France bans all pro-Palestinian demonstrations

> The current government includes people who are terrible racists and they did the al-Alqsa stuff. They are the Israeli counterparts of the Hamas.

You say you see no paralells, and so, hypothetically speaking, you'd have no trouble if the Palestinians bombed the cities these law markers live in, who use the shield of democracy to hide behind a 10 million strong populace?

> They are not fighting for their people, they are fighting for their god, it's a war for the purpose of death not liberation.

The Palestinians don't desire death. I'm sure, they'd want to live as freely and as purposefully as folks on the other side of the fence in Ashkelon and Ashdod.

> The IDF specifically issued a clearance warning indicating its targets in advance. That's not something you do if you plan to kill civilians.

What about the seige? There have been reports of shelling without warning, too. I recall, that's how a journalist reporting from there died.

Surely, there is a way other than destruction at this scale to kill a handful of who, you claim, are suicidal folks fighting for God?

> Calling it ethnic cleansing is untrue at the moment. Even the inflated numbers published by the Hamas don't back that up. Notice that even now the Hamas is still firing missiles onto Israel and I just walked out of a shelter...

Surely, you can see that the refugee camps of the West Bank, the barriers in Jerusalem, the walls in Hebron, the crossings at Gaza pack a generation of humiliation which leads to desperation that results in nothing but more pain. Both sides have suffered enough. The problem I see is, one side (in particular, the terriblly racist but democratically-elected government you allude to above) thinks some more years of fierceful force, while they have the economic, political, and military backing of the Western world and while the Arab world is reeling from political and socio-economic turmoil, and it could all be finished soon.

> You say you see no paralells, and so, hypothetically speaking, you'd have no trouble if the Palestinians bombed the cities these law markers live in, who use the shield of democracy to hide behind a 10 million strong populace?

I understand the missiles. I think it hurts their own people more but I do understand that. The saying here is that if Hamas puts down its arms there will be peace. If Israel puts down its arms there will be no more Israelis. That isn't wrong although the reality is more nuanced.

E.g. the PLO did put down its arms and the result isn't stellar for them either. This is exactly due to those racist government elements. The racists on the Israeli side actually supported Hamas until last week. They did that in order to weaken the PLO and weaken the chance of a Palestinian state. Unfortunately, they were very successful.

The PLO at its current state is so weak, the Palestinian people have no real leadership. Even if Israel is successful in destroying the Hamas there will be a huge vacuum and no one to run a Palestinian state.

> > They are not fighting for their people, they are fighting for their god, it's a war for the purpose of death not liberation.

> The Palestinians don't desire death. I'm sure, they'd want to live as freely and as purposefully as folks on the other side of the fence in Ashkelon and Ashdod.

I was writing about the Hamas not the Palestinian people. The Hamas wants death plain and simple. If you don't believe me I suggest reading up on them and their charter.

They consider any Palestinian civilian death as part of the holy war to be a blessing. They are unwilling to settle for a part of the land. They demand the entire state of Israel. There's no negotiating, no discussion and no compromise.

> What about the seige? There have been reports of shelling without warning, too.

I totally agree that this is horrible and isn't helpful to Israel or its cause. Unfortunately, there's a thirst for blood on the Israeli side. You need to understand the scale of this thing. It's a small country. It's as if 9/11 had 40,000 casualties adjusted to population size. Everyone knows someone who was there and probably at least one casualty.

Hamas new exactly what they were doing. That's why they kidnapped children. That's a trigger at a level and scale we've never seen. They know how to push the buttons and are doing it to trigger the government with the express intention for Israel to murder as many Palestinians as possible. They hope this will enrage the surrounding Arab countries enough to trigger an all out regional holy war for the destruction of Israel.

Israeli bombing civilians is something Israel is doing as part of a Hamas strategy. It's stupid and plain evil.

> I recall, that's how a journalist reporting from there died.

There were several journalist deaths but only one from Lebanon was reported here recently so I might have missed one. Israel said it is investigating it but honestly, they don't do a great job with that. To be fair, plenty of journalists died in US wars too.

But again. I think the bombings are terrible and mostly help the cause of the Hamas.

> Surely, there is a way other than destruction at this scale to kill a handful of who, you claim, are suicidal folks fighting for God?

I would surely hope so but there will be many casualties either way. Ground forces will go in and those will increase dramatically. This is warfare in neighborhoods. That's hard and deadly. Even a tank becomes vulnerable and often can't move. Finding the enemy in these situations is nearly impossible.

The logistic concept of destroying the buildings is removing places to hide when the ground forces move through the streets.

> Surely, you can see that the refugee camps of the West Bank, the barriers in Jerusalem, the walls in Hebron, the crossings at Gaza pack a generation of humiliation which leads to desperation that results in nothing but more pain.

I agree. This situation includes a lot of fault for Israel and its leadership. Unfortunately, I don't see things improving. Even if Bibi is finally held accountable for this debacle the question is who will replace him.

People write about these things a lot in the local papers. There are many organizations that try to fight for the Palestinian people and try to restore faith in a two country solution. But so much poison was thrown in the well that the majority of people around here refuse to see the other side.

Major claims are here are:

* Hamas was voted into power - they chose the Hamas.

* When the attack happened last week people were celebrating in the streets in Gaza.

They aren't wrong. For more than a decade Hamas controlled the narrative in the west bank and brainwashed a generation. They all believe that we're all murderers and must all be killed. How do you unwind that and make peace?

Since the Palestinian leadership was decimated who do you even make peace with?

As a very far left liberal humanist I'm at a loss here. I don't know how anyone can fix the current situation.

You haven't put forward any argument that would allow for such a severe accusation, so I can dismiss it w.ithout comment just fine.

I am not flexible about the vocabulary of ethnic cleansing for that matter. It has a very specific meaning

> Hopefully, the Arab League can convince them one way or the other. I believe, by simply accepting the Israeli citizenship, ALL Palestinians stand a chance to fight it out politically, as otherwise, they're anyway "second-rate citizens", regardless of whether they're militant (Gaza) or not (the West Bank).

Israeli citizenship is the crux of the issue. Much of when we consider as the borders of Israel was annexed. That means the people who were there before got full citizenship and rights.

In 1967 when Israel occupied these additional territories they came with a vast number of Palestinians in them. Egypt didn't want Gaza back when a peace treaty was finally signed. Even now they won't let anyone in from Gaza. Jordan didn't want the west bank either.

Israel chose to form settlements to slowly grab land. This was in-part a strategic decision, especially in the west bank where the border is very narrow. This was a poor mistake that was actually started by Nobel Peace prize winner for the Oslo accord Shimon Peres. Yes. The liberals started the settlements.

This was criticized by some smart people at the time such as Yeshayahu Leibowitz who was a fascinating man that saw how occupying another people would destroy the country from within.

Israel specifically chose not to annex the west bank and gaza to avoid citizenship for millions of additional Palestinians. That would completely offset the balance of power in the country. It's just a fucked up scenario. The extreme right parts of the current government have an annexation plan that would not grant citizenship to the Palestinian people effectively becoming an apartheid state officially. Most of the country is against it but I think a lot of the current events are part of their plan.

> > They hope this will enrage the surrounding Arab countries enough to trigger an all out regional holy war for the destruction of Israel. > > The powers-that-be, surely aren't that naive given the unconditional support Israel has always had from Europe and the Americas. ALL of their Arab neighbors are in no economic position to wage a war, even if there's political will. But they still went ahead with this despicable plan anyway... I am lost, really.

They did that in the past. In 1973 they nearly wiped out Israel and no one sent troops. Arguably Nixon saved Israel through weapon shipments. But up until now it was one of the deadliest wars in our history. Israel survived by dumb luck to a remarkable extent.

Looking at Ukraine, you fight your wars alone. Support is all good but despite the attack western countries kept buying Russian gas. That fear is very real. Imagine countries cutting off oil to the west if they help Israel...

> Not terrorism when people in uniform do it ;)

Yes. But to be fair Israel does have some cases where investigation resulted in surprising outcomes. E.g. a couple of years ago a terrorist (real one) was shot while trying to stab a soldier. He wasn't dead, just lying down neutralized. A soldier took his weapon and killed him.

That soldier stood trial and went to jail despite the right-wing going apeshit over this...

> From Israeli (tech) twitter, the sentiment I get is... all of Gaza is enemy, and couldn't care less if IDF nakba'd them a bit more in to Sinai.

Yes. I'm afraid this is pretty terrible in the news comment section too. A lot of this is due to a misconception about the Palestinians and gaza residents. During the day of the attack one of my spouses students was in a safe root with her kids corresponding with us. Amazingly they all survived (house burned down but considering literally half of their village died... that's good). There was no news so we went on Instagram and looked at their hashtags. The videos published and cheered by the Hamas supporters were just horrible. It's hard to think about the human side.

We all know people and lost people. I was looking at John Oliver today and he showed a clip I didn't see here about a young guy who lost his brother. He was specifically talking about how his brother wouldn't want innocent Palestinians hurt.

The problem is we don't see those things here... When I was a kid they took us to a holocaust museum and showed us what people wrote on the walls in death camps. That fucks up kids minds. It's all cries for vengeance. Right now the media is pumping out every demonstration and every anti-semantic sentiment, this creates a "we don't have anywhere else to go" mentality. A persecution complex that weighs heavily on everyone here. All of these things come together. Even when we see the innocent victims, the blame goes to the Hamas. That's partially true (obviously), but it's disheartening.

Another thing that wasn't really reported here is the low support for the Hamas. People think that the Hamas won an election. They got 40% of the votes and even then the vast majority were in favor of peace. Yet, that latter part is missed. People justify violence because there's an assumption that the majority in Gaza chose violence and then celebrated in the streets when it happened.

> if Israel remains a democracy

I doubt it will still be a democracy even for us when the dust settles...

> Hamas have estimated 40K "fighters" (but lets face it, they're not really a match, they'll be slaughtered if not by the Army

If you have no morals and 2M human shields to hide behind this can stretch for years. Look at the much larger US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finding them is a needle in a haystack.

> Tear up the farce that was the US-brokered Oslo Accords and the UK-brokered Mandate, and undo the partition. Offer a life of dignity, peace, prosperity, and purpose to peoples who consider themselves refugees in their own homeland. Making the Palestinians accept citizenship can be forced by the Arab League. Easier said than done, of course (:

That is something no one wants. It will be a disaster.

Israel is a liberal democracy. We have things such as gay rights, women's rights, etc. Even with our religious factions this is sometimes a problem. Unfortunately, there's a lot in common between religions in that sense. It will send us back to a point we can't get beyond.

That's if we're actually able to stop the terrorists. To do this we would need to remove the walls. That means we will go back to suicide bomber of the week. Three busses exploded in the street where I lived right next to my building. A coffee shop I was in was blown up. We can't go back to that, we need a border.

By "They" you mean "Some".