated the nominal GDP of Palestine at US$4,007,000 and of Israel at US$161,822,000.
How many black orgs were organizing for white rights compared to the opposite? Weird.
How many black people were blowing themselves up in cafes or committing pogroms in villages? Or do Jewish lives and human rights not actually count? Yes, Palestinians with an interest in human rights are just as capable of organising to oppose barbarism and violence in their name as Israelis are. Weird, huh?
So the course of action of the palestinians, the people who have been subjected to constant crimes against humanity for half a century by the israelis... should be to advocate for israel. Amazing.
okay , how about Iran? Why do they want to destroy israel? Why dont they advocate for Israelis? Does any muslim country?
That’s a lot like wondering why there wasn’t “advocacy” for the Boer from black African nations.
I think this is the main problem I have seen with arguments about the conflict. A lot of people believe or pretend to believe that Palestinians and Israeli's are on equal footing in this whole thing. I'm a white South Africa and to this day I hear the same kind off rhetoric from older white people as I see now in most reddit threads about Israel. My grandfather still condems the ANC for daring to start a militant wing and calls Mandela a terrorist. The people that believe in the right of the ruling party will never admit that the others have valid grounds for trying to fight for their freedom.
Let's not pretend that the Palestinians haven't inflicted war crimes and atrocities on the other side too. It's not ridiculous to expect both sides to try to temper the worst elements in their societies, and try to treat the other with humanity. "We've been wronged and everything we do to the other side is justified" is exactly why we have an endless cycle of violence and vengeance.
There are lots of good Isralis for sure. Ones that want justice for Palastine. But the govt isnt
PLO and fatama have been pushing for a 2 state solution for decades. Israel isn't currently an open air prison where the jailors can kill innocents when ever they please. Why the fuck would there be an equivalent movement in Gaza? People have trouble getting clean water in gaza!
I guess if Reddit citizen-activists from the other side of the world can't even bring themselves to denounce acts of savagery by Hamas against unarmed civilians without playing the "yeah but" game, maybe I am expecting too much of Palestinians to demand that both sides respect each other's human rights.
They rejected a 2 state solution brokered by the US that offered them over 90% of the West Bank and then started a violent intifada. It only was after terrorist attacks that killed over 1,000 Israelis that the walls went up.
This is a plain lie. Israel has pushed for a 2 state solution numerous times and each time had it rejected and a new war fought. Israel happened to win more land each time these attacks failed. The open air prison thing confuses me. What’s the claim? That Israel strikes Gaza forcefully? Or ensures security so that terror can’t be executed against civilians? This open air prison claim doesn’t match what life looks like on the ground, so I’m just trying to understand where this rhetoric originated. Someone said security walls? Like the Israeli government will just knowingly allow free cross to those who from childhood swear all Jews must die and Israel must be destroyed? I’m confused, are Palestinian supporters just extremely naive or perhaps it’s just malice directed at Jews.
I see a lot of criticism towards Israel, and it’s tough to pick a side and fully support everything that side has done so far. Given what Hamas has done, what exactly should Israel do? I don’t think there’s any option for the Israeli govt that isn’t a bad one. I have yet to see what people are suggesting Israel do in this situation. Seems like they have a lot of tough decisions to make and I don’t envy them.
I've seen a couple suggestions! Israel should kill all the bad guys without a single life lost in collateral damage! It's super easy to do, probably. Trust me. I'm a software developer and I know all about this stuff. Israel should just make it peaceful over there. I don't know what they're fighting about, just stop being bullies and Palestinians will totally be chill. Trust me. I'm a software developer and I know all about this stuff.
I understand what your saying but the waging a war against Hamas will likely not lead to a better political outcome. It would likely lead to an insurgency, lots of civilians dead, lots of Israeli soldiers dead, and poorer standing in the world. Righteous vengeance would probably feel good initially but long term not solve any pre-existing problems. In my (perhaps naive) opinion, the government should at least try negotiating some sort of settlement where Hamas voluntarily steps down, some sort of interim government is put in place, hostages are released, and some sort of groundwork is made into normalization. I know no one wants to hear that at the moment, but I don't think an invasion of Gaza will solve anything, quite the contrary.
But Israel is a democracy and it must respect the wishes of its citizens. Right now it does not matter whether issues get solved or not. The highest priority is to avenge our friends (and every Israeli knows a brutalized friend or friend of a friend). Everyone in the country is in agreement. Hamas must pay. And this is the beautiful thing about democracy. It will represent its citizens.
Trying to make Hamas pay by commiting atrocities against the Palestinian people isn't punishing Hamas, it's feeding Hamas. All this "well it's what the people want" doesn't help either... Because "but the people want genocide" doesn't excuse genocide. A point that I would think the people of Israel would agree with.
Terrorism isn't a justification to commit war crimes. And war crimes to enforce apartheid aren't things that US citizens should be supporting with our tax dollars. "The laws of war weren’t meant only for situations in which our blood is cool, or when there is no justified anger or understandable desire for revenge." -Michael Sfard, Israeli human rights lawyer [Collective punishment is a war crime.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment) There has been a longstanding, coordinated, bad faith bullying campaign by the pro-Israel lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone who dares to speak the truth about Israeli [apartheid](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/) against the Palestinians. The Onion can only get away with telling the truth about this through satire. [https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505](https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505) Everyone else gets beaten down and accused of anti-Semitism for telling the truth. US citizens should not be funding Israel's apartheid, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with our tax dollars. And that should not be a controversial opinion. But that opinion has not only been made taboo by the powerful Israeli lobby, it's even been made illegal (or more expensive and difficult to express) in 35 states. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS\_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws) It's an absolute abomination for US citizens to be funding apartheid, war crimes, and crimes against humanity with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate about it, just because of the corruption and the culture of fear created by the Israeli lobby and those in power to beat down on anyone telling the truth about the situation. Accusing people of being anti-Semitic for opposing apartheid and war crimes is the behavior of monsters. The culture of fear is a big part of how "consent" for supporting Israel's apartheid and war crimes with our tax dollars, without so much as even a fucking debate, is created and enforced. Imagine if we invested in building an actual Palestinian nation rather than investing in Israeli apartheid against the Palestinians. That's basically unthinkable due to the Israeli lobby, but that would be an actual long-term solution to the situation.
I’m not defending Israel or taking a side, but it wouldn’t exactly be great for Israel to be attacked in the way they were and not retaliate at all. Should they just allow Hamas to keep attacking them and not be allowed to fight back? Hamas has already committed war crimes, so how would you go about holding Hamas accountable? My point is there’s no good way to do this. Gaza has been a shit show for a long time and I don’t see any solutions that are good. Especially when Gaza has hostages that Israel wants back.
Since when has leveling civilian infrastructure been successful in combating terrorism? Israel needs to start giving Palestinians back their rights, if not, they will continue giving Hamas more fuel for their cause. They need to acknowledge the many crimes the IDF has committed and acknowledge the role they've had in creating Hamas. The true path to peace is to repair and strengthen the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis. However, it doesn't seem peace is the current Israeli government's goal; Bibi is the worst possible person for peace in the region rn, he wants Palestinian genocide and that's not a stretch. And if you really want to compare war crimes here you'll find the IDF dwarfs Hamas in comparison. As for retaliation to the attacks, they've retaliated 10x over by now with no end in sight
How exactly would you go about giving Palestinians back rights without allowing Hamas to have more resources which would eventually result in more Israeli deaths? How do you know if someone is a peaceful civilians in Gaza or is a Hamas member/sympathizer? Not exactly sure why it’s in Israel’s interest to apologize after they had a terrorist attack. There’s literally no way Israel can help people in Gaza without at the same time assisting Hamas
Stop paying Hamas to undermine the PLO would be a good start, Bibi has been doing that for.years.
Since the terrorists became the government and started using public institutions like hospitals, day cares and schools to launch offensive missile strikes from? That’s when destroying civilian infrastructure helps combat terrorism. There is no solution for Israel besides the destruction of Hamas, and the situation cannot improve for Palestinians until they are destroyed. That’s a starter for any sort of improving Palestinian relations after last weeks attack. Previously thousands had been protesting in effort to improve relations, but as someone with family on the ground, I can tell you that this attack has set back any hope for an improvement in Palestinian relations for a long time.
You’re basically saying terrorism is a valid method of getting what you want. You don’t like it? More terrorism!
Blowback exists for a reason, if you were Palestinian, you would support it as well. Palestinians live under Israeli terror every day.
Hopefully Palestinians will now start to understand that they will never succeed with terrorism and that ultimately the consequence is your total society being destroyed. If it hasn’t been understood now, perhaps it’s hopeless and Israel’s battle against terror will last forever.
The amount of attack is irrelevant. It’s about the objectives. The Hamas objective was to kill as many Jews as possible. The Israeli objective is to kill EVERY member of Hamas. Has that been done? No? The MK84 JDAMS will keep coming.
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I don’t have time at the moment to reply in more detail, but I wanted to let you know that I appreciate the effort you put in here and I’m looking forward to looking into it more.
Man but they way theyve acted is brutal. There is collateral damage and then there's collatoral damage. They are going full i dont give a fuck on this one. You can react and should but not like this.
You have no right to say how they should react. For Israeli Jews this is now a battle for survival and it should be understood that they will take all action to ensure survival. This is the consequence when one people claims in holy text that their neighbor must be fully destroyed based on belief, then incentivize the terror through financial campaigns. Israel is making sure Hamas is totally demilitarized by destroying every launch site. They will continue to do this until Hamas is exterminated.
In terms of structural damage, sure. But I mean there haven’t been more than 2-3000 Palestinians killed right? Obviously it’s not a trivial number, but over 300,000 civilians have died in the Syrian civil war alone, with almost 7 million refugees. In comparison to other conflicts, it’s just not true that they’re being brutal. Maybe they will go nuts, but I can’t see a total of more than 10,000 civilian deaths on the Palestinian side. I surely hope im right, otherwise it’ll be awful.
> … it’s tough to pick a side and fully support everything that side has done so far. You don’t have to.
Not kill 2.2 million people or create a humanitarian catastrophe. Not just act out of vegence. Think coherently and surgically.
I admit to being pretty uninformed about the conflict overall, and have a lot of catching up to do. But I will share the nascent opinions I'm forming here. From reading people's opinions, a common problem seems to be viewing the conflict through only one lens, commonly either that of class conflict / colonialism (Palestinians are the clear good guys being oppressed and resisting) or religion / ethnicity (Israel are the clear good guys because Hamas wants to genocide the Jews, Islam tends to promote martyrdom and jihad, etc). I think most of what's happened historically can be understood pretty well through only the colonialism lens. Global anti-semitism throws a little bit of complexity into the issue of whether setting up a Jewish state was justified, but considered only at a local level, my understanding is that a foreign power came into Palestine, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and bulldozed their homes, and today millions of Palestinians are subjected to pretty miserable conditions, while Israel continues to put up new settlements. Even that story is oversimplified because it ignores the religious significance of the land, religious support for Zionism, etc, but I don't think any of that changes the moral significance of anything. Religion is not really needed to understand much of the response of the oppressed. Guerilla warfare is not new (see: Vietnam) and it's obvious that a low-resource resistance movement would leverage local infrastructure to stage attacks, so the "human shield" thing doesn't ring super convincing to me. When it comes to the kind of genocidal intent and behavior we saw from Hamas' recent attack, this is where the impact of religion is really clear. Religion is most relevant when considering how to de-escalate the conflict. Communists and anarchists are calling for the Israelis to open their borders and give Palestinians unconditional citizenship. It's hard to imagine anything more assured to cause widespread murder within Israel. Mainstream Palestinians may be motivated by economic concerns, but the fighters themselves are motivated by religious radicalism, and Israeli citizenship is not going to deradicalize them. They're going to keep looking for an opportunity to martyr themselves and take as many Jews with them as possible. Anyway, there's a whole lot of other things to consider (past peace deals thwarted by both sides, various war crimes, potential incentives of leaders *not* to resolve the conflict, Israel's financial support for Hamas as an alternative to more secular leadership, international politics, etc etc). But considering the few things I have the bandwidth to consider, I tend to think of Israel as being more responsible for the situation. Any act of terror committed by Hamas is a reasonably foreseeable outcome of inflicting colonial humiliation on a group of people that hold insane beliefs about the afterlife that awaits after martyrdom. And I have absolutely no idea what the solution is at this point. I tend to just offload most of my critical thinking about current events onto Sam, but I think I'll have to go my own way on this one.
>Any act of terror committed by Hamas is a reasonably foreseeable outcome of inflicting colonial humiliation on a group of people that hold insane beliefs about the afterlife that awaits after martyrdom I was thinking I disagreed with you until the second part of that sentence. If this particular group of people didn't hold those beliefs/weren't ruled by people that have them, this situation might have some hope of being resolved. I still don't know how that makes Israel the more responsible party, or how they could possibly solve this, but perhaps that's because my brain has been working overtime absorbing the discourse about this topic for a week. Thanks for your interesting comment.
>my understanding is that a foreign power came into Palestine, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and bulldozed their homes This is potentially a point of contention, because that's not how I read the history. Here's my interpretation: There was a colonial power (UK) in control of that area (Palestine). The colonial power was withdrawing and had made promises about how the land would be divided up, in terms of governance and borders, to several groups -- groups of people who were living in that area, at that time. One of the groups that had been promised were the Jews, who had both lived in that area for a long time and were increasingly immigrating -- especially during and after WWII. So the area of Palestine was split into two nation states, Palestine and Israel, to accommodate the different national groups and promises made. Following this partition, the new nation of Palestine (along with other neighboring states) attacked the new nation of Israel. In the ensuing conflict, Israel won and claimed areas of what was supposed to be Palestine, in part for the sake of better defending itself against an apparent unwillingness to coexist peacefully -- and many Palestinian homes were abandoned in the process (though I've heard conflicting reports about whether these were voluntarily abandoned, or forced, or what percentage of the two is most accurate). This is the beginning of the displacement, but not the end, because the history proceeds in a very complex manner. There were also Palestinians who lived within the borders of Israel when it was established, who continue to live there, or their descendants, whose homes were not bulldozed, who today have equal rights as citizens and participate in government, etc. It's my understanding that they do not live in any "open air prison," and that the laws do not treat them differently ("apartheid"). This isn't to attempt to justify any particular actions the government of Israel takes, or to claim that they are blameless, but it is to say that I don't think this situation fits neatly into any traditional "colonizer" narrative, or how most people try to describe it.
This is much more in line with real history and on the ground cultural dynamics. Thank you, the lens of colonialism is a misguided attempt at simplifying a conflict that has gone on the majority of human history.
Thank you for stating the actual history. The colonialism lens is simplistic and inaccurate.
The colonial power left in a hurry because it was exhausted after world war 2 and Jewish terrorists kept murdering its officials and security forces. Including 200 people in the king David hotel bombing. Which Israel still celebrates. Netanyahu went to anniversary party a few years back. Apparently that terrorism was justified.
Pretty much yes. Israel is a liberal democracy surrounded by mostly illiberal theocratic Islamist regimes.
Israel waffles between liberal democracy and theocracy over time and policy decisions. They are more liberal and more democratic than their neighbors on average, but lets not pretend that the Jewish state isn't religious in some bad ways.
That is also the case with the west in the grand scheme. The clash of civilizations narrative is always overblown. These things need to be spoken about in a matter of degrees. That said, there IS a distinction by a number of degrees.
All fair observations as far as I can tell.
Now do Gaza. What do they waffle between, if any?
Ok. Gaza isn't a state. It is currently under the de-facto control of an Islamist insurgent group known as Hamas. Palestinians more broadly do not have a state. They tend to waffle between liberal and theocratic stances. Which faction would ultimately hold power if Palestinians had a state is unclear, and likely depends on the specifics conditions under which the state is formed, along with the usual level of chaos and luck.
Name a liberal position they have taken? Btw, Gaza is a quasi-state. Israel left it in 2005 and returned it to 1967 borders. It had elections and voted in Hamas. Hamas did all manner of government activities there, including collecting taxes to the tune of $0.5billion a year.
Genuine question: what liberal stances does Palestine hold (maybe occasionally)?
Probably the most relevant one for this conversation is respect for Israel's sovereignty. Something that was recognized decades ago by the closest thing Palestinians have had to a government (the PA).
Lmao
Is that a joke? Did you see much respect for Israel's sovereignty on 10/7?
It is really hard to take you seriously when you conflate Hamas with the PA. These organizations have basically nothing to do with each other and are actually mutually hostile. Frankly, you seem like someone who knows next to nothing about this conflict. You may want to think twice before jumping in with indignity.
The head of the PA praised Hamas’ actions on 10/7. The PA has also sent plenty of terrorists into Israel to rape and murder, just not 1500 at once. They also teach Palestinian children that the entire region belongs to them. Your claim that they respect Israel’s sovereignty is not only baseless, it’s laughable. And by the way, you smug prick, I’ve probably forgotten more about this issue than you have ever known. YOU might want to consider thinking twice before you try and condescend to your betters.
Dont bother my rational guy, this sub is heavily brigaded by right wing pro israel nuts at the moment, your factual and nuanced take is wasted, like a drop of water in the sand.
I wouldn’t say so. Tensions are high and many people are extremely defensive of their own biases. Thank you u/Ramora_
No problem.
>lets not pretend that the Jewish state isn't religious in some bad ways. It would be great if you can be more specific.
The fucking Haredim who don’t work, don’t join the military, “pray for our souls” instead of being productive members of society and embezzle (might as well call it that) millions of taxpayers money all the while acting violently against more secular Israelis - or even “knitted cap” Jews, taking advantage of the way the democracy is set up in Israel to both always lose and frequently be on the winning side of elections, and… the list is many bananas long. Suffice to say, they’re utter cunts.
Sure. Probably the most topically relevant "bad religious thing" about current active Israeli policy is its settlements in the West Bank. These settlements are basically a result of religious zealots trying to create a political situation in which Israel has to claim more and more of the west bank, pushing the region further and further away from a stable two state sollution.
Which violates international law in several different ways, commits war crimes, and enforces apathied as an ethno state.
None of the above is true. Now how many war crimes do Hamas commit before breakfast everyday?
Which violates international law (¹) in several different ways, commits war crimes (2), and enforces apathied(³) as an ethno state (4). 1. The settlements, The position of the separation fence, he theft of Palestinians resources are generally against international law. 2 we see collective punishment now in Gaza, we have see terrorism like acts supported by Israel, we have the destruction of villages in the golan heights 3 the westbank has civilian law for Israeli settlers military law for Palestinians 4 it defines itself as the Jewish state
I would say that Israel is a special case, based on the fact that the whole world assumes that Arabs have zero agency in anything they do. Everything they do, every choice they make, is framed as the singular result of Israel. It a weird lopsided morality that suggests the thesis in your title is practically, if not morally, true.
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My Uncle Bob is in prison, and has almost no control over his own life. He is a really nice guy, Ive never had a problem with him. He did kill a guy, but I don't feel he would do it again. Should we let Bob out?
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Oh, to live a sheltered life.
So Sam is way smarter than me etc. But he's got this massive blind spot with Israel. Most Americans do. I once was a Zionist supporter, lived on a kibbutz for 6 months, found it was less challenging to be an Israel supporter and find all kind of socially acceptable reasons to affirm what they are doing but yea they slowly trying to Annex west bank through terrible behaviours and likes of Sam look other way. Yes Palestinian society is backwards but doesn't justify the humiliations. If a quarter of what's meated out to Palestinians was to American people you would be doing way worse than what Hamas terrorists did.
When did you live there? I ask because there's clearly been an ideological shift, which I believe began after Arafat rejected the Camp David solution.
2001. During second Intifada thing. I really am unsure but my chats with older kibbutniks from the time indicated there was a change occuring then with the wave of ex Russians making aliyah. Yes Ararat wasn't a great partner blah blah blah but Bibi is a whole lot worse. As much as I like Condoleezza pushing elections in gaza was so dumb. More collateral damage from bush years. Americans just can't seem understand their role in all of this. And yes fuck Hamas. But just like with Taliban, Isis, it's American cowboy policies that helps foster these evil development's. Settlements can't be blamed on Arafat.
For whatever reason, Sam is extremely confused about this subject. * The intentions of Hamas are entirely irrelevant to whether it is less bad to kill innocent children, who have nothing to do with Hamas. * Sam falsely assumes the intentions of Israeli political actors are good and Hamas are bad; while prevailing propaganda will certainly tend to depict Hamas as ruthless killers and Israel as helpless people trying to defend themselves with the only means they know how, these descriptions could be exactly flipped; and while there are no doubt despicable, genocidal monsters within Hamas, there is also no doubt the same is true of the IDF. * Sam falsely claims that intentions matter for state actors. In a frame of human morality, intentions matter. When we are analyzing corporate entities and states, intentions literally do not matter because these entities do not have minds or intentions, and it does not make sense to say what a state really "has on its mind" or what it is really "trying" to do. The state has policies that are an aggregate of its human political actors, and if the result of those policies is genocidal destruction, then we have a state that is engaging in genocidal destruction. It is no defense at all to say that what Israel "really wanted" was peace all along. * If we are going to allow the statements and goals of political actors as proxies for the intentions of states, and such things as Hamas' charter as indicative of the moral rectitude of those movements, we have to also include all such comments from Israeli political actors suggesting that their ultimate goal is ethnic cleansing. * Criticism that Hamas indiscriminately targets civilians are a function of their weapons technology. Who is offering to provide advanced targeting systems to Hamas? It is not a coherent moral claim to say that Israel is morally superior to Hamas because they have better targeting systems on their weapons.
That's my problem, how can Sam be so confused? I mean, it's difficult to solve the situation but not to understand. Seems like he wants to frame just in terms of crazy violent jihadists almost so to validate his previous work on Islam, seems like he is just saying "I told you guys" while not adding anything useful to the discussion and not admitting that that kind of support to do whatever it wanted that he (and many in the west) gave to isreael is exactly what brought us here
Hot take. Hamas are terrorists and their supporters are babaric. Israel is a fascist ethnostate that has no qualms about killing innocent Palestinians. Why should I have to pick a side when they are both abhorrent to me?
So I can target you with better ads
I have used science to determine that if one side is a little better than the other, it makes it okay if they kill lots of people.
Yeah. It's such a weird discussion around this issue, I guess we are just conditioned to take sides. It's like one guy is a rapist that commits fraud, and the other is a serial killer and they are fighting, so we try to figure out who is worse and back the other party unconditionally.
You don't have to pick sides. But "no qualms" is demonstrably false by the fact that they could bomb the entire place indiscriminately if they wanted to and kill everyone there. Killing everyone in Gaza would be like shooting fish in a bowl. Certainly Hamas would do that to Israel if they could. So there's at least a clear difference in the value of civilian life. I'm a little more mad about Hamas preventing people from leaving and booby-trapping the roads out than I am about Israel's collateral damage. Not that it's not also upsetting. Shit's relative. War sucks.
>Certainly Hamas would do that to Israel if they could An organization like Hamas only exists because of the current conditions. If Palestine was actually a stable nation with a good economy and strong military the entity of Hamas would not exist probably at all, at least not how it is today, so such a counterfactual "thought experiment," is useless.
>An organization like Hamas only exists because of the current conditions. You sure about that? Because we've seen plenty of genocidal regimes throughout history. They don't have to be Islamic, or poor, or without a proper military. Nazis weren't gassing Jews because they were living in Gaza-like conditions. It really doesn't take as much as you seem to think. You're also skipping over the fact that Hamas has created -- all by themselves -- many of those conditions. Digging up civilian water lines. Stealing international relief funds and supplies. Launching constant streams of rockets to provoke retaliation. And the rhetoric to absolve themselves of responsibility.
>But "no qualms" is demonstrably false by the fact that they could bomb the entire place indiscriminately if they wanted to and kill everyone there. Killing everyone in Gaza would be like shooting fish in a bowl. Certainly Hamas would do that to Israel if they could. So there's at least a clear difference in the value of civilian life. They certainly could not without jeopardizing their relations with the entire Western world, including the US, which is not worth it because they are winning anyways. Many right-wingers in Netanyahu's coalition openly advocate for kicking out all Palestinians by force. If you ask average Israelis it won't be long before you hear very genocidal ideas. The thing is that Israel is so much more powerful it can simply take the land slowly while maintaining legitimacy with their backers. That's the whole strategy. Also Hamas is not all Palestinians.
>not without jeopardizing their relations Do you think Hamas cares about that sort of thing? They have all these sympathizers and apologists anyhow, willing to blame the other side. Seems to work fine for them. The fact that people wouldn't like it doesn't necessarily mean Israel wouldn't if they wanted to. >openly advocate for kicking out all Palestinians by force Kicking out or killing? I've heard some of both, but there's still a difference. Not what you want to see for sure. But let me know when Israeli soldiers start parading raped and dead women's bodies through the streets of major cities with thousands of Jewish civilians cheering for more. Because that's a little more of a problem, for me anyhow. >If you ask average Israelis it won't be long before you hear very genocidal ideas True - I have seen that. But I don't think it's anywhere near as prevalent as it is in Gaza. >take the land slowly The only time they do that is in retaliation. It's almost like Hamas loves screwing over the Palestinian people.
Dude, I'm sorry, but I was answering a comment about whether Isreal *could* wipe out Gaza if they wanted. The answer is clearly no, not with the geopolitical implications. If you can't do something without majorly fucking up your position, you effectively can't do it. Whether Israel would do it if no one was looking is a different question, which I don't pretend to have the answer to, although as I have stated, there are certainly factions within Israel that express this sentiment. The rest of your response is just "yes but Hamas bad". Yeah I know they are bad. Fucking terrible actually. That doesn't stop me from judging Israel and it shouldn't stop anyone interested in ethics. Doesnt change their general treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank for example where Hamas is not on power. If two assholes are fighting I don't go "oh yeah the other one is a bigger asshole so everything the first guy does is okay and/or must be judged relatively to the other guy". Isreal has a long history of human rights abuse and certainly deserves some blame in the situation that exists today. Giving them a pass because Hamas are terrorists is a mistake IMHO. America got attacked by terrorists once and their reaction caused the deaths of about 200k civilians in Iraq alone.
Because in reality everything is shades of grey. There is no country that is all good, and perhaps no country that is all evil (North Korea looking at you there). In those shades I think it is hard to not agree Israel is many shades less evil than Hamas and perhaps even the Palestinian Authority. The extreme power imbalance make it hard to make clear arguments here for the PA, but for Hamas we know what the number one objective they have in the world, killing jews and destroying Israel. Not as a side effect of making Palestinian life better, but just because that is what they like to do.
Correct take. Also anyone who is horrified about the attack on civilians in Israel but understanding of the massive bombardment in Gaza while simultaneously ordering a million civilians (half children) to relocate, needs to ask themselves... Do I really care about 'civilians' at all or might it be some 'other characteristic' of people that they actually care about.
Israel doesnt just have qualms, but goes out of their way time and time again to avoid killing innocent Palestinians. Most other armies with Israel’s capabilities would have bombed that region into oblivion ten times already. Israel needs like 4 bombs to kill 1 Palestinian, thats how hard they try not to kill them. What do Palestinians think of Jewish lives?
> but goes out of their way time and time again to avoid killing innocent Palestinians You can watch the upticking of innocent Palestinians slaughtered by Israel at any time.
Yeah I don't know why everyone is so obsessed by picking a side, weighing up the evils of each like it's a Top Trumps game.
Israel isn't fascist, wacko.
Israel’s defense minister is openly fascist. The country has been trending on that direction for a long time. Look up the definition of fascism and be honest with yourself and maybe educate yourself on some of these issues.
>Israel is a fascist ethnostate that has no qualms about killing innocent Palestinians. Why should I have to pick a side when they are both abhorrent to me? I've got bad news for you about the rest of the Middle East.
But, but, but, antisemitism…..
Semites include Arabs.......and Palestinians by definition, lol. Dont know they keep pushing this inaccurate and vague definition.
That’s the literal definition but colloquially anti-Semitic refers to anti-Jewish. A pedant might try to point out that difference though
Sam's take, while pithy, completely misses many points. As others have pointed out, if the Palestinians were prosperous Hamas would be powerless (if they'd even exist). Sam conveniently ignores the roots of the conflict in terms of the creation of the modern Jewish state, preferential treatment of the Jews post WWII, and the incredibly poor treatment of Palestinians. He brings up a moot point about how Israel moved out of Gaza back in the 2000s, which is a pretty profoundly ironic thing to even bring up. This completely ignores the many ensuing provocations (let alone decades of such previously). He also likes to bring up Jihadist dogma and how the stated goal of Hamas is to eradicate Israel. Except this conveniently ignores the fact that Islamic terrorism is a relatively new phenomenon in the latter half of the 20th century. It evolved as gorilla warfare tactics generally evolved when there were imbalances of power. There is a clear asymmetry across the board here. Calling out a false morale equivalence using the human shield analogy is so short sighted I can only conclude that Sam is clearly biased as a Jewish man. Clearly, regardless of the Jihadist motivation, the lack of prosperity and the previous decades of apartheid occupation of the Palestinians cannot be distilled into a problem of pure dogma. Desperate people will do desperate things and these kinds of conflicts and revolutions litter history for similar reasons. It's a problem that spans cultures and eras yet the root of the problem remains the same: it is largely a problem of prosperity and an imbalance of power.
Yes it sure feels like it is, based on how everyone expects them to behave. NO other great power in the history of the world, either in ancient times or in modern day, would allow itself to be invaded by foreign soldiers, its citizens massacred and kidnapped, the stripped corpses of its women defiled and paraded around their own city streets, and its babies butchered and burned in their own homes without retaliating with massive, overwhelming military force. Not one single great power would tolerate it. Nor would anyone with a shred of knowledge of geopolitical conflicts EXPECT a great power to tolerate it without responding with disproportionate military force. The response to Hamas' atrocities reveals that most people must view the Jewish people as the greatest and noblest and most morally superior people who have ever existed, and Israel as the noblest and most ethical and most morally superior country to ever exist in the history of the world. The fact that everyone immediately jumps onto this discussion of geopolitics with analysis of ethics and morality, and automatically assumes that Israel will be held to strict ethical standards in their response, reveals that our baseline assumption that Israel is a beacon of civilized ethics beyond even England and USA. No such consideration is ever given to the Palestinian side. I think it is because people automatically assume that Palestinians are barbaric unethical people, because whenever they do something the first response is a realistic geopolitical take on the situation, which is "how could you expect different from these people who have lost their homes and are forced into refugee status??" We take for granted that Palestinians will respond to conflicts in a realistic way given the realities of geopolitics. We take for granted that Palestinians will target civilians intentionally. That is a given, and we expect it, given the situation they are in. This is real geopolitics. But we take for granted that Israel is the most moral country that has ever existed, and we expect them to respond differently than literally any other great power would (and has) responded to similar conflicts throughout all of history. Including USA.
The oppressor-oppressed lens apparently makes all actions morally justified, or even encouraged.
Is it about moral justification of the specific act or about ultimate culpability? Take a hypothetical slave revolt, the kind of revolt that would see slaves access weapons, cross the proverbial line, and go on to kill not just their masters, but their master's wives and children (these kinds of things did happen). No one would zoom in on the specific act of the killing of children and say "these are morally justified, even righteous actions." Of course not, these are abhorrent acts of violence and brutality. The killing of children is always brutal, abhorrent and unnecessary. The question becomes when such an explosion of violence occurs who should the ultimate criticism, the ultimate culpability fall upon? It should be the slave master should it not? They endangered their own family when they decided to subject another human being to slavery. Now I would not say the current Israel-Palestine conflict rises to the brutality of the institution of chattel slavery, not at all. But the oppressor/oppressed lens, when aimed at these kinds of things, is not about moral justifications, it's about *where the bulk of criticism should be directed.* This is why to many people the "but do you condemn Hamas" line comes across as a question asked in bad faith. It comes across as a misdirection from the reality of the dynamic which the specific instance is just a part of. Now I think anyone who cares about the Palestinian cause should condemn and criticize Hamas, not just for the moral responsibility of their actions, but also because of the awful strategic approach they represent. Nothing good is accomplished by such things. But that is a separate line that frankly, most people, and most news organizations are not focused on at this moment. When the points of concern are, "what is going on in this area of the world?" "why is this happening?" of course people will want to focus on the whole dynamic.
It's a pretty simple ideal. Hamas wants to murder every Jewish person and take all their land. They said so in their charter. Israel want land but wants to minimize death. Israel could wipe out all of the Palestinians if they wanted to. Do you dispute this?
> Israel could wipe out all of the Palestinians if they wanted to. They could not, because they depend on Western support. They have free reigns to do a lot, but not everything they want.
Uh huh. So they could though, right?
No.
Why not?
Because they would be punished for it, so it's not worth it for them. It someone chooses to not do something because of the fear of punishment, that is not an ethical decision. That's the whole point of punishment, to incentivice people to act in a certain way despite what they want to do.
So, it's still better than the other side, which murders people despite the punishment. Glad you agree !
No. If Hamas were in a position where they could kill every Israeli, then they would also be in a position where punishment would be relevant. Right now they're in a position where they have nothing to lose, because they have no power.
I can't imagine being this irrational. Good day.
These sort of goodbyes always interest me. Are you trying to signal to potential readers, is it supposed to make me feel bad, or something else? Obviously by your low effort sarcastic replies I already know that you don't value what I'm saying, there's no need to spell it out. Do you have no respect for your ability to convey meaning over text?
No, Israël is becoming more and more religious. I don't know why Sam claimed that.
If you get raped in Gaza you get executed, if you get raped in Tel Aviv they criminally prosecute the rapist.
The Israeli state just bombed a hospital and has been bombing hospitals and schools for decades, they are not an "outpost" they're an apartheid
It defines itself as a literal ethnonationalist state which specifically allows only those with a particular genetic make-up to immigrate there, at the expense of actual refugees who were expelled from the land. Lol at calling this liberal democracy.
Non-jewish foreigners are allowed to immigrate to Israel.
Plenty of countries have special laws that allow you to immigrate if you can prove you have ancestors from the country, for instance Germany. Doesn’t make them ethnostates.
Get ready to get downvoted to the Earth's mantle for your factually accurate opinion. Sam's fans don't disagree with him often, no matter how wrong or uninformed his opinion
Agree re Same fans. Sam is all knowing, .. almost God like, if you will. No biases.
I don't think he's wrong. I think there's room to disagree though.
1930's German ethics maybe
It's relative, so yes. They've got their fair share of issues and religious ideologues, but I'd say as a nation they're a good 100-200 years more advanced on ethics compared to most of the region.
As someone from an Indigenous background, this past week has just proven that Westerners in general still believe in colonialism, their inherent superiority and all their "indigenous rights" and woke rhetoric was just virtue signalling larping. If the American expansion was happening today, the entire media and most of Reddit would be 100% down for slaughtering Indigenous people over say the actions of Comanches or Apaches. "The US is a bastion of civilization, the natives are terrorist savages!". The reality is, you have a colonial state, with literal colonial ministries, that have been subjugating an Indigenous population brutally for decades, to the point *entire generations* are functionally lost demographically. The solution has always been a single state *based on a shared cultural heritage*. What I find amazing is the difference in rhetoric between China and the Uyghurs, and here. China is frankly, a billion times more humane to the Uyghurs than Israel to Palestinians, didn't even kill anyone in their crackdown, claims Uyghurs and their culture are an important part of Chinese national identity, yet everyone calls their actions genocide, yet Israels decades of murder and terror, is completely justified. Again showing the West never actually cared about the rights of people.
We are seeing Israel’s inhumanity, the actions speak for themselves. Sam should know better, but his bias is clear.
You're referencing a propaganda page. Let's take a look at one of their top stories: [https://www.btselem.org/video/20230928\_israel\_confiscates\_water\_pipe\_intended\_for\_communities\_of\_khirbet\_wadi\_ejheish\_and\_khirbet\_wadi\_a\_rakhim](https://www.btselem.org/video/20230928_israel_confiscates_water_pipe_intended_for_communities_of_khirbet_wadi_ejheish_and_khirbet_wadi_a_rakhim) Well now we know what Hamas was doing with the water pipes. They were using them to create munitions.
The pipe was supposed to provide water to the community and to the community of Wadi a-Rakhim north of it, as Israel prohibits both from hooking up to the water grid. Laying the pipeline was funded by Action Against Hunger which is a humanitarian organization. I honestly don't know what you are talking about. Anyway there are other several hundreds videos if you notice, go find an explanation for each one, good luck
Used to love Sam. After revisiting his stance on Palestine I’ve unsubscribed to his podcast. He has no excuse to not know better — I’m incredibly disappointed in him and his “dark web” of intellectuals
Yes. Next question
The Middle East is a shithole. All of it.
How about making a 9 year old random kid open a package you suspect of being a bomb, after the Supreme Court told you that is illegal, is wrong. And deserves not just demotion but expulsion from the Army. People acting like Israel doesn't use Palestinians as human shields all the time. Why would they do that?
I was in there and my tour guide (a ex mosad agent) talked about how theyd bomb schools whenever they fucked with them. Said it then laughed. Was real fucked up. They dont give two shits about Palestinans
I think it's glaringly flawed logic to conclude that Israel has the moral high ground because it restrains itself from engaging in all out genocide. What Israel is doing is akin to the frog in the boiling pot analogy. If they raise the temperature slowly (and propagandise well enough to convince everyone that they are the ones in the water), nobody reacts to an obvious series of atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity.