Nobody’s arguing that. His death being good and the continued eradication of the Palestinian people by the IDF and Israeli state can coexist.
To be perfectly clear, since this is the internet and people can’t seem to have two concepts in their minds at once: The genocide of the Palestinian people needs to stop.
There is no genocide, there is no official source for that. War is bad, but this is not a genocide.
The International Criminal Courts and the UN declared Isreal guilty of extermination (genocide), among a plethora of other war crimes/crimes against humanity.
I’m putting this here for everyone to see how pathetic zionist propagandists can be, and not because you demanded easily verifiable facts be spoon fed to you:
Takes 2 seconds to Google and click on the first link to wiki. You can read everything there, and click on the references tab near the bottom for the official ICC website links.
I think IDF also uses option B - explosives. Also very effective, since the only ones who get harmed by IDF weapons are Hamas, so everyone killed/harmed in the blast zone can safely be declared Hamas.
Gaza Strip wasn’t a very joyful time even before the war. It was ruled by extremist religious terrorists that would literally torture, rape and kill you for whatever reason (like being gay).
I think you mean Israel, who does torture, rape, and kill Palestinians (including children) for whatever reason. Pinkwashing the Apartheid doesn’t justify it.
Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Prisons
Palestinians are jailed without charge, forced into false confessions, routinely tortured, raped, denied medical attention, and some killed as a result. This includes hundreds of children.
You should read up on some history. I will briefly recapitulate:
Israel started a war in 1967. Israel would argue it was in self defense, but their argument is basically the same as that of Russia for invading Ukraine. They (Russia and Israel) felt “threatened”, but they shot first. This war is known as the six day war.
One outcome of this war was that 400k Syrians and Palestinians were displaced (something the western media has referred to as a form of ethnic cleansing in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine), and the Golan heights, Sinai peninsula (this might be another conflict), and the Gaza strip were occupied by Israel. Two of these are occupied to this day, a violation of international law (you’re not supposed to steal land by war). Here, I mean occupied in the sense that both Israeli troops, as well as Israeli settlers were present in the Gaza strip.
In 2005, in an effort to improve their standing in the international community, Israel decided to disengage from Gaza in a very specific way. There would no longer be any troops or settlers present inside the Gaza strip. However, Israel would maintain complete control of the airspace, borders, and its shoreline. That is, anything or anyone going in or out of Gaza needs to be approved by Israel. That sounds bad, but to really appreciate the impact this has, it helps to know some figures. Gaza is twice the size of Washington DC, or about the size of Rotterdam, and it has about 2 million citizens. That’s three times as much as Rotterdam, so it’s very densely populated. That means it cannot feed itself, and relies on imports. Imagine a city in your country being completely cut off from the outside world beyond its borders. How long would it survive? At any rate, it is hopefully clear that Israel maintained its occupation of Gaza in 2005, despite not having boots on the ground. It is this version of the Gaza occupation that even David Cameron (who is not a progressive) called a prison camp. Do you know another word for a prison camp where you keep people of one ethnicity? Starts with a “c”.
in 2006, two years after the death of Arafat, elections were held in Gaza and the West Bank for the legislative council of the Palestinian Authority. These elections were monitored by the Carter foundation, which found them to be fair. The Palestinians elected Hamas, which had a much less collaborationist attitude than the ruling Fatah. This upset Israel and the US. Hillary Clinton is quoted saying “we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
This describes the status quo up until October 7th. Some choice facts about the 2006-2023 period:
in 2008, Israel calculated how many calories Gaza needs to survive and used this to limit the amount of food allowed into Gaza. This mass starvation policy ended after two years through international pressure. In the meantime, Hamas dug tunnels to smuggle more food in so that Palestinians could eat.
Construction materials are not allowed into Gaza. This means that necessary repairs to crucial civilian infrastructure such as desalination plants cannot be done.
Israel conducts regular bombing campaigns in Gaza, which they call “mowing the lawn”. This has killed thousands of Palestinians.
At the march of return, a recent peaceful rally by Palestinians to be allowed back in their homeland, Israeli snipers deliberately shot people in the knees maiming dozens. In total 183 Palestinians were murdered, and thousands injured. Hospitals were overwhelmed.
There’s much, much more. So no, Gaza was not a joyful place to live before October 7th, and yes, it is because of religious terrorists, just not the ones you’re referring to.
Ethnic Cleansing has always been a cornerstone of Zionism.
Origins of Zionism
Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.
Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.
That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.
Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.
Quote
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction
that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
100%, everyone thinking Palestinians were duped by Sinwar into striking back at Israel has no knowledge of the history of Israel as a Settler-Colonial project.
Fun fact, practically “Palestinian” consists of a diverse population of Arabs (i.e. Bedouin and Muslims), Jews, and Christians and more. So which do you refer to as “Palestinians”?
Sinwar was not a charismatic guy who brainwashed everyone into attacking Israel.
He WAS a charismatic killer who brainwashed into attacking Israel.
According tohttps://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AHRC47NGO145_150621.pdf
“United Nations Watch is concerned that the Palestinian education system continues to
promote antisemitism and incite terrorism, including in schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).”
As an Irish person, you can’t end terrorism with violence. You just create martyrs to a cause, a cause which looks more and more legitimate the more civilians suffer and die because of said violence. “Kill the rebels” every 20 years did nothing for peace on Ireland for 800 years.
Killing terrorists isn’t genocide. Plenty of violent groups have been stopped by arresting or killing their members. That doesn’t mean their race, culture, or nation was destroyed though. The only “culture” that distinguishes them from those around them is a philosophy predicated on killing as many civilians as possible. Often people within their own culture stop them with violence since they often target their own.
Israel has been supporting Palestinians such ash letting them work within Israel. But that didn’t help unfortunately.
The best solution is education. The hard truth is what they are being educated with: to terror and destruction or to peace and prosperity.
Saying that letting Palestinians work in their own ancestral land as precarious labour is “Israel supporting Palestinians”, is like saying that Apartheid South Africa was such a supportive institution for letting the blacks in Soweto work outside the fucking Bantustan.
Are they asking to do so? Is there an organization, entity, etc that argues for their return? If so, please let me know its name because I would want to donate to them because I 100% support their right to do so.
Because I don’t have double standards. And to bring the focus back to Palestine and Israel, I 100% support the right of Jews to live and thrive in safety there AND I 100% support the right of Palestinians to do the exact same. No double standard. Same rights, same protections.
And if your dream were ever to come true (and I unwaveringly support you in that), would you accept to live in the conditions that Palestinians are forced to endure in the occupied territories? Hell, even the conditions that Arab Israelis are enduring as second class citizens inside Israel proper?
I don’t fucking think so.
Which brings me back to my main question: do you accept the basic Enlightenment, Common-Sense principle of same rights, and same laws, and same protections for all people from the river to the sea?
Stop making violence the only thing you’ll react to in any way? Or indeed, stop responding to peaceful resistance with violence (eg the civil rights marches in Northern Ireland).
It might seem like Palestine has been a hopeless mire forever, but there was a point in the 90s where the last reasonable leaders of both sides were coming together for a peaceful solution. Hamas and the Israeli right wing - the “both sides” of today - were on the fringe.
Then Yitzhak Rabin was killed by an Israeli right-winger, Israel inexplicably responded by killing a Hamas leader, Arab civilians were massacred at the Cave of Patriarchs by an American Israeli, and Hamas responded with more bombings, Yassar Arafat died under siege by the IDF, Hamas took control of Gaza, and well, here we are.
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is probably as impactful to history of that of Archduke Ferdinand, but seems to be being forgotten.
Rabin was murdered by a Likud fanatic with personal ties to Mossad. Israel disputes any involvement of Mossad. Before the murder, Likud and other fascists called for the murder of Rabin and depicted him as new Hitler. After the murder of Rabin Netanyahu took power. While there were supposed center or progressive governments in between Netanyahus reigns, they all continued the annexation of more Palestinian land to make a two state solution or any solution except ethnic cleansing and genocide impossible.
It is important to understand that all of Israels society has been poisoned into various degrees of fascism over the past 30 years.
At this point the Israelis have made the two state solution impossible because of their settling of the best lands of the West Bank in such a way that makes a contiguous truly independent Palestinian state impossible.
So the only way forward is Democracy with safety and equal rights for all, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others from the river to the sea.
The Israeli right of the last 30 years has basically made it a choice between genocide and apartheid and the end of Zionism as we know it.
Your fatal assumption is that the Palestinians want peace too. They were given pipes to create water lines, they turned the pipes into rockets. You can’t have piece when neither side wants it.
Yeah… Except this is total bullshit. There was an airport built in Gaza. Israel bombed it the next month to prevent Palestinians from ever developing outside of Israels occupational pressure.
The amount of food and building materials amd other essentials being allowed into Gaza was deliberately limited to slowly degrade the living conditions in a way easily ignorable by the West.
The smuggling Tunnels into Egypt were a great source of income for Hamas, by allowing people to smuggle in basic commodities.
Meanwhile Israels “mowing the lawn” always revolved around slowly destroying Gaza and not allowing for rebuilding. The difference now is that they removed all restraint as the US and allies are allowing the total annihilation of all infrastructure, ethnic cleansing and genocide with impunity.
What do expect Palestinians to do? Do you want them to waste away drinking contaminated water because Israel attacked their sole desalination plant? That isn’t peace either.
When do you think this conflict started? Because if you’re not aware Israel has been bombing Gaza for decades. The bombing of the desalinization plant I mentioned happened in 2021 and Israel has bombed water infrastructure in Gaza far before that.
Don’t avoid the question this time. In such circumstances what do you expect Palestinians to do? Because as far as I can tell the only answer you have for them is death.
When do you think this conflict started? Because if you’re not aware Israel has been bombing Gaza for decades. The bombing of the desalinization plant I mentioned happened in 2021 and Israel has bombed water infrastructure in Gaza far before that.
Which is significantly after 2014 when Palestine started using water pipes for rockets.
Don’t avoid the question this time. In such circumstances what do you expect Palestinians to do? Because as far as I can tell the only answer you have for them is death.
I expect if Palestine wants peace that they would use water pipes for delivery of water not explosives.
the future that you speaking of called “west bank” where “Israeli occupier” put bounty on “indigenous Palestinian” homes for burning their cars or destroying their properties. Where the “Israeli occupier” open carry guns threatening or shooting “indigenous Palestinian” and if the “indigenous Palestinian” fight back in any form “since they don’t have guns” they get into a military court, then prison, maybe without a charge, then get raped in prison, based on “Israeli sources”
Pretending this not a case of apartheid genocidal military force is stupid considering the overwhelming evidence that you can find reading a few news article or maybe 5 minutes in Wikipedia.
If you are bored maybe you can watch this episode of Anthony Bourdain “Palestine parts unknown” aired in 2013 and ask yourself if that the past and the current living condition what makes believe this will help in anyway!
Fun fact, practically “indigenous Palestinian” consists of a diverse population of Arabs (i.e. Bedouin and Muslims), Jews, and Christians, Bedouin and more. So which do you refer to as “indigenous Palestinian”?
“Israeli occupier” is a pure propaganda. Israel received an official support for by the UN for setting up a state. Whoever was against it it’s his own problem. Israel has the right to be an independent heterogeneous multicultural and multi-religion state.
Israel received an official support for by the UN for setting up a state.
And that was how many years ago, like 75? The UN and the ICC declared Isreal guilty of extermination, among other crimes against humanity, just this year. It’s messed up it took them this long to do it.
So which do you refer to as “indigenous Palestinian”?
Spoken like a holocaust denier being intentionally thick.
Nope, it will only intensify. Yahya Sinwar wasn’t some evil mastermind manipulating and controlling the Palestinian people, they have been fighting an existential war against a genocidal entity that has been exterminating them for nearly a century. You can’t get a ceasefire by killing someone beloved by the Palestinian people.
You can hate Sinwar if you want and celebrate if you wish, but the Palestinian people are not celebrating right now, they are mourning. Historically, deaths of Hamas leaders have only hurt ceasefire talks.
Comments like these are just supporting these kinds of heinous figures like him, and it’s just sad, and evil.
Yahya Sinwar wasn’t some evil mastermind manipulating and controlling the Palestinian people
This is a pure lie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Sinwar:
“Sinwar planned the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians whom he suspected of cooperating with Israel.”
“Sinwar was believed to have overseen the torture and execution.”
And this is just part of the list.
they have been fighting an existential war against a genocidal
There no genocide. Lie #2. This is not Israel’s goal in this war. Or ever.
that’s not what they meant though, you removed the context of the phrase. Their point is that it’s not as if when you remove sinwar suddenly the rest wake up from the matrix.
I wasn’t making a moral judgement of Sinwar, but contextualizing the Palestinian view of him. Palestinians sided with Hamas and Sinwar because of Israel’s genocide against Palestine, Sinwar wasn’t some great and powerful manipulator able to trick an entire population. Again, I am not making a moral justification for Sinwar, I am explaining why this isn’t leading to a ceasefire.
Secondly, are you denying that Israel is committing genocide?
Third, Sinwar absolutely has positive views among Palestinians. The majority of Palestinians support fighting Israel, and the footage of him perishing on the front lines, in full combat garb, defiantly throwing scrap metal at the drone confirming his soon to be death, has fully disproven the idea that he was a coward hiding in a bunker this whole time. He is more popular now than ever before.
It means, that at the time of the election (2006) almost half of the Palestinians supported Hamas, which officially had antisemistic principals.
Third, Sinwar absolutely has positive views among Palestinians.
You linked a highly biased news, so unfortunately I can’t refer to that.
As a reminder, Sinwar was the official leader of Hamas. Every school that teached terrorism, every old man, women, children and babys, every tunnel that was digged under civilians, everything that happens, and the consequences of this war, by Hamas, are his responsibility.
I disagree that Israel is commiting genocide. There are millions peaceful Palestinians who live peacefully. This is not a genocide.
Intentionally utilizing the presence of civilians or other protected persons to render certain areas immune from military attack is prohibited under international law. Amnesty International was not able to establish whether or not the fighters’ presence in the camps was intended to shield themselves from military attacks. However, under international humanitarian law, even if one party uses “human shields”, or is otherwise unlawfully endangering civilians, this does not absolve the opposing party from complying with its obligations to distinguish between military objectives and civilians or civilian objects, to refrain from carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, and to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects.
Israel also targets Israeli Soldiers and Civilians to prevent them being leveraged as hostages, known as the Hannibal Directive. Which was also used on Oct 7th.
Starvation
Prior to the current hostilities, 1.2 million of Gaza’s 2.2 million people were estimated to be facing acute food insecurity, and over 80 percent were reliant on humanitarian aid. Israel maintains overarching control over Gaza, including over the movement of people and goods, territorial waters, airspace, the infrastructure upon which Gaza relies, as well as the registry of the population. This leaves Gaza’s population, which Israel has subjected to an unlawful closure for 16 years, almost entirely dependent on Israel for access to fuel, electricity, medicine, food, and other essential commodities.
After the imposition of a “total blockade” on Gaza on October 9, Israeli authorities resumed piping water to some parts of southern Gaza on October 15 and, as of October 21, allowed limited humanitarian aid to arrive through the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on October 18 that Israel would not allow humanitarian assistance “in the form of food and medicines” into Gaza through its crossings “as long as our hostages are not returned.”
I’m looking at the Fatah charter and I don’t see that line you claim is there (“no other human can be Palestinian, besides Arabs”).
Are you making some kind of bad faith reference to the line “Long live Palestine, free and Arab”? Because this line is entirely consistent with the two-state solution, which imagines a Jewish Israel alongside an Arab Palestine.
Edit: I apologize for my cynicism, but I struggle to be hopeful about the prospects of Israel making peace with its surroundings nations and occupied territories.
Not really likely. With all these kids and the younger generation terrorised/traumatized by Israel, hopes for a lasting peace is dim. Imagine your home and loved ones being torn into pieces right in front of your eyes by Israel all because of a terrorist attack that you played no part in. Now multiply this by tens of thousands…They will go on to be members or leaders of whatever terrorist/resistance organization follows hamas. It’s an endless cycle where only people on the very top take advantage off.
Both states are traumatized. It’s time to come together.
Give me a fucking break. One state is subsidized by American taxpayers, receiving about $5 billion per year ($18 billion this year alone) from the US to rain terror on the other, steal their land, and exterminate them over the course of almost a century.
We hanged Nazis at Nuremberg for the same thing Isrealis have been doing. Collaborators were rounded up and shot. There is no coming together after (or during) a genocide.
Hopefully now a better future for Palestinians and Israelis is ahead.
I’m not sure the Palestinians will view being ethnically cleansed slightly less vigorously as a brighter future.
He was the mastermind behind the Oct. 7th attack. The world is a better place without him.
Nobody’s arguing that. His death being good and the continued eradication of the Palestinian people by the IDF and Israeli state can coexist.
To be perfectly clear, since this is the internet and people can’t seem to have two concepts in their minds at once: The genocide of the Palestinian people needs to stop.
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Removed for genocide denial.
To be 100% clear here, the precise definition of a genocide has five criteria, it only takes ONE to be declared a genocide.
Israel’s actions in Gaza meet ALL FIVE requirements.
https://iccforum.com/genocide-convention
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
© Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The International Criminal Courts and the UN declared Isreal guilty of extermination (genocide), among a plethora of other war crimes/crimes against humanity.
Removed by mod
I’m putting this here for everyone to see how pathetic zionist propagandists can be, and not because you demanded easily verifiable facts be spoon fed to you:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_investigation_in_Palestine
Takes 2 seconds to Google and click on the first link to wiki. You can read everything there, and click on the references tab near the bottom for the official ICC website links.
Yes, but the masterminds behind levelling Gaza are still at large.
Unfortunately.
Who said anything about doing it slightly less? I haven’t heard that from the Israelis.
I am probably out of the loop but how does one go about Identifying a Palestinian without shooting everyone?
Point your Tavor at them. If they run, they’re Hamas. If they don’t, they’re well-disciplined Hamas.
Well I guess I am a Palestinian because if someone pointed a gun at me I would run.
I think IDF also uses option B - explosives. Also very effective, since the only ones who get harmed by IDF weapons are Hamas, so everyone killed/harmed in the blast zone can safely be declared Hamas.
/s
Bold assumption to claim it will get less intense.
Gaza Strip wasn’t a very joyful time even before the war. It was ruled by extremist religious terrorists that would literally torture, rape and kill you for whatever reason (like being gay).
People somehow conveniently ignore this.
You conviently ignore that Gaza has been under Israeli occupation and siege since well before Hamas rose to power.
I think you mean Israel, who does torture, rape, and kill Palestinians (including children) for whatever reason. Pinkwashing the Apartheid doesn’t justify it.
Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Prisons
Palestinians are jailed without charge, forced into false confessions, routinely tortured, raped, denied medical attention, and some killed as a result. This includes hundreds of children.
Palestinians denied civil rights (HRW) including Military Court (B’TSelem)
Palestinian Prisoners in Israel (wiki)
Children are jailed and abused in Israeli prisons (Save The Children)
Torture and Abuse in Interrogations (B’TSelem)
Thousands of Palestinians are held without charge under Israeli detention policy (NPR)
Urgently investigate inhumane treatment and enforced disappearance of Palestinians detainees from Gaza (Amnesty)
Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees amid spike in arbitrary arrests (Amnesty)
Indeed, one of them is the Islamic Jihad. I hope the Palestinians will have a positive government.
You should read up on some history. I will briefly recapitulate:
Israel started a war in 1967. Israel would argue it was in self defense, but their argument is basically the same as that of Russia for invading Ukraine. They (Russia and Israel) felt “threatened”, but they shot first. This war is known as the six day war.
One outcome of this war was that 400k Syrians and Palestinians were displaced (something the western media has referred to as a form of ethnic cleansing in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine), and the Golan heights, Sinai peninsula (this might be another conflict), and the Gaza strip were occupied by Israel. Two of these are occupied to this day, a violation of international law (you’re not supposed to steal land by war). Here, I mean occupied in the sense that both Israeli troops, as well as Israeli settlers were present in the Gaza strip.
In 2005, in an effort to improve their standing in the international community, Israel decided to disengage from Gaza in a very specific way. There would no longer be any troops or settlers present inside the Gaza strip. However, Israel would maintain complete control of the airspace, borders, and its shoreline. That is, anything or anyone going in or out of Gaza needs to be approved by Israel. That sounds bad, but to really appreciate the impact this has, it helps to know some figures. Gaza is twice the size of Washington DC, or about the size of Rotterdam, and it has about 2 million citizens. That’s three times as much as Rotterdam, so it’s very densely populated. That means it cannot feed itself, and relies on imports. Imagine a city in your country being completely cut off from the outside world beyond its borders. How long would it survive? At any rate, it is hopefully clear that Israel maintained its occupation of Gaza in 2005, despite not having boots on the ground. It is this version of the Gaza occupation that even David Cameron (who is not a progressive) called a prison camp. Do you know another word for a prison camp where you keep people of one ethnicity? Starts with a “c”.
in 2006, two years after the death of Arafat, elections were held in Gaza and the West Bank for the legislative council of the Palestinian Authority. These elections were monitored by the Carter foundation, which found them to be fair. The Palestinians elected Hamas, which had a much less collaborationist attitude than the ruling Fatah. This upset Israel and the US. Hillary Clinton is quoted saying “we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
This describes the status quo up until October 7th. Some choice facts about the 2006-2023 period:
in 2008, Israel calculated how many calories Gaza needs to survive and used this to limit the amount of food allowed into Gaza. This mass starvation policy ended after two years through international pressure. In the meantime, Hamas dug tunnels to smuggle more food in so that Palestinians could eat.
Construction materials are not allowed into Gaza. This means that necessary repairs to crucial civilian infrastructure such as desalination plants cannot be done.
Israel conducts regular bombing campaigns in Gaza, which they call “mowing the lawn”. This has killed thousands of Palestinians.
At the march of return, a recent peaceful rally by Palestinians to be allowed back in their homeland, Israeli snipers deliberately shot people in the knees maiming dozens. In total 183 Palestinians were murdered, and thousands injured. Hospitals were overwhelmed.
There’s much, much more. So no, Gaza was not a joyful place to live before October 7th, and yes, it is because of religious terrorists, just not the ones you’re referring to.
I appreciate your wall of text but I genuinely don’t understand your point here.
Both Israel and Hamas can be oppressors here, no?
Palestinians have never been ethnically cleansed. There are also peaceful Palestinians that don’t want, and do want a brighter future.
Ethnic Cleansing has always been a cornerstone of Zionism.
Origins of Zionism
Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.
Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.
That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.
Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.
Quote
Settlements, Occupation, and Apartheid
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
Apartheid Evidence
Amnesty Report
Human Rights Watch Report
B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Historian Works on the History
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
Not while Netanyahu remains in power, he has no incentive to end this.
Neither does Israel in general, nor the US backing them.
Netanyahu is indeed a problematic figure who take these situations into his advantage, maybe another would be better to make peace.
It’s the only way. The problem is that if he called an election tomorrow he would stand a good chance of winning it.
Hamas was created as a reaction to Israel oppressing Palestinians.
The resistance will continue until the oppressors stop oppressing them.
Sinwar was not a charismatic guy who brainwashed everyone into attacking Israel. Israel oppressed Palestinians into violent resistance.
100%, everyone thinking Palestinians were duped by Sinwar into striking back at Israel has no knowledge of the history of Israel as a Settler-Colonial project.
Fun fact, practically “Palestinian” consists of a diverse population of Arabs (i.e. Bedouin and Muslims), Jews, and Christians and more. So which do you refer to as “Palestinians”?
He WAS a charismatic killer who brainwashed into attacking Israel.
According tohttps://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AHRC47NGO145_150621.pdf “United Nations Watch is concerned that the Palestinian education system continues to promote antisemitism and incite terrorism, including in schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).”
Fun fact nothing you said is true.
As an Irish person, you can’t end terrorism with violence. You just create martyrs to a cause, a cause which looks more and more legitimate the more civilians suffer and die because of said violence. “Kill the rebels” every 20 years did nothing for peace on Ireland for 800 years.
This sound like survivorship bias. We got rid of plenty of terrorists with violence you just don’t know about them because they’re gone
Well yes, the only way to erase a nation or culture’s hatred of your violence is with enough violence to literally genocide them.
But there really aren’t that many. You just put it down for a generation until it comes back, usually with a different name.
Killing terrorists isn’t genocide. Plenty of violent groups have been stopped by arresting or killing their members. That doesn’t mean their race, culture, or nation was destroyed though. The only “culture” that distinguishes them from those around them is a philosophy predicated on killing as many civilians as possible. Often people within their own culture stop them with violence since they often target their own.
Israel has been supporting Palestinians such ash letting them work within Israel. But that didn’t help unfortunately. The best solution is education. The hard truth is what they are being educated with: to terror and destruction or to peace and prosperity.
Saying that letting Palestinians work in their own ancestral land as precarious labour is “Israel supporting Palestinians”, is like saying that Apartheid South Africa was such a supportive institution for letting the blacks in Soweto work outside the fucking Bantustan.
What about the 900,000 Jewish exodus from the Muslim world? Is someone letting them work, or even enter, their own “ancestral land”? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
Are they asking to do so? Is there an organization, entity, etc that argues for their return? If so, please let me know its name because I would want to donate to them because I 100% support their right to do so.
Because I don’t have double standards. And to bring the focus back to Palestine and Israel, I 100% support the right of Jews to live and thrive in safety there AND I 100% support the right of Palestinians to do the exact same. No double standard. Same rights, same protections.
Do you accept that principle?
I am, and it’s my dream that it will happen.
And if your dream were ever to come true (and I unwaveringly support you in that), would you accept to live in the conditions that Palestinians are forced to endure in the occupied territories? Hell, even the conditions that Arab Israelis are enduring as second class citizens inside Israel proper?
I don’t fucking think so.
Which brings me back to my main question: do you accept the basic Enlightenment, Common-Sense principle of same rights, and same laws, and same protections for all people from the river to the sea?
Which is horrible in itself, but this doesnt justify the zionists doing the same and worse against the Palestinians.
They’ll keep doing it so that they can have an out group to blame for people’s problems.
What’s the antidote for that then?
Stop making violence the only thing you’ll react to in any way? Or indeed, stop responding to peaceful resistance with violence (eg the civil rights marches in Northern Ireland).
It might seem like Palestine has been a hopeless mire forever, but there was a point in the 90s where the last reasonable leaders of both sides were coming together for a peaceful solution. Hamas and the Israeli right wing - the “both sides” of today - were on the fringe.
Then Yitzhak Rabin was killed by an Israeli right-winger, Israel inexplicably responded by killing a Hamas leader, Arab civilians were massacred at the Cave of Patriarchs by an American Israeli, and Hamas responded with more bombings, Yassar Arafat died under siege by the IDF, Hamas took control of Gaza, and well, here we are.
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is probably as impactful to history of that of Archduke Ferdinand, but seems to be being forgotten.
Rabin was murdered by a Likud fanatic with personal ties to Mossad. Israel disputes any involvement of Mossad. Before the murder, Likud and other fascists called for the murder of Rabin and depicted him as new Hitler. After the murder of Rabin Netanyahu took power. While there were supposed center or progressive governments in between Netanyahus reigns, they all continued the annexation of more Palestinian land to make a two state solution or any solution except ethnic cleansing and genocide impossible.
It is important to understand that all of Israels society has been poisoned into various degrees of fascism over the past 30 years.
Zionism has always been Fascism, since it’s inception as a Setter Colonialist Ideology. Ethnic Cleansing has been fundamental to it since Herzl
At this point the Israelis have made the two state solution impossible because of their settling of the best lands of the West Bank in such a way that makes a contiguous truly independent Palestinian state impossible.
So the only way forward is Democracy with safety and equal rights for all, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others from the river to the sea.
The Israeli right of the last 30 years has basically made it a choice between genocide and apartheid and the end of Zionism as we know it.
So there.
Help - provide food, housing, education. Stop dehumanizing people. Help them build a peaceful future. Everyone will benefit from that.
But that would require actual good will.
Your fatal assumption is that the Palestinians want peace too. They were given pipes to create water lines, they turned the pipes into rockets. You can’t have piece when neither side wants it.
Removed by mod
Yeah… Except this is total bullshit. There was an airport built in Gaza. Israel bombed it the next month to prevent Palestinians from ever developing outside of Israels occupational pressure.
The amount of food and building materials amd other essentials being allowed into Gaza was deliberately limited to slowly degrade the living conditions in a way easily ignorable by the West.
The smuggling Tunnels into Egypt were a great source of income for Hamas, by allowing people to smuggle in basic commodities.
Meanwhile Israels “mowing the lawn” always revolved around slowly destroying Gaza and not allowing for rebuilding. The difference now is that they removed all restraint as the US and allies are allowing the total annihilation of all infrastructure, ethnic cleansing and genocide with impunity.
What do expect Palestinians to do? Do you want them to waste away drinking contaminated water because Israel attacked their sole desalination plant? That isn’t peace either.
There are reports of water pipes being made into rockets as far back as 2014. This was before the conflict even started.
When do you think this conflict started? Because if you’re not aware Israel has been bombing Gaza for decades. The bombing of the desalinization plant I mentioned happened in 2021 and Israel has bombed water infrastructure in Gaza far before that.
Don’t avoid the question this time. In such circumstances what do you expect Palestinians to do? Because as far as I can tell the only answer you have for them is death.
Which is significantly after 2014 when Palestine started using water pipes for rockets.
I expect if Palestine wants peace that they would use water pipes for delivery of water not explosives.
One state solution
How optimistic.
the future that you speaking of called “west bank” where “Israeli occupier” put bounty on “indigenous Palestinian” homes for burning their cars or destroying their properties. Where the “Israeli occupier” open carry guns threatening or shooting “indigenous Palestinian” and if the “indigenous Palestinian” fight back in any form “since they don’t have guns” they get into a military court, then prison, maybe without a charge, then get raped in prison, based on “Israeli sources”
Pretending this not a case of apartheid genocidal military force is stupid considering the overwhelming evidence that you can find reading a few news article or maybe 5 minutes in Wikipedia.
If you are bored maybe you can watch this episode of Anthony Bourdain “Palestine parts unknown” aired in 2013 and ask yourself if that the past and the current living condition what makes believe this will help in anyway!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_bVSRlaIjw
Fun fact, practically “indigenous Palestinian” consists of a diverse population of Arabs (i.e. Bedouin and Muslims), Jews, and Christians, Bedouin and more. So which do you refer to as “indigenous Palestinian”?
“Israeli occupier” is a pure propaganda. Israel received an official support for by the UN for setting up a state. Whoever was against it it’s his own problem. Israel has the right to be an independent heterogeneous multicultural and multi-religion state.
And that was how many years ago, like 75? The UN and the ICC declared Isreal guilty of extermination, among other crimes against humanity, just this year. It’s messed up it took them this long to do it.
Spoken like a holocaust denier being intentionally thick.
Are you just completely ignoring the events of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War?
Probably. They’re also ignoring current events so why be truthful about the past?
Sounds like 'Merica!
Nope, it will only intensify. Yahya Sinwar wasn’t some evil mastermind manipulating and controlling the Palestinian people, they have been fighting an existential war against a genocidal entity that has been exterminating them for nearly a century. You can’t get a ceasefire by killing someone beloved by the Palestinian people.
You can hate Sinwar if you want and celebrate if you wish, but the Palestinian people are not celebrating right now, they are mourning. Historically, deaths of Hamas leaders have only hurt ceasefire talks.
Comments like these are just supporting these kinds of heinous figures like him, and it’s just sad, and evil.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Sinwar: “Sinwar planned the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians whom he suspected of cooperating with Israel.” “Sinwar was believed to have overseen the torture and execution.” And this is just part of the list.
Stop posting lies.
Don’t be daft, he’s explaining, not justifying.
There is a difference between explaining and lying mate.
Please quote here the exact phrase from the post that is a lie.
that’s not what they meant though, you removed the context of the phrase. Their point is that it’s not as if when you remove sinwar suddenly the rest wake up from the matrix.
Well, now. That’s not a lie, habibi.
sadly, also not a lie. Israel seems to have just created a a martyr. See: “Palestinians say drone footage shows Sinwar’s ‘heroic’ final moments in Gaza”.
I wasn’t making a moral judgement of Sinwar, but contextualizing the Palestinian view of him. Palestinians sided with Hamas and Sinwar because of Israel’s genocide against Palestine, Sinwar wasn’t some great and powerful manipulator able to trick an entire population. Again, I am not making a moral justification for Sinwar, I am explaining why this isn’t leading to a ceasefire.
Secondly, are you denying that Israel is committing genocide?
Third, Sinwar absolutely has positive views among Palestinians. The majority of Palestinians support fighting Israel, and the footage of him perishing on the front lines, in full combat garb, defiantly throwing scrap metal at the drone confirming his soon to be death, has fully disproven the idea that he was a coward hiding in a bunker this whole time. He is more popular now than ever before.
“Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip in Palestine since its takeover of the region from rival party Fatah in June 2007.”
The Palestinians had no option but to choose between an antisemitistic group at the time called Hamas (by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter) or a group who officially claims that no other human can be Palestinian, besides Arabs, which is called Fatah (by https://irp.fas.org/dni/osc/fatah-charter.pdf)
It means, that at the time of the election (2006) almost half of the Palestinians supported Hamas, which officially had antisemistic principals.
I disagree that Israel is commiting genocide. There are millions peaceful Palestinians who live peacefully. This is not a genocide.
Israel is committing genocide and an ethnic cleansing. Claiming otherwise is incredibly callous and cruel.
Apartheid
Amnesty Report
Human Rights Watch Report
B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer
Genocide
Holocaust scholar to discuss his conclusion that Gaza campaign constitutes genocide
UN Expert Says Impunity for Israel Must End as ‘Genocidal Violence’ Spreads to West Bank
“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza
800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza
Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated
AP News, Time, Reuters, Vox, CBC
Human Shields
Hamas:
HRW on Laws-of-War Violations 2009
Agency Demands Full Respect for the Sanctity of Its Premises in Gaza - July 2014
HRW - Palestinian Armed Groups’ October 7 Assault on Israel
Israel:
Israel/OPT: Israeli attacks targeting Hamas and other armed group fighters that killed scores of displaced civilians in Rafah should be investigated as war crimes
HRW - Gaza: Unlawful Israeli Hospital Strikes Worsen Health Crisis
Additionally, there is extensive independent verification of Israel using Palestinians as Human Shields:
IDF uses Human Shields,
Including Children (2013 Report)
Israel “Systematically” Uses Gaza Children as Human Shields, Rights Group Finds 2024
Breaking The Silence - Testimonies from IDF Veterans
Deliberate Attacks on Civilians
Israel deliberately targets civilian areas. From in general with the Dahiya Doctrine to multiple systems deployed in Gaza to do so:
The Dahiya Doctrine & Israel’s Use of Disproportionate Force
‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
Lavender
Where’s Daddy
Israel also targets Israeli Soldiers and Civilians to prevent them being leveraged as hostages, known as the Hannibal Directive. Which was also used on Oct 7th.
Starvation
Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza
I’m looking at the Fatah charter and I don’t see that line you claim is there (“no other human can be Palestinian, besides Arabs”).
Are you making some kind of bad faith reference to the line “Long live Palestine, free and Arab”? Because this line is entirely consistent with the two-state solution, which imagines a Jewish Israel alongside an Arab Palestine.
I don’t disagree with you but you posted Wikipedia as your source and thats just cringe. At least use the source that Wikipedia cited, please.
Edit: I apologize for my cynicism, but I struggle to be hopeful about the prospects of Israel making peace with its surroundings nations and occupied territories.
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
Nope, no joke.
Just because you’re not in on the joke doesn’t mean it’s not a joke
Not really likely. With all these kids and the younger generation terrorised/traumatized by Israel, hopes for a lasting peace is dim. Imagine your home and loved ones being torn into pieces right in front of your eyes by Israel all because of a terrorist attack that you played no part in. Now multiply this by tens of thousands…They will go on to be members or leaders of whatever terrorist/resistance organization follows hamas. It’s an endless cycle where only people on the very top take advantage off.
This is a sad truth, and it can only be solved with education. Both states are traumatized. It’s time to come together.
Give me a fucking break. One state is subsidized by American taxpayers, receiving about $5 billion per year ($18 billion this year alone) from the US to rain terror on the other, steal their land, and exterminate them over the course of almost a century.
We hanged Nazis at Nuremberg for the same thing Isrealis have been doing. Collaborators were rounded up and shot. There is no coming together after (or during) a genocide.
Probably not the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians. Homeless, without any future.
It’s possible. See the numerous states that went through hard times and strive eventually. When you believe it, it’s possible.