901–910 of 1001 posts
People ought to understand that this problem of innocent Gazans - often children - being fired upon by IDF soldiers isn't a new one, it predates the current food distribution operation. An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in s…
I’m not going to claim a side in this, but I do have a question to pose. When you have two ideologies which are so diametrically opposed to each other that they cannot coexist in the same space at the same time, what is the alternative outcome? One must destroy the other for peace to exist - this is the nature of war. To think that there is some world where everyone comes away from this with a handshake and an agreem…
> One must destroy the other for peace to exist - this is the nature of war. Wars generally don't end with genocide. Conquered people don't cease to exist. Worst case they are subjugated, but these days they just assimilated/absorbed. The alternative is perpetual war, or some sort of compromise. If Hamas surrendered unconditionally tomorrow, what would Israel do?
I agree with you that this is not actually the nature of War. However, it's also true that it depends on the type of war being fought.
It's not uncommon to see in history that when a country/village/group of people can't/doesn't want to be subjugated or it's strategically difficult to "keep" them, it gets wiped off.
In the Ancient Rome entire Celtic tribes wiped off, while during Charlemagne's empire it was the Saxons, and more recently during the the Ottoman Empire it was the Greeks, Armenians, and today the Curds.
Unfortunately such things do happen and sadly enough will always happen. Not justifying in any way, I am just saying that we're so used to believe that this is something new, when it actually it isn't, and we also believe we are better than back then, while we actually aren't. :(
I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength. When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an e…
What are you actually expecting an average Israeli who does not agree with this to do? This comment strikes me as wild considering the exact same thing is playing out in America right now, and a bunch of people are making up their minds about "Americans" and what they stand for. The same has been true for Iran, only up until now (and probably still) we have always had a more nuanced discussion - its the Iranian gover…
In a similar vein, I'm ethnically Russian and a Russian citizen. I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine in any way, shape, or form, and I don't think that I am responsible for it as a Russian. However, it is also clear to me that the majority of Russians do support it (or at least think that it's fine), and on that basis I don't consider myself to be a part of that nation anymore, regardless of ethnicity.
How credible is the reporting in in Haaretz? I am normally fairly well accustomed to the reliability and credibility of newspapers, but I have never read this newspaper.
So nice that pro-Israeli comments get flagged and moderators do nothing about that. Talking about bias and censorship, I guess some contradictory thoughts are not very welcomed for some who think about themselves as standing in the frontlines of democracy. Also disappointed about @dang, there seems very little objective admin work done here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options: 1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that 2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The cur…
You'd think given Israel's history they'd do everything they could to not make 4) acceptable.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ...
> The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage. ... Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators. This is equally true of the Arabs. Our Peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine , in return for cultural and economic advantages. ...
> We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel." ... Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim.
> We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached.
Now, Jabotinsky was arguably naive in that he thought that after the inevitable forcing of the Arabs to accept Jewish colonization of their homeland, once they have "given up on all hopes", they could be negotiated with on the terms of settlement:
> In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity.
The problem, of course, is that once you have that amount of upper hand over someone, you don't actually have to negotiate. You can just keep taking everything you want, by force. And that is exactly where Israel found itself in the long term.
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I'm really surprised to hear another Jewish person speak about this in language that evokes the Nuremberg trials. The article generally describes the IDF being asked to do crowd control with lethal weapons. For the most part it also described casualties (number unclear/unknown) as unintentional consequences. I agree this does not look good but it's also not a matter of fact either. We don't know the facts, we don't k…
Israel's government is doing a genocide on the Palestinian people. The ICC sees it and that is why the war criminal Netanyahu has a warrant for his arrest and will be tried in the Hague, not Nuremberg, but close enough. Stop the Israeli genocide on Palestinian people.
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I keep hearing the “the killing would end if Hamas would just release the hostages”. But the Israelis keep offering ceasefire terms that include full release of hostages but no permanent cessation of hostilities, only 60 days and not even temporary full withdrawal from Gaza. Why do you think the Israelis want to keep their tanks in Gaza even after all the hostages come back? Why won’t they offer a full and permanent…
Nonsense. Anything less then a full military occupation of gaza for the medium term at least would be unacceptable. This is so blindingly obvious that it doesn't even need to be explained. Anyway it would benefit the gazans far more then a war every 5 years. If they wanted to ethnically cleanse gaza they would have done so long before October 7. You don't seem to understand the reality of war and the consequences of…
Is this a “reality of war”? Complete destruction of infrastructure? Perhaps every uninhabited house is actually Hamas.
If this isn’t ethnic cleansing, what is it?
We already knew this was happening from testimony from Gazans, it was obvious that the new US-Israeli monopolized "aid" organization was running the Hunger Games, with dozens killed by Israelis (+ US contractors) every time there was a distribution day, and horrific pictures and video of it. Entirely predictable too when the genocidaires are controlling the aid. It is good there is now proof from the inside as well.
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Arguably then, shouldn’t China be ahead of them in line for Uighur camps, and the US for the Japanese camps?
It's possible to have multiple trials occurring simultaneously. Also whataboutism is not at all helpful to the discussion at hand.
You see, whataboutism is really only worth calling out in super low risk environments, because the potential future consequences are irrelevant. When we’re talking about putting the world powers on trial, the future consequences are now worth considering. Get off reddit, it’s poisoning your ability to reason.