Don’t fall into the trap of ‘picking sides’ over Gaza: Hamas’s attacks were unconscionable, razing Gaza to the ground would be abhorrent. In both cases, basic humanity is at stake --- [Opinion]
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Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5185724
Original link is here: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/israel/gaza-war/63691/alan-rusbridger-gaza-war-israel-hamas
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The big thing is the Hamas attack wasnt the start of all this. It wasnt Israel minding their own business and Hamas invading for the glory of Islam. The warning cries of a humanitarian crisis were going off long before this recent war, from international humanitarian agencies like Unicef. Gaza was being militarily oppressed by Israel, blocking humanitarian aid, international trade, even denying access to their own waters for fishing.
Civilians were dying off already as a result of Israel, and Israel ignored the warnings, the international community ignored the warnings, and then its shocked pikachus all around as a dying people fight back for survival.
You can point out back and forth violence going into the 1800s. Nobody has clean hands in this conflict.
Yeah, but siding with Israel here is the logical equivalent of siding with Andrew Jackson and supporting the Indian Removal Act as he committed genocide against the native people.
The power imbalance and how Israel has used it is what makes it imperative that Israel be held accountable by the international community.
I'm glad you bring up the power imbalance. The "both sides have been doing horrible stuff" only works if both sides have equal footing, which they clearly do not. This does not negate the crimes commited by Hamas, but extremism doesn't come from nowhere and Israël has a responsibility in that.
Also disproportionate use of force is a war crime. We see Israel doing this in every war with Palestine since the Nakba.
Except jews, christians and muslims lived pretty much peacefully together during ottoman rule. The violence worsened when britian controlled palestine and then became a lot worse during the nakba and israeli occupation. It's not about 'having clean hands'. It's about stopping genocide and understanding that occupation and colonialism leads to violent pushback. It always has and always will.
Wasn't the Ottoman period occupation/colonialism too? Not that I am in favour of imperialism but you do raise a fascinating point I wasn't aware of.
The Ottomans took control of palestine after a war with the Mamluk empire. Palestine hasn't been and independent country for much of it's history. It's still a form of occupation but if you were muslim, christian or jewish you still had access to certain rights (unless you were a slave). Mostly if you were muslim.
I dont know anything about this. We're they all living in the same neighborhoods or we're they in different neighborhoods in the same city or like different towns in the same Provence?
Just curious how closely bound their networks were. In my home town folks of different faiths are neighbors and mostly go to the same schools and share a government. There's not much segregation at all. Sure, there's racism among all groups, but it gets much weaker and much less frequent with each generation.
Oh yeah and fuck the ole British state. Bunch of tossers meddling all about so they can exploit everyone's resources. Their emancipated colony, all-grown-up now, isn't much better.
Mostly it goes back to the 1940's. There was more history of Zionism beforehand, Jewish settlers gradually coming in to live in the holy land. But after WW2 was the large influx and big push for a Jewish ethnostate. Aaand the people living there already opposed it from the start. And since then it's been very apparent why, because Israel pushes beyond the borders they were already given from Palestinian land, and militarily occupy the Palestinian land they dont yet claim.
It was Arabs who did not accept those borders. They lost and Israel expanded.
What I have more of a problem with is the settlers in the WB and that seems to be Bibi's doing without much pushback from USA. Fascists gonna fasche.
They were never given a vote. The UN voted to take away the Palestinians' land, and the actual people living there weren't given a single fucking vote in the issue.
What vote? I wasn't talking about any election and neither was blazera (who correctly said Jews were given the land).
I was talking about the 6 day war. Great animation showing the history here https://youtu.be/m19F4IHTVGc/
Timeline:
Well... kind of, but not really, not exactly that land, and the result wasn't truly agreed upon by anyone.
That's in 1967. Israel wasn't "given" any land there, it used a provocation by Egypt in order to claim all of it (and have Egypt give thanks for not claiming all of Sinai too... for now).
There was also a lot of bribery and intimidation involved to get the vote to come out a certain way.
They were given the land by UN at the start of the partition. I want discussing whether it was just.
Yep, just as I said.
Didn't say it was dune in 1967. It was given by UN straight after WW2. I was being as brief as possible.
It seems we agree on everything except the following. Hopefully you can clarify for me please...
Not explicitly AFAIK. This is my understanding...
Arabs were not OK with the UN partition but Jews were. Jews therefore understood that would mean Arabs would annul the partition as soon as the Brits exited so they declared independence from the day of the exit but I cannot find any borders mentioned. Then the Arabs really did attack.
Do you know of any borders mentioned by Jews then? Did they state "we want to be observed of the Arab partitions?" Certainly that is how it ended up but was that the plan on Independence Day? Wikipedia is vague.
There is a funny tidbit on the Wikipedia page:
https://catalog.archives.gov.il/en/chapter/the-declaration-of-independence/
As for borders, by following the Declaration of Independence itself:
The UN resolution called for an economic union of "Israel and Palestine", which would imply that "Eretz-Israel" was supposed to mean the whole land of the "Mandatory Palestine".
Prior to that:
The British mandate was over the whole "Mandatory Palestine"... but the declaration talks about the State of Israel being "in Eretz-Israel", without specifying any explicit borders.
The "spirit" of the text can be interpreted as intended to follow the borders of the UN resolution... maybe.
Since the resolution clearly was not accepted by the Arab states, it would require some further analysis whether that means Israel is supposed to prioritize establishing an economic union of the whole land, or strictly follow the resolution.
MVP! Thanks.
So it sounds like the UN presumed the states would form a union (like the EU) without caring if the member states wanted it.
Arabs I think were not happy even with the initial borders since Israel were a smaller population but handed a larger land area than Arabs. Maybe some anti-semitism too but that disparity must have stung.
Israel was happy with the allotment and even with the union as long as they were the masters of the union. Islamophobia too perhaps.
Chicken and the egg. Each side had a reason to distrust the other and it has just been spiralling ever since.
Seems like Britain should have stayed on a few more years but were probably too tired after WW2.
I am mainly learning only now. Are you also researching as we go or have you already familiarized yourself with much of the detail? Either way I appreciate having someone who is polite to discuss this with.
Indeed, the UN expected a sort of conjoined two-state arrangement.
The problem with the Declaration of Independence, is that, not only it was signed before getting written, rising the question of whether should the notes, the speech, or the document crafted after the fact to be considered the "official" one... but also Israel still lacks a proper Constitution; it has a set of Basic Laws, the last one of which got approved in 2018, but it's expected more should follow, so it can still be seen as a "not fully established" state, making stuff up on the go.
Some of this stuff I've double checked, but most had already looked up before. One thing it would be interesting to know more about, are the nuances in the Hebrew text of the Declaration of Independence... but my knowledge of Hebrew barely goes as far as realizing that the English version is not a word for word translation.
Maybe by reading multiple translations you can at least narrow down to which the problematic passages are so then you could concentrate on them with a fluent Hebrew speaker.
I know one but it is hard to get him to stop once he gets started and he is right wing (I am left) so I don't want to listen to his preaching. Nevertheless if you give me a specific question I will ask.
The vote to create Israel in 1948
Why do i keep hearing it described like losing a game? Zionists invaded, murdered, and exiled palestinians from their land, that should "win" them nothing but opposition from the international community, same as happening with Russias invasion of Ukraine.
What do you mean by "it"?
I thought we were talking specifically about changes to the borders of what was given to them (irresponsibly?) by the Allies after WW2.
The 6 day war in 1967 was initiated by surrounding Arab countries. Israel won that war and expanded into the Sinai and Gaza (Egypt), Golan Heights (Syria), West Bank and East Jerusalem (Jordan). They didn't initiate the expansion. They then returned the Sinai to Egypt.
Admittedly after that they did take more without provocation. The chipping away with settlements is happening to this very day.
I just rewatched the above video in order to spell out the details. It is all new to me. Have a look yourself if you are genuinely interested in discussing the conflict. It really is well made and easy to follow (I dunno if there are errors though).
Nothing was ever given to them, only taken. They were living there already. They did not consent to being murdered and evicted from where they lived, and predictably they fought against it. That they lost against a much larger, internationally backed army invading their land doesnt exactly persuade me that they should lose their right to living there.
Who is "them"? I was talking about the land given to Jews by the colonisers: England and France.
The 6 day war had a larger army on the Arab side. I dunno how much financial backing Israel had from USA or how it compared with the backing (if any) by the Arab oil states and I doubt you know or care either.
I am trying to learn here, but you just insist on lazy mud slinging. Blocking you.
You and the rest of the world are blocking out the truth, not able to defend the indefensible actions of Israel.
It was not Palestine at that time though and Jews always lived in the area.
This issue has nothing to do with Jews. It has to do with Zionism.
Jews have lived there peacefully, yes. They did so without stealing their neighbors land. Its the Zionists that formed Israel and stole ~40% of Palesines land that caused the war.
There have always been Jews opposed to Zionism since the idea was first thought up.
After the Nazi shit and the reluctance of the West to accept refugees I can understand why.
And look at the rise of cookers who think we live on a flat earth run by a cabal of Jewish shape-shifting lizards from the planet Nibiru. I do not think social progress by humanity is inevitable anymore.
Nazi Germany could really happen again. Just last week in Australia a judge revealed himself to be a Nazi sympathiser... https://old.reddit.com/r/auslaw/comments/17hecdx/comment/k6nuov1/
Zionism starts in the 1800s, well before the Nazi shit. The 1940's One Million Plan actually got amended after the Holocaust by stirring up a civil war so more Jews from Arab countries would flee in fear of prosecution in order to meet the Zionist numbers, precisely because "too many" Western countries were accepting (or got forced to accept) Holocaust refugees, who were nowhere as many as previously expected (by the Zionists).
Not exactly. Genocides have been going on all the time, just the countries and ethnicities have been changing. So you could say it's been happening all along... while the chance of the same exact combination repeating, is quite low.
Thanks for the background info.
I used to resent that Jews had a special word just for them: "antisemitism". But now I see it might be warranted because although every migrant group gets racist pushback, it is Jews who are the target of crazy conspiracy theorists. It is Jews who are said to secretly run the world.
I am not joking about the shape-shifting lizards from the planet Nibiru. That is from David Icke who says our world leaders are those lizards.
It is thought that he is using it as a dog-whistle for Nazis (to mean Jews). Certainly there is a disproportionate crossover between Nazis and Icke supporters.
Icke also championed the 5G conspiracies, is an anti-vaxxer and thinks the moon is a hollow spaceship used by aliens to spy on us from. I can't even...
"Antisemitism" is technically a BS word, just like the "Semitism" word it comes from. It was invented in the 1800s by some proto-Nazis, adopted in the 1900s by Nazis after the concept was already debunked, and continued in the 2000s by neo-Nazis. Nothing to be either jealous or proud of.
Somewhat ironically, not so secretly, and not a conspiracy.
Since 70CE, all Jews have been required to both read and understand the Torah, while other religions relied on priests "interpreting" the sacred texts for uneducated peasants, leading to Jewish literacy levels of 70% or more in countries with otherwise a 3% or less during the Middle Ages. At the same time, both Christians and Muslims were forbidden from "usury", or charging interest on loans (Muslim banking still is), but guess who wasn't: Jews. And who'd guess it, the Diaspora meant there was one or a dozen Jews pretty much in every city. As commerce grew all over the world, merchants used to go to literate Jews, like the ones sitting on the bench ("banca") in Florence, asking for loans and generally to do what nobody else was either capable or allowed to do, like letting them carry bank notes instead of coffers full of gold, redeemable at other "branches". Big surprise, some centuries later, you can trace most of the financial world back to Jews, both the concepts and ownership.
Also not a coincidence there have been so many famous Jewish artists, scientists or inventors. Anyone who's got a problem with that, can thank their own religious ancestry for the cultural suicide.
...but of course it's easier to blame the guys who got it right, while spreading further conspiranoic BS to dig an even deeper hole for one's own culture. 🤦
Thanks. Your summary is great copypasta I will be using in future.
I learned all about that from my Jewish friend (who is afraid to let people know. I used to think it was paranoid but after the rise of the cookers and Nazis, I now appreciate his caution).
The only AI I fear is Augmented Idiocy. Covid will subside but the declining language and science literacy and numeracy is just getting worse. Flat earthers are on the increase FFS.
This bit I disagree with though:
BS or not the racist extremists, from what you tell us, made up the word Semitism so surely that warrants legitimate pushback with the term Antisemitism?
Both words were made by the same people, claiming a racial difference between those descending from semitic cultures and those who were not (this was already debunked by the 1920s). "Semitism" was intended as a pejorative, with "Antisemitism" being the idea of "cleansing" the society from the negative influence of "semitism".
It's a made up Boogeyman used as an excuse to have something to push back against... and of course you can unite people around those ideas.
As a freakishly recent example, right now I've been watching the news on TV here in Spain. There is a problem around choosing a president, with the opposition using every strategy they can to discredit the incumbent.
One of the arguments they just decided to get up in arms about, is the incumbent just revealed agreed to forgive 15B€ of fiscal debt from one of the regions, which the representative of another region was being shown Live heavily criticizing, going on about how it should be all regions negotiating together, yadda yadda... and just then a news ticker goes by, stating that the incumbent has also agreed to forgive another 12B€ to the region of the guy just speaking Live. So much for "negotiating all together"!
Boogeyman created, and debunked Live. Wish I had recorded it. 😄
But wait, there's more!
Just then, they switched to the speaker for the opposition party, also Live, who started criticizing the incumbent for trying to agree on which days are going to be holidays and which work days, to fit in the voting calendar... news ticker goes by: opposition party, with majority in the Senate, tries to urgently pass a law change to delay the votes so they fall on holidays and the incumbent runs out of time.
Seriously!? Two in the span of less than 10 minutes! 🔔🔔
Clearly I need to read up more on the Antisemitism. You have inspired me.
Your TV sounds like comedy. Yes it is indeed a shame you didn't record it. Two in a short period of special but in future even if you could capture don't individual occurrences it would make for a wonderful compilation. Perhaps they people running the ticker are hoping someone like you will do just that?
Speaking of dodgy politicians: this ex lawyer-soldier pointed out how Australian military commanders were behaving illegally in Afghanistan and only acting to please politicians who in turn were only concerned with their own popularity (measured by polling).
Nothing he said was untrue, but instead of investigating the war crimes the government is trying to throw him into jail for the rest of his life because, according to them, his whistleblowing compromised national security.
https://youtu.be/56cleIKdt0c
You will recognize the power games from Spain and every other country. This guy is a hero for challenging the system.
I dont care that they were ottoman or british ruled, it was palestinians living there, and they opposed zionism from the beginning
You can go back much much further than the 1800s, back to the start of zionism.
There have always been Jews opposed to Zionism since the idea was created. Its almost like stealing someone elsea land is immoral.
I do agree the Hamas attack wasn't the start of this. However tactically it was incredibly silly, honestly what did they think would happen?
They gave Netanyahu, who was finally fumbling at the reigns after almost thirty years aan excuse to execute his wet dreams and all of Israel uniting behind him.
I see no way how they could have thought the attack would benefit their cause.
I dont think people are appreciating the context of Gazans dying off. It wasnt a stable situation that was fine to continue as it was going, imagine youre locked in a room with a lunatic with a knife trying to kill you. Youre not likely to beat the lunatic, but youre gonna try, you dont have any other options.
Waiting didnt work, protests didnt work, pleading with the international community didnt work, they cant leave. Everyone keeps saying they shouldnt have fought back, but what should they have done? Nothing is not available as an option.
I appreciate that and I have equated the current war to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. I'm not an apologist.
However, as Sun Zu said, you must not interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. Netanyahu's might was failing. Israeli youth was rising up against him.
It's not like they absolutely needed to do this right now, and they could've quite easily understood what the response would be (maybe not the entire extent).
Tactically it was stupid.
What authority was netanyahu losing? Or are you just referring to there being some chance of him losing an election? Because Gaza did wait and see for several elections. He was just reelected in 2022. So apparently he's not being voted out.
The meddling with the court system had many Israelis protesting last spring.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/israeli-protests-netanyahus-judicial-reform-plan-explained/story?id=98148726
It became apparent to many how corrupt he was and trying to cement his position in anti constitutional measures.
Sure, but it wasn't saving any Palestinians lives in the process OR the goal. Most Israelis weren't opposing Netanyahu because they were against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, they just didn't like what he was doing to prevent punishment for his corruption. They wanted to replace him, but it would just be with another genocidal guy.
I don't know. I remember both Rabin and Sharon, who briefly gave some hope in the nineties. It never materialized but it's hope I must cling to. Just like the Irish managed to put their para military ways aside.
The sad part of this attack is that that hoe is pushed back even further.
So call me naive or a fool, but I keep hoping for a new generation that distances itself from the spiral of violence. It's a feint hope, that got even more so due to this new horrible episode.
"Rising up" insomuch as they were protesting his proposed changes, not in that they were contemplating actually removing him from power, or even trying to oust/disband/etc Likud.
Don't you think that, however small, some action must take form?
When I was small there were two conflicts that dividend public opinion and were sure to last centuries, those bring the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Irish one.
I think that disengaging the murder spiral makes things better. Both the resentment of the Israeli youth against their more and more fascist government was an incredibly worthwhile step.
Hamas and Likud alle don't like any two state proposals, that's why this is happening.
If I came into your house and drove you by force into the garage, I don't think you'd want a "2-house solution" that allows you to live there, either.
And no, I don't think that essentially saying, "why don't the Palestinians wait around being killed quietly, to see if the youths protesting today will massively change Israel's trajectory when they get into politics in 20 years?" is a reasonable, measured, or humane stance.
Should they have protested instead? How about in the land of the free?
They did a little more than simply "fight back." They also engaged in widespread and utterly gratuitous acts of violence and torture in ways that can only have been calculated to trigger an overreaction on the part of Israel. They knew exactly what they were doing and what would happen. They obviously don't give a fuck about their own people.
Where you getting torture from?
Why doesn't Egypt open the border?
Because Israel will never let them back in if they leave. That is not hypothetical; it happened to thousands of Palestinians during the 6-day war, and their families are still stuck in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon today.
It's also because Hamas has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood which for obvious reasons means that Egypt is very leery of accepting Palestinians from Gaza.
I'm not defending their position, just explaining it; Egypt is basically a military dictatorship at this point and the Muslim Brotherhood is enemy number one for them.
Why doesn't Israel stop doing things that require other countries to intervene
They don't want them either.
All the Arab world may be united in it's hatred of Israel, but that doesn't mean they like each other...
@Blackmist it's not about "like" it's about realpolitik.
2 million refugees into Egypt would be like suddenly allowing 6 million refugees into the US. Political suicide for anyone that did it.
Especially if it meant you were likely going to get a border war with a notoriously land-stealing nation as well.
Israel occupies that border too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphi\_Route
Why do you think a Levantine Trail of Tears is an acceptable solution rather than ethnic cleansing?
@FaulerFuffi assuming that's a genuine question there are a bunch of reasons and one is they don't want to open themselves up to being attacked by Israel.
Why Egypt Won't Open The Border To Its Palestinian Neighbours.
500 people came through recently iirc.
It all started when Israel showed up on the block and forcibly removed 700000 Palestinians from their homes. There's no history before that worth discussing as it is archeological records, not history.
Areas that were once 90% Palestinian, suddenly became 90% Jewish. Those people are still fighting to get their homes back, and Israel is continuing to evict Palestinians daily.
The first step to a solution is to recognize that Israel's goals are to ethnically cleanse the area and then work from there.