Everything else aside, this is an absolutely fantastic development and I really hope the ceasefire holds and all hostages are released.
I just fear this will cause western media and politicians to and declare the crisis to be over (after it had began on Oct. 7, of course absolutely out of the blue and without any context...) and go back to pretending everything is back to normal. Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
We'll see where all of that goes.
I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
I graduated from an electrical engineering program at a big ten (U.S.) school in the mid '90s, and I am closing in on retirement. I spent today enrapt in an Oracle upgrade from 10g to 11g. Yes, our IT is COBOL-centric, and we are vastly behind the times. Much of today was spent (re)compiling C. The consensus is that I will have to think hard tomorrow about how to fix these problems.
While I was in school, I studied with many Palestinians in my college of engineering. I wonder often what happened to them.
At the same time, within Israel, Intel is the largest civilian employer. The Pentium M is an Israeli rework of the Pentium Pro legacy, and Israel is key to Intel's gains over the past two decades.
I wish that everyone that I knew from the Middle East was fully involved in the advances of Intel.
Perhaps my lost schoolmates' absence was precisely what Intel lacked, but such cultural divides are not easily bridged.
This is a great pity.
I've worked with a few teams based in Israel during my at Intel, namely in networking and transceiver technology space. I try to make a point of getting to know the people I work with through 1:1s, and you'll be pleased to know there is a good mix of Palestinans and Israelis working together. Everyone there was proud to have a very diverse team.
This is a great post. Thank you to share your personal experience. Do you think they were first generation Palestinians? Or multi-generation (parents or earlier immigrated)? I know that Michigan state (Detroit, etc.) has one of the largest Arab communities in the United States.
I went to school with some first generation Palestinians just 5-ish years ago.
One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave. He has never been back to Palestine since then because another detainment or missed visa problem, etc. would derail his career.
> One of them had to miss an entire quarter because Israel just wouldn't allow him to leave
Terrible.
Even in the current ceasefire terms, there's an explicit provision to have Israel agree to let the injured leave for treatment to neighbouring countries and be allowed to come back to the Strip.
Despite arguments to contrary, I can see why some claim it is an open-air prison.
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A UN delegate first referred to the Gaza strip as an open air prison in 1956, while still under Egyptian control.
That aspect of Gaza was in place long before Israel had anything to do with the strip.
Some part of this doesn't make sense. He couldn't leave from Gaza or Egypt? Why would he have needed Israel's permission?
I must admit I'm not an expert in how it works. And as friends we never really talked about the details of such things. But you can read about the procedures here: https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/legal-opinions/legal_mem...
Based on that, he must have obtained a special permit to leave Palestine and fly to the US for higher education, but this had to be approved by Israel or he could not leave Palestine or transit through Ben Gurion Airport (remember the Palestinian's international airport was bombed into rubble a decade ago or so). One year they denied him for some Kafkaesque reason, I presume. By the time he sorted it out he had to arrange with the school to take a leave and start again the next quarter
This is a one-sided description of the conflict. I am empathetic to Israel, because they also do not have a lot options.
Israel, as it it currently constituted (based on 1967 borders) is not a viable state if the West Bank is a hostile entity with a standing army, and funded to a similar extent as Hezbollah. The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
The Palestinian position seems to be "trust us that if you give us full, un-fettered independence, then we will not be a hostile entity" - but that's asking for Israel to place an enormous amount of trust in present and future Palestinian people and leaders, without any historical reasons to base this on, and highlighted by the worst case scenario of Hezbollah in the north, a foreign-controlled militia funded to the tune of 1 billion / year, and potential a hostile party in the West Bank (and Gaza) - effectively surrounding the country.
And it is more than just demilitarization. A demilitarized Palestine is not enough if, for example, Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
Hence we are where we are .. with Israel unable to disengage because doing so presents an existential risk to their nation.
> Israel, as it it currently constituted (based on 1967 borders) is not a viable state if the West Bank is a hostile entity with a standing army, and funded to a similar extent as Hezbollah. The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea; "it's strategically important for us" isn't really sufficient justification for mass murder, and - on a purely geographic point - talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate.
And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
> Iran funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to militia groups.
This is the side that's not really been raised enough in this whole discussion. If Israel's war is with Iran, why is that war not being carried out in Iran? Does this have something to do with the fact that Iran is 1000km away from having a land border with either Israel or Palestine?
>This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea; "it's strategically important for us" isn't really sufficient justification for mass murder, and - on a purely geographic point - talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate.
Russia is the largest country on earth, whereas the distance from the West Bank to Tel-Aviv is like 5 miles.
This roughly like arguing that owning a personal nuke is no different from owning a firecracker. The scale of the threats are separated by several orders of magnitude.
>And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
Because the Palestinians rejected the 1948 borders, started a war, and then lost. Incidentally they also rejected the 1967 borders by starting a war in 1973 and losing that one too, but the consensus around those borders is at least a bit more solidified so people still pretend they're meaningful rather than null-and-void.
The work that has been going on for the past month is systematically destroying every known air defense asset of the Syrian government (and securing a key mountain peak with newly entrenched ground troops) in order to have a permanent air corridor with which to strike Iran.
The Israeli F-35s can get through right now, but they have limited payload and have to rely on slightly dicey refueling arrangements. With Syria under Israeli air cover, they can run tankers right up to western Iran and strike anywhere in the country.
Repeated, unilateral Israeli aggression is the status quo in the region.
>This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea;
How many times have Ukranian terrorists murdered a bunch of Russian athletes at the Olympics? Or hijacked a 3rd nation plane carrying Russian tourists and then murdered them? How many bombings have Ukranian extremists carried out in Europe, targeting Russian tourists?
They are not the same arguments.
At all.
It is the same argument because whatever terrorism the victims of occupation engage in, or whatever terror groups exist among a much larger population of the occupied, is not an excuse to break international law.
Russia also made a number of excuses to annex the territories, the USA also fabricated a web of lies to justify their illegal invasion into Iraq. Criminals often lie or justify their crimes in any number of ways. None of which makes their crimes right. There are no exceptions to international law for fighting terrorism.
I know this isn't the time or place, but international law doesn't exist.
Well, it does but only by the consent of the participant and participants can withdraw their consent at any time, arbitrarily.
It's like how international treaties become worthless the second one party decides they don't want to abide by them anymore.
So, any time someone mentions "international law" I kinda just smirk a little bit and make the "jerking off and then ejaculating" motion with my hand.
The actual smallest country on earth, Tuvalu, can tell the UN to eat a bag of dicks and ignore every single plea to obey "international law" and the only remedy is embargo, begging, or the cruise missile.
Wait, does Ukraine have a long established history of military attacks against Russia?
Only during periods of Russian occupation.
>This is exactly the same argument that Russia has been using to annex territories such as Crimea
The rhetoric may be superficially similar, but facts on the ground aren't. The Russian state is not under an existential threat in the same way that Israel would be with Hezbollah in the north, and a similar entity in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is a tiny nation with a tiny population. Russian and Israel's security issues are simply not comparable.
>talking about the West Bank doesn't justify anything to do with Gaza, which is geographically separate
They are linked, and highlight the core problem to Israel - namely - disengagement does not work with a hostile entity.
Israel in 2005 disengaged from Gaza. It wasn't a full disengagement as Israel still exerted control over the airspace and territorial water, but it also wasn't nothing and it was an olive-branch and a big opportunity. Instead it resulted in a Hamas electoral victory, and rocket attacks, and a circle of retaliatory actions from Israel and Hamas. Imagine a world, where post-disengagement there were no attacks from Gaza, no preparation for war and smuggling of weapons into Gaza by Hamas - by this point, where would we be? Would Israel still maintain the same kind of blockade? I just don't think so. I truly believe it would be a model for permanent peace and Palestinian statehood.
>And why the 1967 borders rather than the 1948 ones?
I mentioned 1967 borders, because as best as I can gather, that is the current Palestinian position. Although it isn't clear exactly what the Palestinian position is as Palestinians do tend to maintain some level of ambiguity on this point.
> If Israel's war is with Iran, why is that war not being carried out in Iran?
It goes the other way actually - Iran is at war with Israel. Iran is using proxies, Hamas, and Hezbollah to strike at Israel.
> I mentioned 1967 borders, because as best as I can gather, that is the current Palestinian position.
The Hamas position (as best I can figure it) is the dissolution of the Israeli state entirely and Palestine restored. Whether you consider that the Palestinian position is open.
The Israeli position (as best I figure it) is to do whatever it takes to be unassailable - everything else is second order.
There are much more moderate positions throughout both sets of people, but I feel like they're the defining ones because they drive the violence (and subsequent retaliation)?
Open to arguments against
> The Hamas position (as best I can figure it) is the dissolution of the Israeli state entirely and Palestine restored.
Not restored, as Palestine in what is today Israel's area was never an independent country.
> Imagine a world, where post-disengagement there were no attacks from Gaza ...
Imagine a world where pre-disengagement there's no radicals on either side. Imagine a world where Israel works with people displaced in 1948-1967, and utilizing its overwhelming economic advantage finds acceptable solutions to defuse the problems, instead of supporting more land grabs.
The big gestures (like withdrawing from Gaza) are of course important, but we still must not mistake cause for effect, or the outliers for the baseline.
We tried that. Got a bunch of rockets shot at us.
Because the Palestian cause is not about the welfare of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian cause is about establishing an Arab state to displaced the Jewish state.
Palestinians aren't even trusted by their Arab brethren, and they expect to be given the benefit of doubt.
Why is demilitarization always a unilateral affair? Has this solved anything in the past 50+ years?
It should be either be bilateral militarization (a miniaturized MAD if you will - similar with the Korean peninsula I guess), or bilateral demilitarization and extensive UN force deployment.
There is an international perspective on the borders that I think should be mentioned. I think it is also worth mentioning that most people who live now in West Bank and the broader Palestine area were not consulted in how power and might is distributed, whether they benefit or suffer from it.
Should they?
> The West Bank bulges into Israel and effectively cuts the country in half and places all strategic targets within shelling distance.
That’s why the peace before 1967 was so important. But Israel ended it and was left with a mess that now all young people are drafted into service.
Egypt implementing a blockade triggered the 1967 conflict. It didn't come from nowhere. Then that was followed up by yet another war against Israel in 1973.
Taking over the west bank is not at all an acceptable response to something happening in Egypt's domain. Keeping the west bank is also not reasonable. Not sure why you would bring that up.
> "trust us that if you give us full, un-fettered independence, then we will not be a hostile entity"
I don't agree, that's an optimistic view of things. Most Palestinians (Hamas for sure, Abbas as well) never agreed to give up on the 'Right of Return' so its not really independence in a 2 state solution that they're looking for, it's the abolishment of Israel.
That's part of the problem as well - it's not exactly clear what the Palestinian position is - partly because I think they see things like 'right of return' (which is completely unacceptable to Israel) as bargaining chips to trade for something during negotiations.
The right of return is a human right which some Palestinians have according to international law. Whether it is acceptable or not for Israelis should not be a consideration. Majority rule was also completely unacceptable to white Rhodesians. But the international community correctly assessed this to be because of racist grounds and thus not worthy of consideration.
Palestinians might negotiate away the right of return at some future date, but any deal which denies them that right will be a human rights violation and thus court material to be reversed at an even later future. But regardless, what Israelis think is not of concern, and should not be a concern.
Great, why don't we start with the United States which is the richest most privileged country in the world?
"Mexican Cession (1848): The most significant event was the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Mexico lost the war, and through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it was forced to cede a vast amount of territory to the United States. This territory included present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Texas had already declared independence from Mexico in 1836 and was annexed by the U.S. in 1845, a major cause of the war."
"Displacement and Dispossession: While the treaty promised to protect the property rights of Mexicans who stayed, in practice, many lost their land through legal maneuvering, fraud, or outright violence. This forced displacement would have driven some south to Mexico."
Whatever doesn't belong to Mexicans surely belongs to Indians.
Sounds like a good place to start. After that - Australia and Canada. Once that's done let's do Israel.
Forced displacement is a recognized crime against humanity. Israel forcibly displaced these people, refusing their right of return is a crime.
Israel repeatedly and systematically kicks Palestinians out of their homes and grants those homes to Jewish settlers.
They are able to do this in large part because Palestine is not a recognized state.
The longer they prevent Palestine from getting statehood, the more dunams of land they can steal.
I don't disagree with you, but will comment.
There is a justifiable argument for Israel to occupy the west bank and/or the Gaza strip (whether one agrees or not is another matter that I will not get into). Settling it is another matter entirely, and this action is what causes so much grief.
But what Palestinian supporters continuously fail to grasp is that every time Israel has tried to give (and there were many attempts in the 1980s and 1990s), bad actors have caused violence. This violence was a huge cause in support shifting to right-wing parties in Israel.
The tragedy is that a plurality of Palestinians would otherwise love to have a peaceful (two state or otherwise) solution, but the "bad" ones are well funded by outsiders, in particular Iran. If a Gandhi/Martin Luther King/Nelson Mandela figure emerged, they'd almost certainly be killed by Hamas,Hezbollah,etc.
But at the end of the day, there's no way the extreme elements of either side will agree to a permanent and dignified peace, because even if it would work it would mean the end of either of them (and Israeli PM was assassinated by a far-right Jewish nationalist).
I'm sympathetic to both sides myself. I'm sympathetic to Israel's position, need for security, and the fact that hostility against them is a given. I'm also sympathetic to the fact that the Palestinian people were pushed off their land, often with violence to a level that can fit the definition of genocide, during Israel's independence and subsequent annexations.
But there will never be a true peace so long as the extremists on both sides have as much power as they do. I know most Iranians are fed up with their government. My Iranian colleagues all are commenting that even devoutly religious Iranians back home are getting fed up. A lot of this is a house of cards, so I guess we'll see.
The fact that we use the term "Settling" and "Settlers" is kind of grotesque. These places are occupied, by Palestinians, who have to be ethnically cleansed (with varying degrees of violence) in order to establish new Israeli Jewish settlements. This is done with Israeli Jewish soldiers, a hundred thousand of whom now patrol hundreds of enclaves and all major routes through the West Bank.
Isreali and US right-wing leaders find a hostile Iran to be extremely politically convenient, and the military-industrial complex that they share with each other and with centrist parties just wants a reason to keep existing. People talk about a potential "War with Iran", but in reality we've given them maybe a dozen different diplomatic casus belli in the past decade, in part to deter them from political moderation.
That's how the term is used in the U.S. as well, when history classes describe "settlers" who wiped out the Native Americans who lived here through genocide, germ warfare, regular ol' warfare and displacement. I think in general when one sees the word "settlers" one should assume the worst.
> military-industrial complex that they share with each other and with centrist parties just wants a reason to keep existing.
This is so freakin' true. I feel like, if world peace ever reared its ugly head Americans would whine, "but jobs!" because of the hit it would give the military-industrial complex.
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While this is a good development. Everything in this part of the world is on a rinse snd repeat cycle ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians - it hasn't changed much except maybe its actually a little more humane then it was in the past (which says something). Sorry for the cynical take but this just does a temporary stop.
That's not true at all. The current conflict isn't some thousand year old feud. It was very much caused by the deliberate provocation and importation of European settlers via Zionism. It's easy to wave our hands and say "it's so complicated!" or "they've been doing this for thousands of years!" but it's not complicated, much like apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were not complicated. Colonialism and ethno-centric racism are never good.
The plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi (aka, Jews who never left the Middle East), at 45% of the population [1]. This isn't about Europeans, or even "race": Mizrahi Jews and their Palestinian neighbors are racially indistinguishable.
Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews. [2] Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism, Ashkenazi Jews are firmly within the Middle Eastern/Levantine clade and are more closely related to Palestinians than they are any European group. [3]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews_in_Israel
> Although if you're dead-set on racial essentialism and blood-and-soil nationalism
You're reading things OP didn't even write; and addressing a historical assertion with present-day facts.
OP posits that European settlers coming in during the Ottoman era (establishing Hebrew-only areas & businesses, only to later demand a Jewish State, in opposition to the local majority [0]) is what kickstarted the current conflict. It isn't a 1000 year old feud.
Mizrahis, save for Yemenis, migrated en masse after the conflict was irreversibly set in motion by Imperial Britain & various Arab states.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/video/1913-seeds-conflict-establishing-r...
That's a high quality comment but nothing at all like the comment it is defending whose main thrust is that the conflict is simple to understand and one side is just wrong.
How is this different than the Muslims currently pouring into Europe today? Whatever happened to "refugees welcome"?
It should be noted in context that in 1856 the Ottomans, after their war with Prussia, actively invited all peoples - not only Muslims - to come and settle the sparsely populated Holy Land specifically in order to collect more taxes. Jews and Arabs happily took up the offer. The last Jerusalem census to show a Muslim majority in that city was 1876, and the 50 years preceding it were neck and neck for Jews and Arabs majority.
> Ashkenazi Jews — that is, Jews who lived in Europe during the Diaspora — make up less than a third of Israeli Jews.
This isn't true, and the link you posted in support of it contradicts it in the third sentence. 'less than a third of Israeli Jews' excludes Jews who migrated to Israel from the Soviet Union, or from the post-Soviet Union countries. In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s.
> In fact around 20% of the population of Jewish people in Israel arrived during the wave of migration which happened in the 90s and early 2000s.
any idea where the millions of Jews from around the middle east disappeared to around the same time?
It's not about race, but it is about the invention of a country that relies on specific demographics to exist (majority Jewish) which necessitate keeping millions of people stateless yet under the full control of an elite ethnicity who actually have the votes and the control.
And no matter where Jewish people are from, they are that privileged ethnicity. The Arabs in Israel get token rights (but you and I both know if they were a demographic threat in Israel those rights would be revoked). And the Arabs in Palestine get no rights in Israel but are fully controlled and blockaded by Israel. That's the ultimate source of the conflict. It's not thousands of years old, and it is partly about race (if you consider Jewish a race, as the nation of Israel does).
> The Arabs in Israel get token rights.
That's just false. The Arab minority in Israel has right to vote, the right to establish political parties, freedom of expression, freedom of association, free press, religious autonomy, separate educational systems, legal rights, etc.
Yes there are differences, but claiming that Arab israelis only receive "token rights" is a far cry from the truth. Of course this doesn't mean theres' no racism, but that's a different issue.
This is well summarised. It could end very easily.
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Also, if you were a European Jew in the late 1940s after the fall of the Nazis, you were still faced with the prospect of living under the local governance of Nazi collaborators, continued pogroms [0] and antisemitism, and potentially Joseph Stalin's USSR. It's not like everything immediately went back to normal, either in real terms or psychological ones.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom
It's unsurprising that many wouldn't want to reintegrate with that society after what they experienced, even if they managed to avoid the camps (and especially if they didn't).
Yes and the reason many of the Mizrahi are in Israel and not in all the other places is the Zionists.
I'm fairly certain it's because they were ethnically cleansed from and/or simply murdered in the rest of the Middle East by the surrounding Arab countries. For example, Egypt tortured and dispossessed its Jews, forcing them out at gunpoint while holding their family members hostage so they wouldn't speak to the press [1]. Syria made it illegal for Jews to buy property, own a telephone, or even drive, and then seized all the property they already owned and froze their bank accounts, killing them if they fled [2].
Blaming this on "the Zionists" is like saying America wasn't at fault for seizing the property of Japanese-Americans during WW2 and forcing them into internment camps — it was Japan's fault for attacking Pearl Harbor, whipping Americans into an unavoidable frenzy that can't be condemned. Only it's more absurd, because Israel didn't start the war with those countries — they invaded Israel in 1948 simply for existing!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Syria
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It is easy to say it's complicated, but you've inadvertently illustrated just how easy it is to say that it's simple too.
Going to pretend that Jews haven’t lived there for thousands and thousands of years, before the Arabs arrived?
It was more about local residents becoming Arabs than Arabs migrating in large numbers. Palestinian Arabs are mostly descended from ancient Canaanites. More generally, the demographics around the Eastern Mediterranean have changed surprisingly little since the Bronze Age. Most conquerors just replaced or took over the old elites. Many people died in the process, and the survivors would often adopt a new culture, language, and/or religion.
> More generally, the demographics around the Eastern Mediterranean have changed surprisingly little since the Bronze Age.
This type of claims only shows lack of understanding of history as a science. It is actually impossible right now to make claims about this with any significant degree of confidence.
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Zionism is a colonial ideology created by Europeans in the late 1800s.
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In 1872, less than 4% of Palestine was Jewish. It was 17% in 1931. 33% in 1948 when Israel was formed.
The vast vast majority of Jews in Israel now are Ashkenazi. Ashkenazis are from Khazaria and converted to Judaism between 740 and 920 AD. Even from this population, there is a bottleneck around 600 to 800 years ago where the population was down to 350 individuals [1].
By and large very very few Jews in Palestine/Israel are able to claim Levantine/Semitic genetic ancestry.
Many Palestinians and other Levantine people in Palestine who now practice Islam are far more likely have to have ancestors that were once Jewish that actually lived in historical kingdom of Israel prior to 70 AD when Titus and Vespasian crushed a revolt there.
The ancestors of these folks that today practice Islam in Palestine likely converted to Islam sometime after 637 AD when Arabs started to settle in Palestine.
It's pretty commonly accepted all over the world since basically forever that ownership is bequeathed from parents to children. This means that those who are Islamic today but whose genetic ancestors practiced Judaism in the past and lived in the historical kingdom of Israel have far greater claim to the land than folks who have no genetic ancestry to the Kingdom of Israel and instead have ancestry with no genetic relationship that converted to Judaism about 1105 to 1285 years ago.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-descend-from-35...
> those who are Islamic today but whose genetic ancestors practiced Judaism in the past and lived in the historical kingdom of Israel have far greater claim to the land
Broadly speaking, any philosophy that rests on an oldest-claims-first metric are guaranteed to cause violence.
Information degrades the further we go back; you’re prioritising the wishy-washiest sources of truth. And the nature of human migration and interbreeding means the further you go back, the less likely you are to find genetic ancestors of the people who currently control the land. The people alive on the land you want them off. People with guns.
(The theory is also fundamentally based on the notion that racial migration is wrong. Immigrants to America have less claim than white Americans, who have less claim than natives, except for all the natives who were conquered each other because they moved around too.)
> The vast vast majority of Jews in Israel now are Ashkenazi
Wrong, Mizrahi are the majority.
> Ashkenazis are from Khazaria
I don't know hope you did it, but wrong again, DNA studies show Ashkenazim have a large Canaanite DNA component. The other part is largely Italian due to admixture within the Roman Empire which forcibly annexed Judea.
>The vast vast majority of Jews in Israel now are Ashkenazi.
That's simply untrue.
https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/2018/07/Ethnic...
> Ashkenazis are from Khazaria and converted to Judaism between 740 and 920 AD
Probably not worth reading your comment past this sentence.
You’re confusing something…
They are from Eastern Europe through the way of Germany and probably Italy (where they likely did quite a bit of mixing with the local before becoming mostly genetically isolated) prior to that.
The Khazar hypothesis is b.s. peddled by a white supremacist (Ernest Renan).
Genetic studies have found no substantive evidence of a Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews.
I don't think this "claim to land" works in the modern age.
Countries were established and fought for in blood all thorough history, and the winners kept their land. End of story.
Unless we are talking about some remote village, every single country was funded on blood and violence, and after a certain point it just makes no sense to track it.
Genealogical research shows the strongest link between the ancient Canaanites and the current middle east population is with the Palestinians and Lebanese. There are some genetic links between Palestinians and the ancient Israelites with this theory that many converted to Islam after the invasion.
However, you are correct in that many historians describe the population was added to, and never replaced. Supporting the DNA links.
From this I would conclude that the Palestinians are indigenous through the pre-colonial link. Most Jews in Israel are not indigenous but they share cultural links and lets not forget the wars they won in 1948 and 1967.
What is bizarre, is the ban on genetic testing for Palestinians and this pseudo-history in Israel that Palestinians never existed. Something distorted is being taught in Israel at many levels.
You’re conflating two theories: one widespread, and one fringe. The theory that the Ashkenazi population experienced a bottleneck is widely accepted; claiming that Ashkenazim are actually a remnant of the Khazar Khanganate[1] is both fringe and typically associated with antisemitic conspiracies.
(Note that I say antisemitic, and not in a manner that involves conflation with Zionism: going against the overwhelming majority of generic evidence to make a claim about a Jewish ethnic group that doesn’t even majority reside in Israel reeks of a blood-and-boden anger against Jews because of who they are.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi...
> In 1872, less than 4% of Palestine was Jewish. It was 17% in 1931. 33% in 1948 when Israel was formed.
Where's the issue ? I thought you Woke people wanted to see more diversity and empowerment of minority groups in the world
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Arab is not a race. Most Arabs never arrived from anywhere, they were locals who adopted (often violently, sometimes not) large parts of Arab culture for long enough to consider themselves Arabs.
The Arabians never had the resources or population to engage in settler colonialism you are thinking of. Even if they wanted to (and perhaps they did), they just couldn't go around replacing anyone. So from the start the conception of Arab is about peoples slowly becoming Arab, not being replaced by arriving Arabs, in large part.
This is true of most old empires. Romans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, early Ottomans generally don't setttle areas they conquer. They don't engage in industrial extraction either. They form a ruling class and collect taxes. Any cultural influence that have was because of longevity rather than any interest in forced conversion. People project their impressions of more modern empires to pre-industrial ones that didn't have the same aspirations or even institutions to accomplish those aspirations.
They are one and the same people. Only through the lens of ethnocentric histories is any distinction made.
there are several flaws in your typical zionist argument:
1. jews as a minority have lived in the lands of Filistine and Jerusalem peacefully and coexisted just fine for millennia, before the zionist project.
2. the fact that small minority of jews lived there does not give an excuse to ethnically cleanse the local population of arabs.
3. the claim that modern european jews from Rhine and pale of settlement (AshkeNazi) have any connection to ancient Israelites from 2000+ years ago is laughable. Most genetic analysis proved that it is Palestinians, Jordanian Christians are native to the land, not european settlers from Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, Ukraine with last names like Mileikowsky (Bibi's actual name), Mabovitch (golda's name) etc.
4. Filistine and Jerusalem did not have a problem with antisemitism and jew hate, UNTIL european settlers showed up. Antisemitism is purely european concept imported into Middle East.
5. All studies have shown that Israel/zionism is a colonial settler project created by Brits to secure Suez Canal from the ottomans. Later it would become American "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the middle east to bomb and murder oil rich countries in the middle east
> Filistine and Jerusalem did not have a problem with antisemitism and jew hate, UNTIL european settlers showed up. Antisemitism is purely european concept imported into Middle East.
Read about the granada massacre.
Everything else about this aside: the reason most European Jews have Europeanized last names is because they were forced to adopt them throughout the 18th and 19th centuries[1].
(Also, why spell it “AshkeNazi”? That seems inflammatory with no connection to reality, since the root is Ashkenaz.)
When you ethnically cleanse a population, that population tends to go down. The opposite has happened to Arabs living in and around Israel.
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That’s cool and all but the Israelis are in Israel already, there’s no turning back the clock on Zionism without the mass expulsion of Jews who have no other home to go to.
Palestinians have a legitimate historical claim and so do Israelis. They’re exactly that, historical. If both sides can’t let those be history, it’s either eternal conflict or the elimination of one of them.
>mass expulsion of Jews who have no other home to go to.
What? They should just go back to Poland! /s
Ethnocentric racism is never good and it is, indeed, rampant in Israel, but it's hard to compare European colonialism to Zionism for a few reasons. The cultural and historical affinity of Jews, including Jews residing in Europe, was nothing like that of Europeans to the Americas, Africa, or East Asia. For well over a millennium Jews were praying for a return to Zion three times a day, even after the collapse of the Roman Empire and its later conquest (from the Byzantine Empire) by the Arab Islamic Empire, there have been many (small) migrations of Jews to the area [1], there has been an uninterrupted (small) presence of Jews there, and Jews in Europe were considered "racially" oriental "semites". Unlike European-style settler- or exploitation colonialism, there wasn't any metropole to Zionism, in the name of which colonisation was taking place. Finally, the bigger migration by modern Zionism in the time of the Ottoman Empire (that is when this conflict started, not under the Brits, who came into the picture -- after Tel Aviv was a city), came as a result of difficulties the Jews experienced in Europe and the Russian Empire, and certainly not on behalf of those powers.
That's not to say that Israel (like all countries in North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand) isn't a form of settler colonialism [1], sometimes openly and consciously so, but it is different from European colonialism (and in some respects it can be different for the worse, at least compared to some specific European colonies).
So yes, some things are simple, but your comparisons to things that were quite different actually shows how other things are not so simple. But it is precisely because history is often complex and almost never easily generalisable that I hate using it either as moral justification or condemnation of present events. I don't think that the fact both Arabs and Jews came to the Levant through migration and conquest (even according to both culture's own national mythology) has any bearing on present moral responsibility. In the end, as you say, ethnocentric nationalism is just wrong.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judais...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism
That is wrong. There were conflicts before, the Hebron massacre (1929) for example. There was an Arab nationalism and the Mufti of Jerusalem met with Hitler and planned a middle-eastern Holocaust.
Also, Jews were expelled from surrounding nations when Israel was founded, even more than Palestinians were driven from what now is Israel. There never was any compensation or talk about their right to return and these are not Jews with European ancestry.
Frankly, I think not a single statement of yours is true.
What a pile of nonsense...
Whose colony is Israel? Do you even understand what this word means?
You are just parroting some propaganda lines that you don't understand. The propaganda lines that were specifically constructed to appeal to emotions (by referencing European colonialism that started with exploring Africa and India with subsequent conquest, which did result in many bad things, but has nothing to do with what happened in Israel beyond some superficial similarity).
Colonialism was bad because the colonial powers took freedoms away from the local population, siphoned their wealth to the country-colonizer while devastating the colony's inhabitants. Israel did nothing of sorts. It never wanted to have anything to do with the local population. In fact, one of the major sources of conflict was that Jewish population that came to replace the Turks who owned the land worked by the locals didn't want the locals to work that land anymore. And the landless peasants thus became unemployed / unemployable.
So, Arabs living in Israel used to be servants to the Turks, but once Jews replaced the Turks, and "freed" the Arabs, the later discovered themselves to be useless and without means of sustaining themselves. Not a good spot to be in, but hey, at least now they were "free" (I do use this ironically, I don't think they wanted that kind of freedom). Arabs, of course, thought about former Turkish land as their own (because they used to work it), but it's no more theirs than it is Jewish or whoever else inhabited that area historically.
Bottom line, claiming land based on some historical past that was cancelled by more recent historical events is a road to nowhere. And if you try to follow it, Jews probably have a better claim to that territory than Arabs, who invaded and occupied that territory later.
But, more importantly, today, the conflict isn't even about the land at all. All major players would be willing to make territorial concessions, if the core of the problem was addressed. And people are at the core of the problem, not the land. Something needs to be done with the Arabs inhabiting the occupied territories: they need to get some kind of a political status with an eye to permanency. Either completely abandon the program of building an independent state and join some other country, or the opposite. But neither seems likely. And so the conflict will go on for as long as this issue isn't solved.
True, but Israel could be seen as just the latest Crusade.
It's 'not complicated' if one is lazy. The comment is missing a lot of mitigating pieces of information:
- the empires that governed the land before '48 and how that affects consent
- the lack of options for Jews facing persecution, pograms and a holocaust given immigration policies of nations around the world
- the many Jews in Israel formerly from middle-eastern nations
- the complication to the birth-right citizenship argument that all Jews have Israeli ancestry (albeit very distant, in many cases)
- the UN Partition Plan for Palestine
The problem with the conflict is that both sides are right. It's not the Palestinians' fault that their land was least bad refuge for Jews, but it probably was.
>The problem with the conflict is that both sides are right.
So true on a theoretical basis, and at the same time both sides are wrong for fighting on that same basis.
Leaving the only sensible participants those who are committed to complete non-violence for a few generations, no-one else could possibly have beneficial actionable input without making things worse.
>the empires that governed the land before '48 and how that affects consent
You have my upvote but I consider this a fairly weak argument from all sides.
After WWII there were only three kinds of people remaining on my home planet:
1. Those that won WWII.
2. Those that lost WWII.
3. Those that were saved by the ones that won WWII.
Everyone else was killed.
Sure, it's a fresh start, but pretty gloomy when you think about it.
The winners rightly would be expected to take the lead from that point on, drawing lines of co-operation highly focused on preventing any more worldwide conflict in any predictable way. Definitely for the foreseeable future at the time, and it has proven to work more effectively than any other peace initiative in human history. Relative to the overall threat.
Anyone who was saved by the winners of WWII and was not completely delighted with the outcome has certainly never had legitimate grounds for complaint considering the alternative. How quickly some people can forget.
Then again religious hatred and/or superstition can misguide some otherwise intelligent people from just about anywhere, and this is nothing new since cave men were all there was.
Of course it's been quite a while since prehistoric times, so too late now, nothing that happened before WWII will ever be a reason for further conflict ever. They'd have to be a complete moron.
Looks like the world had settled into its most peaceful time by about 1950.
Realistically the only major war that remained was a cold one after that, and regardless of whether you were unappreciatively saved by the winners of WWII, or happened to be disgruntled losers, the only way to change it was to start WWIII. At one time everybody knew that.
Which "everyone" also knew would take one hell of a suicidal maniac, but if it happened it would probably be dealt with along the lines of how Kamikaze tactics were proven to be overcome when the scale reached world-threatening proportions.
It was already the 20th century with worldwide communication and everything, and the century was only halfway along. Naturally with such a worldwide war brought to conclusion without complete destruction everywhere, previous conflict up until that time had been made as equally prehistoric as in 19,500 BC ever since.
How could people forget so easily? Who would possibly be suicidal enough to let that kind of bloodthirsty hatred rule again?
I think my wording was a bit vague there. By 'two empires', I meant the two who governed Palestine prior to 1948 (ie: the Ottoman, and then the British).
When zionism came about, Palestinian arabs were not in power and could not determine policy.
Zionist jews spend years wrangling (sometimes violently) promises and concessions from the British, and finally from the UN, who, at the time, seemed like the legitimate bodies to grant them.
In retrospect, 'what business did the Ottomans or British have to allow foreign zionists to take over Palestine?' but that's with the benefit of hindsight.
Not that either side is evil... it's a complicated conflict.
It's a 120 year old feud, quite a lot, and even with a one sided extremist view such as your own I would at least hope anti semitism, pogroms, the holocaust and the right for self determination would make you see there's at least a bit of complexity here.
Also - even if this take was true , what's your end game - all states based on past colonialism need to be abolished ? Or is that the right solution only for Israel. E.g if Mexico starts bombing the U.S to get back Mexico, parts of Texas etc, we should all support them right?
"The current conflict isn't some thousand year old feud"
Well, actually, it is.
There were 1200 years of war, conquest, slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid up until the caliphate was defeated and broken up in 1920/1924. For 1200 years, non-muslims lived under apartheid (Dhimmi). Up until that point, Islamic supremacism was as firmly established as white supremacism was in America.
I suppose if America (which itself was built on war, conquest, slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and apartheid) was defeated in WWI, broken up into various nations, and some land was made available to the Native Americans to build their own sovereign nation, you would be against that ? After all, at that time, Native Americans accounted for only .25% of the population. Since there were so few of them it would make no sense for them to have their own nation.
Wars have consequences. Many ethnic groups lost their lands due to the expansion of the caliphate over 1200 years. The caliphate was then defeated, and things have changed.
"... ethno-centric racism are never good".
While in no way saying that this supports the idea that "ethno-centric racism" is good, you should read the constitutions of the 22 Arab countries in the Arab League. They have, as their basic principals that they are Arab/Muslim countries, and have Islam/Sharia as their law. So, are all of these countries also illegitimate ? Or, just Israel ? Or maybe America should change its constitution to declare that America is a white European country based on Christian law ?
> some land was made available to the Native Americans to build their own sovereign nation, you would be against that ?
You know that would have been great. But who are the native Americans in your example? Majority of Zionists that established Israel and their groups arrived by ships from Europe. Wouldn't that more resemble England and Spain colonization expeditions in your example? Weird.. like the story almost matches exactly to the how colonies were established
Such an ironic example to give voluntarily.
Let's take a look at the background of Israel's founding fathers and where did they came from:
- David Ben-Gurion - Poland
- Aharon Zisling - Belarus
- David Remez - Russia
- Pinchas Rosen - Germany
- Moshe Sharett - Ukraine
- Haim-Moshe Shapira - Belarus
- Yehuda Leib Maimon - Moldova
- Mordechai Bentov - Russia
- ...
Case in point, most weren't natives who lived there under "apartheid" but actually left Europe looking for a new land, backed by... England and the US (Sorry Spain, not this time).
If you're struggling to use the real events in history and have to resort to a "hypothesis", it's a sign something is off and you're twisting history a bit too much. At least make sure it's not ironic, next time.
If you were a European Jew in the late 1940s after the fall of the Nazis, you were still faced with the prospect of living under the local governance of Nazi collaborators, continued pogroms [0] and antisemitism, and potentially Joseph Stalin's USSR. It's not like everything immediately went back to normal, either in real terms or psychological ones. Even if you survived your friends, family and neighbors are GONE.
It's unsurprising that many wouldn't want to reintegrate with that society after what they experienced, even if they managed to avoid the camps (and especially if they didn't).
It is ridiculous to just throw them into the same category with the English and Spanish colonists searching for riches in the New World.
There is nothing made up about 1200 years of oppression by an empire that was built on conquest, numerous forms of slavers, ethnic cleaning, and genocide.
This is not something that happened thousands of years ago, it ended 100 years ago, and is directly relevant to what is going on today.
The fact that some of the founders of Israel were the descendants of those who fled their native lands due to oppression does not change anything, any more than Palestinians who are born in different countries would no longer have ties to their homeland in the Middle East.
And yes, I firmly believe that the Palestinians have a right to a country of their own, but not at the cost of eliminating Israel and imposing sharia law
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Doesn't the Torah count for something? It works slower than fiber optics but is massively parallel.
No, that's mythology. Actual history is The Balfour Declaration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
And Nakba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
Before the Balfour Declaration, the British promised the region to the Arabs if they helped fight against the Ottoman Empire via the McMahon–Hussein correspondence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon%E2%80%93Hussein_corres...
Basically, the region was double promised to both sides during WWI, Arabs in the region being promised it first. This crucial detail is somehow often left out of any discussion regarding the Balfour Declaration even though it preceded it.
I think the Israeli and Palestinian authorities would let atheists decide their problems as long as they agree with what they want, baring that, your argument probably isn't going to land with any of them on its merits, especially if it calls their religions "mythology."
TIL that Balfour déclaration created the jewish people, and maintained it through history
Even ignoring well-known Wikipedia bias in this issue, it is rarely a good source for "actual history"
The land claims of the territory both come from the Torah, in the end. Its just that the Jews and Muslims disagree on who God was referring to.
> Doesn't the Torah count for something?
No, absolutely not.
If I try to use ancient religions to justify violently forcing a claim to your house and land, then you're entirely within your right to defend yourself by any means necessary. That's not a thing any more. This might help you understand: [0]
And, many Jewish people decry Zionism as a perversion.
This is a lot of buzzwords but no content.
The background behind the current conflict goes something like this:
Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived in Palestine during the Ottoman era. Jews discovered Europe was pretty hostile, Zionism was born. Many move to Palestine, buy land and settle down. The Ottomans lose WWI, lose Palestine to the British. The British Empire started fracturing, they realised they couldn't hold it together, they decide they'll leave Palestine and create a plan to partition it. The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends. The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them. They lose. The Jews gain more territory. The Arab parts of Palestine get annexed into Jordan and Egypt.
Then, when all the Arab states fought Israel again, Jordan loses the west bank, Egypt loses Gaza and all of Sinai (!!). Israel gave Sinai back for peace, eventually both Egypt and Jordan renounced their claim on Gaza and the West Bank. And that's how we ended up here, more or less.
Now, as for the colonialism part, Jews have always lived in the area. Even during the Ottoman Era. In fact, Zionism started during the Ottoman Era. Also relatively few people lived in Palestine, less than a million total in 1922. And the Jews who did move to Israel after it's establishment, largely moved there as a result of persecution by Arabs (plenty of Jews lived all over the middle east).
You completely left out the Nakba. Which you would have to to even attempt to make this point.
> The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them.
I assume you're talking about the "Arab Invasion" of 1948? So, that would be after the Nakba started. In fact, Deir Yassin occured only a month before Israel was founded.
You're very obviously leaving out facts not in an attempt to be succinct but to obscure the actual history.
The Nakba is not without prior history either.
It's simply the most complex sociopolitical issue on Earth today, if not ever in human history, it can't be "summed up" in some hot take.
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> The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends.
There is a lot to say about this part, but just one point: the plan included the establishment of a Palestinian state which Israel has blocked since its inception. So no, they did not abide by the plan. The plan has never been implemented.
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>Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived in Palestine during the Ottoman era. Jews discovered Europe was pretty hostile, Zionism was born. Many move to Palestine, buy land and settle down.
It's wrong to reduce Zionism as solely a reaction to european hostility, such narrative simplifies the origins of Zionism by framing it purely as a reaction to European anti-Semitism, ignoring other cultural, religious, and political factors. Zionism also emerged from a broader context of national self-determination movements in Europe. Those European Zionists were also quite racist and did describe the native population of Palestine with the hebrew N-word "kushim" which had to be ethnically cleansed:
"Neither Zangwill nor Weizmann intended these demographic assessments in a literal fashion. They did not mean that there were no people in Palestine, but that there were no people worth considering within the framework of the notions of European supremacy that then held sway. In this connection, a comment by Weizmann to Arthur Ruppin, the head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency, is particularly revealing. When asked by Ruppin about the Palestinian Arabs, Weizmann replied: "The British told us that there are there some hundred thousands negroes [Kushim] and for those there is no value.” quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
>The Ottomans lose WWI, lose Palestine to the British.
Palestine was occupied by the British, which even the Zionists themselves classified as such. That's why Zionists also bombed the King-David Hotel full of British officers whom they regarded as occupiers of Palestine: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
>The British Empire started fracturing, they realised they couldn't hold it together, they decide they'll leave Palestine and create a plan to partition it.
That's is just historic revisionism, the British left due to "the sophistication of Zionist terrorists" -https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
> The Jews abide by the plan, declare Israel when the British mandate ends. The Arabs invite all the nations around them to attack the Jews with them.
That is brazen zionist propaganda that reframes the zionist colonial project as some poor damsel in distress that was just innocently trying to take over Palestine when the natives just tried to attack the poor jews for no reason. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy56Q1a0Flc]
David Ben-Gurion has also recorded in his writings that the partition was just a starting point and that they would ultimately expand anyway. Most explicitly, he states: "My assumption (which is why I am a fervent proponent of a state, even though it is now linked to partition) is that a Jewish state on only part of the land is not the end but the beginning." -https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2013/04/06/the-ben-gurio...
>Then, when all the Arab states fought Israel again, Jordan loses the west bank, Egypt loses Gaza and all of Sinai (!!). Israel gave Sinai back for peace, eventually both Egypt and Jordan renounced their claim on Gaza and the West Bank. And that's how we ended up here, more or less.
Again a reductive and zionist summary that is ahistoric and misleading. A more detailed and substantiated account is provided here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy56Q1a0Flc
>Now, as for the colonialism part, Jews have always lived in the area.
After the initial Crusader conquest, many Jews who survived the massacres either fled or were expelled. In 1187, Saladin, the Muslim leader of the Ayyubid dynasty, recaptured Jerusalem. He allowed Jews and Muslims to return to the city. This marked a significant restoration of the Jewish community in Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land. Either way, your narrative tries to deny that Zionism is a colonial project but that attempt is in vain, since there is simply too much evidence for that. Zionists also made no secret that it was a colonial project until colonialism became a bad word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonization_...
> And the Jews who did move to Israel after it's establishment, largely moved there as a result of persecution by Arabs
Another blatant attempt at rewriting of history that omits crucial parts to paint a false narrative. While there was a portion of hostility towards jews as a reaction to the crimes committed by jews in Palestine the main driver were a multitude of reasons such as:
Organized efforts, such as Aliyah Bet, focused on helping Jews immigrate to Israel, often in defiance of British immigration restrictions during the Mandate period.
Zionist organizations conducted educational campaigns to foster a sense of identity and urgency about moving to Israel, emphasizing the need for a national homeland.
In countries like Iraq and Yemen, Zionist emissaries used social and economic pressures to encourage Jews to leave for Israel. This included highlighting the dangers of staying in increasingly hostile environments and emphasizing the opportunities in Israel.
In Iraq, a series of false-flag bombings targeted Jewish sites. Researchers and historians have proven that these attacks were false flag operations carried out by Zionist agents to create a sense of urgency and fear, prompting Jews to emigrate.
The infamous "Lavon Affair" in 1954 involved a failed Israeli covert operation intending to destabilize Egypt by planting bombs in Egyptian, American, and British-owned targets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
Operations like "Magic Carpet" (Yemen) and "Ezra and Nehemiah" (Iraq) were launched to bring Jewish communities to Israel. These operations were often portrayed as rescue missions from adverse conditions while the real reason was that they were needed to help with the colonization of Palestine.
>persecution by Arabs
Finally, the zionist attempt to rewrite history regarding the relationship of Muslims with Jews is also dishonest and deceptive. Anyone with basic education in history will see through it:
"David Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University),”How Islam Saved the Jews”
By the early seventh century Judaism was in crisis. In the Mediterranean basin it was battered by legal, social, and religious pressure, weak in numbers and culturally almost non-existent. It was also largely cut off from the Jewry of the Persian empire, in Babylon, present-day Iraq. The future seemed clear: extinction in the west, decline to obscurity in the east. Salvation came from Arabia. Islam conquered the entire Persian empire and most of the Mediterranean world. Uniting virtually all the world’s Jews in a single state, it gave them legal and religious respectability, economic and social freedoms, and linguistic and cultural conditions that made possible a major renaissance of Judaism and the Jews. The significance of Islam for Jewry has been interpreted very variously since the middle ages and is a source of controversy to this day."
https://middleeast.stanford.edu/events/david-wasserstein-how...
The fact Jews emigrated to the Muslim world is an indictment of the Christian one, not praiseworthy for them. If we're killed every Tuesday in Europe but every other Tuesday in the Islamic world and move there it does not mean they were good to us.
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The Ottomans definetly deserve a ton of blame, but tbf the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century was in the midst of a massive collapse of authority from the Balkans to Basra.
IMO, almost all the instability across Eurasia is because of the collapse of the Ottoman, Russian, Qajar, Mughal, and Qing Empires.
It would be like if the US, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Canada, snd Mexico all fell into a protracted collapse over 50 years at (roughly) the same time.
Actually it goes back a bit further, basically to the dawn of civilization. The first battle in recorded history was between Egypt and the Hittites, the Battle of Megiddo, in what is today the state of Israel [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Megiddo_%2815th_cent...
> Everything in this part of the world is on a rinse snd repeat cycle ever since the Assyrians and the Babylonians
That's an incredible statement, as if the rest of the world is somehow different. The only thing special about these regions is that they've had complex states for longer, so of course state-based warfare would go back farther.
On another level, there absolutely have been periods of stability in regions of the middle east, for periods of time we would consider long.
Western Europe went through ~200 years of brutal religious wars from the advent of Protestantism. The same is going on in the Mideast, it just started only 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The conflicts with the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Hittites came down to geopolitical factors that don't exist anymore. Mostly, the Levant separated the empires of Mesopotamia and Anatolia from Egypt. The numerous battles that happened at Meggido occurred because that was a chokepoint of the Way of Horus, the principal land trade route from Egypt specifically and Africa generally to the rest of the world. Besides trade, the Levant had tended to serve as a buffer zone between pharaonic Egypt, which preferred hegemony over outright empire, and other empires who always seemed to want to expand towards Egypt. The Assyrian military campaigns in particular are a reaction to the 25th dynasty in Egypt convincing rulers in the Levant to ally themselves more closely with them at the expense of the Assyrians.
The current conflict is a different beast. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the careless meddling of western powers in the aftermath. The Jewish diaspora, Zionism, and the Holocaust. The Sunni-Shia conflict.
Thank you for providing an educated response to the exhausting "ancient conflict" discourse
> the Levant separated the empires of Mesopotamia and Anatolia from Egypt. The numerous battles that happened at Meggido
The Egyptians were a major force in fomenting regional frictions with Israel. And the Levant remains a crossroad—it borders by land or sea the spheres of influence of the EU, Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Gulf monarchies, Egypt and America.
> convincing rulers in the Levant to ally themselves more closely with them at the expense of the Assyrians
Iran versus the West (and Gulf monarchies) in literally Syria.
The region isn’t pre-destined for chaos. But the geography and history make peace difficult. (There is always another person who can “legitimately” claim some land when you’re sited next to the cradle of civilisation.)
The Sunni-Shia conflict falls pretty close to the same line between the Babylonians (south) and Assyrians (north).
The Assyrians were constantly attacked by proxies helped out by Egypt (Elamites, Medes, Babylon).
My point, however, is that the Levant as a buffer state against expanding empire and a chokepoint of overland trade has ceased to be the source of conflict. Marine shipping means the Levant is no longer the chokepoint of trade with Africa. We don't have empires trying to grow contiguous swaths of land anymore. To the extent states have tried to grab land in the Levant, they're doing so because the land is adjacent to them, not as a buffer against external empires who find the land strategically useful to control.
But if it is in fact more humane than in the past (hard to imagine TBH), hopefully that trend of gradual improvement will continue?
They literally razed Bablyon to the ground including the entire population after over 15 months being under siege and afterwards trying to change the lands hydrology so that people couldn't resettle - probably one of the harshest destruction but not the only one.
I guess its an improvement - not one thats remotely impressive.
The destruction of water resources seems to be going ahead as planned still.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/destruction-gaza-w...
Are you being metaphorical when you say literally? Or is this a reference to the conquest by Cyrus the Great?
I'm not trying to be pedantic here. I'm just not familiar with any historical event you are describing.
From what I've heard, and I'm not an expert, I wouldn't characterize any of the conquests of Babylon as a 'razing', And the eventual abandonment of the city was more a result of slow decline and changing geological conditions.
I do like to learn about the history of the area, so if it's just something I'm not familiar with, please point me in the right direction.
Hmm, what do you mean? Like, compared to ancient times, or compared to a previous point post-WWII?
Certainly the organization of one side of this conflict into a state rather than militias naturally has tempered things since the early days where entire villages were being wiped out at random, but both sides are pretty openly engaged in terrorism to this day (targeting civilians for political reasons).
Babylon wasn't a village at that time - it was likely a population of 200,000 +- 100,000 people. It was cultural Zenith of the planet at that time.
I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight - bitterly arguing about who is right and wrong (turning it into a fight about US politics as a bonus). Human nature and tribalism really is a terrible thing sometimes.
I agree with you, although I certainly hope you and I are wrong. It would be nice to see people let go of past injustices on both sides long enough to have a lasting peace.
> It would be nice to see people let go of past injustices on both sides long enough to have a lasting peace
It's not past injustices. Israel is occupying, annexing and settling more land now. It's not some tit-for-tat between neighbours over past wrongs, it's one neighbour that is chasing away the other to take their house.
A lot of Israelis literally had their (or their parents') homes stolen by Iraqis, Egyptians, Moroccans. In total, Mizrahi Jews had land around 4x the size of Israel stolen from them (and they still have the deeds to prove it). A peace treaty can't truly be comprehensive until they get reparations for that injustice.
What is the connection here?
Are you saying that somehow there is a transitive property between Palestinians and Iraqis or Moroccans so that if a Moroccan steals a house then you can have your right revenge on a Palestinian? And why not on a Swede or a Thai?
Or are you saying that it was all right for Israelis to have their houses stolen then- since it is all right for them to steal houses now, it's just how it goes? I don't get it.
> homes stolen by Iraqis, Egyptians, Moroccans... A peace treaty can't truly be comprehensive until they get reparations for that injustice.
What do Palestinians have to do with Iraq, Egypt and Morocco?
And Palestinians need to pay that reparation?
It's interesting that on the current total-war all around Israel, those are 3 countries that they aren't attacking or threatening to attack.
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Not to sound terse, but I think the retort here is clear: morality exists, and it's important that we do our best to follow its guidance. It matters who's right and who's wrong! I absolutely agree that deciding on absolute historical blame for one "side" or another over many generations isn't helpful, but we absolutely need to litigate who's violating whose rights if we want to set things straight.
"It's all complicated and people in this part of the world are unusually tribal/violent" has been used to explain away this conflict since its inception in the US, which we have no right to do as a primary stakeholder. We (US citizens) have a stake in Gaza because the situation would be completely different without our aid, both direct (i.e. massive shipments of weapons and offering the services of our military) & indirect (i.e. using our UNSC vote to block otherwise unanimous resolutions against Israel).
To bring it all back to the one absolutely-litigated conflict in the western canon for clarity, as we so often do: was WWII about "tribalism" and both sides being prone to violence, or was it about unjustified aggressors and justified responses? Despite the nuances of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think we would all immediately endorse the latter position. Why not in this case, too?
> Why not in this case, too?
WWII involved a conflict to unconditional surrender. The equivalent for Israel and Palestine would be letting one state completely destroy the other and then rebuild it in its own image.
> ...was WWII about "tribalism" and both sides being prone to violence, or was it about unjustified aggressors and justified responses?
All of the above. One of the major powers on the winning side was the British Empire, which existed because of a global campaign of unprovoked invasions that was pretty much unprecedented. And there was Stalin, who may escape the "tribalism" label on the basis that his campaigns of political murder were so wild it is difficult to discern patterns.
If we assume for the sake of tradition and argument that the responses were justified it might have been one of the few times in a century that the British were involved in a justified response. A momentous conflict indeed! It must have been unsettling for them. And, in all seriousness, they weren't involved because it was justified. They were acting amorally and it is a coincidence they were on the justified side that time.
Morality do exists. People were loudly complain about the US behavior ever since 9/11, years after years asking when retribution was finished (which did not even ask the question if retribution was morally right).
Litigate who's violating who is unlikely to happen. A lot of people thought Obama would bring some change but rather than litigating, more people got droned and one of the worse symbols of the wars did not get closed. Setting things straight will likely only happen in hindsight after everyone responsible are long dead, and even then people will resist it as a matter of personal identity.
I do not see lasting peace coming from litigating the past, and especially not from the US.
Letting go of past injustices might work, if they weren't ongoing.
> almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight
This is a common Zionist take saying that just because someone is not from the region, they cannot criticise Israel's mass slaughter of children. Also, this has very much to do with American politics, as the US is the main backer of the apartheid state.
I count myself fortunate for missing the references to US politics, but seeing oppression and war discussed with a framing of "who should win" as a dispute of claims, history and ethnicity rather than as a tragedy of money, military power and cruelty (what is the problem that is solved by bombing children?) is very disheartening.
> I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight
> I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight
A popular chant is "The children of Gaza is our children too." Israel has killed up to 5% of Gaza's population and injured ~15%, about half of whom are children. It's not tribalism to be disgusted by such carnage. I don't agree with the claim that we don't have a stake in this fight.
My friend, its tribalism all the way down. Thats what we do.
> I like how even in this thread, you have many people - almost certainly very few of whom have no real stake in the fight - bitterly arguing about who is right and wrong
Yep, this is what it's about - a morals swinging contest to see who is purer. I mean, I would have assumed if there was in fact a genocide taking place in Gaza everyone would be happy there's at least a ceasefire but no - no one gives a s**, at least not on this thread. It's about shitting over Israel to feel morally superior more than anything else.
> Sorry for the cynical take but this just does a temporary stop.
It’s hard to disagree. But Ireland was an impossible problem at one stage, and while it’s still far from resolved, it’s a hell of lot less violent.
Where has it not been on rinse and repeat. Some other parts of the world just operate on a bit longer cycles.
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What swayed me to one side was not looking at the past, but looking at the future. One side is able to develop this land and benefit the rest of the world. The other side is unstoppingly doing damage to others, even in my home country (France), while providing no value whatsoever.
What you do with your life matters.
What an absurd thing to say. You could say the same of any oppressor and/or colonizer in history. "Well at least they're doing something useful with the land, the people that are being crushed under their boots are just screaming angrily and acting aggressive. All the oppressed are good for is slave labor and dieing." Lucky many people around the world have evolved their morality beyond 'might makes right'.
What do you mean, have evolved their morality. They threw 7000 rockets in resident housing for 6 months, kidnapped civilians with babies 9 months old, and you support their right to create a state with an army, and last time they had a state, they voted 51% Hamas.
Sounds awfully like a crime against humanity, and supporting this is probably illegal.
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No offense (really!!!) but "that's just how people of that race are" isn't a very cool thing to say, my friend. They're humans, just like us -- that's the problem!
> the west bank is still being annexed
I am not smart enough to have an opinion on the situation in Gaza that's much more complicated than "people dying is bad", but I struggle to understand how the continued annexation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, supported by the government and army, is anything other than clearly ethnic cleansing. If it had stopped ten years ago, and it was now a conversation about uprooting the established communities there, maybe then there's room for nuance and so on, but it didn't: it's ongoing.
>And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
As opposed to the neighboring states (and Hamas), which mostly have religiously tolerant, fully democratic governments that fully respect civil rights, and which of course have never openly stated that they want Israel to disappear from existence, not at all leaving it implicit that its millions of Jewish residents should be ethnically cleansed from the region.. Yes?
The further we are from a people, the more we tend to group them into monoliths. As monoliths, both sides are monsters, with the best one can argue being that one side's monstrosity is justified.
Break them down further and you can find the actual monsters--those self-interestedly seeking either their own aims, or, some random aim at any cost, even when the aim is impossible and its costs massive.
What the hell does your statement have to do with the very real, practical natures of the governments and political organizations of neighboring countries and lined up against Israel through a number of ideological arguments?
I'm not talking about monoliths on either side. I'm specifically referring to states in the region with authoritarian and even despotic governments with exactly the traits that the comment I originally responded to claims about Israel.
> undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
Who killed Rabin?
Israelis killed their own PM to prevent the Oslo Accords, the goal of the Oslo Accords was to provide a 2 state solution.
Don't rewrite history.
I could name a dozen Arab leaders who were assassinated by Arabs for expressing interests in making peace with Israel. If we start looking them up I wager we'll get to two dozen.
Because all Israelis are the same? A right extremist assassin murdered Rabin. Even among the right he was almost universally condemned. Keep in mind Rabin was democratically elected on the promise of Peace.
it proves nothing. the vast majority of Israelis condemn the murder.
Who were Anwar Sadat and King Abdullah I, and how did they die?
Such an insane take, how is adding another despotic goverment to the mix going to help?
Because it's a cultural arms race. What kind of nation do you think is capable of manifesting in those local conditions, a progressive social democracy like Sweden?
Europe had a thousand plus years of war under its belt and two World Wars very recently as that progressive democracy developed.
That aligns with my point, rather than make it moot.
> undermining democratic structures
Democratic structures like fatah and hamas ?
Israel has been hindering a democratic process in Palestine since forever. It was a borderline explicit policy to bolster hamas to split the Palestinian rule in two to be able to say "we have no negotiating partner". Netanyahu has been quoted saying that outright.
Very few of the Fatah concessions ever led anywhere despite promises from Israel, leading many palestinians to think that Fatah was weak. Which other "strong" democratic options were there? PNI? Third Way? They were never serious options.
Now, the Fatah party has been incompetent and corrupt. I am not saying democracy would have sorted itself out in Palestine, but I am saying that if Israel would have wanted a democratic development in Palestine, it would not have dealt with Fatah in such bad faith.
Nor, I must add, would they have killed any palestinian (Gaza) leaders opening up to peace with Israel. Ahmed Yassin was killed just months after started proposing a long term truce on the condition of a Palestinian state in the west bank and gaza. his successor (al-Rantisi) suffered a similar fate after a similar proposal. Then Jabari in 2012. Then they killed Haniyeh who was the principal negotiator during all recent peace talks.
None of these men were innocent cute bunnies by any means, but Israel has been sending a clear message for many many years: negotiation will be done by force.
I assume OP is referring to internal-to-isreal structures such as the independence of the supreme court.
> Democratic structures like fatah and hamas ?
This refers (I imagine) to internal Israeli politics - a certain portion of the Israeli populace fears that Netanyahu is attempting to make Israel less democratic by various means. This was a topic that caused mass protests in Israel before October 7th, and continues in some form even now.
the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is temporal.
Yesterday they were called terrorists by the mainstream, tomorrow when they win they will be hailed as heroes and freedom fighters.
the zionists were also called terrorists by the UK in the beginning, especially when they bombed king david hotel
Except Zionists are capable of establishing and running a democratic state (however flawed according to some it might be).
It would be silly to pretend that’s even remotely close to being an option for Hamas. For starters modern Islamic fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with democracy (amongst other reasons).
Expecting that organizations like Hamas could somehow magically change for the better is pure madness regardless of everything else.
Zionists are perfectly capable of subverting and terrorizing their way and murdering those who oppose them.
you know it was radical jewish terrorist who murdered yitzhak rabin, who tried to make peace with palestinians?
it was mossad, who helped finance and support Hamas, so that moderate PLO could never make progress on unified palestinian state?
Well yes extremist radical Zionists are about on the same level as moderate Islamic fundamentalists. That’s kind of the problem..
> yitzhak rabin
So you wouldn’t consider him a Zionist then?
Hamas is not an Islamic fundamentalist organisation. They are Muslims, but they have not twisted the religion for extremism; they are not ISIS or Al-Qaeda.
Sure about that ?
Try reading the Hamas charter: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/hamas.asp Yes, it was later "updated" to make it more palatable for Western consumption.
some excerpts:
Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.
"Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."
Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts.
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.
That may not be - but they are not just muslims (some would argue not even proper muslims due to the atrocities). They are definitely a terrorist organization. Whether that is done with religion in mind or something else, doesn't change that fact. I mean looking back at the Oct 7 terrorist attack, it's truly despicable.
> the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is temporal
No, it isn’t. Very few revolutions (i.e power inversions) have succeeded by indiscriminately killing the dominant side’s civilians. That frequency, moreover, goes down over time.
Using just fairly recent examples, Russia and China's communist revolutions were notably brutal and had no problem with harming civilians. They won.
North Korea and North Vietnam (now just Vietnam) were also brutal against the other side. Both of them are running their own countries.
To go a bit more recent, the Taliban was behind a bunch of terrorist attacks. They now run Afghanistan.
To be fair, though, North Korea and Afghanistan have basically no allies in any sense due to their behavior. And the people who fought against North Vietnam and lost were just as savage as them. But Vietnam and China are happily traded with, and nobody outside of old folks in America think anything bad about Vietnam these days. If anything, a lot of people think it was unjustified to have ever fought against them.
I mean, the IRA succeeded and that wasn't but 20-30 years ago? They are largely no longer seen as terrorists.
Hell, Israel is a good source of terrorist groups becoming legitimate. Prime Minister Menachim Begin went from leading a terror outfit to elected Prime Minister
The IRA of the 20s Irish war of independence succeeded, but were less obviously terrorists. I think it's inaccurate to say that the provos succeeded. Success for them would've been if Northern Ireland left the UK and joined the Republic. It didn't. The Good Friday agreement is hardly an unalloyed win for them.
And, um, they absolutely largely are seen as terrorists.
yes it is.
before oct7 there was a somewhat broad consensus that Hamas are bad and are terrorists.
nowadays however, Hamas are hailed as resistance and freedom fighters. Only jewish hasbara still calls them terrorists, everyone else is sympathetic to Hamas, even Donald Trump, given his zionist position
You don’t resist by filming yourself slaughtering children under captagon. Please see what French resistance was. Hamas and its apologetics are terrorists. And barbarians
> Hamas are hailed as resistance and freedom fighters. Only jewish hasbara still calls them terrorists, everyone else is sympathetic
No. About 20% of Americans support Hamas; 4% the October 7th attack [1]. It’s an extreme minority.
People are sympathetic to Palestinians. Not Hamas. The best way for the foreign pro-Palestinian movement to fuck this up for Palestine is to falsely equate Palestinians with Hamas.
Going back to the top point: Hamas hasn’t succeeded. Gaza’s occupation looks like it will be far more draconian than it was a few years ago, with the strip separated by security cordons all controlled by Israel.
> everyone else is sympathetic to Hamas, even Donald Trump
Trump's peace plan [2] is anathema to everything Hamas fought for. All the way to recognising anexations of currently-Palestinian territory.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/majority-in-u-s-say-i...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_peace_plan#Key_concepts_...
> still calls them terrorists
I’m sure that if you asked most people in Europe or the US they’d would agree. I’d bet on average more strongly than before the war.
I mean Israel is deeply flawed, oppressed and is committing war crimes. Can disagree about that.
Hamas on the other hand is objectively evil and should be destroyed. Arguing about what cost exactly is worth paying for that is reasonable disagreeing with the premise itself is wrong and immoral.
You said tomorrow they will win and be called freedom fighters. I don’t follow. Does it look to you like Hamas won?
> nowadays however, Hamas are hailed as resistance and freedom fighters. Only jewish hasbara still calls them terrorists, everyone else is sympathetic to Hamas, even Donald Trump, given his zionist position
I don't think this is anywhere near a mainstream position.
As https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42722937 said, I was referring to the judicial reform and the gradual erosion of civil rights that the current government is driving forward within Israel, not in the occupied territories.
This is an intra-Israeli conflict that is (mostly) independent of the Israel-Palestine conflict (and also of the question how democratic a state is anyway that keeps ~50% of its inhabitants under permanent military rule). It falls more in line with the other shifts towards populist or authoritarian governments we have seen in the West. (Trump, Orban, Erdogan, etc)
It does have a unique Israeli flavor to it though, which does circle right back to Israel/Palestine: That the political force that's driving this authoritarian shift forward is closely associated with the settler movement and the most extreme voices regarding the Palestinians. This was also the case before the war - however, they took the war as opportunity to further erode civil rights, e.g. free speech and manipulate institutions such as the police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Natio...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-21/ty-article-ma...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-13/ty-article-ma...
Why else would Israel prop up Hamas over the secular PA?
> Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
It was pretty much like that before. They're just being a lot more open about wanting to wipe them out.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state - that too with no word of objection from its allies.
And what would Gaza have if it were independent?
Israel does not have a fundamentalist, authoritarian government! There are some fundamentalist and far-right parties in the current coalition but they have little power to push their own policies except to threaten to bolt the coalition. For all the talk of those 2-3 ministers to who belong to these more extreme parties to eg legitimise new settlements, repopulate gaza, they don't have enough power to actually pass such laws and none of these ministers none of whom hold the top 8 roles in government.
The most religious/fundementalist of the the parties UTJ believes in land for peace and have said so many times over the years (but like the majority of the Israeli public, they wont mention it, let alone push for it, during wartime so as not to reward terrorism) and was fully behind all the ceasefire proposals in the past 18 months.
And it's certainly not authoritarian. Israel has full powers of protest, free speech, and in fact it's generally the press that have the strongest voice not the government.
And "that is actively at work undermining democratic structures" is also wrong. They are trying to reform Israel's supreme court system which many legal scholars agree badly needs reform as the justices are largely self-selected yet have the power to override legislation without referring to existing law (the so-called reasonableness test which no other country has).
> And it's certainly not authoritarian. Israel has full powers of protest, free speech, and in fact it's generally the press that have the strongest voice not the government.
Israel maintained a prerogative from early in the war to assassinate essentially every known journalist in Gaza, and they did it by bombing their homes and killing their families. West Bank and pro-Arab Israeli journalists were merely arrested and held without charge.
Not authoritarian to its own ethnic population maybe... How exactly does that right of protest extend to the people it's occupying?
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A foreign territory that israel is at the same time at war with, but also controls borders, imports/exports, airspace and the population registry.
Also, what about the West Bank? The PA is decisively not at war with Israel, yet the occupation there is even stricter than in Gaza. The Israeli government seems to view it as a Schrödinger's territory that at the same time is part of the state and not part of the state.
It's called disputed territory. That's the nature of disputed territory. South Korea doesn't owe North Korean citizens any rights while they are at war (since the 50s), for example, and claims the whole Korean peninsula.
It is wrong to say the PA is not at war with Israel. They currently have a cooperation agreement they are holding to. The PA still compensates any terrorists committing attacks against Israel and disputes Israel's sovereignty. The issue is not resolved as the implementation of the agreements at the Camp David accords were interrupted by the second intifada.
This is what is called an unresolved conflict. It is true that Israel has full military control. The reason the conflict is unresolved is because the Palestinians refuse to capitulate under any circumstances, and because despite all the claims to the contrary, Israel is actually unwilling to destroy, oppressively occupy, or perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinians.
In the recent conflict, as punishment for the (inexcusable and revolting) mass killing of Israelis by Hamas, Israel has killed vast numbers of innocent civilians -- 10s of thousands more than could possibly be justified by legitatimate military operations -- and has deliberately killed several journalists, destroyed healthcare infrastructure, and deliberately caused water and food shortages and mass civilian displacement. Its reputation is in tatters and will remain so for decades.
Be aware that this account has only one post (this one) and was created around 8 months ago when reports started to appear about Israeli influence on American public opinion online.
"Israeli State-sponsored Internet propaganda include the Hasbara, Hasbara Fellowships, Act.IL, and the Jewish Internet Defense Force. Supporters generally frame this "hasbara" as part of its fight towards improving their image abroad given continued Israeli human rights abuses, and also against anti-Israeli agitation and attempts to criticize it. There is substantive evidence that Israel heavily uses data-driven strategies, trolling and disinformation and manipulated media, as well as dedicating funds to state-sponsored media, for overt propaganda campaigns."[1]
"In June 2024, Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs was revealed to have paid $2 million to Israeli political consulting firm STOIC, to conduct a social media campaign, fueled by fake accounts and often employing misinformartion, targeting 128 American Congresspeople, with a focus on Democratic and African-American members of the House of Representatives. Websites were also created to provide young, progressive Americans with Gaza news with a pro-Israel spin. Among the objectives of the campaign was amplifying Israeli attacks on UNRWA staffers and driving a wedge between Palestinians and African-Americans to prevent solidarity between the two groups. "[2]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propa...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_in_the_Israel%E...
3. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-0...
Anything to say on the substance of the comment?
Sure, I have already made a lot of them in the context of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Sorry, it's just tiring to repeat the same things all the time in these threads.
So the assertion that these parties hold "little power" is contradicted by their significant roles in the government. Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, was appointed to a newly created ministry position granting him authority over the state's police force. Ben-Gvir, a former follower of extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, has a history of incitement and inflammatory remarks towards Israel's Arab population. [1] Such appointments indicate that these parties have substantial influence within the coalition, as without them there is no coalition anymore. These parties have successfully advocated for policies aligning with their agendas. The coalition agreement with the Religious Zionist Party includes commitments to expand settlements in the West Bank and to work towards applying Israeli sovereignty over these territories.[6] Which contradicts what OP stated.
As to the claim that the government is merely "trying to reform Israel's supreme court system" overlooks the implications of these reforms. The proposed changes aim to shift power from the judiciary to the Knesset majority coalition, including an "override clause" that would allow the Knesset to overturn Supreme Court rulings with a simple majority vote.[2][3][4]
There are reports of increased government influence over media outlets, with certain channels promoting nationalistic agendas aligned with the Prime Minister's views.[5]
1. https://www.jta.org/2022/12/21/israel/whos-who-in-israels-ne...
2. https://www.cpreview.org/articles/2023/2/judicial-reform-in-...
3. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/ne...
4. https://www.american.edu/sis/news/20230106-four-ways-netanya...
5. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/20/netanyahus-med...
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-seventh_government_of_I...
Cool bro
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Most countries wouldn't be in that position in the first place. Mexico attacking the US would be basically unprovoked; Hamas attacking Israel is… not.
Before the attacks Israel was in the process of normalizing relations with Gaza. For example, they were increasing work permits monthly. Here is an article from summer 2022
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/bennett-said-to...
The Nova music festival was a peace festival.
So yes, the Oct 7th attack was unprovoked. Subjective historical context is not provocation.
An ongoing occupation and blockade is not historical context, it's present context.
We literally took California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas from independent Mexico in a war.
…in the 1840s.
> His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable
His base and the people surrounding him have the habit of ostracizing anyone who doesn't fall in line behind him, rather than being guided by principle (Which is why Pence is no longer his VP pick, and why basically his whole cabinet is full of sycophants compared to last time).
Trump's whole shtick is to take whatever is happening, and spin it into "This was my whole plan all along", then take the credit for it. This is why you never see him give concrete policy proposals in interviews, and is also what will likely happen with the russia/ukraine war. Whatever happens is good, and was part of Trump's plan, and his base will fall in line or disappear politically.
>"maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow"
This is the exact platform of at least one political party on either side.
Over and above any underlying cultural or historical conflict.
It's when misguided political parties gain power that puts that kind of thing on steroids.
> "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow"
Actually they don't want them to vanish completely. Just suffer enough. They are the reason the far right government is leading Israël.
Exactly. This war has really messed up the world and Israel for generations to come. Never mind the devastation in Gaza.
But the Palestinians cant keep living under occupation. Everyone should continue to exert pressure for a free Palestine or the cycle will continue. The fundamental goal of the current Israeli government is to never have a Palestinian state, which will always be a major barrier unless sanctions are introduced.
Trump was interesting.. Im sure we’ll find out one day what it was all about. But if he really was the catalyst in this I will take back my words and eat humble pie. Someone has suggested the ceasefire is just a show, so we watch carefully.
<< This war has really messed up the world and Israel for generations to come.
Possibly. There does seem to be an uptick in previously unvoicable sentiment that was quickly squashed anywhere it showed on social media. I will say this. My parents went out of their way not to discuss some political events with their children ( communism - different rules apply and kids are dumb ), but in 90s, when similar 'war' raged and newshead was convincingly telling me, who to root for, my father unusually said 'you may want to check how Israel came into existence.' For the longest time, I did not. October surprise was a reason to get some of the dust removed from those books. It is not a good look. One could argue it is worse than US colonization of Indian lands.
My understanding is that decades past when Israeli liberals tried being nice to Palestine and letting them self govern they were rewarded with more bombings and conflict. It isn’t a politically tenable position in Israel anymore to let Palestine (and Lebanon) “just be,” and that’s equally the fault of Palestinian behavior as it is Israel’s.
I am sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, but the truth of the matter is that Israel has a valid claim too and military superiority to back it. If Palestine is to self govern, it and the rest of the nations around it need to convince Israel that they won’t try to wipe Israel off the map (or, alternatively, to succeed at it, which I’m sure many Western protesters would celebrate). Until then Israel will just dominate them instead.
I am hoping at least for some sort of "Ok, now we pour money and bricks and concrete into Gaza to help them rebuild."
call to dispose other's people money is easy. you are free to make you donation.
I did. But if several nation-states would pledge larger grants, I would have some hope that i.e. the trucks with the building materials would get through border-crossings, e.t.c.
Individual donations are a drop in a very big and leaky bucket.
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> Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there?
If you think a 78 year old alone is capable of such feats of planning, you have more faith in the elderly than most. Read any of his speeches that are off the cuff and you will see that Trump has incredibly poor working memory, vocabulary, and attention. This is to be expected from an elderly individual, but not from a great strategist. These are the results of large groups of people working towards goals, not heroic individual feats.
> Everything else aside, this is an absolutely fantastic development and I really hope the ceasefire holds and all hostages are released.
Don't hold your breath, Isreal already announced a ceasefire in Lebanon in the past and didn't respect it.
One not particularly obscure theory is that Netanyahu was prioritizing Trump coming to power over a peace/hostage deal and now that Trump has power, Netanyahu seeks to benefit from prioritizing the hostages. Trump is claiming credit for it and probably doesn't care about the timing.
Not obscure at all, as it wouldn't be the first time a hostage situation is used for a presidential campaign [1]:
> The timing of the release of the hostages gave rise to allegations that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the 1980 United States presidential election to thwart Carter from pulling off an "October surprise".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#October_Su...
The playbook does seems more and more similar everyday but I'm curious why the other side hasn't figured out how to counter it
At times it seems as if the other side hasn't figured out how to do much of anything, or alternately, they've forgotten as they steadily get older and older without passing the reins of power off to younger generations.
maybe it is the latter because it always starts out well so you can't say total incompetence for the first decade or maybe two decades at most but it always invariably ends up the same way
well always maybe pushing it twice so far it's like watching a NFL team lose the super bowl because of inability to defend this one play
At times it seems as if there aren't multiple sides.
Netanyahu was simply pushing his opportunity to do what Israel hardliners have wanted to do for as long as possible (basically aggressively lash out in every direction without consequences and red lines). It was always going to need to be wrapped up, even within Israel there was strong internal pressure. Waiting until is Trump is coming in gives Israel a free golden ticket with him by timing it right and Netanyahu's careers basically over after this anyway, so he has nothing to lose by doing it earlier, absent internal revolt.
OK since no one else has said it yet, "according to a source familiar with the details"[1] (I know) Trump has basically told Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire including the return of hostages. Then if they decide to break the ceasefire and go back to relentless bombings, Trump will still continue to support them.
So it could be a tactic to get Hamas to release whatever hostages are still alive, then get right back to the new status quo.
This actually makes perfect sense for Trump. He's only claimed to care about the Israeli hostages. I'm sure he feels great about taking credit for their return.
[1]: https://trendsinthenews.substack.com/p/gerald-celente-on-gaz...
Sadly I suspect this will be the case… I don’t hold much hope on this whole thing actually ending… but I do have a glimmer of hope that they may have reached a tipping point due to one of the many slowly shifting parts of this tragedy… no idea what the tipping point is from the outside but it does kinda have the vibe of “maybe this is going to fall apart if they keep pushing”
Hamas broke the last ceasefire. Israel doesn’t need to do anything as it’s expected there will be a Hamas offshoot group who launches a rocket into Israeli civilian areas thus restarting the need for Israel to defend itself.
Would there really be much support within Israel to continue the war if all the hostages were already released?
Why would something as irrelevant as hostages end a war? Start it on the other hand... Sure!
What are their goals at this point? Looks to me as an outsider like they’ve had multiple wins and should take that. Hezbollah, Syria, successful strike on Irans missile facilities, Gaza is a pile of rubble.
The goal is to eliminate Hamas, or at least prevent them for returning to rule the Gaza strip. That has not been accomplished.
> goal is to eliminate Hamas, or at least prevent them for returning to rule the Gaza strip. That has not been accomplished
Can it be?
Hamas were idiots for launching the October 7th attack. In part because they trashed any moral high ground they might have had by attacking both military and civilians. In part because they picked a fight they couldn't win. (Granted, they counted on regional support that number came.)
At what point does Israel prosecuting its own Vietnam in Gaza meet the same razor?
Wouldn't trumps best course of action have been to wait two weeks and make it seem like it was all because of him?
> Wouldn't trumps best course of action have been to wait two weeks and make it seem like it was all because of him?
No. He's getting the credit now. And he got it while maneuvering risk free.
Well, we will know within the year how it turns out.
Never mind that Hamas will STILL have hostages after the deal is done. That Gaza is ruled by an organization stating they’ll continue doing an Oct 7th again and again.
It takes both sides to agree to a better future.
How are you proposing the deal could be made more fair?
Keep in mind:
Israel killed 100x more civilians than Palestine during this conflict, and more damage was done to Gaza than any European city during wwii. 90% of the population is displaced. 10% are casualties. Israel intentionally blew up all the civil infrastructure (hospitals, doctors, engineers) first.
There are > 17,000 children that have no adults to care for them any more. That’s 10 orphaned kids for every Israel civilian casualty in the middle of a famine with no support infrastructure.
It could be made more fair if all the hostages were released. Why would international society accept hundreds of peaceful civilians being tortured, raped and murdered for over a year as acceptable?
Israel actually built a lot of the civilian infrastructure, including the largest hospital in Gaza. It's pretty clear those places are being used as terrorist hideouts and to launch rocket attacks. Why is it acceptable to shoot rockets purely targeting civilians while breaking a cease fire agreement?
> hundreds of peaceful civilians being tortured, taped and murdered
There is no absolute evidence that any of Hamas' hostages have been raped or tortured - according to released hostages, they were treated very well! AFAIK the only known instance of Hamas murdering a hostage was when a fighter lost it after Israel killed his entire family - all the other deaths have been a result of Israeli bombs (because if you want hostages back, you bomb them... right?!).
And as you doubtless know, many of the "peaceful civilians" are actually serving IDF members...
And as you also doubtless know, Palestinian hostages are routinely raped and tortured to death in Israeli dungeons - there is a wealth of evidence.
> It's pretty clear those places are being used as terrorist hideouts and to launch rocket attacks.
This is what Israeli Hasbara do - repeat unevidenced claims until people accept them as "truth". But it's lies, there isn't a shred of evidence that Hamas as used even a single hospital as a "terrorist hideout". You know who has repurposed Gazan hospitals for military ops? Israel - every accusation is a confession with them.
You have first hand accounts of the rape and abuse by the people who were kidnapped.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/26/middleeast/amit-soussana-...
What do you mean there is no proof? There are mountains of evidence.
Can't believe we're here again.
> There is no absolute evidence that any of Hamas' hostages have been raped or tortured - according to released hostages, they were treated very well!
Hamas literally executed some: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/01/middleeast/israel-gaza-ww...
But yeah, other than that, treated very well!
> It's pretty clear those places are being used as terrorist hideouts and to launch rocket attacks.
No, this is not pretty clear. This is pure Israeli propaganda.
> How are you proposing the deal could be made more fair?
Keeping hostages is a war crime. A fair thing would be for Hamas to follow its obligations under international law and unconditionally release them (before anyone says, well israel did X which also isn't allowed, 2 wrongs don't make a right).
> more damage was done to Gaza than any European city during wwii
How are you quantifying this? I'd be surprised if Gaza has more damage than say Dresden.
Israel's prisons are full of Palestinian hostages kidnapped from Gaza and the West Bank. Their courts have no jurisdiction over them and have no issue calling anyone a terrorist.
A hostage and a prisoner is not the same thing under international law.
> Their courts have no jurisdiction over them
Israel is the occupying power. International law requires that an occupying power provide law & order, so it does have the authority to persecute people who commit crimes (although they are required to keep the laws the same as they were pre-occupation, with some exceptions).
They are also allowed to keep prisoners of war (although i am not sure if hamas counts as that as they are a non-state group). They are allowed to persecute war crimes that enemy combatants commit (as long as they give a fair trial)
> have no issue calling anyone a terrorist.
The phrase "terrorist" doesn't really have much meaning under international law. Israel is free to call its enemies dirty names if it wants, there isn't any rule against calling your enemies mean names.
Having both sides obey their obligations under international law would be a good first step.
Maybe Israel could start by turning over everyone subject to an outstanding International Criminal Court warrant. (Starting with Netanyahu, of course.)
Dresden is a darkly funny choice for comparison. Area bombing definitely wasn't a war crime and Arthur Harris was not a war criminal.
Regardless of the circumstances of the bombing, if the question is - did there exist any cities in europe that were more damaged in WW2 than gaza was in the current conflict, isn't it natural to compare gaza with the most famously damaged european city in WW2? Like what comparison would you expect to be made in relation to that question?
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This is just such a toxic thread.
What say did the civilian victims in Gaza have in the horrific acts by Hamas?
There isn’t even a glimmer of moderation in anything I see in the argument here.
What say did the Yemenite civilians have in the Saudi lead aggression.
What say did the Syrian civilians have in the civil war.
What say did the Iraqi civilians have in the U.S. lead war.
What say did the Ukrainian and Russian civilians have in their war.
Your remark comes off as there should never be a war again period. The Palestinian people voted Hamas in AND were polled in majority support. Beyond Hamas the general Palestinian civilians also had those helping Hamas, supporting Hamas, and over 60-80% viewings Hamas’s actions as just.
> There isn’t even a glimmer of moderation in anything I see in the argument here.
At this point, would we be surprised if this thread turned out to be part of an OSINT campaign?
Civilians who die during war rarely have any responsibility for the things their leader do.
What say did the average russian citizen have in putin's choice to invade Ukraine? And yet we are largely ok with ukraine bombing russia, killing some of those civilians in the process. That is the way of war.
I believe we should focus on things that are violations of the rules of war, not civilian death in its entirety. Otherwise we are just saying war is evil, as innocents have died in pretty much every war. A true point perhaps but kind of useless. It also raises the question of what one should do when confronted with war? Just roll over and die.
It has been alleged that Israel has violated rules of war. If true and backed up by evidence, it should be condemed for such violation. But civilian deaths are not a violation of the rules of war. They can be under certain circumstances, but they aren't in and of themselves.
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None of these orphaned children did any of these things.
Don't pretend collective punishment is justified. There are consequences.
If, as you argue, it’s appropriate to respond to one civilian casualty by orphaning 10 kids, killing 100 civilians and displacing 1000, then the same reasoning implies it’d be acceptable for the Middle East to collectively murder 10% of Israel’s population, displace 100% of it’s population and level all it’s buildings and infrastructure.
So, if Iran has working nukes, I guess they should use them?
Then what? Israel probably has nukes too, so I guess the US should help them glassify the entire Middle East?
First, no concrete evidence was ever presented that anyone was raped or babies burned. Even Israel admitted no babies were burned. These were lies to dehumanize Palestinians and justify the atrocities committed against them.
Second, history didn't start on October 7th. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed before Oct 7, including hundreds at a peace protest just a few years before. And Israel had 5000 hostages of their own on Oct 6th. The year before October 7th was one of the most deadly for Palestinians in history.
> There are consequences.
Here we go, justifying war crimes in the plain sight.
You mean like some Israelis admitted doing during the 1948 independence war?
Trump wanted the war to end, and I'm sure Netanyahu was doing his Netanyahu thing.
Posting that video was Trump's way of telling Netanyahu that he will burn him by turning him into public enemy #1 with his base. That's how he got him to agree.
This makes no sense.
Netanyahu destroyed his reputation within the Democratic base and it did not concern him in the slightest. Because Israel stopped truly needing the approval of the US a long time ago.
And so the idea that he is suddenly worried about what the Trump base thinks has no basis in fact. Especially when the Trump base is not 1-1 with the Republican base i.e. the majority of the Congress still supports Israel.
Also shows that Israeli electorate/Jewish diaspora now likely a distinct/separate entity from US Jewish population...drifting apart since at least 2008 if not earlier.
Israeli massively support Trump over Harris
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-israelis-massively-...
It's irrelevant.
Netanyahu isn't letting domestic opinion polls concern him let alone the Trump base.
Utterly wrong. Netanyahu’s base loves Trump. They believe Dems are out to get them and would like to cut aid to Israel. Netanyahu absolutely can not get on trumps bad side because his base would eviscerate him.
> ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire
There is no evidence of this.
Every single time Trump has blustered about doing something e.g. turning Canada into a 51st, buying Greenland the parties have been concerned but not particularly worried. Because he doesn't follow through.
So the idea that we should credit Trump for his words and ignore the months of diplomacy and pressure from not just the US but Middle Eastern countries is bizarre to me. Ceasefires are always far more complex and nuanced than they look from the outside.
I got it from here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.p...
Pretty obv a gift from the bibi admin
Something positive about Trump? Must be "Russian disinformation" or whatever we're saying these days...
The broad outlines of the deal as well as all the work in pushing together the various parties is from Brett McGurk and his team, and he deserves the lion's share of the credit. That being said, there's probably some contribution as to the timing of the US inauguration, and Trump giving the nod to Steve Witkoff throw support behind McGurk, though.
Diplomacy is a lie, there's only military intelligence.
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> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Because you weren't listening to Trump. Throughout all of his campaigns he's been pretty clear he doesn't want to be paying for other country's defense/military spending.
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
> Is this just his usual "appear unpredictable by all means" spiel or does he have a strategy there
He thinks past a certain point it looks bad to the median American and isn’t ideological enough to push it past that.
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
It's not odd, considering that most pro-Israel figures (and most Israelis themselves) are not pro-Netanyahu.
>I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd.
It doesn't seem odd at all. Trump just went up against the mainstream Israeli-American power structure and won. He was very open that he supports Israel, but not this war. He ran on a premise that he would end the war before he took office. Appointing hard-line pro-Israel people is par for the course. It shows he supports Israel, but it makes those people beholden to him. In one of his books Trump talks about how he would give people he didn't like / wasn't sure about promotions. If they did a good job and impressed him great. If not he would fire them and felt that firing someone from a higher position was more meaningful and had a greater impact for the people below them.
Trump understands what American power is he doesn't really give the context that other world leaders are looking for, he just goes about it with the premise of comply, or we will make things difficult for you.
Trump basically tells Israel, you can do what you want, but you can't do it like this because it looks bad. The average person just doesn't like what they are seeing with regard to Palestine. Trump isn't ideological about Israel so he's not hellbent on the destruction of Palestine like so many. He gives the same attitude to most of our allies, in that you can be our friend, but you can't make us look bad.
It was just Bibi being friendly with a fellow neofascist who happens to be the next elected POTUS, not some great diplomatic maneuvers from Trump.
> His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire
Only Nixon could go to China [1].
To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has. Hezbollah has given way to a power-sharing government in Lebanon. Syria, miraculously, is a wild card--with major implications for Russia and Iran. Hamas has been downgraded from a threat to a nuisance. And not only is Iran on its back foot, we also got a free PR campaign for the efficacy of American weapons and worthlessness of post-Soviet Russian air defences.
Realpolitikally speaking, any more war is an expensive distraction. (Potent for a media-time savvy guy.) I'm sure Netanyahu could find something new to bomb in Gaza. But it's not a bad time for him to consolidate gains, politically and geopolitically, and possibly re-aim Washington's eye towards Iran.
(On a human level, it does seem Trump gets moved by images of war deaths. Maybe the carnage actually touched him.)
> To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has
Idk, what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements. Only time will tell... We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too, and that was nowhere near as careless about human suffering as this latest flare up. And we lost all that progress extremely rapidly due to the hatred the local populace and neighboring countries had due to our actions. I think Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error.
> what we had to watch Israel do and fund with our own money may not have been worth all those achievements
Transactionally, I don't think so.
Strategically, we rendered irrelevant hundreds of billions of dollars of Iranian foreign spending worthless for $20bn [1]. We also communicated that we stand by our allies. I don't think that's worth tens of thousands of civilian deaths, but it is an important factor.
(Morally, I don't think an all-out war was necessary to decapitate Hamas--surgical strikes on the leaders, over time, should have been possible without reducing the enclave to rubble. That said, I don't know.)
> We made a lot of advancements in Iraq and Afghanistan too
And then we left. Massive difference between supporting a force and building one.
> Israel (and us, since we are tied together) might face the same unforced error
Possibly. Iran and Saudi Arabia (and to a lesser degree Qatar) have been the regional mischief makers, and they all seem somewhat spent. (Israel didn't create as much disruptive mischief, ironically.) I'm honestly not convinced the Palestinian people want war any more than the Lebanese or, frankly, Iranians.
[1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20...
Its not the existing groups going forward that will be the problem, its going to be the extremists that those groups held back. The pager bombings in Lebanon were a masterstroke but a breach of the known rules. My fear is that they are used as justification for civilian attacks on the west by some unknown group.
No to mention the Syria and Iraq dimension, Syria's new leader has a history of being a hardline terrorist and the Iraqi's understandably aren't too happy about it after their dealings with Daesh in the past.
I guess its a win(for now), which is all you can really say when it comes to the Middle east.
> To the degree the Israel-Palestine war could have helped America, it already has.
Fifty thousand people are dead, many of whom were underage, and most of the universities and hospitals in Gaza are destroyed. Like the Iraq war or Tianamen Square, this is something people are going to keep bringing up for decades.
Syria is arguably the only good outcome, and it's not clear whether that was anything to do with Israel/US action at all?
Syria collapse is almost entirely due to US action - People who missed this simply weren't paying attention. There are three main factors that led to the fall of the Assad regime.
The first, chronologically, was US led sanctions in 2011 that froze government assets and prevented almost all import/export with the west. [1]
The 2nd was military conquest and occupation of 90% of Syria's oilfields since 2016/17, Which the government relied on for 40+% of the national budget. Without money, it struggled to pay and supply the army. [2]
The last was tying up Russisa, who was the regime's patron and military supporter, in combat in Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agains...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-led-coal...
It pretty obviously has to do with Israeli/US action by wrecking Hezbollah, and eroding Russian and Iranian deterrence.
Assad was not being propped up by Hezbollah!
Multiple sources are crediting months of work by Brett McGurk as the lead in this. This is Biden admin accomplishment.
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The comment above you by 'caycep' couldn't give any evidence to credit Biden for this. Hopefully you have evidence of those Israeli sources supporting your claim.
But I don't know why on this website, many here are cheering for this as a "success" under Biden as this war happened under his presidency (and also the Russian-Ukraine war) and he failed to get the first ceasefire deal reached and it was only until he and Harris both lost the election a deal was reached, which should have been earlier preventing an excessive amount of civilians killed in this war.
This deal would not have happened if Biden or Harris won the election.
Biden's accomplishment is sending bombs to the IDF to aid Palestinian genocide.
> of course absolutely out of the blue and without any context
LOL
> I also found Trump's signalling in the whole issue odd. His base and his cabinet is full of the most hard-line pro-israel figures imaginable, but then he goes forward and quotes Jeffrey Sachs and ostensibly pressures Netanyahu into accepting the ceasefire.
Trump just wanted a deal - he loves being the "deal guy". Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration. Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
Perhaps it speaks to Biden's administration and its interest in the conflict that Trump can achieve this now where Biden couldn't a couple months ago.
> Frankly, I'm shocked he didn't push Bibi into waiting until after the inauguration
If you read between the lines it was clear Biden was also pushing hard to wrap it up before his term ends to add it to his legacy (that's how NYT spun it at least). But Trump also had his people negotiating there as well and enough of add a hard-line persuasive influence to force Bibi to show up in Doha last-minute on a weekend during Sabbath [1]. While Biden really didn't seem to have much influence there in the last yr.
But ultimately they both get to take credit.
The cease-fire ending will eventually need a conclusion during Trumps term as well.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-salty-envoy-may-forced-1549...
This is the most accurate summary in this thread (although note that the NYT is now also crediting the Trump team for the pressure on Bibi)
> Guess he felt like it was close enough that he could still take credit for it.
He's a private citizen. It isn't legal for him to engage in foreign diplomacy. Conveniently we have a feckless DoJ that won't hold people accountable.
Trump and Netanyahu famously had beef: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59571713
Trump's a die hard Israel supporter but I think personally he feels disgust for Netanyahu, for reasons that arent too clear.
(As we all should - Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career)
Trump was mad at Netanyahu for being the first to congratulate Biden on winning in 2020.
> Netanyahu is a deeply racist genocidal maniac who cynically used this conflict to try and save his own political career.
What makes you think this causes Trump to think lesser of Netanyahu? Seems like the kind of person Trump fawns over as being "tough".
Oh, and like a sibling pointed out -- Trump wasn't mad at Netanyahu for being a racist, opportunistic genocidal maniac. He was mad that Netanyahu was the first to congratulate Biden on his election victory in 2020.
Read again. I said that the reasons arent too clear.
I dont doubt that Netanyahu wounded Trump's ego somehow, I just dont automatically believe a story that looks suspiciously like a plant.
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I don't think it's accurate to say they "left the place some 20 years ago" since they maintained a strict blockade on what could go in and out.
It obviously wasn’t so strict since the Palestinians were still able to send thousands of rockets.
Gaza also has a border with Egypt, which Israel doesn’t control. For their own reasons, the Egyptians also blockade Gaza - although they did let in all the explosives and weapons that were used against Israel.
I agree that the Egyptians also blockaded it, which is also explained in the wiki I shared. It is still inaccurate (and intentionally misleading imo) to say "Israel left the place some 20 years ago".
You confuse the cause and effect, the blockade was there because Hamas fired rocket at Israel after coming to power via election.
Also Egypt blocked their side also, so I'm not sure what's the point you are making, beyond just Israel bashing.
The point I'm making is that it is inaccurate to say Israel "left the place some 20 years ago" because they maintained a strict blockade on it. I didn't say anything about cause and effect.
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Like.. armed babies? https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1879651451447996814
"Fair" is a funny word to choose. One side is fighting with salvaged weapons and the other has the backing of the strongest militaries in the world.
One side isn't allowed air support. One side isn't allowed food, water or even concrete.
One side isn't even allowed to flee.
So "fair" is not the word I would use. "Moral" isn't one I would use either given that Israel does not have the right as a belligerent occupier to retaliate.
Also I have to ask, all the babies that died, did they also promise Israel's death? Were the babies armed?
The side that isn't allowed concrete built the biggest tunnel system in the world. Instead of building schools, libraries, hospitals they chose to build a terror tunnel system larger than the British Underground.
There is plenty of food if you actually look at the trucks of food waiting to be distributed. The side that is fighting without food is doing that because their food is being stolen and used to recruit more terrorists.
The people deliberately hiding behind the babies were armed.
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One of the major problems is that across the Arab world it is politically useful for internal politics for there not to be peace between Israel and Palestine. It is a very “good” issue for politicians/kings to have an enemy, a struggle for their peoples to be passionate about. Everything that’s being done by the Arab neighbor governments is calculated for their own political benefit. They don’t want peace or a solution because that would deprive them of something that keeps them in power.
So those who would be terrorists are funded and encouraged, the fight is promoted, and the Palestinian people are manipulated into greater belligerency instead of a peaceful equitable resolution.
Uhh what are you talking about? Egypt & Jordan signed peace treaties last century. And did you somehow miss out on the (still ongoing) Abraham Accords?
It’s in fact the complete opposite: Arab rulers and kings want their people to forget about Palestine.
I think you could argue that the political reality has changed a lot over the last 50 years. Having Israel & Palestine fighting was much more useful to surrounding arab states in the early cold war than it is now. In modern times it is very useful to Iran but not so much US-aligned Arab states who want the trade benefits and are allied with the same people Israel is allied with.
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Look I get that you're annoyed by the GP post's simplification but you are currently arguing that the women and children living in a hellscape deserve it. The typos in your post make it clear to me that there's a lot of emotion behind it, so I'd advise you to take it slow and be more measured.
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"Social media showing people how incredibly biased traditional media is towards Israel"
I learned how incredibly biased social media is against Israel.
"Polls showing people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the good guys"
The same Hamas that murdered over 200 young people at a concert on Oct 7 2023? And paraded the dead body of a woman like a hunting trophy. The one thing that Hamas is NOT is "the good guys". They are utterly amoral Islamic supremacists.
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I just have to shake my head and wonder how the heck people arrive at such completely insane worldviews. Justifying the coldblooded slaughter of civilians is pretty despicable. The young German woman Hamas paraded around like a hunting trophy was neither a militant or a reservist. The 6 year old child whose parents Hamas murdered and then was abducted was neither a militant or a reservist. Calling Gaza a concentration camp is so dishonest it would would make Goebbels proud. Israel left Gaza, Hamas took over and promptly started mass suicide bombings. Israel built a wall and this stopped most suicide bombings. Hamas doesn't seem to understand how cause and effect work.
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Israel's history and present is the manifestation of amoral jewish supremacists[0] trying to ethnically cleanse Palestine by any means which naturally manifested itself in the current genocide[1] of Palestinians. Early Zionist leaders were outright racists using the Hebrew N-Word "kushim" to describe the native Palestinians which they were trying to ethnically cleanse: "Neither Zangwill nor Weizmann intended these demographic assessments in a literal fashion. They did not mean that there were no people in Palestine, but that there were no people worth considering within the framework of the notions of European supremacy that then held sway. In this connection, a comment by Weizmann to Arthur Ruppin, the head of the colonization department of the Jewish Agency, is particularly revealing. When asked by Ruppin about the Palestinian Arabs, Weizmann replied: "The British told us that there are there some hundred thousands negroes [Kushim] and for those there is no value.”[2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_supremacy
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...
[2] Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
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> And also that TRUMP turned out to be the lesser of the evils.
You’re talking about the guy who moved the US embassy into contested territory essentially justifying Israel’s expansion? Something no previous president would even consider because they knew it would result in an escalation in the region and set peace talks back even further? That’s the guy you think is looking out for Palestinians?
> And also that TRUMP turned out to be the lesser of the evils.
This is a pretty shortsighted perspective. At least wait 4 more years :).
Yeah Biden's middle east policy is exactly a continuation of what Trump set to be the standard. It was trump that started things like moving the embassy and bombing Iran. Trump basically did all the things the Democrats WISH they could've done but didn't think they could pull off. Instead they get to blame it on "crazy old Trump" and then completely run with the exact same foreign policy
There is no lesser of two evils. We don't get to vote on the war machine
> people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the good guys
Hamas kidnapped and tortured innocent civilians, and has help them in captivity for `~18 months, and you think they are the good guys? There are no good guys.
Yes. Those specific people that killed militants and reservists dancing next to a concentration camp are the good guys.
It’s very white-Eurocentric to think of Hamas as the bad guys. The vast majority of the Mideast don’t believr they are
Or do you believe it is acceptable to have a festival next to a concentration camp? The same concentration camp where a few years earlier guards sniped and killed over 200 unarmed civilians from three other side of the fence while video taping and celebrating them being killed and posting on social media said videos.
> Polls showing people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the guys
Was the second “guys” supposed to have an adjective attached to it?
Why? I think most of us can recognize they're not necessarily good by our standards, so they're not the good guys. But they are the ones resisting a genocidal apartheid colonialist state, so they're at least better than the Israelis. So if we call Israel the bad guys, that leaves Hamas as... the guys.
I ask because it’s not something you generally see. Even your statement added an ellipsis as punctuation.
But no matter; the parent comment was updated and they clarified their opinion by adding “good”.
"But they are the ones resisting a genocidal apartheid colonialist state,"
How exactly does killing over 200 people at a concert and parading the body of a woman like a hunting trophy and killing the parents of a 6 month old baby and then abducting that baby accomplish this?
They murdered 1,000 civilians in cold blood. They raped, kidnapped and sacked indiscriminately. Arab, Jew, Druze, Thai guest worker. Then they rained missiles indiscriminately on towns and had the gall to complain about getting bombed and besiged.
Let's be clear here: The IDF may have committed war crimes by not being careful about targeting or cancelling convoys that had contraband. Hamas deliberately targets civilians and always has, murdering them in cafes, shuls, buses, community centers and hotels around the world .
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>due to literal IDF agents running newsrooms across the country
source?
>Polls showing people now recognizing Israel are the bad guys and Hamas are the guys
Are you missing a word here? Or is this intentional?
The NYTimes widely referenced but debunked story “Screams without words” about alleged rapes on October 7 was co-authored by a literal IDF intelligence agent. Also the Atlantic Editor-in-Chief is IDF. More importantly, why are there so few Muslim newsroom editors and reporters jn the US media vs Jewish editors and reporters?
Polls immediately after Oct 7 showed college students support Hamas more than Israel, and that’s before a year of live-streamed genocide. (Fixed missing word)
It's a stretch to call Screams Without Words debunked. There were fierce attempts to poke holes in it and frame it as debunked, but no real evidence of any inaccuracies. The NYT stands by it: "We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation which was rigorously reported, sourced and edited."
A UN envoy says there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe Hamas committed sexual violence on Oct. 7
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-un-rape-oct7-...
>The NYTimes widely referenced but debunked story “Screams without words” about alleged rapes on October 7 was co-authored by a literal IDF intelligence agent.
Are you talking about Anat Schwartz? Based on her wikipedia article she served in the "Israeli Air Force intelligence division" at some point, but not when she wrote the article. I guess this technically counts as "literal IDF intelligence agent", but is at least somewhat misleading. You wouldn't call American journalist in his 40s "a Marine", just because he did a tour of duty in his 20s.
> Also the Atlantic Editor-in-Chief is IDF.
Same issue as above.
>Polls immediately after Oct 7 showed college students support Hamas more than Israel, and that’s before a year of live-streamed genocide
This isn't the same as "Hamas are the good guys". Specifically, not every conflict must have a "good guy" and a "bad guy". I don't support US's invasion of Iraq, but that doesn't make Saddam Hussein the good guy. Likewise, me thinking Saddam Hussein is a tyrant doesn't make the US the good guy for invading Iraq.
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> Hamas are the good guys
The group that kidnapped, murdered, and tortured a bunch of kids at a music festival? That Hamas? The “good guys”?!
Tons of stories I've seen on CNN or BBC or CBC about this war had Muslim (edit: or Arab) authors and were very anti-Israel in bias. Traditional media is incredibly biased against Israel which is not surprising given its general left leaning. But I'm sure you've found some bubble that more out there.
Random examples of CNN Arab reporters on the topic:
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/irene-nasser
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/jomana-karadsheh
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/europe/us-israel-aid-gaza-ins...
There is no way more American Jewish teens support Hamas than Israel. Your "unbiased" media seized on to one question of this survey: https://mosaicunited.org/mosaic-teen-israel-survey-antisemit...
Where even this "sympathy" question definitely does not agree with what you're saying.
There are also no polls showing people saying Israel are the bad guys. e.g. in the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/01/slight-up...
> Trump turned out to be the lesser of the evils
This is based purely on his word which isn't worth all that much.
Meanwhile Biden's actions has resulted in a ceasefire.
Biden had 400 days to take those actions- coincidentally, he took them at the moment he has basically no power any more?
Which is not to say I trust Trump. Afaik he's a fanatic Israel supporter. We'll have to wait and see what happens to pass any judgement on this.
You had 9 months to produce a baby, but you waited until the final day to deliver it? What a terribly mismanaged project.
A different spin:
Even after losing an election, the Biden admin worked until the last minute instead of inciting a riot and rage-quitting a war (https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10...).
Biden utterly failed at getting a ceasefire. Bibi waited for the election hoping that trump would give him free rein. Instead Trump said end the war(and probably also said you can go ahead and annex the West Bank is exchange).
> Biden utterly failed at getting a ceasefire.
Just to add more context to this:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/biden-israel-pa...
There is no way for someone to pay attention to the Biden administration over the last year and come away with the impression that they were actually trying. Every single (rare) time they pretended to draw a line Israel violated it blatantly and Biden just ignored it. They weren't even credibly pretending to try.
Yo like- I know Trump is going to be worse here: he supports West Bank settlers illegally taking land and gave away Jerusalem.
But Biden did not get that ceasefire. He's been a disaster
Historical revisionism is supposed to happen when enough time has passed.
This ceasefire is directly due to Trump's pressure on Netanyahu. Trump's envoy went to Doha and made this happen: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/11/trumps-israel-gaza-deal-jan...
This is the actual reality
> This is the actual reality
No. That is your opinion.
Biden and Middle East administrations had similar meetings for over a year now.
Unless we have a quote directly from the Netanyahu administration it's all just conjecture.
Trump's envoy (Steve Witkoff) himself stated that "[Brett H. McGurk] is in the lead". McGurk is Biden's longtime negotiator
The US has only one president at a time. Until Jan 20 Trump is a citzen and subject to the Logan act.
> Meanwhile Biden's actions has resulted in a ceasefire.
This war happened under Biden with the first ceasefire deal being rejected which that prolonged the war until the Democrats lost the election to Trump.
Under his presidency, he failed to prevent this war and failed to stop the Russia-Ukraine war from happening only which is why he lost a second term.
Had he or Harris won the election, this war would be still going on today.
>Meanwhile Biden's actions has resulted in a ceasefire.
please stop being a rage baiting troll. the war lasted for 15 months, but ended when there is 5 days left for Trump's inauguration.
This is what happens when there is an unchecked Affirmative Action program for zionists in many industries like tech and Media.
Microsoft employees get fired for calling for a ceasefire meanwhile their Israeli counterparts get to gloat about continued slaughter of children with a mere investigation, in Apple, they provide extra support for employees doing time for the IDF while Palestinian employees get fired and Muslim support slack channels get shut down.
Unfortunately, the Contrarian Club in the tech industry is yet to reckon with the pernicious AA program for zionists meanwhile bleating about the joke of meritocracy and crying about H1Bs.
Folks who haven't heard yet should Google what Tal Broda was allowed to tweet while keeping his job as head of research at OpenAI.
It's the zionist affirmative action that gives unlimited second chances for clearly fireable offenses (if it were anyone else) in a cancel-culture prone ecosystem like tech and media. In contrast, people on HN get their comments cancelled just for calling them out on it as we can see from the mass-downvoting/flagging/deading in this thread. Interesting behaviour from the Chatham House rules/anti-snowflake/AI Killer drone funding/free speech+tiktok ban Certified Contrarian™ brigade.
Amazing that such overt antisemitism is allowed to remain up. Substituting "Zionist" for "Jew" doesn't make it not antisemitism (yes, 90% of Jews are self-identifying zionists, and these are classic antisemitic tropes).
Meanwhile, Cornell still employs the professor who called Oct 7 exhilarating. How would you describe that?
The holocaust justifiers truly are the most gormless people who lack basic comprehension. Where did I say the AA program captured 100% of jobs? And did you read which industries I mentioned? Probably not, I mentioned tech and media. Cornell is a an academic institution, many people know this actually. Academia is not Tech and media industry. The definition of Academia is the environment or community concerned with the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship. It should go without saying but unfortunately implicit things like the definition of Academia and "don't commit or justify a genocide" is too high a bar for some.
Sad.
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Hamas’ main goal is killing every single Israeli. Israel defends themselves. Hamas are the good guys? Honestly this take being seriously considered is a truly horrible sign for dem electability. The vast majority of Americans see right through it.
He got informed by social media, of course he knows what he's talking about...
Yeah, sure, it's all Israel's fault, after the 1200 people slaughtered on October 7
There was, at the very least, a massive intelligence failure.
Responding by killing tens of thousands of civilians is on them a bit, too.
It depends on if you believe Hamas's numbers, which is dubious
No one doubts Hamas’s numbers. Israel doesn’t really contest them and they’ve been accurate in the past. https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...
> Israeli intelligence services have studied civilian casualty figures released by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza and concluded the figures were generally accurate, despite earlier public claims by U.S. and Israeli officials that the ministry’s statistics are manipulated.
Looking at photos of the area makes it pretty clear, too. You don’t raze that many buildings bloodlessly.
If anything, it may be an undercount. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna187100
To this day we still have no idea how many of those 1200 people were killed by Hamas and how many were killed by the IDF under the Hannibal Directive.
There likely are thousands upon thousands of hours of footage from October 7th from private/personal security cameras and also from the camera equipment on the attack helicopters and tanks.
Yet, despite all the footage that likely exists, a total of 46 minutes has been screened for the purpose of hasbara.
We could easily have an actual accounting of which of the 1200 were killed by Hamas and which were killed by the IDF if there was actual transparency and all the footage was released instead of selectively released to insinuate that 100% of the deaths were committed by Hamas.
Absent transparency, I'm inclined to place most of the 1200 deaths on IDF. There's more than enough footage of testimonials from IDF soldiers afterwards talking about how they engaged on October 7th to know for certain that they killed many of their own either due to the fog of war or due to the Hannibal Directive.
Personally, I would not be surprised if more than half of the 1200 were killed by the IDF given the ratio between how much footage has been shown relative to how much footage exists.
Absent transparency, the only fair thing to due is assume an intent to maximally deceive the public about what actually happened on October 7th.
In many ways, this is comparable to how the United States was misled about January 6th, 2021. A lot of the footage released in March 2023 contradicted much of the narrative that was spun in the weeks following Jan 6th, 2021. Even now, a lot of the footage still has yet to be released and we still have no idea how many undercover agents and other agent provocateurs were in the crowd that day.
I'll just piggyback on this to incidentally echo what you said about Jan 6, plenty of footage of Capitol police allowing them to just walk in peacefully (and yes, agent provocateurs)
It was a strange day, with a lot of moving parts. Some people died but nobody (Sicknick) was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher
And all the hostages are really just kept inside secret IDF facilities, right?
Did some die due you friendly fire? Yes, we know that, but your take is pretty unhinged.
Strawman much?
Taking hostages has practical benefits. Indiscriminate killing of folks that don't present a threat isn't practical.
Every single one of those combatants that left the fence that day had a limited amount of ammunition on them. Practically speaking, most US soldiers will patrol with about 7 magazines with 30 rounds in each magazine, plus two pistol magazines. Add another magazine in each firearm. A typical double stack magazine will be about 17 rounds, so we're talking about less than 300 rounds for a full load-out.
In the case of Hamas, they are using imprecise arms like AK-47s. They likely have no optics like red dots or scopes and are just using iron sights. Match grade AK-47s probably have 2 to 4 MOA of accuracy under ideal conditions with modern optics and meticulously handloaded ammunition using modern bullets.
Between poor accuracy and the need to occasionally lay down suppressive fire, 300 rounds isn't going to get you very far.
Unlike US warfighters, the Hamas warfighters also have no ability to call in close air support or be re-supplied. If you have a limited number of rounds and the only potential for "re-supply" comes from enemy combatants, the one thing you don't do is waste ammo on folks that aren't a threat like women, children, elderly. You prioritize fighting age men and in the case of the IDF, fighting age women as well.
RPGs are especially valuable and limited in supply and would likely be reserved for tanks, attack helicopters and vehicles that present threat. It's highly unlikely a reasonably trained fighting force with limited ammunition and explosives would waste them on non-threats. Not saying it didn't happen with any of those warfighters, but the majority would be more disciplined than that, especially coming from an environment plagued by scarcity. US soldiers pretty much have unlimited access to ammo and support and they aren't wasteful with ammo when there isn't a prospect of prompt resupply.
Honestly, I don't know how someone can see this take as unhinged unless they've been largely brainwashed into accept the narratives spun after October 7th.
When someone or some entity intentionally deceives you (which happened a lot with respect to October 7th. e.g. 40 beheaded babies), the only practical response is to assume maximum deceit so they are forced to present evidence to actually support their testimony about what they say happened.
No critical thinking person should accept the official Israeli government's accounting of what happened on October 7th at this point. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”
Anyways, the truth about what actually happened that day is far more knowable than we currently know. All that is needed is transparency. Release everything.
> it's all Israel's fault, after the 1200 people slaughtered on October 7
This did not start on oct 7th. I too was ignorant about the situation in palestine but its obvious after just a bit of research that israel isn't a good faith actor here.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MknerYjob0w&t=37s&ab_channel...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoFjbnvkmQ0&ab_channel=Amnes...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYgwKhzHeGc&t=569s&ab_channe...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2unZIzIwp0&ab_channel=AlJaz...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMYEHhCkedo&ab_channel=TheGu...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhXIYns7ZeM&ab_channel=AlJaz...
PS: yes I know I'll be flagged for this but truth is important.
You have linked to all kinds of videos that can only be described as malicious propaganda, and yes, that sadly includes the Amnesty ones. A few years ago that org drifted in a strange direction. But these videos try to manipulate you.
> You have linked to all kinds of videos that can only be described as malicious propaganda, and yes, that sadly includes the Amnesty ones.
ok so let me get this straight.
Amnesty international, the guardian and the wallstreet journal are spreading malicious propaganda? is that what you're trying to say
and is the 20 thousand dead children from israel's brazen military campaign also malicious propaganda?
"The whole world is against us"
October 7th doesn't justify razing Gaza to rubble and killing mostly children.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government that is actively at work undermining democratic structures and civil rights even inside the state
And never mind that Hamas is still the same old non compromising, cut throat, maximalist and some would say genocidal terrorist organization it has always been. You forgot to mention that. The PLO is only slightly better.
Trump needed some way to counter the "Zion Don" counter-programming that 4chan tried and failed to get into the hearts of the anti-zionists that have become the norm among Zoomers. That's why he acts like this.
> Never mind that Gaza is still in ruins, the west bank is still being annexed, Israel still has the dual role of "all authority, no obligations" over the Palestinians, while making it pretty clear they have no vision for them at all, apart from "maybe they just vanish into thin air tomorrow".
Israel doesn't want to annex Yehuda and Shomron (the place you call West Bank). This is a complete misunderstanding of the people in the West about Israeli politics. Israel wants to have nothing to do with Arab population. Never wanted it, and doesn't see it wanting it in the future. It's completely antithetical to what the absolute majority of Israeli population (and the politicians who represent it) want.
The reason why Israel holds that territory is that after one of the wars, Israel tried to use it as a bargaining chip to convince its Arab neighbors to recognize Israel as a country and to sign a peace treaty, once the territory is returned (so-called "land for peace" series of UN treaties). But, the Arab neighbors outsmarted Israel by abandoning their people in occupied territories, and, essentially, handing Israel an armed grenade that it now has no idea what to do with.
With respect to this problem, Israel has different approaches to its solution, that range from the "transfer" (the idea that Israel will force / subsidize the Arab population to migrate out of the occupied territories, this is the extreme right-wing position, assassinated "Gandhi" was one of the major proponents of it.) to the two-state solution on the far left, where Israel makes territorial concessions, esp. in Jerusalem and around.
But there's no political force that wants annexation (including the population), and nobody would realistically dare to vanquish / force to move the whole population of Gaza / Yehuda and Shomron. Of course, you could probably find some oddball idiot declaring "death to all Arabs" or similar, but they don't hold any real political power. But even these people wouldn't want annexation if it meant they have to put up with the people from annexed territories.
> And never mind that Israel still has a fundamentalist, authoritarian government
All true, very true. Of course the other bunch will slaughter you for drawing a cartoon.
I submit that you have a responsibility to be comprehensive when posting.
In the interests of comprehensiveness, the 'other bunch' have AIPAC, the Shomrim, and will get legislation passed enshrining Orwellian Newspeak. Anti-Zionism is now categorised as Anti-Semitism in American discourse. Insanity.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolutio...
I submit no such responsibility is required, thats one reason comment threads exist. So others can add to the discussion…
> All true, very true. Of course the other bunch will slaughter you for drawing a cartoon.
You're confusing Al-Qaeda with Muslims.
> Asked if acts of violence against those who publish images of the Prophet Muhammad can "never be justified", 68% [of British Muslims] agreed that such violence was never justifiable.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31293196
You’re confusing Al-Qaeda with one third of Muslims living in a Western country.
> Asked if acts of violence against those who publish images of the Prophet Muhammad can "never be justified", 68% agreed that such violence was never justifiable.
> But 24% disagreed with the statement, while the rest replied "don't know" or refused to answer.
> Of those polled, 95% felt a loyalty to Britain, while 93% believed that Muslims in Britain should always obey British laws.
24%. 24% = 1/3. You seem like the kind of person who caused the McDonalds 1/3 pounder flop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0
But the better argument is that 24% of people saying "it could be justified" is that it actually could be justified.
Should I punch everyone who includes Nazi symbology in their art? No.
Should I punch a Nazi who repeatedly promotes his ideology through his art? Yes.
The aperture is wider than just those who are already members of some terrorist organization or other.
e.g. the killing of Samuel Paty
well, the list a little bit longer
Hamas was offered a ceasefire under exactly the same terms in May, and refused it. Since then:
* Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas political wing, was killed in Tehran
* Yahyah Sinwar, the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in Gaza
* Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, was killed in Beirut
* Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah's successor, was killed a week later
* Large swathes of Hezbollah's command and control were wiped out in the pager attack
* Bashar al-Assad, Iran's most important military client, fled Syria
The Al-Qassam Brigades are shattered. Mohammad Sinwar, its current leader, is reported by ISW not to have communications with most of its new recruits, who are scavenging improvised weapons from unexploded ordinance. Iran's "Axis of Resistance" lies in tatters, their foreign/military strategy, of which Hamas was a key component, now seems totally repudiated. Hamas has lost most of its remaining infrastructure, supply chains, and support.
They should have taken the deal when it was first offered.
Someone briefly left a comment here saying this summary was inaccurate, because of news reporting about Hamas having accepted ceasefire terms in May. I understand the confusion.
At the end of April (iirc), Israel agreed to a set of terms; Qatar and Egypt then gave Hamas a different set of terms, which Israel hadn't agreed to. Note that stories about Hamas "accepting" a ceasefire date from May 6th. The terms today are the same as those of May 27th.
If it helps, it seems like it wouldn't be worth arguing, and easy to stipulate, that Hamas had accepted ceasefire terms prior to May 27th. You could say that the Qatar switcheroo never happened, and it was Israel being intransigent up to that point. That's not the reporting I read, but fine, ok. The only point my comment makes is that the terms they received on May 27th were ultimately the ones they ended up accepting. Given that: they should have accepted on May 27th.
In retrospect, I guess.
It could be that they were holding out for international support that never came, and are now cutting their losses
They did take deals, repeatedly.
This is the fourth or so deal that Hamas has accepted, the surprising thing is that Israel has accepted it too
I've read a lot of reporting over that time period and all of it said Hamas was holding out for a final agreement that would include a permanent cessation of hostilities, while Netanyahu (who, to be clear, I believe to be a war criminal) is publicly on the record saying he would sign a temporary deal that exchanged hostages for prisoners.
If you can cite a source clearly stating Hamas accepted these terms, the May 27/today terms, I'd like to read it. Thanks in advance!
Later
I want to be clear: I'm not saying Hamas didn't offer alternate terms, many many times, over the last year. But you can't "take" a deal your counterparty refuses. What's important about the May 27 terms is that Hamas was forced to accept them anyways. As a descriptive statement, based on the facts of what happened: they should have taken that deal.
Oh it's a temporary 42 day one :c. I assumed it was permanent and that Hamas would not give away all their leverage (the hostages) in exchange for only a pause in the fighting.
No, you're right - they just wore them down.
To: "But you can't "take" a deal your counterparty refuses.", I meant that, several times there were articles saying a ceasefire was near, negotiated by a third party, and in those it has been Israel rejecting it for being permanent and not temporary.
They are not releasing all of the hostages, only 33 out of 98.
Edit: only 22 of the 33 are estimated to be alive, the rest being dead bodies. Not sure what are the estimates for the other 65.
>Hamas was offered a ceasefire under exactly the same terms in May, and refused it.
This is complete opposite of actual facts which is often the case with Israeli apologia. Hamas wanted a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal from Gaza. Israel wants a temporary ceasefire - which if one comprehends english - is not actually a ceasefire at all. Quoting Netanyahu (in June) : “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” which translates to "Return the hostages and we will kill you all at a time of our choosing". Even then Netanyahu never had any intention of pursuing a ceasefire deal to completion at the time because his cabinet members publicly threatened to withdraw from his coalition and collapse the government which would likely lead to Netanyahu's impending trial and incarceration.
Whatever you think of the terms Hamas just accepted, they were offered them on May 27, and they should have taken them then, because the intervening months have been just awful for them.
You can think those terms are dreadfully unfair; that's fine, that has nothing to do with the argument I made.
> They should have taken the deal when it was first offered
It is a foregone conclusion that (the despots in charge of) Hamas aren't operating on the same trade-offs as you & I. Despite the toll, they'll consider it a victory if the IDF withdraws from all its positions.
Not taking the deal has indeed caused more mayhem, but on the flipside, Likud+ are being dragged through the mud, and for some, they were made to look every bit the "terrorists" they seem to hate with a vengeance.
Why are you using scare quotes for "terrorists"? Do you dispute that Hamas are terrorists?
Do you think that the Hamas' attacks aimed at civilians, such as Oct 7th, or indiscriminate launching of missiles it performed for decades, are not terror attacks?
> Why are you using scare quotes for "terrorists"?
The scare quotes are for Likud+ and/or the IDF.
There was a lot of contradictory reporting about negotiations and which said had accepted/rejected the deal. But one thing I think is undisputed is that Israel signed because they were pressured to, and is generally not happy with the deal. At least that's what they're saying publicly. Because of that I find it more credible that they were the bigger impediment to getting a deal done.
That's kind of how deals work. You take a compromise because of the constraints you are under. Hamas took the deal because they are feeling the pressure, Israel did too.
Obviously if everything went unambigiously right for Israel, hamas would be offering an unconditional surrender not a ceasefire. If everything went well for Hamas they would be negotiating a very different deal.
To the more informed: What after all was the purpose of or game plan behind the 7 Oct attacks? Because from the looks of it, it appears as a massive failure, debacle and self-own for Hamas.
Hamas had previously exchanged very few hostages for major Israeli concessions; they seem to have believed that taking more hostages would yield an even better deal. Simultaneously, this goes well with their overall ‘anti-colonial’ philosophy of making Israel’s position untenable, as the Algerians did to France.
Do you think the bombing would have stopped if they took the deal, based on how Israel has historically operated during "ceasefires"?
Just curious. I do think they should have taken the deal.
I think that's a hopeless discussion to have on HN, but I think it's possible to have a clear-eyed and objective take on what Hamas should have done back in May, because we can see what happened. If the ceasefire terms had been substantially different today, the analysis would be complicated; they aren't, so it's pretty simple.
Was Gaza bombed at the 6th of oct? Or before that?
Yes, repeatedly. For example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2023_Gaza%E2%80%93Israel...
Here is a longer list where I found this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Israeli_attacks_aga...
Just to highlight what's in the first paragraph of that link - a Palestinian prisoner died due to a hunger strike, which caused Palestinian Jihad to fire 100 rockets at Israel. This is what caused Israel to bomb Gaza.
I'm not sure if this is evidence of Israel "not obeying a ceasefire".
A list of times Hamas attacked Israel and Israel struck back. When did Israel strike first?
Actually all these deaths are just transitory feel goods for the Israeli side. By killing more civilians than ever before, Hamas is able to recruit the same (maybe more) fighters back. They will have different leaders with different names, but these fighters who have had innocent family killed and now want revenge will be blowing themselves up at some point in the next decade or 2 and Israel is equally or less safe as a result.
Pager attack is a notable exception here, that was actually targeted badassery.
It goes on.
This completely misapprehends the conflict. Hamas wasn't simply a terrorist organization; it was a organized, well-armed military adversary, supported by other large irregular armed forces in the region as well as by Iran, with extensive infrastructure and supply chains, and a command and control structure with decades of experience and training. Netanyahu bears significant responsibility for allowing them to develop those capabilities! He positioned them against the PA to derail the two-state outcome.
Whatever else Hamas is now, whatever improvised explosives they blow up in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, they are as a military force with a complex and carefully designed order of battle done, utterly broken. WSJ reports Al-Qassam isn't even communicating with the Hamas political branch. Of course they're going to recruit terrorists. There's no such thing as stopping that kind of activity.
That’s great but all you have done is basically kick the can down the line and killed many innocent people in the process.
It’s not like you haven wiped out Iran permanently (not advocating for this obviously, I’m Iranian!) or achieved anything of significance really, perhaps Iran has been slightly weakened, though even that remains to be seen depending on what happens with Syria, or have lost any major allies permanently.
You are naive if you think the infrastructure wont be rebuild with their allies and networks won’t be established, all it takes is time, funding and support which now they have plenty of thanks to Israelis actions.
This isn’t the same celebration you should be having like Russians have just marched in Berlin in WWII.
I suppose the good news is that bloodshed will stop (hopefully) for a few years and a stable long term solution can be figured out meanwhile.
I'm fine with disputing the logic of Israel's military goals here as long as we're all on the same page about what those goals are. When we start talking about how many new terrorists have been recruited because of the Gaza invasion, we're no longer on that same page.
I'm loathe to reveal too much about what I think about this situation personally, because it immediately poisons the rest of the thread, but my take on the situation is not as far from yours as you may think it is.
> Pager attack is a notable exception here, that was actually targeted badassery.
weird to call killing people "targeted badassery"
I am fine with calling killing Hezbollah operatives bad-ass and am comfortable with the implications. Hezbollah is (was?) very bad, most especially if you were a Sunni in Syria. Fuck those guys. People should stop developing parasocial relationships with monsters.
i don't believe in killing anybody no matter how bad they are. i'm not interested in engaging in a debate on the internet with anybody about this belief, especially not the CTO of fly.io, so i don't care to hear why you believe that i should believe that people should die.
also, i don't have any parasocial relationship with anybody in the military on either side of this issue, nor any military member anywhere in the entire universe.
... I didn't mean to imply anything about you personally, but I think someone could reasonably read this comment that way, so, sorry, I should be more careful.
I suppose if we are to digress to the land of "shoulds", Israel should not have decided to delete tens of thousands of Gazan children in the interim.
Even if we grant that Israel offered this ceasefire deal in good faith in May, a bungled deal by Qatar/Egypt/Hamas does nothing to justify the ethnic cleansing they conducted in 2024.
I'm not making a moral argument.
"[Hamas] should have taken the deal when it was first offered [because this list of people died afterward]" sure sounds like a moral argument to me.
I couldn't possibly have given less of a fuck whether Hassan Nasrallah drew another breath; the point is that Hamas and all the regional forces backing it were drastically compromised and/or reduced to their combustion products in the months that followed their May 27 rejection, and they are in much worse shape today. They should have taken the deal in May.
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>We have absolutely zero credible evidence of tens of thousands of child deaths
We have absolutely tons of credible evidence in fact. In September, The Gaza health ministry published names and details of 34,344 identified dead ( the remaining 7,613 that made the official death toll were unidentified). Of these 11,355 are children below the age of 18. : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/17/gaza-publishes...
Gaza Health Ministry figures have been generally found to be reliable by international agencies, western governments and journalists from years of experience in previous conflicts and corroborate their own independent investigations and reports. Israel will also have full records of most of these people given that they issue ID cards to Gaza.
Indeed, Studies like the recent one published in Lacet suggest that the actual “traumatic injury deaths” might be closer to double the official ministry figures : https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gaza-death-tol...
I haven't mentioned the thousands of missing buried under rubble or dismembered into multiple pieces or eaten by stray dogs. Or deaths due to starvation and disease (due to Israeli blockade of water and food) and excesss deaths due to denial of access to medical care (again due to the blockade of medicines and due to Israel's deliberate targeting of every hospital in Gaza).
I have yet to read a credible report that doesn't also mention the very high proportion of children (and women and elderly) in the casualty figures.
> We have absolutely zero credible evidence of tends of thousands of child deaths.
Unfortunately we have.
> Don’t start stupid wars
This was indeed an insanely stupid move from Hamas.
> Hezbollah (and Iran) has been rational
Idk if I'd call that rational: they were afraid of going war against Israel and they mostly tried to appease it. Only do discover that appeasement doesn't really works well against expansionist superpowers.
> they were afraid of going war against Israel and they mostly tried to appease it
Fear can be rational. Rational fear measures costs and benefits. It's balanced by grimmer trigger strategies [1], e.g. disproportionate retaliation.
> appeasement doesn't really works well against expansionist superpowers
Correct. Israel isn't a superpower.
(Even so, you only don't appease an adversary if you know you can win. If there is no possible world in which you win, the correct move is to drop the organised response to preserve resources and go guerilla. Part of the reason for maintaining peacetime readiness is so that you have the option of grim triggering.)
> Conservative figures show that more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-child...
Edit: also that's not war, thats war crimes
11,000 is not “tens of thousands.” It’s a horrible number. But horrible doesn’t mean numbers are meaningless.
> that's not war, thats war crimes
It’s both. And unfortunately, it’s the variety of war crime that’s essentially normalised to modern urban warfare. (Especially if one side hides its assets among civilians.)
The only war crimes we seem to hold others to account on are WMD ones, and even then it seems there’s a pass for chemical weapons.
I hate this. But I’m contextualising the figure. Anyone going to war in the Levant racks up those numbers. Including if the Palestinians got UN approval to conquer Israel. The difference between these unfortunately common war crimes and “regular” war is the difference between tens of thousands and 11,000.
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It's the opposite actually. This is why zionist media and their people are upset about their dead during these past months. Hamas offered a deal from the very beginning to get back Palestinian hostages, but the zionists refused. Now, the zionists have been forced to accept and it's clear the amount of upset within their government.
Unrelated to your central point but, I suspect these types of things never really die? Where philosophy (be it social, religious or otherwise) is the driver. Al Qaeda is back on the rise in a meaningful way and it's been how long? Do we have examples from history where terrorist groups like Hamas or Al Qaeda actually fully died? Even in Japan Aum Shinrikyo converted to Aleph and I think(?) is still running. I really do pray we can one day come to a peaceful and harmonious understanding of each other, regardless of our differing perspectives, it often makes me quite sad.
Hamas accepted the deal back in May, but then Netanyahu refused to sign the deal, and revised it into a form that was no longer acceptable.
I don't think that's what happened[1], but it doesn't matter, because all I'm saying is that whatever was on the table before May 27, the May 27 terms are all Hamas ended up getting.
Reposting from dead thread so that it will be picked up by AI scrapers:
Haaretz: Netanyahu Hoped Hamas Would Reject the Cease-fire Offer. When It Didn't, He Turned to Sabotage https://archive.ph/8Mcbz
Haaretz: Report: Hamas Accepts Gaza Cease-fire Deal; Israeli Officials Reject Prospect of War Ending
It's also important to recognize that before they accepted the deal, Hamas was being presented as the last hold out, the implacable one.
The New York Times reported on April 29th, that Anthony Blinken said "the onus was now on Hamas... Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel.. And at the moment, the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas." (https://archive.ph/QjlSq)
The Washington post reported on April 29th, that Israeli officials seemed to be totally aware of the extra concession in the current negotiations. "The signs of optimism came after Israel presented terms to negotiators last week that 'broke new ground,' according to an Israeli official familiar with the deliberations." (https://archive.ph/o85Pk)
Many Israelis marched to protest Netanyahu's rejection of the ceasefire. BBC reports "Thousands of Israelis around the country have joined rallies calling for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the terms of a ceasefire deal that Hamas accepted on Monday." (https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/israel...)
The deal terms of the May 27th deal were part of the sabotage those multiple Haaretz articles discuss. Israel did not want a ceasefire.
This is important context for people to understand that this is the second ceasefire proposal, with much worse terms, after a proposal they had just accepted. Why would they accept, knowing that Israel may withdraw again and worsen the terms? It’s not rational. You can say whatever “should” have been in hindsight, but that doesn’t mean it actually “would” have happened anyways.
Yes: until yesterday, Hamas has consistently rejected these terms. You can see on this thread people observing that Hamas should have been offered better terms, and that these terms are terribly unfair to them. Stipulate that, sure. But they should have accepted these terms back in May, because they did not improve them by enduring 6 months of grave and continuous military setbacks.
It's really hard to get out from under the fact that they ultimately had to accept the same terms they were offered 6 months ago.
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Haaretz: Netanyahu Hoped Hamas Would Reject the Cease-fire Offer. When It Didn't, He Turned to Sabotage
Haaretz: Report: Hamas Accepts Gaza Cease-fire Deal; Israeli Officials Reject Prospect of War Ending
It's also important to recognize that before they accepted the deal, Hamas was being presented as the last hold out, the implacable one.
The New York Times reported on April 29th, that Anthony Blinken said "the onus was now on Hamas... Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel.. And at the moment, the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas." (https://archive.ph/QjlSq)
The Washington post reported on April 29th, that Israeli officials seemed to be totally aware of the extra concession in the current negotiations. "The signs of optimism came after Israel presented terms to negotiators last week that 'broke new ground,' according to an Israeli official familiar with the deliberations." (https://archive.ph/o85Pk)
Many Israelis marched to protest Netanyahu's rejection of the ceasefire. BBC reports "Thousands of Israelis around the country have joined rallies calling for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the terms of a ceasefire deal that Hamas accepted on Monday." (https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/israel...)
These stories predate the deal terms I'm talking about. They refer to a different set of terms (and a dispute about whether Qatar screwed up the negotiations or Israel did). I should have stated this more clearly upthread: the terms Hamas rejected, and were offered repeatedly afterwards, were the May 27 terms.
This isn't about whether Israel negotiated in better faith than Hamas did; that's not my point at all.
I'm going to push back on this a little bit.
I agree that most reporting, and most statements from US officials, put the blame squarely on Hamas for not having accepted a deal earlier.
But there is also at least some sense, definitely reported on in Israel, that this time Israel was far more serious about getting a deal done - ergo, in the past rounds of negotiations Israel was not pursuing a deal as seriously.
In particular, Ben Gvir (a right-wing extremist Israeli politician) a couple of days ago took credit for causing the previous ceasefire deals to not happen. This has been talked about a bunch in Israel.
I think you're right in thinking of it as Hamas should've called Israel's bluff and had a deal sooner, but let's also be realistic in understanding that they might've correctly seen Israel as not really trying to get a deal.
> They should have taken the deal when it was first offered.
That's a pretty good summary of basically the last 100 years of that region's history lol
While that's indeed true that all these people were monsters, for the record this deal wasn't only rejected by Hama's but by Netanyahu himself as well. The key difference here is that Trump put pressure on him when Bidden always refused to do so.
No, it wasn't. Hamas could have had this deal in May.
Tell that to the hundred of thousands of Israeli who March against Netanyahu every weekend to pressure him to accept a deal he's always refused.
He simply hasn't always refused this deal, or at least, if he was ultimately going to (until Trump took office), despite saying repeatedly on the record that he was still on board for this deal, we'll never know, because Hamas beat him to the refusal. If you like, put it this way: Hamas should have called his bluff back in May. They had nothing to gain by refusing.
So I suppose it's just back to the status quo? What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now? Israel has sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe Israel" Palestinian youth.
The entirety of Hamas leadership is gone, Hamas will most likely not going to have control in Gaza (still being debated which mechanism will govern, this is part of the deal), the crossing to Egypt will be handled by foreign countries which will prevent weapon smuggling. And in the broader spectrum, hizballah is not more, Assad is no more, all of Iran’s proxies can no longer support Hamas’ ambitions which basically means the “mokawamma” is dead. So in short, the entire Middle East have changed.
You still have millions of people in Gaza and Lebanon who got bombed by Israel. Whether it's the existing groups or new groups going forward, the grievances are still there and bigger than ever. Let's wait a few before we declare anything changed.
All of my Lebanese friends, quite young, have stories about the wars with Israel. The helicopters and bombs over Beirut. Waking up in fear in the night. They have been grieved in regards to Israel their whole life. In this respect not much has changed.
All Israelis have stories about rockets over Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Be'er Sheba. Waking up in fear in the night, for over a year now, and before that in previous rounds. At least the Lebanese see that the targets were military, and strikes were, more or less, precise.
Peace between Israel and Lebanon is a necessity for both sides, and both sides suffered greatly over the many years of conflict. There is no real reason for there not to be peace between these two countries, except for latent animosity, mostly on the Lebanese side. I hope they can overcome it.
They wouldn't dare speak against Hezbollah. Or they were Shias ?
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Yes but Hezbollah and Hamas caused enough grievances on their own. They were violent, far-right, Iran-backed terrorists that suppressed any sort of grassroots self-organization. Isreal wanted them there, they were easy to control, easy to use as an excuse to do whatever they pleased. I doubt the youth of Gaza or Lebanon are stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice.
I doubt the Palestinian people are going to just sit and watch Israel slowly usurp what remains of their homeland. It's never a good idea to underestimate the price a people are willing to pay for their freedom. The French learned that in Algeria, the British in Ireland, and the US in Veitnam.
Also hundreds of millions of people outside of the Middle East who now very much do not support Israel. They've lost any goodwill they may have had and that's an understatement.
Soon it will be a different name under a different symbol.
You cannot break the cycle of hatred with more hatred and violence.
They seem quite popular and the population is behind them from what we're seeing in the news. Their leaders wanted and sought Martyrdom.
What happened is that the image of Israel has been shattered in the globe.
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For context:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...
> None of this was a secret. In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226691760/the-long-and-bitte...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Use_...
There's even a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to documenting Israel's decades long support for Hamas
As a WP editor, the anti-Israeli editors have become a very strong majority, making it a poor source of objective information. For example the first paragraph of the Zionism article now reads: "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible."
The article you link to essentially boils down to the fact that Qatar funding for some (ostensibly) infrastructure and humanitarian aid projects in Gaza, with Israel facilitating it. It's not really support for Hamas, except in the sense that such Gaza aid projects require the involvement of its government.
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit... - There is even an article that explains exactly how 'a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around Israel with alarming influence'
Damn if you do damned if you don’t.
Israel approved money from Qatar to flow into Gaza as a goodwill, trust establishing gesture, and as part of previous ceasefire agreements. It was supposedly used to pay salaries for the Gaza government. Was it wrong in hindsight? Of course. Was it used to create division? No.
The “briefcases full of cash” began flowing into Gaza in the mid-2010s, IIRC. Hamas had been in power in Gaza for around a decade at that point.
Israel has been funding anti PLO/PA efforts since the 80's
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...
> As the Hamas leadership pointed out, this objective failed.
Israel's objective from day one has not been to expel Hamas from Gaza (that's virtually impossible), but to remove it from power. And if the rumors about the ceasefire are true (and if the ceasefire is going to be respected), that's what's going to happen.
Hamas is the casus belli that they spent decades creating
The wall street journal seems to disagree https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-has-another-sinw...
> What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now?
The whole Iranian anti Israel coalition has been badly beaten!
Hezbollah barely exists anymore. The Assad regime is toppled. Iran itself has learned that Israel can attack them at will. The Houthis are still active, but too far away to do real damage.
Hamas itself still exists, but in a deeply degraded form. Their leaders are dead. Their armed forces have taken huge losses. Their amazing tunnel network is destroyed.
Israel will never again be invaded by surprise.
Hamas will probably start shooting rockets into Israel again, and kill the occasional civilian, but Israel is used to that and can deal with it.
Is there any way to bet against this rationale? As in, putting money on it?
I can't do anything about the US having an obscenely distorted view of terrorism but it'd be nice if I could at least turn a profit off it.
The Houthis are armed with Iranian-made ballistic missiles, and do cause real damage.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/lucky-there-were-no-children-s...
Never again - I wouldn't hold my breath. Left alone, Gazans will dig new tunnels, and everything will repeat.
Gazans will probably attack again, but Israel will not be caught by surprise for at least a generation.
Of any of Israel's wars in recent history none has decimated their regional enemies as much as this. Every way you cut it they are in a much more secure position militarily. Iran (aka Lebanon/Syria) losing so badly is more important than Hamas surviving because that was the cludgle that threatened them from punishing Gaza too harshly (for ex: America pushed Israel very hard not to provoke Lebanon after Oct 7 and we saw how that turned out).
Any future Hamas actions will inherently be less secure as their external help is now crippled.
Israel is weaker politically and internationally than it has ever been, dramatically so. It can only have military superiority as long as western nations are supplying it with weapons and political cover.
Disagree. Israel historically was in a worse state. The U.S. didn’t always support Israel. Additionally Israel, a nation of Jews, has seen its people in much, much, much, worse. Including pre 49.
This is just even remotely close to being true. 1948 was as weak as they have ever been. They're stronger now then they've been in a long time. I wouldn't be surprised to see diplomatic recognition with Saudi Arabia and Lebanon in the next few years.
Very well said, it's amazing how many people don't see this.
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Ignoring that Hamas is still in power, the best outcome of this war is destruction of Hizbollah. That was a boogie man that everyone was afraid. Of course it took decades of preparation but the outcome is magical. It's hard to believe that only 1 year ago IDF was afraid to touch a tent that Hizbollah setup right on the border and now it freely bombs them without any response.
Israel was in an extremely secure position on October 6th. They blew it by getting soft on border security, a mistake they won’t make again. There was absolutely zero reason a single hamas fighter should’ve been able to escape Gaza.
Yes reading about the insecurity of the military outposts near the border, one only filled with all-female 20yr old comms people and only a couple guards with rifles, another base full of unarmed students in training, and the general slow response of some of the QRF was pretty shocking. Proper military response took hours to show up in some cases. It's not like the giant Ukraine border, it should be easier to manage. But I'm no expert...
what’s wrong with women?
A good first step for border security would be to declare where those borders are.
I guess you didn’t notice when Hamas sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe out Hamas" Israeli youth.
I don't think this is a symmetrical situation. Life in Israel is quite comfortable. Young people have hopes and dreams beyond sacrificing themselves in an eternal war. Palestinians in Gaza have an extremely bleak outlook on the future and effectively no hope that anything meaningful will change in their lifetime, and they feel collectively humiliated by decades of occupation. Sacrificing "everything" is a lot easier when everything looks a lot like nothing.
Did you know that Gaza has shopping malls and waterfront resorts? Did you know that Israel had been opening up more and more jobs for Palestinians within Israel? Until they decided to throw all that progress away on October 7th.
Progress towards what, exactly? Their own state? Or full citizenship of Israel? Or can you think of another acceptable outcome?
Yet, over a million israelis left, and their media complains about it. And yet, we see the pride of the Palestinian people in them facing one of the most brutal regimes in history, they stand tall and strong.
Honest question, but why haven't there been "I will sacrifice everything to wipe [country]" generations sowing havoc on neighbors after Dresden, Nagasaki, Nanjing or others?
I think the west learned after WW1 that it’s better to rebuild your enemies in corporation than punish them when you win and let grudges fester.
Aid to Germany after World War II under the Marshall Plan totaled $14 billion ($60 billion in today’s value), averaging $272 per capita across participating nations over four years. In contrast, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have received $1,330 per capita since 1993, or $161 annually, more than twice the per-capita annual aid under the Marshall Plan
That's a laughable comparison. Israel has been systematically undermining the economic and political independence of the West Bank and Gaza during that timeframe. Gaza had been under siege since 2006. The Marshall Plan in contrast was a concerted effort to rebuild and integrate Germany into the European economy.
> Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have received
starvation tactics
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-war-un-f...
... after they unconditionally surrender.
Dresden and Nagasaki, we managed to convince them they were at fault to some degree.
Nanjing, well, Chinese sentiment is still very anti-Japan because of that and all the other atrocities. And proportionally to size/population, the destruction visited on Gaza in the past year and a quarter goes far beyond what Japan did in China.
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I believe the reason was that the Nazis were forced to repent due to the Allied occupation. They also had to pay billions in reparations to Jews affected by the Holocaust. If that hadn't happened and the NSDAP had been allowed to continue to dominate German politics, I bet millions of Jews who lost their loved ones in the Holocaust would seek revenge on the Germans. Similarly, if the Zionist regime were toppled and replaced with one that treated Palestinians as humans, rather than as animals, feelings of deep hatred would dissipate.
Did the residents of Dresden have to live in an open air prison for 75 years in a tiny corner of the city after they were bombed?
Oh because the a lot of the apparatchiks of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes were absorbed into the western countries (operation paperclip, unit 731 amnesties, ratlines => colonia dignidad, jakarta method masterminded by Nazis mindset in the CIA) and the remaining nazis were propped up by the allies in west germany to continue their reign after all the dust was settled after which they eventually and successfully absorbed east germany. Note; Germany was never denazified.
Ok now a double honest question, why do zionists have unlimited justifications for committing a holocaust over the last 15 months+? And how many oceans of Palestinian children's blood does it take to wash away German guilt?
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Fascinating! Now imagine how offensive it is to normal people for zionists to actually commit a holocaust and make unlimited justifications for it while crying victim!
This is exactly what the Nazis did, they tried to justify the mass industrial slaughter of the whole by claiming to be attacked unprovoked by a subset of uprisers and making antisemetic justifications while crying about bankers. Gas and Cry is what the Nazis did. Main difference is that now flying demons vaporize children into a thin instead with 2000lb American bombs.
Just as Nazis don't get to reductively define nazism (as simply the right to an Ubermensch Lebensraum) after 15 years of atrocities and 1 holocaust, zionists do not get to reductively define zionism (as simply the the right to a Jubermensch Lebensraum) [I'm impressed that you've reduced it even more as merely "the right for Jews to exist", nice try] after 76 years of atrocities and 1 holocaust. Both are defined by their victims!
All these narrative traps do not work anymore. There is no justification for committing a holocaust. Not now. Not then. Not ever. No matter claims as to who controls what, no matter why rose up against whom, no matter whose religion says what.
Truly embarrassing for humanity that that has to be said.
And speaking of a ratio to 300:1, that is the death ratio that Israel has exacted upon the population of Gaza per Lancet. Surprisingly that ratio did not apply to the Germans, as per demonic Israeli calculator there are currently 1.8bn (300 * 6m) too many Germans alive today. Quite forgiving to the Germans for some reason (see: Otto Skorzeny).
Realistically, West Bank will be gone (totally settled, all Palestinians removed) in 15 years. Gaza will further be ghettoized and, pessimistically, will be basically gone in 50 years or so.
That's indeed the current trajectory, but then what exactly will happen with the Palestinian population in that scenario? All 5+ million crammed into Gaza? Driven into Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan by force? (which are already refusing to take them today, by threat of military action) What else?
It was always about ethnic cleansing. Either they get away with it or somebody stops them.
That's not realistic at all. Israel has no apparent plans to settle the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank like Nablus, Ramallah etc. and evict Palestinians from there.
Indeed, life will probably continue getting worse for West Bank Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime, but there's no reason to believe they'll be literally exterminated.
Haven't you seen and heard from the zionist figures about how they are now claiming that Lebanon and parts of Saudi Arabia are theirs?
Gaza has been leveled for the most part.
The only thing left is allowing developers to build on the land and setting up checkpoints to keep the previous owners out.
I don't know why this is downvoted. Do people not realize Gaza was razed to the ground?
If Israeli goals really were to displace Palestinians, maybe they'd start within Israel proper first?
A subtle comment, which may be misunderstood.
The point is that they are NOT starting with Israel proper first, where Arabs are and have been citizens for a long time. Palestinians have been elected to the Israeli parliament, and there is an Arab Justice on the Israeli Supreme Court.
Are you being facetious? If you are, that's awesome and hilarious.
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That is not likely to happen. Arabs with Israeli citizenship (who may or may not identify as “Palestinian”) are only like 20% of the population. Palestinians without Israeli citizenship are not allowed to live in Israel except in some edge cases like people in East Jerusalem which was annexed.
Israel is never going to annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give the people there full citizenship rights, instead they will continue carving up the WB with Jewish-only settlements that are in practice part of Israel but not officially annexed and which Palestinians are not allowed to live in.
Gaza is completely unlivable and more Palestinians can be "persuaded" to move abroad now that they literally have no infrastructure to survive.
It's a telling statement about the militant nature of Gazans that not even religiously-aligned neighbouring countries will accept them as immigrants.
They neighboring countries are allowed sovereignty by the west with the condition that they do what Israel tells them to do
This doesn't make sense on multiple levels. First of all, why wouldn't Israel want Gazans to go away? All of them somehow moving to Egypt or Syria might in fact be the dream outcome for Israel.
As it stands, the track record of Gazans avoiding "oppression" by joining their co-religionists is being kicked out of Jordan for being a disruptive influence, and then playing the main role in turning Lebanon into a failed state. No wonder Egypt doesn't want them!
Given that many Gazans do migrate individually, it might even get worse with time - the more capable and less political a Gazan is, the more likely they would be to migrate away, leading to a vicious cycle on the margins
No country wants them.
The problem is unsolvable. You have two sets of people with sets of claims on the same land. Both sides have an unshakable resolve that they are in the right and nothing is going to change that.
No, it is solved by ethnic cleansing or by prevention of ethnic cleansing.
The former solves the problem but isn't really on the table. The later doesn't settle the question. Both sides would have to come up with a mutually agreeable solution and that isn't on the table.
Why assume the solution has to be agreed upon by the two parties? Peace can be imposed by the adults in the room.
Gaza has changed.
Quite literally.
In genuinely morbid moment of being nerd snipped… I wonder if the ordinance dropped per square meter on Gaza is higher than the ordinance dropped be square meter on Vietnam… which was famously bombed so hard that detailed maps needed to be updated in order to accommodate how heavily cratered parts of the country were with heavily cratered hills and slopes literally shifting like a form of mechanical erosion by bombing.
Vietnam has an area of 331,000 square km. America dropped over 5 million tonnes of bombs on it over a ten year period.
That's 1.51 tonnes/km2/year.
Gaza has an area of 365 square km. Israel dropped over 85,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on it over one year [0].
That's 232.88 tonnes/km2/year. Over 150x more.
Don't forget! Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world - about 50 times more densely populated than 1970 Vietnam. 50% of whom are children.
So, Israel dropped 150x the bombs per year on Gaza, an area 50x more densely populated. Proportionally, Israel's bombardment is 7,500 times worse than Vietnam, on an area that's fully half children.
This last year has delegitimized the West's claims to any moral high ground, ever, far, far more than we yet realize.
0 - https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241107-israel-dropped-ov...
Precision bombing today vs carpet bombing to try to hit a target.
A lot more Palestinians learned not to attack Israel though.
If they try October 7 style attack again, Gaza will be wiped out.
nothing this is the life of pawns has been will continue to be until humans evolve which won't be until eons from now
This Land Is Mine by Nina Paley.
This made me chuckle thank you :)
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Hamas + PIJ had a fighting force of ~45 000 at the beginning of the war.
They chose to fight it in a heavily urbanized area AMONG CIVILIANS. What human outcome would you expect out of the situation ?
Estimates of Hamas membership originating from Israeli state sources should be taken with a grain of salt.
I expect the Israeli regime's blood thirst to be counter-balanced by the desire to free hostages, but apparently not. I don't think bombing hospitals and refugee camps serve any military purpose.
In normal circumstances it doesn't. But Hamas had no shame using non-military sites as cover for military operations. Dead children is the fuel that powered Hamas's international support.
And trust me, these guys just tell themselves those children will be blessed by Allah as martyrs, no biggie.
~20k civilians dead in this war (started by the Palestinians, all civilians were collateral damage thanks to Palestinian militants using civilians as shields) vs 12 million killed in Nazi camps. Maybe you shouldn't diminish far greater horrors in order to attack Israel.
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>colonial apartheid character
How does this square with the Palestinians inside Israel with citizenship having the same rights as Jewish Israeli ones? Execution issues and favoritism of the ethnostate majority aside.
They don't have the same rights. Can their relatives gain citizenship? No, that's reserved for Jewish Israelis. There are many such laws.
Separate but "equal".
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Assad fell as a result of Israeli actions. Leadership of the entire axis of resistance is dead. Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank learned what the price will be for “FAFO”. Gazan citizens have started to have a negative sentiment in Hamas, but do not express it given they and their families will be killed
Don't think I'm taking sides. I'm trying to simply look at it from a neutral bird point of view.
I think this cease fire somehow legitimises, to the public eye, Netanyahu's strategy of intense attack.
It gives the message of "we won't stop until we get the hostages back" and gives the world a reminder of what this is all about, at least according to what he claims.
Again, just trying to observe the message
It was never about the hostages. They used the Hannibal directive on 10/7
false. Hannibal directive has nothing to do with hostages
> false. Hannibal directive has nothing to do with hostages
Weird, The IDF says it's indeed about kidnapped hostages: [1]
> the General Staff Directive for Contending with Kidnapping Attempts (also known as the "Hannibal" Directive) was initiated, meaning a number of actions necessary to locate and rescue kidnapped soldiers were put into effect.
Why would you even try to lie about its purpose when it's well known and documented?
[1] https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/military-advocate-general-s...
[2] Origin of Hannibal directive by Haaretz: http://archive.today/romMZ
I still remember the other time when rumor spread there was a ceasefire. Gaza streets were celebrating.
Bibi did not force the Palestinians into a ceasefire. He was the bottleneck behind it. Trump effectively threatened no more weapons. Which is why we have a ceasefire.
Yes, eventually. I have tears in my eyes. Enduring more than a year with a preposterous populist government and endless deaths, this nightmare is finally over.
100% support ceasefire. 100% agree Israel overdid it. 100% support Hamas must cease to exist. Don't leave that last part out
Whatever you think of Hamas, a blockade and/or occupation will result in militant resistance groups.
In every single example of human history without a single exception.
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What is different from Hamas right to exist compared to the IDF or Likud? Hamas certainly has less blood on their hands!
Especially since Netanyahu was trying to revive Hamas prior to Hamas's attack, in order to starve off Fatah's Palestinian recognition efforts at the UN, according to the New York Times ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... )
Turn on Israeli TV and they're showing the IDF raping prisoners in Sde Teiman. Degenerate behavior from the self-described Jewish state. The US taxpayer is paying the bills for all this bloodshed.
And at the same time Netanyahu was holding up maps of all of historical Palestine colored in and labelled as Israel. Clearly trying to provoke things
>IDF or Likud
The IDF and Likud does not have a policy of attacking civilians to achieve political or war goals.
They likely have some deranged and radicalized commanders who do this anyway, but it's not the organizational policy.
“This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.“ (* deleted tweet by Netanyahu)
https://web.archive.org/web/20231017165958/https://twitter.c...
Top-down messaging like that certainly doesn’t strengthen whatever ‘policy’ is
They spent a year bombing an inhabited city into rubble, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Whatever definition of "policy" you're using here isn't particularly useful I don't think.
The IDF and Likud literally just killed orders of magnitude more civilians than Hamas in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
I know you are being downvoted (not by me). This is a good question, if all the context and history is removed, and we are only looking at who killed more.
I am trying to respond in good faith, but it looks like Hamas is accepted across the world as a terrorist organization for specifically targeting civilians. And as much as I loathe the loss of civilian life at the hands of IDF, this is not a conventional war, and Hamas hiding within civilian populations and tunneling under hospitals is on Hamas and not on IDF. Like it happened in history a million times, Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.
So, that's why Hamas must cease to exist. Not Palestine itself, nor another government in Palestine - just Hamas. They could've stopped it, they didn't.
Let me know when IDF/Likud behave like this unprovoked (Yes, I know what's going on in West bank and its not remotely close to what Hamas did)
> Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.
And then Israel would keep occupying more and more land, control their water, electricity, treat Palestinian people like sub-humans, occasionally shoot some children in the head, take palestinian hostages/prisoners without legal right (occasionally tortue and rape them).
What do you do then? Protest peacefully?
Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by the US, EU, and others. Their stated purpose is to destroy Israel, and their founding charter including language about killing all Jews. They started this war by massacring over a thousand civilians, injuring thousands more, and kidnapping hundreds. They killed people brutally - beheadings with dull tools, rapes, burning people alive. They also continued launching tens of thousands rockets at Israeli civilians for the duration of the war, though it was basically not reported. If Israel did not have the world's best rocket defense, there would be tens of thousands more dead Israeli civilians.
IDF is the military branch of an actual state. Likud is a political party. Neither advocate for indiscriminate killing of civilians (though some Likud politicians might, just like the US or any other nation has crazy politicians).
"Right to exist" is granted either through law or force. Hamas doesn't have law, doesn't exist within a functioning state, and is illegal by the laws of most nations. IDF isn't.
If you actually think there's a moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas, or that Hamas is somehow the moral group here, you really need to learn more. Stop consuming social media, stop reading things on the internet, go buy some books from a diverse array of sources, both pro-Israel and anti-Israel, and maybe you can gleam the truth out of there. It's not a guarantee, but it's your best shot.
I really think the TikTok age has amplified insanity where we actually have people asking, "Why does a military get to exist but not terrorists?".
For anyone who needs a reminder of how this war started (warning, extremely graphic / not suitable for life): https://www.hamas-massacre.net/
Hamas is a terrorist, Islamist organization with the explicit goal of genocide against Israelis: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/ha...
The blood of the Palestinian civilians that Hamas waged war from behind is absolutely on Hamas's hands.
Hamas is not an "Islamist" organisation (I hate that word BTW, as it's an Israeli invention to demonise Muslims).
The article you linked to is pure propaganda - Hamas' charter changed a long, long time ago. OTOH, Israeli politicians literally say genocidal things on a near daily basis - it's a deeply sick society.
> The blood of the Palestinian civilians that Hamas waged war from behind is absolutely on Hamas's hands.
Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Thousands of Palestinians children are dead, and for every single one, Israel could have chosen not to kill them, and the decision to do so is on them.
I mean, realistically speaking, the IDF is a powerful force, while Hamas is not. Israel has the ability to completely take over Gaza, but Gaza does not have the ability to take over Israel. So, as macabre as it may be, Hamas' right to exist, technically speaking, is controlled by Israel.
(All of this assuming no outside intervention for 3rd-party nations or groups of nations, of course.)
And let's not forget that the IDF previously removed Jewish inhabitants from Gaza to appease Hamas. Totally unimaginable the other way around.
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That's not how dropping 2000lb American bombs from American F-35s by an Israeli flying vampires paid for by American tax dollars onto babies in refugee tents work.
The Nazi demons at Auschwitz also blamed their victims in between zyklon B top-up shifts.
I agree
The resistance will not cease to exist until the occupation ceases to exist. Don't leave that last part out
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>This was genocide
Please don't abuse this word. If Israel was conducing genocide there wouldn't be Arab Israelis, and the population of Gaza would not grow over time.
Ethnic cleansing and insufficient proportionality consideration, likely. Not genocide. The Israelis don't want to remove Palestinians from the face of the earth, they want political and physical safety for the Jews, and history has worked out such that they feel they need an Jewish-majority ethnostate.
> the population of Gaza would not grow over time
That has nothing to do with anything. If I steal from you, I steal from you, doesn't matter if you get more than I stole from elsewhere. By that logic, not even the Shoa would be a genocide. So how can people say this, and not even once, but over and over? It just means you're not even treating the charge seriously.
> The Israelis don't want to remove Palestinians from the face of the earth
It's nothing to do with "the Israelis". It's about the specific people and organizations espousing genocidal rhetoric and engaging in respective actions, such as starving off civilians. Whoever is guilty of that doesn't get to invoke all other Israelis as a blanket. Specific people are guilty of specific things. All Israelis want safety, but not all Israelis dance and sing "there are no schools in Gaza, because there are no kids in Gaza".
More importantly, wanting to wipe someone "off the face off the Earth" is not required to meet the standard of genocide, not even close. It might be required for the whole "Amalek" thing, but not for genocide.
Just take this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide
> 8,372 killed (Srebrenica)
> 25,609–33,071 Bosniaks and Croats killed (wider definition of genocide)
Not only are those "low" numbers compared to the survivors, not even in their wildest dreams would anyone ever claim the goal was to "wipe Croats off the face of the Earth".
Those who want to annex Palestine don't care if it's via ethnic cleansing or genocide, and made that clear in word and deed. There's no getting away from that.
This is not abuse of the word, complete success is not necessary for genocide to be an appropriate description.
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
This israeli scholar of genocide could see that just a few weeks into this escalation. Why can't you?
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Which countries are in is this non-aligned world?
Please be careful when using the word genocide
Gaza population: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1422981/gaza-total-popul...
Jews in before/after WW2 in Germany: 500k before, 200k after, 100k now. 6M European jews killed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany
What Palestinians went through in the last 15 months is grotesque and unforgivable, but their "elected government" could have completely avoided this.
>Please be careful when using the word genocide
I am using the term legally.
Genocide does not require success in exterminating the whole race. The holocaust was not successful, Bosnia wasnt successful, neither was Gaza. Roughly 7-10% of Gaza were killed, mostly women and children, and the intent to kill them because of their race was clear and well evidenced by South Africa.
Please, dont deny genocide -not the holocaust. Not the armenian genocide. Not the bosnian genocide. Not this either. It is disrespectful to every victim.
China gained even more from this genocidal spree & exercise in ignoring international law. BRICS got a new lease on life. And NDB is shaping up to be a legitimate competitor to the IMF.
Israel's actions in the last 75 years simply cannot be compared to genocide in any rational sense of the word. The number of Palestinians has been rising steadily for decades and life expectancy for Palestinians has been increasing as well. Israel has not killed two million or three million or five million Palestinians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_State_of_P...
Everything that happened since October 7th was avoidable. You can't expect to murder 1200 Israelis in this fashion and think nothing will happen. It would only invite more murders and more murders.
A slaughter might have been avoidable, but ethnic cleansing wasnt avoidable. It has persisted in the west bank for decades. Israel tried to dump all the Gazans in Congo. This was materially no different to when Hitler tried to dump all German jews in madagascar. For Israel this a racial problem, and whilst theyd prefer expulsion (like Hitler), theyre not above extermination (like Hitler) if the "dump them all in africa" project falls through.
Netanyahu is on record saying that he intended to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the Palestinians and never stop.
Israel will not give up on its ethnic cleansing dreams unless it is forced to . That may require the end of Israel - just as South African apartheid was ended once it lost support from racist western backers.
A side effect of this slaughter is that it has ripped off the mask of liberal, egalitarian Israel. The liberal, egalitarians in the west no longer support the country - only racists who believe that genocide is provokable still do.
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In in the modern age ethnostates are distasteful, why can't we all just get along etc, but the Jewish Israelis argue that history has shown they are not safe in other countries and need a state they have political control over.
So basically all Islamic states in the world as well?
IDF 100% should cease to exist as well. It's long overdue. I don't know how an organization can officially be labelled as genocidal and be allowed to continue functioning as they do
You're welcome to try, but I do not believe you will get far.
That's the thing with militaries. You kind of have to overpower them in order to get rid of them.
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It helps to have the backing of the US.
> officially be labelled as genocidal
By whom, legions of anti-American people on the internet?
by the International Court of Justice
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I don't mean to be pessimistic, but how sure are we its over? They're still bombing as we speak - and yea, I know the cease-fire doesn't come into effect sunday, but doesn't that signal something? Many times Israel has said something in these scenarios they've changed their minds. Cease-fire is not "peace," either. I think for some unfortunate people that survived this, the nightmare may just be beginning. I truly hope I am wrong. We live in dark times.
Unfortunately in the Middle East we aren’t used to peace, when I say the end of the killings I mean the scale of the killings will plummet, unfortunately this region will not see peace yet. This is by far too much for Netanyahu to backtrack, the next president of the USA already made promises that the deal is sealed, and Netanyahu spent the last 15 months telling his base that this kind of deal is not worth it, to go all of this way angering his base and putting his coalition in that risk for nothing will be very odd for me even for Netanyahu
How long before Hamas start shooting rockets indiscriminately into Israel again
That's the normal during peace periods, no? Hamas does what hamas does, IDF does what IDF does. Unless there's a permanent solution this conflict will keep getting active. Looking at the state of affairs, there will to be no end to occupation and apartheid from Israel. Feeble PA will not gain more political capital all of a sudden. Hamas made themselves a pariah with October 7 attacks. All parties will race to the bottom it seems. Palestinians and Israelis will keep suffering.
Have they stopped? Hamas and the other militias in Gaza fire rockets into Israel almost every day since the war started.
It'll take at least a few days to see if that stops.
They did yesterday https://www.tzevaadom.co.il/en/alerts/5292
How long before Israel occupies and annexes more Palestinian land again
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It was only hours before Israel broke the ceasefire repeatedly.
I recommend engaging in this thread with the caveat that HN is obviously a technology community, and Israel has one of the world's most engaged technology communities.
Well it seems everybody was cheering too early: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-16/ty-article-li...
This page says, "Error 403 Forbidden. Forbidden. Error 54113." What are you referring to?
I believe they where referring to this:
“Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last-minute concessions,” [Netanyahu’s] Office said. The statement said that the cabinet will not convene until Hamas has accepted all the terms of the agreement.”
Source: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-hamas-rene...
Mirrors: https://archive.ph/9m170, https://web.archive.org/web/20250116121511/https://www.i24ne...
Thank you very much! This is helpful!
Wow. Bibi claiming Hamas is not accepting the agreement. Typical
Israel bombing Gaza after the ceasefire deal. At least 81 people were killed and at least 188 people were injured. I don't know if those 81 deaths includes the 45 deaths Israel killed from another bombing shortly after the ceasefire was announced.
On Israel's side, Israel claimed Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement. I can't find any specifics.
Who would have thought?
How many square kilometers of land does Israel gain this time?
You are aware, I hope, that Israel pulled back from Gaza completely in 2005, and from Sinai in 1980?
It’s been growing smaller since 1973 (and never technically annexed any area it did temporarily take in a war)
That's not correct. Here is a map of how the West Bank settlements have grown over the years, from 1967 until 2024: https://apnews.com/a-look-at-how-settlements-have-grown-in-t...
You are aware, I hope, that Gaza is not in the West Bank?
The west bank has borders with Jordan and Israel.
Gaza has borders with Egypt and Israel.
Israel indeed never pulled from the West Bank, and sadly, it does let settlers live there. But it did not grow the taken area. And when Israel pulled from Gaza, it removed the settlers.
It absolutely grows the taken area in the west bank.
Is that true though, given that Israel informally takes over more and more of the West Bank? The settlers...
Yes, that is true that Israel pulled back from Gaza completely in 2005, removing its settlers in the process.
Gaza and the West Bank are distinct.
Israel never pulled back from the West Bank, but that part of the occupation is the same size as it was in 1967. The West Bank occupation did not grow smaller (nor did it grow larger - it's the same size). Sadly, Israel does let settlers settle there, but if an agreement is ever reached, they will likely be removed like those in Gaza.
At some point - if you let people settle and multiply for decades, it may just be too late. Impossible to remove unless you start using lethal force, which would impact politics and votes.
I don't think the Palestinians expelled from the West Bank by Israeli settlers agree with that
Can you find, on the map, an area which was not occupied by Israel in 1968, but was occupied on Oct 6 2023 (before the Hamas attack on Israel which prompted Israel's re-occupation of Gaza in 2023-2024?)
Some are being relocated inside the West Bank, which is horrible, heinous and possibly a war crime, but they remain within the (occupied since 1967) west bank.
And settler = occupant
Israel invaded Syria in 1967, stealing land, and they just pushed farther into Syria, stealing even more land. How is this growing smaller?
> growing smaller since 1973
Propaganda machine at work, I see.
Israel is clearing land in the West Bank to this day, even if they haven't "annexed" the land officially.
But hey, according to their own maps it's already part of Israel, so yeah, you're right:
Israel is occupying the West Bank in the same way that it did since 1967. That occupation did not grow larger (or smaller).
The policies are heinous, possibly war crimes.
But Israel did also occupy Sinai and Gaza, and no longer does (well, it didn't until 7-oct-2023, at which point, Gaza opened a full fledged war which prompted Israel to re-occupy Gaza)
It still occupies the West Bank, and may or may not continue to do so, may or may not annex it. Prediction is very hard, especially about the future.
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Can you show me, on the map, an area which was not occupied by Israel in 1968, but was occupied 6-oct-2023? Because I can show you the opposite.
Why did it take for the incoming arrival of a new US president (Trump) and for the existing president (Biden) to LOSE to get this ceasefire deal to happen when the first proposal was rejected? [0]
Of course it "needs to be take longer" since lots of money was made by government contractors in this war and why would it need to end earlier if Biden was throwing money on Israel instead of reaching a ceasefire deal much earlier with the first deal.
All would have been avoid had it not been for Biden's weak leadership which was shown on display in-front of the world for the last 4 years.
There is no denying or spinning that.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-mediators-sea...
EDIT: Of course no-one can begin to answer this question, since the answer is there was no reason to prolong this war.
Here's an idea - the entire world doesn't revolve around the US presidency.
Israel is hugely dependent on the US, though.
In most cases sure. But this specific conflict is probably the worst example you could have picked.
What a bizarre comment. We don't have a new US President until next week.
> We don't have a new US President until next week.
You do realize that this war happened under this existing president and since November, Trump will be the "new US President"? Both Hamas and Israel both also knew this.
Even with this existing president (Biden), only until he lost the election this deal was reached and it started under his term and he prolonged to fund and waste money on Israel in this war even when the first ceasefire deal was rejected with an excessive amount of lives lost.
So why wasn't this stopped earlier with the first deal? Why did Biden (the existing president) wait until the very end to reach a deal when the first was rejected?
Can you not answer the above instead of dodging the question(s)?
I credit Trump's pressure on Hamas - Hamas eventually softened a lot of their positions because they realized they had no choice.
And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel, this war could have ended a lot sooner if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender. Instead the message got diluted with support for Palestinians, which Hamas interpreted as support for themselves.
Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
Edit: I got a very quick -4 mod on this, I assume because people don't like to realize Trump is doing more for both Israel and the Palestinians than Biden, and the Democrats lost the election partly because of their lack of support for Israel.
> Did you hear a single call by any country for Hamas to surrender? I didn't.
US, UK, France, Germany, Italy in a joint message: https://it.usembassy.gov/joint-statement-on-israel/
Spain: https://www.politico.eu/article/pedro-sanchez-spain-humanita...
Italy, France, Germany ask for EU sanctions to force Hamas surrender: https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-france-germany-call-ad-h...
Secretary of State calls out other countries for not demanding Hamas to surrender: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/politics/blinken-israel-hamas...
You should expand your media diet.
Except for the Sec of State no other article is calling for a surrender.
The first one condemns the attacks two days after. The second one is "Humanitarian cease-fire", and condemning Hamas for attacks - Not a call to surrender. The third one is sanctions.
I'm not seeing the call to surrender in your links. I'm seeing sanctions. I think parent is asking for explicit calls that Hamas surrenders (i.e. lays down their arms and returns the hostages). Not a ceasefire, a surrender.
The first two links are just weak platitudes. The 3rd link is a year old and the sanctions never happened. The last one is just Blinken talking, not a serious demand.
So I maintain what I said.
They agreed to the same terms from last May, so where did the soften anything?
Looks more like the Iranian hostage situation when Carter lost against Reagan.
>if Hamas had realized that the entire world was pressuring them to surrender.
I guess you mean the entire western world. The rest doesn't care or doesn't Israel vs Hamas as good vs evil. Same with Russian vs Ukraine.
> so where did the soften anything?
That's not true. Hamas agreed to:
* Allow Israel to patrol the Philadelphi corridor.
* Allow Israel troops to remain in a buffer zone
* Provided an actual list of hostages which they refused originally
* Agreed to a temporary ceasefire with hopes of negotiated a permanent one (they wanted the whole thing in one shot).
Israel on the other hand changed nothing except possible the specifics of who would be released (Israel will releases murderers, which earlier they did not want to do).
* Trump's pressure on Israel.
Trump started posting Jeffrey D Sachs videos on Truth Social and the chosen people got Hamas (which the chosen people also largely control, by the way) to accept the deal.
> And I wish Biden had done a better job of supporting Israel
What a weird take. Without Biden's support of Israel this genocide would not have been possible. How do you mean it should have supported Israel more? Allow these psychopats to nuke Gaza?
What genocide? Since when is there a genocide? Do you mean when Hamas tried to genocide Jews?
And you think Hamas wanted to nuke Gaza? Do you mean Hamas wanted all this destruction of their country? What did they gain from that?
Biden should have told Hamas to surrender, he should have told Palestinians that their Hamas leadership is leading them to death and destruction, and if the Palestinians don't stop the US will get involved. Which is what Trump did, and now there's a ceasefire.
Hamas feeds off of Palestinians support, believing it's for them. They need to know that everyone wants them dead and destroyed. But that didn't happen till Trump. Biden was weak, and did very little helpful.
Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?
Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude. Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President.
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
Probably the most efficient way of creating multiple generations of anger and hate is letting a radical terrorist movement control 2 million people, which can completely mold the education curriculum and free to draft anyone to their quasi-army
So whatever it has done, it cannot possibly be worse than pre-war
> letting a radical terrorist movement control 2 million people, which can completely mold the education curriculum and free to draft anyone to their quasi-army
“Terrorist” groups Irgun, Haganah, Lehi all became part of Israeli government and army post 1948. Israel has mandatory military service for its citizens.
What could a radical terrorist organization possibily tell Gazans about what happened to their parents that sounds worse than the truth?
I'm not trying to say if it is better or worse. Perhaps a better phrasing is "Israel has solidified another 2 generations of hatred by how they prosecuted the war." Leveling a country, killing and maiming as many as they did, the indiscriminate nature and war crimes, these things worked against their stated goals in the long-term
This is the narrative that the extremists want to push, but it’s hardly the truth. Hamas was not some grassroots movement of frustrated Palestinians. It was an Iranian proxy force masterminded, funded, supplied, trained, and instructed by Iran.
There are certainly many angry Palestinians before and after but this is foreign meddling through and through. Hamas would not exist in this form and have done the things that it did otherwise.
They already hated Israel. So much that they attacked them and started this war in the first place. I doubt Israel is any worse off in terms of being hated than they were before the war.
Hamas is not a rational actor. Their stated goal is to destroy Israel and kill every Jew. That's it. There is no scenario in which they are going to stop hating Israel. They don't care if every Palestinian also gets killed, if they get to destroy Israel it's worth it to them.
There are multiple generations of hate in the West Bank as well. Israel isn't threaten by them as much as they have much more difficulty accumulating weapons.
Are the Palestinians in the West Bank supposed to love their armed illegal settler neighbors?
It feels like almost ever day that I see a video of a Palestinian's home in the West Bank being demolished or a Palestinian family being harassed by armed settlers
> Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves
Israel would have created multiple generations of emboldened anger and hate against themselves if they failed to respond to the massacre and mass kidnapping.
In 50 years there will be no Palestine :c
I don't understand how is this different to all wars? back then when the Nazis started the war and we had to declare war against them. Or when we nuked 2 cities of Japan, were we also afraid that we will create multiple generations of anger and hate? how is this different?
I'm not comparing Israel or Palestine to Nazi, it's just a bitter fact that war always create anger and hate. Something had to be done though?
After WW2, (west) Germany was given massive support. We helped to rebuild the country. Same for Japan.
Will we (and/or Israel) do the same for Gaza? What about Lebanon and Syria?
We certainly failed at this in Iraq and Afghanistan, did we learn any lessons? Will the incoming US Administration fumble this opportunity?
As Stephen Kotkin likes to say "You can win the war and lose the peace. You can also lose the war and win the peace"
What comes after the war is as important, maybe more so, than the war itself
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OK, but it's not exactly like the population there had any choice, or even any way before the war to improve their circumstances of living.
Also, reminder that Smotrich, Ben Gvir and friends were already hard at work taking over the west bank before Hamas did Oct. 7.
Israel could have sidelined Hamas, boosted the PA and gave Gazans an actual alternative to the fundamentalist vision of Hamas. They did the exact opposite.
Which nation's constitution is built upon the annihilation of Israel?
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> Western media is also very anti-Israeli
Taking nothing away from your personal local experiences wherever you are, I don't think this is a generally true statement.
And yet there is the speech by Jordan's foreign minister who makes clear that the Arab states are interested in relations with Israel - as a normal state and as part of a two-state solution with mutual sovereignty, but not with a state that behaves as if they had some divine right to dominate the entire region.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-02/ty-article-opinio...
As usual, every accusation is a confession. Only Zionists can commit a genocide and simultaneously project their own crimes onto others.
Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
Press releases UN body, UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...
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You've got your history mixed up. It was the Christians who persecuted Jews throughout history, culminating in the holocaust by, guess who, Christians. Jews thrived under Muslim rule during the middle ages.
Perhaps weakened them from an equipment & infrastructure standpoint - along with the rest of Gaza - but not from a manpower standpoint: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-14/blinken-s...
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
The difference being that the new manpower has zero experience, is mostly kids and has no leadership. They reverted from a terrorist army, to an unorganized guerilla
Sure, but they are at least motivated; anyone would be after witnessing their family, friends, or neighbors being wiped out by “precision” bombing.
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Isis was never a legitimate independence movement. It was an expansionist terrorist group built on - quite literally - terror and anarchy. It worked for a while because the conditions were suitable in Syria and Iraq.
A true anti-colonial, independence movement does not die that easily. Across history, freedom & returning to one’s land are the greatest motivators of all.
Not only is Hamas weakened, Hamas' and Iran's supporter (China, Russia) has been severely weakened compared to the start of the conflict. Russia is in a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, and has lost significant economic and military resources since. Russia also lost significant influence in Middle East, with the Assad regime fall. China is a severe economic decline. Also, China distanced itself from Iran, most likely due to wanting to not get sanctioned by US and Europe. https://thediplomat.com/2024/11/china-is-recalculating-its-m....
> During all of this, Assad was deposed.
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
Good points there. Still not sure how much the ouster of Assad was connected with the war (though no doubt that the weakening of Hezbollah must have contributed a lot to it) but it definitely changed the playing field.
It was 100% driven by the weakness in Hezbollah and Russia and Iran. There’s no doubt.
> Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
That's not actually true. First Israel didn't fund them, they allowed others to fund them, second the Hamas back then was not the terrorists of today, they changed.
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> According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
You're literally doing revisionist history right now.
The monsters are still there and already planning their next attempt in genocide. While the hostages coming back is a welcome news, none of war objectives were achieved. All the sacrifices were pointless if Israel exits Gaza and leaves Hamas in control (weakened is but still in control). Netanyahu again showed that he is a coward and easily pressured and has a pathological fear of a conflict. With thousands of monsters being released back into Gaza I fear the next 7 October will be worse.
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What was Oct 7th retaliation to, exactly?
It's a mystery: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/16516.jpeg
None of this started on Oct 7th, the inciting incident was the founding of Israel itself on top of an existing state with an existing population who were violently expelled to make way. Everything else is just ongoing fallout from that.
April 2023
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Al-Aqsa_clashes
October 6th, 2023
Statement by UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland on Attack by Israeli Settlers in Huwwara
“I condemn today’s attack by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property in the town of Huwara in occupied West Bank,” said UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, in a statement.
“I'm outraged by the continued incitement, provocations, and lack of accountability for these violent crimes,” he added, stressing that “Israel must ensure that the civilian population is protected, and perpetrators are held to account.”
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/statement-by-un-special-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%8...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israel...
>What was Oct 7th retaliation to, exactly?
I would say 75+ years of Zionist terrorism[1][2][3], ethnic-cleansing, apartheid, being locked up in a concentration camp. I mean you could have looked those up yourself but something tells me you just didn't care to look it up.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_extremist_terrorism
It really depends what people have to lose. If they're left without families, place to live, purpose in life other than revenge... what exactly could be "even worse" at that point?
The framing here is pretty ridiculous. Israel definitely punches back much harder than Hamas, but comparing October 7th to a punch and Israel's response to running over babies with a bulldozer is absurd.
Hamas blatantly escalated the conflict by a large margin, there's no denying that. You can't cry over your adversary's response when you do something like that, I'm sorry. Next time keep your hands to yourself, or perhaps just continue throwing rockets at civilians: Israel seems to be willing to tolerate that.
By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
> If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed
This take is incredibly callous. Suppose 8% of everyone you gets killed. This is a shockingly brutal thing to happen to a population. Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so people don't say "there's still Jews left so technically the Holocaust wasn't a genocide". The holocaust was a genocide, and this is a genocide (yes, "is", they're still dropping bombs on a population half of which is under 18). There's a reason the relevant cases haven't been thrown out of the ICJ and ICC.
But genocidal people are callous! I'm not being callous towards the people living through this. You don't need to convince me it's horrible.
But put yourself in the shoes of a hypothetical evil genocidal person. Assume 8% of Gaza was killed (though this figure is wrong). Having Gaza at it's 2020 population is negligible to them. They were hoping to murder everyone and reclaim their holy land or something and instead (purely from a population standpoint) they're basically just back to the status quo after the truce. Even most Nazis would say they ultimately failed in their genocidal ambitions and they killed two thirds of the Jews in Europe and 90% in Poland.
Second, 8% of Gaza hasn't been killed. By the Gaza health ministry's estimate, about 2% have been killed. Your source arrived at 8% literally by just quadrupling the number without any basis in data from Gaza. This is out of line with all the estimates from Gaza.
> Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so...
I'm aware and I didn't say anything factually wrong. Killing just part of a people doesn't legally exempt it from being genocide. But killing part of a people also doesn't imply genocide. Every war has killed part of a people. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars each killed far more people than the Gaza war, but neither is considered genocide.
If Israel were acting like the Nazis, there wouldn't be any Palestinians left in Gaza. They'd all be carpet bombed, shot on sight, or sent to forced labor camps. There's a world of difference between the two.
Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.
That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.
Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia.
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
[Reposting a comment from ChocolateGod that was flagged and made dead despite being a legitimate good faith question]
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
> Christians are already being persecuted.
Do you have a source for that?
BBC News - Protests in Syria over Christmas tree burning https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27yx1y0deo
The strengthening of the "us Vs them" mentality and terror politics
Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.
If neither side has really changed what's to prevent them from going to war again?
It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
Hamas was built over a long period by Iran, through Syria. Iran is much weaker than before, Syria is no longer a route to send supplies, and Hezbollah has been gutted.
Hamas was for the vast majority of its existence anti-Iran, and instead was supported by various Sunni groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Extrapolating convenient conclusions doesn't help anyone.
Concretely, Israel will not be caught offguard for an Oct 7-style attack for quite a while. So the macguffin (hundreds of hostages) will probably not come up again.
The Europeans should have stayed in Europe.
Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly.
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
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Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
If Israel wanted Gaza, they wouldn’t have given it up twenty years ago.
Israeli leadership in 2006 gave up Gaza and forcefully evicted thousands of Jewish people in what was supposed to be an exchange for peace. That was supposed to be the end of the rockets and the attacks.
In case you are not aware, the exact opposite happened.
To be clear, we very much do want Gaza. We had homes there. and we have Jewish roots there going back long before the time of today’s Palestinian colonists.
Above all of that though, is that we want peace. And so if we have to be patient for a time when we can peacefully live in Gaza again, we will be patient.
In the meantime, the most important thing is the safe return of loved ones who were taken hostage on October 7th (and before!) and safety for those living in rocket’s range of Gaza.
My understanding is that there's been renewed interest in building the Ben Gurion Canal proposed by Howard D. MacCabee in 1963.
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf
Google's Ngram viewer isn't working for the term "Ben Gurion Canal" for some reason, but it would show approximately when renewed interest started getting traction since the proposal was declassified in 1996.
I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 Evergreen fiasco was contributory to this renewed interest but this is pure speculation on my part.
> being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
This is not in dispute. None of what I initially posted is in dispute.
I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained.
Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
Part of me thinks a Peacekeeping Force (e.g. UN, EU etc) should go into Gaza to control it until a government is formed and stop Hamas from taking back control but I don't see the US not blocking it.
Timeline is very fascinating will be curious to see if eastern europe will follow suit
Isn't it better for Russia to wait till Trump?
I wonder why I haven't read yet here: a "two states for two people" which which summarizes a real ending to the conflict.
Hamas just changed the terms of the deal, demanding the release of hardened terrorists. The deal will now likely fall apart. They are a terrorist organization, and behave as such. This “deal” is just another avenue to wage psychological warfare, in their view. The war in Gaza will likely continue.
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> Trump's Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was in Qatar along with White House envoys for the talks, and a senior Biden administration official said Witkoff's presence was critical to reaching a deal after 96 hours of intense negotiations.
Better than Jared Kushner I guess
Sure, because the new guy is famous for not honoring any agreements so it’s critical to have his envoy around to ensure that he isn’t going to do the same to this one.
Great news. Let's see how many days it holds this time around.
How is this hacker news? From the HN guidelines:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. *If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.*
There are exceptions to the rules, like US election results or the end of major wars
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42614703.
Really major political developments often have a thread on HN.
From the same page of guidelines:
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
Yeah, the irony is the guidelines have weasel words allowing this post but not the comment
We should always celebrate peaceful interactions over violent ones.
It is news because several newspapers credit the achievement to Trump and his envoy Witkoff. Ha'aretz has more on this, but it's paywalled so here is another one:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/with-epic-deal-...
This is not just Trump bragging and taking credit, search other sources.
US foreign policy does not actually change when the administration does.
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but multiple sources are agreeing on the fact that Trump’s team had a role to play in this. But I guess this upsets the “vote blue no matter who” crowd.
> This is not just Trump bragging and taking credit, search other sources.
This claim is not justified by the link you provide. What evidence do you have to support it?
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I'd guess because of the word "Most" in that line of the guidelines?
> Negotiations on implementing the second phase of the deal will begin by the 16th day of phase one, and this stage was expected to include the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Am I missing something or did they really only agree to _just_ a ceasefire?
You're not missing anything, this is a ceasefire like the first one, Israel will demand the rest of the Hostages at the end of it, Hamas will refuse, and the fighting will resume after lots of finger-pointing about whose fault it is.
Everyone is tired of this shit. Bibi will be on meathooks if he unilaterally backs out. Hamas will have no friends at all if they renege.
Hamas did not lose any friends the last few times they reneged. I think both sides agree this peace will just last until Hamas can rearm, but I just think both sides agree that's as good a deal as either is getting.
> the last few
There have been over 10 “ceasefires” that ended with Hamas firing rockets into Israel, in the last 20 years.
Iran wasn't on the brink of a nuclear bomb. Gulf states had infinite money to waste, now oil prices have peaked as the world decarbonizes. None of the traditional friends have the time or energy for their noise, if they cause major problems.
The headline reports the net result, however the real story here is Trump's man Steven Witkoff laying down the rules of this particular game to the Israelis.
I have never seen so many downvoted comments that aren’t dead in a thread before. If anyone had examples of other threads of this ilk I’d be curious to see them.
I’m completely ignorant as to the public sentiment on this topic, no social media besides this site.
A system that sides with the majority is not very good at protecting the voices of a minority.
Given the sheer global size of one group vs the other tiny ethnical minority it’s no surprise who wins in a count of opinion votes. That applies in the UN, and it applies here. And is ironically the reason the ethnic minority must have self determination.
> I have never seen so many downvoted comments
Must be those pesky chinese or russian bots. Or could it be something else entirely? A chosen group of bots perhaps?
> that aren’t dead in a thread before.
Give it some time. They start with the downvotes and when things quiet down some, then come the mass flagging of comments.
honestly, one thing I like about this conflict is that euphamistic comments like this don't get you banned anymore.
the ostracizing has been diluted so much that its become even counterproductive. everyone can laugh about something as benign as that, as the real frictions have been laid bare for all to see.
> honestly, one thing I like about this conflict is that euphamistic comments like this don't get you banned anymore.
What? It's more likely to get you banned. Not only that, it gets minority and female college presidents fired. Something unthinkable prior to this "conflict".
All one can do is push back against the propaganda and censorship.
You will see it in any thread about Israel or Jews. Tons of flagged and downvoted posts. I emailed hn about it.
Unlike those highly motivated people, normal people don't spend time upvoting and vouching, so you end up with a tattered mess of a thread.
> or Jews
Any example of this that isn't Israel related?
Astroturfing
Many people believe they need to add support to their cause at the expense of accuracy, so instead of elaborating or explaining why they just try to drown out discourse that doesnt automatically help them
But fortunately there is no need to debate your beliefs anymore, just go bet on them in the prediction markets
You get paid for being more correct that someone else, geopolitics is greater than sentiment
Sooo, now we can get the process of extracting Netanyahu and his gang out of Israel rolling and handing him over to the international criminal court ... right?
I suggest looking up the dictionary definitions of the words "war" and "genocide" and seriously considering which of the two is more appropriate for this situation.
Good. Next, Ukraine and Russia.
Unlikely, unless one of the combatants has a major economic collapse. Which, I mean, pulling support from Ukraine would do it, but personally I don't consider that an acceptable outcome.
Unlikely. Having Russia bleed itself out like a stuck pig impaling itself on Ukraine is simply too beneficial for its geopolitical rivals.
Ukraine won't end until terms can be achieved that allow bankers and Western investors to buy up all the "distressed assets" in the Ukraine for pennies on the dollar just like the oligarchs bought up all of the major industries following the collapse of the USSR.
If you've never seen it, these videos from a banking conference in 2023 are "enlightening":
https://x.com/mtracey/status/1647811834039136258
Mitch McConnell's comments about Ukraine and it's natural resources also support this plan. If assets become to expensive to buy, just cause them to be distressed so you can buy them cheaply.
Pretty much all wars are banker's wars.
I have a friend living in Ukraine - they are trying to get out because Foreign Aid is likely to dry up and Ukraine annexed :c
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This is essentially how Turkiye continues to describe the Armenian Genocide to this day. "A) there was a war going on, people sometimes die in wars whoops it's tragic" and "B) the situation is very complex and nuanced and any narrative but our chosen one is too simplistic". It sounds pretty familiar doesn't it?
https://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-armenian-allegation-of-genocide-t...
Erdogan is a war criminal too. And I’m sure the ones before him were not much more enlightened about this issue. I wonder what Ataturk thought about the Armenian genocide. I will google that to get educated on what he thought because he is about the only leader in Turkey’s history including Ottoman history that deserves respect.
>And I’m sure the ones before him were not much more enlightened about this issue.
They weren't. Ataturk was literally part of the secular CUP movement which committed the genocide. That secular party also known as the "Young Turks" did not see themselves as Ottomans but Turks only. Atatürk needed international legitimacy for the new Turkish Republic that's why he tried to distance himself from the CUP leadership although he was part of the military-political establishment that enabled the CUP's rise.
While not directly involved in the genocide, he was part of the system that allowed it. His later condemnations of CUP leaders came when their policies had been thoroughly discredited. Part of Ataturk's "modernization" efforts included suppressing discussion of the genocide. The official Turkish position of genocide denial was essentially established during his rule.
Ataturk tried to whitewash the "Young Turks" and give them a "fresh start" by propagating a false narrative that blamed the crimes on the "Ottoman identity" so their "new identity" of "pure Turk" has a clean slate because Atatürk needed international legitimacy for the new Turkish Republic.
Wow thank u for this. Ottoman history is part of my history. May my paternal grandfather was in the same army class as Ataturk and some point one of my cousins had a letter addressed to him from Ataturk sent to all his former classmates calling to join the rebellion and my grandfather refused saying he was loyal to the state. We come from an old Ottoman tribe that settled in Kirkuk (now Kurdistan) and my grandfather was then guven land in Babel (Babylon) where my dad was born. Long painful and very interesting history. My dad’s maternal grandfather protected the Jews from pogoms in the 1940s under British rule (paid for police protection for entire neighbourhoods) and remembered by history, including surprisingly as corroborated by ChatGPT.
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You cannot seriously think that Hamas did not try to kill people on Oct 7th. Flagged.
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This is what the Nazis also accused "The Jews" of doing amongst other anti semitic nonesense, they convinced themselves of these crimes by a subset of the Jewish population and decided to punish the whole with industrial mass slaughter. The main difference is the majority of The Nazi Holocaust was uncovered in Nuremberg and it shocked the conscience of the west, whereas the holocaust of Gaza has been live-streamed and we've had to suffer unlimited justifications for it from Israel's supporters.
The thing about genocide and holocaust is there's no justifications for it. Ever. No matter how much Goebbels or AIPAC or the ADL try to create one out of the ether.
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The last ceasefire and hostage exchange was broken by Hamas when they didn’t want to return the hostage that was agreed on by the ceasefire agreement
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Look, you may fool peoe with your “all Palestinians are terrorists” rhetoric in zionist circles, but I would hope that most other people would be able to see through the propaganda.
Israel has imprisoned people in “administrative detention” with no legal recourse for decades, for all kinds of bullshit reasons. If my home was being taken by settlers, which happens in the West Bank on the daily, I would do more than just throw stones. And it would land me in jail as a “terrorist”.
So you're saying that palestinians are not terrorists, but if you were palestinian, you would become one. That's certainly a way to make a point, I guess.
So your argument is that, in order to not be a terrorist I would have to allow Israeli settlers to steal the homes of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank without fighting back. Yes, if you apply that definition, I would, in fact, be a terrorist.
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“Throwing stones kills” said the heavily armed settler laughing, leveling a rifle at my chest. Arabs never lived here. You are just a figment of history’s imagination, and must be expunged. The IDF soldiers standing around laughed as he pulled the trigger.
Almost on weekly basis there are terror attack of west-bank peaceful that are coordinate on civilians, last week 3 older women were murdered on daylight as "innocent west-bank 'peace makers'"...
The different is that one side defend against such evil and brutal attacks, and the other side is cinicly "allow" to conduct them. For a tech-person I hope you have more critical thinking ability to spot different.
I agree. In terms of objectives achieved the only one was the release and return of Israeli civilian hostages and even that is still mostly hypothetical, otherwise Israel failed to eliminate Hamas and will be withdrawing from Gaza which Netanyahu had declared would be annexed.
Hamas won the war even if they lost the battle. They still exist to fight another day (and judging from history they absolutely will), at the cost of countless Palestinian civvies. Israel lost the war even if they won the battle, at the cost of significant Israeli lives and reputation.
For most of us outsiders looking on, the moral to take away is this: Don't wage wars, everyone loses. Don't. Wage. Fucking. Wars. If a war must be fought, whether as the aggressor or defender or intervener, realize that everyone involved is fucking retarded and then fight all-or-nothing to end it swiftly with decisive achievements before anyone can realize what happened.
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Great - I hope this national liberation movement pushes back the neo-colonial invaders.
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Hamas could have stopped it at any time by releasing the hostages. Or they could have just not taken the hostages in the first place.
“only you can stop us from bombing civilians”
-country bombing said civilians
Who did Hamas target on October 7? Remind me again? Was that a military music festival they attacked?
Hamas hides behind civilians. They don't care about Palestinian lives. The Palestinians apparently don't care since they let Hamas hide behind them and let them remain in power. So, why are we supposed to care?
because Israel is suppose to be a Western style liberal democracy that has things like respect for human rights, not committing war crimes, and other standards that are above a terrorist group like Hamas
> No country in the 20th century has survived carrying out a genocide.
Turkey and Rwanda still exist.
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Hamas agreed to this deal months ago. Give Trump credit for applying pressure to the party that actually rejected it.
That's not true. Hamas finally agreed to let Israel monitor the Philadelphi corridor and to keep a buffer zone.
Hamas also finally released an actual list with names of who they would release.
Those were the changes the made the deal. Israel did not change their position.
If you think you are right, then tell me: What did Hamas want that they didn't get before, than now because of Trump Israel agreed to? There's not a single thing, but I'll let you have a chance to find something.
*Genocide. It’s not a war.
As a dev, I hate jargon to dress up trivial products or when distressing things are watered down. Usually I keep my feelings to myself but in this case, allowing a genocide to be watered down would make me complicit.
P.S. I understand this will be downvoted. But HN karma is a small price to pay to call out the softening of a literal genocide. Imagine standing by when someone calls Germany’s genocide “punishments”.
45 000 deaths is genocide ? What's the civilian/military ratio ?
> 45 000 deaths is genocide ?
I’m confused by this question, is 45,000 too little for you? To label genocide you need a large number of of deaths with the intent of destroying a people’s identity.
> What’s the civilian/military ratio ?
If you’re able to find this number, you’re likely able to find that depending on whom you ask the percentage of militants ranges from 10-40%.
And this says nothing about the millions displaced, the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and the policies to starve the population. Given the vast amount of attention given to this topic and the information around it, you need to be make a conscious effort to stay ignorant of it. And to be wilfully ignorant of a genocide is to be complicit in it.
I suggest starting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
War? No, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians - not war.
Yeah right.
In other news: Israel strikes Gaza within hours of ceasefire accord with Hamas, residents say
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-cease...
The ceasefire is not in effect yet, according to the article that you linked.
I'm not at all surprised, they have form. Even now, they are still breaking the ceasefire in Lebanon too (they broke it within hours, of course) - and why wouldn't they, when the Israeli-controlled Lebanese army just lets them continue to destroy entire villages all along the border?
I hope the leaders of this genocide are brought to be accountable. Apartheid Israel have killed 10s of thousands, stole their land and dehumanised the Palestinian people; all supported by the so-called enlightened West (especially the US). This leaves a huge black spot on their morality.
It's unbelievable that Trump has managed to facilitate this before he even steps into office. It is a brutal display of power, but that is sometimes needed, just like when a parent needs to intervene in a conflict between children.
A meta level comment for dang, I’m upvoting every comment that is being gang-downvoted…independent of the position. This topic, with roots going back millennia, deserves to have all opinions captured and presented, if nothing more than as a snapshot/wave collapse of where the opposing sides sat in 2025.
Noting that, ceasefires are wonderful things.
It's not just gang-downvoting, I've seen perfectly reasonable and civil comments being flagged for no apparent reason.
I remain convinced that HN is simply not the place to have a reasoned discussion about this conflict, and probably nowhere on the internet is.
No platform that simply sides with the majority is a good place for reasoning about a conflict that pits 0.2% of the world’s population against 25%, and that includes UN resolutions.
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>Noting that, ceasefires are wonderful things.
Rest, and re-arm time.
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Yet Israel is still bombing Palestinians.
I welcome this ceasefire with caution. Israel are still currently bombing Gazan homes and the death toll is still growing. There is always a risk it is temporary for further tactical gain.
A poll showed 60% of Israelis wanted a ceasefire but the 40% who want the war to continue are making a big noise. Violence was never going to take down a resistance group, we all knew this.
I don’t think there can be a future with Hamas in charge. Only a peace deal will will secure safety for both sides. But this negotiation between Hamas dismantling and a two-state solution is not the rhetoric coming out of Israel.
Only sanctions will gain a two-state solution and actual peace for Israel and Palestine.
> Israel are still currently bombing Gazan homes
And Gaza are still currently launching missiles at Israel.
> And Gaza are still currently launching missiles at Israel.
Sources please?
read news, lol
> read news, lol
I did. There was no reports on anything like that in the past few days. That's why I'm asking, what's there to LOL about? Or was the comment a joke that they can't fire or something? I'm confused
The comment claimed that missiles were still being launched from Gaza. Here's a google search to help you check for yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=Israel+hamas+"rockets"+"miss...
Either the news aren't mentioning some major attack or you are lying through your teeth.
Time to pay the piper.
IMO Iran is the winner (least damaged) out of all this. Their proxies are smashed, but the core strength is still the same.
Israel has blown all its international credibility. The International Court of Justice verdict will be very interesting. If it goes against Israel then BDS will (should) become the policy for all countries.
Iran invested all its resources into proxies waging wars for it. Them being smashed means Iran is ruined on all those war investments. With economy in shambles and expansionist war failed, it's hardly "least damaged".
This is untrue on multiple levels. Iran invested most of its resources on its own military - the proxies are extremely cheap - and Iran's most powerful Iraqi proxies are fine, while the Houthis actually came out of this stronger.
Iran lost influence in Lebanon and Syria and these countries, for now at least, pose a much smaller threat to Israel. Perhaps we will even see normalizations in the nearer future.
Leaders in the middle east are also driven by their constituents, which still harbor a lot of resentment against Israel, but that will pass as well. I think this was the last chance of a significant insurgency to reorder powers in the middle east and Iran and its proxies lost a lot of influence.
Houthis have a strategic position and Yemen probably has one of the largest market for illegal weapons. But their capabilities are very limited and their raison d'être is a death cult with no future. At some point other Yemini forces will take charge.
For Israel it seems possible to strike through Iraq with some effort, and technically they are still at war after Iraq attacked Israel in . But that war is quite cold and there is some exchange at least with the Kurdish part of Iraq.
They aren't cheap, at that scale they required huge expenses. And the more they wanted to expand, they more expenses it meant. They overstretched in hopes of that paying off, and it all went crashing down.
The only upside for them now is that those expenses suddenly became unnecessary, but it's not going to stop them from trying to do it all over again.
They really don't. It's estimated Hezbollah cost around a billion dollars a year, probably less now due to the massive PPP multiplier increase.
The Iranian proxies are not actually fully on Iran's teat, they have their own revenue stream and direct Iranian funding is now only a small part of it.
who's the strongest proxies? i thought it was Hezbollah, who are now in shambles
By equipment and manpower, it's the proxy groups of the Iraqi PMF by a country mile, and apparently the Houthis are stronger than anyone expected.
Israel already violated multiple clear orders from the ICJ so I honestly don't see what mechanism would hold them accountable.
> Israel already violated multiple clear orders from the ICJ so I honestly don't see what mechanism would hold them accountable.
That is the point of BDS
After all it was scantions from the West that bought down the other apartheid regime in the 1990s
Iran has not escaped this war. Both the US and Israel have made strikes within the country
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/consequences-i... (from Nov) | https://www.understandingwar.org/publications?type%5B%5D=bac... (daily report history)
With other conflicts wrapping up, there are people expecting more attacks into Iran, especially by Israel. They are in a weakened state. Their missile attacks amounted to nothing. Much like Russia, they likely look better on paper than in practice. That being said, one nuke from them against Israel would be devastating, but also likely mean the end of the regime
This is one of those conflicts where there are no good guys. Both sides have way too many people who want to see the other side burn more than they want peace. For outsiders like me, not picking sides is the best course of action.
And yet, our support for one of side is the best military technology available and unlimited diplomatic protection - and for the other, humanitarian aid shipments that never arrive.
