I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
the ones staying out of it
Israel and its settler garrison are carrying out the standard colonialist formula throughout history (epitomized by the US model in its conquest) : eviction and genocide of the indigenous inhabitants, and theft of their lands.
This is defended under many premises, a “religious” calling, a “civilizing” venture (with orientalist undertones), and many others, but the goal is the same as all imperialist ventures: theft of land, labor, and natural resources. People from around the world, no matter how rich or poor, are invited to join in this colonial project, and many do, because of the promise of cheap land.
Predictably, Israel calls anyone who opposes this genocide as “terrorists”, even though by all reasonable definition of terrorism, its the settler garrison who are the real terrorists: murdering innocent civilians, stealing their towns, and erasing the old names. In Palestine, the largest of this event was called the Nakba, whereas in the US, the entire 1800s was a westward-expanding colonial war defeating hundreds of native tribes and killing anyone who resisted.
The US is the primary supporter of this project, because Israel is for them, a giant, unsinkable aircraft carrier / military base in the middle east, which can be used to project western military power on the resource-rich middle east. As Joe Biden said: “If Israel didn’t exist, it would be necessary for the US to invent one herself.”
I suggest watching this video, as its the best short introduction: How Palestine became Colonized.
Thanks for the info. I’ve saved this video to my watch later list, and I’ll let you know what I think about it when I do.
👍
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oh right, totally forgot about those poor people who lived and partied next to the concentration camp and then got either kidnapped by people who wanted to break out of the concentration camp or were killed by the IDF. let’s all show a bit more empathy! 😥
It’s clear Judaism / Muslim conflicts have caused a lot more suffering to Muslims in Palestine for the last 100+ years. But the solution to this conflict will never be violence. Only diplomacy.
I’m arguing that such comments can generate hate and divide. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but I at least hope you agree that the solution is not hate, but diplomacy.
When violence is acceptable the weak and marginalized are destroyed. I only wish the best for Gaza and Israel. And in my opinion the solution is empathy and diplomacy. It’s obviously terribly hard to negotiate and empathize with your abuser. But in my opinion, if this sentiment doesn’t start the conflict will only stop when the weaker side is destroyed. I hope we can respect each other. Bless you.
While you sound reasonable, your mistake seems to be to believie that Judaism is the same as Zionism. It is not. It is completely not. They are inherently incompatible. Learn about it or don’t. I’m not some kind of theological scholar or history professor. Maybe ask your local Rabbi about it.
Anyway, sorry to sound like some kind of an extremist to you, but violence is (at the moment) 100% the only answer. Not against the Jewish people, but against the fascist, zionist apartheid regime, who is committing genocide, right now, right before your eyes. Every day, bless you too.
It’s clear Judaism / Muslim conflicts have caused a lot more suffering to Muslims in Palestine for the last 100+ years.
This is a Zionism / Palestinian (and any other independence groups, really) “conflict”, which is to say, occupation and rrsistance.
But the solution to this conflict will never be violence. Only diplomacy.
Diplomacy requires leverage and is not an inherent good on its own. Diplomacy can be a tool for delay, propaganda, and for achieving a lopsided deal with false representatives. All of these things have been done via US/Israeli “diplomacy” regarding Paleetine.
You see a people forced into a ghetto fighting back and say, “no that’s not the way” as if you have any understanding and have earned an opinion. An important lesson to learn is when you should have no opinion until you become informed.
I’m arguing that such comments can generate hate and divide. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but I at least hope you agree that the solution is not hate, but diplomacy.
The divide is already there. It is genocidal settler-colonial apartheid vs. freedom fighters. And the camps throwing in for each side of this. Personally, I don’t find it difficult to place myself fully in the freedom fighter camp and against the genociders. Do you? And no, there is no third option because there is no third force with any leverage or will.
When violence is acceptable the weak and marginalized are destroyed.
The violence has already been here. What on earth are you talking about? What fantasy world do you live in where passive Palestinians are left alone? The Israeli project is premised on their oppression and expulsion.
And you are simply wrong in your generalization. Violence has been essential for virtually every liberation fight. This is not because the marginalized love violence, it is because the oppressor leaves no other options.
I only wish the best for Gaza and Israel.
Israel is an apartheid ethnostate doing a genocide. It is racist and horrible to wish the best for it.
And in my opinion the solution is empathy and diplomacy. It’s obviously terribly hard to negotiate and empathize with your abuser. But in my opinion, if this sentiment doesn’t start the conflict will only stop when the weaker side is destroyed. I hope we can respect each other. Bless you.
You don’t deserve an opinion on this topic because you do not know anything about it. You do not get to set the terms of others’ freedom. You should spend your time helping the resistance, not rationalizing a fairy tale about how to oppose settler-colonial genocide with “diplomacy” and no militarized resistance.
Replace US with Israel in this Stokely Carmichael Quote:
“Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”
Israel, or any bully, will not be swayed by your appeals to their conscience, no matter how hard you try. Ruling classes intentionally spread pacifist propaganda becomes its completely unthreatening to them. Pacifism overall is a losing strategy with zero historical successes, as the article below gets into.
Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy’s job for them. Youtube Audiobook
Dr. King also changed his opinion later on. People act like he was some lifelong pacifist without knowing his full history and what changes were caused by his pacifist actions and by other’s more aggressive actions.
I’m extremely confused. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, led by MLK, had massive, sweeping success. Brown v. BOE, Loving v. Virginia, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968, etc. The non-violent strategy succeded in striking down segregation, Jim crow laws, and nearly all forms of legal racial discrimination within a couple decades.
Securing legal rights for minority groups to be treated equally under the law and courts is a losing strategy? What exactly is your objective if you see the civil rights movement as a loss?
I understand that you’re probably not American so you may not have an extensive knowledge of American history. But this is pretty important stuff, and acting like MLK failed because of his non-violent strategy is 1,000,000% wrong. Literally could not be further from the truth.
What did the Black Panthers accomplish with their violent strategy? They committed a few terrorist acts and all ended up dead or in jail. They didn’t secure any major, permanent victories for future generations.
Saying that MLK failed because of his non-violent approach is like saying Julius Caesar failed because he was an ineffective military commander. It’s so incredibly incorrect that I don’t understand how you could ever come to think that.
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It’s clear Judaism / Muslim conflicts have caused a lot more suffering to Muslims in Palestine for the last 100+ years. But the solution to this conflict will never be violence. Only diplomacy.
The mental model here is “violence and diplomacy are mutually exclusive”. In fact, they’re very closely connected, almost synonymous.
I’m arguing that such comments can generate hate and divide. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but I at least hope you agree that the solution is not hate, but diplomacy.
Agree here. I grew up in violence and lived through the peace process. It starts out violent, and you win concessions by showing strength, and then negotiate peace. That worked in Ireland in 1998 and almost worked in Palestine in 2000. Violence is the first part of the diplomacy.
When violence is acceptable the weak and marginalized are destroyed.
You’re saying that the weak should go to the negotiating table empty-handed, but that won’t solve anything for them. They need to stop being weak and start being strong, then diplomacy can start to happen.
The solution to weakness is strength. How can the weak become strong without the Armalite?
The Catholics took up arms in 1968 and came to the negotiating table in 1998. We won some concessions because we showed strength for 31 years, not “empathy”. Yasser Arafat understood this: he knew when to use violence and when to negotiate. If you defang yourself as Step One, you make diplomacy impossible.
I only wish the best for Gaza and Israel. And in my opinion the solution is empathy and diplomacy. It’s obviously terribly hard to negotiate and empathize with your abuser. But in my opinion, if this sentiment doesn’t start the conflict will only stop when the weaker side is destroyed. I hope we can respect each other. Bless you.
I admire your values, but you’re incorrectly equating “empathy and diplomacy”. Diplomacy is more a military matter; empathy has no place in realpolitik.
The fact that somebody would be asking this question after a year of genocide is phenomenal.
Reminder that at the outbreak of WWII, TONS of people in the US supported the Nazi regime right up until they started invading Western Europe AKA “the countries that matter”
Also worth noting that the US continued to do business with the nazis well into the war, and IBM famously facilitated the holocaust.
The working class in both nations. The people, divided and conquered.
If Israel has a working class, it is one of settlers, IDF soldiers, etc. Those are not the “good guys”.
There is a longstanding and incorrect view of Western leftists in the capacity of the Israeli working class to build their power and address the injustices. That class has no capacity to do so whatsoever. They are fully bought-off by the ethnocentric project, both materially and psychologically. This is not very different from how other settler colonist “working classes” did the same. If anything, it is an important lesson that the working class is not a moral quantity, it is a group defined by its relation to production, and only through political education can it gain agency for positive change.
They do have a working class, but your second point is all too true, which is why it has made no impact.
on a scale from 1 to 10 how serious are you in asking this, I ask because I am genuinly unsure if you are confused and unaware of what is happening, or if you are trying to start some shit
I’ve answered this in the post to another commenter, but I am 100% serious.
Well for Decades the Irealies have both been genociding the Palistinians, and have been on a long push to try to conflait zionism, an origionaly anti-symetic idea in eurpope, that was even embraced by the Nazis, and quinticentialy jewish, so they could use anti-semitism to shield themselvs.
The good guys are the palistinians who where there before anyone else got there, and have been being genocided agian for decades on end, and are being genocided now.
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Very few of Israeli Jews are actually Arabs. They are largely of European descent. So it is misinformation to characterize this as Arabs murdering Arabs. What this is is Western settler-colonialism.
Arabs have been murdering Arabs for hundreds of years. To say Israel started it is not only wrong but spreading misinformation.
“Israel” was internationally recognized as established in the 1940s based on a European movement from the 1800s to create a settler-colonial ethnostate. Israel did start it, it is an occupying force that displaced Palestinians from their lands in living memory, implemented violent apartheid conditions, and is currently doing a genocide.
Your “Arabs just kill each other this isn’t different” is frankly just relying on racism to avoid actually addressing the real history.
Who started it is pointless at this point
No, it is very much an important point as it happened in recent history via occupation, terrorism, and forced immigration by European settlers backed by the British empire and then the US empire. You must ignore this in order to share the positions that you have.
but this anti Palestine sentiment from Israelis has been brewing for decades. For some context look up Arab-Israeli war of 1948
Anti-Palestinian sentiment has been a core part of the Zionist project since its inception. 1948 is when the largest expulsions happened, the war was a response to this occupation and aggression.
Like killing like isn’t what’s going on here, though. Unless I’m missing something.
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10 kids born 2 killed guess what population still grew by 8
I thought the Jewish heritage and population had been there just as long but were purged out from the area. And as part of the WWII agreements, land was set aside for them to reclaim what was theirs many centuries ago.
Where are you getting news, and how often?
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You can’t argue that in good faith when one military has so much more resources than the other.
It’s like if a child hits you, then you beat the shit out of him and use the “he started it” excuse.
Forget everything you know (or think you know) about the conflict for a second. Now look at what human rights groups, including the UN, have to say about what’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon. It’s called a genocide because it is; it’s really that simple and there are mountains of evidence published by the likes of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and, again the UN. Also to dispell that particular piece of propaganda: they’re not trying to get the hostages back. If they were they’d turn the first ceasefire agreement into a “permanent” ceasefire (there are no permanent ceasefires in this conflict) and end the whole thing. They want to genocide and settle Gaza, so they’re doing that while sabotaging ceasefire negotiations.
By the way if you’re going to side with the side that has hostages, then you should read up on Palestinian detainees first. Long story short: Israel arrests Palestinians from the West Bank or (until 2005) Gaza for dubious or no charges—which they can do because these places are governed under Israeli military law rather than civil law—and sometimes torture them while stealing years of their life. Part of Palestinian resistance organizations’ raison d’etre is to return those people to their homes, which requires constant action because Israel arrests more Palestinians every day. There were already thousands of those detainees before October 7th and thousands more have been arrested after. Note: We’re not talking about Palestinians who are arrested for legitimate crimes doing their time here; these people were kidnapped as a punishment against Palestinians for existing. If this doesn’t sound like hostages to you, you should do some soul searching and ask yourself if you’re trying to learn or justify your beliefs.
This probably sounds biased to you, but I took care to only state verifiable, indisputably objective facts here Sometimes things are just that simple. That doesn’t make Hamas good guys; they’re more gray with some legitimate resistance actions and some straight up terrorism, and it’s not always clear which is which.
Finally, if you want to learn more about the conflict in general and about the conditions that drove Hamas to launch the October 7th attack to begin with, you should see what Amnesty International and other human rights groups have to say on the topic. The long story short is that Israel subjects Palestinians to Apartheid conditions along with a slow-burn genocide to serve their long-term goal of colonizing the whole Palestine and (to their more extremist factions) expand beyond it.
In Western fiction, you are taught to support the scrappy underdogs facing oppression from a racist occupying force. You root for them and cheer when they blow up military facilities and you feel for them when they lose their compatriots to oppressor violence. You know very well who the good guys and bad guys are.
But then, in Western media, with a mere change of labeling and some paper-thin propaganda, they will have you believing the opposite. All they need to do is call the freedom fighter resistance “terrorists”, say that the occupiers “have a right to defend themselves”, and pretend the “conflict” is “complicated” and really about religion. And they will so this even when the occupier ramps up genocide to unignorable levels.
The good guys remain those fighting occupation. This is consistent with a basic understanding of liberation, with nearly everyone’s stated beliefs about self-determination, and international law. The bad guys are the ethnic supremacist apartheid settler colonist occupiers doing a genocide as well as their supporters.
Question- isn’t Hamas constantly attacking Israel with the stated goal to eradicate them?
Just to be clear, Hamas does not want to eradicate the Jews. That is a myth propagated by Israel.
Hamas wants to eliminate Israel, by which they mean they want Israel replaced by an Arab-majority state in which both Jews and Arabs live. (Hamas want the return of 4 million Palestinian refugees to Israel/Palestine, which would make it an Arab-majority state.)
Furthermore, they have indicated they are open to negotiating a Two-State solution.
I don’t think it makes any sense to portray Hamas as unreasonable for wanting Arabs to control the whole land (from the river to the sea) when Israel want the same thing for Jews.
Why does Hamas get to say they want to eradicate Israel as a state and have Arab-majority control over the region, but Israel doesn’t get to say they want to control the entire region? What makes who correct to say that in either case?
Israel is saying they want to destroy Hamas which is the government of Gaza.
And they are saying they want to control the region. They call it Greater Israel.
Because Israel set up an apartheid state. If they had set about building a representative democracy that included a constitutional right of return for Jews nobody would have had a problem. Instead they want to own all this land and oppress the people who live there.
Either that’s a legitimate goal or it isn’t. I don’t think it is.
but Israel doesn’t get to say they want to control the entire region?
What do you mean Israel doesn’t “get” to say that?
Israel does say that, and Israel does control the entire region, and almost every Western power allows them to.
I guess I meant to ask why is it morally okay for Palestinians to want to do that, but not morally ok for Israelis to want to do that. Is it because Israel is an apartheid, ethnostate?
Palestinians want the right to return from where they were ethnically cleansed, Israel wants to maintain a Jewish majority state.
Your confusing a state with a people.
Hama’s want to stop Israel (the state) from existing as they occupy their territory, and make them live in internment camps.
Israel wants to stop the Palestinian people from existing, because they are an inconvenience.
Because Palestine is a multifaith, multicultural country and Israel is a colonial foothold & apartheid that is actively and systemically trying to erase both Palestine and Palestinians.
Resistance is justified, oppression is not.
Did you watch the video I linked you below?
I’m sorry, I don’t see a video link.
Israel is a racist genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate. All good people wish for the destruction of such a thing just like all good people wished for the destruction of the apartheid South African ethnostate. If Hamas wishes this, they should be commended for it, don’t you think? And anyone who disagrees called out for the racial supremacist that they are?
What does destruction of Israel as a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate look like to you? Does it look like Oct 7 writ large across all of Israel? Does it look like the massive bombing campaign, displacement, and destruction of capacity for civilians to live that Israel has perpetrated in Gaza?
Does it look like Oct 7 writ large across all of Israel?
Can’t say they don’t deserve it
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Which is why Jews across the world have said Israel is genuinely the greatest source of danger to them in terms of antisemitism - because it has linked its atrocities to their identity, regardless of their personal support.
Because you’re unable to distinguish between a state and a people, you’re unable to imagine anything but the eradication of a people, even though the example of the state of South Africa was just given to you.
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conflation of state and people that Hamas’s ideology clearly makes
A Document of General Principles and Policies
by largely targeting and slaughtering civilians in their homes
That is not what happened. That is what Western media said happened.
- The Intercept:
- Al Jazeera: Why did Israel deploy Hannibal Directive, allowing killing of own citizens?
- Electronic Intifada: How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October
.
If Hamas wants to dismantle Israeli oppression through activism, negotiations, and political reform great.
- It has tried to do that for decades. The most recent significant attempt was Great March of Return, wherein the IDF slaughtered Gazans.
- Palestinians have the legal right under UN law to struggle against their occupiers by any means necessary, including armed struggle.
- Israel, as an occupier, has no right to “self defense.”
How did it look when south africans overthrew the apartheid regime? Didn’t come anywhere near the racist nightmares of white supremacists, and there’s no reason to believe the return of palestine will be any different.
Also it’s up to Palestinians, and no one else to decide what to do with their land.
The end of apartheid, the end of ethnosupremacy at both the state and societal level, land back for displaced Palestinians. But most importantly, self-determination for the people of Palestine. They decide what they need or want once they are in a position to liberate themselves, not you and not me.
The side you are carrying water for is an ethnosupremacy at apartheid settler colonial occupation. You don’t get to hand wring about what you think the oppressed will do to their opprrssors.
First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter. I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned, dismantling apartheid and establishing self-determination for Palestinians. However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal. Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.
Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.
First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter
And yet you used a tired Zionist talking point that amounts to, “what if the people we are oppressing do the same things to us if we stop the oppression?” It was also used for apartheid South Africa, incidentally. And we can see that the oppressed are far more humane than these ethnic supremacists.
But maybe you are anti-Zionist and just picked up this question from others.
I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned
The outcomes I mentioned are incompatible with a two-state solution. A two-state solution is bantustans and it was “agreed” to by compradors. It is not a serious proposal, which is why Israel/the US has never attempted to implement it and has instead further oppressed and fragmented Palestinians.
A two-state solution means no right of return, the continuation of the Israeli apartheid ethnostate, and the status quo for Gaza and The West Bank. There can be no state under occupation, with its orchards and homes stolen, with its towns disjointed, with a comprador government installed by Western interests. That is neither sovereignty nor justice and it would not be tolerated by the oppressed.
However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal.
Define atrocities. Israel will simply shoot and torture peaceful movements. It already has done so many times. Only armed resistance can defeat such an oppressor.
Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.
Just as the West labels all Palestinians freedom fighters, they will label actions far lesser than what Israel does on a daily basis “war crimes” when it suits them, just like the ICC seems to basically only go after black African war criminals (Bush and Cheney weren’t tried at the Hague, hmm). Guerilla warfare against an oppressor will not be clean, this is impossible. Intelligence will fail and targets will be colocated, e.g. the IDF has part of its headquarters by a shopping mall. And individuals will do terrible and violent things. Also, Israelis and the West, including the US president, will simply lie, like with the “beheaded babies” narrative. So you will have to prepare yourself to question these narratives and accept a world where the freedom fighters will be accused of war crimes by the usual sources.
Though, if we are speaking of international law, occupied people are allowed to resist their occupiers by any means they deem fit.
Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.
I use this platform for chatting and agitation. This convo is in the agitation category, of course. Generally speaking it is important to shout down pro-genocide narratives, whether it is Zionist propaganda or Dems trying to get their voters to tolerate genocide.
You can support Palestine as a people right to live, and condemn Israeli blanket bombing without supporting Hamas’ shooting civilians.
Or did you also struggle with condemning British occupation of Ireland, whilst also disagreeing with the IRA bombing of civilian targets?
I’ve seen many people in this post say the best solution is a two state system. You’re saying that’s not what you would prefer, and that Israel should be wiped out?
I don’t have a particular opinion on your view because my knowledge of what Israel and Hamas has done is admittedly limited, but I would lean towards the idea that you’re justifying Israel’s reaction and statements that the reason they are taking the action they are is because of, well, ideas like yours.
I think, from what I’ve learned over the past week of exploring this situation, that a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable. I seem to have an innately negative reaction to what you suggest here.
Please understand the distinction between the destruction of the state of Israel and the destruction of the people of Israel. The example you were just given was the destruction of the state of South Africa.
a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable.
That sounds nice, but Israel wants no such thing and never has, despite its past claims to the contrary.
I’ve seen many people in this post say the best solution is a two state system.
That is not a solution, it is bantustans.
You’re saying that’s not what you would prefer, and that Israel should be wiped out?
The “state” of Israel should be destroyed thoroughly. The “state” of Israel is premised on ethnosuoremacist genocidal apartheid and colonization. Remove those things and the “state” of Israel will fundamentally no longer exist, both because injustice will have been addressed and also because a very large number of Israeli settlers will simply leave, as they only care about living in an ethnostate that serves them. Something similar happened with Boers.
I don’t have a particular opinion on your view because my knowledge of what Israel and Hamas has done is admittedly limited, but I would lean towards the idea that you’re justifying Israel’s reaction and statements that the reason they are taking the action they are is because of, well, ideas like yours.
Israel’s political leadership have always understood their project as ethnosupremacist, of requiring stealing land from the natives, as requiring oppression of the larger population of Palestinians who will not tolerate these conditions. They correctly understand that this project will end if those conditions are addressed, if justice is done. That is not a reason to accept their justification, as no ethnkstate deserves to exist or “defend itself” against those it oppresses.
I think, from what I’ve learned over the past week of exploring this situation, that a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable. I seem to have an innately negative reaction to what you suggest here.
A two-state solution is bantustans and not even taken seriously by the “Israelis” or their American sponsors. It is just a nice-sounding “compromise” they hold in front of liberals like a carrot so that they will accept their continued slow (or now fast) genocide and displacement of Palestinians. “Israel” prefers its slow and steady expulsion of Palestinians into smaller and smaller concentration camps, like districts from South Africa. Those could never be considered a “state” under any circumstances and “Israel” would never accept them as such, even in such a diajointed condition.
Justice requires an end to the ethnostate itself.
Thank you for such a detailed response. Considering your views that ethnostates should be done away with, an interesting question came up for me. Would you be in favor of forcefully going in and forcing regime change in Israel?
I think the latter is entirely unnecessary. The US and its co-sponsor lackeys could do plenty by simply withdrawing support. The Zionist project is 90% dependent on constant material aid from Western powers to prop up its regime and would be forced to concede to the larger and more committed Palestian liberation movement without it. If they were to do anything active that was helpful, it would be to denuclearize Israel first.
Both of this things would require significant changes, though. Israel is propped up because it’s violence against its neighbors is useful for US domination of the region. But we can work for this in pieces by blocking arms exports, disrupting supply chains, and builsing leverage to demand that countries spend domestically instead of supporting genocide. Ironically in EU countries it is far-right electoral groups that have more steam for the latter due to the fact that liberals have made themselves the warmongers focused on increased militarization, but of course we cannot trust those right wingers to follow through.
I think a Two-State Solution would be a good idea (and I have opinions on exactly where the border should go), but it will have to be imposed on Israel by the international community.
Israel has never been sincere about a Two-State solution, and their “offers” to Palestine have been inadequate and unworkable, and the Palestinians have been right to reject them because there’s no point in accepting a deal that won’t lead to peace. Only a fair and workable deal can lead to peace.
Israel has demonstrated that they are an illegitimate state, because legitimate states do not bomb the stateless people living within their borders. At this point we should be treating Israel like Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. The Israeli military should be placed under foreign control, and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza returned to the Palestinians.
So far, the only thing stopping this from happening has been the United States’ support for Israel.
Israel needs to realize that the United States is rapidly declining in power, and if Israel doesn’t voluntarily cede the Palestinian territories, Israel might not exist at all in the near future.
Israel has been keeping Palestinians in a brutal and murderous apartheid state and brutalizing them for 80 years-- imprisoning them indefinitely without charges too. But you want to question what the oppressed do and why, as if it was mysterious. I’m having a hard time beleiving you when you say you want this explained to you, but I suppose I’ll take it at face value and hope for the best.
If you truly want to understand this stuff, start with a deep dive-- several actually, into history. Start with the jewish-roman wars to understand the zionist/zealot motivations. At this point the original states of Israel were 1000 years gone, having weakened themselves with civil war over taxation, then plundered and abosrbed by the neo-babylonians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars
From there you’ll want to look at the expansion of the ottoman empire and jewish place in it, and how they were governed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire This overlapped with the crusades. I recommend “empires of the sea” by crowley. Crucial in there is how the Ottoman empire depended on slaves to function, but their religion only allowed them to get slaves by capturing them in battle, and it forbade muslims from trading in slaves thesmelves, but allowed buying them. Hence the birth of slave traders as a caste, who were foriegn, and became largely a jewish group. This understandably was not well received back in Europe, where the slaves came from. The ottomans almost totally depopulated the mediteranean coasts gathering slaves. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_14 Toward the end of the ottoman empire (it was an 800 year empire), they officially tolerated muslims as slave traders. (Progress?)
You can also read up on how jews participated in and were persecuted in the crusades, and draw some conclusions as to why and how that played out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_the_Crusades#:~:text=In the First Crusade%2C Jewish,Jews in France suffered especially.
Then move on to jewish presence in the region during the ottoman empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Turkey
Read up on how jewish expulsions from european countries came about because of christianities Vix pervenit. Theres a lot there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vix_pervenit
See how because of medeival views of usury, Jews were ejcted by monarchs in europe as a way to justify seizing their assets, only to allow them back a bit later and starting the process over https://humsci.stanford.edu/feature/stanford-historian-explores-how-expulsions-became-widespread-medieval-europe
From there you can end up in the start of WW2, the jewish holocaust, and then Haganah and Irgun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
Partition, the UN creating a state of Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
Israel’s leadership thoughts at the time: https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
From there, the Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
The six day war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War The USS liberty incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
The first and second intifada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada
Oslo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_I_Accord
The creation of hamas by Israel to thwart the PLO peace plans and two state solution https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
9/11 and Osama bin laden, and the use and weaponization of his logic by western powers https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/miller.html
The rise of indefinite administrative detention https://apnews.com/article/israel-detention-jails-palestinians-west-bank-793a3b2a1ce8439d08756da8c63e5435
Storming of al aqsa mosque on oct 4 2023 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot
October 7 2023 attacks https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67039975
The use of the hannibal directive https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
You can google and read a lot about the negoatiations and doubts for whether Netenyahu wanted to negotiate for the release of hostages at all, and the Israelis protesting his lack of interest in getting the hostages back. You can also look at settler groups auctioning off peices of gaza, and now lebanon.
That’s fine. Some of my leftist friends feel the same way, like I’m not asking in good faith. I don’t have any way to convince you that I am. I just feel like I’m not educated on the subject and that’s why I’m looking for a wide array of facts and opinions.
Personally I think your perception is part of a larger problem of a breakdown in communication and education, where people automatically assume the worst of everyone’s intentions because of either experience with other bad actors, or because you feel like since you have the knowledge you have and it feels intuitive to you, you feel like everyone else must also have that knowledge and anyone outside of that sphere is simply trying to be a disruptor.
Personally I think your perception is part of a larger problem of a breakdown in communication and education, where people automatically assume the worst of everyone’s intentions because of either experience with other bad actors
Thats a fair accusation. Theres often a lot of bad faith in these communications, so if you are coming from a place of good faith and are here to learn, I apologize, and I’ve added a bunch of history links to my original comment, so you can interpret the history yourself.
Thank you for adding all of that information to your original post. I will read through it!
The volunteers that risk going to do stuff in either side. It’s crazy out there
Depends really. What do you value in your life? What ethical framework do you use? Do you value freedom and self determination, do you value people different from you as much as people of your nationality/race? Or perhaps do you value the Western stability, growth, dominance and wellbeing at the expense of the economic South more? There’s no objective answer, it depends on you and your viewpoint.
If we do away with the propaganda and misinformation we are left with this question. Because the US and Europe would never support anyone for the sake of them being the only democracy in the middle east or fighting terrorists or whatever. If that were the case the US wouldn’t have been complicit with the dictatorships of the gulf countries or any other of the innumerable dictatorships they have established throughout the years in the world. And they would also not be funding the ISIS or other terrorist groups in Columbia, Cuba, Nicaragua and so many other countries.
No dominant organisation in the world like the US state would give a significant amount of money(like it does for Israel) for something that doesn’t serve their material interests, namely the perpetuation and/or increase of their power and influence.
So what do you value? Freedom and dignity for all, or more power for the Western states and corporations (- and whatever religious crap you want to excuse colonising and ethnically cleansing a nation)?
If you see this, it’d save you a lot of time from arguing about every single event of the conflict. If you see every human in the world as equal and deserving of freedom, then you’d see that Israel and the West is bringing these people at the brink of extinction, torturing, killing, humiliating, starving them, expelling them from their land, destroying their vital civil infrastructure, stealing their land and property for 75 years now. And when you see all this (not from Western mainstream media though), you’d recognise the right for armed struggle against a colonizing entity that Israel is. No civilian casualties are acceptable, but the ones affected in 7/10/23 would have to turn against their government for ethnically cleansing Palestinians, bringing them to that desperate point of retaliation, not Palestinians.
No dominant organisation in the world like the US state would give a significant amount of money(like it does for Israel) for something that doesn’t serve their material interests, namely the perpetuation and/or increase of their power and influence.
I disagree with the notion that dominant organizations would never give significant of money away in a manner contrary to their material interests. If anything, the opposite is true: if you are dominant, then you have more freedom to get away with acting against your material interests (intentionally or not).
I think that our treatment of Israel is an example of this. All of the money we have been throwing at them does not buy anything at all, since the Israeli government does not even seem to be that grateful for it but just expects it as a matter of course. They seem hell-bent on bringing the entire region into a war that would pull us in and cause a ton of damage to our material interests, and we have barely any ability to stop them from doing this. Worst, this situation is entirely avoidable because we could, at the very least, put strings on our military aid and then enforce them, rather than just giving Israel whatever it wants and ignoring whenever it crosses any of our supposed lines.
Just to be clear, I am not arguing that our material interests are the only reason to care about what is happening or to criticize our government’s actions, I am just saying that it makes no sense to just take as given that a dominant organization will always act in its own best material interests in this way.
Undermining of independent states in the middle east is in the material interest of the US empire. They just disagree internally about how to best go about doing this. A regional war is not directly against US ruling interests unless they think they would lose that fight or if it would shut down the Strait of Hormuz for a long time. The US has not exactly reined in its Israeli attack dog in any meaningful way, which us what they could do and would do if they wanted descalation.
It’s not in the interests of the wider civilian population of the planet, or even just those in the US, but those things barely register for empire.
The problem with this reasoning is that instability, whether as the result of undermining governments or regional wars, has unpredictable outcomes. For example, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran seemed like a great idea to those in power in the U.S. at the time when we disagreed with Iran’s policies, but this decision turned around to bite us when that got overturned. So it is not in our material interests to promote instability, and I think that the current administration knows this, so to the extent it is supporting Israel with effectively no conditions on its actions I think that it is behaving irrationally rather than maliciously.
The US Empire barely cares about blowback, they subscribe for a maximalist foreign policy pressure ethos. Like in Domino Theory, they abhor independence lest it coherently spread, and act swiftly and decisively against it like playing whack-a-mole. The ethos doesn’t have to deliver perfect results free of blowback, it just needs to be good enough for the interests it serves. Regarsing Iran, this is why it is co stantly threatened and sanctiobed by the US and its cronies. The blowback was too successful so they are still just doing a maximum pressure campaign and constantly threatening war. They take a similar approach against Syria and Yemen. They took a similar approach against Iraq and likely will again.
When speaking of material interest and the US state, using “our” can be ambiguous. I am not of the ruling class of the US, and certainly nowhere near the great financiers and imperialists whose interests are the real ones served by empire. So I would never say this serves “our” interests using this kind of logic. Are you of that class? Often actions are taken against the interests of the non-ruling classes and in favor of the ruling class.
One can make an argument that the citizen US working class is a beneficiary of imperialism, paying far below what they should for imports and having wages propped up by the petrodollar, buy this is challenging to rationalize with the idea that it is simply in their interest to, say, keep Iran subservient to US empire. The public are ignorant to these things and there is no mechanistic connection between their actions and these outcomes except the propaganda appaeatus that manufactures their consent, which is really a top-down monopoly on information that still does not inform them of how this might be in their interest. And even then, it is arguable whether this is more generally in their interest. Undermining the petrodollar might lead to their yolk being removed.
So it is not in our material interests to promote instability
When hasn’t the US used the british strategy of balkanization, especially in the middle east? Divide and conquer a cornerstone of their strategy, in the ME, africa, south america, SE asia… literally everywhere.
Mossadegh’s government was actively overthrown by the CIA, then the US supported the Shah and his son, and had strong relations with imperial Iran until they were overthrown in the Iranian revolution. The Iranian people refused to accept that right-wing US-puppet and his brutal regime any longer, and there was nothing the US could do about it.
US leaders repeatedly tell you why supporting Israel is in the US’s interests: its a giant unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle east to project power on this resource rich region. The US would never support even another colonialist project with the same values, unless it was in its material interests.
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The people who won’t accept a two state solution are the bad guys, so much is clear.
To me that seems the most optimal and level headed solution, but as you can see many people disagree. A lot of people in this thread are calling for the elimination of Israel as a state, and that confuses me, because they’re saying the things that Israel is SAYING that their enemies are saying, further justifying, in Israel’s eyes, their own actions.
With this post, I guess I was looking for more historical facts and context on who is historically the bad guy in this situation. I’ve gotten some of that. I’ll keep studying the situation and I think I’m going to actively try to avoid getting sucked into the idea that one side or the other should be completely eliminated. My gut just has a really negative reaction to that sort of talk.
Yeah, and the problem is that the history of the conflict didn’t even start with the current state of Israel being established. There really is no simple good/bad narrative to be had. It’s just a shitty situation for anyone who happens to live there.
“Why won’t you accept our proposal of Bantustans, you ingrates!? You deserve genocide for this”
Let’s just fight forever then. Endless hate. Only war. Is anyone who started this shit even alive anymore?
The attempt to “both sides” a genocuidal apartheid settler colonial ethnostate currently doing a genocide vs. the indigenous and regional people opposing them is disgusting. If you don’t put in any work yo understand this topic, you do not need to have an opinion, let alone share it. Though it is important to be politically educated, so you should do the reading so that you can be helpful rather than counterproductive.
And re: people alive remembering how it “started”, much of the leadership of the resistance are literal refugees driven from their homes in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. And of course it does not take much work to inform yourself of the origins of Zionism in 1800s Europe and the antisemitism a collaborating Zionist movement that built ethnocentric colonies in Palestine and eventually formed organized terrorist groups to force conflicts with the indigenous population and receive military backing from the British.
Maybe try looking at it from the point of view of the individual people living there (and having been born there for generations) instead of whatever strategic/historical layer you’re on. The state of Israel exists and won’t be going away, that’s a fact. You can hate the injustice if you want but it would still be better if they’d finally make peace and just live in the present instead of murdering each other over the past. But neither leadership is willing to do that.
Okay, now you can continue scolding me. Don’t forget to link this to Russia’s attack on Ukraine!
Like I said, you need to shed this idea that you are entitled to an opinion, and to share it, having done no investigation.
Maybe try looking at it from the point of view of the individual people living there (and having been born there for generations) instead of whatever strategic/historical layer you’re on.
Which people and where? What do they think? Have you ever actually interacted with Israelis, Palestinians? Israelis are extremely racist and support their settler colonial project and the genocide.
The state of Israel exists and won’t be going away, that’s a fact.
Apartheid South Africa went away.
Also what happened to thinking about the individual people? You didn’t talk about them.
You can hate the injustice if you want but it would still be better if they’d finally make peace and just live in the present instead of murdering each other over the past. But neither leadership is willing to do that.
You cannot live in peace under constant occupation, displacement, and genocide. “Just make peace” is a childish idealism that means you don’t know anything about this topic.
But neither leadership is willing to do that.
One is a gemoxidal racist occupier and the other is an occupation resistance group. Don’t give me this both sides bullshit.
Okay, now you can continue scolding me. Don’t forget to link this to Russia’s attack on Ukraine!
You should do the actual self-reflection required here. There is a genocide on. If you are going to share thoughts on this topic that defends the genociders in any way you better have spent at least a few houra educating yourself. Clearly you have not, and still have no humility about it.
You are really good at putting words in my mouth, that’s been clear from your first reply.
So what’s your great plan that isn’t childish idealism?
Take as much time as you need to actually reply to my response.
