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Genocide in the Gaza


Lord Raven
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I think you're reading into what I said a bit much. Saying that it is reoccuring is not saying that you shouldn't be angry about it or accept it, it's stating that it's nothing new and a systematic problem. Where the history and the reason it continues to happen may be important in progress for trying to stop it. If you would prefer I wrote emotionally about the subject, I can do that for you.

If you get "it's always been happening so therefore you shouldn't care about it" or something similar out of it then I honestly don't know. Regardless.

54 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

considering how entrenched it is universally, getting current leaders out of office. Except I don't think we will cycle out leaders fast enough. Progressive and young leaders in the US do not look the other way

I mean even this year is the most pushback on the narratives I've seen in a while.

I'm not going to say that isn't correct but don't you also feel that whenever progressives or such come out hard on the Israel issue, they are immediately tarred with the anti-semitic brush pretty effectively? You just need to look at the reaction to what Ilhan Omar said to see that first-hand.

Of course, the response to that was nonsense, but there is this perception that pervades in the US. I am optimistic that eventually perceptions will change but as long as the current old Democrats stay in the power position in the party, that isn't going to happen for a while. It's not just Israel. The US aligns itselfs with a lot of dictatorships.

Edited by Tryhard
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I’m pretty sure perceptions are changing now because there really was no precipitating incitement beforehand to justify the violence Israel is dishing out. There’s been some interesting mental gymnastics from supporters to try to justify it retroactively, but they’re ringing pretty hollow. Not every building is a Hamas hq.

Things change, even ancient problems.

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I'm more curious as to why it escalated so sharply.  I know Israel's going far off the deep end in terms of political spectrum, but would that be enough?

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42 minutes ago, eclipse said:

I'm more curious as to why it escalated so sharply.  I know Israel's going far off the deep end in terms of political spectrum, but would that be enough?

probably

just look at how our politics/country has transformed in the last four years. did you think the jan 6 insurrection was something on the horizon back in 2015/16?

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1 minute ago, Crysta said:

probably

just look at how our politics/country has transformed in the last four years. did you think the jan 6 insurrection was something on the horizon back in 2015/16?

Was in the back of my mind if Trump lost.  However, that's nowhere near the scale of literally going after the press.  That tends to be a very worrying sign when it comes to democracy, and this was a pretty blatant incident.

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Yeah they're not selling me on the AP = Hamas, either.

I still think that the government increasingly kowtowing to right wing elements is enough to make them feel emboldened enough to do this sort of thing, though.

Edited by Crysta
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2 hours ago, eclipse said:

I'm more curious as to why it escalated so sharply.  I know Israel's going far off the deep end in terms of political spectrum, but would that be enough?

I don't want to imply that everything revolves around America, but let's not forget that during the Trump presidency, America's foreign policy towards this conflict was basically a blank check of support for Israel, even if Israel was to completely take over all of Palestine remaining land. That would easily provide more motivation + evidence for both sides to dig deeper into their positions.

Also, thank you everyone who attempted to explain the situation on this forum. It was helpful. I've been spending this week studying up on this conflict to get a better understanding of this terrible conflict.

Edited by Clear World
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19 hours ago, Tryhard said:

So I guess I'll ask a question then: what do you think it would take for Western allies and the UN to stop overlooking Israeli war crimes?

Somewhere between the nukes dropping to overstaying their occupation of a neighboring country, kind of like what happened to Kuwait.

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On 5/15/2021 at 7:29 PM, Tryhard said:

'm not going to say that isn't correct but don't you also feel that whenever progressives or such come out hard on the Israel issue, they are immediately tarred with the anti-semitic brush pretty effectively? You just need to look at the reaction to what Ilhan Omar said to see that first-hand.

Yes. I am fully aware of this. I'm not an idiot.

This is the first time I've actually seen protests and consistent media pushback.

On 5/15/2021 at 7:29 PM, Tryhard said:

I think you're reading into what I said a bit much.

"making no attempt to not sound jaded" has been you for like the entire time I've known you. it really comes off a certain way and dismissive when you've been so consistent about it. Am I reading too much into that statement? Quite possibly. But I mean, when you've been so persistent in this regard, I'm really just expressing my annoyance. You can mind it or not, I really don't care.

I'm not asking you to be indignant. How could I possibly? I'm fairly certain you're some white guy and you don't feel an existential crisis anytime Islam's brought up on the news, even tangentially. And I mean this in the least dismissive way possible, since I know you know for a fact that I feel this way about the modern world.

But, there is a very sharp contrast in a lot of what's happening, and you always seem to push back on new ideas right off the bat instead of investigating or questioning. That's pretty much your MO as soon as you walk into any thread or discussion here.

And I mean, it's fairly obvious why at this point anyway:

Likud need a coalition. They need a coalition with the far right. What better way to get support from the Jewish equivalent of a Nazi party?

Edited by Lord Raven
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/15/2021 at 10:29 PM, eclipse said:

I'm more curious as to why it escalated so sharply.  I know Israel's going far off the deep end in terms of political spectrum, but would that be enough?

Here's the totality of the present circumstances, as I understand them. (take my 2 cents for whatever its worth)

There are two (2) obvious moves that need to be made to get to the presumably desirable outcome of a peaceful 2-state resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.

[On the Palestinian Side]:  The obvious move is that they need to get to a place where they accept that Israel exists and will continue to exist as a Jewish neighbor, self-police their own radicals and religious fanatics, stop electing Hamas to represent them, and renounce the Hamas Charter (i.e. 'Israel exists and continues to exist until Islam will annihilate it; all who leave the circle of conflict with zionism shall be cursed. The day of judgment will not come until the Muslim fights the Jew, killing the Jew.'

[On the Israeli Side]:  The obvious move is that they need to accept their legally defined UN borders is the Land of Israel. The territory they occupied after the 1967 war is The Land of Palestine. The Land of Palestine is not Israeli land to build upon or evict occupants from or populate with Jewish settlements. And the settlements constructed on the occupied land they've been holding since the 1967 war are illegal + must be abandoned and relinquished back to the Palestinians.

...now Israel presently perceives...correctly, imo...that regardless of what they do on their end, the Palestinians aren't anywhere close to making the move that they would need to make on their end...         

This perception is grounded in the fact that past Israeli Prime Ministers who have been good-faith stewards of the peace process have attempted to unilaterally evict Israeli settlers from Palestinian Land (i.e. Ariel Sharon) and make territorial concessions to Palestinian Statehood (i.e. Ehud Barak)

And it was never enough.

The Palestinians never recognized Israel or moved off their position of support for Hamas or committed to ending the 'Intifada.'

There are 2 schools of thought in Israel on how you engage with that reality.

The first school of thought says:

"Doesn't matter whether or not they're ready to make that move. We always want to be the peace-seeking party; as long as we're ready to make a move, that means we can have peace once they're ready. So to show that we're good faith partners in the peace process and that we want them to come to the table and we're ready when they are; let's NOT settle the post-1967 land. Leave returning it on the table. And keep communicating that when they're ready to make their peace, we're ready to endorse Palestinian Statehood. We're ready. We moved. The ball is in their court to make the next move."

The second school of thought says:

"Well if they aren't gonna get there anytime soon--fuck em. Just do what we wanted to do anyway and everything that serves our immediate national interests for all the difference it will make. Occupy all the land. Build more settlements. The peace process wouldn't move forward even if we didn't, and at least this way we have more land + more settlements."

...obviously...these positions breakdown largely upon left/right grounds. With the 1st mindset being more characteristic of the Israeli Left. And the second mindset being more characteristic of the Israeli Right.
___

The present problem, as others have pointed out in this thread, is that with Netanyahu at the helm for the past decade, the Israeli Right has really been in the drivers seat. 

The hawkish nationalists who are always itching for a fight and the ultra-conservative Orthodox Jews who make all their decisions based on religious doctrine have largely been left untethered to call the shots. While the progressives and the secularists have been largely powerless to stop them. 

The ultra-conservative Orthodox Jews are particularly problematic, politically, because they literally believe their mandate to The Land of Israel doesn't come from international law. It comes from Old Testament God and the covenant with Abraham. And they believe they have a god-given right to expand Israel's borders + settle the Palestinian Territories.

The result of Netanyahu allying with these ultra-conservatives and giving them free reign to do as they please is that Israel in the last ~10 years has gotten much more aggressive with pushing into the Palestinian Territories. Evicting Palestinians from their land. And building illegal settlements.

(Israel for its part comes up with all kinds of legal theories for why they are entitled to do this ranging from military law to landlord-tenant, but these evictions and settlements outside of Israel's UN defined borders ARE almost universally recognized by the rest of the international community as illegal)   

Israel then sends in the IDF to quell local uprisings and violence against settlers, when the persons being evicted by the settlers inevitably react violently.

Hamas then responds with calls for vengeance.

And this escalates the conflict + leads to all-out war, rather than deescalating and leading back towards the peace table. 

This escalation will continue for the foreseeable future, as long as Netanyahu and the conservative party is in power. 

And if it ever deescalates back to a point where peace talks are possible again.

Those talks now become more difficult moving forward. Because now there's MORE Israeli disengagement from the Palestinian Territories that needs to be worked out and more settlers that need to displaced as a precondition to working out any kind of functional peace deal.

(I know that was a long-winded explanation and lots of text to read. But the complexity of the issue is such that I feel like this is the absolute shortest I can make a general overview of my thoughts on the matter. And I still feel like I left a lot out, for the sake of keeping it short)    

 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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23 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

(Israel for its part comes up with all kinds of legal theories for why they are entitled to do this ranging from military law to landlord-tenant, but these evictions and settlements outside of Israel's UN defined borders ARE almost universally recognized by the rest of the international community as illegal)   

I think a good start might be placing a buffer zone between Israel and Palestine a là Cyprus's own buffer zone between the Cypriot and Turkish sides. With a UN buffer zone, at least the settlements cannot expand any further, and the slow process of eminent domain can maybe move the settlers out of the occupied territories. I guess the only issue is that the US is not going to agree to such a thing, and I am not sure how Israel will react even if the US by some miracle supports a buffer zone.

A buffer zone seems more like a two-state solution thing though, and a thick buffer zone/border feels like it might sabotage a one-state solution if that is still being considered, although I rarely hear about one-state solution being talked about, so maybe not many people there want a one-state solution.

Edited by XRay
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2 hours ago, XRay said:

I think a good start might be placing a buffer zone between Israel and Palestine a là Cyprus's own buffer zone between the Cypriot and Turkish sides. With a UN buffer zone, at least the settlements cannot expand any further, and the slow process of eminent domain can maybe move the settlers out of the occupied territories. I guess the only issue is that the US is not going to agree to such a thing, and I am not sure how Israel will react even if the US by some miracle supports a buffer zone.

A buffer zone seems more like a two-state solution thing though, and a thick buffer zone/border feels like it might sabotage a one-state solution if that is still being considered, although I rarely hear about one-state solution being talked about, so maybe not many people there want a one-state solution.


I've always considered the best precedent for what a good peace deal should look like to be the cooling of relations between Israel and Egypt.  Where for Israel's entire early history, they were bitter enemies. 

And there was a history of bad blood between them going all the way back to biblical times.

And Egypt joined the invading armies that tried to wipe Israel out in the 1967 war.

And thereafter, when Israel won, Israel pushed outside its borders to place Egyptian land in the Saini Peninsula under Israeli occupation as a buffer against further Egyptian invasions.

   Sinai Peninsula

 

^^^
there was a 15 year period from like 1967 to 1982 where that entire orange landmass was under Israeli occupation.

What wound up happening was the Egyptians agreed to recognize Israel as a neighbor state, wage no further wars against the Israelis, and on their own end self-police + self-patrol to make sure that The Sinai wasn't a safe zone for terrorist organizations and jihadist fighters trying to amass attacks against Israel. 

And the Israelis, in turn, agreed to fully withdraw from the Saini. Remove their troops. Deconstruct their settlements. And return the land to the Egyptians.

And Egyptian/Israeli relations have been peaceful for the past 30+ years now.  
___

In a perfect world, thats what a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict looks like.

The, big difference, of course, is that The Saini was a giant fuck-off tract of largely uninhabited desert. (i.e. one city in The Gaza Strip has the population of the entire Saini) 

There were  no pre-existing cities or heavily populated areas. 

There weren't a ton of Israeli settlers rushing to move there. 

The Israeli presence in The Saini was almost entirely a military occupation, and Israel disengaging from Saini was for the most part simply a matter of withdrawing its military forces. (i.e. there was no large-scale issue with returning The Saini to Egypt meaning that Jewish settlements had to be dismantled and Jewish settlers had to be relocated)

There were a few small Kibbutzim out there like Avashalom and Dikla that had to be demolished, but nothing of the size and scope of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

(note that the Gaza Strip itself is technically Egyptian land. But Egypt doesn't even want it; it knows that place is an absolute powderkeg, and doesn't want the trouble of being the party responsible for governing it) 

...The settlements and the expansion of the settlements just make everything so much more messy...  

But in theory. The arrangement that was worked out between the Israelis and the Egyptians could be the arrangement worked out between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

At some point when they're ready to start talking peace again.   

Edited by Shoblongoo
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@Shoblongoo thanks!  Figured it was a messy situation.  I wouldn't be surprised if the wave of neo-Nazis is a factor as well.  Honestly, it's a bigger selling point for Israel, since they have to worry about Hamas along with a bunch of losers who didn't learn the first time around that Jewish extermination is not okay.  Which means we can't do much about it directly while sitting pretty in another country.  Best I can do is chase off the hateful/racist rhetoric.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Andddddddd following this latest debacle; Netanyahu is now officially out as Prime Minister after a 12 year run

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/13/middleeast/israel-knesset-vote-prime-minister-intl/index.html

"After four elections in two years, Bennett's incoming government breaks a long political deadlock and ushers in the most diverse coalition Israel has ever seen, including the first Arab party to serve in the government. In his speech before the Knesset confidence vote, Bennett celebrated the diversity and warned of polarization within the country.

"Twice in history, we have lost our national home precisely because the leaders of the generation were not able to sit with one and another and compromise. Each was right, yet with all their being right, they burnt the house down on top of us," Bennett said. "I am proud of the ability to sit together with people with very different views from my own."

"Bennett's path to victory seemed all but lost during 11 days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants last month, when Netanyahu appeared to scuttle any chances of the opposition parties forming a government to replace him. But Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party which holds 17 seats, forged the agreements between the different parties that led to the end of Netanyahu's grip on power. The arrangement places Bennett at the head of a coalition that includes right-wing, left-wing, and Arab parties, united largely by their desire to dethrone Netanyahu."

____

1)    New Prime Minister immediately sending some signals that Israel is looking to move in a different direction with that kind of talk and coalition

2)  Wondering now if this whole recent blow-up in Gaza was Netanyahu reading the writing on the wall that he was on the verge of losing the support he needed to stay in power. And trying to pride-prick the nationalists + posture himself as Israel's strongman in a last-ditch effort to keep it together. (he's just enough of a crooked bastard that i wouldn't put it past him) 

 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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3 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

 

1)    New Prime Minister immediately sending some signals that Israel is looking to move in a different direction with that kind of talk and coalition

2)  Wondering now if this whole recent blow-up in Gaza was Netanyahu reading the writing on the wall that he was on the verge of losing the support he needed to stay in power. And trying to pride-prick the nationalists + posture himself as Israel's strongman in a last-ditch effort to keep it together. (he's just enough of a crooked bastard that i wouldn't put it past him) 

 

It's a pretty tried and trusted strategy to use conflict to present oneself as the only viable option. I'm glad to hear that didn't happen here though. This actually looks like it could be a step towards actual peace for the first time in, well basically ever.

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6 hours ago, Jotari said:

It's a pretty tried and trusted strategy to use conflict to present oneself as the only viable option. I'm glad to hear that didn't happen here though. This actually looks like it could be a step towards actual peace for the first time in, well basically ever.

I may be misinterpreting your statement, but I wanted to note that there have been steps made towards peace before. The Camp David Accords was one step, and the Oslo Accords certainly marked another. Both had their flaws, but have helped move the region towards peace. There is this misconception people have that peace in the middle east is impossible, and has been that way since time immemorial, but seeing these steps emphasize that this problem isn't set in stone, and peace is closer than people think.

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  • 7 months later...
On 5/28/2021 at 7:04 PM, Shoblongoo said:


I've always considered the best precedent for what a good peace deal should look like to be the cooling of relations between Israel and Egypt.  Where for Israel's entire early history, they were bitter enemies. 

And there was a history of bad blood between them going all the way back to biblical times.

And Egypt joined the invading armies that tried to wipe Israel out in the 1967 war.

And thereafter, when Israel won, Israel pushed outside its borders to place Egyptian land in the Saini Peninsula under Israeli occupation as a buffer against further Egyptian invasions.

   Sinai Peninsula

 

^^^
there was a 15 year period from like 1967 to 1982 where that entire orange landmass was under Israeli occupation.

What wound up happening was the Egyptians agreed to recognize Israel as a neighbor state, wage no further wars against the Israelis, and on their own end self-police + self-patrol to make sure that The Sinai wasn't a safe zone for terrorist organizations and jihadist fighters trying to amass attacks against Israel. 

And the Israelis, in turn, agreed to fully withdraw from the Saini. Remove their troops. Deconstruct their settlements. And return the land to the Egyptians.

And Egyptian/Israeli relations have been peaceful for the past 30+ years now.  
___

In a perfect world, thats what a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict looks like.

The, big difference, of course, is that The Saini was a giant fuck-off tract of largely uninhabited desert. (i.e. one city in The Gaza Strip has the population of the entire Saini) 

There were  no pre-existing cities or heavily populated areas. 

There weren't a ton of Israeli settlers rushing to move there. 

The Israeli presence in The Saini was almost entirely a military occupation, and Israel disengaging from Saini was for the most part simply a matter of withdrawing its military forces. (i.e. there was no large-scale issue with returning The Saini to Egypt meaning that Jewish settlements had to be dismantled and Jewish settlers had to be relocated)

There were a few small Kibbutzim out there like Avashalom and Dikla that had to be demolished, but nothing of the size and scope of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

(note that the Gaza Strip itself is technically Egyptian land. But Egypt doesn't even want it; it knows that place is an absolute powderkeg, and doesn't want the trouble of being the party responsible for governing it) 

...The settlements and the expansion of the settlements just make everything so much more messy...  

But in theory. The arrangement that was worked out between the Israelis and the Egyptians could be the arrangement worked out between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

At some point when they're ready to start talking peace again.   

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