Comment by kelthuzad
3 days ago
>Not the Holocaust or Warsaw Uprising?
Why single out that part and avoid mentioning the massacres of Palestinian women and children in the Nakba and Tanatura by Israel's founders to establish an apartheid state on top of the mass graves of Palestinians?
>And there is recognition that strategic (conventional) bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel.
If the bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel, why did America go onto commit the "the single greatest acts of terrorism in human history" by dropping 2(!!!) atomic bombs on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? [https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2015/08/hiroshima-and-nag...]
And if "there is recognition that strategic (conventional) bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel" then why did israeli officials reference the bombing of civilians in Dresden as their model for Gaza before they started the genocide and "dropped 70000 tons of bombs on Gaza Strip since last October, exceeding World War II bombings in Dresden, Hamburg, London combined" and "hit Gaza Strip with the equivalent of two nuclear bombs" https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5908/Israel-hits-Gaza-...
>Hamas has received something like $20bn of aid from Iran. That's roughly what the U.S. has provided Israel in the last few years.
That's a figure which you most certainly made up and did not even bother providing any sources for. Any data about that is unreliable anyway because Iran doesn't disclose any figures regarding that while America does, so that is a dishonest argument to make anyway. Any reliable sources quote estimated figures ranging from 20-100 million which is a far cry from $20bn: "Historically (1990-2000), Iranian funding to Hamas ranged from $20-100 million per year" - These are still guesses and US being Israel's ally has also an interest in inflating the numbers to justify its overspending and absurd funding of Israel.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_support_for_Hamas]
The United States has provided Israel with over $160 billion in bilateral assistance since its founding in 1948, whatever the Palestinian resistance receives pales in comparison because its limited to what can be smuggled into Gaza. Israel has an actual army with tanks and receives fighter jets from the US to exterminate the civilian population of Gaza because they can't reach guerrilla fighter in tunnels like in Vietnam.
> Of course Israel is a superior fighting force to Hamas. But Hamas wasn't defenceless. (It was still allegedly firing rockets this week.)
That's exactly the point, Hamas isnt an army with tanks and fighter jets but they arent completely defenseless, they, like the Vietcong, have tunnels and since Israel can't reach them, Israel instead murders civilians to put pressure on hamas. What do you call it again when an army kills civilians in pursuit of political aims? ter·ror·ism /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evide...]
[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/israel-opt-ne...]
>> Both siding an almost century old brutal colonial occupation and a 15 Month long Genocide is extremely absurd >Excusing one side's war crimes undermines the argument.
It doesnt undermine anything, Jews have committed warcrimes against Germans civilians who had once been Nazis as retribution, but when talking about the Holocaust someone says "both sides committed Warcrimes" it would be seen as Nazi apologia. You are clearly trying your best to "both sides" a century of brutal occupation and now genocide, but it still won't change the fact that the israelis are the colonizers and the Palestinians the resistance with the right to defend themselves against colonization.
>Like, one of Netanyahu's racists could construct a similar argument about the millenia-old persecution of the Jews and Hamas' explicit aim of not only destroying Israel but exterminating Jews. If war crimes being criminal depends so deeply on context, they're no longer open-and-shut cases that can be judged from afar.
This is straight up nonsense and israeli propaganda. Zionists already bend over backwards and invent the most absurd narratives to justify their century old occupation of Palestine akin to "actually our Palestinian slaves are oppressing us from the concentration camp we locked them up in and are disturbing our colonial project, so we're the real victims here". Even the Nazis used a similar narrative to justify their persecution of jews by claiming that Jews actually declared war on Germany first. [The Jewish "Declaration of War" against the Nazis - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4614991]. If a jewish prisoner in Dachau had written in his diary that he will kill all Nazi Germans if he can escape the concentration camp would you accept the narrative of a Nazi claiming "See? The Jews wanted to also genocide us, so the holocaust was justified actually" Of course you wouldn't. You're regurgitating all these zionist narratives because you're clearly a zionist who ignored mountains of evidence of the past 15 Months so you can prevent any cognitive dissonance and uphold your unmaintainable zionist worldview, but it will collapse under the weight of the evidence which you tried to ignore, downplay or subconsciously suppress.
>There was no armed-resistance equivalent to Hamas among the Jews.
Wrong. The Jewish Combat Organization: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Jewish Military Union: Żydowski Związek Wojskowy. Not that it matters anyway, if the jews had chosen not to fight back against their oppressors that would have been their choice. the jews suffered under the Nazis for about 12 years, while the Palestinians suffered under zionist terrorism and colonization and now genocide for more than a century now.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...]
>A better example might be found among the Native Americans. (Or La Résistance.) Even there, the practical lesson is attacking civilians at best doesn't work. (At worst, it galvanises the population against you.)
If it really doesnt work Israel shouldn't have done it for 15 months straight.
> If a jewish prisoner in Dachau had written in his diary that he will kill all Nazi Germans if he can escape the concentration camp would you accept the narrative of a Nazi claiming "See? The Jews wanted to also genocide us, so the holocaust was justified actually" Of course you wouldn't
Isn’t it notable that this is a hypothetical? Jews aren’t killing Germans. Native Americans aren’t bombing Americans, Indians aren’t bombing England…there is simply a choice that has been made in the way some groups have prosecuted past persecution that is relevant to present treatment. Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement.
Israel and Palestine is a fucked situation because both sides have hardlined the other as terrorists or genociders. Both side reject the other’s label, and on somewhat credible grounds. As long as those hard lines exist, the people can’t coëxist. (There are people in this thread complaining about millennia-old transgressions. Like, so the Mongolians owe the Turks reparations?!)
And practically speaking, that sort of points—long term—to a single path for the region. (It’s notable, too, that nobody is willing to accept Palestinians as refugees. Both out of security concerns and because the nutter wing would label helping people as facilitating genocide.)
>Isn’t it notable that this is a hypothetical? Jews aren’t killing Germans. Native Americans aren’t bombing Americans, Indians aren’t bombing England…there is simply a choice that has been made in the way some groups have prosecuted past persecution that is relevant to present treatment. Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement.
It's notable that your Zionist sensibilities don't ever allow you to reflect properly on a hypothetical which was suited to your israeli propaganda regarding the inversion of victimhood. Many Jews who escaped the Nazi concentration camp had a natural and immense hatred towards Germans in general and they also acted upon it by killing Germans who had previously been Nazis as retribution.
It's also notable that you intentionally twist and misrepresent any given situation to make dishonest and misleading arguments. Like "Native Americans aren’t bombing Americans" but they did do that during their ongoing oppression and genocide, but now it's over for them because the American colonial project succeeded and made a comeback impossible for them. The Palestinians are still being genocided, we're witnessing their active colonization, so for you to compare post-colonial indians to an ongoing colonization of Palestinians is so asinine that it's indicative of bad faith.
>Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement.
Don't be ridiculous, people could have forgotten something that only happened in the past, but the zionist colonial project has never in its century long presence in Palestine ever stopped murdering, ethnically-cleansing, stealing more land and now genociding Palestinians. It's like you going to Dachau and telling a jew in the camp that "Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement" during their ongoing genocide.
Furthermore, the difference between Palestinians and other groups who have been successfully colonized and diminished is that Palestinians are part of a religion with almost 2 Billion members in a region surrounded by nations of that faith. That's why colonial powers invest huge amounts of money into regional dictators, who against the will of the population, help protect the colonial outpost from being kicked out. The dictators, however, will not be able to hold onto power forever.
>Israel and Palestine is a fucked situation because both sides have hardlined the other as terrorists or genociders. Both side reject the other’s label, and on somewhat credible grounds.
"Germany and Jewry in 1940 is a fucked situation because both sides have hardlined the other as terrorists or genociders. Both side reject the other’s label, and on somewhat credible grounds." [The Jewish "Declaration of War" against the Nazis - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4614991]
Again miss me with your Zionist/Nazi apologia, the Palestinians have been subjected to brutal occupation, ethnic-cleansing and genocide for a century and they have every right to armed resistance. Your "both sides" zionist trash argument is toothless and a disgusting attempt at inversion of victimhood. Israel has been founded on the mass graves of Palestinian women and children by Zionists who even US and UK classified as Jewish-Zionist terrorists: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
If you don't want people to develop a genocidal hatred towards you then dont build an apartheid state on the mass graves of their women and children, then commit genocide and pretend that you're actually the victim while you're genociding them. Anyone with a sound mind and a proper education will see through that zionist gaslighting.
>It’s notable, too, that nobody is willing to accept Palestinians as refugees.
You mean notable like the Jewish refugees who nobody was willing to accept? British support for the Zionist project was even motivated by british antisemitism.
And even the US established a quota system, Immigration Act of 1921, which limited annual immigration from Eastern European countries with large Jewish populations. These restrictions remained in place during the 1930s and 1940s, significantly limiting Jewish refugee admission during the Holocaust era. Interesting behavior for Israel's great "ally" America.
> your Zionist sensibilities
Consider how you may be hurting your cause.
Labelling everyone who disagrees with (or merely doesn’t understand what you’re saying) you a Zionist or genocide sympathiser is satisfying. It’s easy. But it also makes it virtually impossible to distinguish, from a glance, which side is more extreme, the pro-Palestinian side in the West or the Ben-Gvir gang. (I make the former distinction because, again from a distance, the people I know in e.g. Lebanon are much more balanced than what I hear in New York.)
Because if both sides are absolutists on from the river to the sea or whatever, there isn’t a discussion. There is no room to compromise. As Clausewitz said, there is necessity for politics by other means. Those other means are deadly.
And yes, I’m saying that the uncompromising rhetoric being pushed by people thousands of miles away from the conflict is driving up death tolls. Sykes and Picot didn’t kill these people. But they caused the circumstances that lead to their deaths. A lot of foreign activism around this issue is repeating the mistake of drawing boundaries—rhetorical and geographic—from afar, considering only the views of one side or, worse, their own assumptions about what one side should believe.
> Many Jews who escaped the Nazi concentration camp had a natural and immense hatred towards Germans in general and they also acted upon it by killing Germans who had previously been Nazis as retribution
And they were wrong. Understandable. But wrong.
If that had turned into a political movement it would have destroyed sympathy for their cause. (In the same way Israeli extremism is sapping support for Israel today.)
> like you going to Dachau and telling a jew in the camp that "Generational hatred for crimes committed by ancestors isn’t a requirement" during their ongoing genocide
If you can’t see the difference between an unarmed concentration camp and a foreign-armed militant group lobbing rockets, sure.
> they did do that during their ongoing oppression and genocide
Which tribes? Because the ones who hit settlers got wiped out more frequently than those who bid for time.
> like the Jewish refugees who nobody was willing to accept
Yes.
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