Because we're supposed to post things that create discussion and stimulate curiosity, while that generates outbursts like "I used to support Israel but now I don't support it's right to exist!" from new accounts.
In the spirit of wanting this thread to be more productive: I would like to see ~80%+ of the West Bank settlers shoved back into Israel as part of a peace deal and the infrastructure given as reparations.
Because the Palestinians are many decades late in accepting a two-state peace deal and their bargaining position isn't getting any better.
Because even moving 80% of West Bank settlement population is going to be difficult for Israel to achieve politically and we want the proposal to be something that can be actually achieved because we can see what the alternatives are. And this is with a hypothetical Democrat US president willing to bring ultimatums to an new Israeli President that is to the left of Netanyahu.
If you want to encourage endless conflict over what your vision of justice is then that's your right. But if there's no compromise there's going to be a lot of (mostly Palestinian) blood spilled yet and you should be aware of that.
I agree with you that politics is compromise. So given that:
Israel perpetrated an ethnic cleansing in 1948.
Israel illegally occupied Palestinian territory for decades, enforced apartheid, committed innumerable war crimes, murdered enormous amounts of civilians through the decades and caused total destruction of Gaza as well as many West Bank villages.
Never recognised Palestine even after Palestine recognised Israel (in 1998) and maneuvered to prevent its creation.
Given this and more, I would start by asking at least 120% of the territory back plus substantial reparations.
As for what Israel can achieve politically- I don't think you understand. You will never get anything via political negotiations because Israel has zero interest in giving up anything. The entire "peace process" has always been a farce, used to grant Israel more time to grab what it wants. The only way you're going to get anything is by exercising a substantial force, either economically (crippling sanctions) or via direct military intervention. If you keep treating Israel as a friend or an ally you'll never get anything out if it. Israel is an enemy.
Probably not even this compromise will ever happen.
The people holding power there (and that includes e.g. Hamas leaders, PLO leaders, various Israel leaders like from Shas party, or leaders of the settlers) hold part of their power BECAUSE of this conflict. Would the conflict go away, and the area become as boring as e.g. Austria, then their importance would have been reduced.
A powerful group there benefit from the ongoing drama.
I see this take quite often- I find it generic and naive in its cynicism. In fact you call the situation "the ongoing drama". Sorry, it's not "drama". It's thieves taking other people's land and wealth, to benefit themselves and the Israeli society at large (think natural resources, real estate, builders, banks, etc.); it's people murdering to steal and to protect those who steal, and people being murdered- men, women and children.
You say Israeli leaders would not want peace because it would mean giving up their power. As if the value of what they take wasn't a sufficient incentive enough. They keep stealing because they- themselves, their family or their country- profit handsomely from it.
And you say Hamas leaders wouldn't want to relinquish their power, as if it gave them great privileges. Well, many, most of the Hamas leaders are probably dead, or have had their family killed, their parents and their children are under the rubble of the razed cities- and you think that they want to keep playing this game for the power? Seriously?
And you call this a "drama", in which both sides are equal and fight just because of the ego of their leaders. Would you have called "the ongoing drama" the South-african apartheid? Mandela's 27 years in prison? Maybe the Holocaust too?
Why do you support for the arbitrary number (20%) of the brutal, illegal occupiers involved in the countless, documented human right abuses and murders to remain on the land they stole and have absolutely no right to occupy?
There are users such as myself who find nearly all of the comments about these issues (not to mention many of the actual links) to be low quality.
I closed my reddit account years ago because half of the comments there are factually wrong, and, in my world view, incorrect pieces of information, in the best case, cancel out legitimate pieces of information.
Stories on Israel here are at least as bad.
I get an inaccurate picture from pro-israeli comments here, often accompanied by hateful comments about arabs.
I get an even more inaccurate picture from pro-palestinian comments here, always accompanied by the kind of comments that, a decade ago, one primarily would find on stormfront.
This topic is where reasonable, careful, thoughts go to commit seppuku.
It would be nice if users could not just read HN to entertainment themselves, but also to enlighten themselves. That does not happen with this topic. So people, such as I, flag these stories.
And when these stories get flagged, the inevitable "why is that flagged?" comments often amass followup comments insinuating that the moderators here are working for Israel, or that the flags are inauthentic. Those explanations strike me as silly: while a majority of HN users certainly are unsympathetic to Israel, it's not a totality, and a small minority of irritated users is sufficient to trigger a flag.
Actual, the opposite is true. One thing has nothing to do with the other. And it aggravates me whenever this is conflated.
One can be a christian believer and not like what the last absolutist monarch of the monarch (the Pope, monarch of the "Holy Chair" in the Vatikan) does. One can even be roman catholic and not like what the catholic church does, e.g. when they shushed sexual abuse of kids.
And so one can be a jew (religious) and not like what the Israel (secular) government does.
Actually, there are LOTS of sects in the jewish religion. One of them, the ultra-orthodox (actual: charedic) living in Israel, are now in the news. They are now supposed to also go to the military. But some subgroups (Neturei Karta and Edah HaChareidis) of them actually deny the existence right of Israel. Jews not liking the state of Israel, if you so will. They claim that Israel can only exist once the Messiah comes back.
So, one can say that these two subgroups "question" the israelic identity. But that is only a minority of them. The majority, e.g. all the millions that demonstrated against "Bibi" Netanjahu know quite well that a national identity and a religious stance / believe are two different things.
In Germany, in the DLF radio program, they have each friday a short news block made by jewish people. And they all the time conflate these two. They claim that people speaking against the Israel government are against jew, or even anti-semitic. Which is nonsense, see the millions of jewish people in Israel that demonstrated against "Bibi" ...
15 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 8.3 ms ] threadIn the spirit of wanting this thread to be more productive: I would like to see ~80%+ of the West Bank settlers shoved back into Israel as part of a peace deal and the infrastructure given as reparations.
That's not a comment on that article though (not that there's anything wrong with it). The comments on the flagged post seem quite reasonable.
Because the Palestinians are many decades late in accepting a two-state peace deal and their bargaining position isn't getting any better.
Because even moving 80% of West Bank settlement population is going to be difficult for Israel to achieve politically and we want the proposal to be something that can be actually achieved because we can see what the alternatives are. And this is with a hypothetical Democrat US president willing to bring ultimatums to an new Israeli President that is to the left of Netanyahu.
If you want to encourage endless conflict over what your vision of justice is then that's your right. But if there's no compromise there's going to be a lot of (mostly Palestinian) blood spilled yet and you should be aware of that.
Israel perpetrated an ethnic cleansing in 1948.
Israel illegally occupied Palestinian territory for decades, enforced apartheid, committed innumerable war crimes, murdered enormous amounts of civilians through the decades and caused total destruction of Gaza as well as many West Bank villages.
Never recognised Palestine even after Palestine recognised Israel (in 1998) and maneuvered to prevent its creation.
Given this and more, I would start by asking at least 120% of the territory back plus substantial reparations.
As for what Israel can achieve politically- I don't think you understand. You will never get anything via political negotiations because Israel has zero interest in giving up anything. The entire "peace process" has always been a farce, used to grant Israel more time to grab what it wants. The only way you're going to get anything is by exercising a substantial force, either economically (crippling sanctions) or via direct military intervention. If you keep treating Israel as a friend or an ally you'll never get anything out if it. Israel is an enemy.
The people holding power there (and that includes e.g. Hamas leaders, PLO leaders, various Israel leaders like from Shas party, or leaders of the settlers) hold part of their power BECAUSE of this conflict. Would the conflict go away, and the area become as boring as e.g. Austria, then their importance would have been reduced.
A powerful group there benefit from the ongoing drama.
You say Israeli leaders would not want peace because it would mean giving up their power. As if the value of what they take wasn't a sufficient incentive enough. They keep stealing because they- themselves, their family or their country- profit handsomely from it.
And you say Hamas leaders wouldn't want to relinquish their power, as if it gave them great privileges. Well, many, most of the Hamas leaders are probably dead, or have had their family killed, their parents and their children are under the rubble of the razed cities- and you think that they want to keep playing this game for the power? Seriously?
And you call this a "drama", in which both sides are equal and fight just because of the ego of their leaders. Would you have called "the ongoing drama" the South-african apartheid? Mandela's 27 years in prison? Maybe the Holocaust too?
Why do you support for the arbitrary number (20%) of the brutal, illegal occupiers involved in the countless, documented human right abuses and murders to remain on the land they stole and have absolutely no right to occupy?
I closed my reddit account years ago because half of the comments there are factually wrong, and, in my world view, incorrect pieces of information, in the best case, cancel out legitimate pieces of information.
Stories on Israel here are at least as bad.
I get an inaccurate picture from pro-israeli comments here, often accompanied by hateful comments about arabs.
I get an even more inaccurate picture from pro-palestinian comments here, always accompanied by the kind of comments that, a decade ago, one primarily would find on stormfront.
This topic is where reasonable, careful, thoughts go to commit seppuku.
It would be nice if users could not just read HN to entertainment themselves, but also to enlighten themselves. That does not happen with this topic. So people, such as I, flag these stories.
And when these stories get flagged, the inevitable "why is that flagged?" comments often amass followup comments insinuating that the moderators here are working for Israel, or that the flags are inauthentic. Those explanations strike me as silly: while a majority of HN users certainly are unsympathetic to Israel, it's not a totality, and a small minority of irritated users is sufficient to trigger a flag.
One can be a christian believer and not like what the last absolutist monarch of the monarch (the Pope, monarch of the "Holy Chair" in the Vatikan) does. One can even be roman catholic and not like what the catholic church does, e.g. when they shushed sexual abuse of kids.
And so one can be a jew (religious) and not like what the Israel (secular) government does.
Actually, there are LOTS of sects in the jewish religion. One of them, the ultra-orthodox (actual: charedic) living in Israel, are now in the news. They are now supposed to also go to the military. But some subgroups (Neturei Karta and Edah HaChareidis) of them actually deny the existence right of Israel. Jews not liking the state of Israel, if you so will. They claim that Israel can only exist once the Messiah comes back.
So, one can say that these two subgroups "question" the israelic identity. But that is only a minority of them. The majority, e.g. all the millions that demonstrated against "Bibi" Netanjahu know quite well that a national identity and a religious stance / believe are two different things.
In Germany, in the DLF radio program, they have each friday a short news block made by jewish people. And they all the time conflate these two. They claim that people speaking against the Israel government are against jew, or even anti-semitic. Which is nonsense, see the millions of jewish people in Israel that demonstrated against "Bibi" ...