For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.
For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.
Lots of us believe in Israel’s right to defend itself. You’re on Lemmy, so it can seem that this isn’t a divided or divisive issue, but I assure you it is–especially among people who know their history. Another reason the bulk of the 18-24 group is making up a lot of the Hamas sympathizers.
Not looking to debate it eith you, but I PROMISE, if you get out of the Lemmy bubble you’ll find it’s not a cut and dry situation like you framed it.
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Yet that’s exactly what Israel has done for decades and every gd President has backed them on it.
Nothing ever changes.
sigh
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Hamas has launched over 10,000 rockets at Israel in November alone. If Israel is getting bombed, they should be able to defend themselves.
If you had caught me before the Oct attack, we’d probably have agreed on more. All the collective punishment pre Oct was obviously war crimes, and Bibi and much of Likud should be tried and convicted as war criminals. Even with the constant war crimes (with the approval of the Palestinian people) of launching rockets at civilians, collective punishment wasn’t warranted.
All the other failed measures were better to try (walls and shit). But it’s ridiculous to sit by and not do something about the October attack and encourage these terrorists just like ignoring all their other terrorism for decades has done.
I’ve yet to hear a realistic and potentially effective solution for dealing with Hamas, other than eradicating them. But I’d love to know how the current efforts could be supplanted by something more effective.
For over two decades, tens of thousands of rockets have been lobbed into Israel with the support of the Palestinanian people who gladly elected Hamas while they did so and continued to do so to this day. This isn’t a homogenous group of innocents. That’s a Lemmy fantasy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel
Currently, they run at 75% approval for the Oct. 7th attack.
There is no nation on earth who would have tolerated two decades of tens of thousands of rockets launched at civilians. And that’s while having tried walls, fences, border crossings, and on and on. All of which were decried as barbaric to Gaza (with reason), and which clearly failed to stop rocket attacks, and then October.
The twenty years of rocket attacks launched at civilians by the palestians are all war crimes. There’re no innocent parties here.
There’s only one difference between Israel and any other nation defending themselves from decades of war crimes and terrorist attacks… you can figure out what that is… just like everyone cries that they’re so passionate about the humanitarian crisis, but two of the largest humanitarian situations, Haiti and the DRC (with over 7 million displaced) get jack shit for news coverage.
People cover this conflict bc it’s trendy and religion.
They don’t continue to elect them to this day. They were elected one time, on a more moderate platform, and there hasn’t been an election since. They actually had less than 50% support before the attack, but getting bombed to shit makes you support the only group that’s willing to do something about them and fight back, do I get why they’re popularity may have risen since then.
Incidentally, that’s why bombing the crap out of civilians doesn’t stop terrorist groups. All those offers Israel is making just turns into more terrorists. Either that, or they kill all the Palestinians, which is genocide.
No people would tolerate what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians since the start of their occupation. The rockets are their only means of defense,and even those don’t do shit. Look at the numbers of dead from each side in every year. It’s not even comparavle. Israel isn’t defending themselves, they’re perpetrating the humanitarian crisis by their treatment of human beings, and then complaining when those people are pushed to the brink and lash out. Then they use it an excuse to do more genocide: displace people, take their land, and kill more children. The US did the same thing to the Native Americans, it’s the same playbook.
Yes, I know these delusions and have seen them here on Lemmy and amongst terrorist adjacent apologists all the time. Claims that the terrorists they elected aren’t really their elected government. Denying the fact that Hamas is the government of Gaza is just denying facts. People do it here because it doesn’t support the false narratives Lemmy loves so much.
The Palestinians elected Hamas, loving their war crimes like suicide bombings, blowing up bus loads of civilians, lobbing endless rockets into civilians, and cheering in the streets about it. Just like they celebrate the Oct attacks with a 75% approval level in Gaza. They didn’t trick the Palestinians into thinking they were peaceful, innocent angels, and then go “whoops our bad we are terrorists and war crimianls.” No, that’s who they elected on purpose.
Oh, and yes, the war crimes you support and apologize for as “their only defense” is just as bad as the rest of your claims. Every one of the tens of thousands of rockets fired has been a war crime. You’re an apologist for that. Take the time to sit down and realize how radicalized you already are that you think war crimes like tens of thousands of rockets laumched at civilians are the ONLY way they can defend themselves–your words. Like many here on Lemmy, you’re way down a dangerous and slippery slope.
And notice all the bitching and moaning comments, that accompany the thread nobody has a better solution for what’s going on to stop the rockets and mass terrorist attacks of the Gazan government. I’m still VERY open to hearing a realistic one. But you’re not going to.
Lastly, who are you defining as “the Palestinians”, do you count the millions in Jordan, Egypt, etc? Or do you think Gaza is all Palestinians? You diminish the term when you misuse and/or intentionally abuse the term genocide.
It’s not delusions, it’s called acknowledging facts. Fact:the last election was decades ago. Fact: Most of the population is under 18. Fact: Most of the population didn’t participate in that election. Fact: Hamas at the time was more moderate, or appeared to be, supported a two state solution and other more moderate policies. Fact: Most of the population didn’t support Hamas until Israel started doing a genocide. These are all facts. The irony of warning of a slippery slope when you’re ignoring all of these to defend an oppressive, genocidal, apartheid regime that’s killing tens of thousands more civilians, including children, than Palestine is palpable. You’re so stuck in your propaganda bubble you don’t even realize it.
Everyone knows the solution. Stop oppressing and blockading the Palestinians. Adopt a one state or two solution, give them autonomy, the ability to control their own land, power, sky, sea, trash, water, imports, etc. Either with their own state, or combine all the land into one, give equal protections to all people in a strong constitution, give representation to everyone, setup reconciliation panels to help the nation move past the crimes done and establish a new start, make treaties, etc. It was done in the UK with the Irish and South Africa. Israel thinks their situation is so special and unique, but it’s not. It’s the same settler colonial situation as all the others, except with Jewish people, so because they went through the holocaust, I guess they get a pass on genocide.
And genocide is what it is, or they’re dumb. Otherwise, what’s the plan? They’re just making more Hamas recruits by making all these orphans. You think they’ll like Israel after 30,000 dead? They’re either stupid or just plan on killing or displacing all the orphans, too, which is genocide. That’s what I’m saying.
Even before now, it looks like the same process, what they’ve been doing for decades. It’s the same as the natives in the US, which everyone would call a genocide, too, btw. It’s the same playbook. First, lots of colonialism and taking of land. Next, say they’re savage when they retaliate. Then, killing while moving them over bit by bit into smaller and farther pieces of land. Retaliate with huge violence when they try to fight back to kill off tons more and take more land. And their situation gets more desperate and they fight back more, retaliate harder, and repeat. It’s like the Nazis saying that it’s the only solution after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising because they too dangerous to govern. No shit, stop oppressing them.
This is one of the dumbest dogwhistles in existence. Everyone knows that’s not the actual point of contention.
It actually is a huge point of contention. That misunderstanding causes a lot of profanity and anger.
It’s not though, that is just false. No one in good faith will deny that a country has a right to defend themselves from an attack.
Setting aside your defense of genocide, it’s a divided issue, but support for Palestine is higher among democrats, and especially young democrats. Biden is actively losing young voters moment by moment, and that will lose him the election if he doesn’t fix it.
You don’t know what genocide is, and you demean the term by abusing it. As do a lot of people who have misappropriated it for propaganda reasons.
And yes, I know the younger the voter, the less history and background they have on this issue, and this the more knee jerk and blindly they react to Hamas propaganda. That’s one of the main points.
Actually the more people study the history of Israel, the worse it looks. When you start diving into the terrorist groups that drove the creation of Israel, that then were forgive for their war crimes, combined with their mainstream right party, and one even became prime minister; or Britain’s betrayal of the Palestinians after they helped them fight the Ottoman Empire during the war, or the historical opinions of Jews who survived the holocaust talking about the terrible treatment of Palestinians even back in 1948, etc it doesn’t look good.
Get out of your bubble, man. And expand your sources.
If you’re citing the terrible treatment of the Palestinians in 48, then expand and look at the expulsion of the Jews from the Muslim world and the theft of all their land. Approximately 800,000+, who then fled to Israel.
The point is your one-sided perspective and cherry picking of examples for this reductive reply.
As far as the Ottoman empire, Jews lived there before it fell in WWI. Including, (GASP), Palestinian Jews, which Lemmy doesn’t even seem to realize existed. Or tall about the useless land that they purchased and transformed and THEN it became an issue with pre 48 conflict.
And if you think Britian betrayed the Palestians instead of COMPLETELY fucked the middle east hand in hand with Russia, France, and the US through incompetence, arrogance, and racism… then you’ve either not studied the subject or you’re being intellectually disingenuous.
Pretending there’s innocent parties here is an easy way to spot someone who doesn’t know what the fuck their talking about or worse is being intentionally dishonest.
I can easily roll off examples of settlers’ crimes and pre Israeli settlers, but I’m aware of plenty of Arab ones too.
I can provide a laundry list of war crimes Bibi and the Likud party should be tried and convicted for, but I can do the the same for both Gaza and the West Bank.
If you’re sure this is one-sided, then you need more and different sources.
If you really want to delve into history and issues arising, why are the Israel’s arguably the first people’s / first nation. Treated so differently worldwide than all other first nations? Hmm. LOL
Why does every Israeli argument come down to “we were oppressed and killed en masse so we’re allowed to oppress and kill en masse others”? That’s not a defense. By your logic, black people in the US should be allowed to kill white people in the South and take everything below the Mason-Dixon.
Lemmy does acknowledge this, you just ignore it. It actually doesn’t help your argument at all. Jewish, Christians, and Muslim Arabs lived in peace in the area for centuries. That’s a huge argument against the necessity of Israel as it’s one Jewish ethnostate and a huge argument for a one-state solution, the one I prefer myself. And no one minded the land they purchased until they started buying it from the UN without consulting the local people who actually lived there. Israel always says it was legal, but ethically it’s horrible. Imagine your landlord selling your stuff and land without consulting you after promising you he’d sell it to you soon if you rebel against your old landlord.
Ya, they did both, but that’s unrelated. What’s your point here? My point was that there’s a reason Palestinians were angry at being promised their own state and then Britain and France giving huge portions to what would become Israel. It explains a lot of later actions that Israel doesn’t like to give context for, like when they’re attacked by surrounding nations (after all, that’s where the Palestinian refugees end up running to and affecting). Not sure what your point was.
There’s no completely innocent party. I mean, Hamas sucks. But the power dynamics make things more clear. All the power to change things lies in Israel, who has an actual government, state, military, advanced defense technology, etc and controls everything about the Palestinian territories.
I’d bet you money they don’t really compare. That’d like saying I can say plenty of times the Native Americans did horrible things to the white settlers to the US, but I can tell you 100% that one side was way worse than the other when you factor in scale of damage, power, and historical context.
Treated differently how? They get special treatment, I suppose, but I have a feeling that’s not what you mean. They’re condemned as much as other nations. Probably should be condemned more, up there with Russia, but they got the US backing them up. Other than that, they’re brought up a lot because 1) people are more anti-colonialosm now than they used to be and 2) most of the English-speaking internet is from the US and it’s allies who donate tons of money to Israel, so unlike other places of horror, a lot of the citizens who speak up can actually do something about it, and 3) I actually don’t think people speak up enough. People have generally ignored the plight of Palestinians for decades, part of the reason they’re so angry lol.
We are getting into so much that it’s hard to reply to everything immediately… I will just do chunks when I have the time and though we clearly, deeply, disagree, thank you for the conversation.
I was not trying to make that argument. I was indicating that you were leaving out relative and pertinent counter-facts. Being oppressed does not give one the right to oppress others. But when you hear about stolen Palestinian (Arab) land (which DID and DOES happen to this day), you never hear about stolen Jewish land and exile from the same conflict as part of this conflict. Neither existed in a vacuum. Neither justified the other. But with many claims and views on Lemmy, only one side informs the thinking. I take exception to that.
I am really trying to be clear here. The collective punishment that the Palestinians have suffered since the second intifada is war crimes. Literally, collective punishment is a war crime. Bibi, and many in Likud (whom I detest with a passion rivaled only by my revulsion at American republicans and neo-libs… capitalists…) are ALL war criminals, should be tried and convicted for it. Yes, I know Israel isn’t a signatory to the ICC… idc. They should all be convicted of their war crimes.
But I will not pretend that the Palestinians were some angelic group of peace-loving people who have been nothing but oppressed and have no blood AND war crimes on their hands.
Evaluated in a vacuum, anybody would understand many of these radicalized anti-Israel views. Because Israel is GUILTY of WAR CRIMES. I am not excusing or defending it. I WILL debate some horrors of war, though as not being clear-cut war-crimes. Especially Hamas’ co-location war crimes, which are the worst of the conflict as they have been committed for decades with nobody doing anything about it.
But I do not view the conflict in a vacuum, and sincerely believe it makes zero sense to do so. Here’s a severely abridged list of things that affect my views and thinking on the conflict:
pre-WW I, in the Ottoman empire, Palestine was not a deep and widespread national identity. Most Arabs (the majority of people in the Ottoman Empire identified tribally or by family). And Palestine was a place filled with Christians, Muslims, and Jews, with relatively low levels of conflict (but also not a peaceful Disney wonderland, as I have seen pro-ported in some claims). And when the immigration of Jews increased post 1908, so did resentment and hatred directed towards them similar to all anti-immigrant behavior (like Brexit, America/Mexico, etc.) You can find historical articles on how Jews moving in lowers the value of the land, and how undesirable they are, directed as much at the immigrant aspect as it was the religious. Much like white neighborhoods trying to keep blacks out in the US, nobody wanted the new Jewish Immigrants… or you could think the Irish influx of America around the turn of the century. Anyway, many definitely minded the Jewish immigrants and people did mind the land they purchased.
Historic claims are arbitrary and relative, to a degree. What do I mean? For instance, who’s claims do we honor? Israel’s biblical claims to the land (as an Athiest, this is not compelling to me. archaeological and objectively supported claims are more compelling, even so, who the fuck cares what happened back then?) The Crusaders who lost the land (should it be returned?)? The Ottoman empire (who I could debate on the side of Suleiman the Great, was one of the best times for the region)? People, with this conflict, often pick the most convenient claim to support the point they are making? Maybe we should use the most recent legal recognition of Israel as a Jewish homeland and state? I think there is a very strong reason to use that one, but admit it’s debatable, and am not saying that there was not shady shit going on in the creation and recognition of the state. I will also say, MOST countries have shady pasts and formations. Surely we can agree on that too?
There were clearly horrific crimes during the Nakba. And even recognition of the Nakba has been suppressed in the West and especially in Israel. Most Americans do not even know the term Nakba. It is like how most Americans do not know that Central Park was an African American area of properties that was literally stolen from them to make the park. Or the ignorance about how many other American African American successful communities that were literally razed and occupied or erased from history and memory as best as the criminals could. Israel to this day has not unsealed numerous files on Nakba operations. I do not excuse these, but also do not find it a convincing argument to dismantle Israel as a state anymore.
I am highly open to a discussion and debate on it though. A meaningful, respectful one, not a normal Lemmy world news one where I get death threats regularly and comments to “fist yourself you fucker”. LMFAO.
Shit man, this is already getting too long. I’m sorry. My point early on when I was taking part in Lemmy World News (back in Oct) was that this is a SUPER deep and complicated issue. I am open to a respectful and intellectually honest discussion and debate. I am just not sure how to shrink it down.
Should we start a separate thread elsewhere, for people who want to discuss things honestly? Or even a community, so we can mod it and remove hate and propaganda…
Maybe we just leave it here in this thread and keep chatting like this. I don’t know, what do you think? If you just want me to (insert hatred here) lemmie know so I dont’ waste anymore time. ;)
Cheers
Genocide is action or intent to destroy a people in whole or in part because of their status as a member of that group. Israeli officials have made it clear numerous times that their ultimate goal is the removal of the Palestinian people from Palestine, which will result in mass death and destruction of their culture. This is textbook genocide.
You’re absolutely right that outside of “the lemmy bubble” you may find a shitload of unintelligent dumbasses. People incapable of critical thinking or the ability to form a thought of their own.
That was eloquent and a well supported argument. I’m convinced!
A lot of us believe in Palestinian’s right to defend themselves as well. I work in a city, among many people that have no idea what Lemmy even is, there is a Palestinian flag on my work’s building and we feel grief at the atrocities committed by Israel. You’re right it isn’t cut and dry, but the support for Israel is at the lowest I have ever seen in my life.
Soooo fucking naive.
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