Comment by underlipton
2 years ago
>Okay - then what should be Israel's response?
The same response I have concluded should have been the US' response to 9/11: turn the other cheek, and invest heavily in reconciling with "enemy" forces while rebuilding "enemy" infrastructure and institutions, while dealing with individual bad actors on a case-by-case basis as a matter of legal (rather than martial) procedure.
And I'm not joking.
I feel bad for Israelis who have let their government doom them to a generation of government mismanagement and expensive, arduous military adventure. My single-payer health insurance and my friends' free college education went into a couple Patriot missiles, and I do wonder what they're going to have to give up.
1) thats politically a dead end,
nobody will immediately make friends after a massacre and mass rape. Especially after decades of tensions and double especially when the muslim world once descended on Israel at once.
2) Quiet reminder that there are 1B followers of Islam and there has always been a wish (especially from Iran) to end the existence of Israel: the Palestinian people are unfortunately a pawn in that game. - Winning over the palestinians wont actually win you over anything. Instead you will have terrorist attacks by “palestinians” until the tensions are stoked again.
>nobody will immediately make friends after a massacre and mass rape
Certainly, Israel has seen to it that it will be much more difficult. Which would be my point.
>Quiet reminder that there are 1B followers of Islam and there has always been a wish (especially from Iran) to end the existence of Israel: the Palestinian people are unfortunately a pawn in that game.
As a black American, I understand the Israeli hypersensitivity to even the whiff of anti-Semitic violence as the harbinger of a possible repeat of history that should never be repeated. I also understand that lashing out at every perceived slight as the harbinger of a possible repeat of history that should never be repeated is a great way to make allies unsympathetic, as they get caught in the crossfire. The real enemy is the war you want.
I would like Israel to reach a state where it doesn't constantly fear for its existence. The road there passes through, "Not doing another Nakba."
> Winning over the palestinians wont actually win you over anything.
Establishment of a Palestinian State with a stake in peace and stability would win you something.
> Instead you will have terrorist attacks by “palestinians” until the tensions are stoked again.
One of the things this would win you is someone with interest and capacity to respond to this where the occupation/colonialism/ethnic-/religious-conflict narrative would not be applicable.
I would love to sit here and write a comment about how youre absolutely right.
But, I empathise fully with Israel and also with the Palestinian people.
On Israels side you have what amounts to a large motivated but not universal contingent of people who will literally slaughter themselves to make you look bad on the world stage, pulling out long protracted altercations where the intent is clearly to provoke the most disgusting outcome and whom have a history of invading, slaughtering and rioting. Sometimes bringing in half the Muslim world to do it.
I would be fucking terrified.
But for the Palestinians, you have an interloper, stealing the best of your ancestral lands, relegating you to tiny torrid stretches of impoverished city because they claim that they “don't trust you” based on nothing but your accident of birth. living every day knowing that this tiny population of privileged people who dont look like you at all and are so heavily financed that they live significantly better lives on your land. Meanwhile hearing constantly that they continuously kill your countrymen. For all you know: for the crime of existing.
I’d be pissed too, and I wouldn't let up either.
Both sides feel like the victim, its easy for us to sit here half a world away and conjure up idealised scenarios. But Israel is scared of the entire middle east and having an irate and catastrophically motivated population bent on its eradication and tries to handle it the best it can.
Palestine is scared of being obliterated and is outright hateful towards what it considers oppressors.
Trust is hard earned and fragile, and there are external actors involved that would like this tension to go on indefinitely.
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That was attempted, and more death followed. Heck many of the gazans who were employed by the kibbutz ended up being spies to inform Hamas of security procedures AND killed kibbutz workers.
We both know that solution only works if the other side wants peace. Most gazans want death to Israel and death to all Jews globally (see the recent polls). The schools teach it is good to kill a Jew in America, Europe, or Israel.
It is a shame that this could never, ever happen politically, when from an outside, dispassionate perspective, it just seems obviously and objectively correct.
I think a lot of people get “turn the other cheek” wrong, much like “a few bad apples”, and “blood is thicker than water”.
Here’s the passage from Matthew 5:38-39 KJV:
“38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
What Jesus is advocating is nonviolent resistance, not walking away. MLK Jr. understood this passage well.
>I think a lot of people get “turn the other cheek” wrong
Good thing I'm not one of them. The point is that the way to resist effectively is to not let yourself be drawn into a quagmire or an opportunity to show the world your ass (which is what Israel and the US have done). Responding with the intent to do good works (which you will admittedly fall short of, because you're human, landing you somewhere at least justifiable) is better than responding with the intent to wipe out the opposition, indiscriminately and by any means necessary, and accidentally committing a form of genocide. (Note: we (Americans) did that too. The fire next time, and I hate it.)
Under your plan, how many instances of oct 7 do you think Israel should tolerate before they rethink things?
Under my plan, reconciliation and shared prosperity makes more instances of oct 7 terminally unworkable for any who would attempt them. There haven't been too many Pearl Harbor reduxes, if I'm not mistaken.
Is it your understanding that America turned the other cheek after Pearl Harbor?
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