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Thanks for your answer. I have some more questions if you don't care. 1. Ive watched and read things about Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Those settl

Thanks for your answer. I have some more questions if you don't care. 1. Ive watched and read things about Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Those settlements are not supported or protected by the Israeli government. Why isnt Hamas just shooting rockets at the settlements and not Israel proper? (I understand that there is considerable debate about what Israel proper is) 2. Can you expand on why the land is Palestine and not Jewish? Seems to me that the rough history is thousands of years of the Jewish people living there -> The ottoman empire -> British rule with Jewish settlers coming back to Israel and mixing with the people that lived there (where Palestine's claim comes in to play I believe) -> the UN partition of the land -> what we have now where the Israeli government has taken more and more of the land. I was brought up to believe that the land should be the Jewish people's land. Why do you believe that is wrong?

uoaei 3y ago
> Those settlements are not supported or protected by the Israeli government. That's not strictly true. No matter what the government's official stance is, IDF soldiers are reported as helping Israeli settlers to raze Palestinian farms, orchards, and even homes on occasion. Just this year, Netanyahu "beefed up security" around the settlements, which sounds like military occupation because it is.[1] Even in cases where the government does not explicitly help the settlers, they don't punish violent crimes nor theft either. > Why isnt Hamas just shooting rockets at the settlements and not Israel proper? That's a good question. I don't have a good sense of what it's like on the ground so don't count my speculation for much, but I would guess that because Hamas knows their rockets aren't accurate (they're not designed to be, they're cheap and produced using poor equipment), they decide to launch them in directions where a positive hit is most likely. It may be that the settlements themselves are too small or sparse to have much real impact, even if it seems like it would be more symbolically relevant. > Why do you believe that is wrong? I believe what is wrong is the application of the word "should". Many societies have occupied that land historically, and the Abrahamic religions all consider it a site of immense power and importance. It's true that the region was the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity and that Islam was born further down the Arabian peninsula, but the history of the past 2000 years doesn't impose enough of a moral imperative to justify mass occupation and upheaval of people who are trying to live their lives. More glibly, if the religious folks are inflicting such pain and suffering on entire groups of people based on what amounts to in-group bias, I don't consider that pro-social and want that behavior to stop. We should not tolerate those who make people miserable and sometimes kill them in the name of some god. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383010/israel-is-moving-to-strengthen-settlements-after-shooting-attacks https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383010/israel-is-moving-t...
- jagtstronaut 3y ago
  Thanks for that article. Even that article (which I am sure that NPR leans pro-Palestine), seems to indicate that the situation is fraught with wrongs on both sides. I don't think I will be abandoning my american, conservative upbringing in this particular instance, but this has been super helpful.

uoaei 3y ago

> Those settlements are not supported or protected by the Israeli government. That's not strictly true. No matter what the government's official stance is, IDF soldiers are reported as helping Israeli settlers to raze Palestinian farms, orchards, and even homes on occasion. Just this year, Netanyahu "beefed up security" around the settlements, which sounds like military occupation because it is.[1] Even in cases where the government does not explicitly help the settlers, they don't punish violent crimes nor theft either. > Why isnt Hamas just shooting rockets at the settlements and not Israel proper? That's a good question. I don't have a good sense of what it's like on the ground so don't count my speculation for much, but I would guess that because Hamas knows their rockets aren't accurate (they're not designed to be, they're cheap and produced using poor equipment), they decide to launch them in directions where a positive hit is most likely. It may be that the settlements themselves are too small or sparse to have much real impact, even if it seems like it would be more symbolically relevant. > Why do you believe that is wrong? I believe what is wrong is the application of the word "should". Many societies have occupied that land historically, and the Abrahamic religions all consider it a site of immense power and importance. It's true that the region was the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity and that Islam was born further down the Arabian peninsula, but the history of the past 2000 years doesn't impose enough of a moral imperative to justify mass occupation and upheaval of people who are trying to live their lives. More glibly, if the religious folks are inflicting such pain and suffering on entire groups of people based on what amounts to in-group bias, I don't consider that pro-social and want that behavior to stop. We should not tolerate those who make people miserable and sometimes kill them in the name of some god. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383010/israel-is-moving-to-strengthen-settlements-after-shooting-attacks https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383010/israel-is-moving-t...

jagtstronaut 3y ago
Thanks for that article. Even that article (which I am sure that NPR leans pro-Palestine), seems to indicate that the situation is fraught with wrongs on both sides. I don't think I will be abandoning my american, conservative upbringing in this particular instance, but this has been super helpful.