Comment by xg15

I went to school with some first generation Palestinians just 5-ish years ago.

One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave. He has never been back to Palestine since then because another detainment or missed visa problem, etc. would derail his career.

>This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea; "it's strategically important for us" isn't really sufficient justification for mass murder, and - on a purely geographic point - talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate.

Russia is the largest country on earth, whereas the distance from the West Bank to Tel-Aviv is like 5 miles.

This roughly like arguing that owning a personal nuke is no different from owning a firecracker. The scale of the threats are separated by several orders of magnitude.

>And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?

Because the Palestinians rejected the 1948 borders, started a war, and then lost. Incidentally they also rejected the 1967 borders by starting a war in 1973 and losing that one too, but the consensus around those borders is at least a bit more solidified so people still pretend they're meaningful rather than null-and-void.

The work that has been going on for the past month is systematically destroying every known air defense asset of the Syrian government (and securing a key mountain peak with newly entrenched ground troops) in order to have a permanent air corridor with which to strike Iran.

The Israeli F-35s can get through right now, but they have limited payload and have to rely on slightly dicey refueling arrangements. With Syria under Israeli air cover, they can run tankers right up to western Iran and strike anywhere in the country.

Repeated, unilateral Israeli aggression is the status quo in the region.

>This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea;

How many times have Ukranian terrorists murdered a bunch of Russian athletes at the Olympics? Or hijacked a 3rd nation plane carrying Russian tourists and then murdered them? How many bombings have Ukranian extremists carried out in Europe, targeting Russian tourists?

They are not the same arguments.

At all.

Wait, does Ukraine have a long established history of military attacks against Russia?

>This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea

The rhetoric may be superficially similar, but facts on the ground aren't. The Russian state is not under an existential threat in the same way that Israel would be with Hezbollah in the north, and a similar entity in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is a tiny nation with a tiny population. Russian and Israel's security issues are simply not comparable.

>talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate

They are linked, and highlight the core problem to Israel - namely - disengagement does not work with a hostile entity.

Israel in 2005 disengaged from Gaza. It wasn't a full disengagement as Israel still exerted control over the airspace and territorial water, but it also wasn't nothing and it was an olive-branch and a big opportunity. Instead it resulted in a Hamas electoral victory, and rocket attacks, and a circle of retaliatory actions from Israel and Hamas. Imagine a world, where post-disengagement there were no attacks from Gaza, no preparation for war and smuggling of weapons into Gaza by Hamas - by this point, where would we be? Would Israel still maintain the same kind of blockade? I just don't think so. I truly believe it would be a model for permanent peace and Palestinian statehood.

>And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?

I mentioned 1967 borders, because as best as I can gather, that is the current Palestinian position. Although it isn't clear exactly what the Palestinian position is as Palestinians do tend to maintain some level of ambiguity on this point.

> If Israel's war is with Iran, why is that war not being carried out in Iran?

It goes the other way actually - Iran is at war with Israel. Iran is using proxies, Hamas, and Hezbollah to strike at Israel.

Egypt implementing a blockade triggered the 1967 conflict. It didn't come from nowhere. Then that was followed up by yet another war against Israel in 1973.

That's part of the problem as well - it's not exactly clear what the Palestinian position is - partly because I think they see things like 'right of return' (which is completely unacceptable to Israel) as bargaining chips to trade for something during negotiations.

Forced displacement is a recognized crime against humanity. Israel forcibly displaced these people, refusing their right of return is a crime.

The fact that we use the term "Settling" and "Settlers" is kind of grotesque. These places are occupied, by Palestinians, who have to be ethnically cleansed (with varying degrees of violence) in order to establish new Israeli Jewish settlements. This is done with Israeli Jewish soldiers, a hundred thousand of whom now patrol hundreds of enclaves and all major routes through the West Bank.

Isreali and US right-wing leaders find a hostile Iran to be extremely politically convenient, and the military-industrial complex that they share with each other and with centrist parties just wants a reason to keep existing. People talk about a potential "War with Iran", but in reality we've given them maybe a dozen different diplomatic casus belli in the past decade, in part to deter them from political moderation.

The plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi (aka, Jews who never left the Middle East), at 45% of the population [1]. This isn't about Europeans, or even "race": Mizrahi Jews and their Palestinian neighbors are racially indistinguishable.

Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews. [2] Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism, Ashkenazi Jews are firmly within the Middle Eastern/Levantine clade and are more closely related to Palestinians than they are any European group. [3]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews_in_Israel

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews_in_Israel

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews

That’s cool and all but the Israelis are in Israel already, there’s no turning back the clock on Zionism without the mass expulsion of Jews who have no other home to go to.

Palestinians have a legitimate historical claim and so do Israelis. They’re exactly that, historical. If both sides can’t let those be history, it’s either eternal conflict or the elimination of one of them.

Going to pretend that Jews haven’t lived there for thousands and thousands of years, before the Arabs arrived?

Ethnocentric racism is never good and it is, indeed, rampant in Israel, but it's hard to compare European colonialism to Zionism for a few reasons. The cultural and historical affinity of Jews, including Jews residing in Europe, was nothing like that of Europeans to the Americas, Africa, or East Asia. For well over a millennium Jews were praying for a return to Zion three times a day, even after the collapse of the Roman Empire and its later conquest (from the Byzantine Empire) by the Arab Islamic Empire, there have been many (small) migrations of Jews to the area [1], there has been an uninterrupted (small) presence of Jews there, and Jews in Europe were considered "racially" oriental "semites". Unlike European-style settler- or exploitation colonialism, there wasn't any metropole to Zionism, in the name of which colonisation was taking place. Finally, the bigger migration by modern Zionism in the time of the Ottoman Empire (that is when this conflict started, not under the Brits, who came into the picture -- after Tel Aviv was a city), came as a result of difficulties the Jews experienced in Europe and the Russian Empire, and certainly not on behalf of those powers.

That's not to say that Israel (like all countries in North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand) isn't a form of settler colonialism [1], sometimes openly and consciously so, but it is different from European colonialism (and in some respects it can be different for the worse, at least compared to some specific European colonies).

So yes, some things are simple, but your comparisons to things that were quite different actually shows how other things are not so simple. But it is precisely because history is often complex and almost never easily generalisable that I hate using it either as moral justification or condemnation of present events. I don't think that the fact both Arabs and Jews came to the Levant through migration and conquest (even according to both culture's own national mythology) has any bearing on present moral responsibility. In the end, as you say, ethnocentric nationalism is just wrong.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judais...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism

That is wrong. There were conflicts before, the Hebron massacre (1929) for example. There was an Arab nationalism and the Mufti of Jerusalem met with Hitler and planned a middle-eastern Holocaust.

Also, Jews were expelled from surrounding nations when Israel was founded, even more than Palestinians were driven from what now is Israel. There never was any compensation or talk about their right to return and these are not Jews with European ancestry.

Frankly, I think not a single statement of yours is true.

What a pile of nonsense...

Whose colony is Israel? Do you even understand what this word means?

You are just parroting some propaganda lines that you don't understand. The propaganda lines that were specifically constructed to appeal to emotions (by referencing European colonialism that started with exploring Africa and India with subsequent conquest, which did result in many bad things, but has nothing to do with what happened in Israel beyond some superficial similarity).

Colonialism was bad because the colonial powers took freedoms away from the local population, siphoned their wealth to the country-colonizer while devastating the colony's inhabitants. Israel did nothing of sorts. It never wanted to have anything to do with the local population. In fact, one of the major sources of conflict was that Jewish population that came to replace the Turks who owned the land worked by the locals didn't want the locals to work that land anymore. And the landless peasants thus became unemployed / unemployable.

So, Arabs living in Israel used to be servants to the Turks, but once Jews replaced the Turks, and "freed" the Arabs, the later discovered themselves to be useless and without means of sustaining themselves. Not a good spot to be in, but hey, at least now they were "free" (I do use this ironically, I don't think they wanted that kind of freedom). Arabs, of course, thought about former Turkish land as their own (because they used to work it), but it's no more theirs than it is Jewish or whoever else inhabited that area historically.

Bottom line, claiming land based on some historical past that was cancelled by more recent historical events is a road to nowhere. And if you try to follow it, Jews probably have a better claim to that territory than Arabs, who invaded and occupied that territory later.

But, more importantly, today, the conflict isn't even about the land at all. All major players would be willing to make territorial concessions, if the core of the problem was addressed. And people are at the core of the problem, not the land. Something needs to be done with the Arabs inhabiting the occupied territories: they need to get some kind of a political status with an eye to permanency. Either completely abandon the program of building an independent state and join some other country, or the opposite. But neither seems likely. And so the conflict will go on for as long as this issue isn't solved.

True, but Israel could be seen as just the latest Crusade.

It's 'not complicated' if one is lazy. The comment is missing a lot of mitigating pieces of information:

- the empires that governed the land before '48 and how that affects consent

- the lack of options for Jews facing persecution, pograms and a holocaust given immigration policies of nations around the world

- the many Jews in Israel formerly from middle-eastern nations

- the complication to the birth-right citizenship argument that all Jews have Israeli ancestry (albeit very distant, in many cases)

- the UN Partition Plan for Palestine

The problem with the conflict is that both sides are right. It's not the Palestinians' fault that their land was least bad refuge for Jews, but it probably was.

It's a 120 year old feud, quite a lot, and even with a one sided extremist view such as your own I would at least hope anti semitism, pogroms, the holocaust and the right for self determination would make you see there's at least a bit of complexity here.

Also - even if this take was true , what's your end game - all states based on past colonialism need to be abolished ? Or is that the right solution only for Israel. E.g if Mexico starts bombing the U.S to get back Mexico, parts of Texas etc, we should all support them right?

"The current conflict isn't some thousand year old feud"

Well, actually, it is.

There were 1200 years of war, conquest, slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid up until the caliphate was defeated and broken up in 1920/1924. For 1200 years, non-muslims lived under apartheid (Dhimmi). Up until that point, Islamic supremacism was as firmly established as white supremacism was in America.

I suppose if America (which itself was built on war, conquest, slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and apartheid) was defeated in WWI, broken up into various nations, and some land was made available to the Native Americans to build their own sovereign nation, you would be against that ? After all, at that time, Native Americans accounted for only .25% of the population. Since there were so few of them it would make no sense for them to have their own nation.

Wars have consequences. Many ethnic groups lost their lands due to the expansion of the caliphate over 1200 years. The caliphate was then defeated, and things have changed.

"... ethno-centric racism are never good".

While in no way saying that this supports the idea that "ethno-centric racism" is good, you should read the constitutions of the 22 Arab countries in the Arab League. They have, as their basic principals that they are Arab/Muslim countries, and have Islam/Sharia as their law. So, are all of these countries also illegitimate ? Or, just Israel ? Or maybe America should change its constitution to declare that America is a white European country based on Christian law ?

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Doesn't the Torah count for something? It works slower than fiber optics but is massively parallel.

This is a lot of buzzwords but no content.

The background behind the current conflict goes something like this:

Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived in Palestine during the Ottoman era. Jews discovered Europe was pretty hostile, Zionism was born. Many move to Palestine, buy land and settle down. The Ottomans lose WWI, lose Palestine to the British. The British Empire started fracturing, they realised they couldn't hold it together, they decide they'll leave Palestine and create a plan to partition it. The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends. The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them. They lose. The Jews gain more territory. The Arab parts of Palestine get annexed into Jordan and Egypt.

Then, when all the Arab states fought Israel again, Jordan loses the west bank, Egypt loses Gaza and all of Sinai (!!). Israel gave Sinai back for peace, eventually both Egypt and Jordan renounced their claim on Gaza and the West Bank. And that's how we ended up here, more or less.

Now, as for the colonialism part, Jews have always lived in the area. Even during the Ottoman Era. In fact, Zionism started during the Ottoman Era. Also relatively few people lived in Palestine, less than a million total in 1922. And the Jews who did move to Israel after it's establishment, largely moved there as a result of persecution by Arabs (plenty of Jews lived all over the middle east).

Western Europe went through ~200 years of brutal religious wars from the advent of Protestantism. The same is going on in the Mideast, it just started only 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Thank you for providing an educated response to the exhausting "ancient conflict" discourse

> the Levant separated the empires of Mesopotamia and Anatolia from Egypt. The numerous battles that happened at Meggido

The Egyptians were a major force in fomenting regional frictions with Israel. And the Levant remains a crossroad—it borders by land or sea the spheres of influence of the EU, Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Gulf monarchies, Egypt and America.

> convincing rulers in the Levant to ally themselves more closely with them at the expense of the Assyrians

Iran versus the West (and Gulf monarchies) in literally Syria.

The region isn’t pre-destined for chaos. But the geography and history make peace difficult. (There is always another person who can “legitimately” claim some land when you’re sited next to the cradle of civilisation.)

The Sunni-Shia conflict falls pretty close to the same line between the Babylonians (south) and Assyrians (north).

The Assyrians were constantly attacked by proxies helped out by Egypt (Elamites, Medes, Babylon).

They literally razed Bablyon to the ground including the entire population after over 15 months being under siege and afterwards trying to change the lands hydrology so that people couldn't resettle - probably one of the harshest destruction but not the only one.

I guess its an improvement - not one thats remotely impressive.

Hmm, what do you mean? Like, compared to ancient times, or compared to a previous point post-WWII?

Certainly the organization of one side of this conflict into a state rather than militias naturally has tempered things since the early days where entire villages were being wiped out at random, but both sides are pretty openly engaged in terrorism to this day (targeting civilians for political reasons).

> It would be nice to see people let go of past injustices on both sides long enough to have a lasting peace

It's not past injustices. Israel is occupying, annexing and settling more land now. It's not some tit-for-tat between neighbours over past wrongs, it's one neighbour that is chasing away the other to take their house.

Not to sound terse, but I think the retort here is clear: morality exists, and it's important that we do our best to follow its guidance. It matters who's right and who's wrong! I absolutely agree that deciding on absolute historical blame for one "side" or another over many generations isn't helpful, but we absolutely need to litigate who's violating whose rights if we want to set things straight.

"It's all complicated and people in this part of the world are unusually tribal/violent" has been used to explain away this conflict since its inception in the US, which we have no right to do as a primary stakeholder. We (US citizens) have a stake in Gaza because the situation would be completely different without our aid, both direct (i.e. massive shipments of weapons and offering the services of our military) & indirect (i.e. using our UNSC vote to block otherwise unanimous resolutions against Israel).

To bring it all back to the one absolutely-litigated conflict in the western canon for clarity, as we so often do: was WWII about "tribalism" and both sides being prone to violence, or was it about unjustified aggressors and justified responses? Despite the nuances of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think we would all immediately endorse the latter position. Why not in this case, too?

Letting go of past injustices might work, if they weren't ongoing.

> almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight

This is a common Zionist take saying that just because someone is not from the region, they cannot criticise Israel's mass slaughter of children. Also, this has very much to do with American politics, as the US is the main backer of the apartheid state.

I count myself fortunate for missing the references to US politics, but seeing oppression and war discussed with a framing of "who should win" as a dispute of claims, history and ethnicity rather than as a tragedy of money, military power and cruelty (what is the problem that is solved by bombing children?) is very disheartening.

> I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity

> I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight

A popular chant is "The children of Gaza is our children too." Israel has killed up to 5% of Gaza's population and injured ~15%, about half of whom are children. It's not tribalism to be disgusted by such carnage. I don't agree with the claim that we don't have a stake in this fight.

My friend, its tribalism all the way down. Thats what we do.

> I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight - bitterly arguing about who is right and wrong

Yep, this is what it's about - a morals swinging contest to see who is purer. I mean, I would have assumed if there was in fact a genocide taking place in Gaza everyone would be happy there's at least a ceasefire but no - no one gives a s**, at least not on this thread. It's about shitting over Israel to feel morally superior more than anything else.

What swayed me to one side was not looking at the past, but looking at the future. One side is able to develop this land and benefit the rest of the world. The other side is unstoppingly doing damage to others, even in my home country (France), while providing no value whatsoever.

What you do with your life matters.

No offense (really!!!) but "that's just how people of that race are" isn't a very cool thing to say, my friend. They're humans, just like us -- that's the problem!

What the hell does your statement have to do with the very real, practical natures of the governments and political organizations of neighboring countries and lined up against Israel through a number of ideological arguments?

I'm not talking about monoliths on either side. I'm specifically referring to states in the region with authoritarian and even despotic governments with exactly the traits that the comment I originally responded to claims about Israel.

I could name a dozen Arab leaders who were assassinated by Arabs for expressing interests in making peace with Israel. If we start looking them up I wager we'll get to two dozen.

Because all Israelis are the same? A right extremist assassin murdered Rabin. Even among the right he was almost universally condemned. Keep in mind Rabin was democratically elected on the promise of Peace.

it proves nothing. the vast majority of Israelis condemn the murder.

Who were Anwar Sadat and King Abdullah I, and how did they die?

Because it's a cultural arms race. What kind of nation do you think is capable of manifesting in those local conditions, a progressive social democracy like Sweden?

Except Zionists are capable of establishing and running a democratic state (however flawed according to some it might be).

It would be silly to pretend that’s even remotely close to being an option for Hamas. For starters modern Islamic fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with democracy (amongst other reasons).

Expecting that organizations like Hamas could somehow magically change for the better is pure madness regardless of everything else.

> the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is temporal

No, it isn’t. Very few revolutions (i.e power inversions) have succeeded by indiscriminately killing the dominant side’s civilians. That frequency, moreover, goes down over time.

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Anything to say on the substance of the comment?

Cool bro

Most countries wouldn't be in that position in the first place. Mexico attacking the US would be basically unprovoked; Hamas attacking Israel is… not.

I did. But if several nation-states would pledge larger grants, I would have some hope that i.e. the trucks with the building materials would get through border-crossings, e.t.c.

Individual donations are a drop in a very big and leaky bucket.

Why would something as irrelevant as hostages end a war? Start it on the other hand... Sure!

What are their goals at this point? Looks to me as an outsider like they’ve had multiple wins and should take that. Hezbollah, Syria, successful strike on Irans missile facilities, Gaza is a pile of rubble.

> Wouldn't trumps best course of action have been to wait two weeks and make it seem like it was all because of him?

No. He's getting the credit now. And he got it while maneuvering risk free.

The playbook does seems more and more similar everyday but I'm curious why the other side hasn't figured out how to counter it

It could be made more fair if all the hostages were released. Why would international society accept hundreds of peaceful civilians being tortured, raped and murdered for over a year as acceptable?

Israel actually built a lot of the civilian infrastructure, including the largest hospital in Gaza. It's pretty clear those places are being used as terrorist hideouts and to launch rocket attacks. Why is it acceptable to shoot rockets purely targeting civilians while breaking a cease fire agreement?

> How are you proposing the deal could be made more fair?

Keeping hostages is a war crime. A fair thing would be for Hamas to follow its obligations under international law and unconditionally release them (before anyone says, well israel did X which also isn't allowed, 2 wrongs don't make a right).

> more damage was done to Gaza than any European city during wwii

How are you quantifying this? I'd be surprised if Gaza has more damage than say Dresden.

Here's a suggestion - don't rape girls, burn babies, kill everyone at a music festival etc. if you don't want your city (Gaza) to be destroyed.

There are consequences.

It would be far more dangerous for the world if the terrorists had learned they can rape and murder without consequences.

Also shows that Israeli electorate/Jewish diaspora now likely a distinct/separate entity from US Jewish population...drifting apart since at least 2008 if not earlier.

Israeli massively support Trump over Harris

https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-israelis-massively-...

Utterly wrong. Netanyahu’s base loves Trump. They believe Dems are out to get them and would like to cut aid to Israel. Netanyahu absolutely can not get on trumps bad side because his base would eviscerate him.

Pretty obv a gift from the bibi admin

Something positive about Trump? Must be "Russian disinformation" or whatever we're saying these days...

> what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements

Transactionally, I don't think so.

Strategically, we rendered irrelevant hundreds of billions of dollars of Iranian foreign spending worthless for $20bn [1]. We also communicated that we stand by our allies. I don't think that's worth tens of thousands of civilian deaths, but it is an important factor.

(Morally, I don't think an all-out war was necessary to decapitate Hamas--surgical strikes on the leaders, over time, should have been possible without reducing the enclave to rubble. That said, I don't know.)

> We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too

And then we left. Massive difference between supporting a force and building one.

> Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error

Possibly. Iran and Saudi Arabia (and to a lesser degree Qatar) have been the regional mischief makers, and they all seem somewhat spent. (Israel didn't create as much disruptive mischief, ironically.) I'm honestly not convinced the Palestinian people want war any more than the Lebanese or, frankly, Iranians.

[1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20...

Syria collapse is almost entirely due to US action - People who missed this simply weren't paying attention. There are three main factors that led to the fall of the Assad regime.

The first, chronologically, was US led sanctions in 2011 that froze government assets and prevented almost all import/export with the west. [1]

The 2nd was military conquest and occupation of 90% of Syria's oilfields since 2016/17, Which the government relied on for 40+% of the national budget. Without money, it struggled to pay and supply the army. [2]

The last was tying up Russisa, who was the regime's patron and military supporter, in combat in Ukraine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agains...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-led-coal...

It pretty obviously has to do with Israeli/US action by wrecking Hezbollah, and eroding Russian and Iranian deterrence.

The comment above you by 'caycep' couldn't give any evidence to credit Biden for this. Hopefully you have evidence of those Israeli sources supporting your claim.

But I don't know why on this website, many here are cheering for this as a "success" under Biden as this war happened under his presidency (and also the Russian-Ukraine war) and he failed to get the first ceasefire deal reached and it was only until he and Harris both lost the election a deal was reached, which should have been earlier preventing an excessive amount of civilians killed in this war.

This deal would not have happened if Biden or Harris won the election.

This is the most accurate summary in this thread (although note that the NYT is now also crediting the Trump team for the pressure on Bibi)

Read again. I said that the reasons arent too clear.

I dont doubt that Netanyahu wounded Trump's ego somehow, I just dont automatically believe a story that looks suspiciously like a plant.

It obviously wasn’t so strict since the Palestinians were still able to send thousands of rockets.

Gaza also has a border with Egypt, which Israel doesn’t control. For their own reasons, the Egyptians also blockade Gaza - although they did let in all the explosives and weapons that were used against Israel.

You confuse the cause and effect, the blockade was there because Hamas fired rocket at Israel after coming to power via election.

Also Egypt blocked their side also, so I'm not sure what's the point you are making, beyond just Israel bashing.

Like.. armed babies? https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1879651451447996814

"Fair" is a funny word to choose. One side is fighting with salvaged weapons and the other has the backing of the strongest militaries in the world.

One side isn't allowed air support. One side isn't allowed food, water or even concrete.

One side isn't even allowed to flee.

So "fair" is not the word I would use. "Moral" isn't one I would use either given that Israel does not have the right as a belligerent occupier to retaliate.

Also I have to ask, all the babies that died, did they also promise Israel's death? Were the babies armed?

Uhh what are you talking about? Egypt & Jordan signed peace treaties last century. And did you somehow miss out on the (still ongoing) Abraham Accords?

It’s in fact the complete opposite: Arab rulers and kings want their people to forget about Palestine.

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Israel's history and present is the manifestation of amoral jewish supremacists[0] trying to ethnically cleanse Palestine by any means which naturally manifested itself in the current genocide[1] of Palestinians. Early Zionist leaders were outright racists using the Hebrew N-Word "kushim" to describe the native Palestinians which they were trying to ethnically cleanse: "Neither Zangwill nor Weizmann intended these demographic assessments in a literal fashion. They did not mean that there were no people in Palestine, but that there were no people worth considering within the framework of the notions of European supremacy that then held sway. In this connection, a comment by Weizmann to Arthur Ruppin, the head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency, is particularly revealing. When asked by Ruppin about the Palestinian Arabs, Weizmann replied: "The British told us that there are there some hundred thousands negroes [Kushim] and for those there is no value.”[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_supremacy

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...

[2] Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.

Yeah Biden's middle east policy is exactly a continuation of what Trump set to be the standard. It was trump that started things like moving the embassy and bombing Iran. Trump basically did all the things the Democrats WISH they could've done but didn't think they could pull off. Instead they get to blame it on "crazy old Trump" and then completely run with the exact same foreign policy

There is no lesser of two evils. We don't get to vote on the war machine

Yes. Those specific people that killed militants and reservists dancing next to a concentration camp are the good guys.

It’s very white-Eurocentric to think of Hamas as the bad guys. The vast majority of the Mideast don’t believr they are

Or do you believe it is acceptable to have a festival next to a concentration camp? The same concentration camp where a few years earlier guards sniped and killed over 200 unarmed civilians from three other side of the fence while video taping and celebrating them being killed and posting on social media said videos.

Why? I think most of us can recognize they're not necessarily good by our standards, so they're not the good guys. But they are the ones resisting a genocidal apartheid colonialist state, so they're at least better than the Israelis. So if we call Israel the bad guys, that leaves Hamas as... the guys.

The NYTimes widely referenced but debunked story “Screams without words” about alleged rapes on October 7 was co-authored by a literal IDF intelligence agent. Also the Atlantic Editor-in-Chief is IDF. More importantly, why are there so few Muslim newsroom editors and reporters jn the US media vs Jewish editors and reporters?

Polls immediately after Oct 7 showed college students support Hamas more than Israel, and that’s before a year of live-streamed genocide. (Fixed missing word)

Biden had 400 days to take those actions- coincidentally, he took them at the moment he has basically no power any more?

Which is not to say I trust Trump. Afaik he's a fanatic Israel supporter. We'll have to wait and see what happens to pass any judgement on this.

Biden utterly failed at getting a ceasefire. Bibi waited for the election hoping that trump would give him free rein. Instead Trump said end the war(and probably also said you can go ahead and annex the West Bank is exchange).

Yo like- I know Trump is going to be worse here: he supports West Bank settlers illegally taking land and gave away Jerusalem.

But Biden did not get that ceasefire. He's been a disaster

Historical revisionism is supposed to happen when enough time has passed.

This ceasefire is directly due to Trump's pressure on Netanyahu. Trump's envoy went to Doha and made this happen: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/11/trumps-israel-gaza-deal-jan...

This is the actual reality

> Meanwhile Biden's actions has resulted in a ceasefire.

This war happened under Biden with the first ceasefire deal being rejected which that prolonged the war until the Democrats lost the election to Trump.

Under his presidency, he failed to prevent this war and failed to stop the Russia-Ukraine war from happening only which is why he lost a second term.

Had he or Harris won the election, this war would be still going on today.

>Meanwhile Biden's actions has resulted in a ceasefire.

please stop being a rage baiting troll. the war lasted for 15 months, but ended when there is 5 days left for Trump's inauguration.

Folks who haven't heard yet should Google what Tal Broda was allowed to tweet while keeping his job as head of research at OpenAI.

Meanwhile, Cornell still employs the professor who called Oct 7 exhilarating. How would you describe that?

Amazing that such overt antisemitism is allowed to remain up. Substituting "Zionist" for "Jew" doesn't make it not antisemitism (yes, 90% of Jews are self-identifying zionists, and these are classic antisemitic tropes).

He got informed by social media, of course he knows what he's talking about...

It depends on if you believe Hamas's numbers, which is dubious

I'll just piggyback on this to incidentally echo what you said about Jan 6, plenty of footage of Capitol police allowing them to just walk in peacefully (and yes, agent provocateurs)

It was a strange day, with a lot of moving parts. Some people died but nobody (Sicknick) was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher

And all the hostages are really just kept inside secret IDF facilities, right?

Did some die due you friendly fire? Yes, we know that, but your take is pretty unhinged.

You have linked to all kinds of videos that can only be described as malicious propaganda, and yes, that sadly includes the Amnesty ones. A few years ago that org drifted in a strange direction. But these videos try to manipulate you.

> Asked if acts of violence against those who publish images of the Prophet Muhammad can "never be justified", 68% [of British Muslims] agreed that such violence was never justifiable.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31293196

You’re confusing Al-Qaeda with one third of Muslims living in a Western country.

The aperture is wider than just those who are already members of some terrorist organization or other.

e.g. the killing of Samuel Paty

well, the list a little bit longer

https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/