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Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history o

Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history of ethnic persecution. What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. There are players on both "sides" of this conflict that are driving it because they actually want the conflict, people who never wanted it and desperately want it to stop, and most are caught like bits of air in this conflict hurricane that even the head of state in a world hegemonic power can do scarcely more to dictate terms to than an actual hurricane. I don't know what the answer is, and I appreciate the urgency of feeling that causes people to protest, but at this point I'm pretty sure most protest gestures do little other than feed the tribal vortex at the heart of the hurricane, especially the farther away from any actual leverage points on the dynamic that they are. And an Israeli tech exec existing and doing tech exec things is probably not close to a leverage point, nor is protesting them doing tech exec things doing anything worth levering.

smashah 3y ago
Yeah, the Google employee should've done this in front of Biden or Bibi. Nevermind feeling as though they had no choice but to protest in whatever way they could against a plausible-genocide.
godelski 3y ago
> an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. I think this is important to reiterate. Because forces us to pay close attention to the details. There are extremely reasonable justifications for both sides because both sides have committed atrocities. This conflict goes a long way back and I'm in no position to claim who started it. But I can recognize that one atrocity does not justify another. I can recognize that justifying or dismissing the committing of an atrocity only further enables the conflict. Whichever side you land on, if you do not take a highly nuanced approach you are only further enabling conflict. For that's a key reason the conflict continues today. War always includes psychological warfare because you have to convince humans to do the inhumane. There is no such thing as a righteous war. War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander. - [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc
- salah7252 3y ago
  There has never nor ever will be justification on the side of an occupying force to fight back against armed resistance against oppression on stolen land. Ever.
  - name_nick_sex_m 3y ago
    And yet all countries are built on this anyway
tuatoru 3y ago
Up until Hamas attacked Israel, Palestine relied on Israel to collect taxes. Collecting taxes is the bmost basic government function there is. Hamas had twenty years to become a government. It was uninterested in doing so. Israel is not the genocidal agent here.
- Gunnerhead 3y ago
  Israel didn’t collect taxes out of the goodness of their hearts. They’ve collected them due to the Oslo Agreement, giving Israel the power to collect the taxes. This allows Israel to control the tap and punish the Palestinians whenever they see fit, as they’ve done over and over again for years.
- salah7252 3y ago
  This line of logic is so low level, why did a non-governmental party..not build a government..in a walled off open air camp...where an occupier controls what goes in or out & has destroyed things like seaports & airports. VERY low level.
  - YZF 3y ago
    Your argument isn't very strong either. Gaza wasn't walled off forever. The walls were built in response to attacks from Gaza into Israel. No attacks and there'd be no wall. Israel didn't occupy Gaza so how is an "occupier" controlling everything? What about Egypt? If Israel controlled everything then how did lathes for making rockets, trucks, machine guns, RPGs, grenades, assault rifles, mines, get to Gaza? Your "open air camp" is my "Singapore". It was up to the Gazans to decide what to do on this piece of land they were given control over. Even if they aspire to have the entire of Mandatory Palestine they could have chosen not to do this using violence. Israel didn't destroy airports or seaports. Gaza never had a deep seeport, the water is shallow, and the fishing ports exist. Israel does have a naval blockage on Gaza so that Hamas couldn't get tanks and artillery and more weaponry in to attack it with, a fairly reasonable position. Similarly Israel will not allow airplanes to fly in either, for the same reasons. I'm not following on "non-governmental party", didn't Hamas win the elections and rule Gaza as its government?
edanm 3y ago
[flagged]
- adastra22 3y ago
  It's not an ethnostate either. There's 2 million muslim arab people living in Israel with full citizenship and all the rights that go with it--including the right to vote in democratic elections. It's no more an ethnostate than, say, France or Germany.
  - edanm 3y ago
    Agreed. But, to be fair, there is some validity to the idea that it's an ethnostate, in that there is automatic "right of return" only to ethnic Jews. Not to mention there is some legal discrimination against non-Jews (like the new nation-state law) and also a whole lot of non-legal discrimination. I don't agree with this reasoning - but the situation is complicated so I understand why some people argue otherwise. Like you, I'd say that Israel is just like France - it defined some group of people to be citizens (or the equivalent of "expat" citizens), which included all Jews in the world, and also included the non-Jews on the land at the time. And from then on, acted like any other state. This is very similar to France/Germany/anyone (and Zionism was started as part of the same worldwide move towards nationalism).
pbiggar 3y ago
> What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. Why is one a humanitarian tragedy but the other an unnacceptable attack. You're trying to absolve Israel of its role in the killing of 30,000 civilians over 5 months, to the condemnation of the entire world. Israel is not entitled to kill civilians under any circumstances, not even if Hamas makes it hard to attack Hamas directly. If you look at the statements of Israeli leaders, it is clear that the killing of Palestinians is intentional [1]. As has been the long policy of apartheid and annexation of the West bank (where, you might remember, there is no Hamas). Finally, to be clear the protest is of a Google exec by a Google employee over a google policy/contract which is part of the IDF's murderous policy. [1] https://isitgenocide.com/ https://isitgenocide.com/
- tptacek 3y ago
  I don't think much of what Israel has done in Gaza is justifiable, but "cannot kill civilians under any circumstances" can't possibly be the standard; if it was, the Nazis might still control most of Europe.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - pbiggar 3y ago
    You twisted my words: I said "not entitled". Accidental civilian killings are not acceptable but yes of course they happen. Deliberate killing of civilians are war crimes. We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to commit rape, neither is allowed commit war crimes. The issue is that the IDF is much worse than Hamas on all these things: - Israel has killed 30,000 (though the number is suspected to be as high as 50,000 now, and it continues to increase), while Hamas killed 700 civilians (I'll leave aside the very credible claims that Israel killed a good number of it's own) - Israel has a much worse ratio of civilians to valid military targets (possibly between 5/1 and 8/1 ratio, while Hamas has 2/1 ratio during Hamas' attack, and it is believed many of those were killed by the IDF) - Hamas has only killed civilians during the Oct 7 attack. Israel is killing hundreds of civilians per day, and has used rhetoric that indicates this is deliberate [4]. Even Biden, who claims he is a zionist, called Israeli bombing of civilian areas "indiscriminate" [5]. There are plenty of videos online of the IDF killing civilians, including today an old deaf man was killed by a soldier, and congratulated by his squad [11]. - Hamas has apologized for killing civilians; Israel has justified killing and claims it can and will continue to do so, including by denying aid (a war crime) - Israel denies aid to civilians, directly causing a famine; Hamas does not starve civilians - Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well; Israel tortures and rapes and sexually abuses its detainees [1] - Israel is deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure (it claims Hamas is hiding there, which does not excuse it and this is a war crime) - Hamas has been alleged to have committed a total of 3 acts of sexual violence (this is heavily disputed, see [2]). However the IDF has committed dozens of acts of torture [9] and rape [1] (this is only counting since Oct 7, but Israel has been killing, torturing and committing sexual violence against Palestinians since 1948, eg [12] ) - Hamas took 250 detainees, Israel had over 1000 before Oct 7 [10] and it increased to over 2000 since Oct 7 [3]. After releasing detainees as part of the short ceasefire, Israel recaptured some of the same people. An Israeli sniper shot a child who celebrated the return of a family member. - There are multiple credible reports of execution of civilians by the IDF outside of combat situations (that is, they came into a place, expelled the women and children, and executed all the men and older boys) [6] [7] - Israel has been killing thousands of Palestinians for years, including thousands in Gaza in 2021 and 2014, and of course 15,000 killed and 750,000 displaced in the massacres during the original invasion of Palestine by the settlers who created Israel. [8] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-israeli-sexual-assault-of-palestinian-women-are-credible-un-panel-says https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-isra... [2] https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence [3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-ho... [4] https://isitgenocide.com/ https://isitgenocide.com/) [5] https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d4c1270d9cfa484b664a22071 https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d... [6] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse-israeli-forces-of-executing-19-civilians-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse... [7] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-shows-aftermath-of-a-summary-execution-of-15-men-in-a-gaza-apartment https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-s... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba [9] https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ [10] https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics [11] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1766404796909588637 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17664047969095886... [12] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-video-of-palestinian-shot-by-israeli-sniper https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-v...
nebula8804 3y ago
This is more eloquently put than I could write however it feels quite pessimistic (understandably so) I personally have felt a bit more optimistic about the long term future. Coming of age in post 9/11 America and going from the warm embrace of playing my Nintendo 64 everyday to seeing regular people go full on hate for people like me was a depressing era that I thought would never end. It certainly shaped how I view myself as a human. I guess you can say the haters got to me. A lot of things I aspired to in middle school completely ended in high school because of this self-hate. I felt renewed hope during the Obama years in college but never really shook off this feeling. After all long term damage was already done regarding the path I took in life. When Trump got elected, I felt all depressed all over again because all those terrible people came right back out of the shadows yet again but I eventually realized (finally) that I cannot keep letting this affect me. I had to focus on how lucky I am to have what I have and do the best I can. When this attack happened, I thought oh no not again. Overnight all those people came out of the shadows yet again. But this time I saw something amazing. I saw countless numbers of people organizing against the Israeli siege: all over the world including the US. My initial thought was this is just a temporary blip and people will get tired and move on. Nope: protests continued even in the US which I was sure would just move on from caring about Muslims. It sometimes feels like the US will not come to the defense of Muslims like they would other groups. We see it in the favorability polling. But these protests: I have seen first hand, how this has really scared a lot of those people that normally come out of the shadows. The first time I have seen this in my life. Now the protests are being dismissed as if they are nothing. Attempts are being made to silence any avenue they use to communicate. Meta platforms were already blocking this stuff, they deployed the standard bucket of tricks to silent dissent on Youtube and Reddit(thank god for HN) and now the potential banning of the 400lb gorilla in the room: Tiktok. This tool of potential Chinese propaganda helped serve a useful purpose: it amplified conversations that are normally taboo in the US. So going back to why I feel a bit optimistic? Well I believe this is a signature event for Millennials and especially Gen Z. Gen Z is a generation that grew up with so many problems thrown in their faces (the mental illness caused by smartphones, graduating into a terrible job market, no prospects of owning property, having to live to see climate change etc.) As a result they started out of the gate super pessimistic about the powers that be. I saw the unbelievable boost in Bernie Sanders's candidacy thanks the the efforts of these people. We really could be seeing a future Gen Z president who is in one of these pro-Palestinian protests. Lets not even get into Gen-Alpha. They are on track to be the first majority non-white generation in America. How will that affect their world views? Meanwhile where is Israel? This country that has continually gotten the benefit of the doubt my entire life has severely damaged its reputation in the eyes of young people world wide. The people that are about to take power. At the same time, they can't even get their own house in order regarding their government. This attack has proven that despite their supposed brilliance in war technology (Unit 8200, Stuxnet, etc.) they can really mess up and look like a bunch of dopes shattering the image that they are invincible. In all Israel is trying to hold together by pushing back against "political" entropy, at some point given all the things that have transpired, entropy will win. How long will it take? Who knows. But I don't think you can make young people "unlearn" their views on Israel at this point and thats the challenge groups like AIPAC are going to have to face. Now I do want to give an opposite view: That this is indeed a flash in the pan Here is Noah Smith's recent article on how both the far right and far left are dying. [1]: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/getting-past-the-2010s https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/getting-past-the-2010s >"I think this is part of the reason progressives are turning more and more toward Palestine as their single overarching cause. The extremist types who dominate progressive groups after “evaporative cooling” has removed the moderates are more likely to be leftist types, who see all political action as falling under one unifying anti-Western decolonial revolutionary struggle. And with general enthusiasm on the wane, activist groups are looking for something that can restore the free-flowing rage from which they drew their energy in the 2010s. >And if you’re going to unite around a single cause, I suppose Palestine isn’t such a bad choice. Israel’s war in Gaza has been undeniably brutal — not a real genocide, but similar to Bashar al-Assad’s bloody indiscriminate crushing of rebellious provinces in Syria. Hamas is evil, but that doesn’t mean tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians need to die. And support for Palestine gets massive amounts of support and attention from foreigners on social media, boosting online engagement — which might encourage more Americans to be activists. >The problem here is that as with every progressive activist cause, activist movements are embracing the most extreme possible position. Instead of simply calling for a cease-fire, many, like Aaron Bushnell, demand the destruction of Israel. Whereas a normal liberal might use the term “apartheid” to refer to Israel’s disgraceful treatment of West Bank Palestinians, progressives increasingly use the word to mean the very existence of the state of Israel. And when they call for “decolonization”, progressives increasingly mean the mass expulsion of Israelis from the region. >That is not a position that the U.S. — or other powerful countries — are ever going to support. Staking out this extreme position might seem to reduce the risk that the issue will be solved anytime soon — even if Israel stops its war, progressive activists can keep on marching for Palestine as long as Israel continues to exist. But ultimately that will drain the moral force from the progressive position, causing the activist base to shrink even further." Frankly I dont know really know how the wind will end up blowing but lets all see what happens.
irfanshaik 3y ago
Great, why is the United States taking sides in an ethnoconflict? How many voters even care about this issue vs how many are being dragged into it? Why do both presidential candidates speak at AIPAC? Makes 0 sense for us to take sides in this conflict.
weatherlite 3y ago
> Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history of ethnic persecution How can these two thoughts go together? Either its a horrible "ethnostate" or its a reasonable construct due to Jews special history.
- wwweston 3y ago
  The same way any number of understandable or even reasonable reactions can end up being suboptimal or even counterproductive. See the prisoner's dilemma. Any history of ethnic suffering creates a situation where it's natural to suspect outgroup society can't be trusted to reliably treat the ingroup adequately well. So in response, they might create institutions that privilege the ingroup and prioritize its security and prosperity. Outgroup rights & dignity may even become negotiable or disposable in the name of ingroup priorities, sometimes even basic rights like property, freedom of movement, or life. This of course guarantees the outgroup will have legitimate and serious grievances (along with any less legitimate ones they may or may not have), which will eventually mean they too may feel justified in approaching the problem from a never-again ingroup-first perspective, probably eventually including organized violence and whatever system oriented around these values that they can. Voilà: self-sustaining conflict dynamic. And everything seemed at least locally justifiable all along the way. After all, what's wrong with providing ingroup security, and punishing outgroup aggression? Or is there something wrong with it?
  - weatherlite 3y ago
    > Or is there something wrong with it? So you're basically saying it made sense at the time (and perhaps it still does) but it also created a mess with the Palestinians? I can agree with that. Yet here we are, what are we going to do now? Going back in history to prevent the holocaust and many other atrocities towards Jews before (and even after) is not possible. Preventing Zionism is not possible. For some reason the intellectual elite seems to be convinced the only possible way out of this is the elimination of Israel - how come? I can understand why Palestinians or the Iranians would want that, I don't understand the huge support in the West for this type of thinking though.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

smashah 3y ago

Yeah, the Google employee should've done this in front of Biden or Bibi. Nevermind feeling as though they had no choice but to protest in whatever way they could against a plausible-genocide.

godelski 3y ago

> an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. I think this is important to reiterate. Because forces us to pay close attention to the details. There are extremely reasonable justifications for both sides because both sides have committed atrocities. This conflict goes a long way back and I'm in no position to claim who started it. But I can recognize that one atrocity does not justify another. I can recognize that justifying or dismissing the committing of an atrocity only further enables the conflict. Whichever side you land on, if you do not take a highly nuanced approach you are only further enabling conflict. For that's a key reason the conflict continues today. War always includes psychological warfare because you have to convince humans to do the inhumane. There is no such thing as a righteous war. War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander. - [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc

salah7252 3y ago
There has never nor ever will be justification on the side of an occupying force to fight back against armed resistance against oppression on stolen land. Ever.
- name_nick_sex_m 3y ago
  And yet all countries are built on this anyway

tuatoru 3y ago

Up until Hamas attacked Israel, Palestine relied on Israel to collect taxes. Collecting taxes is the bmost basic government function there is. Hamas had twenty years to become a government. It was uninterested in doing so. Israel is not the genocidal agent here.

Gunnerhead 3y ago
Israel didn’t collect taxes out of the goodness of their hearts. They’ve collected them due to the Oslo Agreement, giving Israel the power to collect the taxes. This allows Israel to control the tap and punish the Palestinians whenever they see fit, as they’ve done over and over again for years.
salah7252 3y ago
This line of logic is so low level, why did a non-governmental party..not build a government..in a walled off open air camp...where an occupier controls what goes in or out & has destroyed things like seaports & airports. VERY low level.
- YZF 3y ago
  Your argument isn't very strong either. Gaza wasn't walled off forever. The walls were built in response to attacks from Gaza into Israel. No attacks and there'd be no wall. Israel didn't occupy Gaza so how is an "occupier" controlling everything? What about Egypt? If Israel controlled everything then how did lathes for making rockets, trucks, machine guns, RPGs, grenades, assault rifles, mines, get to Gaza? Your "open air camp" is my "Singapore". It was up to the Gazans to decide what to do on this piece of land they were given control over. Even if they aspire to have the entire of Mandatory Palestine they could have chosen not to do this using violence. Israel didn't destroy airports or seaports. Gaza never had a deep seeport, the water is shallow, and the fishing ports exist. Israel does have a naval blockage on Gaza so that Hamas couldn't get tanks and artillery and more weaponry in to attack it with, a fairly reasonable position. Similarly Israel will not allow airplanes to fly in either, for the same reasons. I'm not following on "non-governmental party", didn't Hamas win the elections and rule Gaza as its government?

edanm 3y ago

[flagged]

adastra22 3y ago
It's not an ethnostate either. There's 2 million muslim arab people living in Israel with full citizenship and all the rights that go with it--including the right to vote in democratic elections. It's no more an ethnostate than, say, France or Germany.
- edanm 3y ago
  Agreed. But, to be fair, there is some validity to the idea that it's an ethnostate, in that there is automatic "right of return" only to ethnic Jews. Not to mention there is some legal discrimination against non-Jews (like the new nation-state law) and also a whole lot of non-legal discrimination. I don't agree with this reasoning - but the situation is complicated so I understand why some people argue otherwise. Like you, I'd say that Israel is just like France - it defined some group of people to be citizens (or the equivalent of "expat" citizens), which included all Jews in the world, and also included the non-Jews on the land at the time. And from then on, acted like any other state. This is very similar to France/Germany/anyone (and Zionism was started as part of the same worldwide move towards nationalism).

pbiggar 3y ago

> What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. Why is one a humanitarian tragedy but the other an unnacceptable attack. You're trying to absolve Israel of its role in the killing of 30,000 civilians over 5 months, to the condemnation of the entire world. Israel is not entitled to kill civilians under any circumstances, not even if Hamas makes it hard to attack Hamas directly. If you look at the statements of Israeli leaders, it is clear that the killing of Palestinians is intentional [1]. As has been the long policy of apartheid and annexation of the West bank (where, you might remember, there is no Hamas). Finally, to be clear the protest is of a Google exec by a Google employee over a google policy/contract which is part of the IDF's murderous policy. [1] https://isitgenocide.com/ https://isitgenocide.com/

tptacek 3y ago
I don't think much of what Israel has done in Gaza is justifiable, but "cannot kill civilians under any circumstances" can't possibly be the standard; if it was, the Nazis might still control most of Europe.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  [flagged]
- pbiggar 3y ago
  You twisted my words: I said "not entitled". Accidental civilian killings are not acceptable but yes of course they happen. Deliberate killing of civilians are war crimes. We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to commit rape, neither is allowed commit war crimes. The issue is that the IDF is much worse than Hamas on all these things: - Israel has killed 30,000 (though the number is suspected to be as high as 50,000 now, and it continues to increase), while Hamas killed 700 civilians (I'll leave aside the very credible claims that Israel killed a good number of it's own) - Israel has a much worse ratio of civilians to valid military targets (possibly between 5/1 and 8/1 ratio, while Hamas has 2/1 ratio during Hamas' attack, and it is believed many of those were killed by the IDF) - Hamas has only killed civilians during the Oct 7 attack. Israel is killing hundreds of civilians per day, and has used rhetoric that indicates this is deliberate [4]. Even Biden, who claims he is a zionist, called Israeli bombing of civilian areas "indiscriminate" [5]. There are plenty of videos online of the IDF killing civilians, including today an old deaf man was killed by a soldier, and congratulated by his squad [11]. - Hamas has apologized for killing civilians; Israel has justified killing and claims it can and will continue to do so, including by denying aid (a war crime) - Israel denies aid to civilians, directly causing a famine; Hamas does not starve civilians - Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well; Israel tortures and rapes and sexually abuses its detainees [1] - Israel is deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure (it claims Hamas is hiding there, which does not excuse it and this is a war crime) - Hamas has been alleged to have committed a total of 3 acts of sexual violence (this is heavily disputed, see [2]). However the IDF has committed dozens of acts of torture [9] and rape [1] (this is only counting since Oct 7, but Israel has been killing, torturing and committing sexual violence against Palestinians since 1948, eg [12] ) - Hamas took 250 detainees, Israel had over 1000 before Oct 7 [10] and it increased to over 2000 since Oct 7 [3]. After releasing detainees as part of the short ceasefire, Israel recaptured some of the same people. An Israeli sniper shot a child who celebrated the return of a family member. - There are multiple credible reports of execution of civilians by the IDF outside of combat situations (that is, they came into a place, expelled the women and children, and executed all the men and older boys) [6] [7] - Israel has been killing thousands of Palestinians for years, including thousands in Gaza in 2021 and 2014, and of course 15,000 killed and 750,000 displaced in the massacres during the original invasion of Palestine by the settlers who created Israel. [8] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-israeli-sexual-assault-of-palestinian-women-are-credible-un-panel-says https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-isra... [2] https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence [3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-ho... [4] https://isitgenocide.com/ https://isitgenocide.com/) [5] https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d4c1270d9cfa484b664a22071 https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d... [6] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse-israeli-forces-of-executing-19-civilians-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse... [7] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-shows-aftermath-of-a-summary-execution-of-15-men-in-a-gaza-apartment https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-s... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba [9] https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ [10] https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics [11] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1766404796909588637 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17664047969095886... [12] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-video-of-palestinian-shot-by-israeli-sniper https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-v...

nebula8804 3y ago

This is more eloquently put than I could write however it feels quite pessimistic (understandably so) I personally have felt a bit more optimistic about the long term future. Coming of age in post 9/11 America and going from the warm embrace of playing my Nintendo 64 everyday to seeing regular people go full on hate for people like me was a depressing era that I thought would never end. It certainly shaped how I view myself as a human. I guess you can say the haters got to me. A lot of things I aspired to in middle school completely ended in high school because of this self-hate. I felt renewed hope during the Obama years in college but never really shook off this feeling. After all long term damage was already done regarding the path I took in life. When Trump got elected, I felt all depressed all over again because all those terrible people came right back out of the shadows yet again but I eventually realized (finally) that I cannot keep letting this affect me. I had to focus on how lucky I am to have what I have and do the best I can. When this attack happened, I thought oh no not again. Overnight all those people came out of the shadows yet again. But this time I saw something amazing. I saw countless numbers of people organizing against the Israeli siege: all over the world including the US. My initial thought was this is just a temporary blip and people will get tired and move on. Nope: protests continued even in the US which I was sure would just move on from caring about Muslims. It sometimes feels like the US will not come to the defense of Muslims like they would other groups. We see it in the favorability polling. But these protests: I have seen first hand, how this has really scared a lot of those people that normally come out of the shadows. The first time I have seen this in my life. Now the protests are being dismissed as if they are nothing. Attempts are being made to silence any avenue they use to communicate. Meta platforms were already blocking this stuff, they deployed the standard bucket of tricks to silent dissent on Youtube and Reddit(thank god for HN) and now the potential banning of the 400lb gorilla in the room: Tiktok. This tool of potential Chinese propaganda helped serve a useful purpose: it amplified conversations that are normally taboo in the US. So going back to why I feel a bit optimistic? Well I believe this is a signature event for Millennials and especially Gen Z. Gen Z is a generation that grew up with so many problems thrown in their faces (the mental illness caused by smartphones, graduating into a terrible job market, no prospects of owning property, having to live to see climate change etc.) As a result they started out of the gate super pessimistic about the powers that be. I saw the unbelievable boost in Bernie Sanders's candidacy thanks the the efforts of these people. We really could be seeing a future Gen Z president who is in one of these pro-Palestinian protests. Lets not even get into Gen-Alpha. They are on track to be the first majority non-white generation in America. How will that affect their world views? Meanwhile where is Israel? This country that has continually gotten the benefit of the doubt my entire life has severely damaged its reputation in the eyes of young people world wide. The people that are about to take power. At the same time, they can't even get their own house in order regarding their government. This attack has proven that despite their supposed brilliance in war technology (Unit 8200, Stuxnet, etc.) they can really mess up and look like a bunch of dopes shattering the image that they are invincible. In all Israel is trying to hold together by pushing back against "political" entropy, at some point given all the things that have transpired, entropy will win. How long will it take? Who knows. But I don't think you can make young people "unlearn" their views on Israel at this point and thats the challenge groups like AIPAC are going to have to face. Now I do want to give an opposite view: That this is indeed a flash in the pan Here is Noah Smith's recent article on how both the far right and far left are dying. [1]: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/getting-past-the-2010s https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/getting-past-the-2010s >"I think this is part of the reason progressives are turning more and more toward Palestine as their single overarching cause. The extremist types who dominate progressive groups after “evaporative cooling” has removed the moderates are more likely to be leftist types, who see all political action as falling under one unifying anti-Western decolonial revolutionary struggle. And with general enthusiasm on the wane, activist groups are looking for something that can restore the free-flowing rage from which they drew their energy in the 2010s. >And if you’re going to unite around a single cause, I suppose Palestine isn’t such a bad choice. Israel’s war in Gaza has been undeniably brutal — not a real genocide, but similar to Bashar al-Assad’s bloody indiscriminate crushing of rebellious provinces in Syria. Hamas is evil, but that doesn’t mean tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians need to die. And support for Palestine gets massive amounts of support and attention from foreigners on social media, boosting online engagement — which might encourage more Americans to be activists. >The problem here is that as with every progressive activist cause, activist movements are embracing the most extreme possible position. Instead of simply calling for a cease-fire, many, like Aaron Bushnell, demand the destruction of Israel. Whereas a normal liberal might use the term “apartheid” to refer to Israel’s disgraceful treatment of West Bank Palestinians, progressives increasingly use the word to mean the very existence of the state of Israel. And when they call for “decolonization”, progressives increasingly mean the mass expulsion of Israelis from the region. >That is not a position that the U.S. — or other powerful countries — are ever going to support. Staking out this extreme position might seem to reduce the risk that the issue will be solved anytime soon — even if Israel stops its war, progressive activists can keep on marching for Palestine as long as Israel continues to exist. But ultimately that will drain the moral force from the progressive position, causing the activist base to shrink even further." Frankly I dont know really know how the wind will end up blowing but lets all see what happens.

irfanshaik 3y ago

Great, why is the United States taking sides in an ethnoconflict? How many voters even care about this issue vs how many are being dragged into it? Why do both presidential candidates speak at AIPAC? Makes 0 sense for us to take sides in this conflict.

weatherlite 3y ago

> Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history of ethnic persecution How can these two thoughts go together? Either its a horrible "ethnostate" or its a reasonable construct due to Jews special history.

wwweston 3y ago
The same way any number of understandable or even reasonable reactions can end up being suboptimal or even counterproductive. See the prisoner's dilemma. Any history of ethnic suffering creates a situation where it's natural to suspect outgroup society can't be trusted to reliably treat the ingroup adequately well. So in response, they might create institutions that privilege the ingroup and prioritize its security and prosperity. Outgroup rights & dignity may even become negotiable or disposable in the name of ingroup priorities, sometimes even basic rights like property, freedom of movement, or life. This of course guarantees the outgroup will have legitimate and serious grievances (along with any less legitimate ones they may or may not have), which will eventually mean they too may feel justified in approaching the problem from a never-again ingroup-first perspective, probably eventually including organized violence and whatever system oriented around these values that they can. Voilà: self-sustaining conflict dynamic. And everything seemed at least locally justifiable all along the way. After all, what's wrong with providing ingroup security, and punishing outgroup aggression? Or is there something wrong with it?
- weatherlite 3y ago
  > Or is there something wrong with it? So you're basically saying it made sense at the time (and perhaps it still does) but it also created a mess with the Palestinians? I can agree with that. Yet here we are, what are we going to do now? Going back in history to prevent the holocaust and many other atrocities towards Jews before (and even after) is not possible. Preventing Zionism is not possible. For some reason the intellectual elite seems to be convinced the only possible way out of this is the elimination of Israel - how come? I can understand why Palestinians or the Iranians would want that, I don't understand the huge support in the West for this type of thinking though.

deleted 3y ago

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