Your statement doesn’t make a ton of sense. Qatar is attempting to mediate this conflict. I suppose if one saw mediation as detrimental to wiping gaza off the map, and one had no issues with a supposedly democratic government making illegal press sources it doesn’t like, then your statement makes more sense.
> the people (hamas) operating the fight against that genocide
FYI, voicing support for terrorists undermines sympathy for a cause. (Legitimacy of violence is an old, controversial and unresolvable question. The politics of coalition building are less obscure.)
Sure. But citing comments like yours is how you get an Israel aid package passed by the Congress. (I didn’t lobby on it, but I did on Ukraine, and showing that there are people who support horrible means for their end is a good way to deplete marginal support for that end.)
…why would I want aid for Israel to pass? I don’t want zionism to run a nation state, and for people of all faiths to be .. not under the yoke of apartheid or genocide.
I guess I just don’t understand - why it’s ok to criticize “one side’s” tactic and not the other when one of the sides is killing by the thousands, while claiming to be “mowing the lawn.”
One of the best assets for people trying to bring down a hammer on Israel are its right-wing politicians explicitly calling for bombing civilians and annexing Gaza. You generally want extremists on the other side to voice support for unpopular things.
I don’t think this is true at all. History is full of terrorist causes which materialized with full public support.
Plenty of people supported the ANC, while the ANC was considered a terrorist organization, still Apartheid South Africa ended and the ANC is now in government.
Plenty of people supported the IRA, but still Northern Irish Catholics got civil rights and a political avenue for Irish reunification. Shin Féin even holds a plurality in Northern Ireland’s assembly and is increasing in popularity in the Republic of Ireland.
Plenty of people supported violent resistance of the Civil Rights movement (including Martin Luther King). Though the Civil Rights movement never ventured into terrorism, other black liberation groups certainly did, this did not undermine the cause of black liberation. And if we go even further back in history, support for John Brown—a terrorist and a full blown insurrectionist—did not undermine any sympathy for the abolitionist movement.
Each of those cases are solid examples of support despite terrorism—the IRA’s bombings in particular isolated its cause from international support for years.
Their brethren? I believe you are uneducated if you are referring to the group I assume you are. Especially given the politics of the region and the differences/animosity between those groups
The fact that individual groups in the Islamist pond engage in constant hate and strife doesn't make them non-brethren. Ideological movements often engage in constant conflict over relatively minor differences. Obsession with purity is common in bigots.
Their important common denominator is "we believe in bringing about submission to Allah at the point of the gun". I would advise any "unbeliever" to stay the hell away from any such group.
That's the thing, that's not a common denominator if you really know what each group stands for and promotes. There are christians in Gaza under Hamas. There are different Muslim denominations in Gaza under Hamas. The other groups you are mentioning wouldn't allow this, they kill other Muslims for being different, and they attack christians. There is a huge contrast. What you call a common denominator is false. There are many "unbelievers" living fine in Gaza and in Palestine in general (ignoring that they are also being victims of Israeli attacks)
Islam, even in its fundamentalist form (Salafism, Wahhabism) doesn't call for outright extermination of "People of the Book", only their subjugation under the dhimmi status.
When Hamas lets Christians live, they are doing what Islam considers right. Outright pagans (polytheists) would be a different story.
Still, they enforce Islamic law where they rule. You cannot be openly gay, you cannot openly proclaim that you no longer believe in Allah (apostasy), a Christian man cannot marry a Muslim woman.
The fact that some other fundamentalists go further than Hamas doesn't make Hamas non-fundamentalists.
Oh absolutely! It is absolutely not the fact that Al-jazeera coverage has made it hard for America and Israel to deny the ongoing genocide and the abundant war crimes happening constantly.
People working in the Israeli Al-Jazeera office don't have any direct access to report from Gaza. There is also a large foreign press presence in Israel (vs. zero in Gaza e.g.) anyways so you'll still get plenty of direct reporting from Israel and the West Bank that's unfiltered (vs. zero in Gaza e.g.).
Al Jazeera isn't free media. It's the propaganda arm of Qatar.
"Several journalists have been arrested and jailed, or even deported – in most cases for taking too close an interest in the working conditions of immigrant workers. The authorities do not hesitate, if necessary, to convict bloggers who are local residents of “disseminating false information”. This is how the blogger Malcolm Bidali was detained for a month before being deported to his country of origin, Kenya, after paying a fine." - https://rsf.org/en/country/qatar
There was plenty of coverage of the closure including photos. Not sure what you're insinuating here. Israel has free press and no it's not like Egypt.
In your bastions of democracy (pick one?) Journalists can't go anywhere they want to. If the police is operating in an area they might restrict access to it. That has nothing to do with freedom of the press. E.g. in the USA the first amendment does not guarantee journalists access to non-public spaces (like a hotel is).
A video posted by the minister on X shows police officers and inspectors from the ministry entering a hotel room.
A BBC team visited the scene, but was prevented from filming or going into the hotel by police.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said they had filed a request to the country's Supreme Court to issue an interim order to overturn the ban.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) urged the Israeli government to reconsider its decision, saying the shut down of Al Jazeera in the country should be "a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press".
The FPA said in a statement that Israel now joins "a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station", and warned that Mr Netanyahu has the authority to target other foreign outlets that he considers to be "acting against the state".
The Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna echoed the same concerns, saying: "The Israeli cabinet must allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime."
The UN's Human Rights office also called the Israeli government to reverse the ban, posting on X: "A free & independent media is essential to ensuring transparency & accountability. Now, even more so given tight restrictions on reporting from Gaza."
But yes all those terrorist groups like the UN, Foreign Press Association, ACRI, are all irrelevant, all we need is the IDF mouthpiece and Baghdad Bob.
> Al Jazeera isn't free media. It's the propaganda arm of Qatar.
Conflating Qatar's other issues with Al Jazeera is misdirection.
Media watch groups consistently rate Al Jazeera as "neutral/balanced", with their perspective "skewing slightly left", which doesn't seem particularly consistent with Qatar.
> Ad Fontes Media rates Al Jazeera in the Skews Left category of bias and as Reliable, Analysis/Fact Reporting in terms of reliability.
> All Sides rates Al Jazeera as "Leans Left"
> Al Jazeera equal in reliability to CNN
They are certainly not without issue, to be sure. But still.
It is not a misdirection. It is headquartered in Qatar and is funded by the government. There is no conflation there. Qatar is not free, journalists operating in Qatar are not free, end of story. You can't operate free press based and funded by a country that is not free and suppressed/intimidates/controls the press.
> In review, Al Jazeera reports news with minimally loaded wording in their headlines and articles ... properly sourced from credible news agencies. When reporting USA news, there is minimal bias in reporting ... In general, straight news reporting has a minimal bias; however, as a state-funded news agency, Al Jazeera is typically not critical of Qatar.
The failed fact checks were regarding two articles that weren't corrected.
> In 2017, Al Jazeera aired an investigative report of Britain’s Israel lobby. Following the airing, Ofcom (the UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority) received complaints from many pro-Israeli British activists, including one former Israeli embassy employee. They were accused of anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and infringement of privacy, which was later cleared by Ofcom, who said the piece was not anti-semitic and was, in fact, investigative journalism.
Huh.
> Further, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations demanded Qatar to shut down Al-Jazeera. Al Jazeera rebuts the accusations here.
So pro-Arab that SA (and UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt) demanded Qatar shut them down...
I never said Al Jazeera is perfect, and as noted, there is a reluctance to criticize the Qatari government.
I take less issue with "some of their opinion pieces are vocally anti-Israel", unless the contention is that nothing Israel can do can be criticized for ... reasons?
> some of their opinion pieces are vocally anti-Israel
All, not some. I've been reading them regularly for a few months and have never seen anything that isn't Anti Zionist, let alone pro Israel, and this was way before the current war - I'm sure its much worse now.
Every press operates within the confines of the government it’s based in.
Major US news agencies regularly ask DoD if certain topics are okay for them to cover. Beyond that, most relevant news in the US is owned by billionaires that regularly repress news that would paint them in a bad light.
The BBC is also headquartered in the UK, and is funded by the government. Thad doesn’t automatically make the BBC “The propaganda arm” of the UK.
This submission is about Al Jazeeras operations in Israel—which is supposed to have press freedom. Israel raided and closed the Israel operations, and banned Al Jazeera’s journalists from operating in Israel.
All that said, I’m not sure you last point goes without saying. There is nothing which fundamentally prevents receiving funding from a country which suppresses press freedom, which prevents you from doing free journalism. Will receiving funding cause editorial bias? Sure, but if receiving funding automatically made you a propaganda arm for the entity funding you, then you should really question whether western media is a propaganda arm for free market capitalism, or if Hacker News was a propaganda arm for venture capitalist Y Combinator.
Everyone in the comments just assume al jazera is right even tough we have well documented cases when they spread claims who are totally wrong with no journalism due process
They're a modern news site so I agree with you that fake or sloppy news is a problem,
however this example is that they interviewed someone who made an inflammatory claim, and then the next day removed the claims when it came out that they were false. That hardly seems that bad for our modern news landscape.
And then you have a meme of some AJ reporters saying "Terrorists in press dresses." captioned "You can't put lipstick on a pig, you can't put a press vest on a terrorist."
True, It is the Zionists. I can see the vast majority of the faith are against this inhuman occupation and genocide. Especially those who have first hand experience of the holocaust. At any point opposing the genocidal regime should not equate to hating on the people. The regime wants it and thrives on it.
"The Zionists" is a dog whistle. Nobody would care about "The Zionists" if they weren't Jews. We know this because Israel's neighbors kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel would even dream, and no one is out there protesting, building encampments and roughing up passersby. Rational arguments for Israel are dismissed out of hand by "anti-Zionists" such as yourself because "The Zionists always lie". Mitigating history is simply elided. Rockets fired indiscriminately into civilian population centers by Palestinians are "resistance". Intifada after Israeli peace offers are "resistance". Murdering civilians is "resistance". Military campaigns to end this behavior is "genocide". Dog whistle, through and through.
The pro-Palestinian movement has a literal, direct, documented connection to Nazis, and its behavior is entirely dedicated to the elimination of the only Jewish state in existence without compromise or negotiation, yet it's "The Zionists" who are accused of genocide.
There are so many untrue statements in this post, I don’t even know where to begin:
> Israel's neighbors kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel would even dream
What are you talking about? Are you saying that Israel wants to kill Muslims?
Israel has so far killed over 34000 Palestinians in the ongoing genocide. This level of killing is nowhere to be found in the neighboring region. You’ll have to go all the way to Sudan to find a similar number, where there is a civil war, and (yes) a plausible genocide. Even before Oct 7. in 2023 alone Israel killed at least 278 Palestinians in the West Bank (including 70 children). You don’t see these kind of number in the neighboring countries.
> The pro-Palestinian movement has a literal, direct, documented connection to Nazis
Where? Can you provide me with a source. I don’t recall this in the news. And even if they did, this does not negate the Palestinian cause. If a particular member of a particular movement has documented connection to Nazis, and said movement does not kick that person out and denounce them, then that single movement should be denounced, and this would not affect other movements.
> and its behavior is entirely dedicated to the elimination of the only Jewish state in existence without compromise or negotiation
I’ll leave aside for a moment the fact that you take it as a given that a particular groups should have an ethno-state deticated to them, but who wants to eliminate Israel without compromise or negotiations? Most of everybody wants negotiations, even staunch proponents of a 1-state solution usually want guaranteed civil rights to Jews and Arabs alike (albeit, sometimes omitting recent settlers in occupied West Bank from this). Even Hamas is currently advocating for a 2 state solution with a right to return for displaced Palestinians. Who is this group that doesn’t want any compromise or negotiations. Honestly Israel is much more uncompromising than any pro-Palestinian actor.
That said, being against an ethno-state is not an unreasonable, nor a racist position to take. A lot of people wanted Rhodesia to stop existing, they were not racists, they simply didn’t think it was reasonable that a segregationist settler colonial state should exist on indigenous lands.
> "The Zionists" is a dog whistle
It is not. Zionism is an ideology distinct from Judasim. There are plenty of non-zionist Jews, and even more non-Jewish Zionists. Zionism is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition of Judaism. Most pro-Palistinian demonstrators do in fact call out non-Jewish zionists, such as Joe Biden, all the time.
> As for the Nazi origins of the pro-Palestinian movement, it starts in the 1920s with al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, who hated Jews so much he met with Hitler to discuss solutions to his own "Jewish Problem". This is why "pro Palestine" is today not about peace and sovereignty for the Palestinian people. It is about the elimination of the state - and people - of Israel. Really listen to the protesters.
You went further in this comment than the previous one, claiming that the pro-Palestinian movement has Nazi origins (meaning it originate via Nazism). This is pretty false.
And for many people, "Pro Palestine" is about peace and sovereignity for the Palestinian people. For others it isn't. I don't think you should paint the whole movement with the same brush so easily.
We Westerners want peace, prosperity and sovereignty for Palestinians. For us, a 2 state solution seems so reasonable. But we're not the ones who matter. Among Palestinians and Arabs in general, advocates for a 2-state peaceful coexistence is such a miniscule minority that yes, you can effectively paint the entire pro-Palestinian movement as genocidal. This is hard for Westerners to swallow, but that is the reality.
1) The official position of most Arab countries is aiming for a 2 state solution, iirc. The Palestinian Authority - which is the effective government of the West Bank Palestinians, and the official representative of Palestinians - officially recognize the State of Israel and endorse a two state solution.
Yes, support among the populace right now is weak - both Israelis and Palestinians - but that's probably because of the breakdown of the peace talks and living for the last 15 years in a situation in which Israel itself isn't really pursuing any kind of peace.
2) You write: "you can effectively paint the entire pro-Palestinian movement as genocidal."
Even if they don't support a two-state solution, calling them genocidal is going way too far.
3) When you talk about the "entire pro-Palestinian movement", it sounds like you're including the Western pro-Palestinian movement as well.
They are definitely not genocidal, and very relevant in the current context.
4) Most importantly - the best way to get to peace isn't to ignore the peaceful voices on either side as fringe, it's to amplify them.
There are genuinely pro-peace people on all sides of these issues, and pretending they don't exist is exactly the kind of rhetorical message that leads to more hate and violence. "No one on the other side is reasonable" is both wrong, and very harmful.
> There are genuinely pro-peace people on all sides of these issues, and pretending they don't exist is exactly the kind of rhetorical message that leads to more hate and violence.
No one pretends they don't exist. I genuinely love them. They are considered traitors and get a lot of hate, but all the more power and support to them. But it's foolish to pretend they are not rare.
Not supporting a two-state solution is genocidal, because it would require putting people who have explicitly stated that they want to kill Jews, in power. By their statements and behavior, Hamas, with overwhelming Gazan support, want a 1-state solution with Muslims in charge.
I don't think we're disagreeing about any facts here, only framing.
I wrote:
>> > They are definitely not genocidal...
You responded:
> I'll just direct you to the Hamas Charter (pdf)
But I was specifically talking in that line about the Western pro-Palestinian movement, not Hamas. In other parts of my comment, I specifically called out the position of the PA as the official representative of the Palestinians.
You really don't need to remind me of the actions of Hamas. I agree with you about them. They are clearly genocidal and, more importantly, anti-peace. (I say more importantly because they can't actually commit genocide, but they can and have blocked peace from happening.)
> But I was specifically talking in that line about the Western pro-Palestinian movement, not Hamas.
Oh I see. I did misunderstand. But, honestly, I'm not so sure. Maybe you and I consume different news sources, but organizations and movements I once considered to be bastions of Western morality continue to distort the reality of the conflict so egregiously that I have a hard time understanding how it could be accidental. Continuing to report Hamas statistics without qualification and then using them to accuse Israel of "genocide" is unconscionable, for instance.
In 2021, the UN Human Rights Council published a resolution titled "Human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel," which accused Israel of widespread abuses without substantial mention of the barrage of rocket attacks from Hamas that provoked some of these responses. This selective reporting led readers to believe that Israel was the primary aggressor in the conflict.
In May 2021, during a conflict between Israel and Hamas, the BBC headlined, "Israel intensifies attacks in Gaza as conflict escalates," without equally highlighting the hundreds of rockets fired into civilian areas of Israel by Hamas. This portrayal skewed public perception, framing Israel as the initiator rather than acting in retaliation.
In April 2021, HRW released a report titled "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution." This report categorically labeled Israel as an apartheid state, a term deeply contentious and debated, suggesting an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians.
In February 2022, Amnesty International issued a report stating that Israel's policies towards Palestinians amount to apartheid. The report asserts, "Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession, and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid." This statement casts Israel's actions and policies in strictly negative terms, intensifying global anti-Israel sentiment without a balanced discussion of the complex security and political challenges that inform these policies.
Labeling Israel's policies as "apartheid" is both inappropriate and harmful because it inaccurately applies a term specifically defined under international law to the unique and complex Arab-Israeli conflict. Apartheid, as legally defined, refers to an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another. The situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories involves a national and territorial conflict, marked by security concerns and political disputes that differ fundamentally from the racial segregation and legal discrimination that characterized apartheid in South Africa.
Using the term "apartheid" to describe the Israeli-Palestinian context distorts understanding by simplifying a multifaceted conflict into a one-dimensional moral failing, which undermines the nuanced approach needed to resolve such disputes. It prevents meaningful dialogue, polarizes opinions, and can incite further tension by misrepresenting the nature of the conflict. This characterization shifts focus from seeking viable solutions to assigning blame, which is counterproductive for peace efforts and does a disservice to both Israelis and Palestinians who are impacted by these complex issues.
While I'm sure that many leftists think "Free Palestine" means freedom, self-rule, sovereignty, I know that the movement depends on that ambiguity to dog whistle to racists who, unfortunately, infect some of our human rights watch dogs. So, no, I'm not convinced that Western pro-Palestinians are not on some level intentionally genocidal. I cannot otherwise explain the level of hate and vitriol directed at Israel way out of proportion to any other conflict or situation on the planet.
Well, I can nitpick some of what you said but I largely agree. I think it's not crazy to call Israel's policies in the WB apartheid, effectively, or at least there's a real case to be made there, though I think you're right about the actual effects of using it as a political flattening, and applying it to all of Israel doesn't make sense.
> So, no, I'm not convinced that Western pro-Palestinians are not on some level intentionally genocidal. I cannot otherwise explain the level of hate and vitriol directed at Israel way out of proportion to any other conflict or situation on the planet.
Well I think the fact that many focus on Israel specifically is anti-semitic, at least at the top. I think 90% of people are followers, and are jumping on this cause just because it's popular, without necessarily understanding it in the context of the rest of what's happening around the world.
I wouldn't call any of that genocidal though, that's a pretty high bar.
I'd balk too except for the Western left's response to October 7th. Immediate celebration. One American professor at Cornell described himself as exhilerated! [1] "This is what resistance looks like" say others. Tearing down missing posters. Exhileration followed by mass protests. Against Israel. On October 8th! Even before Israel could collect its dead. Using the inevitably incorrect rumors that develop in the panic that follows any disaster ("I heard there were 40 beheaded babies!" "A woman was raped while her baby was burned alive in the oven!") to discredit any actual atrocity ("This is a disinformation campaign by Israel! 40 beheaded babies is absurd. Hamas targeted only soldiers."[2][3]) Women's rights organizations who have yet to condemn the rape of Israeli women as a tool of terror [4]. Denial that there was any rape. Denial that children were murdered. Claims that the hostages were volunteers. Claims that the attack was by Israel, akshually. Claims that Israel staged the whole thing in order to justify genocide. UNWRA materials for children glorifying martyrdom. Even here on YN the only political articles of any kind that make it through the filter are those critical of Israel. It goes on. And on. If you don't find that convincing I unfortunately can drop loads more genocide- and rape-apologia - as long as it's perpetrated against "Zionists" (wink).
You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent.
[3] https://youtu.be/VL5ACBwO9cg I find this asshole mortifying. Within hours of his hearing about the attack, you can see him in real time struggling to convert the atrocity into something anti-Israel.
You don't need to convince me that there's been a lot of awful reactions to October 7th.
I'm only pushing back that saying something like this:
> You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent.
Is painting too many people with too broad a brush. Yes, some protesters are genocidal. But it's a tiny minority of protesters, and all of these frankly disgusting anecdotes are a tiny percentage of the people engaged on this topic.
Except... Here is an open letter from the Jewish students at Columbia. Their experience there sounds pretty terrifying. Imagine yourself going through these experiences:
Do leftists who call for Israelis to "return to Europe" not know the A) centuries of stark, genocidal oppression against Jews in Europe nor B) that many Israeli Jews are in Israel because they have been expelled from Arab and Middle-East countries where their ancestors have lived for centuries? There is no "back home" to go to for these people.
One could argue these Western leftists earnestly care for Palestinians, but why? Why do they care about these particular Arabs and not the 1M+ other deaths of Muslims in current conflicts? What is the difference?
When I look back at the literally genocidal pograms by Levantine Arabs against Levantine Jews in an unbroken timeline of violence from 1850s, continuing through the 1920s and al-Husseini's agreements with Hitler in WW2, and the continuing violence right now, the repeated rejections of compromise and peace, the insistence on "all the land or death", is super clear to me that the "pro-Palestine" movement is and has always been genocidal. It is not and has never been about sovereignty or self-determination. Do Western leftists not know this? Do they not care? They certainly don't want to hear about it.
There have been numerous disturbing / idiotic / arguably antisemitic episodes originating from certain elements of the protestors' side, to be sure.
Unfortunately the letter presents certain regrettable factual distortions. For example:
We felt helpless when we watched students and faculty physically block Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they turned their faces away in silence.
The protest movement, especially at Columbia, has a highly visible Jewish contingent (especially within its leadership). If people were blocked from the protest encampments, it was plainly not because they were Jewish. And it is intellectually dishonest to claim that this is the reason they were excluded.
There have also been numerous disturbing / idiotic episodes on the part of the counter-protest movement, as I'm sure you know. Except unfortunately these have been notably more violent than most of what's been happening from the protestors' side. Just the other day for example:
Imagine being 55 years old and getting hit by a car that just so happens to have been driven by a cousin of one of one of Israel's most famous convicted terrorists (celebrated by none other than the country's current Finance Minister). Or being attacked with military-grade crowd control chemicals:
This isn't whataboutism. In order to understand this situation, it necessary the consider the whole playing field. And the simple fact that there's many profoundly disturbing episodes originating in both camps.
I'll just close with one more particularly revealing snippet from the letter:
If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People.
Again, no one buys the "Zionism = Judaism" equivalence. Outside the ideological bubble world that the signatories of the letter (and the driver of that car which nearly killed a 55 year-old woman for expressing her political beliefs the other day) choose to live in.
Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish? The contention of Jewish people who see antisemitism in these protests is that Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity. This gets into the whole JVP thing; activists have held JVP up as a demonstration of Jewish support --- to the point where College Democrats of America claimed that JVP was more representative of Jewish Democrats than the CDA Jewish Caucus (a risible claim) --- and we just saw the JVP Peace Seder, where the labels on the plate were written front-to-back; JVP has also (very recently!) posted a Houthi endorsement on their Insta (it's since been deleted).
Don't get me started on counter-protesters. No matter who's protesting, the counter-protest will always be worse. At least some subset of protesters have an intrinsic motivation aligned with the cause. Virtually all the counter-protesters will be there to stir the pot.
I know I'm a wet blanket here but I'm going to keep mentioning that we're all necroposting on a long-dead threat, bloated with corpse-gases, that just 3-4 people are reading. HN is bigger and better than this.
Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish?
Because the encampments contained many Jewish organizers / participants (likely equal to or greater than their proportion across the student body as a whole).
The contention [is that] Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity.
I see what you're driving at, but overall it seems to be a weak and ancillary argument. It basically gets into the whole "if you reject / insult Zionism (or even the military campaign in Gaza itself) then you're insulting my religious/ethnic identity" line, which I just don't buy (neither do many Jews in fact, and in fact they find it rather insulting that one should presume that all Jews should automatically feel that way).
I don't speak for JVP, so you'll have to take up issues about their dining plates / ephemeral Houthi endorsements with them.
Yeah, I don't know. If you're protesting the broad concept of Zionism, of the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland, then not allowing the participation of the majority of Jewish people who are (in that broad sense) Zionist makes sense. On the other hand, you can't be blocking their entrance to buildings, or singling them out for verbal harassment due solely to religious signifiers coupled with the fact that they're not echoing your chants, right? This doesn't seem all that complicated. Everybody is a little bit right, everybody is a little bit wrong, and a few people on both sides (SJP, Shai Davidai) are luridly wrong.
Blocking them from buildings doesn't seem to be happening.
As I've acknowledged there's been a fair amount of verbal harassment (and obnoxious signage), some of it arguably antisemitic. Deplorable thought it is, it gets into a different topic (from the issue of people being supposedly blocked from campus areas due to their perceived ethnic classification).
It's also not been a feature of the encampments as such that I'm aware of (but I could be wrong of course). More like a feature of spontaneous confrontations / street actions.
Addendum (edit): To the extent that some of these people protest Israel specifically (as no doubt many of them do) -- it's usually against Israel in its current (effectively Revisionist) Zionist configuration, aka "Israel as a rigidly defined ethnostate", built on as much territory as it can reasonably hold onto and with a supremacist attitude towards non-Jewish inhabitants. Not the "legitimacy of a Jewish homeland" in principle, which can mean a lot of things (such as the idea of a "Jewish homeland" that is genuinely democratic and not determined by the fact of a Jewish supermajority).
I've seen videos with people being blocked out of spaces, but like, those spaces presumably have like 9 other entrances that aren't being blocked, and people are challenging the protesters to make a point. Who knows? To the extent it isn't happening at all, it doesn't matter.
None of these are big issues for me, but there's a whole "the Good Jews" phenomenon that American Jewish people are keyed in on (which I hear about from friends, who all revile Netanyahu and oppose the Gaza invasion --- ironic that I'm disclaiming that!), and you said something that pricked my ears up about that. That's all. I'm not rebutting you.
> Deplorable though it is, it gets into a different topic
I am going to argue something different, and I would like you to seriously entertain the idea. The argument is: anti-Semitic harassment and anti-Zionism are part-and-parcel.
Consider: imagine for the sake of argument a universe that is exactly like ours, except in that universe, Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza reasonably well, as perfectly as it is possible to prosecute any war. They actually do minimize civilian deaths, not commit any war crimes or genocide, ensure that aid gets where it needs to go. They simply want to get rid of Hamas. In that universe, the war is actually a measured and rational response to the Hamas provocations of that universe, October 7th actually happened, etc.
Please answer honestly: in that universe, how do you think the world responds? Does Hamas still claim genocide? Does the "Gazan Ministry of Health" still issue a daily death toll that is strangely absent of combatants? Does the BBC and al-Jazeera, et. al. still quote those statistics with neither qualification nor caveat? Does South Africa still take Israel to ICJ? Does the UN security council still issue resolutions against Israel without reference to Hamas or the hostages?
I believe that the answer to those questions would be identical to this universe. Would you agree? If not, what is the mechanism by which the world could tell the difference? What trustworthy organization would impartially inform us all that there is no genocide in a way that you yourself would believe it?
I believe most anti-Zionists would behave quite the same in that universe, because for them, Israel's existence is a problem, and the accusation of genocide is a tool in its dismantling.
In this purely hypothetical universe -- in which the Israeli government was acting in an at least arguably rational fashion in regard to securing a timely release of the hostages, and protecting the security of citizens otherwise; in which it wasn't concurrently stepping up its rampage in the West Bank because it thinks the world will be distracted by the much greater number of bodies piling up in Gaza; in which there was no Dahiya Doctrine --
What we have here is the "They're just going to criticize / hate Israel no matter what it does" defense which has been raised as a blanket response to pretty much any robust criticism of what Israel does, for several decades. Or to paraphrase only slightly how you put it: "Israel's existence is the problem, serious criticisms about what it does are tools for its dismantling."
So to answer your question - of course no, I don't buy it. And yes, fundamentally the current response would be very different. There wouldn't be an ICJ case; there wouldn't be calls for sanctions against units like Netzah Yehuda for doing what they're currently doing out here in the real, actual world; etc.
If not, what is the mechanism by which the world could tell the difference? What trustworthy organization would impartially inform us all that there is no genocide in a way that you yourself would believe it?
The same organizations that are the obvious answer to this question (independent journalists and human rights groups in and outside of Israel; UN bodies; forensic analysis teams, etc).
In short, yes - in this science fiction universe, it would be a very different response. You're not going to agree of course, and that's fine.
Your other bullet points seem to be ancillary: no one is acting on what Hamas is claiming about the ongoing genocide, for example. And the Gaza Health Ministry numbers are a huge red herring (even Israeli military intelligence considers them to be generally reliable and uses them in their briefings; US officials believe the real numbers may be even higher, etc).
> Your other bullet points seem to be ancillary: no one is acting on what Hamas is claiming about the ongoing genocide, for example. And Gaza Health Ministry numbers are a huge red herring (even Israeli military intelligence considers them to be generally reliable and uses them in their briefings; US officials believe the real numbers may be even higher, etc).
Far from being "ancillary" or a "red herring", the Gaza Health Ministry statistics are central to the accusations against Israel of genocide. Weird you would even say that.
And, no, neither Israel nor "Israeli intelligence" considers Gazan Health Ministry statistics accurate [1]. That's another weird thing to say. As for "US officials believe the real numbers may be even higher, etc" I only found a single quote from a single US official, from one Barbara Leaf, Assistant Secretary of State, implying this [2]. I also found a quote from the same Voice of America article that "President Joe Biden has openly questioned figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is run by Hamas, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist group" so...
It's odd that you made so many hrm... exaggerations in such a short response. It's almost like you don't care about the accuracy of your statements? Surely that cannot be true.
> etc
Etc? What is the etc? You wouldn't have only two things to say and then write "etc" to imply there's more, would you? I refuse to believe it.
The key part of Leaf's acknowledgment (which came some weeks after what Biden said) is where she added that the US has sources from a "variety of folks who are on the ground". Meaning they had independent confirmation that had been vetted by internal analysts.
I’d like to answer that question, and I think you’re not gonna like the answer.
I believe the response would be similar but not identical. There would be mass protests, just like there were in 2021, 2018, 2014, etc. I also participated in these protests. These protests would be smaller but still loud. Student movements would also call out their universities and demand boycott, just like in 2021, 2018, etc. But we probably wouldn’t see as many students participating, nor would it spread to as many school.
We would still see an ICJ case, however it wouldn’t be South Africa charging Israel of genocide. It would be the General Assembly charging Israel of apartheid. This case is also ongoing in our universe, and and was agreed to before Oct 7. Delegations would use that case to voice discontent with that universe’s version of the Gaza atrocities, no matter how scaled back it would be. But I think they would stop short of calling it a genocide (assuming Israel wouldn’t be committing one in that Universe). The security council would vote on a ceasefire and the US would veto it, just like in 2021, 2018, etc. The general assembly would also vote on and agree to to a ceasefire.
The BBC and Al Jazeera would quote statistics straight from the Hamas run Gaza health ministry, the BBC would say Hamas run, but Al Jazeera wouldn’t, just like in our universe. People would criticize BBC for that from both the left and the right (just like in our universe).
The truth about this universe is that Israel has been braking international humanitarian laws for a very long time, and the world is tired of it. In this alternative universe, the world would be equally tired of it, and would condemn Israel for it. Settler policies, apartheid, constant bombing campaigns in Gaza, constant raids on the West Bank, etc. all of that would be the reason the world would condemn Israel in your alternative universe. Israel’s settler colonial and apartheid policies would be a problem. And the accusations there of would be just.
> The truth about this universe is that Israel has been braking international humanitarian laws...
What laws?
Usually when people answer that question, they just refer to a law ("look up the Geneva Conventions") and then disappear. If you could, please actually quote the relevant paragraphs and, even better, an actual court ruling.
You literally just sent a link without reading it as I asked you not to do. Please do the work of actually understanding what it is that you're linking and then explaining it. You will see that this is not whatever you seem to think it is.
This link is to the ICJ case 186: Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem
This link contains all written and spoken testimonies, as well as related documents and news from the UN. In it you will find several examples of international humanitarian law broken by Israel without consequences. You will find several UN resolutions ignored by Israel without consequences. This case seeks to establish which consequences Israel should face from decades of this behavior. The ICJ accepted this case, and proclaims jurisdiction.
During the oral testimonies you will find statements and conclusions such as this from South Africa:
> The available evidence indicates that Israel is responsible for inhuman acts which fall within the ambit of Article 2(a), (c), (d) and (f) of the Apartheid
Convention. [1] (Paragraph 115)
Here is another example from the same oral testimony:
> The establishment of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories is considered as illegal by the international community as they are in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Paragraph 6 of Article 49 of the
Fourth Geneva Convention provides that “the Occupying Power shall not
deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it
occupies”. t therefore follows that any legislation authorising settlements or the extension of settlements “adopted by Israel to facilitate or set up settlements would be in violation of Article 43
I gave you this link because it is full of legal experts from all over the world citing humanitarian law and explaining how Israel is breaking them. This case would have been ongoing today even without Oct 7 and without the Gaza genocide. This case and the number of written and oral testimonies, and the content of these testimonies, is proof that the world is fed up with Israel’s behavior towards the Palestinians.
This is not a judgment. It's an accusation by South Africa. Neither more nor less. The ICJ has not rendered any decision yet.
Ok, I've tried to get a coherent argument out of you and I have just about given up. If you'd like to have the final word, feel free. I'll read whatever you have to say, but probably will not respond.
My point was that the world is fed up with Israel’s behavior, and I gave this ICJ case as an example of how fed up the world is. This case is an action the world has taken in the hopes that Israel will finally have to face consequences for their violations of international humanitarian laws. You asked which ones, and the answer is in the case, as described by experts.
> The ICJ has not rendered any decision yet.
I know, however the world believes Israel has violated several UN orders, and is taking action based on that belief.
> It's an accusation by South Africa.
It is not. I cited two paragraphs from the written statement given by South Africa. This is more like a witness statement than accusations. South Africa gave Oral Testimonies reflecting this written statement[1] (page 10)
The accusations were done by the General assembly back in December 2022 (read the actual accusations here[2]). 87 countries votes in favor of these accusations, 26 against, and 53 abstentions
The reason I’m citing these is that actual legal experts formed a consensus about these and submitted them to the world’s highest court, which accepted the case. This is not just my opinion, but the opinion of several legal experts spanning most of the world. Like I said, you may not like it, but the world is taking actions against Israel’s human rights violations. This would have happened even without the Gaza Genocide being a part of this reality.
EDIT: And if you want examples of specific laws which Israel has definetly broken, with an ICJ judgement to prove it. Then read case 131 https://www.icj-cij.org/case/131 which ruled Israel to be in violation of certain International Humanitarian Law by building the border wall, which still stands today and is cited in the resolution I cited above https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n04/419/86/pdf/n04419...
This is just one of many examples of international human rights violations of Israel, some of which have the backing of an ICJ court behind it.
I don't know about "terrifying". "Uncomfortable", or, probably more accurately, "supremely irritating", sure. Zeynep Tufekci has been writing for a couple weeks --- I don't agree with everything she's saying, but I take anything she says seriously --- about how physically small and limited the protests have been.
If there were white power protests happening on campus at the University of Chicago, we'd all be up in arms; we are not when SJP, an organization that formally endorses the Al-Qassam Brigades, protests instead. There's for sure a blind spot. I see why people are pissed. It is not at all clear to me that anyone's safety was threatened at Columbia, though.
The comment you are replying to is ridiculous. Frankly by engaging I perpetuate ridiculousness and I should know better.
That said, to some reasonable approximation even the most militant pro Palestinian campus protests didn’t threaten any ones safety. In nearly every case the danger came from reactionary protests. Which is completely predictable if you are a campus safety officer!
We only have a problem if we agree with the contention that kids protesting genocide are some sort of chaos agent. They aren’t! They’re just college kids. Sleeping rough. Temporarily.
I don't know what "chaos agent" means, but the problem I'm referring to is us all commenting on this thread. I'm confident we agree more than we disagree about all of this stuff.
> I'm confident we agree more than we disagree about all of this stuff.
I do think we all want Palestinians to live peaceful and prosperous lives. Despite what many anti-Zionists believe, Israel would like that for Palestinians too.
The fundamental question is, does Israel get to exist as a state? If you believe yes, then congratulations, you are a Zionist!
If you believe no, and if you're not struggling intellectually with the practical consequences of the end of the Israeli state to the Israeli people, really walking through it with concern, then you court genocide. There isn't really much leeway, there.
> We only have a problem if we agree with the contention that kids protesting genocide are some sort of chaos agent.
Logically, they are, though. They are impervious to logical argument that it is not a genocide. Their only evidence, ultimately, is Hamas' "trust me, bro" and their own presumption that Israel is evil. If people throw the word "genocide" around without second thought out question and cannot accept any mitigating argument, they are not helping. So, yes, chaos agents and no, not just "college students sleeping rough".
> The comment you are replying to is ridiculous. Frankly by engaging I perpetuate ridiculousness and I should know better.
This is against the community guidelines. With over 13k karma points, you know better.
I hesitate to ask, but pretend for a moment that I am an earnest rationalist who respects logical arguments and lets truth lead to conclusions even if I am not happy with those conclusions.
Can you, striving to minimize emotionalism or logical fallacy, walk through in concise points what specifically is "ridiculous"?
I took zero offense from his comment; its spirit was clear. I agree with him: it is ridiculous that were are frolicking in this rotted carcass of a thread.
> You’ll have to go all the way to Sudan to find a similar number,
Syria was a civil war with who knows how many dead, its over half a million easily. Iraq I'm not an expert on but parts of what's happened and still is happening there seems like a civil war to me, number of dead is huge.
How is the Israeli-Gaza war a civil war btw?
If you don't look at the artificial definition of civil wars, the region is even more violent with millions more dead in conflicts - Yemen / Saudi Arabia, Iran-Iraq etc.
I assumed my parent was talking about ongoing conflicts and current mortality rates. Of which you’ll have to go all the way to Sudan to find similar numbers.
I don't get if the conflict was finished a year ago it doesn't count anymore? We're comparing only to on-going conflicts? Right. Makes total sense. Well I assume the current Gaza war will be over soon - in that case we can all just forget about it (?).
Palestinians were being killed by Israelis in record numbers before Oct 7. Like I said above: Between Jan 1st 2023 and Oct 7th 2023, 278 Palestinians in the West Bank (including 70 children) were killed by either the Israeli army or Israeli settler terrorists. So even if the Gaza genocide ends today and Israel signs the peace treaty offered and accepted by Hamas, we are still looking at number of victims which are nowhere to be found in the region.
If we include wars from over 20 years ago, we should also include the numbers of atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians in the same time period. Including the Great March of Return massacres in 2018-2019 where Israel murdered 223 Palestinians, most of whom were unarmed civilians.
Now the total number of Palestinian victims probably won’t come anywhere near the total number of victims of the Iraq war, but a major difference is that Palestine is a lot smaller nations, and has had to suffer repeated atrocities, continuously throughout whichever time period we decide to start counting.
But my point here is that Israel’s neighbors are not “kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel”.
Even if you take "neighbor" literally as adjacent and so do not care to include Yemen or Sudan, then consider the death rate of Syria. 300 thousand civilians dead and counting. 3,000 Palestinians massacred in the Yarmouk Camp Siege. Ugly, that.
You will no doubt be relieved to know that Israel is not the #1 killer of Muslims by any measure, neither now nor in the past. Armed with this new information, you will no doubt become a prominent anti-Assad and -ISIL activist, organizing marches through the streets, calling for a ceasefire?
Yes there are some metrics where you can find a bigger killer of Muslims then Israel. There are other metrics where Israel is larger. But even still, Israel is killing a lot of people. Being top 5 in killing Muslim is not something you can be proud of by saying, “look at the top 4 muslim killers here”.
I'll answer, but I ask again: do you know what it is about the Palestinian cause that has you so exercised? Above, say, the Syrian or Sudanese or Yemen or Saudi or Iraqi or Lebanese causes, which are all far more deadly, even if you take Hamas' word for it. I mean, maybe you have an excellent reason...?
My answer is that there is a lack of perspective when it comes to Israel. It's better that everyone understands the scale of the death and destruction in the region. What the people of Israel risk should the state fall.
If we start at 1936 (when the conflict in Palestine began in earnest), bucket by country (consistent with the fact that Israel's myriad wars up until the current one have been lumped together in a single "conflict"); and divide by net population -- then Israel's per-capita ranking does seem to take place 5 or so out of the 17 countries involved, in terms of the Arab/Muslim killing business.
In terms of immediate neighbors - just behind (and much closer to) Lebanon and Syria, but much greater numerically than Jordan / Egypt / Saudi.
The conflict in Palestine started way earlier than that. At least since the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1917. Might have really gotten going with the Hebron Massacre of 1929 but even that was preceded by Arab riots beginning even in 1920. Jews were already well sick of Arabs' shit by the time 1948 rolled around.
Funny you should mention. At least some of the new arrivals from Europe were apparently "already well sick of the Arabs' shit" from the minute they landed in their new homeland. As Ahad Ha'am (Asher Zvi Ginsburg) wrote in 1891, regarding the early Zionist settlers:
They were slaves in their land of exile, and they suddenly find themselves with unlimited freedom, the kind of wild freedom to be found only in a country like Turkey. This sudden change has engendered in them an impulse to despotism, as always happens when "a slave becomes a king," and behold they walk with the Arabs in hostility and cruelty, unjustly encroaching on them, shamefully beating them for no good reason, and even bragging about what they do, and there is no one to stand in the breach and call a halt to this dangerous and despicable impulse. To be sure our people are correct in saying that the Arab respects only those who demonstrate strength and courage, but this is relevant only when he feels that his rival is acting justly; it is not the case if there is reason to think his rival's actions are oppressive and unjust.
Of course by 1917 everyone knew what was up. As presaged by Herzl in his diary (1895):
We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.
Several things to note: That particular list starts in 1920, not because that's when Arabs began their nonsense but because it's a list of massacres in Mandatory Palestine and that started in 1918. The Muslim Arab massacre of Jews began literally at the beginning of Islam. But perhaps directly relevant, Arabs massacred Jews throughout the 1800s in spasms of violence in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, Aleppo, Cairo, Damascus and surrounds. The war against Jews in 1948 and all the accusations against Jews for "stealing land" was just a continuation of centuries of SOP.
Despite all of this violence, directed by Arabs towards Jews, thousands of Jewish deaths at the hands of Arabs in the preceding decades and centuries and millenia, you have to scroll down to 1939 before finding the first instance of Jewish retaliation.
As for "Zionists stole muh lands", here is a concise video that makes the case in under a minute that Jews stole no Arab land.
This isn't a question of 1937 versus 1939 (or whether these atrocities were in any meaningful sense "retaliatory"). But if you're going to somehow not mention -- whether by choice, or simple carelessness -- one of the most important chapters of the lead-up to the so-called "defensive war" of 1947-1949 then I don't see us heading towards a productive analysis of the larger historical context.
Wikipedia is pretty good, overall. But uneven also, in terms of edit quality. So when assembling data on such large scale tragedies (as the matter of targeted violence against civilians by both sides in this conflict), it's best to check against other sources.
Like moldy old books in the library. And listening to people whose families have lived through these events.
Against a guy's essay ...
The point is the unequivocally colonial intent of the Zionist project from its earliest beginnings. Not the guy or his essay.
You have decided this 2 years difference allows you to entirely dismiss the significance of this being the first retaliation after centuries of Arab attacks. I don't blame you. I wouldn't address it either if I were you. That it was in 1937 vs 1939 still entirely undermines your central thesis that Israelis are pure, unadulterated evil and Palestinians are their innocent victims. Why are you like this?
> The point is the unequivocally colonial intent of the Zionist project from its earliest beginnings.
The guy had an opinion, for which he was bitterly criticised by other Zionists. What is with you?
I mean, really, if you do not believe that the State of Israel should exist, then outline a realistic plan of what will happen to the Israelis after its end?
Lots of tit-for-tat here. My thesis is that it was not Zionism that caused today's conflict, but today's conflict is but a continuation of centuries of Arab violence against Jews.
In support, I offer the fact that the Irgun attack of 1937 cum 1939 was the first Jewish retaliation after centuries of Arab attacks.
You attempted to demonstrate that Zionism was the cause of today's conflict by excerpting a 1917 essay. I don't think this reasonably compares to the historical record which shows a long, long pattern of Arab violence and calumny against Jews going back centuries.
Your username implies that you value rationality. Great! Me too.
In general, after years of arguing about this with strangers on the internet, I have not ever once encountered an anti-Zionist who argues well and honestly by scrupulously steel-manning the pro-Israeli argument, employing the Principle of Charity, citing falsifiable evidence for assertions, acknowledging opponents' points rather than ghosting, avoiding logical fallacy, and so forth. After years of only ever hearing fallacious arguing of that sort, I strongly suspect that there is no foundation for the anti-Israel stance based in logic and rationality.
Is there? Can you meet that challenge? Can you address the challenge directly and honestly, steel-manning and then refuting that thesis?
So, directly: if the first Jewish attack on Arabs was in 1937 while, to be charitable, the "first" Arab attack on Jews of the region were over 100 years earlier in 1834 in Safed and Hebron, with many thereafter, then how can it be Zionism that caused Arabs to attack Jews? Isn't it more credible to say that Arabs attack Jews irrespective of Zionism? Rather, that "Zionism" is the excuse for attacks that would happen anyway? Moreover, isn't it possible that Zionism gained status and authority, not as a bigoted "settler-colonialist project" as you term it, but rather as a necessary defensive corrective against ongoing violent attacks, both in the region and abroad? As the kids say these days, where the lie?
You were attributing to me views which I haven't expressed. So a correction was provided, which was hopefully helpful to you. In any case it seems we've traded enough notes about historical bloodletting the topic of Zionism as such.
If you like you can tell us how you think should look on the ground -- in, say, about 20 years from now -- in your most optimistic (but realistically obtainable) scenario. Specifically with regard to (1) the final and borders of the State of Israel, (2) the status of the West Bank settlements (for those which do not end up on the Israeli side of the final borders), and (3) whether you see a need for any "population transfer" (as per the Decisive Plan or other proposals) in order to create conditions for a just and lasting peace.
To answer you. The ideal situation would be a borderless friendliness between Israel and the Palestinian states of Gaza and the West Bank. No attacks. I know that Israel would be delighted to have peaceful, prosperous neighbors. I know that having political control of Israel through a majority rule is important to Jews, so I don't see a "right of return" for Muslims not already citizens of Israel, but in the ideal scenario, Palestinians with actual, legitimate claims in Israeli territory will have been financially compensated for, and made peace with, their loss. Gaza will have been rebuilt and be a tourist destination for those who like beaches and Mediterranean sun.
But, no, while I think my ideal future for the region is a pipe dream that will never come about, I don't think the answer is actual genocide like population transfer.
Earlier you made assertions that Zionism is a settler-colonialist project and at least strongly implied that it was the cause of the conflict today. In light of the fact that continuous Arab attacks against Jews of the region began decades before Zionism, has it changed your mind at all about the cause of the conflict? Changed your calculation at least to a degree regarding Arab culpability?
I'll just restate it here: there are no arguments that are both rational and anti-Israel.
In order to argue against Israel, particularly that Israel is somehow deeply immoral, one must distort, deny and divert. There is no argument against the state of Israel that does not rely on this. Anyone who employs principles of rationality to the conflict will be pro-Israel.
When pressed or challenged too hard, an anti-Israeli will simply end the conversation and ghost.
> there are no arguments that are both rational and anti-Israel.
This seems like a leap of logic. I see there are only two possibilities for that to hold true.
a) There are no illegitimate states
b) Israel is unique and unquestionable
I don’t think (b) is worth discussing as such exceptionalism is at the base of all genocidal states, and are almost always illegitimate (I’ll make an exception for the Vatican)
And (a) is easily disproven with a simple look at history. There are plenty of illegitimate states throughout history. A recent example is Apartheid South Africa which got replaced by a democratic South Africa in 1994. A more blatant example is Rhodesia. Almost everybody questioned the legitimacy of Rhodesia, and any anti-Rhodesian argument was indeed rational. Rhodesia was funded as a racist, white-supremacist, ethno-state and as such had no right to exist. Most of the world agreed. Not even Israel recognized Rhodesia (despite militarily supporting the white ethno-fascist government).
Israel in its current form has not right to exist. Israel needs to either a) grant full sovereignty to Palestine, and either pay reparations or grant the right of return to the descendants of those displaced in the Nakba and following atrocities; or b) unite with Palestine under a single democratic government with equal rights of all citizens. It cannot exist as a Jewish ethno-national ethno-state, which subjugates Palestinians in a settler colonial fashion, and further antagonizes its neighbors who shelter Palestinian refugees with constant military incursions.
I know this is an annoying comment, but I can't not: you all are commenting on a ten day old thread. It's dead, Jim. The very fact that you're seeing this at all means you're unpersuadable, and communicating only with the unpersuadable.
I would want someone else to tell me this on the (many) occasions where I've gone on tilt like this.
>> there are no arguments that are both rational and anti-Israel.
> This seems like a leap of logic.
a) There are no illegitimate states
b) Israel is unique and unquestionable
...<then non-sequiturs about South Africa and Rhodesia>
I am a Westerner. One of my core beliefs is that rationalism and logic leads to truth and correct action; conversely that irrationality and emotionalism leads to suffering and poor decisions. I'm not pro-Israel because I've chosen "team Israel, right or wrong". I'm pro-Israel because the pro-Israel arguments that I've heard are far more rational than pro-Palestinian arguments. I do seek out anti-Israel arguments, hoping to find something rational, but so far, nothing. Again, my goal is truth and correct action, not tribal chest-thumping.
Your arguments here did not hit the mark. I do not accept that South Africa or Rhodesia are appropriate comparisons, and therefore their inclusion was a non-sequitur.
Further, my null hypothesis is that Israel is an unremarkable state, not "unique and unquestionable". I therefore interpret Israel as doing only that which any Western nation would do in the same circumstances. Yours appears to be the obverse, that Israel is uniquely questionable. Maybe it is? You'd have to supply evidence or arguments compelling enough to match that thesis, for me to be convinced.
If you do want to earnestly go down this path of becoming the first to construct actually rational arguments against Israel, you won't be able to just throw around emotional shorthands like "apartheid", "Nakba", "settler-colonialist", etc. It's lazy emotionalism designed to stop rational thought. It will convince only those who are already convinced, but it's not a rational argument.
If you want to argue rationally and compellingly that Israel is "an apartheid state" then understand the strongest arguments against using that term, and dismantle those arguments. We pro-Israel peeps have heard all the accusations, but have never heard any considered, thoughtful, direct, courageous rebuttal of the "Israel is not apartheid, actually" arguments. Just more emotionalism.
I do bet that if you take the journey to understand the arguments for and the arguments against you will conclude that it's not appropriate in Israel's case. But! Maybe I'm wrong about that! Maybe you will come up with a really rational, dispassionate argument that Israel is an apartheid state and all rational people will be compelled to follow the truth, reluctantly or not.
Good luck. I honestly look forward to see what you come up with.
Apartheid is a legal term with a precise definition in international law. It is not an emotional shorthand, or at least I’m not using it as such here.
The Nakba is a historical event, which took place in Palestine 1947-1948. I was using it here to describe that even (or rather as a reference point), not as an emotional shorthand.
Settler Colonialism is a conduct done by a dominant power and against an indigenous population. Rhodesia was a settler colonial state, there is a historical agreement about that, and there was a contemporary agreement that that was bad, and in and of it self made Rhodesia an illegitimate state. I was using it as an emotional shorthand, but so did contemporaries, including at the UN when they encourage nations to never recognize such as state.
Your claim that I threw around these terms as lazy emotionalism is unfounded, I explained how they are relevant and how one can indeed criticize Israel using these terms. Israel may not be as bad as Rhodesia, but the term Settler colonialism, and ethno-state still apply. Israel was a Settler colonial enterprise, it was funded 76 years ago by mass displacements of an indigenous population in an event known as the Nakba. Israel is an ethno-state. It maintains a supremacy and domination of a single ethno-religious group over others. It encourages immigration of that single entho-religious group, while denying any rights to the indigenous population which they displaced.
I’ve argued elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40346997) that Israel is an apartheid state, citing, among other, a legal argument used before the ICJ that Israel does indeed brake international humanitarian laws, specifically relating to the legal definition of Apartheid. You however refused to engage with that argument. Claiming that I wasn’t making any coherent arguments. The thing is, I’m not making those arguments, legal experts are. I’m simply appealing to authority on the matter, and there is an overwhelming concern among experts that Israel is indeed an apartheid state.
EDIT: As a case in point of how universal these criticisms of Israel are (a universality which must grant at least some legitimacy) the Wikipedia pages for both Settler Colonialism and Ethnocracy (redirected from ethno-state), have a substantial segments about how these terms can be described to Israel. Even Apartheid (South Africa) which is an article about Apartheid in South Africa (not the crime of Apartheid) has a couple of paragraphs dedicated to how Israel’s conduct against Palestinians can be described as Apartheid. Jimmy Carter even wrote a whole book about it.
> You however refused to engage with that argument. Claiming that I wasn’t making any coherent arguments. The thing is, I’m not making those arguments, legal experts are. I’m simply appealing to authority on the matter, and there is an overwhelming concern among experts that Israel is indeed an apartheid state.
You aren't making coherent arguments. For example, if you aren't aware that "the Nakba" is considered by pro-Israelis to be a myth, then you should, and you should know why.
One problem with appeal to authority is that you don't have to understand the argument. Just find the person arguing your preference, label them "expert" and I do the same, and then it's detached from any actual understanding.
So, summarize these legal experts arguments and demonstrate that you actually understand the argument.
And, frankly, you did not even understand that the document was an accusation. This fundamental error didn't give me confidence, to be honest.
How can you call the Nakba a myth? It is a historical event with historical documents. Some of the victims and perpetrators are even still alive today and do describe exactly what happened. Calling it a myth is the kind of denialism which makes it impossible for me to engage with. Climate deniers also deny that climate change is real, that doesn’t make their position correct, or even legitimate, it just makes them wrong, and impossible to engage with.
Now, I’m actually not that smart, and I don’t know how to summarize arguments in a convincing manner. We have plenty of people that have done so already, Wikipedia does an excellent job for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid I guess that is also appealing to authority.
Not exactly what I said. I said you should understand why pro-Israelis consider it to be a myth. You don't have to agree, but at least understand the arguments. You say you're not smart, but if you're smart enough to argue one side, then you're smart enough to understand the best arguments of the other.
Though "How can you call the Nakba a myth?" is in the form of a question, I have enough experience in "debates" of this sort to know it would be a mistake to treat it as a question. "How can you call the Nakba a myth?" is not actually your earnest request for an exchange of views, is it. It's more of a rhetorical device to demonstrate disagreement, even disapproval.
Given that it's not an invitation to exchange views, were I to make the mistake of interpreting it as an actual question, and were then to take the time to answer, explain, link to sources, ask questions in return, would you not scoff, dismiss, divert, and not seek to absorb the actual argument, but look immediately for ways to "debunk" it? Some, worried about ideological taint, might even run off to find approved anti-Israel sources to find out how they "debunk" the argument.
Invariably, the quality of the rebuttal is not as important as its existence. You (and your co-interlocutor @racional) disapprove, and you are on Team Palestine, therefore it doesn't really matter what the Nakba myth arguments actually are, nor their rebuttal, because they aren't gonna be seriously considered anyway.
Again, disappointing, but unsurprising. Not sure how barking talking points at each other is helping at this point.
Let us all cheerfully agree to disagree. You can continue to believe that Israel is committing genocide, and I can continue to believe that the accusation is murderously cynical, callous and morally bankrupt.
You are approaching this as if this is some sort of a debate, with a panel of judges who score us point depending on our performance. That is not the case. There is no competition, no judges, and whatever it is we are doing is nothing like competitive debate.
If we were doing competitive debate, a tactic like building a hypothetical Nakba denier, and claiming I have to understand their point—despite denying the Nakba being obviously wrong—that tactic might work in competitive debate, but not here. I don’t care about people who deny a real historical event, and I don’t have to acknowledge them, let alone understand them. They are just wrong. If they exists, that changes nothing, except the number of misinformed and wrong people surrounding this issue.
This is not a competitive debate, but an internet forum aimed at tech workers and tech enthusiasts. My goal here is to inform people of the ongoing genocide (which is really sad that that is something we need to do in the 21st century) because there are tech workers contributing to the genocide. I entered this thread 10 days ago because you had been gish galloping common myths about the issue (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40269500) and I felt the need to correct some of them for a wider audience. Some of those myths were ridiculous and obviously wrong, such as Zionism being a dog whistle, and smearing Pro-palestinian protestors as Nazis. It was not hard to correct those. Why I continued the thread though, that is anybodies guess.
IF your goal is to win me in a debate, you have probably succeeded. Congratulations. But I’d like to remind you that there are real victims in the ongoing genocide. Real people, some of them are tech workers who may have an account here on HN. To them this is not a debate which seperates people into “our team” and the “other team”. To them this is a disaster, a tragedy. Out of respect to all the victims of the genocide, I’m not gonna “agree to disagree”. You were wrong on multiple points in your original post, and while these wrong points persist in the public dialog, there will be tech workers feeling OK about contributing their work into furthering the atrocities, which will result in even more of our comrades being murdered in the ongoing genocide.
> My goal here is to inform people of the ongoing genocide
No. You're goal is to misinform people with a dangerous, mean, and genocidal lie. Why you would do such an evil thing is an open question. That you and others like you shamelessly, smugly repeat this lie, even at your own expense, is deeply weird. Was it hatred, implanted during childhood? Religious indoctrination of some kind? It will remain a mystery to me why people like you hold such recalcitrant, unmitigated hate but it's very clearly there, and it's the same hatred that has caused actual genocide through the centuries. Something ugly, deep in your soul.
I hope you figure it out and uproot it someday. It can't be making you happy. Good luck.
> And, frankly, you did not even understand that the document was an accusation. This fundamental error didn't give me confidence, to be honest.
The document I linked was a testimony relating to accusations made by the UN general assembly. You incorrectly stated I cited it as a judgement, but I did not. I did however cite an ICJ judgement (Case 131) later which ruled Israel’s border wall illegal under international law, which was cited in the accusations for more general human rights violations (A/RES/77/247).
I understand what I cited, and I stand by my words. I’m however not that smart, and perhaps I failed to convey the purpose of each document I cited. Sorry for that.
"The Nakba" is considered by pro-Israelis to be a myth, then you should, and you should know why.
This is, in itself, a myth.
They might talk around it, and attempt to dial down certain aspects, bemoan the "necessity", etc. But every serious person in Israel more or less acknowledges the basic historic reality of the Nakba these days.
In fact, far from denying the Nakba -- since Oct 7, some are now quite proud of what the Irgun and the Haganah accomplished in 1948-1949, and are openly issuing calls to take it up a notch.
Meet Likud MK Ariel Kallner for example (via WP):
Following Hamas’s attack on Israeli communities near Gaza, Kallner in October 2023 called for Israel to bring about a second Nakba. In a post on social media platform X, Kallner advocated for a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48", calling for a "Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join."
Not to be outdone -- here's Former Internal Security Minister and Shin Bet director Avi Dichter (from the same party, natch):
Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”
When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
Let's also remember the words of MK Israel Katz (now Minister for Foreign Affairs). A bit ahead of the curve, his remarks came in 2022 in a speech before the Knesset:
“Yesterday I warned the Arab students, who are flying Palestine flags at universities: Remember 48. Remember our independence war and your Nakba, don’t stretch the rope too much. Ask your elders, your grandfathers and grandmothers and they will explain to you that in the end the Jews will awaken. They know how to defend themselves and the Jewish state. Don't stretch the rope too much.”
After a protest from a Palestinian lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman, he shot back:
Listen, listen - if you don't calm down, we'll teach you a lesson that won't be forgotten
In light of the fact that continuous Arab attacks against Jews of the region began decades before Zionism, has it changed your mind at all about the cause of the conflict?
I was already aware of the chronology. I've pretty much always seen the conflict as having multiple sources of causality, both in its origins and in its reasons continuing to this day -- with plenty of blame to go around to various parties on all sides.
Changed your calculation at least to a degree regarding Arab culpability?
That said I just don't believe in the idea collective blame, as applies to any ethnic or religious group. And certainly not going back centuries and millennia.
I do see it as an intrinsically modern conflict, and in essence -- the outcome of global and regional power interests. Ignorance, fear, hatred and the conscious actions of individuals at local levels certainly have their roles also. But in the bigger picture -- it's the larger geopolitical interests, and the decisions of persons at these levels which have exploited these factors, and brought us to where we are today.
> I just don't believe in the idea collective blame
> -- with plenty of blame to go around to various parties on all sides.
These two statements are contradictory and non-sequiturs. Apparently Arabs are not to be assigned collective blame for their attacks, while Israeli Jews receive full, collective blame.
No one talked about blame anyway, but the cause and effect of the historical pattern of Arabs killing Jews in the region.
> I've pretty much always seen the conflict as having multiple sources of causality, both in its origins and in its reasons continuing to this day
This is an evasion when the question became tough. Now it's about "multiple sources of causality" when it's clear it was not Zionism or settler-colonialism that caused Arabs to attack Jews.
You say "there is plenty of blame to go around", and yet every post of yours exclusively focuses on Israeli and Zionist culpability and Palestinian victimhood, and you seem unable to seriously entertain any mitigating arguments our evidence on behalf of Israel.
You will no doubt be relieved to know that Israel is not the #1 killer of Muslims by any measure, neither now nor in the past.
The IDF is unequivocally the agent behind of the largest number of non-combatant Muslim deaths in a single country since Oct 7 (and most likely including all of 2023). More than Darfur, Myanmar, Yemen and Syria presently. The same outfit which holds itself up as "the most moral army in the world".
I assume the current Gaza war will be over soon - in that case we can all just forget about it (?).
Not a chance. What's happening in Gaza now will be no more forgotten than all the other trenches filled with civilian bodies (adult and infant) thanks to the various atrocities of WW II.
This submission is about an attack on press freedom in Israel and has nothing to do with American interest rates, or American government spending.
It has even less to do with Jewish people.
Your post comes across as racist, and sounds as someone blaming a whole ethno-religeous group for the Zionist ideology or fascistic tendencies of an unpopular government. Zionism is also a harmful ideology for the Jewish people, and “the Jews” have not become anything except victims of this ideology, and governments which support it.
No doubt both sides have propoganda, but for anyone who watches AJ, literally every news piece every 15 minute covers Gaza so much so its mind numbing. I'm also yet to see any balance on it.
It seems hardly fair to denounce one side of the scale as unbalanced as people lean on its other side.
The fact is that on this topic the propaganda with all its disinformation and misinformation is persistent, pervasive in media, and potent. You can start to see it for yourself — simply take a shallow dive into the history of this subject and you will immediately notice the degree of the active distortion of all discourses on this topic in the modern media.
It won’t take you a weekend to read any one of the below books on this topic. After which you will start to notice how the journalists and the op-ed authors leave out highly relevant details regarding the origins of the problems in order to — time and time again - blame the Palestinians for their plight and ultimately frame them as responsible for their suffering.
It’s not the Zionists that steal Palestinian land and demolish/steal existing houses to build new settlements it’s the Palestinians that didn’t accept a supposedly “fair peace deal” while nobody mentions that said deal requires giving up the right of return of millions of refugees displaced in 1948. It’s not the F16 pilot that bombed the residential compound filled with civilians it’s the civilians that voted a decade ago for Hamas. And on and on.
Read a short book and start to see for yourself.
1. The Hundred Years War on Palestine - Khalidi (Palestinian Arab author)
2. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Pappe (Israeli Jewish author)
Before we talk of Israelis taking "Palestinian" land remember that Jewish population numbers have literally been wiped from every Arab country. They just want a land where Arabs won't obliterate them, and yes, Gazans came from Arab countries.
Infact Arabs have gone to war with Israel many times, so when you see the 10,000 foot view, its very different to just to 1000 foot view focusing on "Palestine"
Isn't the same as when RT was not allowed to broadcast in Europe after the war? I wonder why the news about Al Jazeera and Israel makes more splash than the RT and Russia news
Finally, there won't be direct propaganda. Freedom should be available to those, who value it, not those who actively promote terrorism and cover it up with lies.
146 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadIt’s fair to say it’s unclear what Qatar’s motives are, given their recent sympathy for Iran. (Which, given their geographic situation, makes sense.)
I don’t agree with shutting down Al Jazeera. But Qatar seems to benefit from ongoing conflict as it elevates their profile in the region.
FYI, voicing support for terrorists undermines sympathy for a cause. (Legitimacy of violence is an old, controversial and unresolvable question. The politics of coalition building are less obscure.)
Terrorism is not an ideal, it’s a tactic. One the zionists and america uses, but when they do it’s ok?
I labeled hamas a “people” because they are not a nation state - not even close.
Sure. But citing comments like yours is how you get an Israel aid package passed by the Congress. (I didn’t lobby on it, but I did on Ukraine, and showing that there are people who support horrible means for their end is a good way to deplete marginal support for that end.)
I guess I just don’t understand - why it’s ok to criticize “one side’s” tactic and not the other when one of the sides is killing by the thousands, while claiming to be “mowing the lawn.”
You probably don’t.
> why it’s ok to criticize “one side’s” tactic
One of the best assets for people trying to bring down a hammer on Israel are its right-wing politicians explicitly calling for bombing civilians and annexing Gaza. You generally want extremists on the other side to voice support for unpopular things.
I don’t.
Plenty of people supported the ANC, while the ANC was considered a terrorist organization, still Apartheid South Africa ended and the ANC is now in government.
Plenty of people supported the IRA, but still Northern Irish Catholics got civil rights and a political avenue for Irish reunification. Shin Féin even holds a plurality in Northern Ireland’s assembly and is increasing in popularity in the Republic of Ireland.
Plenty of people supported violent resistance of the Civil Rights movement (including Martin Luther King). Though the Civil Rights movement never ventured into terrorism, other black liberation groups certainly did, this did not undermine the cause of black liberation. And if we go even further back in history, support for John Brown—a terrorist and a full blown insurrectionist—did not undermine any sympathy for the abolitionist movement.
Their brethren have murdered multiple Europeans for just walking the streets of their own cities.
I will never support jihadists, no matter what sort of cause they profess to defend.
Their important common denominator is "we believe in bringing about submission to Allah at the point of the gun". I would advise any "unbeliever" to stay the hell away from any such group.
When Hamas lets Christians live, they are doing what Islam considers right. Outright pagans (polytheists) would be a different story.
Still, they enforce Islamic law where they rule. You cannot be openly gay, you cannot openly proclaim that you no longer believe in Allah (apostasy), a Christian man cannot marry a Muslim woman.
The fact that some other fundamentalists go further than Hamas doesn't make Hamas non-fundamentalists.
Very American.
https://foreignpressassociation.online/who-we-are/
Al Jazeera isn't free media. It's the propaganda arm of Qatar.
"Several journalists have been arrested and jailed, or even deported – in most cases for taking too close an interest in the working conditions of immigrant workers. The authorities do not hesitate, if necessary, to convict bloggers who are local residents of “disseminating false information”. This is how the blogger Malcolm Bidali was detained for a month before being deported to his country of origin, Kenya, after paying a fine." - https://rsf.org/en/country/qatar
Oh.
“A BBC team visited the scene, but was prevented from filming or going into the hotel by police.”
It’s the kind of behaviour you expect in Egypt
https://www.wired.com/2011/01/al-jazeera-closed/
That was followed by arrests
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/29/268481172...
https://freedomhouse.org/country/israel https://rsf.org/en/country/israel
https://freedomhouse.org/country/egypt https://rsf.org/en/country/egypt
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68961753
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said they had filed a request to the country's Supreme Court to issue an interim order to overturn the ban.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) urged the Israeli government to reconsider its decision, saying the shut down of Al Jazeera in the country should be "a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press". The FPA said in a statement that Israel now joins "a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station", and warned that Mr Netanyahu has the authority to target other foreign outlets that he considers to be "acting against the state". The Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna echoed the same concerns, saying: "The Israeli cabinet must allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime." The UN's Human Rights office also called the Israeli government to reverse the ban, posting on X: "A free & independent media is essential to ensuring transparency & accountability. Now, even more so given tight restrictions on reporting from Gaza."
But yes all those terrorist groups like the UN, Foreign Press Association, ACRI, are all irrelevant, all we need is the IDF mouthpiece and Baghdad Bob.
Conflating Qatar's other issues with Al Jazeera is misdirection.
Media watch groups consistently rate Al Jazeera as "neutral/balanced", with their perspective "skewing slightly left", which doesn't seem particularly consistent with Qatar.
> Ad Fontes Media rates Al Jazeera in the Skews Left category of bias and as Reliable, Analysis/Fact Reporting in terms of reliability.
> All Sides rates Al Jazeera as "Leans Left"
> Al Jazeera equal in reliability to CNN
They are certainly not without issue, to be sure. But still.
Sources: https://adfontesmedia.com/al-jazeera-bias-and-reliability/ , https://www.allsides.com/news-source/al-jazeera-media-bias
Answer these two questions and you'll be able to answer your own question.
And consistently rated as a neutral and reliable media source.
The two concepts, though they may have some overlap, are not one and the same.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/ - Rated "mixed" on "factual" reporting, i.e. some facts, some lies... i.e. rates as propaganda.
EDIT: "and Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar."
EDIT2: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/al-jazeera-%E2%80%98defe...
Even your link here says:
> In review, Al Jazeera reports news with minimally loaded wording in their headlines and articles ... properly sourced from credible news agencies. When reporting USA news, there is minimal bias in reporting ... In general, straight news reporting has a minimal bias; however, as a state-funded news agency, Al Jazeera is typically not critical of Qatar.
The failed fact checks were regarding two articles that weren't corrected.
> In 2017, Al Jazeera aired an investigative report of Britain’s Israel lobby. Following the airing, Ofcom (the UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority) received complaints from many pro-Israeli British activists, including one former Israeli embassy employee. They were accused of anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and infringement of privacy, which was later cleared by Ofcom, who said the piece was not anti-semitic and was, in fact, investigative journalism.
Huh.
> Further, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations demanded Qatar to shut down Al-Jazeera. Al Jazeera rebuts the accusations here.
So pro-Arab that SA (and UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt) demanded Qatar shut them down...
I never said Al Jazeera is perfect, and as noted, there is a reluctance to criticize the Qatari government.
I take less issue with "some of their opinion pieces are vocally anti-Israel", unless the contention is that nothing Israel can do can be criticized for ... reasons?
All, not some. I've been reading them regularly for a few months and have never seen anything that isn't Anti Zionist, let alone pro Israel, and this was way before the current war - I'm sure its much worse now.
Major US news agencies regularly ask DoD if certain topics are okay for them to cover. Beyond that, most relevant news in the US is owned by billionaires that regularly repress news that would paint them in a bad light.
Anyway, no news agency is perfect.
This submission is about Al Jazeeras operations in Israel—which is supposed to have press freedom. Israel raided and closed the Israel operations, and banned Al Jazeera’s journalists from operating in Israel.
All that said, I’m not sure you last point goes without saying. There is nothing which fundamentally prevents receiving funding from a country which suppresses press freedom, which prevents you from doing free journalism. Will receiving funding cause editorial bias? Sure, but if receiving funding automatically made you a propaganda arm for the entity funding you, then you should really question whether western media is a propaganda arm for free market capitalism, or if Hacker News was a propaganda arm for venture capitalist Y Combinator.
See: https://honestreporting.com/damage-done-how-al-jazeeras-fake...
So to say truth has been silenced is off the mark imo
Edit: haaretz link https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2024-0...
however this example is that they interviewed someone who made an inflammatory claim, and then the next day removed the claims when it came out that they were false. That hardly seems that bad for our modern news landscape.
And then you have a meme of some AJ reporters saying "Terrorists in press dresses." captioned "You can't put lipstick on a pig, you can't put a press vest on a terrorist."
That's pretty inflammatory and biased too!
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/
The pro-Palestinian movement has a literal, direct, documented connection to Nazis, and its behavior is entirely dedicated to the elimination of the only Jewish state in existence without compromise or negotiation, yet it's "The Zionists" who are accused of genocide.
> Israel's neighbors kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel would even dream
What are you talking about? Are you saying that Israel wants to kill Muslims?
Israel has so far killed over 34000 Palestinians in the ongoing genocide. This level of killing is nowhere to be found in the neighboring region. You’ll have to go all the way to Sudan to find a similar number, where there is a civil war, and (yes) a plausible genocide. Even before Oct 7. in 2023 alone Israel killed at least 278 Palestinians in the West Bank (including 70 children). You don’t see these kind of number in the neighboring countries.
> The pro-Palestinian movement has a literal, direct, documented connection to Nazis
Where? Can you provide me with a source. I don’t recall this in the news. And even if they did, this does not negate the Palestinian cause. If a particular member of a particular movement has documented connection to Nazis, and said movement does not kick that person out and denounce them, then that single movement should be denounced, and this would not affect other movements.
> and its behavior is entirely dedicated to the elimination of the only Jewish state in existence without compromise or negotiation
I’ll leave aside for a moment the fact that you take it as a given that a particular groups should have an ethno-state deticated to them, but who wants to eliminate Israel without compromise or negotiations? Most of everybody wants negotiations, even staunch proponents of a 1-state solution usually want guaranteed civil rights to Jews and Arabs alike (albeit, sometimes omitting recent settlers in occupied West Bank from this). Even Hamas is currently advocating for a 2 state solution with a right to return for displaced Palestinians. Who is this group that doesn’t want any compromise or negotiations. Honestly Israel is much more uncompromising than any pro-Palestinian actor.
That said, being against an ethno-state is not an unreasonable, nor a racist position to take. A lot of people wanted Rhodesia to stop existing, they were not racists, they simply didn’t think it was reasonable that a segregationist settler colonial state should exist on indigenous lands.
> "The Zionists" is a dog whistle
It is not. Zionism is an ideology distinct from Judasim. There are plenty of non-zionist Jews, and even more non-Jewish Zionists. Zionism is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition of Judaism. Most pro-Palistinian demonstrators do in fact call out non-Jewish zionists, such as Joe Biden, all the time.
You went further in this comment than the previous one, claiming that the pro-Palestinian movement has Nazi origins (meaning it originate via Nazism). This is pretty false.
And for many people, "Pro Palestine" is about peace and sovereignity for the Palestinian people. For others it isn't. I don't think you should paint the whole movement with the same brush so easily.
1) The official position of most Arab countries is aiming for a 2 state solution, iirc. The Palestinian Authority - which is the effective government of the West Bank Palestinians, and the official representative of Palestinians - officially recognize the State of Israel and endorse a two state solution.
Yes, support among the populace right now is weak - both Israelis and Palestinians - but that's probably because of the breakdown of the peace talks and living for the last 15 years in a situation in which Israel itself isn't really pursuing any kind of peace.
2) You write: "you can effectively paint the entire pro-Palestinian movement as genocidal."
Even if they don't support a two-state solution, calling them genocidal is going way too far.
3) When you talk about the "entire pro-Palestinian movement", it sounds like you're including the Western pro-Palestinian movement as well.
They are definitely not genocidal, and very relevant in the current context.
4) Most importantly - the best way to get to peace isn't to ignore the peaceful voices on either side as fringe, it's to amplify them.
There are genuinely pro-peace people on all sides of these issues, and pretending they don't exist is exactly the kind of rhetorical message that leads to more hate and violence. "No one on the other side is reasonable" is both wrong, and very harmful.
I'll just direct you to the Hamas Charter (pdf): https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attach...
Also to the history of Arab violence on Jews, both in the Levant and in the Middle East in general: https://medium.com/@Ksantini/the-list-of-crimes-committed-by...
Also to the latest attack on October 7th.
> There are genuinely pro-peace people on all sides of these issues, and pretending they don't exist is exactly the kind of rhetorical message that leads to more hate and violence.
No one pretends they don't exist. I genuinely love them. They are considered traitors and get a lot of hate, but all the more power and support to them. But it's foolish to pretend they are not rare.
John Aziz is amazing: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/gaza-israe...
Not supporting a two-state solution is genocidal, because it would require putting people who have explicitly stated that they want to kill Jews, in power. By their statements and behavior, Hamas, with overwhelming Gazan support, want a 1-state solution with Muslims in charge.
I wrote:
>> > They are definitely not genocidal...
You responded:
> I'll just direct you to the Hamas Charter (pdf)
But I was specifically talking in that line about the Western pro-Palestinian movement, not Hamas. In other parts of my comment, I specifically called out the position of the PA as the official representative of the Palestinians.
You really don't need to remind me of the actions of Hamas. I agree with you about them. They are clearly genocidal and, more importantly, anti-peace. (I say more importantly because they can't actually commit genocide, but they can and have blocked peace from happening.)
Oh I see. I did misunderstand. But, honestly, I'm not so sure. Maybe you and I consume different news sources, but organizations and movements I once considered to be bastions of Western morality continue to distort the reality of the conflict so egregiously that I have a hard time understanding how it could be accidental. Continuing to report Hamas statistics without qualification and then using them to accuse Israel of "genocide" is unconscionable, for instance.
In 2021, the UN Human Rights Council published a resolution titled "Human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel," which accused Israel of widespread abuses without substantial mention of the barrage of rocket attacks from Hamas that provoked some of these responses. This selective reporting led readers to believe that Israel was the primary aggressor in the conflict.
In May 2021, during a conflict between Israel and Hamas, the BBC headlined, "Israel intensifies attacks in Gaza as conflict escalates," without equally highlighting the hundreds of rockets fired into civilian areas of Israel by Hamas. This portrayal skewed public perception, framing Israel as the initiator rather than acting in retaliation.
In April 2021, HRW released a report titled "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution." This report categorically labeled Israel as an apartheid state, a term deeply contentious and debated, suggesting an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians.
In February 2022, Amnesty International issued a report stating that Israel's policies towards Palestinians amount to apartheid. The report asserts, "Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession, and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid." This statement casts Israel's actions and policies in strictly negative terms, intensifying global anti-Israel sentiment without a balanced discussion of the complex security and political challenges that inform these policies.
Labeling Israel's policies as "apartheid" is both inappropriate and harmful because it inaccurately applies a term specifically defined under international law to the unique and complex Arab-Israeli conflict. Apartheid, as legally defined, refers to an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another. The situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories involves a national and territorial conflict, marked by security concerns and political disputes that differ fundamentally from the racial segregation and legal discrimination that characterized apartheid in South Africa.
Using the term "apartheid" to describe the Israeli-Palestinian context distorts understanding by simplifying a multifaceted conflict into a one-dimensional moral failing, which undermines the nuanced approach needed to resolve such disputes. It prevents meaningful dialogue, polarizes opinions, and can incite further tension by misrepresenting the nature of the conflict. This characterization shifts focus from seeking viable solutions to assigning blame, which is counterproductive for peace efforts and does a disservice to both Israelis and Palestinians who are impacted by these complex issues.
While I'm sure that many leftists think "Free Palestine" means freedom, self-rule, sovereignty, I know that the movement depends on that ambiguity to dog whistle to racists who, unfortunately, infect some of our human rights watch dogs. So, no, I'm not convinced that Western pro-Palestinians are not on some level intentionally genocidal. I cannot otherwise explain the level of hate and vitriol directed at Israel way out of proportion to any other conflict or situation on the planet.
> So, no, I'm not convinced that Western pro-Palestinians are not on some level intentionally genocidal. I cannot otherwise explain the level of hate and vitriol directed at Israel way out of proportion to any other conflict or situation on the planet.
Well I think the fact that many focus on Israel specifically is anti-semitic, at least at the top. I think 90% of people are followers, and are jumping on this cause just because it's popular, without necessarily understanding it in the context of the rest of what's happening around the world.
I wouldn't call any of that genocidal though, that's a pretty high bar.
You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent.
[1] https://youtu.be/_foZMY8xfD8
[2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/10/31/post...
[3] https://youtu.be/VL5ACBwO9cg I find this asshole mortifying. Within hours of his hearing about the attack, you can see him in real time struggling to convert the atrocity into something anti-Israel.
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/october-7-...
I'm only pushing back that saying something like this: > You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent.
Is painting too many people with too broad a brush. Yes, some protesters are genocidal. But it's a tiny minority of protesters, and all of these frankly disgusting anecdotes are a tiny percentage of the people engaged on this topic.
https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRQgyDhIjZup...
Do leftists who call for Israelis to "return to Europe" not know the A) centuries of stark, genocidal oppression against Jews in Europe nor B) that many Israeli Jews are in Israel because they have been expelled from Arab and Middle-East countries where their ancestors have lived for centuries? There is no "back home" to go to for these people.
One could argue these Western leftists earnestly care for Palestinians, but why? Why do they care about these particular Arabs and not the 1M+ other deaths of Muslims in current conflicts? What is the difference?
When I look back at the literally genocidal pograms by Levantine Arabs against Levantine Jews in an unbroken timeline of violence from 1850s, continuing through the 1920s and al-Husseini's agreements with Hitler in WW2, and the continuing violence right now, the repeated rejections of compromise and peace, the insistence on "all the land or death", is super clear to me that the "pro-Palestine" movement is and has always been genocidal. It is not and has never been about sovereignty or self-determination. Do Western leftists not know this? Do they not care? They certainly don't want to hear about it.
Unfortunately the letter presents certain regrettable factual distortions. For example:
We felt helpless when we watched students and faculty physically block Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they turned their faces away in silence.
The protest movement, especially at Columbia, has a highly visible Jewish contingent (especially within its leadership). If people were blocked from the protest encampments, it was plainly not because they were Jewish. And it is intellectually dishonest to claim that this is the reason they were excluded.
There have also been numerous disturbing / idiotic episodes on the part of the counter-protest movement, as I'm sure you know. Except unfortunately these have been notably more violent than most of what's been happening from the protestors' side. Just the other day for example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/nyregion/columbia-driver-...
Imagine being 55 years old and getting hit by a car that just so happens to have been driven by a cousin of one of one of Israel's most famous convicted terrorists (celebrated by none other than the country's current Finance Minister). Or being attacked with military-grade crowd control chemicals:
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/01/22/protesters...
This isn't whataboutism. In order to understand this situation, it necessary the consider the whole playing field. And the simple fact that there's many profoundly disturbing episodes originating in both camps.
I'll just close with one more particularly revealing snippet from the letter:
If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People.
Again, no one buys the "Zionism = Judaism" equivalence. Outside the ideological bubble world that the signatories of the letter (and the driver of that car which nearly killed a 55 year-old woman for expressing her political beliefs the other day) choose to live in.
Don't get me started on counter-protesters. No matter who's protesting, the counter-protest will always be worse. At least some subset of protesters have an intrinsic motivation aligned with the cause. Virtually all the counter-protesters will be there to stir the pot.
I know I'm a wet blanket here but I'm going to keep mentioning that we're all necroposting on a long-dead threat, bloated with corpse-gases, that just 3-4 people are reading. HN is bigger and better than this.
Because the encampments contained many Jewish organizers / participants (likely equal to or greater than their proportion across the student body as a whole).
The contention [is that] Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity.
I see what you're driving at, but overall it seems to be a weak and ancillary argument. It basically gets into the whole "if you reject / insult Zionism (or even the military campaign in Gaza itself) then you're insulting my religious/ethnic identity" line, which I just don't buy (neither do many Jews in fact, and in fact they find it rather insulting that one should presume that all Jews should automatically feel that way).
I don't speak for JVP, so you'll have to take up issues about their dining plates / ephemeral Houthi endorsements with them.
As I've acknowledged there's been a fair amount of verbal harassment (and obnoxious signage), some of it arguably antisemitic. Deplorable thought it is, it gets into a different topic (from the issue of people being supposedly blocked from campus areas due to their perceived ethnic classification).
It's also not been a feature of the encampments as such that I'm aware of (but I could be wrong of course). More like a feature of spontaneous confrontations / street actions.
Addendum (edit): To the extent that some of these people protest Israel specifically (as no doubt many of them do) -- it's usually against Israel in its current (effectively Revisionist) Zionist configuration, aka "Israel as a rigidly defined ethnostate", built on as much territory as it can reasonably hold onto and with a supremacist attitude towards non-Jewish inhabitants. Not the "legitimacy of a Jewish homeland" in principle, which can mean a lot of things (such as the idea of a "Jewish homeland" that is genuinely democratic and not determined by the fact of a Jewish supermajority).
None of these are big issues for me, but there's a whole "the Good Jews" phenomenon that American Jewish people are keyed in on (which I hear about from friends, who all revile Netanyahu and oppose the Gaza invasion --- ironic that I'm disclaiming that!), and you said something that pricked my ears up about that. That's all. I'm not rebutting you.
I am going to argue something different, and I would like you to seriously entertain the idea. The argument is: anti-Semitic harassment and anti-Zionism are part-and-parcel.
Consider: imagine for the sake of argument a universe that is exactly like ours, except in that universe, Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza reasonably well, as perfectly as it is possible to prosecute any war. They actually do minimize civilian deaths, not commit any war crimes or genocide, ensure that aid gets where it needs to go. They simply want to get rid of Hamas. In that universe, the war is actually a measured and rational response to the Hamas provocations of that universe, October 7th actually happened, etc.
Please answer honestly: in that universe, how do you think the world responds? Does Hamas still claim genocide? Does the "Gazan Ministry of Health" still issue a daily death toll that is strangely absent of combatants? Does the BBC and al-Jazeera, et. al. still quote those statistics with neither qualification nor caveat? Does South Africa still take Israel to ICJ? Does the UN security council still issue resolutions against Israel without reference to Hamas or the hostages?
I believe that the answer to those questions would be identical to this universe. Would you agree? If not, what is the mechanism by which the world could tell the difference? What trustworthy organization would impartially inform us all that there is no genocide in a way that you yourself would believe it?
I believe most anti-Zionists would behave quite the same in that universe, because for them, Israel's existence is a problem, and the accusation of genocide is a tool in its dismantling.
What we have here is the "They're just going to criticize / hate Israel no matter what it does" defense which has been raised as a blanket response to pretty much any robust criticism of what Israel does, for several decades. Or to paraphrase only slightly how you put it: "Israel's existence is the problem, serious criticisms about what it does are tools for its dismantling."
So to answer your question - of course no, I don't buy it. And yes, fundamentally the current response would be very different. There wouldn't be an ICJ case; there wouldn't be calls for sanctions against units like Netzah Yehuda for doing what they're currently doing out here in the real, actual world; etc.
If not, what is the mechanism by which the world could tell the difference? What trustworthy organization would impartially inform us all that there is no genocide in a way that you yourself would believe it?
The same organizations that are the obvious answer to this question (independent journalists and human rights groups in and outside of Israel; UN bodies; forensic analysis teams, etc).
In short, yes - in this science fiction universe, it would be a very different response. You're not going to agree of course, and that's fine.
Your other bullet points seem to be ancillary: no one is acting on what Hamas is claiming about the ongoing genocide, for example. And the Gaza Health Ministry numbers are a huge red herring (even Israeli military intelligence considers them to be generally reliable and uses them in their briefings; US officials believe the real numbers may be even higher, etc).
Far from being "ancillary" or a "red herring", the Gaza Health Ministry statistics are central to the accusations against Israel of genocide. Weird you would even say that.
And, no, neither Israel nor "Israeli intelligence" considers Gazan Health Ministry statistics accurate [1]. That's another weird thing to say. As for "US officials believe the real numbers may be even higher, etc" I only found a single quote from a single US official, from one Barbara Leaf, Assistant Secretary of State, implying this [2]. I also found a quote from the same Voice of America article that "President Joe Biden has openly questioned figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is run by Hamas, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist group" so...
It's odd that you made so many hrm... exaggerations in such a short response. It's almost like you don't care about the accuracy of your statements? Surely that cannot be true.
> etc
Etc? What is the etc? You wouldn't have only two things to say and then write "etc" to imply there's more, would you? I refuse to believe it.
[1] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fat...
[2] https://www.voanews.com/a/us-stands-firm-with-israel-amid-co...
I believe the response would be similar but not identical. There would be mass protests, just like there were in 2021, 2018, 2014, etc. I also participated in these protests. These protests would be smaller but still loud. Student movements would also call out their universities and demand boycott, just like in 2021, 2018, etc. But we probably wouldn’t see as many students participating, nor would it spread to as many school.
We would still see an ICJ case, however it wouldn’t be South Africa charging Israel of genocide. It would be the General Assembly charging Israel of apartheid. This case is also ongoing in our universe, and and was agreed to before Oct 7. Delegations would use that case to voice discontent with that universe’s version of the Gaza atrocities, no matter how scaled back it would be. But I think they would stop short of calling it a genocide (assuming Israel wouldn’t be committing one in that Universe). The security council would vote on a ceasefire and the US would veto it, just like in 2021, 2018, etc. The general assembly would also vote on and agree to to a ceasefire.
The BBC and Al Jazeera would quote statistics straight from the Hamas run Gaza health ministry, the BBC would say Hamas run, but Al Jazeera wouldn’t, just like in our universe. People would criticize BBC for that from both the left and the right (just like in our universe).
The truth about this universe is that Israel has been braking international humanitarian laws for a very long time, and the world is tired of it. In this alternative universe, the world would be equally tired of it, and would condemn Israel for it. Settler policies, apartheid, constant bombing campaigns in Gaza, constant raids on the West Bank, etc. all of that would be the reason the world would condemn Israel in your alternative universe. Israel’s settler colonial and apartheid policies would be a problem. And the accusations there of would be just.
What laws?
Usually when people answer that question, they just refer to a law ("look up the Geneva Conventions") and then disappear. If you could, please actually quote the relevant paragraphs and, even better, an actual court ruling.
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186
It was submitted to the court after the UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/77/247 was approved by a majority vote of 98 approved vs. 17 against and 52 absent. Here is a summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_consequences_arising_fro...
This link contains all written and spoken testimonies, as well as related documents and news from the UN. In it you will find several examples of international humanitarian law broken by Israel without consequences. You will find several UN resolutions ignored by Israel without consequences. This case seeks to establish which consequences Israel should face from decades of this behavior. The ICJ accepted this case, and proclaims jurisdiction.
During the oral testimonies you will find statements and conclusions such as this from South Africa:
> The available evidence indicates that Israel is responsible for inhuman acts which fall within the ambit of Article 2(a), (c), (d) and (f) of the Apartheid Convention. [1] (Paragraph 115)
Here is another example from the same oral testimony:
> The establishment of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories is considered as illegal by the international community as they are in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Paragraph 6 of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. t therefore follows that any legislation authorising settlements or the extension of settlements “adopted by Israel to facilitate or set up settlements would be in violation of Article 43
I gave you this link because it is full of legal experts from all over the world citing humanitarian law and explaining how Israel is breaking them. This case would have been ongoing today even without Oct 7 and without the Gaza genocide. This case and the number of written and oral testimonies, and the content of these testimonies, is proof that the world is fed up with Israel’s behavior towards the Palestinians.
1: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186...
Ok, I've tried to get a coherent argument out of you and I have just about given up. If you'd like to have the final word, feel free. I'll read whatever you have to say, but probably will not respond.
> The ICJ has not rendered any decision yet.
I know, however the world believes Israel has violated several UN orders, and is taking action based on that belief.
> It's an accusation by South Africa.
It is not. I cited two paragraphs from the written statement given by South Africa. This is more like a witness statement than accusations. South Africa gave Oral Testimonies reflecting this written statement[1] (page 10)
The accusations were done by the General assembly back in December 2022 (read the actual accusations here[2]). 87 countries votes in favor of these accusations, 26 against, and 53 abstentions
The reason I’m citing these is that actual legal experts formed a consensus about these and submitted them to the world’s highest court, which accepted the case. This is not just my opinion, but the opinion of several legal experts spanning most of the world. Like I said, you may not like it, but the world is taking actions against Israel’s human rights violations. This would have happened even without the Gaza Genocide being a part of this reality.
[1]: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186...
[2]: https://www.undocs.org/A/RES/77/247
EDIT: And if you want examples of specific laws which Israel has definetly broken, with an ICJ judgement to prove it. Then read case 131 https://www.icj-cij.org/case/131 which ruled Israel to be in violation of certain International Humanitarian Law by building the border wall, which still stands today and is cited in the resolution I cited above https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n04/419/86/pdf/n04419...
This is just one of many examples of international human rights violations of Israel, some of which have the backing of an ICJ court behind it.
If there were white power protests happening on campus at the University of Chicago, we'd all be up in arms; we are not when SJP, an organization that formally endorses the Al-Qassam Brigades, protests instead. There's for sure a blind spot. I see why people are pissed. It is not at all clear to me that anyone's safety was threatened at Columbia, though.
That said, to some reasonable approximation even the most militant pro Palestinian campus protests didn’t threaten any ones safety. In nearly every case the danger came from reactionary protests. Which is completely predictable if you are a campus safety officer!
I do think we all want Palestinians to live peaceful and prosperous lives. Despite what many anti-Zionists believe, Israel would like that for Palestinians too.
The fundamental question is, does Israel get to exist as a state? If you believe yes, then congratulations, you are a Zionist!
If you believe no, and if you're not struggling intellectually with the practical consequences of the end of the Israeli state to the Israeli people, really walking through it with concern, then you court genocide. There isn't really much leeway, there.
The other time was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries describing Marjory Taylor Greene and “extreme MAGA Republicans” as “Chaos Agents”.
Logically, they are, though. They are impervious to logical argument that it is not a genocide. Their only evidence, ultimately, is Hamas' "trust me, bro" and their own presumption that Israel is evil. If people throw the word "genocide" around without second thought out question and cannot accept any mitigating argument, they are not helping. So, yes, chaos agents and no, not just "college students sleeping rough".
This is against the community guidelines. With over 13k karma points, you know better.
I hesitate to ask, but pretend for a moment that I am an earnest rationalist who respects logical arguments and lets truth lead to conclusions even if I am not happy with those conclusions.
Can you, striving to minimize emotionalism or logical fallacy, walk through in concise points what specifically is "ridiculous"?
Syria was a civil war with who knows how many dead, its over half a million easily. Iraq I'm not an expert on but parts of what's happened and still is happening there seems like a civil war to me, number of dead is huge.
How is the Israeli-Gaza war a civil war btw?
If you don't look at the artificial definition of civil wars, the region is even more violent with millions more dead in conflicts - Yemen / Saudi Arabia, Iran-Iraq etc.
If we include wars from over 20 years ago, we should also include the numbers of atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians in the same time period. Including the Great March of Return massacres in 2018-2019 where Israel murdered 223 Palestinians, most of whom were unarmed civilians.
Now the total number of Palestinian victims probably won’t come anywhere near the total number of victims of the Iraq war, but a major difference is that Palestine is a lot smaller nations, and has had to suffer repeated atrocities, continuously throughout whichever time period we decide to start counting.
But my point here is that Israel’s neighbors are not “kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel”.
You will no doubt be relieved to know that Israel is not the #1 killer of Muslims by any measure, neither now nor in the past. Armed with this new information, you will no doubt become a prominent anti-Assad and -ISIL activist, organizing marches through the streets, calling for a ceasefire?
Yes there are some metrics where you can find a bigger killer of Muslims then Israel. There are other metrics where Israel is larger. But even still, Israel is killing a lot of people. Being top 5 in killing Muslim is not something you can be proud of by saying, “look at the top 4 muslim killers here”.
I'll answer, but I ask again: do you know what it is about the Palestinian cause that has you so exercised? Above, say, the Syrian or Sudanese or Yemen or Saudi or Iraqi or Lebanese causes, which are all far more deadly, even if you take Hamas' word for it. I mean, maybe you have an excellent reason...?
My answer is that there is a lack of perspective when it comes to Israel. It's better that everyone understands the scale of the death and destruction in the region. What the people of Israel risk should the state fall.
> Being top 5 in killing Muslim...
Not top 5. Not even top 10. Don't take my word for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_conflicts_in_th...
In terms of immediate neighbors - just behind (and much closer to) Lebanon and Syria, but much greater numerically than Jordan / Egypt / Saudi.
Funny you should mention. At least some of the new arrivals from Europe were apparently "already well sick of the Arabs' shit" from the minute they landed in their new homeland. As Ahad Ha'am (Asher Zvi Ginsburg) wrote in 1891, regarding the early Zionist settlers:
They were slaves in their land of exile, and they suddenly find themselves with unlimited freedom, the kind of wild freedom to be found only in a country like Turkey. This sudden change has engendered in them an impulse to despotism, as always happens when "a slave becomes a king," and behold they walk with the Arabs in hostility and cruelty, unjustly encroaching on them, shamefully beating them for no good reason, and even bragging about what they do, and there is no one to stand in the breach and call a halt to this dangerous and despicable impulse. To be sure our people are correct in saying that the Arab respects only those who demonstrate strength and courage, but this is relevant only when he feels that his rival is acting justly; it is not the case if there is reason to think his rival's actions are oppressive and unjust.
Of course by 1917 everyone knew what was up. As presaged by Herzl in his diary (1895):
We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.
The roots of the conflict run very deep indeed.
Here is a list:
"List of killings and massacres in Mandatory Palestine": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_and_massacres...
Several things to note: That particular list starts in 1920, not because that's when Arabs began their nonsense but because it's a list of massacres in Mandatory Palestine and that started in 1918. The Muslim Arab massacre of Jews began literally at the beginning of Islam. But perhaps directly relevant, Arabs massacred Jews throughout the 1800s in spasms of violence in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, Aleppo, Cairo, Damascus and surrounds. The war against Jews in 1948 and all the accusations against Jews for "stealing land" was just a continuation of centuries of SOP.
Despite all of this violence, directed by Arabs towards Jews, thousands of Jewish deaths at the hands of Arabs in the preceding decades and centuries and millenia, you have to scroll down to 1939 before finding the first instance of Jewish retaliation.
As for "Zionists stole muh lands", here is a concise video that makes the case in under a minute that Jews stole no Arab land.
https://youtube.com/shorts/a3CNMHabxrE
> *You, after quoting a 1915 essay*: "The roots of the conflict run very deep indeed."
You wouldn't believe how deep.
There's also this fellow Menachem Begin and the accomplishments of his crew:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks#During_B...
This isn't a question of 1937 versus 1939 (or whether these atrocities were in any meaningful sense "retaliatory"). But if you're going to somehow not mention -- whether by choice, or simple carelessness -- one of the most important chapters of the lead-up to the so-called "defensive war" of 1947-1949 then I don't see us heading towards a productive analysis of the larger historical context.
Wikipedia is pretty good, overall. But uneven also, in terms of edit quality. So when assembling data on such large scale tragedies (as the matter of targeted violence against civilians by both sides in this conflict), it's best to check against other sources.
Like moldy old books in the library. And listening to people whose families have lived through these events.
Against a guy's essay ...
The point is the unequivocally colonial intent of the Zionist project from its earliest beginnings. Not the guy or his essay.
You have decided this 2 years difference allows you to entirely dismiss the significance of this being the first retaliation after centuries of Arab attacks. I don't blame you. I wouldn't address it either if I were you. That it was in 1937 vs 1939 still entirely undermines your central thesis that Israelis are pure, unadulterated evil and Palestinians are their innocent victims. Why are you like this?
> The point is the unequivocally colonial intent of the Zionist project from its earliest beginnings.
The guy had an opinion, for which he was bitterly criticised by other Zionists. What is with you?
It's not my thesis, and nothing I've written even remotely suggests that.
I never said that either.
In support, I offer the fact that the Irgun attack of 1937 cum 1939 was the first Jewish retaliation after centuries of Arab attacks.
You attempted to demonstrate that Zionism was the cause of today's conflict by excerpting a 1917 essay. I don't think this reasonably compares to the historical record which shows a long, long pattern of Arab violence and calumny against Jews going back centuries.
Your username implies that you value rationality. Great! Me too.
In general, after years of arguing about this with strangers on the internet, I have not ever once encountered an anti-Zionist who argues well and honestly by scrupulously steel-manning the pro-Israeli argument, employing the Principle of Charity, citing falsifiable evidence for assertions, acknowledging opponents' points rather than ghosting, avoiding logical fallacy, and so forth. After years of only ever hearing fallacious arguing of that sort, I strongly suspect that there is no foundation for the anti-Israel stance based in logic and rationality.
Is there? Can you meet that challenge? Can you address the challenge directly and honestly, steel-manning and then refuting that thesis?
So, directly: if the first Jewish attack on Arabs was in 1937 while, to be charitable, the "first" Arab attack on Jews of the region were over 100 years earlier in 1834 in Safed and Hebron, with many thereafter, then how can it be Zionism that caused Arabs to attack Jews? Isn't it more credible to say that Arabs attack Jews irrespective of Zionism? Rather, that "Zionism" is the excuse for attacks that would happen anyway? Moreover, isn't it possible that Zionism gained status and authority, not as a bigoted "settler-colonialist project" as you term it, but rather as a necessary defensive corrective against ongoing violent attacks, both in the region and abroad? As the kids say these days, where the lie?
You were attributing to me views which I haven't expressed. So a correction was provided, which was hopefully helpful to you. In any case it seems we've traded enough notes about historical bloodletting the topic of Zionism as such.
If you like you can tell us how you think should look on the ground -- in, say, about 20 years from now -- in your most optimistic (but realistically obtainable) scenario. Specifically with regard to (1) the final and borders of the State of Israel, (2) the status of the West Bank settlements (for those which do not end up on the Israeli side of the final borders), and (3) whether you see a need for any "population transfer" (as per the Decisive Plan or other proposals) in order to create conditions for a just and lasting peace.
If you want to. I'd just be curious.
But, no, while I think my ideal future for the region is a pipe dream that will never come about, I don't think the answer is actual genocide like population transfer.
Earlier you made assertions that Zionism is a settler-colonialist project and at least strongly implied that it was the cause of the conflict today. In light of the fact that continuous Arab attacks against Jews of the region began decades before Zionism, has it changed your mind at all about the cause of the conflict? Changed your calculation at least to a degree regarding Arab culpability?
In order to argue against Israel, particularly that Israel is somehow deeply immoral, one must distort, deny and divert. There is no argument against the state of Israel that does not rely on this. Anyone who employs principles of rationality to the conflict will be pro-Israel.
When pressed or challenged too hard, an anti-Israeli will simply end the conversation and ghost.
Prove me wrong.
This seems like a leap of logic. I see there are only two possibilities for that to hold true.
a) There are no illegitimate states
b) Israel is unique and unquestionable
I don’t think (b) is worth discussing as such exceptionalism is at the base of all genocidal states, and are almost always illegitimate (I’ll make an exception for the Vatican)
And (a) is easily disproven with a simple look at history. There are plenty of illegitimate states throughout history. A recent example is Apartheid South Africa which got replaced by a democratic South Africa in 1994. A more blatant example is Rhodesia. Almost everybody questioned the legitimacy of Rhodesia, and any anti-Rhodesian argument was indeed rational. Rhodesia was funded as a racist, white-supremacist, ethno-state and as such had no right to exist. Most of the world agreed. Not even Israel recognized Rhodesia (despite militarily supporting the white ethno-fascist government).
Israel in its current form has not right to exist. Israel needs to either a) grant full sovereignty to Palestine, and either pay reparations or grant the right of return to the descendants of those displaced in the Nakba and following atrocities; or b) unite with Palestine under a single democratic government with equal rights of all citizens. It cannot exist as a Jewish ethno-national ethno-state, which subjugates Palestinians in a settler colonial fashion, and further antagonizes its neighbors who shelter Palestinian refugees with constant military incursions.
I would want someone else to tell me this on the (many) occasions where I've gone on tilt like this.
> This seems like a leap of logic.
a) There are no illegitimate states
b) Israel is unique and unquestionable
...<then non-sequiturs about South Africa and Rhodesia>
I am a Westerner. One of my core beliefs is that rationalism and logic leads to truth and correct action; conversely that irrationality and emotionalism leads to suffering and poor decisions. I'm not pro-Israel because I've chosen "team Israel, right or wrong". I'm pro-Israel because the pro-Israel arguments that I've heard are far more rational than pro-Palestinian arguments. I do seek out anti-Israel arguments, hoping to find something rational, but so far, nothing. Again, my goal is truth and correct action, not tribal chest-thumping.
Your arguments here did not hit the mark. I do not accept that South Africa or Rhodesia are appropriate comparisons, and therefore their inclusion was a non-sequitur.
Further, my null hypothesis is that Israel is an unremarkable state, not "unique and unquestionable". I therefore interpret Israel as doing only that which any Western nation would do in the same circumstances. Yours appears to be the obverse, that Israel is uniquely questionable. Maybe it is? You'd have to supply evidence or arguments compelling enough to match that thesis, for me to be convinced.
If you do want to earnestly go down this path of becoming the first to construct actually rational arguments against Israel, you won't be able to just throw around emotional shorthands like "apartheid", "Nakba", "settler-colonialist", etc. It's lazy emotionalism designed to stop rational thought. It will convince only those who are already convinced, but it's not a rational argument.
If you want to argue rationally and compellingly that Israel is "an apartheid state" then understand the strongest arguments against using that term, and dismantle those arguments. We pro-Israel peeps have heard all the accusations, but have never heard any considered, thoughtful, direct, courageous rebuttal of the "Israel is not apartheid, actually" arguments. Just more emotionalism.
I do bet that if you take the journey to understand the arguments for and the arguments against you will conclude that it's not appropriate in Israel's case. But! Maybe I'm wrong about that! Maybe you will come up with a really rational, dispassionate argument that Israel is an apartheid state and all rational people will be compelled to follow the truth, reluctantly or not.
Good luck. I honestly look forward to see what you come up with.
The Nakba is a historical event, which took place in Palestine 1947-1948. I was using it here to describe that even (or rather as a reference point), not as an emotional shorthand.
Settler Colonialism is a conduct done by a dominant power and against an indigenous population. Rhodesia was a settler colonial state, there is a historical agreement about that, and there was a contemporary agreement that that was bad, and in and of it self made Rhodesia an illegitimate state. I was using it as an emotional shorthand, but so did contemporaries, including at the UN when they encourage nations to never recognize such as state.
Your claim that I threw around these terms as lazy emotionalism is unfounded, I explained how they are relevant and how one can indeed criticize Israel using these terms. Israel may not be as bad as Rhodesia, but the term Settler colonialism, and ethno-state still apply. Israel was a Settler colonial enterprise, it was funded 76 years ago by mass displacements of an indigenous population in an event known as the Nakba. Israel is an ethno-state. It maintains a supremacy and domination of a single ethno-religious group over others. It encourages immigration of that single entho-religious group, while denying any rights to the indigenous population which they displaced.
I’ve argued elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40346997) that Israel is an apartheid state, citing, among other, a legal argument used before the ICJ that Israel does indeed brake international humanitarian laws, specifically relating to the legal definition of Apartheid. You however refused to engage with that argument. Claiming that I wasn’t making any coherent arguments. The thing is, I’m not making those arguments, legal experts are. I’m simply appealing to authority on the matter, and there is an overwhelming concern among experts that Israel is indeed an apartheid state.
EDIT: As a case in point of how universal these criticisms of Israel are (a universality which must grant at least some legitimacy) the Wikipedia pages for both Settler Colonialism and Ethnocracy (redirected from ethno-state), have a substantial segments about how these terms can be described to Israel. Even Apartheid (South Africa) which is an article about Apartheid in South Africa (not the crime of Apartheid) has a couple of paragraphs dedicated to how Israel’s conduct against Palestinians can be described as Apartheid. Jimmy Carter even wrote a whole book about it.
You aren't making coherent arguments. For example, if you aren't aware that "the Nakba" is considered by pro-Israelis to be a myth, then you should, and you should know why.
I’m not making those arguments, legal experts are
"Legal experts" are as subject to bias as anyone.
I’m simply appealing to authority on the matter
Indeed. This is why I didn't address "your" arguments. You didn't make any. You appealed to authority, which is a logical fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
there is an overwhelming concern among experts...
One problem with appeal to authority is that you don't have to understand the argument. Just find the person arguing your preference, label them "expert" and I do the same, and then it's detached from any actual understanding.
So, summarize these legal experts arguments and demonstrate that you actually understand the argument.
And, frankly, you did not even understand that the document was an accusation. This fundamental error didn't give me confidence, to be honest.
Now, I’m actually not that smart, and I don’t know how to summarize arguments in a convincing manner. We have plenty of people that have done so already, Wikipedia does an excellent job for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid I guess that is also appealing to authority.
Not exactly what I said. I said you should understand why pro-Israelis consider it to be a myth. You don't have to agree, but at least understand the arguments. You say you're not smart, but if you're smart enough to argue one side, then you're smart enough to understand the best arguments of the other.
Though "How can you call the Nakba a myth?" is in the form of a question, I have enough experience in "debates" of this sort to know it would be a mistake to treat it as a question. "How can you call the Nakba a myth?" is not actually your earnest request for an exchange of views, is it. It's more of a rhetorical device to demonstrate disagreement, even disapproval.
Given that it's not an invitation to exchange views, were I to make the mistake of interpreting it as an actual question, and were then to take the time to answer, explain, link to sources, ask questions in return, would you not scoff, dismiss, divert, and not seek to absorb the actual argument, but look immediately for ways to "debunk" it? Some, worried about ideological taint, might even run off to find approved anti-Israel sources to find out how they "debunk" the argument.
Invariably, the quality of the rebuttal is not as important as its existence. You (and your co-interlocutor @racional) disapprove, and you are on Team Palestine, therefore it doesn't really matter what the Nakba myth arguments actually are, nor their rebuttal, because they aren't gonna be seriously considered anyway.
Again, disappointing, but unsurprising. Not sure how barking talking points at each other is helping at this point.
Let us all cheerfully agree to disagree. You can continue to believe that Israel is committing genocide, and I can continue to believe that the accusation is murderously cynical, callous and morally bankrupt.
If we were doing competitive debate, a tactic like building a hypothetical Nakba denier, and claiming I have to understand their point—despite denying the Nakba being obviously wrong—that tactic might work in competitive debate, but not here. I don’t care about people who deny a real historical event, and I don’t have to acknowledge them, let alone understand them. They are just wrong. If they exists, that changes nothing, except the number of misinformed and wrong people surrounding this issue.
This is not a competitive debate, but an internet forum aimed at tech workers and tech enthusiasts. My goal here is to inform people of the ongoing genocide (which is really sad that that is something we need to do in the 21st century) because there are tech workers contributing to the genocide. I entered this thread 10 days ago because you had been gish galloping common myths about the issue (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40269500) and I felt the need to correct some of them for a wider audience. Some of those myths were ridiculous and obviously wrong, such as Zionism being a dog whistle, and smearing Pro-palestinian protestors as Nazis. It was not hard to correct those. Why I continued the thread though, that is anybodies guess.
IF your goal is to win me in a debate, you have probably succeeded. Congratulations. But I’d like to remind you that there are real victims in the ongoing genocide. Real people, some of them are tech workers who may have an account here on HN. To them this is not a debate which seperates people into “our team” and the “other team”. To them this is a disaster, a tragedy. Out of respect to all the victims of the genocide, I’m not gonna “agree to disagree”. You were wrong on multiple points in your original post, and while these wrong points persist in the public dialog, there will be tech workers feeling OK about contributing their work into furthering the atrocities, which will result in even more of our comrades being murdered in the ongoing genocide.
No. You're goal is to misinform people with a dangerous, mean, and genocidal lie. Why you would do such an evil thing is an open question. That you and others like you shamelessly, smugly repeat this lie, even at your own expense, is deeply weird. Was it hatred, implanted during childhood? Religious indoctrination of some kind? It will remain a mystery to me why people like you hold such recalcitrant, unmitigated hate but it's very clearly there, and it's the same hatred that has caused actual genocide through the centuries. Something ugly, deep in your soul.
I hope you figure it out and uproot it someday. It can't be making you happy. Good luck.
The document I linked was a testimony relating to accusations made by the UN general assembly. You incorrectly stated I cited it as a judgement, but I did not. I did however cite an ICJ judgement (Case 131) later which ruled Israel’s border wall illegal under international law, which was cited in the accusations for more general human rights violations (A/RES/77/247).
I understand what I cited, and I stand by my words. I’m however not that smart, and perhaps I failed to convey the purpose of each document I cited. Sorry for that.
This is, in itself, a myth.
They might talk around it, and attempt to dial down certain aspects, bemoan the "necessity", etc. But every serious person in Israel more or less acknowledges the basic historic reality of the Nakba these days.
In fact, far from denying the Nakba -- since Oct 7, some are now quite proud of what the Irgun and the Haganah accomplished in 1948-1949, and are openly issuing calls to take it up a notch.
Meet Likud MK Ariel Kallner for example (via WP):
Following Hamas’s attack on Israeli communities near Gaza, Kallner in October 2023 called for Israel to bring about a second Nakba. In a post on social media platform X, Kallner advocated for a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48", calling for a "Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join."
Not to be outdone -- here's Former Internal Security Minister and Shin Bet director Avi Dichter (from the same party, natch):
Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”
When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/is...
“Yesterday I warned the Arab students, who are flying Palestine flags at universities: Remember 48. Remember our independence war and your Nakba, don’t stretch the rope too much. Ask your elders, your grandfathers and grandmothers and they will explain to you that in the end the Jews will awaken. They know how to defend themselves and the Jewish state. Don't stretch the rope too much.”
After a protest from a Palestinian lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman, he shot back:
Listen, listen - if you don't calm down, we'll teach you a lesson that won't be forgotten
https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1529484002595414019
I was already aware of the chronology. I've pretty much always seen the conflict as having multiple sources of causality, both in its origins and in its reasons continuing to this day -- with plenty of blame to go around to various parties on all sides.
Changed your calculation at least to a degree regarding Arab culpability?
That said I just don't believe in the idea collective blame, as applies to any ethnic or religious group. And certainly not going back centuries and millennia.
I do see it as an intrinsically modern conflict, and in essence -- the outcome of global and regional power interests. Ignorance, fear, hatred and the conscious actions of individuals at local levels certainly have their roles also. But in the bigger picture -- it's the larger geopolitical interests, and the decisions of persons at these levels which have exploited these factors, and brought us to where we are today.
> -- with plenty of blame to go around to various parties on all sides.
These two statements are contradictory and non-sequiturs. Apparently Arabs are not to be assigned collective blame for their attacks, while Israeli Jews receive full, collective blame.
No one talked about blame anyway, but the cause and effect of the historical pattern of Arabs killing Jews in the region.
> I've pretty much always seen the conflict as having multiple sources of causality, both in its origins and in its reasons continuing to this day
This is an evasion when the question became tough. Now it's about "multiple sources of causality" when it's clear it was not Zionism or settler-colonialism that caused Arabs to attack Jews.
You say "there is plenty of blame to go around", and yet every post of yours exclusively focuses on Israeli and Zionist culpability and Palestinian victimhood, and you seem unable to seriously entertain any mitigating arguments our evidence on behalf of Israel.
Disappointing.
I've never said or implied any such thing.
Collective blame and victimhood are your themes, not mine.
The IDF is unequivocally the agent behind of the largest number of non-combatant Muslim deaths in a single country since Oct 7 (and most likely including all of 2023). More than Darfur, Myanmar, Yemen and Syria presently. The same outfit which holds itself up as "the most moral army in the world".
Not a chance. What's happening in Gaza now will be no more forgotten than all the other trenches filled with civilian bodies (adult and infant) thanks to the various atrocities of WW II.
"Mowing the lawn" it ain't.
It has even less to do with Jewish people.
Your post comes across as racist, and sounds as someone blaming a whole ethno-religeous group for the Zionist ideology or fascistic tendencies of an unpopular government. Zionism is also a harmful ideology for the Jewish people, and “the Jews” have not become anything except victims of this ideology, and governments which support it.
The Zionists might be committing a genocide — hence a comparison to Nazis might be justified — but there are many Jews protesting these war crimes.
Are they telling lies? Maybe not.
Are they partial? Yes.
The fact is that on this topic the propaganda with all its disinformation and misinformation is persistent, pervasive in media, and potent. You can start to see it for yourself — simply take a shallow dive into the history of this subject and you will immediately notice the degree of the active distortion of all discourses on this topic in the modern media.
It won’t take you a weekend to read any one of the below books on this topic. After which you will start to notice how the journalists and the op-ed authors leave out highly relevant details regarding the origins of the problems in order to — time and time again - blame the Palestinians for their plight and ultimately frame them as responsible for their suffering.
It’s not the Zionists that steal Palestinian land and demolish/steal existing houses to build new settlements it’s the Palestinians that didn’t accept a supposedly “fair peace deal” while nobody mentions that said deal requires giving up the right of return of millions of refugees displaced in 1948. It’s not the F16 pilot that bombed the residential compound filled with civilians it’s the civilians that voted a decade ago for Hamas. And on and on.
Read a short book and start to see for yourself.
1. The Hundred Years War on Palestine - Khalidi (Palestinian Arab author)
2. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Pappe (Israeli Jewish author)
Infact Arabs have gone to war with Israel many times, so when you see the 10,000 foot view, its very different to just to 1000 foot view focusing on "Palestine"