‘No Other Land’ consultant Awdah Hathaleen killed by Israeli settler

>any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas

They started the war, but Israel should be expected to behave at a higher standard than terrorists. They are causing the starvation and death that is not needed to protect Israel's interests. The deaths are now on them.

>And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war

I don't believe that one minute.

Your own defense ministers have said there is no military value in continuing the war, and there is no getting the hostages back without a deal with Hamas. This war continues because of far-right bloodlust from the Israeli government, and Bibi's desire to stay in power and out of jail.

Aid could get in, and the starvation could stop, if it was the will of the Israeli government. Hamas is militarily FUBAR, and Oct7 only happened because of the decisions made by Bibi to move IDF to the West Bank and ignore warnings from intelligence. Oct7 will not happen again, even if the fighting stopped this instant.

Instead, they want to see Palestine starve so they can take over Gaza.

Great summary of recent status: https://crooked.com/podcast/tbd-2/

What state? The Ottoman Empire? The British Empire? In either case, foreign colonial states?

Which "hostile arabs"? Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States want military cooperation with Israel to counter Iran. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc are too busy with their own affairs and have no desire to fight a unnecessarily destructive war.

I was born in Ukraine and moved to Israel (made "aliyah") in 1999. I moved to the Netherlands for work in 2021.

I'm not an Israeli by Israeli standards :) And will never be. But, of course, I'm a citizen, I can read and speak Hebrew well.

Politically, you can say, I came full circle. As many newcomers I was fed a very simplified and one-sided story of Israeli-Arab relationship. The first time I ever cast my vote in elections I voted Shinuj (they are farther right than Likud). In general, immigrants from the former Soviet Union tend to vote right and be pro-settlers.

For non-political reasons I ended up in military jail, where I met some "prisoners of consciousness" who, while didn't convince me to switch my political position entirely, exposed me to the leftist ideas delivered by the leftists. It's very important to see such ideas through the eyes of supporters because the other side virtually always misrepresents them to score points.

I didn't care about elections for a while, but, eventually, when I finally decided to vote, I voted Meretz.

I don't think I will vote in the next elections. Or, maybe, out of habit, I'll vote Democrats (former Labor and Meretz together)... but, really, I don't see a good candidate.

Anyways, what made me depart from the liberal camp is the European liberals. Pathologically bad decisions, or, even more often, the complete lack of any decisions. Gullible and zealous about issues they don't understand... I just don't want to associate myself with people like that. And I see how Israeli liberals parrot the European liberal's believing they know better.

* * *

So... to try to give some sort of a breakdown on who in Israel stands with settlers and why:

* Working class hates Arabs. It's plain and simple: working class often has to work in mixed environments. Construction, hospitality, agriculture. And there Arabs are just danger. You have to look over your shoulder all the time to make sure Mahmud isn't in a bad mood today and didn't bring a knife to work, and isn't going to cut you. I worked in a chain restaurant where a line cook brought a bomb one day to work and killed a bunch of people, himself included. Any Israeli who worked blue collar jobs probably has a story like that. These people don't care about the technicalities or long-term consequences of illegal settlements. Whoever harms Arabs, they are voting for that guy.

* Healthcare holds a special place in white collar jobs because there are a lot of Arabs working in it. But these are not the brutes who come to work with knives and bombs. Also, doctors Jewish doctors are exposed to Arab patients and the other way around... this creates a more friendly atmosphere. You will also find that doctors in Israel are probably the most leftist of any occupation.

* White collar jobs in general want to see Israel copying Europe. People in these jobs tend to want the rule of law, equality, secularism, inclusivity. They see settlers as either crazy or brutish and don't want to associate with them. Even if they may hold right-wing views, they want the implementation to be lawful and non-violent if possible.

* Black-kipah orthodox Jews only care about themselves. For better or for worse. They only wake up when politicians directly address their interests. If settlers go berserk on Arabs or Arabs eviscerate the settlers: they don't care.

* Knitted-kipah orthodox Jews are the settlers (not all of them, but probably a majority). They believe Israel should be restored in some sort of historical borders... as per usual, those borders aren't very certain, but they would quite certainly encompass a place called Judea and a city called Jerusalem. They believe they are doing a favor to the Jewish community by fighting "invaders" (Arabs).

* Israeli Arabs... are a mixed bag. You can find literal jihadists and those who hate other Arabs on the other side of the fence more than settlers do. It's very clanish and way too involved to try to parse it.

* The owners class, the rich people, they despise settlers. See them as an inconvenience / a bunch of lunatics. They don't care about Arabs either.

* Immigrants, especially fresh, tend to overwhelmingly support settlers because they misunderstand their status and genuinely believe the settlers are doing what the country isn't allowed to do due to some political scheming going on.

As unfortunate as it is, genocides and persecution based on ethnicity or religious orientation are not unique to the Jewish experience. In either case the solution is to target these actions and these policies. The existence of the state of Israel does nothing to further action against these efforts, if what you allege about entire cities in Europe is indeed true. Israel seems to not protect the European Jew at all, nor the African Jew, the Asian Jew, or the Jew anywhere really aside from the Jew within the state of Israel who is actively working to further the goals of the armed forces of Israel, because the state of Israel itself turns its back on Jews in Israel who are critical of this direction.

I just can't get over the cognitive dissonance that this sort of primitive tribalistic propaganda world view creates. Where on the one hand it is claimed that these groups are like water is to oil: entirely immiscible and irreconcilable and should be kept apart as the sole solution. Then you go to a random city in the United States and Germans, Jews, Iranians, Chinese, Russians, and Americans are all neighbors, seeing themselves as equal, working together and raising their kids together, thinking nothing of it because they all share more or less the same exact lived experience.