Israel launched a dozen attacks on UN troops in Lebanon, says leaked report

But you are doing whataboutism. But even if we give you that, Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale. If you want to find any population that has suffered as many atrocities as Palestinians in Gaza, you would have to go to Darfur. But the impunity in which Israel commits these crimes is not comparable to any other oppressor.

People’s reactions are not based on the criminal act void of any context, they look at the past, they look at consequences, etc. Bashar al-Assad’s mass atrocities were met with international condemnation. Israel’s were met with sympathy from our world leaders, and more weapons to continue and further their crimes. People take this into account.

Peoples opinion also reflects what they see. We see in our news everyday some of the worst crimes of the century being committed against a relatively small population. Every day there is another bomb that wipes out a whole family, including children, in Gaza. Every week there is a journalist or a doctor targeted and killed by Israel. We hear no such stories from East Turkistan, or at least not on the same scale nor horror.

> If you think the UN putting out more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined makes sense by the numbers - then you are just ignorant of what is happening all over the world.

I don’t think that, but it is worth noting the history here. In a nibling thread you wanted to go into the history to (seemingly) justify apartheid policies. I want to do the same except to justify the UN behavior here.

Palestine has explicitly been the UN problem since it was decolonized from Britain. The UN had (and still has) a policy of decolonization so this made sense. Unlike most former colonies, full decolonization was never realized for Palestine, so it is still an explicit UN problem. Here is the reason why the UN has focused so much on Israel. It is not helped by the fact that on UN security council member keeps vetoing any potential progress for furthering more decolonization efforts. Resulting in many half measures which ultimately don’t deliver any results towards Palestinian liberation.

I suspect you want to explain these things on a racial line. But I reject all such science. There exists much simpler explanations for these things which don’t require us to go on the dangerous path of racialized demographicial behavior.

> But you are doing whataboutism.

I'm not, because the debate is on the comparative feelings towards Israel vs. other countries, so actually comparing to other actions is specifically what is necessary.

> [...] Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale.

I'll give a more detailed answer, but this is the most important point - you're wrong. I'm not even sure why you think this, since I gave specific numbers for those atrocities.

In what way is the scale of the civilians killed in the Syrian civil war smaller than that of Gaza? It is literally an order of magnitude more civilians killed, as I mentioned. That's 10x more.

In what way is the scale of what's happening to the Uyghurs smaller? An estimated 1 million have been arbitrarily arrested and put into forced labor, per Wikipedia.

However horrible you think what is happening in Gaza is, thinking that it is more horrible in scale than anything else is just wrong and easily disproven by any of a multitude of examples, including the ones I already wrote. What am I misunderstanding in your view here?

Btw, worth mentioning that many of the biggest examples of anti-Israel bias I'm talking about, e.g. the UN sanctions and a lot of ill-will around the world, were all happening before the Gaza war too.

> Bashar al-Assad’s mass atrocities were met with international condemnation. Israel’s were met with sympathy from our world leaders, and more weapons to continue and further their crimes. People take this into account.

I disagree with your characterization of what Israel is doing as crimes, at least not in general (I'm sure specific war crimes have been committed). It is a war. Unless you think war itself is a crime and never justified, in which case that's an entirely separate discussion (I wish I could agree).

In any case, yes, some leaders are standing up for Israel, because unlike many people, they are aware that this is a valid war that needs fighting, if not always agreeing with everything Israel does. I don't think whether the leaders of the US back Israel or not is very strong evidence of morality, but I definitely don't think it's evidence against the morality of the war, as you imply.

> Peoples opinion also reflects what they see. We see in our news everyday some of the worst crimes of the century being committed against a relatively small population.

Oh, I totally agree. People aren't reacting to reality - since these are not even close to "the worst crimes of the century". You could fill 10x the airtime given to what is happening to Gaza with similarly horrible things that have happened in other places (civilians killed in the Iraq war alone - ~120k).

But that's the thing. The news doesn't show anywhere near as much coverage of other "atrocities", which is why people have a skewed perspective of this. It's literally availability bias, and is caused for many reasons. But it simply doesn't reflect reality if you look at the actual numbers.

> Every week there is a journalist or a doctor targeted and killed by Israel. We hear no such stories from East Turkistan, or at least not on the same scale nor horror.

Yes, my point exactly.

> Palestine has explicitly been the UN problem since it was decolonized from Britain. The UN had (and still has) a policy of decolonization so this made sense. Unlike most former colonies, full decolonization was never realized for Palestine, so it is still an explicit UN problem. Here is the reason why the UN has focused so much on Israel.

I mean, yeah that's one explanation, though I don't think it's particularly correct. Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.

But let's leave that aside and look again at what I think is more correct.

The UN is not a democracy - votes are by country. The Arab states, which have historically been anti Israel (including trying to wipe Israel out, multiple times) - number 22. They also hold a population of 220 million consumers, and vast oil wealth.

So Democracy-wise - they have far more "votes" and "voters". Capitalism-wise - they have far more consumers than Israel. Geo-politics-wise - they have far more importance than Israel because of that oil wealth and for other reasons.

Those are all very good reasons to explain why Israel, which makes up 0.1% of the middle east, is like the 150th country in size and population in the world, and by any objective standards does not commit "atrocities" on anywhere near the scale of other countries, even if you think it does commit atrocities - those are all very good reasons for Israel to have more resolutions against it than all other countries combined.

Plus, it's a convenient scapegoat for lots of countries.

Plus, I didn't even mention the rest of the majority Muslim countries, who tend to also be anti-Israel.

I mean, the effects of "democracy", capitalism and geo-politics certainly seem more relevant in my eyes to explain the UN, rather than some idealistic story about colonialism which doesn't even make sense.

> I suspect you want to explain these things on a racial line. But I reject all such science. There exists much simpler explanations for these things which don’t require us to go on the dangerous path of racialized demographicial behavior.

Just to be clear, I'm not making any racial statements here, unless you consider statements like "the Arab countries are historically against Israel". If you don't accept even statements like that - I don't really think you can analyze any history of politics, at all. (And you'll note I didn't even mention anything about antisemitism, which most people certainly think is at least part of the story here, but we can leave that aside.)

No or not exactly. What's missing is the nuance and in this case it's everything. Netanyahu voted 4 times for the law that bans Jewish settlements in Gaza. This law is still in effect.

Yes, he has coalition members that want to repeal that law and are actively trying to resettle Gaza, but the IDF stops them because it's against the law. Yes, they want to repeal that law but even within their extreme coalition that would be tough.

Saying Israelis should elect someone different is even worse than saying Americans shouldn't elect Trump. This lacks nuance and understanding in how elections and parliamentary systems work. This is also the exact argument Israelis make about Hamas: the people of Gaza voted for them. Both are bad arguments.

Netanyahu got roughly 30% of the vote in Israel. He built a coalition based on many conflicting parties. On the one hand he has the fascist extremists. They got a large number of the votes thanks to unification within their ranks. Then he has the Hasidic Jews, they don't care about anything as long as they get paid. This coalition brings him to roughly 50% of the voting populace, he won in a landslide by a 3000 vote difference in the last election. The reason is mostly due to the collapse of the left due to electoral complexities in the way votes are tallied.

Netanyahu himself lacks ideals and is practically made of Teflon. He switched ideological sides multiple times, charged with crimes etc. Prosecution of his crimes just solidifies his base which chucks all of that to "leftist persecution". It's remarkably hard to break that cognitive bias. Guess what helps that cognitive bias?

A sense of persecution. "Everyone is against us" is his greatest slogan. The "pro-Palestinian" rallies were the biggest gift Netanyahu could receive and have bolstered his grasp over Israel. He's pointing at them as "we can't trust western countries", he isn't wrong. Every time Biden tried to pressure Israel politically or by leveraging weapon shipments this actually boosted support for Netanyahu. It's stupid, but it's a fact.

Biden understands that which is why he showed strong support to the Israeli people. Unfortunately, the leader at that time was Bibi and it's really hard to show support for Israel while attacking its elected leader directly. It is a very tight rope and I don't think Biden could have done much better. Especially given the recent claims that Trump has been calling Bibi and encouraging him to avoid a deal.

I wish people abroad would understand this nuance, but it doesn't play well on TikTok. It also doesn't have a nice slogan or rally. We need people to support both Israel and the Palestinian people while demanding their respective far-right factions get out of power.

> Most of the Palestinians who fled in 1948 did so because of Arab armies who urged them to move so they can kill the Jews more easily. That backfired. Those who stayed are Israeli citizens and always have been. Those who fled couldn't come back because the borders were sealed due to a war their leaders chose to start.

You mention 1948....but what happened in 1946, and 1947? Aren't those years also relevant? Things like the bombing of the King David Hotel (by Zionist militias) and the Deir Yassin Massacre (same militias again), precede intervention by neighboring Arab states. Palestinians were already fleeing from murder, and they couldn't return to homes which had been demolished by the Zionist militias, and with the rubble mined to prevent people returning.

Israeli historians have written extensively on this period. Benny Morris's book can be read on the Internet Archive or downloaded on VK ( https://vk.com/wall-52136985_11295 ). I don't have an electronic source for Ilan Pappe's book, but here is an article he wrote which seems like an abridged version: ( https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/jps/vol36-141/vol36-141... ). Pappe's article covers Plan Dalet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet

[flagged]