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While I agree it's very important to welcome people who changed their minds, there are a few things that still annoy me: - the situation was actually very clea

While I agree it's very important to welcome people who changed their minds, there are a few things that still annoy me: - the situation was actually very clear from the start - Israel has been illegally occupying, enforcing apartheid, committing war crimes for decades. You always ignored it. - I don't hear any apology about the above, nor any indication that these people won't return to their default stance of pretending all is well in Palestine as soon as the bulk of the killing stops.

pegasus 1y ago
Was it clear? Did we always ignore it? Not convinced at all. All was and is not well in Palestine, but one thing I know, it ain't cut-and-dry, and Israel going all Hamas on Palestine doesn't make it so either.
- throw310822 1y ago
  Yes, it's perfectly clear and always was. One country is illegally occupying territories outside its borders, illegally annexing them, transferring their civilian population there, ethnically cleansing the natives, enforcing apartheid against those who remain, using its soldiers to protect its citizens when they engage in pogroms against the natives, periodically bombing them, stealing their water, destroying their crops- all while enjoying full diplomatic and military support from the West. Those who resist are deemed "terrorists", condemned and vilified, and are "eliminated", together with any civilians, women and children who happen to be in the way. This has been going on for decades while the Western media ignores most of it, reporting acts of resistance and terrorism from the oppressed side as if they were motivated by ideological hatred, and in general depicting the situation as "complicated"- a position you're now repeating without a second thought.
  - pegasus 1y ago
    That's because you choose to look to only that one side of the story. Keeps things nice and tidy, it's true.
    - netsharc 1y ago
      You write as if you really really don't want to see that side of the story.
      - pegasus 1y ago
        ...because it's always the ones who only look onto one side of the story who conclude things are not cut and dry.
      - tdeck 1y ago
        What's more interesting to me is that folks who support Israel often act as though their audience hasn't heard all these arguments before, and have't been passively absorbing pro-Israel propaganda for most of their lives. At least for those of us in the US, almost all we heard growing up about Israel was couched in sympathetic and positive terms. It's not as though there's a lack of Zionist perspective in a country where all the recent heads of state and political party leaders have been ideological Zionists.
        cmilton 1y ago
        How can we ever have a good faith argument if you believe anyone that says something supportive of Israel has been indoctrinated to do so "most of their lives"?
        throwawaybob420 1y ago
        A good faith argument? Brother who is committing genocide against the Palestinians right now?
        cmilton 1y ago
        If you would kindly provide your definition of genocide, I will happily engage.
        1y ago
- pluto_modadic 1y ago
  given that Israel expanded their borders repeatedly, poisoned village wells, and considers the genocidal periods of the Nakba (their "independence holiday") something that's illegal to mourn... yes. yes it was always clear. the playbook has been the same since 1948.
  - BigJ1211 1y ago
    If that's your criteria this is equally true on the other side of this conflict. Even predating the Jewish exodus from many Arabic nations. The primary difference between them is that the side which openly shouts for genocide doesn't have the means that the side that at least doesn't openly shout for genocide has. (By openly I mean the majority of the people, not select extreme individuals. Some of whom are in positions of power.) I'm not going the route that it's okay to want to genocide a peoples because of things that were done to them by another group of people. Because if that's your way of viewing this conflict, then Israel has more than enough to point at to 'justify' their genocide. And I'm not going to excuse calls for genocide with "well, they don't have the power to, so who cares". Because all these routes lead straight to hell. You can't even begin to resolve the conflicts between these peoples. This conflict isn't nearly as cut-and-dry as say Russia-Ukraine, and it benefits no one to pretend it is. Ukraine never invaded Russia, nor did it commit any terrorism against them. This isn't the case between Israel and the Palestinians. Between 1968-2023 over 3500 acts of terrorism were committed by the Palestinians against Israel. Of which the vast majority (Between 70-78% depending on if you count purely civilian targets), targeted civilians. You can argue for a long time which side committed the most heinous acts, but neither side is anywhere close to "clean".
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- bjoli 1y ago
  On October 9, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we must act accordingly.” If that was not clear, Netanyahu said "remember what amalek did to you". If you know anything of what was done to the amalekites, you know this is a genocidal statement. The statements of ministers in netanyahus cabinet and generals showed very well the intent going into this conflict. They are still adhering to it.
  - dlubarov 1y ago
    That was shortly after the Oct 7 massacres, and the total blockade was lifted shortly after. "Remember what amalek did to you" is about remembering evil. The same statement appears at Yad Vashem, for example, yet no one has accused the Holocaust museum of calling for a genocide of the German people.
    - bjoli 1y ago
      Except for under the ceasefire there has been no point in the conflict where enough supplies and food has gotten in. There is an acronym, SWEAT-MSO, Sewage, Water, electricity, academics, trash, medical, safety and other. It is a framework to assess the needs of the civilian population to, among other things, avoid having them join a resistance. Israel has bombed all those things. Your statement of Amalek is disingenuous. Netanyahu would not say anything that does not have plausible deniability. I think it is important to look at how his words were interpreted. Shortly afterwards there were at least two clips (one of which was use by south Africa in their ICJ deposition ) of Israeli soldiers (lots of them!) going to Gaza singing about destroying the seed of Amalek and "there are no uninvolved civilians". The thing about genocidal statements is that most people committing genocide are not at outspoken av Gallant and Ben-Gvir.
      - dlubarov 1y ago
        Occam’s razor suggests that he probably just meant what he said: that Israelis should remember the atrocities committed by Hamas and other attackers. There was nothing in Netanyahu’s speech, or even the Torah’s passages about Amalek, about “no uninvolved civilians”, so it seems like a stretch to say that Netanyahu deliberately conveyed that message as a subtext. You say the chants occurred “shortly afterwards”, but wasn’t that in December? Whereas the speech you’re drawing a connection to was in October. If we’re going to accuse people of the most heinous crimes, we should have much more solid evidence.
- beAbU 1y ago
  "free palestine" has been a refrain in my country at least the last 20 years as far as I remember. I guess this has been less obvious for those living or growing up in a country that closely allied to israel.
- stanfordkid 1y ago
  Umm... it absolutely was cut and dry. 75 years ago a set of westerners came and occupied another country through massive, brutal and widespread violence all under the approval of western govt's that themselves felt massive guilt about the holocaust. The Israeli gov't pretended to give Palestinians rights all while calculatedly trying to suppress any legitimate form of gov't (read about Israels massive support of Hamas starting in the 80s because they believed they would have a tougher "negotiating position" against extremists... guess that backfired. They enforced apartheid, blockades, mass surveillance etc. naturally that resulted in resistance. Is resistance justified? Who cares. Is it a natural consequence of material conditions? Absolutely. I have a friend who would say anytime someone brings up that "it's a complex issue": "They should just stop stealing peoples houses dude". This pretty much sums it up. Maybe if they stopped that a few decades ago this wouldn't have happened.
slightwinder 1y ago
> - the situation was actually very clear from the start Which start? There are so many in that conflict. > - Israel has been illegally occupying, enforcing apartheid, committing war crimes for decades. So did the other sides. For outsiders, it's very hard to know what's really going on in that region; so many history, so many details, so many emotions, so many abuse and killing... It's a chain of reactions and counter-reactions which is going for over a century. Don't assume that everyone can know everything. Israel was also very good at manipulating the Western World and building on their collective guilt. Even if a politician knew what was going on, it would have been political suicide to speak out too much about this. Even now, it's a delicate topic. And people still blindly spreading hate against all Jews, while it's mainly the fault of some factions, is also not really helping the cause here. > - I don't hear any apology about the above Apologize for what? At the end of the day, there are all trapped in a situation where they have very little control.
- tdeck 1y ago
  Unfortunately this vacuous "both sides" claptrap isn't going to work anymore because we've all seen Israel's true face now.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Eh? "Both sides, X and Y, are bad" requires as a prerequisite that X is in the set of "bad". Doesn't matter which of X and Y are government policies in Israel or Palestine. Now, if the comment you'd replied to was saying "it's all X's fault, Y is innocent", then "we've all seen Israel's true face now" would be a reasonable response.
    - tdeck 1y ago
      Fair enough, I'm getting into the weeds a bit and left some things unsaid. What I'm referring to is a rhetorical technique deployed to get people to simmer down and accept the status quo. Folks who support Israel know they can't get people to be 100% behind Israel anymore, so the fallback position is "it's complicated, the Palestinians don't seem like great people either so I'm not going to go out of my way to support them". That leaves the ruling class foreign policy establishment to run the horror show the way they like without any troublesome democratic meddling. If you want to see an example from a historical genocide, just look at what the Turkish government writes about the Armenian genocide.
woodpanel 1y ago
[flagged]
- regularization 1y ago
  > Israel left Gaza a long time ago So who are those people with guns in between Egypt and Gaza for the past decades? Or blocking Gazan fisherman from fishing for decades? The Zionists leave a settlement in northern Gaza and call that "leaving Gaza". The Zionists brought this on themselves when they decided to take over Gaza in 1967. 33 of the victims of the Zionist aggressions in 1967 were those brave US Navy sailors on the USS Liberty that the Zionists killed then.
  - OldfieldFund 1y ago
    To anyone reading this, I recommend a 224-page book on the topic: On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Frank Barat (Editor) Goodreads Rating: 4.27, 11,732 ratings, 1,588 reviews Operation Protective Edge, Israel's most recent assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. First published May 7, 2015 The paperback is about $12 on Amazon.
    - HDThoreaun 1y ago
      I just dont understand what chomsky's solution is. The palestinians have proven themselves to be just as bad as the israelis, or at least close. Giving them complete sovereignty would end with israel invading them again in all likelihood when they continue to lob rockets at tel aviv. How is that better? Just seems so clear to me that both two and one state solutions are off the table so Im not really sure where things can go.
  - throw310822 1y ago
    Besides this, notice how they're implying that having left a region of Palestine (even if that were true, which isn't) means that no Palestinian from that specific region has a right to attack them. As if no Ukrainian had a right to attack Russia besides those in the occupied regions. As if no American except Californians would have a right to fight if California were occupied by a foreign power.
doka_smoka 1y ago
[dead]
CommanderData 1y ago
The response to bring the hostages home should be: Yes. Bring them back to Brooklyn NYC or wherever they're from.

pegasus 1y ago

Was it clear? Did we always ignore it? Not convinced at all. All was and is not well in Palestine, but one thing I know, it ain't cut-and-dry, and Israel going all Hamas on Palestine doesn't make it so either.

throw310822 1y ago
Yes, it's perfectly clear and always was. One country is illegally occupying territories outside its borders, illegally annexing them, transferring their civilian population there, ethnically cleansing the natives, enforcing apartheid against those who remain, using its soldiers to protect its citizens when they engage in pogroms against the natives, periodically bombing them, stealing their water, destroying their crops- all while enjoying full diplomatic and military support from the West. Those who resist are deemed "terrorists", condemned and vilified, and are "eliminated", together with any civilians, women and children who happen to be in the way. This has been going on for decades while the Western media ignores most of it, reporting acts of resistance and terrorism from the oppressed side as if they were motivated by ideological hatred, and in general depicting the situation as "complicated"- a position you're now repeating without a second thought.
- pegasus 1y ago
  That's because you choose to look to only that one side of the story. Keeps things nice and tidy, it's true.
  - netsharc 1y ago
    You write as if you really really don't want to see that side of the story.
    - pegasus 1y ago
      ...because it's always the ones who only look onto one side of the story who conclude things are not cut and dry.
    - tdeck 1y ago
      What's more interesting to me is that folks who support Israel often act as though their audience hasn't heard all these arguments before, and have't been passively absorbing pro-Israel propaganda for most of their lives. At least for those of us in the US, almost all we heard growing up about Israel was couched in sympathetic and positive terms. It's not as though there's a lack of Zionist perspective in a country where all the recent heads of state and political party leaders have been ideological Zionists.
      - cmilton 1y ago
        How can we ever have a good faith argument if you believe anyone that says something supportive of Israel has been indoctrinated to do so "most of their lives"?
        throwawaybob420 1y ago
        A good faith argument? Brother who is committing genocide against the Palestinians right now?
        cmilton 1y ago
        If you would kindly provide your definition of genocide, I will happily engage.
        1y ago
pluto_modadic 1y ago
given that Israel expanded their borders repeatedly, poisoned village wells, and considers the genocidal periods of the Nakba (their "independence holiday") something that's illegal to mourn... yes. yes it was always clear. the playbook has been the same since 1948.
- BigJ1211 1y ago
  If that's your criteria this is equally true on the other side of this conflict. Even predating the Jewish exodus from many Arabic nations. The primary difference between them is that the side which openly shouts for genocide doesn't have the means that the side that at least doesn't openly shout for genocide has. (By openly I mean the majority of the people, not select extreme individuals. Some of whom are in positions of power.) I'm not going the route that it's okay to want to genocide a peoples because of things that were done to them by another group of people. Because if that's your way of viewing this conflict, then Israel has more than enough to point at to 'justify' their genocide. And I'm not going to excuse calls for genocide with "well, they don't have the power to, so who cares". Because all these routes lead straight to hell. You can't even begin to resolve the conflicts between these peoples. This conflict isn't nearly as cut-and-dry as say Russia-Ukraine, and it benefits no one to pretend it is. Ukraine never invaded Russia, nor did it commit any terrorism against them. This isn't the case between Israel and the Palestinians. Between 1968-2023 over 3500 acts of terrorism were committed by the Palestinians against Israel. Of which the vast majority (Between 70-78% depending on if you count purely civilian targets), targeted civilians. You can argue for a long time which side committed the most heinous acts, but neither side is anywhere close to "clean".
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
bjoli 1y ago
On October 9, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we must act accordingly.” If that was not clear, Netanyahu said "remember what amalek did to you". If you know anything of what was done to the amalekites, you know this is a genocidal statement. The statements of ministers in netanyahus cabinet and generals showed very well the intent going into this conflict. They are still adhering to it.
- dlubarov 1y ago
  That was shortly after the Oct 7 massacres, and the total blockade was lifted shortly after. "Remember what amalek did to you" is about remembering evil. The same statement appears at Yad Vashem, for example, yet no one has accused the Holocaust museum of calling for a genocide of the German people.
  - bjoli 1y ago
    Except for under the ceasefire there has been no point in the conflict where enough supplies and food has gotten in. There is an acronym, SWEAT-MSO, Sewage, Water, electricity, academics, trash, medical, safety and other. It is a framework to assess the needs of the civilian population to, among other things, avoid having them join a resistance. Israel has bombed all those things. Your statement of Amalek is disingenuous. Netanyahu would not say anything that does not have plausible deniability. I think it is important to look at how his words were interpreted. Shortly afterwards there were at least two clips (one of which was use by south Africa in their ICJ deposition ) of Israeli soldiers (lots of them!) going to Gaza singing about destroying the seed of Amalek and "there are no uninvolved civilians". The thing about genocidal statements is that most people committing genocide are not at outspoken av Gallant and Ben-Gvir.
    - dlubarov 1y ago
      Occam’s razor suggests that he probably just meant what he said: that Israelis should remember the atrocities committed by Hamas and other attackers. There was nothing in Netanyahu’s speech, or even the Torah’s passages about Amalek, about “no uninvolved civilians”, so it seems like a stretch to say that Netanyahu deliberately conveyed that message as a subtext. You say the chants occurred “shortly afterwards”, but wasn’t that in December? Whereas the speech you’re drawing a connection to was in October. If we’re going to accuse people of the most heinous crimes, we should have much more solid evidence.
beAbU 1y ago
"free palestine" has been a refrain in my country at least the last 20 years as far as I remember. I guess this has been less obvious for those living or growing up in a country that closely allied to israel.
stanfordkid 1y ago
Umm... it absolutely was cut and dry. 75 years ago a set of westerners came and occupied another country through massive, brutal and widespread violence all under the approval of western govt's that themselves felt massive guilt about the holocaust. The Israeli gov't pretended to give Palestinians rights all while calculatedly trying to suppress any legitimate form of gov't (read about Israels massive support of Hamas starting in the 80s because they believed they would have a tougher "negotiating position" against extremists... guess that backfired. They enforced apartheid, blockades, mass surveillance etc. naturally that resulted in resistance. Is resistance justified? Who cares. Is it a natural consequence of material conditions? Absolutely. I have a friend who would say anytime someone brings up that "it's a complex issue": "They should just stop stealing peoples houses dude". This pretty much sums it up. Maybe if they stopped that a few decades ago this wouldn't have happened.

slightwinder 1y ago

> - the situation was actually very clear from the start Which start? There are so many in that conflict. > - Israel has been illegally occupying, enforcing apartheid, committing war crimes for decades. So did the other sides. For outsiders, it's very hard to know what's really going on in that region; so many history, so many details, so many emotions, so many abuse and killing... It's a chain of reactions and counter-reactions which is going for over a century. Don't assume that everyone can know everything. Israel was also very good at manipulating the Western World and building on their collective guilt. Even if a politician knew what was going on, it would have been political suicide to speak out too much about this. Even now, it's a delicate topic. And people still blindly spreading hate against all Jews, while it's mainly the fault of some factions, is also not really helping the cause here. > - I don't hear any apology about the above Apologize for what? At the end of the day, there are all trapped in a situation where they have very little control.

tdeck 1y ago
Unfortunately this vacuous "both sides" claptrap isn't going to work anymore because we've all seen Israel's true face now.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Eh? "Both sides, X and Y, are bad" requires as a prerequisite that X is in the set of "bad". Doesn't matter which of X and Y are government policies in Israel or Palestine. Now, if the comment you'd replied to was saying "it's all X's fault, Y is innocent", then "we've all seen Israel's true face now" would be a reasonable response.
  - tdeck 1y ago
    Fair enough, I'm getting into the weeds a bit and left some things unsaid. What I'm referring to is a rhetorical technique deployed to get people to simmer down and accept the status quo. Folks who support Israel know they can't get people to be 100% behind Israel anymore, so the fallback position is "it's complicated, the Palestinians don't seem like great people either so I'm not going to go out of my way to support them". That leaves the ruling class foreign policy establishment to run the horror show the way they like without any troublesome democratic meddling. If you want to see an example from a historical genocide, just look at what the Turkish government writes about the Armenian genocide.

woodpanel 1y ago

[flagged]

regularization 1y ago
> Israel left Gaza a long time ago So who are those people with guns in between Egypt and Gaza for the past decades? Or blocking Gazan fisherman from fishing for decades? The Zionists leave a settlement in northern Gaza and call that "leaving Gaza". The Zionists brought this on themselves when they decided to take over Gaza in 1967. 33 of the victims of the Zionist aggressions in 1967 were those brave US Navy sailors on the USS Liberty that the Zionists killed then.
- OldfieldFund 1y ago
  To anyone reading this, I recommend a 224-page book on the topic: On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Frank Barat (Editor) Goodreads Rating: 4.27, 11,732 ratings, 1,588 reviews Operation Protective Edge, Israel's most recent assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. First published May 7, 2015 The paperback is about $12 on Amazon.
  - HDThoreaun 1y ago
    I just dont understand what chomsky's solution is. The palestinians have proven themselves to be just as bad as the israelis, or at least close. Giving them complete sovereignty would end with israel invading them again in all likelihood when they continue to lob rockets at tel aviv. How is that better? Just seems so clear to me that both two and one state solutions are off the table so Im not really sure where things can go.
- throw310822 1y ago
  Besides this, notice how they're implying that having left a region of Palestine (even if that were true, which isn't) means that no Palestinian from that specific region has a right to attack them. As if no Ukrainian had a right to attack Russia besides those in the occupied regions. As if no American except Californians would have a right to fight if California were occupied by a foreign power.

doka_smoka 1y ago

[dead]

CommanderData 1y ago

The response to bring the hostages home should be: Yes. Bring them back to Brooklyn NYC or wherever they're from.