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Can someone living in Israel help me understand what is going on right now? What does the political climate look like in Israel? Do majority of people support

Can someone living in Israel help me understand what is going on right now? What does the political climate look like in Israel? Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this? Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how? I know that the media is all over the place and it's hard to figure out what is going on as an outsider. Either way, I hope that this situation gets resolved. I don't think that it's good for anyone and is costing a lot of money and lives.

mitchbob 1y ago
This might help: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world-since-7-october https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world... https://archive.ph/2025.07.19-181407/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world-since-7-october https://archive.ph/2025.07.19-181407/https://www.lrb.co.uk/t...
- ang_cire 1y ago
  Damn, that was a really good (if grim) article/read. Thank you for posting that.
- alkyon 1y ago
  Thank you, this is what I wanted to know: "‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’ According to a survey commissioned by Penn State, more than 80 per cent of Israeli Jews now support the expulsion of Gazans. Compassion for Palestinians is taboo except among a fringe of radical activists. When Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, posted a tweet celebrating a recent prisoner exchange, he was denounced for seeming to equate the predicament of jailed Palestinians and Jewish hostages: ‘Your presence pollutes the Knesset,’ a colleague told him."
  - Shacklz 1y ago
    > "‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’ I have such a hard time understanding how such statements can find an accepting audience in this day and age; in Israel of all places. Replace "Israeli stand-up comedian" with "some Nazi propagandist in the 30s/40s" and "Gazans" with "Jews", and I'm sure it would be a perfectly accurate historical quote.
    - nandomrumber 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - saubeidl 1y ago
        How many random Gazans has Israel killed by now? 50 times as many? How many is it holding without trial or even cause?
      - xg15 1y ago
        No, but the level of dehumanization openly present is comparable.
        nandomrumber 1y ago
        That’s a wildly out of touch with way reality statement! If you flooded Gaza with chemical weapons and wiped them all out you wouldn’t even come close!
        xg15 1y ago
        Did you just mean that it wouldn't be comparable because it would only be 2 million instead of 6 million, or did I misunderstand you?
      - arp242 1y ago
        This did not start on Oct 7. Bad faith nonsense. This argumentum ad Oct-7 got tired about a year ago. How long do you plan to keep using it? Two more years? Ten years? Twenty years?
- deleted 1y ago
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- frm88 1y ago
  Thank you for sharing this article. This was so well written.
christkv 1y ago
I mean you cloud just browse Israeli newspapers online. Examples like https://www.haaretz.com/ https://www.haaretz.com/ and https://www.jpost.com/ https://www.jpost.com/ both in English.
diggan 1y ago
The settlers been at this for a long, long time. It was hard for me to understand their perspective as well, because surely they most be seeing what they do as something good, like everyone else. There is a BBC documentary that goes into more depth, but a short snippet of the documentary can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU which includes a short interview with Daniella Weiss, a Orthodox Zionist who founded a organization focusing on creating these civilian colonies for Israelis. As far as I can tell, from talking with Israelis both living in Israel and outside, there really isn't one majority thinking a certain way, it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing Speaking out of my ass here. But I’d guess most people don’t care. A minority cheers. A minority protests. Most go on with their lives.
  - Gud 1y ago
    No offense, but why would you speak about a topic you know little about?
    - KingMob 1y ago
      Possibly because smart people with expertise, usually hard-won through years of focus and study, make the common fallacy that they are experts in unrelated areas, even if they haven't put in the effort to become experts. Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.
      - BigHatLogan 1y ago
        Really well said. I would even go further and say that the "smart people with expertise" even disagree on matters like this and are operating on imperfect, vague information. Knowing that, it seems even more ridiculous to ask passersby about their opinion on this. Of course you can have an opinion, but keep in mind you're likely operating in 99% fog. Just my two cents.
deleted 1y ago
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belter 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725768
Liron 1y ago
Israeli here, can't directly answer your question since I've lived in the US for 99% of my adult life, but I consider myself pro-Israel and resent the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed. I see the key problem as people removing context: Context for why the current situation could easily be different if Hamas acted/acts differently, and context for why there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
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  - Sabinus 1y ago
    >Do you also blame Ukraine for fighting back? If they had decades of conflict and there was a credible peace deal freezing the lines as they are and instead the Ukrainian leaders sold the future of the state for a decades long insurgency I would place blame on them for that.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  > why there is no "just stop fighting" option I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that, though I admit I'm not up-to-date on Israeli affairs. Don't the overwhelming majority of outsiders want a two-state solution, or failing that a more secular Israeli administration? Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace. We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government, and there are simple ways to fix it if the willpower exists.
  - bigtex88 1y ago
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  - bawolff 1y ago
    > > why there is no "just stop fighting" option > I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that i live in Canada, literally half a world away. Every street light pole seems to have some sort of "Ceasefire now" sticker on it. I also see similar sentiment in online threads on the topic. I think there is a significant group of people who want Israel to commit to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. > We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government When people talk about this topic, they are usually referring to the conflict with Palestine.
Adverblessly 1y ago
> Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this? If you are asking specifically about the Hilltop Youth, I believe most people understand them to be somewhere between extremists and jewish terrorists and do not support their actions. The government (well, Ben-Gvir) can continue to support them (within limits of plausible deniability) as long as they are in power and elections aren't until late next year. If you are asking about Israeli Jews and the ongoing war, I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory. Everyone (in the mainstream) has either served in the IDF or has family there and so they know first-hand that claims that the IDF is participating in a genocide are absurd. If you're telling me my (in this case fictional) cousing Omri is participating in a genocide, I can very easily ignore that because I know he is a good kid that wouldn't do that, and I can call him up and ask him. Or maybe I'll ask my (fictional) coworker Daniel, the poor guy has been called into reserve duty for over 300 days since the war started. They've also probably seen at least one of the many lies going around about the war. The documentary that the BBC tried to fake. The UN lying about the amount of aid going into Gaza (at the time when the american temporary pier plan was ongoing, the UN published numbers of trucks that they personally supervised going into Gaza. Conveniently, they had no one present to supervise in one of three checkpoints and "missed" about 1/3rd of the aid going in). UNWRA personnel participating in the OCT-7 attack. UNIFIL providing cover for Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israeli homes (including some Druze children which really shocked people around the country). Some blatant foreign media nonesense I've seen is showing footage of Israeli soccer fans being beaten and recontextualising it as if they are the ones doing the beating. Footage of an Israeli survivor of a terrorist attack (speaking Hebrew, in Israeli media!) being subtitled to describe her as a Palestinian survivor of an Israeli terror attack. Footage of Assad slaughtering his Syrian population broadcast as if it is a slaughter by the IDF, etc. Foreign media has proven itself to Israelis as liars, so they have no reason to listen to them. They also see it as the #1 priority to return the hostages and see any call to stop the war before they are returned as ridiculous and evil (Though I do believe a majority support a deal of "everyone for everyone and a stop to the war"). In this light, even though many people believe the war could have already ended (with an aforementioned "everyone for everyone" deal) and Netanyahu is cruelly extending the war for his own personal interests, they also understand that any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas, both for starting the conflict, and for their use of civilians as human shields, their use of civilian infrastructure (schools, mosques, hospitals) as war resources and use of their children as soldiers. They may also be familiar with the data, which last time both sides published semi-reliable information (or equally unreliable information), showed that when compared to other historical conflicts, civilian casualties were actually a smaller part of overall casualties. And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war as the IDF is already doing their duty to fight as ethically as is reasonably possible. While we're there, we also frequently see news of Israelis and Jews being attacked around the world with no one really giving a shit about it. If the UK shows me that they don't give a shit about the lives of Jews/Israelis in the UK, I'm definitely not going to care what the UK government thinks about the ongoing war. > Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how? If you are in Israel and know of Jews residing elsewhere, they are probably former Israelis, which don't neccesarily represent non-Israeli Jews in those countries. Those I've spoken to have spoken about a sharp rise in antisemitism. Some fear for their lives. From the news and other media I know some Jews feel like Israel is going too far, but they get their opinions from e.g. the BBC, so you can't really take them as well-informed opinions. - Incidentally, one former UN employee I know has spoken about ingrained and casual antisemitism in the UN much earlier than OCT-7 (of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" kind), so I'd consider any opinion or intervention by the UN as deceitful and unwelcome.
me_me_me 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
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ars 1y ago
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tmtvl 1y ago
WonderWhy made a good video about the political situation in Israel about 2 years ago: <https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA>
crabbone 1y ago
I was born in Ukraine and moved to Israel (made "aliyah") in 1999. I moved to the Netherlands for work in 2021. I'm not an Israeli by Israeli standards :) And will never be. But, of course, I'm a citizen, I can read and speak Hebrew well. Politically, you can say, I came full circle. As many newcomers I was fed a very simplified and one-sided story of Israeli-Arab relationship. The first time I ever cast my vote in elections I voted Shinuj (they are farther right than Likud). In general, immigrants from the former Soviet Union tend to vote right and be pro-settlers. For non-political reasons I ended up in military jail, where I met some "prisoners of consciousness" who, while didn't convince me to switch my political position entirely, exposed me to the leftist ideas delivered by the leftists. It's very important to see such ideas through the eyes of supporters because the other side virtually always misrepresents them to score points. I didn't care about elections for a while, but, eventually, when I finally decided to vote, I voted Meretz. I don't think I will vote in the next elections. Or, maybe, out of habit, I'll vote Democrats (former Labor and Meretz together)... but, really, I don't see a good candidate. Anyways, what made me depart from the liberal camp is the European liberals. Pathologically bad decisions, or, even more often, the complete lack of any decisions. Gullible and zealous about issues they don't understand... I just don't want to associate myself with people like that. And I see how Israeli liberals parrot the European liberal's believing they know better. * * * So... to try to give some sort of a breakdown on who in Israel stands with settlers and why: * Working class hates Arabs. It's plain and simple: working class often has to work in mixed environments. Construction, hospitality, agriculture. And there Arabs are just danger. You have to look over your shoulder all the time to make sure Mahmud isn't in a bad mood today and didn't bring a knife to work, and isn't going to cut you. I worked in a chain restaurant where a line cook brought a bomb one day to work and killed a bunch of people, himself included. Any Israeli who worked blue collar jobs probably has a story like that. These people don't care about the technicalities or long-term consequences of illegal settlements. Whoever harms Arabs, they are voting for that guy. * Healthcare holds a special place in white collar jobs because there are a lot of Arabs working in it. But these are not the brutes who come to work with knives and bombs. Also, doctors Jewish doctors are exposed to Arab patients and the other way around... this creates a more friendly atmosphere. You will also find that doctors in Israel are probably the most leftist of any occupation. * White collar jobs in general want to see Israel copying Europe. People in these jobs tend to want the rule of law, equality, secularism, inclusivity. They see settlers as either crazy or brutish and don't want to associate with them. Even if they may hold right-wing views, they want the implementation to be lawful and non-violent if possible. * Black-kipah orthodox Jews only care about themselves. For better or for worse. They only wake up when politicians directly address their interests. If settlers go berserk on Arabs or Arabs eviscerate the settlers: they don't care. * Knitted-kipah orthodox Jews are the settlers (not all of them, but probably a majority). They believe Israel should be restored in some sort of historical borders... as per usual, those borders aren't very certain, but they would quite certainly encompass a place called Judea and a city called Jerusalem. They believe they are doing a favor to the Jewish community by fighting "invaders" (Arabs). * Israeli Arabs... are a mixed bag. You can find literal jihadists and those who hate other Arabs on the other side of the fence more than settlers do. It's very clanish and way too involved to try to parse it. * The owners class, the rich people, they despise settlers. See them as an inconvenience / a bunch of lunatics. They don't care about Arabs either. * Immigrants, especially fresh, tend to overwhelmingly support settlers because they misunderstand their status and genuinely believe the settlers are doing what the country isn't allowed to do due to some political scheming going on.
tangled 1y ago
To quote the NYTimes: “Despite the desperate humanitarian crisis, a survey conducted in May by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University found that 64.5 percent of the Israeli public was not at all, or not very, concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.” “About three-quarters of Israeli Jews thought that Israel's military planning should not take into account the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, or should do so only minimally, according to another recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-dissent-war-gaza.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-d...
- e40 1y ago
  That is horrific and much worse than I thought it was.
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      > You expect Israeli's to a give a fuck about Gazans? Um, yes? Like you think the children being starved are all Hamas? You think the doctors and filmmakers and what have you are all terrorists? Don't become worse than the thing you claim to fight.
    - 9dev 1y ago
      Yes. The minimum rules we all must agree on have to be the basic human rights. And that means we can’t take all the civilians in Gaza hostage for Hamas. These are humans with hopes and dreams and friends and family, like you and like Israelis. That Israel in particular would so easily forget about this is horrible.
      - nandomrumber 1y ago
        If the above mentioned surveys are to believed, then a not insignificant fraction of Israelis care less than you expect them to. Why is that? What are we misunderstanding about their perspective that causes the expectation to be off?
homefree 1y ago
Basically nothing portrayed by the main stream media / international press on this issue is accurately represented. Most of it is either wildly ignorant or actively hostile (or both). The Free Press, Call Me Back (podcast), and Breaking Israeli History (podcast) do a good job. Also we will dance again and October 8 (films). I'd also recommend Douglas Murray's On Democracies and Death Cults to get some perspective if you're curious, generally people don't bother on online discussion forums on this topic because it's not productive, but for earnestly curious friends I make the case below. From my perspective, Jews outside of Israel have become more united because the nature of a lot of the western response after 10/7 ironically shows why Jews need a state and an army to protect themselves. I’m all for high minded debate, but a lot of the anti-Israel protesting isn’t that, the people celebrating or excusing 10/7 on 10/8 before Israel responded, the guy that recently executed two young people leaving a jewish event in DC and then screamed “Free Palestine”, the guy that murdered an old woman at a hostage march in boulder, the “death, death to the IDF” shouted from the stage in Glastonbury to a cheering crowd, the “river to the sea” and “intifada” chants/harassing of jews on college campuses, the repeated negative press narrowly focused on Israel from BBC, Guardian, NYT, the ‘genocide’ claims and other false blood libels, people marching waving islamic republic of Iran and Hezbollah flags in NYC, smashing up jewish owned businesses, etc. - these people are not motivated by some idea of nuanced democratic values or a ‘two state solution’, they’re motivated by old Jewish hatred under a new name. Islamism blended with lefty socialism united in their support of “anti-zionism” i.e. the destruction of Israel. Many of these media orgs have been hollowed out by an activist ideology that doesn’t understand the history it’s swimming in and doesn’t pursue truth as much as push a political agenda. What ‘genocide’ provides aid to the people they’re supposedly trying to kill? Hamas is driven by a theologically motivated Jihad against the Jews with explicit genocidal intent, The Islamic Republic of Iran (distinct from its people) wants to destroy Israel and then the west and uses terrorism for this purpose and may have used a nuke if not for recent events. It is necessary to use lethal force to defend against this kind of threat. Anyone that cares about a positive future for Palestinians should recognize there is no possibility of such a future while Hamas remains in power. Europe has largely been protected by the US providing its security and deterrence after WWII. Israel is on the front lines and can’t ignore the reality on the ground, their survival depends on it. You can fight this earlier or wait until the cost is higher to fight it later. Other Arab countries understand these problems, it’s why the UAE has banned the Muslim brotherhood and other extremist organizations, it’s why Saudi is leaning closer towards normalization with Israel and both are allied against Iran. They understand the risks of Islamic terror because they have to deal with it - it forces an accurate understanding. Something Europe (and anti-Israel protestors in the west) don’t grasp, but given Europe’s poor policy on this issue they likely will continue to experience more of first hand. What Hamas did is joyfully murder, rape, and torture a bunch of lefty kibbutzniks (the kind bringing gaza kids to Israeli hospitals) and music festival kids, took hostages that they’re still holding, while filming it, laughing about it and celebrating it. They have an explicitly genocidal charter interested in killing all the Jews. There is no compatibility between the west and those interested in Islamic Jihad. Every third house in gaza has weapons in it (often hidden in kids rooms), Hamas uses hospitals and other civilian areas to try to maximize civilian casualties despite Israel’s effort to minimize them. They also kill civilians that go against them and have been launching rockets into Israel for years. That action requires a military response to achieve political goals: return the hostages and destroy hamas / remove them from power. That is unavoidable without civilian deaths (always a tragedy in war), but the fault for this lies squarely with Hamas for starting the war. Few wars have moral grounding as clear as the war started because of 10/7. On October 8th people in the west were celebrating the invasion and killing carried about by Hamas, some mixture of ignorance and useful idiots (primarily on the political left) along with explicitly pro-hamas support. This was popular in American universities and across Europe before Israel had even responded chanting things like “globalize the intifada”. This is, at best, total moral confusion. Also notice the attention placed on this conflict, but conspicuously absent from others. Why aren’t students protesting Bashar al-Assad? Or the civilian deaths in the conflict in Yemen? Or in Sudan? Why only the one Jewish state that was brutally attacked by a terrorist group that’s still holding its citizens hostage? This isn’t just an issue with Hamas either, it’s more complicated - many Palestinian civilians participated in the kidnapping, looting, and violence on 10/7. They helped harbor hostages. They would have lynched the hostages being returned if Hamas wasn’t preventing that and they of course elected Hamas to power in the first place. The population itself is radicalized with a deep hatred of Jews. Enormous amounts of foreign aid (hundreds of millions) has flowed into gaza of the last couple of decades. Enough to make the Hamas leaders billionaires whose families can live large in Qatar while supporting their investment of tunnels to support their terrorism. A lot of it is backed by Iran, but a lot of this aid is from western nations to organizations that worked directly with and supported Hamas (UNRWA). This money could have been used to build something after Israel’s "land for peace" withdrawal in 2005, instead it was used for terror. It’s more instructive to look at what motivates the groups today rather than litigate divergent historical narratives (i.e. Nakba was five Arab states attacking Israel and the ‘catastrophe’ was that they lost, the security checkpoints exist because of suicide bombing during the intifadas, etc.). If Hamas surrendered and returned the hostages it would end the fighting they started. If Israel laid down their weapons they’d all be killed. Palestinians have no interest in two states which they’ve repeatedly rejected, they’re interested in killing all the Jews, the destruction of Israel, and more broadly the destruction of the west (as Iran’s proxy). Meanwhile in Israel, Arabs and Jews live together peacefully as Israeli citizens. Ideally it’d be possible to engage in war with perfect individual targeting and no civilian casualties. Israel does this as much as possible (Hezbollah pager attack was very narrowly targeted, targeted strikes on individuals in specific apartments, other civilian warning strategies), but it’s not perfect and civilian deaths are unavoidable, especially in dense urban conflict zones. The IDF has a better record on this than any other modern western army (including US when we took Mosul against ISIS). I see war as a means to achieve a specific political result when diplomacy is not possible (or after you’ve been attacked). In this case: remove Hamas from power and return the hostages. In the broader conflict: remove the threat from Hezbollah and Iran. I think it’s necessary to achieve these goals in order to achieve any lasting peace. Some ideologies and enemies require total military defeat. If western civilization is not willing to do this despite its real costs, then power is ceded to enemies that don’t have the same moral concerns, or in this case, explicitly want to maximize civilian death and terror as they did on 10/7 and it'll just happen again. My view is Israel would like to live in peace with its neighbors if that’s a real option (and historically has tried many times), but it’s not. Israel's neighbors (driven by a particular theological view of Islam from the Muslim Brotherhood) are not interested in peaceful coexistence. Israel should not make concessions to an enemy still plotting to destroy them. If we’re lucky an outcome of this conflict could be normalization with KSA / an extension of the Abraham accords and deeper partnership with other Arab countries in the region - maybe even a shift in some of the public’s ideology if people recognize that trying to destroy Israel/kill Jews leads to ruin (though this is hard with radicalization in the culture/schools, etc.) - it’s a generational project that will take time, but it’s not impossible. Currently, because the goals have not been achieved (Hamas still holds hostages, still wants to remain in power, still will not surrender) the war continues and sadly civilians continue to pay some of the cost. The allies (mostly US) fully administered Japan after WWII for 7 years, Japan lost their sovereignty during that time. An outcome of starting a war and losing it is you may lose your sovereignty and land. It’s possible to defeat evil ideologies, it happened in WWII with both Japan and Germany. I think it’s very challenging to know what’s true given all the bad actors (UN, Hamas, Pallywood - they film fake videos to (effectively) manipulate western sentiment) and their repeated lying. I think that the GHF has weakened Hamas by removing their control over the aid which has threatened them, and lastly I’m personally not sure what responsibility there is to provide aid at all while hostages remain held in Gaza (this is a more controversial view) - that said, Israel has provided and continues to provide enormous amounts of civilian aid and works to move civilians outside of the areas of fighting despite this being a thankless task. War can be a moral act, the west exercising its power to defend its values against an evil ideology is an important and necessary thing.
PicassoCTs 1y ago
They do not have the luxury to hallucinate neighbours who just want to life like the west. They just see reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vH2H6oIo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vH2H6oIo4
- deinonychus 1y ago
  yeah i guess we need to kill more kids
  - PicassoCTs 1y ago
    I guess thats thats what american soldiers on the way to berlin had to say - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm A totalitarian ideology throwing its own future into the furnace, not for a tomorrow (all the fertilizer was ammunition, they had sentenced themselves to starvation) but for the hope of killing all your enemies one last time. How can one venture this deep into defending this regressive madness is beyond me. I hope you heal from whatever hatred is devouring you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter
JamesAdir 1y ago
What do you mean the political climate? The current government is based on a majority. Although some parties in the opposition are trying to undermine the government actions, they are mostly hold exact or very similar views on the issues. When the opposition were in charge with Bennett as the PM, there was no major change in the state/security issues, the main arguments are more on "internal" affairs. ? After Oct 7, you'll find very little people interested on what is happening in Gaze. You can also see that the Palestinians in the West Bank are not interested in what's happening in Gaza. Almost zero disturbances or protests about it, even in cities like Ramahllah which enjoys a complete autonomy.
Slava_Propanei 1y ago
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deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago
but thats the thing. it IS good for the settlers and it IS something that israel is actively promoting in its own self interest. this settler stuff isnt a mistake or an oversight
cess11 1y ago
Yes, it's broadly supported. Besides widely publicised polls by universities and corporations outside of Israel you can look at IDI polls here, https://en.idi.org.il/tags-en/1465 https://en.idi.org.il/tags-en/1465. The why takes more explanation. I'd suggest you dig through https://xcancel.com/ireallyhateyou/ https://xcancel.com/ireallyhateyou/, this person is an israeli with background in leftist activism that recently went into exile. They collect and translate a lot of material from israeli television and other media, and also translate and explain a lot of historical material, both more mainstream like background information on contemporary israeli politicians and the occasional look at punk and leftist activism in Israel during the nineties and -00s. It's also a good idea to spend time going through the material collected by Younis Tirawi, https://xcancel.com/ytirawi https://xcancel.com/ytirawi. It shows what IDF personnel believes to be appropriate behaviour that will positively impress their civilian israeli peers, i.e. what they consider to be the political climate. Diaspora jews are quite heterogenous and splintered. Many support Israel, and many don't. One 'poll' is the democratic mayor primary in New York, where Zohran Mamdani was quite popular among jewish constituents. Adding to this, many jewish institutions are in some sense captured or founded by zionists, and funded because they are loyal to the zionist cause. This includes many summer camps and similar activities for jewish youth. Since 2023 I expect more diaspora jews to have lost sympathy with the zionist movement than it has gained, but it's not something I have polling numbers to support. On the other hand, basically every recurring large protest against Israel has a jewish contingent. At the moment we're past immediate resolution, because the entire population in the Gaza strip has been permanently, irrevocably harmed by starvation. It would also take a lot of violence to force the israeli society to back down and stop what it's doing to its neighbours, and then likely generations of enforced stabilisation and education to sow seeds of democracy, neither of which Israel's occidental backers are willing to consider. Then there's the questions of colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are illegal and must be dissolved, which in turn would require distinct amounts of force both to achieve and then to keep it from turning into a civil war within Israel when the so called settlers are relocated there. As I've mentioned elsewhere, one should keep in mind that this is mainly a christian project, most adherents to zionism are christians.
aristofun 1y ago
There is a real war going on between israel and hamas. On all levels, including information war. Information war is the only one where hamas is currently winning. That is why you are already heavily biased based on the tone of your questions. About 90%+ of what you see on mainstream media is either a straightforward lie or carefully designed, massaged and distorted truth (for example hamas counts as casualties everyone, including fully armed terrorists killed in action). Another example is fake news about “starvation” where they post standalone photos of children with generic disorders as a proof. Im just scratching the surface. This information war is mainly sponsored by quatar and iran with 2 longterm goals in mind 1) destabilizing and undermining USA influence in middle east and worldwide 2) destroying israel and killing as many jews as possible (literally, they don’t hide it if you check anything besides bbc and english al-jazeera) That is what really going on. That is the brutal truth. Unfortunately it’s not an exaggeration.
- aristofun 1y ago
  And unfortunately it is nothing new. Way before founding modern Israel there has been a long history of regular pogroms and massacres in that region. This doesn’t excuse current Israel from some mistakes and poor judgements, but it paints a very different picture that doesn’t fit sugarcoated antisemitic victim narrative that all main media sponsored by botomless pit of oil qatar money shoves up all naive western listeners.

mitchbob 1y ago

This might help: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world-since-7-october https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world... https://archive.ph/2025.07.19-181407/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/adam-shatz/the-world-since-7-october https://archive.ph/2025.07.19-181407/https://www.lrb.co.uk/t...

ang_cire 1y ago
Damn, that was a really good (if grim) article/read. Thank you for posting that.
alkyon 1y ago
Thank you, this is what I wanted to know: "‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’ According to a survey commissioned by Penn State, more than 80 per cent of Israeli Jews now support the expulsion of Gazans. Compassion for Palestinians is taboo except among a fringe of radical activists. When Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, posted a tweet celebrating a recent prisoner exchange, he was denounced for seeming to equate the predicament of jailed Palestinians and Jewish hostages: ‘Your presence pollutes the Knesset,’ a colleague told him."
- Shacklz 1y ago
  > "‘If you feed Gazans, they eventually eat you,’ the Israeli stand-up comedian Gil Kopatz posted. ‘It’s not genocide, it’s pesticide.’ I have such a hard time understanding how such statements can find an accepting audience in this day and age; in Israel of all places. Replace "Israeli stand-up comedian" with "some Nazi propagandist in the 30s/40s" and "Gazans" with "Jews", and I'm sure it would be a perfectly accurate historical quote.
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
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    - saubeidl 1y ago
      How many random Gazans has Israel killed by now? 50 times as many? How many is it holding without trial or even cause?
    - xg15 1y ago
      No, but the level of dehumanization openly present is comparable.
      - nandomrumber 1y ago
        That’s a wildly out of touch with way reality statement! If you flooded Gaza with chemical weapons and wiped them all out you wouldn’t even come close!
        xg15 1y ago
        Did you just mean that it wouldn't be comparable because it would only be 2 million instead of 6 million, or did I misunderstand you?
    - arp242 1y ago
      This did not start on Oct 7. Bad faith nonsense. This argumentum ad Oct-7 got tired about a year ago. How long do you plan to keep using it? Two more years? Ten years? Twenty years?
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frm88 1y ago
Thank you for sharing this article. This was so well written.

christkv 1y ago

I mean you cloud just browse Israeli newspapers online. Examples like https://www.haaretz.com/ https://www.haaretz.com/ and https://www.jpost.com/ https://www.jpost.com/ both in English.

diggan 1y ago

The settlers been at this for a long, long time. It was hard for me to understand their perspective as well, because surely they most be seeing what they do as something good, like everyone else. There is a BBC documentary that goes into more depth, but a short snippet of the documentary can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU which includes a short interview with Daniella Weiss, a Orthodox Zionist who founded a organization focusing on creating these civilian colonies for Israelis. As far as I can tell, from talking with Israelis both living in Israel and outside, there really isn't one majority thinking a certain way, it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> it seems to me that there is an equal amount of people cheering the settlers as there are people against what they're doing Speaking out of my ass here. But I’d guess most people don’t care. A minority cheers. A minority protests. Most go on with their lives.
- Gud 1y ago
  No offense, but why would you speak about a topic you know little about?
  - KingMob 1y ago
    Possibly because smart people with expertise, usually hard-won through years of focus and study, make the common fallacy that they are experts in unrelated areas, even if they haven't put in the effort to become experts. Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.
    - BigHatLogan 1y ago
      Really well said. I would even go further and say that the "smart people with expertise" even disagree on matters like this and are operating on imperfect, vague information. Knowing that, it seems even more ridiculous to ask passersby about their opinion on this. Of course you can have an opinion, but keep in mind you're likely operating in 99% fog. Just my two cents.

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belter 1y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725768

Liron 1y ago

Israeli here, can't directly answer your question since I've lived in the US for 99% of my adult life, but I consider myself pro-Israel and resent the way Israel is currently/always being portrayed. I see the key problem as people removing context: Context for why the current situation could easily be different if Hamas acted/acts differently, and context for why there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years.

peterfirefly 1y ago
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- Sabinus 1y ago
  >Do you also blame Ukraine for fighting back? If they had decades of conflict and there was a credible peace deal freezing the lines as they are and instead the Ukrainian leaders sold the future of the state for a decades long insurgency I would place blame on them for that.
bigyabai 1y ago
> why there is no "just stop fighting" option I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that, though I admit I'm not up-to-date on Israeli affairs. Don't the overwhelming majority of outsiders want a two-state solution, or failing that a more secular Israeli administration? Through a lens of historical context and not just Oct 7th, it's hard for me to believe that Israelis don't know how to attain regional peace. We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government, and there are simple ways to fix it if the willpower exists.
- bigtex88 1y ago
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- bawolff 1y ago
  > > why there is no "just stop fighting" option > I don't recall many people ever seriously asking for that i live in Canada, literally half a world away. Every street light pole seems to have some sort of "Ceasefire now" sticker on it. I also see similar sentiment in online threads on the topic. I think there is a significant group of people who want Israel to commit to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. > We know exactly why Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are angry at the Israeli government When people talk about this topic, they are usually referring to the conflict with Palestine.

Adverblessly 1y ago

> Do majority of people support what is happening, if so why? if not, how is the government executing this? If you are asking specifically about the Hilltop Youth, I believe most people understand them to be somewhere between extremists and jewish terrorists and do not support their actions. The government (well, Ben-Gvir) can continue to support them (within limits of plausible deniability) as long as they are in power and elections aren't until late next year. If you are asking about Israeli Jews and the ongoing war, I'd remind you that the IDF is the people's army and conscription is mandatory. Everyone (in the mainstream) has either served in the IDF or has family there and so they know first-hand that claims that the IDF is participating in a genocide are absurd. If you're telling me my (in this case fictional) cousing Omri is participating in a genocide, I can very easily ignore that because I know he is a good kid that wouldn't do that, and I can call him up and ask him. Or maybe I'll ask my (fictional) coworker Daniel, the poor guy has been called into reserve duty for over 300 days since the war started. They've also probably seen at least one of the many lies going around about the war. The documentary that the BBC tried to fake. The UN lying about the amount of aid going into Gaza (at the time when the american temporary pier plan was ongoing, the UN published numbers of trucks that they personally supervised going into Gaza. Conveniently, they had no one present to supervise in one of three checkpoints and "missed" about 1/3rd of the aid going in). UNWRA personnel participating in the OCT-7 attack. UNIFIL providing cover for Hezbollah to fire rockets on Israeli homes (including some Druze children which really shocked people around the country). Some blatant foreign media nonesense I've seen is showing footage of Israeli soccer fans being beaten and recontextualising it as if they are the ones doing the beating. Footage of an Israeli survivor of a terrorist attack (speaking Hebrew, in Israeli media!) being subtitled to describe her as a Palestinian survivor of an Israeli terror attack. Footage of Assad slaughtering his Syrian population broadcast as if it is a slaughter by the IDF, etc. Foreign media has proven itself to Israelis as liars, so they have no reason to listen to them. They also see it as the #1 priority to return the hostages and see any call to stop the war before they are returned as ridiculous and evil (Though I do believe a majority support a deal of "everyone for everyone and a stop to the war"). In this light, even though many people believe the war could have already ended (with an aforementioned "everyone for everyone" deal) and Netanyahu is cruelly extending the war for his own personal interests, they also understand that any civilian casualties are part of the horrors of war and are purely the fault of Hamas, both for starting the conflict, and for their use of civilians as human shields, their use of civilian infrastructure (schools, mosques, hospitals) as war resources and use of their children as soldiers. They may also be familiar with the data, which last time both sides published semi-reliable information (or equally unreliable information), showed that when compared to other historical conflicts, civilian casualties were actually a smaller part of overall casualties. And so until the hostages return, there's not much reason to stop the war as the IDF is already doing their duty to fight as ethically as is reasonably possible. While we're there, we also frequently see news of Israelis and Jews being attacked around the world with no one really giving a shit about it. If the UK shows me that they don't give a shit about the lives of Jews/Israelis in the UK, I'm definitely not going to care what the UK government thinks about the ongoing war. > Further, has this had any impact on the overall relationship between Jewish people worldwide and those residing in Israel? if so, how? If you are in Israel and know of Jews residing elsewhere, they are probably former Israelis, which don't neccesarily represent non-Israeli Jews in those countries. Those I've spoken to have spoken about a sharp rise in antisemitism. Some fear for their lives. From the news and other media I know some Jews feel like Israel is going too far, but they get their opinions from e.g. the BBC, so you can't really take them as well-informed opinions. - Incidentally, one former UN employee I know has spoken about ingrained and casual antisemitism in the UN much earlier than OCT-7 (of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" kind), so I'd consider any opinion or intervention by the UN as deceitful and unwelcome.

me_me_me 1y ago

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ars 1y ago

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tmtvl 1y ago

WonderWhy made a good video about the political situation in Israel about 2 years ago: <https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA https://youtu.be/ST_eZwBIMDA>

crabbone 1y ago

I was born in Ukraine and moved to Israel (made "aliyah") in 1999. I moved to the Netherlands for work in 2021. I'm not an Israeli by Israeli standards :) And will never be. But, of course, I'm a citizen, I can read and speak Hebrew well. Politically, you can say, I came full circle. As many newcomers I was fed a very simplified and one-sided story of Israeli-Arab relationship. The first time I ever cast my vote in elections I voted Shinuj (they are farther right than Likud). In general, immigrants from the former Soviet Union tend to vote right and be pro-settlers. For non-political reasons I ended up in military jail, where I met some "prisoners of consciousness" who, while didn't convince me to switch my political position entirely, exposed me to the leftist ideas delivered by the leftists. It's very important to see such ideas through the eyes of supporters because the other side virtually always misrepresents them to score points. I didn't care about elections for a while, but, eventually, when I finally decided to vote, I voted Meretz. I don't think I will vote in the next elections. Or, maybe, out of habit, I'll vote Democrats (former Labor and Meretz together)... but, really, I don't see a good candidate. Anyways, what made me depart from the liberal camp is the European liberals. Pathologically bad decisions, or, even more often, the complete lack of any decisions. Gullible and zealous about issues they don't understand... I just don't want to associate myself with people like that. And I see how Israeli liberals parrot the European liberal's believing they know better. * * * So... to try to give some sort of a breakdown on who in Israel stands with settlers and why: * Working class hates Arabs. It's plain and simple: working class often has to work in mixed environments. Construction, hospitality, agriculture. And there Arabs are just danger. You have to look over your shoulder all the time to make sure Mahmud isn't in a bad mood today and didn't bring a knife to work, and isn't going to cut you. I worked in a chain restaurant where a line cook brought a bomb one day to work and killed a bunch of people, himself included. Any Israeli who worked blue collar jobs probably has a story like that. These people don't care about the technicalities or long-term consequences of illegal settlements. Whoever harms Arabs, they are voting for that guy. * Healthcare holds a special place in white collar jobs because there are a lot of Arabs working in it. But these are not the brutes who come to work with knives and bombs. Also, doctors Jewish doctors are exposed to Arab patients and the other way around... this creates a more friendly atmosphere. You will also find that doctors in Israel are probably the most leftist of any occupation. * White collar jobs in general want to see Israel copying Europe. People in these jobs tend to want the rule of law, equality, secularism, inclusivity. They see settlers as either crazy or brutish and don't want to associate with them. Even if they may hold right-wing views, they want the implementation to be lawful and non-violent if possible. * Black-kipah orthodox Jews only care about themselves. For better or for worse. They only wake up when politicians directly address their interests. If settlers go berserk on Arabs or Arabs eviscerate the settlers: they don't care. * Knitted-kipah orthodox Jews are the settlers (not all of them, but probably a majority). They believe Israel should be restored in some sort of historical borders... as per usual, those borders aren't very certain, but they would quite certainly encompass a place called Judea and a city called Jerusalem. They believe they are doing a favor to the Jewish community by fighting "invaders" (Arabs). * Israeli Arabs... are a mixed bag. You can find literal jihadists and those who hate other Arabs on the other side of the fence more than settlers do. It's very clanish and way too involved to try to parse it. * The owners class, the rich people, they despise settlers. See them as an inconvenience / a bunch of lunatics. They don't care about Arabs either. * Immigrants, especially fresh, tend to overwhelmingly support settlers because they misunderstand their status and genuinely believe the settlers are doing what the country isn't allowed to do due to some political scheming going on.

tangled 1y ago

To quote the NYTimes: “Despite the desperate humanitarian crisis, a survey conducted in May by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University found that 64.5 percent of the Israeli public was not at all, or not very, concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.” “About three-quarters of Israeli Jews thought that Israel's military planning should not take into account the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, or should do so only minimally, according to another recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-dissent-war-gaza.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-d...

e40 1y ago
That is horrific and much worse than I thought it was.
- nandomrumber 1y ago
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  - saubeidl 1y ago
    > You expect Israeli's to a give a fuck about Gazans? Um, yes? Like you think the children being starved are all Hamas? You think the doctors and filmmakers and what have you are all terrorists? Don't become worse than the thing you claim to fight.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    Yes. The minimum rules we all must agree on have to be the basic human rights. And that means we can’t take all the civilians in Gaza hostage for Hamas. These are humans with hopes and dreams and friends and family, like you and like Israelis. That Israel in particular would so easily forget about this is horrible.
    - nandomrumber 1y ago
      If the above mentioned surveys are to believed, then a not insignificant fraction of Israelis care less than you expect them to. Why is that? What are we misunderstanding about their perspective that causes the expectation to be off?

homefree 1y ago

Basically nothing portrayed by the main stream media / international press on this issue is accurately represented. Most of it is either wildly ignorant or actively hostile (or both). The Free Press, Call Me Back (podcast), and Breaking Israeli History (podcast) do a good job. Also we will dance again and October 8 (films). I'd also recommend Douglas Murray's On Democracies and Death Cults to get some perspective if you're curious, generally people don't bother on online discussion forums on this topic because it's not productive, but for earnestly curious friends I make the case below. From my perspective, Jews outside of Israel have become more united because the nature of a lot of the western response after 10/7 ironically shows why Jews need a state and an army to protect themselves. I’m all for high minded debate, but a lot of the anti-Israel protesting isn’t that, the people celebrating or excusing 10/7 on 10/8 before Israel responded, the guy that recently executed two young people leaving a jewish event in DC and then screamed “Free Palestine”, the guy that murdered an old woman at a hostage march in boulder, the “death, death to the IDF” shouted from the stage in Glastonbury to a cheering crowd, the “river to the sea” and “intifada” chants/harassing of jews on college campuses, the repeated negative press narrowly focused on Israel from BBC, Guardian, NYT, the ‘genocide’ claims and other false blood libels, people marching waving islamic republic of Iran and Hezbollah flags in NYC, smashing up jewish owned businesses, etc. - these people are not motivated by some idea of nuanced democratic values or a ‘two state solution’, they’re motivated by old Jewish hatred under a new name. Islamism blended with lefty socialism united in their support of “anti-zionism” i.e. the destruction of Israel. Many of these media orgs have been hollowed out by an activist ideology that doesn’t understand the history it’s swimming in and doesn’t pursue truth as much as push a political agenda. What ‘genocide’ provides aid to the people they’re supposedly trying to kill? Hamas is driven by a theologically motivated Jihad against the Jews with explicit genocidal intent, The Islamic Republic of Iran (distinct from its people) wants to destroy Israel and then the west and uses terrorism for this purpose and may have used a nuke if not for recent events. It is necessary to use lethal force to defend against this kind of threat. Anyone that cares about a positive future for Palestinians should recognize there is no possibility of such a future while Hamas remains in power. Europe has largely been protected by the US providing its security and deterrence after WWII. Israel is on the front lines and can’t ignore the reality on the ground, their survival depends on it. You can fight this earlier or wait until the cost is higher to fight it later. Other Arab countries understand these problems, it’s why the UAE has banned the Muslim brotherhood and other extremist organizations, it’s why Saudi is leaning closer towards normalization with Israel and both are allied against Iran. They understand the risks of Islamic terror because they have to deal with it - it forces an accurate understanding. Something Europe (and anti-Israel protestors in the west) don’t grasp, but given Europe’s poor policy on this issue they likely will continue to experience more of first hand. What Hamas did is joyfully murder, rape, and torture a bunch of lefty kibbutzniks (the kind bringing gaza kids to Israeli hospitals) and music festival kids, took hostages that they’re still holding, while filming it, laughing about it and celebrating it. They have an explicitly genocidal charter interested in killing all the Jews. There is no compatibility between the west and those interested in Islamic Jihad. Every third house in gaza has weapons in it (often hidden in kids rooms), Hamas uses hospitals and other civilian areas to try to maximize civilian casualties despite Israel’s effort to minimize them. They also kill civilians that go against them and have been launching rockets into Israel for years. That action requires a military response to achieve political goals: return the hostages and destroy hamas / remove them from power. That is unavoidable without civilian deaths (always a tragedy in war), but the fault for this lies squarely with Hamas for starting the war. Few wars have moral grounding as clear as the war started because of 10/7. On October 8th people in the west were celebrating the invasion and killing carried about by Hamas, some mixture of ignorance and useful idiots (primarily on the political left) along with explicitly pro-hamas support. This was popular in American universities and across Europe before Israel had even responded chanting things like “globalize the intifada”. This is, at best, total moral confusion. Also notice the attention placed on this conflict, but conspicuously absent from others. Why aren’t students protesting Bashar al-Assad? Or the civilian deaths in the conflict in Yemen? Or in Sudan? Why only the one Jewish state that was brutally attacked by a terrorist group that’s still holding its citizens hostage? This isn’t just an issue with Hamas either, it’s more complicated - many Palestinian civilians participated in the kidnapping, looting, and violence on 10/7. They helped harbor hostages. They would have lynched the hostages being returned if Hamas wasn’t preventing that and they of course elected Hamas to power in the first place. The population itself is radicalized with a deep hatred of Jews. Enormous amounts of foreign aid (hundreds of millions) has flowed into gaza of the last couple of decades. Enough to make the Hamas leaders billionaires whose families can live large in Qatar while supporting their investment of tunnels to support their terrorism. A lot of it is backed by Iran, but a lot of this aid is from western nations to organizations that worked directly with and supported Hamas (UNRWA). This money could have been used to build something after Israel’s "land for peace" withdrawal in 2005, instead it was used for terror. It’s more instructive to look at what motivates the groups today rather than litigate divergent historical narratives (i.e. Nakba was five Arab states attacking Israel and the ‘catastrophe’ was that they lost, the security checkpoints exist because of suicide bombing during the intifadas, etc.). If Hamas surrendered and returned the hostages it would end the fighting they started. If Israel laid down their weapons they’d all be killed. Palestinians have no interest in two states which they’ve repeatedly rejected, they’re interested in killing all the Jews, the destruction of Israel, and more broadly the destruction of the west (as Iran’s proxy). Meanwhile in Israel, Arabs and Jews live together peacefully as Israeli citizens. Ideally it’d be possible to engage in war with perfect individual targeting and no civilian casualties. Israel does this as much as possible (Hezbollah pager attack was very narrowly targeted, targeted strikes on individuals in specific apartments, other civilian warning strategies), but it’s not perfect and civilian deaths are unavoidable, especially in dense urban conflict zones. The IDF has a better record on this than any other modern western army (including US when we took Mosul against ISIS). I see war as a means to achieve a specific political result when diplomacy is not possible (or after you’ve been attacked). In this case: remove Hamas from power and return the hostages. In the broader conflict: remove the threat from Hezbollah and Iran. I think it’s necessary to achieve these goals in order to achieve any lasting peace. Some ideologies and enemies require total military defeat. If western civilization is not willing to do this despite its real costs, then power is ceded to enemies that don’t have the same moral concerns, or in this case, explicitly want to maximize civilian death and terror as they did on 10/7 and it'll just happen again. My view is Israel would like to live in peace with its neighbors if that’s a real option (and historically has tried many times), but it’s not. Israel's neighbors (driven by a particular theological view of Islam from the Muslim Brotherhood) are not interested in peaceful coexistence. Israel should not make concessions to an enemy still plotting to destroy them. If we’re lucky an outcome of this conflict could be normalization with KSA / an extension of the Abraham accords and deeper partnership with other Arab countries in the region - maybe even a shift in some of the public’s ideology if people recognize that trying to destroy Israel/kill Jews leads to ruin (though this is hard with radicalization in the culture/schools, etc.) - it’s a generational project that will take time, but it’s not impossible. Currently, because the goals have not been achieved (Hamas still holds hostages, still wants to remain in power, still will not surrender) the war continues and sadly civilians continue to pay some of the cost. The allies (mostly US) fully administered Japan after WWII for 7 years, Japan lost their sovereignty during that time. An outcome of starting a war and losing it is you may lose your sovereignty and land. It’s possible to defeat evil ideologies, it happened in WWII with both Japan and Germany. I think it’s very challenging to know what’s true given all the bad actors (UN, Hamas, Pallywood - they film fake videos to (effectively) manipulate western sentiment) and their repeated lying. I think that the GHF has weakened Hamas by removing their control over the aid which has threatened them, and lastly I’m personally not sure what responsibility there is to provide aid at all while hostages remain held in Gaza (this is a more controversial view) - that said, Israel has provided and continues to provide enormous amounts of civilian aid and works to move civilians outside of the areas of fighting despite this being a thankless task. War can be a moral act, the west exercising its power to defend its values against an evil ideology is an important and necessary thing.

PicassoCTs 1y ago

They do not have the luxury to hallucinate neighbours who just want to life like the west. They just see reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vH2H6oIo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vH2H6oIo4

deinonychus 1y ago
yeah i guess we need to kill more kids
- PicassoCTs 1y ago
  I guess thats thats what american soldiers on the way to berlin had to say - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm A totalitarian ideology throwing its own future into the furnace, not for a tomorrow (all the fertilizer was ammunition, they had sentenced themselves to starvation) but for the hope of killing all your enemies one last time. How can one venture this deep into defending this regressive madness is beyond me. I hope you heal from whatever hatred is devouring you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter

JamesAdir 1y ago

What do you mean the political climate? The current government is based on a majority. Although some parties in the opposition are trying to undermine the government actions, they are mostly hold exact or very similar views on the issues. When the opposition were in charge with Bennett as the PM, there was no major change in the state/security issues, the main arguments are more on "internal" affairs. ? After Oct 7, you'll find very little people interested on what is happening in Gaze. You can also see that the Palestinians in the West Bank are not interested in what's happening in Gaza. Almost zero disturbances or protests about it, even in cities like Ramahllah which enjoys a complete autonomy.

Slava_Propanei 1y ago

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deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago

but thats the thing. it IS good for the settlers and it IS something that israel is actively promoting in its own self interest. this settler stuff isnt a mistake or an oversight

cess11 1y ago

Yes, it's broadly supported. Besides widely publicised polls by universities and corporations outside of Israel you can look at IDI polls here, https://en.idi.org.il/tags-en/1465 https://en.idi.org.il/tags-en/1465. The why takes more explanation. I'd suggest you dig through https://xcancel.com/ireallyhateyou/ https://xcancel.com/ireallyhateyou/, this person is an israeli with background in leftist activism that recently went into exile. They collect and translate a lot of material from israeli television and other media, and also translate and explain a lot of historical material, both more mainstream like background information on contemporary israeli politicians and the occasional look at punk and leftist activism in Israel during the nineties and -00s. It's also a good idea to spend time going through the material collected by Younis Tirawi, https://xcancel.com/ytirawi https://xcancel.com/ytirawi. It shows what IDF personnel believes to be appropriate behaviour that will positively impress their civilian israeli peers, i.e. what they consider to be the political climate. Diaspora jews are quite heterogenous and splintered. Many support Israel, and many don't. One 'poll' is the democratic mayor primary in New York, where Zohran Mamdani was quite popular among jewish constituents. Adding to this, many jewish institutions are in some sense captured or founded by zionists, and funded because they are loyal to the zionist cause. This includes many summer camps and similar activities for jewish youth. Since 2023 I expect more diaspora jews to have lost sympathy with the zionist movement than it has gained, but it's not something I have polling numbers to support. On the other hand, basically every recurring large protest against Israel has a jewish contingent. At the moment we're past immediate resolution, because the entire population in the Gaza strip has been permanently, irrevocably harmed by starvation. It would also take a lot of violence to force the israeli society to back down and stop what it's doing to its neighbours, and then likely generations of enforced stabilisation and education to sow seeds of democracy, neither of which Israel's occidental backers are willing to consider. Then there's the questions of colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are illegal and must be dissolved, which in turn would require distinct amounts of force both to achieve and then to keep it from turning into a civil war within Israel when the so called settlers are relocated there. As I've mentioned elsewhere, one should keep in mind that this is mainly a christian project, most adherents to zionism are christians.

aristofun 1y ago

There is a real war going on between israel and hamas. On all levels, including information war. Information war is the only one where hamas is currently winning. That is why you are already heavily biased based on the tone of your questions. About 90%+ of what you see on mainstream media is either a straightforward lie or carefully designed, massaged and distorted truth (for example hamas counts as casualties everyone, including fully armed terrorists killed in action). Another example is fake news about “starvation” where they post standalone photos of children with generic disorders as a proof. Im just scratching the surface. This information war is mainly sponsored by quatar and iran with 2 longterm goals in mind 1) destabilizing and undermining USA influence in middle east and worldwide 2) destroying israel and killing as many jews as possible (literally, they don’t hide it if you check anything besides bbc and english al-jazeera) That is what really going on. That is the brutal truth. Unfortunately it’s not an exaggeration.

aristofun 1y ago
And unfortunately it is nothing new. Way before founding modern Israel there has been a long history of regular pogroms and massacres in that region. This doesn’t excuse current Israel from some mistakes and poor judgements, but it paints a very different picture that doesn’t fit sugarcoated antisemitic victim narrative that all main media sponsored by botomless pit of oil qatar money shoves up all naive western listeners.