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United States41961 Posts
On October 09 2023 19:50 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 09:19 Excludos wrote:On October 09 2023 09:09 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 09:02 Excludos wrote:On October 09 2023 03:19 JimmiC wrote:You use some EVEN IF’s but that he and likely you think Hamas are some sort of leftist freedom fighters because they are against the “capitalists” in Israel is pretty easy to see, and it could not be s’more wrong. Hamas is further right than a basically any group and they only allow one perspective. Your reading comprehension for your favourites and people you do not like leaves a lot to be desired. QUOTE] On May 19 2021 17:48 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 19 2021 17:24 Nebuchad wrote:
There is one cool thing about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and it's that the discourse has shifted dramatically. Last time this happened we had the discussion online and there were people making solid arguments on both sides, we had a little battle on the marketplace of ideas, and the people on the side of Palestine won that battle.
Which means that this time, support for Palestine is overwhelming in leftist places online. So, what can I say, when you're dealing with honest people who have a common goal, debate works, sort of. Leftist online places are set to raise more for Palestine than they did for Mermaids when Glinner decided to direct his constant transphobia at them. Especially Vaush has had a very successful stream, 250k+ in 24 hours.
Will charity solve the occupation, no it won't obviously. But it still signals that we have a pretty large voice, and that's cool. Other cracks start to form with larger protests all over the world, less pro-Israel propaganda in the media than usual (I have no explanation for that one but 1) hey, cool, I'll take it, and 2) there is still some dumb shit going around.
Imo one of the more important rhetorical battles to fight is the battle against the idea that it's complicated. One side has almost all of the power and chooses to oppress the other, openly using terrorism and openly supporting ethnic cleansing. Don't be on that side. Some things are complicated, others are not. The continued settlements is not complicated - they're abhorrent and so is supporting them. Amusingly, I've yet to see anyone defend this practice, even guys that are solidly on the side of Israel. They seem to conveniently ignore that this is the piece of aggression and argue that 'Israel has the right to defend itself' - but I haven't actually seen anyone in this thread or the USPol thread before the discussion moved defend the continued settlement policy. However, while people seem to be able to agree that Israel's settlement policy should end, figuring out where to revert back to is complicated. 1967 borders are two generations ago. We might agree that what happened in 1947-48 was a crime against the Palestinian people, but it's not like it's easy to revert that now. The question of 'who should live where' is complicated, even if we recognize that Israel is the main culprit in the conflict and even if we regard Hamas as freedom fighters more than as terrorists. I'm a bit late to the party, but the thread is moving fast. This would be an interesting debate if Palestine was up for discussing peace whatsoever. Israel did go out several times and offered peace with the inclusion of "returning occupied territories". Where exactly the border of those territories would go is something they could have debated had Hamas had any intentions other than exterminating all Jews from the area. This is why people who agree that the settlement policy is horrible still have trouble weighing too much fault on Israel. To draw parallels, it's a bit like if Russia today went "aight, Ukraine, we want peace, and we'll return all of your territories", and Ukraine just went "nah, we refuse. We won't stop until every Russian is dead". It would suddenly flip the conflict to be a lot more sympathetic to Russia Who speaks for Palestine in that hypothetical where Palestine keeps fighting? Most Palestinians in Gaza weren’t yet born when a two state solution was last on the table. Hamas <> Palestinians. It’s a failed state filled with children run by warlords funded and armed by outsiders. The Israeli people and the Palestinians share a common enemy in Hamas, though they might not realize it. Just as Russians and Ukrainians have a common enemy in Putin. I'm not sure what you think the life expectancy of the average Palestinian is, but the last time a Two-State solutions was offered was in 2014. The rest is pretty on point 2014* Wasn't Jared Kushner in charge of peace in the middle east in Trump's presidency? You implying he didn't get them to negotiate a solution?
He came up with a plan. Basically he worked out that it would take like $50b to build a giant golf resort in Gaza and have everyone in Gaza work at it. So he put forward that maybe they could do that. He did not say where the $50b would come from, or who would be willing to go to a luxury golf resort in Gaza.
In many ways I think the guy banging Trump’s daughter wasn’t wholly qualified to solve the Middle East.
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But only imagine how good this golf resort would be, with 2 million people working on it?
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On October 09 2023 22:30 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 14:26 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 12:12 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 11:31 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 06:12 ChristianS wrote:
Kwark, I think you’re closer to right in this exchange and TLoA is absolutely doing the bait and switch “opposing Israel on anything means supporting a second Holocaust” trick that Israel defenders have always done. You've got a good history of posting in good faith, so I want to return that good faith even while heavily disagreeing. The complaint is not that Kwark is not 100% pro Israel. You'll find very little pushback if you say that the Israeli settlements are wrong even from pro-Israel people. In Kwark's response to this post + Show Spoiler +On October 08 2023 03:11 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2023 02:17 Excludos wrote:On October 07 2023 22:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The framing that they just want to be left alone while continuing to encroach on palestinerne territory is absolutely ridiculous. It's insane how people are just willing to completely disregard context. That they are being attacked by rocket barrages and terrorism on the daily is seemingly unimportant. If Sweden did that to Norway, we'd be doing a lot more than Israel is in regards to counter-aggression. It's like if I keep punching you in the face, and you push me away, suddenly everyone around us goers "omfg how could you push?!". You answer with "I just want to be left alone!" and then people laugh and go "Shouldn't be pushing then!" If Palestine doesn't want Israel to keep pushing, then maybe they should seek peace? Or at the very least meet at the table. Israel doesn't want the occupied territories, and have numerous times claimed willingness to give them back He's talking about the illegal settlements, not the retaliatory attacks by Israel. But overall, I agree. While Israel is adding fuel to the fire by refusing to stop the illegal settlements, we can't overlook the context of this conflict. Namely, when the Arabs thought they had the upper hand, they tried to wipe Israel off the map on several occasions (the Palestinian Arabs were onboard). They chose violence over negotiated peace. On the other hand, once the situation shifted in favour of Israel, Israel was open to accepting several different peace proposals. Those were rejected by the Palestinians, who were unhappy with some of the terms. They were unwilling to accept that their negotiating position was getting progressively weaker, and they chose violence again. I think people siding with Palestine in this conflict are not holding Israel and Palestine to the same standard. If Israel acted the way the Arabs did, they would've wiped out the Palestinians a long time ago. @Drone I would hold off with such claims. The number of casualties on the Palestinian side come from the Palestinian officials, i.e. Hamas... He says On October 08 2023 03:16 KwarK wrote:
Wiping Israel off the map doesn’t necessarily mean killing every Israeli. The third Reich was wiped off of the map, for example. Israel is the state, not the people. They conflate the two deliberately. He's trying to defend "wipe Israel off the map" as merely "remove the country, but totally keep the people". It's bullshit and anyone who's been paying attention should know it. The Palestinians want an ethnic cleansing. The only thing preventing the ethnic cleansing is the power that the Israeli government has. If they ever lose a war or are otherwise dissolved, it will be an ethnic cleansing. The only question would be how many Israelis would escape versus how many would be part of the genocide. What country would take 7 million Jewish refugees because there is no way Palestinians would accept Jewish neighbors and allow them to live. Here's a spokesman for Hamas talking to Al Jazeera today: Osama Hamdan, senior spokesperson for Hamas, told Al Jazeera that the group was not attacking civilians even though the group’s own videos have shown its fighters taking elderly Israelis hostage during the fighting on Saturday.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International have also pointed out that Israeli civilians had been killed by Hamas.
But Hamdan insisted that the group was attacking only settlers living in illegal settlements, whom he described as legitimate targets.
“You have to differentiate between settlers and civilians. Settlers attacked Palestinians,” Hamdan said.
Asked whether civilians in southern Israel were also considered settlers, Hamdan said: “Everyone knows there are settlements there.”
“We are not targeting civilians on purpose. We have declared settlers are part of the occupation and part of the armed Israeli force. They are not civilians,” he added. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-hamas-a-simple-guide-tothe-palestinian-groupHe's not saying that the elderly were unfortunate casualties of war or that mistakes were made. He says that the elderly are not "civilians", they are "settlers" and thus killing and kidnapping them is okay. This is a spokesman for the political leadership of Palestine. It also looks like a concert for peace is a legitimate target according to Palestinians. I've already posted the decline in numbers of Jewish People in every other Mideast country. Every last one experienced an ethnic cleansing. People don't just up and move for the fun of it. They were forced out. Or if you want a non-Jewish example, you can look at what's happening to Christians in Egypt for another example. Church bombings, kidnapped women forced to marry Muslims, and plenty of killings. Fanatical Muslims will not live peacefully side by side with anyone else and there are way too many fanatical Muslims in the middle east. Being anti Israel is indeed taking a pro-genocide stance. However, I'll admit that most western people don't realize that's what they're actually supporting by being anti Israel. Most people are ignorant. And no, that doesn't mean you need to endorse everything the Israeli government does in order to be anti-genocide. However, you do need to support the right of Israel to exist and be against anyone who denies that right. Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? I mean, I guess the underlying question I'm not clear on is whether we're asking "what Kwark means by 'wipe Israel off the map' " or "what this or that Arab leader and/or Palestians generally means/meant by 'wipe Israel off the map' ". You have a lot more confidence than I do in asserting "what Palestinians want." That might just be me being ill-informed, I dunno. But Kwark's specific post is pretty clear that he, at least, is clarifying that ending the current government of Israel does not inherently mean genocide/ethnic cleansing of Israelis. Maybe that's what Palestinians would want. I'm pretty sure that's what Hamas would want. But if, for instance, the international community decided "we're not going to allow an ethnostate to exist" and forced Israel to change their form of government away from one that explicitly, legally determines who is and isn't a Jew and differentiates legal rights accordingly, I don't think that wouldn't necessarily entail genociding Israelis. You could claim that all those policies are necessary to preventing a genocide that would otherwise be inevitable. If so, you could assert "no, you're wrong, it's not possible to imagine ending the current Israeli state without an accompanying genocide of Israelis." But I just don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. Anyway it's clear Kwark doesn't, which is the disputed issue here. I think your anger at Kwark (and maybe TLoA's anger at Kwark) is based on the idea that he's apologizing for/running interference for bloodthirsty Arab leaders that just want to kill every Jew. Which, I dunno, those people certainly exist. I don't *think* Kwark is trying to defend those people, although any time you argue even a nuanced pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel position you're at least giving those people some cover, right? I am too, whether I like it or not, any time I argue that Israel's moral position is compromised or that Palestinians' rights are being trampled on. Like, would it help if Kwark explicitly said "I don't think Israelis should be genocided or ethnically cleansed, and I don't think any Palestinian or Arab leaders advocating that are on defensible moral ground"? I bet he'd do it, although I'm not sure if you'd believe him or not. Otherwise, I just don't think his intention is to empower those people (although he probably disagrees with you about how prevalent that opinion is, either among Palestinians or in the Arab world generally). I'll try to be more clear. I'm accusing people of being short-sighted more than malicious. I don't think any of the normal posters on this forum wants a genocide of the Jewish people. However, I am accusing people of not understanding the consequences of their preferred actions. I liken the situation to a poisoned pawn in chess. You move your queen to take that unprotected pawn, then the next opponent's move is to fork/check you and put you a few moves away from mate. In the real world, mate against Israel is the ethnic cleansing of the place. I'm trying to look more than one move ahead and see what would happen if Israel ended its version of apartheid. From my vantage point, that first move might look nice, but it will be devastating in the future. It would involve an influx of "Palestinians" that are actually radicals from all over the middle east. People willing to die in order to kill infidels. Then you get the terrorist attacks as people feel justified in killing anyone because they're "settlers" not civilians or whatever excuse they feel like that day. You'll get a break down of civil society and eventually pogroms. All you need to do is listen to the Palestinian leaders and you'll hear their desire for it. When someone says they're going to do something evil, don't just handwave it away. Admittedly, it would be a repeat of the Zionism that created Israel, just in reverse and with nowhere adjacent for the Jewish people to flee to. The Jewish people would be stupid to be on the receiving end of it. On October 09 2023 11:30 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 09:54 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:
Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? Something akin to the end of apartheid rule in South Africa or power sharing agreements in NI. I'm not as familiar with NI as I'd like, so I'll go with South Africa as one which I know a little bit about. Do you see any differences between the South African situation and the Israel/Palestine situation that could result in extremely different results despite the same actions? Like, perhaps do you see a significant difference between Nelson Mandela and whoever the Palestinians have put in charge? Nelson Mandela, on trial where he would eventually be sentenced to life in prison, says this: During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. Nelson Mandela started out peacefully, did have a foray into more extreme methods and got prison time for it, and then came out promoting peace and reconciliation again. Even his more extreme methods involved "sabotage against property (designed to minimize risks of injury and death)". When and where did he say it was okay to kill the elderly whites because they were settlers, not civilians? I think I missed that part of his life. When did he refuse to recognize the rights of whites to exist in South Africa? When did he launch a war to wipe out the whites in South Africa? He as the leader, and the movement as a whole, was all about gaining equal rights. The Palestinian movement, from the very beginning, has been about annihilating Israel. The rhetoric during the founding of Israel says it and the rhetoric now says it. Who is the Palestinian comparable to Mandela? Who are the Palestinian people going to follow to peaceful equality? TLDR: Israelis have the right to exist and defend themselves. Fuck Hamas. The opposition to the creation of Israel is more complicated than a black and white good vs bad. The existence of Israel is not inherently neutral and framing it as such is oversimplifying things. But it’s too late now and Israel is better than any alternative. Yes. I completely agree with this TLDR. Well this just got a lot more specific in a way that might be worth focusing on. If I’m not misunderstanding you, you believe that ending Israel’s version of apartheid would necessarily (or, at least, most likely) result in ethnic cleansing of Israelis. I don’t think that’s an opinion shared by a number of posters here, so it’s worth talking through the chain of events. As I understand it, “Israel’s version of apartheid” refers to the fact that, since its creation, Israel has legally distinguished between Jews and non-Jews and discriminated in political rights based on the distinction. Most critically, the policy for a very long time (maybe still? I don’t know the exact history here) was that if you were a Jew, anywhere in the world, you could come to Israel and be given citizenship and land. That’s an understandable idea if you’re trying to give a home to the world’s Jewish population that’s been ravaged during WW2, but where is all that land supposed to come from? Well, it’s a war-torn region; lots of people over the years have fled their homes fearing for their family’s safety. If those people are Jews, you respect their land claim when they come back. If they’re not, you don’t, and now there’s some land freed up to give to newly arrived Jews hoping to take advantage of the policy. So I assume the thing you’re worried about is the so-called “right to return” that critics of Israel often call for. Basically, non-Jews whose families had land claims in the region should be allowed to come home, be given citizenship, and have their land back. And if I’m not mistaken, your fear is that a lot of those returning people are sufficiently radicalized against Israel they would just start committing random acts of terror against their neighbors? This is the point where I’m least certain I’m interpreting you correctly, so maybe I should just stop there before trying to analyze the argument further until you’ve had a chance to say whether that’s really your position or not. I'm saying something much simpler than that. Right now, there is heavy restrictions of movement between Gaza and Israel. Israel is essentially walled in and trying to protect against any incursions. If Israel ends apartheid, the walls have to come down. The people of Gaza will have freedom to go wherever they want in Israel. Right now, for a shockingly large number of radicalized Palestinian people, that means going into Israel and committing acts of terror. Then you have all the crazies from surrounding countries (including countries that don't immediately touch Israel like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc). People who can sneak into Gaza or the West bank and then blend in with the poorly documented Palestinians. They have one goal and that's an intifada. Get all those people into Israel and every day will look like yesterday. Huh, okay. So your worry is about current occupants of Gaza (and anyone who sneaks in to get included in the citizenship deal). I mean, I don’t know what to say. That’s an enormous population, including a huge number of children, that are living in a legal limbo because Israel won’t give them legal status and Palestine isn’t a state. But they have to stay that way forever because we can never know for certain they won’t be violent? I guess that’s “One state solution” off the table for you. What about “two state solution”? If we gave those people a government of their own, with territorial sovereignty and citizenship, and a right not to be bombed and occupied by the IDF all the time, that wouldn’t mean giving them the right to freely wander Israel. The “right to return” folks still won’t be happy, but would that look more like an acceptable outcome to you?
Wouldn’t it also work if we simply copied the planet twice, and gave 1 earth to Palestine and 1 earth to Israel?
We have no incentive to focus on a 2 state solution any more than we do a 2 planet solution. Both are equally likely in the next 50 years. I think it’s dishonest to cite this as some kind of actual possibility.
And just to be clear, I’m well aware of the 1967 borders etc and it truly is not actually relevant from a “what is the path to peace most likely to occur” perspective. These former borders existing in the past do not mean they are extra likely to happen again.
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On October 09 2023 20:08 Elroi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 16:19 Liquid`Drone wrote:On October 09 2023 16:09 Nebuchad wrote:On October 09 2023 15:42 RvB wrote:On October 09 2023 08:27 Biff The Understudy wrote:
I mean.
Israel has been absolutely shitting on palestinians and their most basic rights without even discussing the peace process for the last couple of decades. The palestinian question hasn’t even been on the political radar in the last few elections because israeli felt safe since they built their wall.
Meanwhile, they have kept colonizing more and more land, and electing far right, pro-colony governments.
I think there is a point where oppressed people will do anything, and I mean, anything, to fight for their rights. The Hamas is despicable, that war is atrocious, but I blame Israel 175% for what’s happening. What have they been thinking for 20 years? That they can keep stealing land and absolutely shitting on a whole people forever because they have a wall and a lot of technology?
By the way. The US and Europe are totally guilty too. Because our governments really coukd have done something if they weren’t terrified of the pro israel lobbies. Israel should have been a pariah state long ago, but go count of a right filled with anti muslim racism and a left too busy not to alienate their jewish electors not to ever do anything about the actions of the Israeli. Palestinians aren't interested in the peace process and the biggest oppressors in Palestinian territories are the Palestinian authorities themselves. Hamas and the PA restrict freedom of expression, association, and assembly, use force to crackdown on peaceful protests, subordinated the judiciary, arbitrarily detain their own citizens, torture them, do not allow any opposition or elections, and disregard any minority rights. Hamas then also disregards civilian lives by using them as human shields. It's pretty damning that Israel treats its Arabs citizens better than the PA treats their citizens. If the Palestinian leadership had invested only half as much effort into making the lives of their citizens better instead of oppressing them they'd be in a much better place and get much more support. Damn that's crazy, imagine if Israel was more or less doing the exact same thing to Palestinians but on top of that they were also ethnically cleansing them and progressively stealing their land, then some people might think that's even worse. Maybe in those circumstances that I've just imagine we would see a lot of protests in the West from palestinian refugees, and all of them would be about being freed not from Hamas but from Israeli occupation? I understand that talking points are easy to come by but seriously in this instance you shouldn't need my contribution. All it takes to perceive that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is worse is the understanding that Palestinians are people. Which, granted, is not a belief that we often encounter in our media spheres. I think people have a visceral reaction that is very different when people are gunned down/massacred compared to if they are 'collateral damage' from bombs or airstrikes. Again - just to be clear - this attack from Hamas was obviously abhorrent and I'm not defending it in any way. However, I do not think it was more abhorrent than Israel, back in 2014, killing 2250 palestinians (where the UN estimates are 65% civilians) in retaliation of three Israeli teenagers being abducted and killed. But while I'm not going to state how people feel (I bet it differs from person to person anyway!), it feels to me like many people were less emotionally impacted by that compared to this. Aren't the two cases different though? Israel was striking against Hamas who, knowing that dead Palestinians further their cause, purposefully use civilians as shields. (It was also not only in response to the killing of the teenagers but also of the subsequent rocket attacks, but that's not important.) This on the other hand is a pure terror attack directed against civilians. I saw some videos showing bleeding and panicking women getting abducted into Gaza on twitter yesterday, surrounded by cheering, aggressive Palestinian men. Such images are hard to stomach and it hits differently than the "collateral damage" you referred to. But aren't also the two scenarios different in kind? By the way, we have a lot of Arabs in Sweden after 30 years of pretty substantial immigration from the middle east and there have been lots celebrations in some areas after the attack yesterday. In one city, the police reported a parade of 200-300 cars parading around the synagogue among other places. I personally think they should all be rounded up and parachuted into Gaza, to be honest. Seems like a fitting punishment.
A common misconception in America is that we are unique in our Freedom of Expression and Speech. Perhaps those freedoms don't exist in Sweden.
Sheer ignorance to say they are celebrating the capture of civilians hostages. They are celebrating what they see as an oppressed people having the courage to fight to take their land back. A land that is increasingly encroached on every year.
Woah, "these people are using their speech to proclaim an opinion that differs from mine? Kick them out of the country where they are peacefully lawfully living, and put them in an open air prison/war zone that's denied electricity and running water on the regular. Who the fuck are the terrorists again?
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On October 09 2023 23:47 Cricketer12 wrote:
They are celebrating what they see as an oppressed people having the courage to fight to take their land back. Is raping women next to the corpses of their friends and then parading them while they're still bleeding = courage to fight?
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On October 10 2023 00:08 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 23:47 Cricketer12 wrote:
They are celebrating what they see as an oppressed people having the courage to fight to take their land back. Is raping women next to the corpses of their friends and the parading them while they're still bleeding = courage to fight?
No. The IDF isn't courageous. Obviously civilains shouldn't be harmed at all. Hamas is fucked up for what they did. No one is making a different argument. But if you can reduce this entire struggle to "hurr durr the arab terrorists are rapists and murderers" while ignoring the actual atrocities that happen to Palestine on the daily you'll never be able to have a genuine discussion on this.
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On October 09 2023 23:47 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 22:30 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 14:26 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 12:12 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 11:31 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 06:12 ChristianS wrote:
Kwark, I think you’re closer to right in this exchange and TLoA is absolutely doing the bait and switch “opposing Israel on anything means supporting a second Holocaust” trick that Israel defenders have always done. You've got a good history of posting in good faith, so I want to return that good faith even while heavily disagreeing. The complaint is not that Kwark is not 100% pro Israel. You'll find very little pushback if you say that the Israeli settlements are wrong even from pro-Israel people. In Kwark's response to this post + Show Spoiler +On October 08 2023 03:11 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2023 02:17 Excludos wrote:On October 07 2023 22:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The framing that they just want to be left alone while continuing to encroach on palestinerne territory is absolutely ridiculous. It's insane how people are just willing to completely disregard context. That they are being attacked by rocket barrages and terrorism on the daily is seemingly unimportant. If Sweden did that to Norway, we'd be doing a lot more than Israel is in regards to counter-aggression. It's like if I keep punching you in the face, and you push me away, suddenly everyone around us goers "omfg how could you push?!". You answer with "I just want to be left alone!" and then people laugh and go "Shouldn't be pushing then!" If Palestine doesn't want Israel to keep pushing, then maybe they should seek peace? Or at the very least meet at the table. Israel doesn't want the occupied territories, and have numerous times claimed willingness to give them back He's talking about the illegal settlements, not the retaliatory attacks by Israel. But overall, I agree. While Israel is adding fuel to the fire by refusing to stop the illegal settlements, we can't overlook the context of this conflict. Namely, when the Arabs thought they had the upper hand, they tried to wipe Israel off the map on several occasions (the Palestinian Arabs were onboard). They chose violence over negotiated peace. On the other hand, once the situation shifted in favour of Israel, Israel was open to accepting several different peace proposals. Those were rejected by the Palestinians, who were unhappy with some of the terms. They were unwilling to accept that their negotiating position was getting progressively weaker, and they chose violence again. I think people siding with Palestine in this conflict are not holding Israel and Palestine to the same standard. If Israel acted the way the Arabs did, they would've wiped out the Palestinians a long time ago. @Drone I would hold off with such claims. The number of casualties on the Palestinian side come from the Palestinian officials, i.e. Hamas... He says On October 08 2023 03:16 KwarK wrote:
Wiping Israel off the map doesn’t necessarily mean killing every Israeli. The third Reich was wiped off of the map, for example. Israel is the state, not the people. They conflate the two deliberately. He's trying to defend "wipe Israel off the map" as merely "remove the country, but totally keep the people". It's bullshit and anyone who's been paying attention should know it. The Palestinians want an ethnic cleansing. The only thing preventing the ethnic cleansing is the power that the Israeli government has. If they ever lose a war or are otherwise dissolved, it will be an ethnic cleansing. The only question would be how many Israelis would escape versus how many would be part of the genocide. What country would take 7 million Jewish refugees because there is no way Palestinians would accept Jewish neighbors and allow them to live. Here's a spokesman for Hamas talking to Al Jazeera today: Osama Hamdan, senior spokesperson for Hamas, told Al Jazeera that the group was not attacking civilians even though the group’s own videos have shown its fighters taking elderly Israelis hostage during the fighting on Saturday.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International have also pointed out that Israeli civilians had been killed by Hamas.
But Hamdan insisted that the group was attacking only settlers living in illegal settlements, whom he described as legitimate targets.
“You have to differentiate between settlers and civilians. Settlers attacked Palestinians,” Hamdan said.
Asked whether civilians in southern Israel were also considered settlers, Hamdan said: “Everyone knows there are settlements there.”
“We are not targeting civilians on purpose. We have declared settlers are part of the occupation and part of the armed Israeli force. They are not civilians,” he added. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-hamas-a-simple-guide-tothe-palestinian-groupHe's not saying that the elderly were unfortunate casualties of war or that mistakes were made. He says that the elderly are not "civilians", they are "settlers" and thus killing and kidnapping them is okay. This is a spokesman for the political leadership of Palestine. It also looks like a concert for peace is a legitimate target according to Palestinians. I've already posted the decline in numbers of Jewish People in every other Mideast country. Every last one experienced an ethnic cleansing. People don't just up and move for the fun of it. They were forced out. Or if you want a non-Jewish example, you can look at what's happening to Christians in Egypt for another example. Church bombings, kidnapped women forced to marry Muslims, and plenty of killings. Fanatical Muslims will not live peacefully side by side with anyone else and there are way too many fanatical Muslims in the middle east. Being anti Israel is indeed taking a pro-genocide stance. However, I'll admit that most western people don't realize that's what they're actually supporting by being anti Israel. Most people are ignorant. And no, that doesn't mean you need to endorse everything the Israeli government does in order to be anti-genocide. However, you do need to support the right of Israel to exist and be against anyone who denies that right. Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? I mean, I guess the underlying question I'm not clear on is whether we're asking "what Kwark means by 'wipe Israel off the map' " or "what this or that Arab leader and/or Palestians generally means/meant by 'wipe Israel off the map' ". You have a lot more confidence than I do in asserting "what Palestinians want." That might just be me being ill-informed, I dunno. But Kwark's specific post is pretty clear that he, at least, is clarifying that ending the current government of Israel does not inherently mean genocide/ethnic cleansing of Israelis. Maybe that's what Palestinians would want. I'm pretty sure that's what Hamas would want. But if, for instance, the international community decided "we're not going to allow an ethnostate to exist" and forced Israel to change their form of government away from one that explicitly, legally determines who is and isn't a Jew and differentiates legal rights accordingly, I don't think that wouldn't necessarily entail genociding Israelis. You could claim that all those policies are necessary to preventing a genocide that would otherwise be inevitable. If so, you could assert "no, you're wrong, it's not possible to imagine ending the current Israeli state without an accompanying genocide of Israelis." But I just don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. Anyway it's clear Kwark doesn't, which is the disputed issue here. I think your anger at Kwark (and maybe TLoA's anger at Kwark) is based on the idea that he's apologizing for/running interference for bloodthirsty Arab leaders that just want to kill every Jew. Which, I dunno, those people certainly exist. I don't *think* Kwark is trying to defend those people, although any time you argue even a nuanced pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel position you're at least giving those people some cover, right? I am too, whether I like it or not, any time I argue that Israel's moral position is compromised or that Palestinians' rights are being trampled on. Like, would it help if Kwark explicitly said "I don't think Israelis should be genocided or ethnically cleansed, and I don't think any Palestinian or Arab leaders advocating that are on defensible moral ground"? I bet he'd do it, although I'm not sure if you'd believe him or not. Otherwise, I just don't think his intention is to empower those people (although he probably disagrees with you about how prevalent that opinion is, either among Palestinians or in the Arab world generally). I'll try to be more clear. I'm accusing people of being short-sighted more than malicious. I don't think any of the normal posters on this forum wants a genocide of the Jewish people. However, I am accusing people of not understanding the consequences of their preferred actions. I liken the situation to a poisoned pawn in chess. You move your queen to take that unprotected pawn, then the next opponent's move is to fork/check you and put you a few moves away from mate. In the real world, mate against Israel is the ethnic cleansing of the place. I'm trying to look more than one move ahead and see what would happen if Israel ended its version of apartheid. From my vantage point, that first move might look nice, but it will be devastating in the future. It would involve an influx of "Palestinians" that are actually radicals from all over the middle east. People willing to die in order to kill infidels. Then you get the terrorist attacks as people feel justified in killing anyone because they're "settlers" not civilians or whatever excuse they feel like that day. You'll get a break down of civil society and eventually pogroms. All you need to do is listen to the Palestinian leaders and you'll hear their desire for it. When someone says they're going to do something evil, don't just handwave it away. Admittedly, it would be a repeat of the Zionism that created Israel, just in reverse and with nowhere adjacent for the Jewish people to flee to. The Jewish people would be stupid to be on the receiving end of it. On October 09 2023 11:30 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 09:54 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:
Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? Something akin to the end of apartheid rule in South Africa or power sharing agreements in NI. I'm not as familiar with NI as I'd like, so I'll go with South Africa as one which I know a little bit about. Do you see any differences between the South African situation and the Israel/Palestine situation that could result in extremely different results despite the same actions? Like, perhaps do you see a significant difference between Nelson Mandela and whoever the Palestinians have put in charge? Nelson Mandela, on trial where he would eventually be sentenced to life in prison, says this: During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. Nelson Mandela started out peacefully, did have a foray into more extreme methods and got prison time for it, and then came out promoting peace and reconciliation again. Even his more extreme methods involved "sabotage against property (designed to minimize risks of injury and death)". When and where did he say it was okay to kill the elderly whites because they were settlers, not civilians? I think I missed that part of his life. When did he refuse to recognize the rights of whites to exist in South Africa? When did he launch a war to wipe out the whites in South Africa? He as the leader, and the movement as a whole, was all about gaining equal rights. The Palestinian movement, from the very beginning, has been about annihilating Israel. The rhetoric during the founding of Israel says it and the rhetoric now says it. Who is the Palestinian comparable to Mandela? Who are the Palestinian people going to follow to peaceful equality? TLDR: Israelis have the right to exist and defend themselves. Fuck Hamas. The opposition to the creation of Israel is more complicated than a black and white good vs bad. The existence of Israel is not inherently neutral and framing it as such is oversimplifying things. But it’s too late now and Israel is better than any alternative. Yes. I completely agree with this TLDR. Well this just got a lot more specific in a way that might be worth focusing on. If I’m not misunderstanding you, you believe that ending Israel’s version of apartheid would necessarily (or, at least, most likely) result in ethnic cleansing of Israelis. I don’t think that’s an opinion shared by a number of posters here, so it’s worth talking through the chain of events. As I understand it, “Israel’s version of apartheid” refers to the fact that, since its creation, Israel has legally distinguished between Jews and non-Jews and discriminated in political rights based on the distinction. Most critically, the policy for a very long time (maybe still? I don’t know the exact history here) was that if you were a Jew, anywhere in the world, you could come to Israel and be given citizenship and land. That’s an understandable idea if you’re trying to give a home to the world’s Jewish population that’s been ravaged during WW2, but where is all that land supposed to come from? Well, it’s a war-torn region; lots of people over the years have fled their homes fearing for their family’s safety. If those people are Jews, you respect their land claim when they come back. If they’re not, you don’t, and now there’s some land freed up to give to newly arrived Jews hoping to take advantage of the policy. So I assume the thing you’re worried about is the so-called “right to return” that critics of Israel often call for. Basically, non-Jews whose families had land claims in the region should be allowed to come home, be given citizenship, and have their land back. And if I’m not mistaken, your fear is that a lot of those returning people are sufficiently radicalized against Israel they would just start committing random acts of terror against their neighbors? This is the point where I’m least certain I’m interpreting you correctly, so maybe I should just stop there before trying to analyze the argument further until you’ve had a chance to say whether that’s really your position or not. I'm saying something much simpler than that. Right now, there is heavy restrictions of movement between Gaza and Israel. Israel is essentially walled in and trying to protect against any incursions. If Israel ends apartheid, the walls have to come down. The people of Gaza will have freedom to go wherever they want in Israel. Right now, for a shockingly large number of radicalized Palestinian people, that means going into Israel and committing acts of terror. Then you have all the crazies from surrounding countries (including countries that don't immediately touch Israel like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc). People who can sneak into Gaza or the West bank and then blend in with the poorly documented Palestinians. They have one goal and that's an intifada. Get all those people into Israel and every day will look like yesterday. Huh, okay. So your worry is about current occupants of Gaza (and anyone who sneaks in to get included in the citizenship deal). I mean, I don’t know what to say. That’s an enormous population, including a huge number of children, that are living in a legal limbo because Israel won’t give them legal status and Palestine isn’t a state. But they have to stay that way forever because we can never know for certain they won’t be violent? I guess that’s “One state solution” off the table for you. What about “two state solution”? If we gave those people a government of their own, with territorial sovereignty and citizenship, and a right not to be bombed and occupied by the IDF all the time, that wouldn’t mean giving them the right to freely wander Israel. The “right to return” folks still won’t be happy, but would that look more like an acceptable outcome to you? Wouldn’t it also work if we simply copied the planet twice, and gave 1 earth to Palestine and 1 earth to Israel? We have no incentive to focus on a 2 state solution any more than we do a 2 planet solution. Both are equally likely in the next 50 years. I think it’s dishonest to cite this as some kind of actual possibility. And just to be clear, I’m well aware of the 1967 borders etc and it truly is not actually relevant from a “what is the path to peace most likely to occur” perspective. These former borders existing in the past do not mean they are extra likely to happen again.
I mean, I’m as skeptical as you that Israel will seek a peaceful long-term resolution to the conflict. The last Israeli leader to try that got assassinated.
But that doesn’t mean I have to lie or make pretend about what’s happening, or how we got here, or what will continue to happen and why. Palestinians are people, they have rights, and Israel’s treatment of them is indefensible. Americans preaching “freedom” and “democracy” while sending money and weapons to help bomb Gaza reminds me of French revolutionaries preaching the Declaration of the Rights of Man while sending expeditions to re-enslave Haiti.
I strongly suspect that when the smoke clears, it will be clear that by this point in the timeline, Palestinian casualties had already well surpassed Israeli casualties since Friday. If not, just wait a few hours, we’ll get there. That’s not because Israel has been so rapid and effective at identifying and eliminating thousands of Hamas members; it’s because Israel effectively practices collective punishment, and if Israel wants to kill Palestinians there’s very little anyone can do about it (at least in the short term).
The way you talk about this it’s like you’re talking about the destruction of Carthage – regrettable, maybe, but what’s done is done and we may as well move on. “Genocide is the course of human history” as xDaunt would say. Thing is, it’s not ancient history, it’s happening today, and there’s millions of Palestinians currently alive that soon might not be. That’s not inevitable, and we don’t have to be okay with it. In fact, the international community not being okay with it is the biggest reason they *haven’t* just killed them all already, and it’s not a given that they wouldn’t if we all decided that what’s done is done.
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On October 10 2023 00:09 Cricketer12 wrote:
No. The IDF isn't courageous. Obviously civilains shouldn't be harmed at all. Hamas is fucked up for what they did. No one is making a different argument. But if you can reduce this entire struggle to "hurr durr the arab terrorists are rapists and murderers" while ignoring the actual atrocities that happen to Palestine on the daily you'll never be able to have a genuine discussion on this. But these particular guys are rapists and murderers, they proved it by their actions.
Should people really celebrate their courage to murder and rape innocents? Because that's what these guys did.
They didn't stand up to oppression - because absolutely nothing meaningful was gained by their actions, only more future oppression. And they absolutely knew it.
Whatever options were possible, they destroyed them all because they wanted to rape and murder.
Is this something that should be celebrated?
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On October 09 2023 16:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 09:02 Excludos wrote:On October 09 2023 03:19 JimmiC wrote:You use some EVEN IF’s but that he and likely you think Hamas are some sort of leftist freedom fighters because they are against the “capitalists” in Israel is pretty easy to see, and it could not be s’more wrong. Hamas is further right than a basically any group and they only allow one perspective. Your reading comprehension for your favourites and people you do not like leaves a lot to be desired. QUOTE] On May 19 2021 17:48 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 19 2021 17:24 Nebuchad wrote:
There is one cool thing about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and it's that the discourse has shifted dramatically. Last time this happened we had the discussion online and there were people making solid arguments on both sides, we had a little battle on the marketplace of ideas, and the people on the side of Palestine won that battle.
Which means that this time, support for Palestine is overwhelming in leftist places online. So, what can I say, when you're dealing with honest people who have a common goal, debate works, sort of. Leftist online places are set to raise more for Palestine than they did for Mermaids when Glinner decided to direct his constant transphobia at them. Especially Vaush has had a very successful stream, 250k+ in 24 hours.
Will charity solve the occupation, no it won't obviously. But it still signals that we have a pretty large voice, and that's cool. Other cracks start to form with larger protests all over the world, less pro-Israel propaganda in the media than usual (I have no explanation for that one but 1) hey, cool, I'll take it, and 2) there is still some dumb shit going around.
Imo one of the more important rhetorical battles to fight is the battle against the idea that it's complicated. One side has almost all of the power and chooses to oppress the other, openly using terrorism and openly supporting ethnic cleansing. Don't be on that side. Some things are complicated, others are not. The continued settlements is not complicated - they're abhorrent and so is supporting them. Amusingly, I've yet to see anyone defend this practice, even guys that are solidly on the side of Israel. They seem to conveniently ignore that this is the piece of aggression and argue that 'Israel has the right to defend itself' - but I haven't actually seen anyone in this thread or the USPol thread before the discussion moved defend the continued settlement policy. However, while people seem to be able to agree that Israel's settlement policy should end, figuring out where to revert back to is complicated. 1967 borders are two generations ago. We might agree that what happened in 1947-48 was a crime against the Palestinian people, but it's not like it's easy to revert that now. The question of 'who should live where' is complicated, even if we recognize that Israel is the main culprit in the conflict and even if we regard Hamas as freedom fighters more than as terrorists. I'm a bit late to the party, but the thread is moving fast. This would be an interesting debate if Palestine was up for discussing peace whatsoever. Israel did go out several times and offered peace with the inclusion of "returning occupied territories". Where exactly the border of those territories would go is something they could have debated had Hamas had any intentions other than exterminating all Jews from the area. This is why people who agree that the settlement policy is horrible still have trouble weighing too much fault on Israel. To draw parallels, it's a bit like if Russia today went "aight, Ukraine, we want peace, and we'll return all of your territories", and Ukraine just went "nah, we refuse. We won't stop until every Russian is dead". It would suddenly flip the conflict to be a lot more sympathetic to Russia It's not like Russia going 'we'll return all of your territories' at all though. That sounds like something that was said like 50 and denied years ago and I fail to see the relevance. If you actually have a source from the last decade with Israel stating that they're willing to return back to 1967 borders, including giving back land and homes taken by settlers, then I'll give a heartfelt apology and say hey, I am apparently ignorant of this and heavily amend my position. But right now, my interpretation is more like 'Russia offering peace, but one that includes Russia keeping most of if not all of the annexed territories (settlements) and also that includes them continuing to fairly regularly evict Ukrainians from their homes so that Russians can live in them instead', and I've seen enough of you in the Russia-Ukraine thread to know that this isn't something you would accept in that scenario.
Correct, that would obviously not be an acceptable outcome.
But let's go through all the previous peace talks, in order from last to first, as I'm also learning more details about them as I'm writing them here. If I got something wrong, please correct me.
2013-2014 is the latest attempt, initiated by the US. Israel, lead by Netanyahu, mainly got the blame (By the US) for tanking this one, although with the added caveat that "both sides did things that were incredibly unhelpful". Israel was not willing to return to 1967 borders on this one, but the return of some occupied areas was definitively on the table. Honestly though, reading through it, it's just a massive clusterfuck from everyone involved. I don't think this one had any chance of going anywhere from the start.
Before that was the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. This was directly initiated by the previous six-day-war, which was completely tanked by literally everyone involved. Half the participants of the conflict didn't even bother showing up. The plan was drawn up by the US, and rejected by both Palestine and Israel (Both wholly embraced by the rest of the Arab world, who have continued to endorse it several times since). Israel did not want to withdraw to their pre-1967 borders. Palestine state head(s) were in favor, but Gaza (Hamas) were not. Hamas performing a terrorist attack on the day before the initiative likely did not sweeten the mood of the Israeli negotiators. In fact they used this exactly as an argument for telling Palestine to f-off. They were also worried about the large numbers of refugees into Israel, which is pretty dumb in my opinion as these people aren't going to disappear over night. At some point they will have to deal with them. Israel has since been on the fence about this plan over the years, ranging from outright rejection to "Eh, maybe?" all the way up to 2015, with Netanyahu again rejecting it in 2018.
Right before this, in 2001, was the Taba Summit. This one seemingly had the closest chance of coming to a resolution, as stated by both parties involved. Unfortunately, politics got in the way. Israel had an election, and the newly elected Sharon party did not want to re-start the negotiations. This is the last time all parties involved actually wanted a resolution, and didn't actively try to sabotage the peace negotiations.
The Taba Summit followed the 2000 Camp David Summit, of which no written proposal exists, and all parties have conflicting interpretation of what happened.
Then there was the 1993 Oslo Accords. The return of all occupied areas wasn't really a part of this deal. But it's interesting in that it achieved the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from most of Gaza, a mutual recognition between PLO (Palestine) and Israel, and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority.
And I believe the first real attempt at a two-state plan was in the 1991 Madrid Conference. Which, as far as I can see, only really resulted in a roadmap that turned into the other conferences mentioned above.
So, having spent over an hour reading through all of this, I'm going to backpedal a little bit. It's definitively not super black-and-white in terms of who has been offering what. Israel has for a long time been of the belief that returning some occupied areas should be the basis for peace negotiations, but then back to the 1967 borders, not the 1947 ones that Palestine wants. But it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when even this offer was on the table, as a lot of these negotiations are performed in secret, and it's all vague wishy washy with no real outcomes. Officially, the last time Netanyahu entertained 1967 borders was in 2015, but has since in 2018 rejected it entirely as basis for negotiations. It's entirely possible that 1967 could have happened at some point, if both parties weren't busy sabotaging all efforts to negotiate. Israel has the excuse of the Palestine state not being willing to fight terrorism, which is evidenced by the obvious of the existence of Hamas, but Israel also simultaneously clearly knows that they are the top-dog at the table, and aren't willing to stretch very far in terms of good-will either, in fact the exact opposite they are more than willing to tank negotiation efforts themselves.
Man, the Ukraine conflict is a lot easier than this one in terms of who the bad guys are, that's for sure. But one of the constants in all this is the continuation of Hamas tanking any and all efforts for Israel and the Palestine State to reconcile. As long as they continue to exist, nothing can be done.
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On October 10 2023 00:20 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2023 00:09 Cricketer12 wrote:
No. The IDF isn't courageous. Obviously civilains shouldn't be harmed at all. Hamas is fucked up for what they did. No one is making a different argument. But if you can reduce this entire struggle to "hurr durr the arab terrorists are rapists and murderers" while ignoring the actual atrocities that happen to Palestine on the daily you'll never be able to have a genuine discussion on this. But these particular guys are rapists and murderers, they proved it by their actions. Should people really celebrate their courage to murder and rape innocents? Because that's what these guys did. They didn't stand up to oppression - because absolutely nothing meaningful was gained by their actions, only more future oppression. And they absolutely knew it. Whatever options were possible, they destroyed them all because they wanted to rape and murder. Is this something that should be celebrated?
The people involved in rape and civilian murder should be held accountable. Will you admit the same of IDF forces who commit similar atrocities every week?
Do you also recognize that the civilian harm was a small part of what happened? When I say small I mean in the sense that a lot happened, a lot of areas were affected. I am not trying to minimize the horror that was inflicted on the innocent.
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On October 10 2023 00:28 Cricketer12 wrote:
The people involved in rape and civilian murder should be held accountable. Will you admit the same of IDF forces who commit similar atrocities every week? Of course, those in IDF who commit rapes and cold-blooded murders of innocents who're clearly not military targets, should be held accountable.
But about "what happened" - the thing is, the rape and murder is all that happened, it's the only "victory" they got.
They didn't achieve anything but their future annihilation, loss of whatever non-Arab support they had before, and additional suffering for Palestinians, no?
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On October 10 2023 00:25 Excludos wrote:
Man, the Ukraine conflict is a lot easier than this one in terms of who the bad guys are, that's for sure.
Things become a lot easier when you view the world societies as a bunch of hierarchies interacting with each other and producing shit outcomes for individuals to maintain themselves, as opposed to some sort of well-oiled machine that is gripped by a particular individual thing that needs to be taken out in order for all the social hierarchies to start producing happiness.
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On October 10 2023 00:37 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2023 00:28 Cricketer12 wrote:
The people involved in rape and civilian murder should be held accountable. Will you admit the same of IDF forces who commit similar atrocities every week? Of course, those in IDF who commit rapes and cold-blooded murders of innocents who're clearly not military targets, should be held accountable. But about "what happened" - the thing is, the rape and murder is all that happened, it's the only "victory" they got. They didn't achieve anything but their future annihilation, loss of whatever non-Arab support they had before, and additional suffering for Palestinians, no?
Good point, things were so peachy for them beforehand.
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On October 10 2023 00:18 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 23:47 Mohdoo wrote:On October 09 2023 22:30 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 14:26 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 12:12 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 11:31 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 06:12 ChristianS wrote:
Kwark, I think you’re closer to right in this exchange and TLoA is absolutely doing the bait and switch “opposing Israel on anything means supporting a second Holocaust” trick that Israel defenders have always done. You've got a good history of posting in good faith, so I want to return that good faith even while heavily disagreeing. The complaint is not that Kwark is not 100% pro Israel. You'll find very little pushback if you say that the Israeli settlements are wrong even from pro-Israel people. In Kwark's response to this post + Show Spoiler +On October 08 2023 03:11 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2023 02:17 Excludos wrote:On October 07 2023 22:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The framing that they just want to be left alone while continuing to encroach on palestinerne territory is absolutely ridiculous. It's insane how people are just willing to completely disregard context. That they are being attacked by rocket barrages and terrorism on the daily is seemingly unimportant. If Sweden did that to Norway, we'd be doing a lot more than Israel is in regards to counter-aggression. It's like if I keep punching you in the face, and you push me away, suddenly everyone around us goers "omfg how could you push?!". You answer with "I just want to be left alone!" and then people laugh and go "Shouldn't be pushing then!" If Palestine doesn't want Israel to keep pushing, then maybe they should seek peace? Or at the very least meet at the table. Israel doesn't want the occupied territories, and have numerous times claimed willingness to give them back He's talking about the illegal settlements, not the retaliatory attacks by Israel. But overall, I agree. While Israel is adding fuel to the fire by refusing to stop the illegal settlements, we can't overlook the context of this conflict. Namely, when the Arabs thought they had the upper hand, they tried to wipe Israel off the map on several occasions (the Palestinian Arabs were onboard). They chose violence over negotiated peace. On the other hand, once the situation shifted in favour of Israel, Israel was open to accepting several different peace proposals. Those were rejected by the Palestinians, who were unhappy with some of the terms. They were unwilling to accept that their negotiating position was getting progressively weaker, and they chose violence again. I think people siding with Palestine in this conflict are not holding Israel and Palestine to the same standard. If Israel acted the way the Arabs did, they would've wiped out the Palestinians a long time ago. @Drone I would hold off with such claims. The number of casualties on the Palestinian side come from the Palestinian officials, i.e. Hamas... He says On October 08 2023 03:16 KwarK wrote:
Wiping Israel off the map doesn’t necessarily mean killing every Israeli. The third Reich was wiped off of the map, for example. Israel is the state, not the people. They conflate the two deliberately. He's trying to defend "wipe Israel off the map" as merely "remove the country, but totally keep the people". It's bullshit and anyone who's been paying attention should know it. The Palestinians want an ethnic cleansing. The only thing preventing the ethnic cleansing is the power that the Israeli government has. If they ever lose a war or are otherwise dissolved, it will be an ethnic cleansing. The only question would be how many Israelis would escape versus how many would be part of the genocide. What country would take 7 million Jewish refugees because there is no way Palestinians would accept Jewish neighbors and allow them to live. Here's a spokesman for Hamas talking to Al Jazeera today: Osama Hamdan, senior spokesperson for Hamas, told Al Jazeera that the group was not attacking civilians even though the group’s own videos have shown its fighters taking elderly Israelis hostage during the fighting on Saturday.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International have also pointed out that Israeli civilians had been killed by Hamas.
But Hamdan insisted that the group was attacking only settlers living in illegal settlements, whom he described as legitimate targets.
“You have to differentiate between settlers and civilians. Settlers attacked Palestinians,” Hamdan said.
Asked whether civilians in southern Israel were also considered settlers, Hamdan said: “Everyone knows there are settlements there.”
“We are not targeting civilians on purpose. We have declared settlers are part of the occupation and part of the armed Israeli force. They are not civilians,” he added. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-hamas-a-simple-guide-tothe-palestinian-groupHe's not saying that the elderly were unfortunate casualties of war or that mistakes were made. He says that the elderly are not "civilians", they are "settlers" and thus killing and kidnapping them is okay. This is a spokesman for the political leadership of Palestine. It also looks like a concert for peace is a legitimate target according to Palestinians. I've already posted the decline in numbers of Jewish People in every other Mideast country. Every last one experienced an ethnic cleansing. People don't just up and move for the fun of it. They were forced out. Or if you want a non-Jewish example, you can look at what's happening to Christians in Egypt for another example. Church bombings, kidnapped women forced to marry Muslims, and plenty of killings. Fanatical Muslims will not live peacefully side by side with anyone else and there are way too many fanatical Muslims in the middle east. Being anti Israel is indeed taking a pro-genocide stance. However, I'll admit that most western people don't realize that's what they're actually supporting by being anti Israel. Most people are ignorant. And no, that doesn't mean you need to endorse everything the Israeli government does in order to be anti-genocide. However, you do need to support the right of Israel to exist and be against anyone who denies that right. Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? I mean, I guess the underlying question I'm not clear on is whether we're asking "what Kwark means by 'wipe Israel off the map' " or "what this or that Arab leader and/or Palestians generally means/meant by 'wipe Israel off the map' ". You have a lot more confidence than I do in asserting "what Palestinians want." That might just be me being ill-informed, I dunno. But Kwark's specific post is pretty clear that he, at least, is clarifying that ending the current government of Israel does not inherently mean genocide/ethnic cleansing of Israelis. Maybe that's what Palestinians would want. I'm pretty sure that's what Hamas would want. But if, for instance, the international community decided "we're not going to allow an ethnostate to exist" and forced Israel to change their form of government away from one that explicitly, legally determines who is and isn't a Jew and differentiates legal rights accordingly, I don't think that wouldn't necessarily entail genociding Israelis. You could claim that all those policies are necessary to preventing a genocide that would otherwise be inevitable. If so, you could assert "no, you're wrong, it's not possible to imagine ending the current Israeli state without an accompanying genocide of Israelis." But I just don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. Anyway it's clear Kwark doesn't, which is the disputed issue here. I think your anger at Kwark (and maybe TLoA's anger at Kwark) is based on the idea that he's apologizing for/running interference for bloodthirsty Arab leaders that just want to kill every Jew. Which, I dunno, those people certainly exist. I don't *think* Kwark is trying to defend those people, although any time you argue even a nuanced pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel position you're at least giving those people some cover, right? I am too, whether I like it or not, any time I argue that Israel's moral position is compromised or that Palestinians' rights are being trampled on. Like, would it help if Kwark explicitly said "I don't think Israelis should be genocided or ethnically cleansed, and I don't think any Palestinian or Arab leaders advocating that are on defensible moral ground"? I bet he'd do it, although I'm not sure if you'd believe him or not. Otherwise, I just don't think his intention is to empower those people (although he probably disagrees with you about how prevalent that opinion is, either among Palestinians or in the Arab world generally). I'll try to be more clear. I'm accusing people of being short-sighted more than malicious. I don't think any of the normal posters on this forum wants a genocide of the Jewish people. However, I am accusing people of not understanding the consequences of their preferred actions. I liken the situation to a poisoned pawn in chess. You move your queen to take that unprotected pawn, then the next opponent's move is to fork/check you and put you a few moves away from mate. In the real world, mate against Israel is the ethnic cleansing of the place. I'm trying to look more than one move ahead and see what would happen if Israel ended its version of apartheid. From my vantage point, that first move might look nice, but it will be devastating in the future. It would involve an influx of "Palestinians" that are actually radicals from all over the middle east. People willing to die in order to kill infidels. Then you get the terrorist attacks as people feel justified in killing anyone because they're "settlers" not civilians or whatever excuse they feel like that day. You'll get a break down of civil society and eventually pogroms. All you need to do is listen to the Palestinian leaders and you'll hear their desire for it. When someone says they're going to do something evil, don't just handwave it away. Admittedly, it would be a repeat of the Zionism that created Israel, just in reverse and with nowhere adjacent for the Jewish people to flee to. The Jewish people would be stupid to be on the receiving end of it. On October 09 2023 11:30 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 09:54 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:
Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? Something akin to the end of apartheid rule in South Africa or power sharing agreements in NI. I'm not as familiar with NI as I'd like, so I'll go with South Africa as one which I know a little bit about. Do you see any differences between the South African situation and the Israel/Palestine situation that could result in extremely different results despite the same actions? Like, perhaps do you see a significant difference between Nelson Mandela and whoever the Palestinians have put in charge? Nelson Mandela, on trial where he would eventually be sentenced to life in prison, says this: During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. Nelson Mandela started out peacefully, did have a foray into more extreme methods and got prison time for it, and then came out promoting peace and reconciliation again. Even his more extreme methods involved "sabotage against property (designed to minimize risks of injury and death)". When and where did he say it was okay to kill the elderly whites because they were settlers, not civilians? I think I missed that part of his life. When did he refuse to recognize the rights of whites to exist in South Africa? When did he launch a war to wipe out the whites in South Africa? He as the leader, and the movement as a whole, was all about gaining equal rights. The Palestinian movement, from the very beginning, has been about annihilating Israel. The rhetoric during the founding of Israel says it and the rhetoric now says it. Who is the Palestinian comparable to Mandela? Who are the Palestinian people going to follow to peaceful equality? TLDR: Israelis have the right to exist and defend themselves. Fuck Hamas. The opposition to the creation of Israel is more complicated than a black and white good vs bad. The existence of Israel is not inherently neutral and framing it as such is oversimplifying things. But it’s too late now and Israel is better than any alternative. Yes. I completely agree with this TLDR. Well this just got a lot more specific in a way that might be worth focusing on. If I’m not misunderstanding you, you believe that ending Israel’s version of apartheid would necessarily (or, at least, most likely) result in ethnic cleansing of Israelis. I don’t think that’s an opinion shared by a number of posters here, so it’s worth talking through the chain of events. As I understand it, “Israel’s version of apartheid” refers to the fact that, since its creation, Israel has legally distinguished between Jews and non-Jews and discriminated in political rights based on the distinction. Most critically, the policy for a very long time (maybe still? I don’t know the exact history here) was that if you were a Jew, anywhere in the world, you could come to Israel and be given citizenship and land. That’s an understandable idea if you’re trying to give a home to the world’s Jewish population that’s been ravaged during WW2, but where is all that land supposed to come from? Well, it’s a war-torn region; lots of people over the years have fled their homes fearing for their family’s safety. If those people are Jews, you respect their land claim when they come back. If they’re not, you don’t, and now there’s some land freed up to give to newly arrived Jews hoping to take advantage of the policy. So I assume the thing you’re worried about is the so-called “right to return” that critics of Israel often call for. Basically, non-Jews whose families had land claims in the region should be allowed to come home, be given citizenship, and have their land back. And if I’m not mistaken, your fear is that a lot of those returning people are sufficiently radicalized against Israel they would just start committing random acts of terror against their neighbors? This is the point where I’m least certain I’m interpreting you correctly, so maybe I should just stop there before trying to analyze the argument further until you’ve had a chance to say whether that’s really your position or not. I'm saying something much simpler than that. Right now, there is heavy restrictions of movement between Gaza and Israel. Israel is essentially walled in and trying to protect against any incursions. If Israel ends apartheid, the walls have to come down. The people of Gaza will have freedom to go wherever they want in Israel. Right now, for a shockingly large number of radicalized Palestinian people, that means going into Israel and committing acts of terror. Then you have all the crazies from surrounding countries (including countries that don't immediately touch Israel like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc). People who can sneak into Gaza or the West bank and then blend in with the poorly documented Palestinians. They have one goal and that's an intifada. Get all those people into Israel and every day will look like yesterday. Huh, okay. So your worry is about current occupants of Gaza (and anyone who sneaks in to get included in the citizenship deal). I mean, I don’t know what to say. That’s an enormous population, including a huge number of children, that are living in a legal limbo because Israel won’t give them legal status and Palestine isn’t a state. But they have to stay that way forever because we can never know for certain they won’t be violent? I guess that’s “One state solution” off the table for you. What about “two state solution”? If we gave those people a government of their own, with territorial sovereignty and citizenship, and a right not to be bombed and occupied by the IDF all the time, that wouldn’t mean giving them the right to freely wander Israel. The “right to return” folks still won’t be happy, but would that look more like an acceptable outcome to you? Wouldn’t it also work if we simply copied the planet twice, and gave 1 earth to Palestine and 1 earth to Israel? We have no incentive to focus on a 2 state solution any more than we do a 2 planet solution. Both are equally likely in the next 50 years. I think it’s dishonest to cite this as some kind of actual possibility. And just to be clear, I’m well aware of the 1967 borders etc and it truly is not actually relevant from a “what is the path to peace most likely to occur” perspective. These former borders existing in the past do not mean they are extra likely to happen again. I mean, I’m as skeptical as you that Israel will seek a peaceful long-term resolution to the conflict. The last Israeli leader to try that got assassinated. But that doesn’t mean I have to lie or make pretend about what’s happening, or how we got here, or what will continue to happen and why. Palestinians are people, they have rights, and Israel’s treatment of them is indefensible. Americans preaching “freedom” and “democracy” while sending money and weapons to help bomb Gaza reminds me of French revolutionaries preaching the Declaration of the Rights of Man while sending expeditions to re-enslave Haiti. I strongly suspect that when the smoke clears, it will be clear that by this point in the timeline, Palestinian casualties had already well surpassed Israeli casualties since Friday. If not, just wait a few hours, we’ll get there. That’s not because Israel has been so rapid and effective at identifying and eliminating thousands of Hamas members; it’s because Israel effectively practices collective punishment, and if Israel wants to kill Palestinians there’s very little anyone can do about it (at least in the short term). The way you talk about this it’s like you’re talking about the destruction of Carthage – regrettable, maybe, but what’s done is done and we may as well move on. “Genocide is the course of human history” as xDaunt would say. Thing is, it’s not ancient history, it’s happening today, and there’s millions of Palestinians currently alive that soon might not be. That’s not inevitable, and we don’t have to be okay with it. In fact, the international community not being okay with it is the biggest reason they *haven’t* just killed them all already, and it’s not a given that they wouldn’t if we all decided that what’s done is done.
No one should be ok with it. I agree. And we should do what we can to prevent all forms of suffering for all parties involved. And I am saying people let history cloud their judgment. Of all people I have discussed this topic with, not a single person thinks their preferred solution has any chance whatsoever of being a component of reality any time soon. So what’s the point? Is that not just some ivory tower thought experiment? If these lives are so important, why is it acceptable to let the death counter keep spinning while people review and compare previous borders?
We all agree a 2 state solution has no visible path and only gets less probable every day. Yet people can’t seem to force themselves to pursue other solutions because of some history book sitting on their shelf. So people continue to die day after day because of what is actually just ivory tower nonsense.
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Northern Ireland23767 Posts
On October 10 2023 00:20 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2023 00:09 Cricketer12 wrote:
No. The IDF isn't courageous. Obviously civilains shouldn't be harmed at all. Hamas is fucked up for what they did. No one is making a different argument. But if you can reduce this entire struggle to "hurr durr the arab terrorists are rapists and murderers" while ignoring the actual atrocities that happen to Palestine on the daily you'll never be able to have a genuine discussion on this. But these particular guys are rapists and murderers, they proved it by their actions. Should people really celebrate their courage to murder and rape innocents? Because that's what these guys did. They didn't stand up to oppression - because absolutely nothing meaningful was gained by their actions, only more future oppression. And they absolutely knew it. Whatever options were possible, they destroyed them all because they wanted to rape and murder. Is this something that should be celebrated?
Depends on the people. And understandable and justifiable are different things. Anyone outside Palestinian territory is sick in the head to be cheering such things, had many a run in on this topic over these few days.
People within it? I mean, to me it’s still morally repugnant but if I was born elsewhere and I was stuck in a small box for my entire life, an ever-shrinking one with fuck all prospects, maybe I cheer too. It’s understandable if not justifiable.
They did stand up to oppression. In the worst way fucking possible, but they did. I cannot imagine they were under any illusions that Israel’s response will be vengeful indeed, and a truckload of the perpetrators will die for it.
If you have essentially no good options, people have a tendency to pick the worst one on the table if some kind of vengeance will be involved.
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Norway28553 Posts
On October 10 2023 00:50 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2023 00:18 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 23:47 Mohdoo wrote:On October 09 2023 22:30 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 14:26 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 12:12 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 11:31 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 06:12 ChristianS wrote:
Kwark, I think you’re closer to right in this exchange and TLoA is absolutely doing the bait and switch “opposing Israel on anything means supporting a second Holocaust” trick that Israel defenders have always done. You've got a good history of posting in good faith, so I want to return that good faith even while heavily disagreeing. The complaint is not that Kwark is not 100% pro Israel. You'll find very little pushback if you say that the Israeli settlements are wrong even from pro-Israel people. In Kwark's response to this post + Show Spoiler +On October 08 2023 03:11 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2023 02:17 Excludos wrote:On October 07 2023 22:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The framing that they just want to be left alone while continuing to encroach on palestinerne territory is absolutely ridiculous. It's insane how people are just willing to completely disregard context. That they are being attacked by rocket barrages and terrorism on the daily is seemingly unimportant. If Sweden did that to Norway, we'd be doing a lot more than Israel is in regards to counter-aggression. It's like if I keep punching you in the face, and you push me away, suddenly everyone around us goers "omfg how could you push?!". You answer with "I just want to be left alone!" and then people laugh and go "Shouldn't be pushing then!" If Palestine doesn't want Israel to keep pushing, then maybe they should seek peace? Or at the very least meet at the table. Israel doesn't want the occupied territories, and have numerous times claimed willingness to give them back He's talking about the illegal settlements, not the retaliatory attacks by Israel. But overall, I agree. While Israel is adding fuel to the fire by refusing to stop the illegal settlements, we can't overlook the context of this conflict. Namely, when the Arabs thought they had the upper hand, they tried to wipe Israel off the map on several occasions (the Palestinian Arabs were onboard). They chose violence over negotiated peace. On the other hand, once the situation shifted in favour of Israel, Israel was open to accepting several different peace proposals. Those were rejected by the Palestinians, who were unhappy with some of the terms. They were unwilling to accept that their negotiating position was getting progressively weaker, and they chose violence again. I think people siding with Palestine in this conflict are not holding Israel and Palestine to the same standard. If Israel acted the way the Arabs did, they would've wiped out the Palestinians a long time ago. @Drone I would hold off with such claims. The number of casualties on the Palestinian side come from the Palestinian officials, i.e. Hamas... He says On October 08 2023 03:16 KwarK wrote:
Wiping Israel off the map doesn’t necessarily mean killing every Israeli. The third Reich was wiped off of the map, for example. Israel is the state, not the people. They conflate the two deliberately. He's trying to defend "wipe Israel off the map" as merely "remove the country, but totally keep the people". It's bullshit and anyone who's been paying attention should know it. The Palestinians want an ethnic cleansing. The only thing preventing the ethnic cleansing is the power that the Israeli government has. If they ever lose a war or are otherwise dissolved, it will be an ethnic cleansing. The only question would be how many Israelis would escape versus how many would be part of the genocide. What country would take 7 million Jewish refugees because there is no way Palestinians would accept Jewish neighbors and allow them to live. Here's a spokesman for Hamas talking to Al Jazeera today: Osama Hamdan, senior spokesperson for Hamas, told Al Jazeera that the group was not attacking civilians even though the group’s own videos have shown its fighters taking elderly Israelis hostage during the fighting on Saturday.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International have also pointed out that Israeli civilians had been killed by Hamas.
But Hamdan insisted that the group was attacking only settlers living in illegal settlements, whom he described as legitimate targets.
“You have to differentiate between settlers and civilians. Settlers attacked Palestinians,” Hamdan said.
Asked whether civilians in southern Israel were also considered settlers, Hamdan said: “Everyone knows there are settlements there.”
“We are not targeting civilians on purpose. We have declared settlers are part of the occupation and part of the armed Israeli force. They are not civilians,” he added. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-hamas-a-simple-guide-tothe-palestinian-groupHe's not saying that the elderly were unfortunate casualties of war or that mistakes were made. He says that the elderly are not "civilians", they are "settlers" and thus killing and kidnapping them is okay. This is a spokesman for the political leadership of Palestine. It also looks like a concert for peace is a legitimate target according to Palestinians. I've already posted the decline in numbers of Jewish People in every other Mideast country. Every last one experienced an ethnic cleansing. People don't just up and move for the fun of it. They were forced out. Or if you want a non-Jewish example, you can look at what's happening to Christians in Egypt for another example. Church bombings, kidnapped women forced to marry Muslims, and plenty of killings. Fanatical Muslims will not live peacefully side by side with anyone else and there are way too many fanatical Muslims in the middle east. Being anti Israel is indeed taking a pro-genocide stance. However, I'll admit that most western people don't realize that's what they're actually supporting by being anti Israel. Most people are ignorant. And no, that doesn't mean you need to endorse everything the Israeli government does in order to be anti-genocide. However, you do need to support the right of Israel to exist and be against anyone who denies that right. Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? I mean, I guess the underlying question I'm not clear on is whether we're asking "what Kwark means by 'wipe Israel off the map' " or "what this or that Arab leader and/or Palestians generally means/meant by 'wipe Israel off the map' ". You have a lot more confidence than I do in asserting "what Palestinians want." That might just be me being ill-informed, I dunno. But Kwark's specific post is pretty clear that he, at least, is clarifying that ending the current government of Israel does not inherently mean genocide/ethnic cleansing of Israelis. Maybe that's what Palestinians would want. I'm pretty sure that's what Hamas would want. But if, for instance, the international community decided "we're not going to allow an ethnostate to exist" and forced Israel to change their form of government away from one that explicitly, legally determines who is and isn't a Jew and differentiates legal rights accordingly, I don't think that wouldn't necessarily entail genociding Israelis. You could claim that all those policies are necessary to preventing a genocide that would otherwise be inevitable. If so, you could assert "no, you're wrong, it's not possible to imagine ending the current Israeli state without an accompanying genocide of Israelis." But I just don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. Anyway it's clear Kwark doesn't, which is the disputed issue here. I think your anger at Kwark (and maybe TLoA's anger at Kwark) is based on the idea that he's apologizing for/running interference for bloodthirsty Arab leaders that just want to kill every Jew. Which, I dunno, those people certainly exist. I don't *think* Kwark is trying to defend those people, although any time you argue even a nuanced pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel position you're at least giving those people some cover, right? I am too, whether I like it or not, any time I argue that Israel's moral position is compromised or that Palestinians' rights are being trampled on. Like, would it help if Kwark explicitly said "I don't think Israelis should be genocided or ethnically cleansed, and I don't think any Palestinian or Arab leaders advocating that are on defensible moral ground"? I bet he'd do it, although I'm not sure if you'd believe him or not. Otherwise, I just don't think his intention is to empower those people (although he probably disagrees with you about how prevalent that opinion is, either among Palestinians or in the Arab world generally). I'll try to be more clear. I'm accusing people of being short-sighted more than malicious. I don't think any of the normal posters on this forum wants a genocide of the Jewish people. However, I am accusing people of not understanding the consequences of their preferred actions. I liken the situation to a poisoned pawn in chess. You move your queen to take that unprotected pawn, then the next opponent's move is to fork/check you and put you a few moves away from mate. In the real world, mate against Israel is the ethnic cleansing of the place. I'm trying to look more than one move ahead and see what would happen if Israel ended its version of apartheid. From my vantage point, that first move might look nice, but it will be devastating in the future. It would involve an influx of "Palestinians" that are actually radicals from all over the middle east. People willing to die in order to kill infidels. Then you get the terrorist attacks as people feel justified in killing anyone because they're "settlers" not civilians or whatever excuse they feel like that day. You'll get a break down of civil society and eventually pogroms. All you need to do is listen to the Palestinian leaders and you'll hear their desire for it. When someone says they're going to do something evil, don't just handwave it away. Admittedly, it would be a repeat of the Zionism that created Israel, just in reverse and with nowhere adjacent for the Jewish people to flee to. The Jewish people would be stupid to be on the receiving end of it. On October 09 2023 11:30 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 09:54 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
Something akin to the end of apartheid rule in South Africa or power sharing agreements in NI.
I'm not as familiar with NI as I'd like, so I'll go with South Africa as one which I know a little bit about. Do you see any differences between the South African situation and the Israel/Palestine situation that could result in extremely different results despite the same actions? Like, perhaps do you see a significant difference between Nelson Mandela and whoever the Palestinians have put in charge? Nelson Mandela, on trial where he would eventually be sentenced to life in prison, says this: During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. Nelson Mandela started out peacefully, did have a foray into more extreme methods and got prison time for it, and then came out promoting peace and reconciliation again. Even his more extreme methods involved "sabotage against property (designed to minimize risks of injury and death)". When and where did he say it was okay to kill the elderly whites because they were settlers, not civilians? I think I missed that part of his life. When did he refuse to recognize the rights of whites to exist in South Africa? When did he launch a war to wipe out the whites in South Africa? He as the leader, and the movement as a whole, was all about gaining equal rights. The Palestinian movement, from the very beginning, has been about annihilating Israel. The rhetoric during the founding of Israel says it and the rhetoric now says it. Who is the Palestinian comparable to Mandela? Who are the Palestinian people going to follow to peaceful equality? TLDR: Israelis have the right to exist and defend themselves. Fuck Hamas. The opposition to the creation of Israel is more complicated than a black and white good vs bad. The existence of Israel is not inherently neutral and framing it as such is oversimplifying things. But it’s too late now and Israel is better than any alternative. Yes. I completely agree with this TLDR. Well this just got a lot more specific in a way that might be worth focusing on. If I’m not misunderstanding you, you believe that ending Israel’s version of apartheid would necessarily (or, at least, most likely) result in ethnic cleansing of Israelis. I don’t think that’s an opinion shared by a number of posters here, so it’s worth talking through the chain of events. As I understand it, “Israel’s version of apartheid” refers to the fact that, since its creation, Israel has legally distinguished between Jews and non-Jews and discriminated in political rights based on the distinction. Most critically, the policy for a very long time (maybe still? I don’t know the exact history here) was that if you were a Jew, anywhere in the world, you could come to Israel and be given citizenship and land. That’s an understandable idea if you’re trying to give a home to the world’s Jewish population that’s been ravaged during WW2, but where is all that land supposed to come from? Well, it’s a war-torn region; lots of people over the years have fled their homes fearing for their family’s safety. If those people are Jews, you respect their land claim when they come back. If they’re not, you don’t, and now there’s some land freed up to give to newly arrived Jews hoping to take advantage of the policy. So I assume the thing you’re worried about is the so-called “right to return” that critics of Israel often call for. Basically, non-Jews whose families had land claims in the region should be allowed to come home, be given citizenship, and have their land back. And if I’m not mistaken, your fear is that a lot of those returning people are sufficiently radicalized against Israel they would just start committing random acts of terror against their neighbors? This is the point where I’m least certain I’m interpreting you correctly, so maybe I should just stop there before trying to analyze the argument further until you’ve had a chance to say whether that’s really your position or not. I'm saying something much simpler than that. Right now, there is heavy restrictions of movement between Gaza and Israel. Israel is essentially walled in and trying to protect against any incursions. If Israel ends apartheid, the walls have to come down. The people of Gaza will have freedom to go wherever they want in Israel. Right now, for a shockingly large number of radicalized Palestinian people, that means going into Israel and committing acts of terror. Then you have all the crazies from surrounding countries (including countries that don't immediately touch Israel like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc). People who can sneak into Gaza or the West bank and then blend in with the poorly documented Palestinians. They have one goal and that's an intifada. Get all those people into Israel and every day will look like yesterday. Huh, okay. So your worry is about current occupants of Gaza (and anyone who sneaks in to get included in the citizenship deal). I mean, I don’t know what to say. That’s an enormous population, including a huge number of children, that are living in a legal limbo because Israel won’t give them legal status and Palestine isn’t a state. But they have to stay that way forever because we can never know for certain they won’t be violent? I guess that’s “One state solution” off the table for you. What about “two state solution”? If we gave those people a government of their own, with territorial sovereignty and citizenship, and a right not to be bombed and occupied by the IDF all the time, that wouldn’t mean giving them the right to freely wander Israel. The “right to return” folks still won’t be happy, but would that look more like an acceptable outcome to you? Wouldn’t it also work if we simply copied the planet twice, and gave 1 earth to Palestine and 1 earth to Israel? We have no incentive to focus on a 2 state solution any more than we do a 2 planet solution. Both are equally likely in the next 50 years. I think it’s dishonest to cite this as some kind of actual possibility. And just to be clear, I’m well aware of the 1967 borders etc and it truly is not actually relevant from a “what is the path to peace most likely to occur” perspective. These former borders existing in the past do not mean they are extra likely to happen again. I mean, I’m as skeptical as you that Israel will seek a peaceful long-term resolution to the conflict. The last Israeli leader to try that got assassinated. But that doesn’t mean I have to lie or make pretend about what’s happening, or how we got here, or what will continue to happen and why. Palestinians are people, they have rights, and Israel’s treatment of them is indefensible. Americans preaching “freedom” and “democracy” while sending money and weapons to help bomb Gaza reminds me of French revolutionaries preaching the Declaration of the Rights of Man while sending expeditions to re-enslave Haiti. I strongly suspect that when the smoke clears, it will be clear that by this point in the timeline, Palestinian casualties had already well surpassed Israeli casualties since Friday. If not, just wait a few hours, we’ll get there. That’s not because Israel has been so rapid and effective at identifying and eliminating thousands of Hamas members; it’s because Israel effectively practices collective punishment, and if Israel wants to kill Palestinians there’s very little anyone can do about it (at least in the short term). The way you talk about this it’s like you’re talking about the destruction of Carthage – regrettable, maybe, but what’s done is done and we may as well move on. “Genocide is the course of human history” as xDaunt would say. Thing is, it’s not ancient history, it’s happening today, and there’s millions of Palestinians currently alive that soon might not be. That’s not inevitable, and we don’t have to be okay with it. In fact, the international community not being okay with it is the biggest reason they *haven’t* just killed them all already, and it’s not a given that they wouldn’t if we all decided that what’s done is done. No one should be ok with it. I agree. And we should do what we can to prevent all forms of suffering for all parties involved. And I am saying people let history cloud their judgment. Of all people I have discussed this topic with, not a single person thinks their preferred solution has any chance whatsoever of being a component of reality any time soon. So what’s the point? Is that not just some ivory tower thought experiment? If these lives are so important, why is it acceptable to let the death counter keep spinning while people review and compare previous borders? We all agree a 2 state solution has no visible path and only gets less probable every day. Yet people can’t seem to force themselves to pursue other solutions because of some history book sitting on their shelf. So people continue to die day after day because of what is actually just ivory tower nonsense.
What is your solution again? Because how i am reading it, even failure leading to a continuation of the status quo seems better than what I've understood you to propose.
Excludos, thanks for the writeup, good post. Don't have much more of a comment than that.
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Northern Ireland23767 Posts
On October 10 2023 00:25 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2023 16:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:On October 09 2023 09:02 Excludos wrote:On October 09 2023 03:19 JimmiC wrote:You use some EVEN IF’s but that he and likely you think Hamas are some sort of leftist freedom fighters because they are against the “capitalists” in Israel is pretty easy to see, and it could not be s’more wrong. Hamas is further right than a basically any group and they only allow one perspective. Your reading comprehension for your favourites and people you do not like leaves a lot to be desired. QUOTE] On May 19 2021 17:48 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 19 2021 17:24 Nebuchad wrote:
There is one cool thing about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and it's that the discourse has shifted dramatically. Last time this happened we had the discussion online and there were people making solid arguments on both sides, we had a little battle on the marketplace of ideas, and the people on the side of Palestine won that battle.
Which means that this time, support for Palestine is overwhelming in leftist places online. So, what can I say, when you're dealing with honest people who have a common goal, debate works, sort of. Leftist online places are set to raise more for Palestine than they did for Mermaids when Glinner decided to direct his constant transphobia at them. Especially Vaush has had a very successful stream, 250k+ in 24 hours.
Will charity solve the occupation, no it won't obviously. But it still signals that we have a pretty large voice, and that's cool. Other cracks start to form with larger protests all over the world, less pro-Israel propaganda in the media than usual (I have no explanation for that one but 1) hey, cool, I'll take it, and 2) there is still some dumb shit going around.
Imo one of the more important rhetorical battles to fight is the battle against the idea that it's complicated. One side has almost all of the power and chooses to oppress the other, openly using terrorism and openly supporting ethnic cleansing. Don't be on that side. Some things are complicated, others are not. The continued settlements is not complicated - they're abhorrent and so is supporting them. Amusingly, I've yet to see anyone defend this practice, even guys that are solidly on the side of Israel. They seem to conveniently ignore that this is the piece of aggression and argue that 'Israel has the right to defend itself' - but I haven't actually seen anyone in this thread or the USPol thread before the discussion moved defend the continued settlement policy. However, while people seem to be able to agree that Israel's settlement policy should end, figuring out where to revert back to is complicated. 1967 borders are two generations ago. We might agree that what happened in 1947-48 was a crime against the Palestinian people, but it's not like it's easy to revert that now. The question of 'who should live where' is complicated, even if we recognize that Israel is the main culprit in the conflict and even if we regard Hamas as freedom fighters more than as terrorists. I'm a bit late to the party, but the thread is moving fast. This would be an interesting debate if Palestine was up for discussing peace whatsoever. Israel did go out several times and offered peace with the inclusion of "returning occupied territories". Where exactly the border of those territories would go is something they could have debated had Hamas had any intentions other than exterminating all Jews from the area. This is why people who agree that the settlement policy is horrible still have trouble weighing too much fault on Israel. To draw parallels, it's a bit like if Russia today went "aight, Ukraine, we want peace, and we'll return all of your territories", and Ukraine just went "nah, we refuse. We won't stop until every Russian is dead". It would suddenly flip the conflict to be a lot more sympathetic to Russia It's not like Russia going 'we'll return all of your territories' at all though. That sounds like something that was said like 50 and denied years ago and I fail to see the relevance. If you actually have a source from the last decade with Israel stating that they're willing to return back to 1967 borders, including giving back land and homes taken by settlers, then I'll give a heartfelt apology and say hey, I am apparently ignorant of this and heavily amend my position. But right now, my interpretation is more like 'Russia offering peace, but one that includes Russia keeping most of if not all of the annexed territories (settlements) and also that includes them continuing to fairly regularly evict Ukrainians from their homes so that Russians can live in them instead', and I've seen enough of you in the Russia-Ukraine thread to know that this isn't something you would accept in that scenario. Correct, that would obviously not be an acceptable outcome. But let's go through all the previous peace talks, in order from last to first, as I'm also learning more details about them as I'm writing them here. If I got something wrong, please correct me. 2013-2014 is the latest attempt, initiated by the US. Israel, lead by Netanyahu, mainly got the blame (By the US) for tanking this one, although with the added caveat that "both sides did things that were incredibly unhelpful". Israel was not willing to return to 1967 borders on this one, but the return of some occupied areas was definitively on the table. Honestly though, reading through it, it's just a massive clusterfuck from everyone involved. I don't think this one had any chance of going anywhere from the start. Before that was the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. This was directly initiated by the previous six-day-war, which was completely tanked by literally everyone involved. Half the participants of the conflict didn't even bother showing up. The plan was drawn up by the US (Under Obama), and rejected by both Palestine and Israel (Both wholly embraced by the rest of the Arab world, who have continued to endorse it several times since). Israel did not want to withdraw to their pre-1967 borders. Palestine state head(s) were in favor, but Gaza (Hamas) were not. Hamas performing a terrorist attack on the day before the initiative likely did not sweeten the mood of the Israeli negotiators. In fact they used this exactly as an argument for telling Palestine to f-off. They were also worried about the large numbers of refugees into Israel, which is pretty dumb in my opinion as these people aren't going to disappear over night. At some point they will have to deal with them. Israel has since been on the fence about this plan over the years, ranging from outright rejection to "Eh, maybe?" all the way up to 2015, with Netanyahu again rejecting it in 2018. Right before this, in 2001, was the Taba Summit. This one seemingly had the closest chance of coming to a resolution, as stated by both parties involved. Unfortunately, politics got in the way. Israel had an election, and the newly elected Sharon party did not want to re-start the negotiations. This is the last time all parties involved actually wanted a resolution, and didn't actively try to sabotage the peace negotiations. The Taba Summit followed the 2000 Camp David Summit, of which no written proposal exists, and all parties have conflicting interpretation of what happened. Then there was the 1993 Oslo Accords. The return of all occupied areas wasn't really a part of this deal. But it's interesting in that it achieved the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from most of Gaza, a mutual recognition between PLO (Palestine) and Israel, and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. And I believe the first real attempt at a two-state plan was in the 1991 Madrid Conference. Which, as far as I can see, only really resulted in a roadmap that turned into the other conferences mentioned above. So, having spent over an hour reading through all of this, I'm going to backpedal a little bit. It's definitively not super black-and-white in terms of who has been offering what. Israel has for a long time been of the belief that returning some occupied areas should be the basis for peace negotiations, but then back to the 1967 borders, not the 1947 ones that Palestine wants. But it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when even this offer was on the table, as a lot of these negotiations are performed in secret, and it's all vague wishy washy with no real outcomes. Officially, the last time Netanyahu entertained 1967 borders was in 2015, but has since in 2018 rejected it entirely as basis for negotiations. It's entirely possible that 1967 could have happened at some point, if both parties weren't busy sabotaging all efforts to negotiate. Israel has the excuse of the Palestine state not being willing to fight terrorism, which is evidenced by the obvious of the existence of Hamas, but Israel also simultaneously clearly knows that they are the top-dog at the table, and aren't willing to stretch very far in terms of good-will either, in fact the exact opposite they are more than willing to tank negotiation efforts themselves. Man, the Ukraine conflict is a lot easier than this one in terms of who the bad guys are, that's for sure. But one of the constants in all this is the continuation of Hamas tanking any and all efforts for Israel and the Palestine State to reconcile. As long as they continue to exist, nothing can be done.
Excellent summation of some of the key junctures.
It’s beyond a tough one. Even purely theorycrafting there appears not just no simple path to resolution, but not even a complicated one.
Ukraine it’s pretty easy to envision multiple scenarios that end to a ceasing of the conflict. And once that conflict does cease it strikes me as likely to be settled for the foreseeable, not something liable to be a tinderbox liable to catch fire again at seemingly any moment.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland were an easy solve comparatively, a cessation of violence and a guarantee of a future referendum on Irish unification. The place is rather close to being 50/50 between Irish/British identity folks (I’m the latter incidentally) and there was never really the grotesque, genuinely genocidal sentiment you have in this particular conflict.
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On October 10 2023 00:50 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2023 00:18 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 23:47 Mohdoo wrote:On October 09 2023 22:30 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 14:26 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 12:12 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 11:31 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 06:12 ChristianS wrote:
Kwark, I think you’re closer to right in this exchange and TLoA is absolutely doing the bait and switch “opposing Israel on anything means supporting a second Holocaust” trick that Israel defenders have always done. You've got a good history of posting in good faith, so I want to return that good faith even while heavily disagreeing. The complaint is not that Kwark is not 100% pro Israel. You'll find very little pushback if you say that the Israeli settlements are wrong even from pro-Israel people. In Kwark's response to this post + Show Spoiler +On October 08 2023 03:11 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2023 02:17 Excludos wrote:On October 07 2023 22:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The framing that they just want to be left alone while continuing to encroach on palestinerne territory is absolutely ridiculous. It's insane how people are just willing to completely disregard context. That they are being attacked by rocket barrages and terrorism on the daily is seemingly unimportant. If Sweden did that to Norway, we'd be doing a lot more than Israel is in regards to counter-aggression. It's like if I keep punching you in the face, and you push me away, suddenly everyone around us goers "omfg how could you push?!". You answer with "I just want to be left alone!" and then people laugh and go "Shouldn't be pushing then!" If Palestine doesn't want Israel to keep pushing, then maybe they should seek peace? Or at the very least meet at the table. Israel doesn't want the occupied territories, and have numerous times claimed willingness to give them back He's talking about the illegal settlements, not the retaliatory attacks by Israel. But overall, I agree. While Israel is adding fuel to the fire by refusing to stop the illegal settlements, we can't overlook the context of this conflict. Namely, when the Arabs thought they had the upper hand, they tried to wipe Israel off the map on several occasions (the Palestinian Arabs were onboard). They chose violence over negotiated peace. On the other hand, once the situation shifted in favour of Israel, Israel was open to accepting several different peace proposals. Those were rejected by the Palestinians, who were unhappy with some of the terms. They were unwilling to accept that their negotiating position was getting progressively weaker, and they chose violence again. I think people siding with Palestine in this conflict are not holding Israel and Palestine to the same standard. If Israel acted the way the Arabs did, they would've wiped out the Palestinians a long time ago. @Drone I would hold off with such claims. The number of casualties on the Palestinian side come from the Palestinian officials, i.e. Hamas... He says On October 08 2023 03:16 KwarK wrote:
Wiping Israel off the map doesn’t necessarily mean killing every Israeli. The third Reich was wiped off of the map, for example. Israel is the state, not the people. They conflate the two deliberately. He's trying to defend "wipe Israel off the map" as merely "remove the country, but totally keep the people". It's bullshit and anyone who's been paying attention should know it. The Palestinians want an ethnic cleansing. The only thing preventing the ethnic cleansing is the power that the Israeli government has. If they ever lose a war or are otherwise dissolved, it will be an ethnic cleansing. The only question would be how many Israelis would escape versus how many would be part of the genocide. What country would take 7 million Jewish refugees because there is no way Palestinians would accept Jewish neighbors and allow them to live. Here's a spokesman for Hamas talking to Al Jazeera today: Osama Hamdan, senior spokesperson for Hamas, told Al Jazeera that the group was not attacking civilians even though the group’s own videos have shown its fighters taking elderly Israelis hostage during the fighting on Saturday.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International have also pointed out that Israeli civilians had been killed by Hamas.
But Hamdan insisted that the group was attacking only settlers living in illegal settlements, whom he described as legitimate targets.
“You have to differentiate between settlers and civilians. Settlers attacked Palestinians,” Hamdan said.
Asked whether civilians in southern Israel were also considered settlers, Hamdan said: “Everyone knows there are settlements there.”
“We are not targeting civilians on purpose. We have declared settlers are part of the occupation and part of the armed Israeli force. They are not civilians,” he added. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-hamas-a-simple-guide-tothe-palestinian-groupHe's not saying that the elderly were unfortunate casualties of war or that mistakes were made. He says that the elderly are not "civilians", they are "settlers" and thus killing and kidnapping them is okay. This is a spokesman for the political leadership of Palestine. It also looks like a concert for peace is a legitimate target according to Palestinians. I've already posted the decline in numbers of Jewish People in every other Mideast country. Every last one experienced an ethnic cleansing. People don't just up and move for the fun of it. They were forced out. Or if you want a non-Jewish example, you can look at what's happening to Christians in Egypt for another example. Church bombings, kidnapped women forced to marry Muslims, and plenty of killings. Fanatical Muslims will not live peacefully side by side with anyone else and there are way too many fanatical Muslims in the middle east. Being anti Israel is indeed taking a pro-genocide stance. However, I'll admit that most western people don't realize that's what they're actually supporting by being anti Israel. Most people are ignorant. And no, that doesn't mean you need to endorse everything the Israeli government does in order to be anti-genocide. However, you do need to support the right of Israel to exist and be against anyone who denies that right. Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? I mean, I guess the underlying question I'm not clear on is whether we're asking "what Kwark means by 'wipe Israel off the map' " or "what this or that Arab leader and/or Palestians generally means/meant by 'wipe Israel off the map' ". You have a lot more confidence than I do in asserting "what Palestinians want." That might just be me being ill-informed, I dunno. But Kwark's specific post is pretty clear that he, at least, is clarifying that ending the current government of Israel does not inherently mean genocide/ethnic cleansing of Israelis. Maybe that's what Palestinians would want. I'm pretty sure that's what Hamas would want. But if, for instance, the international community decided "we're not going to allow an ethnostate to exist" and forced Israel to change their form of government away from one that explicitly, legally determines who is and isn't a Jew and differentiates legal rights accordingly, I don't think that wouldn't necessarily entail genociding Israelis. You could claim that all those policies are necessary to preventing a genocide that would otherwise be inevitable. If so, you could assert "no, you're wrong, it's not possible to imagine ending the current Israeli state without an accompanying genocide of Israelis." But I just don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. Anyway it's clear Kwark doesn't, which is the disputed issue here. I think your anger at Kwark (and maybe TLoA's anger at Kwark) is based on the idea that he's apologizing for/running interference for bloodthirsty Arab leaders that just want to kill every Jew. Which, I dunno, those people certainly exist. I don't *think* Kwark is trying to defend those people, although any time you argue even a nuanced pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel position you're at least giving those people some cover, right? I am too, whether I like it or not, any time I argue that Israel's moral position is compromised or that Palestinians' rights are being trampled on. Like, would it help if Kwark explicitly said "I don't think Israelis should be genocided or ethnically cleansed, and I don't think any Palestinian or Arab leaders advocating that are on defensible moral ground"? I bet he'd do it, although I'm not sure if you'd believe him or not. Otherwise, I just don't think his intention is to empower those people (although he probably disagrees with you about how prevalent that opinion is, either among Palestinians or in the Arab world generally). I'll try to be more clear. I'm accusing people of being short-sighted more than malicious. I don't think any of the normal posters on this forum wants a genocide of the Jewish people. However, I am accusing people of not understanding the consequences of their preferred actions. I liken the situation to a poisoned pawn in chess. You move your queen to take that unprotected pawn, then the next opponent's move is to fork/check you and put you a few moves away from mate. In the real world, mate against Israel is the ethnic cleansing of the place. I'm trying to look more than one move ahead and see what would happen if Israel ended its version of apartheid. From my vantage point, that first move might look nice, but it will be devastating in the future. It would involve an influx of "Palestinians" that are actually radicals from all over the middle east. People willing to die in order to kill infidels. Then you get the terrorist attacks as people feel justified in killing anyone because they're "settlers" not civilians or whatever excuse they feel like that day. You'll get a break down of civil society and eventually pogroms. All you need to do is listen to the Palestinian leaders and you'll hear their desire for it. When someone says they're going to do something evil, don't just handwave it away. Admittedly, it would be a repeat of the Zionism that created Israel, just in reverse and with nowhere adjacent for the Jewish people to flee to. The Jewish people would be stupid to be on the receiving end of it. On October 09 2023 11:30 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 09:54 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
Something akin to the end of apartheid rule in South Africa or power sharing agreements in NI.
I'm not as familiar with NI as I'd like, so I'll go with South Africa as one which I know a little bit about. Do you see any differences between the South African situation and the Israel/Palestine situation that could result in extremely different results despite the same actions? Like, perhaps do you see a significant difference between Nelson Mandela and whoever the Palestinians have put in charge? Nelson Mandela, on trial where he would eventually be sentenced to life in prison, says this: During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. Nelson Mandela started out peacefully, did have a foray into more extreme methods and got prison time for it, and then came out promoting peace and reconciliation again. Even his more extreme methods involved "sabotage against property (designed to minimize risks of injury and death)". When and where did he say it was okay to kill the elderly whites because they were settlers, not civilians? I think I missed that part of his life. When did he refuse to recognize the rights of whites to exist in South Africa? When did he launch a war to wipe out the whites in South Africa? He as the leader, and the movement as a whole, was all about gaining equal rights. The Palestinian movement, from the very beginning, has been about annihilating Israel. The rhetoric during the founding of Israel says it and the rhetoric now says it. Who is the Palestinian comparable to Mandela? Who are the Palestinian people going to follow to peaceful equality? TLDR: Israelis have the right to exist and defend themselves. Fuck Hamas. The opposition to the creation of Israel is more complicated than a black and white good vs bad. The existence of Israel is not inherently neutral and framing it as such is oversimplifying things. But it’s too late now and Israel is better than any alternative. Yes. I completely agree with this TLDR. Well this just got a lot more specific in a way that might be worth focusing on. If I’m not misunderstanding you, you believe that ending Israel’s version of apartheid would necessarily (or, at least, most likely) result in ethnic cleansing of Israelis. I don’t think that’s an opinion shared by a number of posters here, so it’s worth talking through the chain of events. As I understand it, “Israel’s version of apartheid” refers to the fact that, since its creation, Israel has legally distinguished between Jews and non-Jews and discriminated in political rights based on the distinction. Most critically, the policy for a very long time (maybe still? I don’t know the exact history here) was that if you were a Jew, anywhere in the world, you could come to Israel and be given citizenship and land. That’s an understandable idea if you’re trying to give a home to the world’s Jewish population that’s been ravaged during WW2, but where is all that land supposed to come from? Well, it’s a war-torn region; lots of people over the years have fled their homes fearing for their family’s safety. If those people are Jews, you respect their land claim when they come back. If they’re not, you don’t, and now there’s some land freed up to give to newly arrived Jews hoping to take advantage of the policy. So I assume the thing you’re worried about is the so-called “right to return” that critics of Israel often call for. Basically, non-Jews whose families had land claims in the region should be allowed to come home, be given citizenship, and have their land back. And if I’m not mistaken, your fear is that a lot of those returning people are sufficiently radicalized against Israel they would just start committing random acts of terror against their neighbors? This is the point where I’m least certain I’m interpreting you correctly, so maybe I should just stop there before trying to analyze the argument further until you’ve had a chance to say whether that’s really your position or not. I'm saying something much simpler than that. Right now, there is heavy restrictions of movement between Gaza and Israel. Israel is essentially walled in and trying to protect against any incursions. If Israel ends apartheid, the walls have to come down. The people of Gaza will have freedom to go wherever they want in Israel. Right now, for a shockingly large number of radicalized Palestinian people, that means going into Israel and committing acts of terror. Then you have all the crazies from surrounding countries (including countries that don't immediately touch Israel like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc). People who can sneak into Gaza or the West bank and then blend in with the poorly documented Palestinians. They have one goal and that's an intifada. Get all those people into Israel and every day will look like yesterday. Huh, okay. So your worry is about current occupants of Gaza (and anyone who sneaks in to get included in the citizenship deal). I mean, I don’t know what to say. That’s an enormous population, including a huge number of children, that are living in a legal limbo because Israel won’t give them legal status and Palestine isn’t a state. But they have to stay that way forever because we can never know for certain they won’t be violent? I guess that’s “One state solution” off the table for you. What about “two state solution”? If we gave those people a government of their own, with territorial sovereignty and citizenship, and a right not to be bombed and occupied by the IDF all the time, that wouldn’t mean giving them the right to freely wander Israel. The “right to return” folks still won’t be happy, but would that look more like an acceptable outcome to you? Wouldn’t it also work if we simply copied the planet twice, and gave 1 earth to Palestine and 1 earth to Israel? We have no incentive to focus on a 2 state solution any more than we do a 2 planet solution. Both are equally likely in the next 50 years. I think it’s dishonest to cite this as some kind of actual possibility. And just to be clear, I’m well aware of the 1967 borders etc and it truly is not actually relevant from a “what is the path to peace most likely to occur” perspective. These former borders existing in the past do not mean they are extra likely to happen again. I mean, I’m as skeptical as you that Israel will seek a peaceful long-term resolution to the conflict. The last Israeli leader to try that got assassinated. But that doesn’t mean I have to lie or make pretend about what’s happening, or how we got here, or what will continue to happen and why. Palestinians are people, they have rights, and Israel’s treatment of them is indefensible. Americans preaching “freedom” and “democracy” while sending money and weapons to help bomb Gaza reminds me of French revolutionaries preaching the Declaration of the Rights of Man while sending expeditions to re-enslave Haiti. I strongly suspect that when the smoke clears, it will be clear that by this point in the timeline, Palestinian casualties had already well surpassed Israeli casualties since Friday. If not, just wait a few hours, we’ll get there. That’s not because Israel has been so rapid and effective at identifying and eliminating thousands of Hamas members; it’s because Israel effectively practices collective punishment, and if Israel wants to kill Palestinians there’s very little anyone can do about it (at least in the short term). The way you talk about this it’s like you’re talking about the destruction of Carthage – regrettable, maybe, but what’s done is done and we may as well move on. “Genocide is the course of human history” as xDaunt would say. Thing is, it’s not ancient history, it’s happening today, and there’s millions of Palestinians currently alive that soon might not be. That’s not inevitable, and we don’t have to be okay with it. In fact, the international community not being okay with it is the biggest reason they *haven’t* just killed them all already, and it’s not a given that they wouldn’t if we all decided that what’s done is done. No one should be ok with it. I agree. And we should do what we can to prevent all forms of suffering for all parties involved. And I am saying people let history cloud their judgment. Of all people I have discussed this topic with, not a single person thinks their preferred solution has any chance whatsoever of being a component of reality any time soon. So what’s the point? Is that not just some ivory tower thought experiment? If these lives are so important, why is it acceptable to let the death counter keep spinning while people review and compare previous borders? We all agree a 2 state solution has no visible path and only gets less probable every day. Yet people can’t seem to force themselves to pursue other solutions because of some history book sitting on their shelf. So people continue to die day after day because of what is actually just ivory tower nonsense.
What’s the point of discussing it at all? I assume nobody’s forcing you to. What more can a discussion thread aspire to, than clear-eyed analysis of what’s happening and why, what outcomes should happen, and what the barriers to those outcomes are?
We’re in the midst of a pretty dramatic sea change in the conflict. That’s usually when it’s most useful to have not just pattern recognition of the existing status quo, but an understanding of the underlying causal forces that produced that status quo. Israel has been increasingly trending in recent years toward an unchecked Netanyahu dictatorship; now that government has failed as colossally as you could imagine in their single most important function. Meanwhile huge percentages of Hamas leadership are likely to be dead or deep in hiding in the immediate future. Does that change the viability of different resolutions that were previously proposed to the conflict? How so? If not, why not?
I mean, in the immediate future Netanyahu is still in charge and has already begun massive indiscriminate bombing campaigns. But then what? Do we reach some new, even more terrible status quo? Does the old one get rebuilt somehow? I really don’t have a handle on all the moving pieces here, but that’s why I’m trying to understand it as best I can. Understanding what resolutions people have hoped for, and why they were or weren’t viable at previous times, is part of that understanding.
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On October 10 2023 00:09 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2023 00:08 ZeroByte13 wrote:On October 09 2023 23:47 Cricketer12 wrote:
They are celebrating what they see as an oppressed people having the courage to fight to take their land back. Is raping women next to the corpses of their friends and the parading them while they're still bleeding = courage to fight? No. The IDF isn't courageous. Obviously civilains shouldn't be harmed at all. Hamas is fucked up for what they did. No one is making a different argument. But if you can reduce this entire struggle to "hurr durr the arab terrorists are rapists and murderers" while ignoring the actual atrocities that happen to Palestine on the daily you'll never be able to have a genuine discussion on this.
And yet you are defending people clearly celebrating a massive terrorist attack...
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On October 10 2023 00:58 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2023 00:50 Mohdoo wrote:On October 10 2023 00:18 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 23:47 Mohdoo wrote:On October 09 2023 22:30 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 14:26 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 12:12 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 11:31 RenSC2 wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 ChristianS wrote:On October 09 2023 09:30 RenSC2 wrote:[quote] You've got a good history of posting in good faith, so I want to return that good faith even while heavily disagreeing. The complaint is not that Kwark is not 100% pro Israel. You'll find very little pushback if you say that the Israeli settlements are wrong even from pro-Israel people. In Kwark's response to this post + Show Spoiler +On October 08 2023 03:11 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2023 02:17 Excludos wrote:On October 07 2023 22:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The framing that they just want to be left alone while continuing to encroach on palestinerne territory is absolutely ridiculous. It's insane how people are just willing to completely disregard context. That they are being attacked by rocket barrages and terrorism on the daily is seemingly unimportant. If Sweden did that to Norway, we'd be doing a lot more than Israel is in regards to counter-aggression. It's like if I keep punching you in the face, and you push me away, suddenly everyone around us goers "omfg how could you push?!". You answer with "I just want to be left alone!" and then people laugh and go "Shouldn't be pushing then!" If Palestine doesn't want Israel to keep pushing, then maybe they should seek peace? Or at the very least meet at the table. Israel doesn't want the occupied territories, and have numerous times claimed willingness to give them back He's talking about the illegal settlements, not the retaliatory attacks by Israel. But overall, I agree. While Israel is adding fuel to the fire by refusing to stop the illegal settlements, we can't overlook the context of this conflict. Namely, when the Arabs thought they had the upper hand, they tried to wipe Israel off the map on several occasions (the Palestinian Arabs were onboard). They chose violence over negotiated peace. On the other hand, once the situation shifted in favour of Israel, Israel was open to accepting several different peace proposals. Those were rejected by the Palestinians, who were unhappy with some of the terms. They were unwilling to accept that their negotiating position was getting progressively weaker, and they chose violence again. I think people siding with Palestine in this conflict are not holding Israel and Palestine to the same standard. If Israel acted the way the Arabs did, they would've wiped out the Palestinians a long time ago. @Drone I would hold off with such claims. The number of casualties on the Palestinian side come from the Palestinian officials, i.e. Hamas... He says [quote] He's trying to defend "wipe Israel off the map" as merely "remove the country, but totally keep the people". It's bullshit and anyone who's been paying attention should know it. The Palestinians want an ethnic cleansing. The only thing preventing the ethnic cleansing is the power that the Israeli government has. If they ever lose a war or are otherwise dissolved, it will be an ethnic cleansing. The only question would be how many Israelis would escape versus how many would be part of the genocide. What country would take 7 million Jewish refugees because there is no way Palestinians would accept Jewish neighbors and allow them to live. Here's a spokesman for Hamas talking to Al Jazeera today: [quote] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-hamas-a-simple-guide-tothe-palestinian-groupHe's not saying that the elderly were unfortunate casualties of war or that mistakes were made. He says that the elderly are not "civilians", they are "settlers" and thus killing and kidnapping them is okay. This is a spokesman for the political leadership of Palestine. It also looks like a concert for peace is a legitimate target according to Palestinians. I've already posted the decline in numbers of Jewish People in every other Mideast country. Every last one experienced an ethnic cleansing. People don't just up and move for the fun of it. They were forced out. Or if you want a non-Jewish example, you can look at what's happening to Christians in Egypt for another example. Church bombings, kidnapped women forced to marry Muslims, and plenty of killings. Fanatical Muslims will not live peacefully side by side with anyone else and there are way too many fanatical Muslims in the middle east. Being anti Israel is indeed taking a pro-genocide stance. However, I'll admit that most western people don't realize that's what they're actually supporting by being anti Israel. Most people are ignorant. And no, that doesn't mean you need to endorse everything the Israeli government does in order to be anti-genocide. However, you do need to support the right of Israel to exist and be against anyone who denies that right. Or if you think I'm wrong, let's try to answer a question, what is the scenario where the Israeli government is dissolved and we don't have an ethnic cleansing? I mean, I guess the underlying question I'm not clear on is whether we're asking "what Kwark means by 'wipe Israel off the map' " or "what this or that Arab leader and/or Palestians generally means/meant by 'wipe Israel off the map' ". You have a lot more confidence than I do in asserting "what Palestinians want." That might just be me being ill-informed, I dunno. But Kwark's specific post is pretty clear that he, at least, is clarifying that ending the current government of Israel does not inherently mean genocide/ethnic cleansing of Israelis. Maybe that's what Palestinians would want. I'm pretty sure that's what Hamas would want. But if, for instance, the international community decided "we're not going to allow an ethnostate to exist" and forced Israel to change their form of government away from one that explicitly, legally determines who is and isn't a Jew and differentiates legal rights accordingly, I don't think that wouldn't necessarily entail genociding Israelis. You could claim that all those policies are necessary to preventing a genocide that would otherwise be inevitable. If so, you could assert "no, you're wrong, it's not possible to imagine ending the current Israeli state without an accompanying genocide of Israelis." But I just don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. Anyway it's clear Kwark doesn't, which is the disputed issue here. I think your anger at Kwark (and maybe TLoA's anger at Kwark) is based on the idea that he's apologizing for/running interference for bloodthirsty Arab leaders that just want to kill every Jew. Which, I dunno, those people certainly exist. I don't *think* Kwark is trying to defend those people, although any time you argue even a nuanced pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel position you're at least giving those people some cover, right? I am too, whether I like it or not, any time I argue that Israel's moral position is compromised or that Palestinians' rights are being trampled on. Like, would it help if Kwark explicitly said "I don't think Israelis should be genocided or ethnically cleansed, and I don't think any Palestinian or Arab leaders advocating that are on defensible moral ground"? I bet he'd do it, although I'm not sure if you'd believe him or not. Otherwise, I just don't think his intention is to empower those people (although he probably disagrees with you about how prevalent that opinion is, either among Palestinians or in the Arab world generally). I'll try to be more clear. I'm accusing people of being short-sighted more than malicious. I don't think any of the normal posters on this forum wants a genocide of the Jewish people. However, I am accusing people of not understanding the consequences of their preferred actions. I liken the situation to a poisoned pawn in chess. You move your queen to take that unprotected pawn, then the next opponent's move is to fork/check you and put you a few moves away from mate. In the real world, mate against Israel is the ethnic cleansing of the place. I'm trying to look more than one move ahead and see what would happen if Israel ended its version of apartheid. From my vantage point, that first move might look nice, but it will be devastating in the future. It would involve an influx of "Palestinians" that are actually radicals from all over the middle east. People willing to die in order to kill infidels. Then you get the terrorist attacks as people feel justified in killing anyone because they're "settlers" not civilians or whatever excuse they feel like that day. You'll get a break down of civil society and eventually pogroms. All you need to do is listen to the Palestinian leaders and you'll hear their desire for it. When someone says they're going to do something evil, don't just handwave it away. Admittedly, it would be a repeat of the Zionism that created Israel, just in reverse and with nowhere adjacent for the Jewish people to flee to. The Jewish people would be stupid to be on the receiving end of it. On October 09 2023 11:30 KwarK wrote:On October 09 2023 10:42 RenSC2 wrote:
[quote]
I'm not as familiar with NI as I'd like, so I'll go with South Africa as one which I know a little bit about. Do you see any differences between the South African situation and the Israel/Palestine situation that could result in extremely different results despite the same actions?
Like, perhaps do you see a significant difference between Nelson Mandela and whoever the Palestinians have put in charge? Nelson Mandela, on trial where he would eventually be sentenced to life in prison, says this:
[quote]
Nelson Mandela started out peacefully, did have a foray into more extreme methods and got prison time for it, and then came out promoting peace and reconciliation again. Even his more extreme methods involved "sabotage against property (designed to minimize risks of injury and death)".
When and where did he say it was okay to kill the elderly whites because they were settlers, not civilians? I think I missed that part of his life. When did he refuse to recognize the rights of whites to exist in South Africa? When did he launch a war to wipe out the whites in South Africa?
He as the leader, and the movement as a whole, was all about gaining equal rights.
The Palestinian movement, from the very beginning, has been about annihilating Israel. The rhetoric during the founding of Israel says it and the rhetoric now says it.
Who is the Palestinian comparable to Mandela? Who are the Palestinian people going to follow to peaceful equality? TLDR: Israelis have the right to exist and defend themselves. Fuck Hamas. The opposition to the creation of Israel is more complicated than a black and white good vs bad. The existence of Israel is not inherently neutral and framing it as such is oversimplifying things. But it’s too late now and Israel is better than any alternative. Yes. I completely agree with this TLDR. Well this just got a lot more specific in a way that might be worth focusing on. If I’m not misunderstanding you, you believe that ending Israel’s version of apartheid would necessarily (or, at least, most likely) result in ethnic cleansing of Israelis. I don’t think that’s an opinion shared by a number of posters here, so it’s worth talking through the chain of events. As I understand it, “Israel’s version of apartheid” refers to the fact that, since its creation, Israel has legally distinguished between Jews and non-Jews and discriminated in political rights based on the distinction. Most critically, the policy for a very long time (maybe still? I don’t know the exact history here) was that if you were a Jew, anywhere in the world, you could come to Israel and be given citizenship and land. That’s an understandable idea if you’re trying to give a home to the world’s Jewish population that’s been ravaged during WW2, but where is all that land supposed to come from? Well, it’s a war-torn region; lots of people over the years have fled their homes fearing for their family’s safety. If those people are Jews, you respect their land claim when they come back. If they’re not, you don’t, and now there’s some land freed up to give to newly arrived Jews hoping to take advantage of the policy. So I assume the thing you’re worried about is the so-called “right to return” that critics of Israel often call for. Basically, non-Jews whose families had land claims in the region should be allowed to come home, be given citizenship, and have their land back. And if I’m not mistaken, your fear is that a lot of those returning people are sufficiently radicalized against Israel they would just start committing random acts of terror against their neighbors? This is the point where I’m least certain I’m interpreting you correctly, so maybe I should just stop there before trying to analyze the argument further until you’ve had a chance to say whether that’s really your position or not. I'm saying something much simpler than that. Right now, there is heavy restrictions of movement between Gaza and Israel. Israel is essentially walled in and trying to protect against any incursions. If Israel ends apartheid, the walls have to come down. The people of Gaza will have freedom to go wherever they want in Israel. Right now, for a shockingly large number of radicalized Palestinian people, that means going into Israel and committing acts of terror. Then you have all the crazies from surrounding countries (including countries that don't immediately touch Israel like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc). People who can sneak into Gaza or the West bank and then blend in with the poorly documented Palestinians. They have one goal and that's an intifada. Get all those people into Israel and every day will look like yesterday. Huh, okay. So your worry is about current occupants of Gaza (and anyone who sneaks in to get included in the citizenship deal). I mean, I don’t know what to say. That’s an enormous population, including a huge number of children, that are living in a legal limbo because Israel won’t give them legal status and Palestine isn’t a state. But they have to stay that way forever because we can never know for certain they won’t be violent? I guess that’s “One state solution” off the table for you. What about “two state solution”? If we gave those people a government of their own, with territorial sovereignty and citizenship, and a right not to be bombed and occupied by the IDF all the time, that wouldn’t mean giving them the right to freely wander Israel. The “right to return” folks still won’t be happy, but would that look more like an acceptable outcome to you? Wouldn’t it also work if we simply copied the planet twice, and gave 1 earth to Palestine and 1 earth to Israel? We have no incentive to focus on a 2 state solution any more than we do a 2 planet solution. Both are equally likely in the next 50 years. I think it’s dishonest to cite this as some kind of actual possibility. And just to be clear, I’m well aware of the 1967 borders etc and it truly is not actually relevant from a “what is the path to peace most likely to occur” perspective. These former borders existing in the past do not mean they are extra likely to happen again. I mean, I’m as skeptical as you that Israel will seek a peaceful long-term resolution to the conflict. The last Israeli leader to try that got assassinated. But that doesn’t mean I have to lie or make pretend about what’s happening, or how we got here, or what will continue to happen and why. Palestinians are people, they have rights, and Israel’s treatment of them is indefensible. Americans preaching “freedom” and “democracy” while sending money and weapons to help bomb Gaza reminds me of French revolutionaries preaching the Declaration of the Rights of Man while sending expeditions to re-enslave Haiti. I strongly suspect that when the smoke clears, it will be clear that by this point in the timeline, Palestinian casualties had already well surpassed Israeli casualties since Friday. If not, just wait a few hours, we’ll get there. That’s not because Israel has been so rapid and effective at identifying and eliminating thousands of Hamas members; it’s because Israel effectively practices collective punishment, and if Israel wants to kill Palestinians there’s very little anyone can do about it (at least in the short term). The way you talk about this it’s like you’re talking about the destruction of Carthage – regrettable, maybe, but what’s done is done and we may as well move on. “Genocide is the course of human history” as xDaunt would say. Thing is, it’s not ancient history, it’s happening today, and there’s millions of Palestinians currently alive that soon might not be. That’s not inevitable, and we don’t have to be okay with it. In fact, the international community not being okay with it is the biggest reason they *haven’t* just killed them all already, and it’s not a given that they wouldn’t if we all decided that what’s done is done. No one should be ok with it. I agree. And we should do what we can to prevent all forms of suffering for all parties involved. And I am saying people let history cloud their judgment. Of all people I have discussed this topic with, not a single person thinks their preferred solution has any chance whatsoever of being a component of reality any time soon. So what’s the point? Is that not just some ivory tower thought experiment? If these lives are so important, why is it acceptable to let the death counter keep spinning while people review and compare previous borders? We all agree a 2 state solution has no visible path and only gets less probable every day. Yet people can’t seem to force themselves to pursue other solutions because of some history book sitting on their shelf. So people continue to die day after day because of what is actually just ivory tower nonsense. What is your solution again? Because how i am reading it, even failure leading to a continuation of the status quo seems better than what I've understood you to propose. Excludos, thanks for the writeup, good post. Don't have much more of a comment than that.
My solution is to find a way to put them somewhere else. The fact that relocating 2 million people is a daunting task is irrelevant when the only other solution being discussed is even less probable.
When you compare:
Option 1: 0% possible
Option 2: 1% possible
Option 2 is a great option. My point isn’t that I have some superb elegant solution that we can bust out next week. No such thing exists. But sipping our chai in an ivory tower talking about old borders is no matter what a waste of time.
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