Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you
The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
Great, more war crimes.
As a Lebanese, I advise them that we are already destroying our country by ourselves!
Israeli invader*
Settler is more accurate, and is a subset of invader. America were invaders in Iraq, but didn't invade to set up permanent settlements. Israel is invading Palestine in order to set up permanent settlements
Coloniser?
Coloniser is probably the best term, yeah
That's actually the word I wanted, but couldn't remember!
It's not clear to me that the fundamental ideals of a liberal democracy are compatible with a state where one race or religion is held above all others; or with a state where some races or religions are considered less equal.
Arguably the US is still working on recognizing this idealism and didn't fully reckon with it until the 1960s.
Basically everyone is sticking their head in the sand re: Israel being an Ethnostate. Basically "sure, but they deserve it". That had some credibility behind it 70 years ago. Today? Not so much.
I've come to find out that in-spite of having many Israeli friends and some family members, I had no idea about what Israeli culture and society were really like. It is mind-boggling to me that the only Jewish people I see speaking against genocide seem to be a part of the diaspora. Every time I hear or see a Jewish person from/ in Israel speaking on this issue, its like "Well its necessary" is basically the argument. Like, I'm sure there must be voices in Israel to the contrary, but I can't seem to find them.
Its as if Zionism has supplanted Judaism in Israel entirely and there is no distinction in current Israeli culture or media.
There's definitely people protesting in Israel and have been since the start. But it is indeed unclear on whether they're protesting regarding their government's actions in Gaza or just protesting against Netanyahu more generally (which they had also been doing prior to all this anyways).
There are voices inside Israel opposing this, but it sounds like (i don't have personal knowledge) all the moderates got co-opted. The opposition voices don't get any media play, not in the US at least. Some Israeli press covers them, or used to at least.
Haaretz is the only real source of coverage of such opposing voices. And the Israeli government has already been trying to make moves to have them be shut down for daring to not support the will of the government.
I honestly feel like if the national powers at the time had been actually serious about the Jewish people deserving a homeland after the horrors of the Holocaust, then Israel should have been created out of a portion of western Germany.
That's my position, 100%. That they didn't is telling, imo.
Make space in Europe for the JEWS?! When there's plenty of land that has only brown people in it?!
The reasoning was that, I think.
Yep
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!!!
Zionists would not have wanted that. Establishment of a Jewish state around Jerusalem is a core idea of Zionism and Jerusalem is not in West Germany.
The plan to realize this ideology is much older than the Holocaust.
It is not about having a safe place to stay, it's about religion.
It is pretty funny that they discussed a bunch of other places, too, including Uganda, and shot down a bunch of them because they were inhabited and weren't sure how the locals would react or there were already white settlers in the area. The irony 🙄
If there was credibility for a Jewish ethnostate 70 years ago due to the Holocaust and global antisemitism, how do we get to say things are better now and take the country back. Especially with all the other ethnostates in the world.
Obviously there is a problem because the region had changed hands over the past 1-2000 years and had other ethnic groups when the country was established by the Allies. The idea of having taken the land from Germany instead of the area around l Jerusalem sounds like poetic justice, but ignores that they have a historic homeland. Anyone would want their historic homeland with their historic religious sites back over somewhere else.
It seems like Jews are treated as second class when it comes to that. Talk of giving Mt Rushmore back is because it was that tribes sacred religious site, and no one would be happy giving them another mountain in another state.
And this isn't even the first time we've realized this either. Look at Ireland, and how they only achieved peace when they enforced equality with their power sharing agreement. Heck, look at the entire EU. Instead of Germany and France invading each other every 30 years, they just said "fuck it", and let their citizens live on both sides of the border. Trying to create ethnostates and encourage division never works.
At this point the only serious solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict is the "one state solution".
For years we kept being told that Israel had "Western Values" as part of the pro-Zionist propaganda in the West.
And indeed they do: 19th Century Western Values.
Why aren’t these terrorist training camps being bombed?
Israel is a terrorist state.
Daniella Weiss, what a horrible person. She will probably never face justice for her crimes.
Reminder, American police training is heavily influenced by Israel and has been since just after 9/11.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-police-departments-training-with-a-chronic-human-rights-violator-israel/
That combined with the "Killology" guy really explains how worthless and barbaric the entire US police system is.
Fucking cultists.
(To be clear, Judaism in general isn't a cult, but these assholes' version sure looks like one.)
Judaism is a cult, Christianity is a cult, Islam is a cult. They are all cults. Insane fantasies and power grabs. There aren't any good religions.
Zionism =\= Judism. and aparthied Israel does not represent the Jewish faith or people. It represents stinking hatful genocidal racism which no nation on the world should accept while in reality many fully enable and aide
Edit: why tf do you need to escape the backlash in my comment like I'm coding perl
You should probably use a double slash in that non-equality sign as a single slash will be seen as an escape character by some parsers and then not rendered. In my client it just shows two equal signs, i.e. the opposite of what you wanted to convey.
Or
/=or!=or≠. There's no reason to ever use a backslash or a double=to represent inequality.there is a reason. =\= is understood in text format. but != and /= make no sense to non-programmers, and I dont even have the last symbol you typed on my phone neither keyboard
If you use a forward slash in that case, it won't get eaten like a backslash.
Not very sure about that. If it were me, I would go with =/= instead, due to the "not equal" sign having the slant that way. I also remember having used =|= somewhere.
Also, the forward slash is considered a text character, whereas backslash, a special character / escape character / compose character in different conditions.
For a keyboard user, it's probably a good idea to get a compose key setup for stuff such as ≠°×∵∴ and the rest. That way you don't have to copy paste those things all the time.
For Android, depending upon what keyboard you use, you might want to get an addon. In case of the default GBoard, long-press the '=' key, and you will find ≠.
For iOS, good luck.
Those particular Zionists are the religious kind, though. They're specifically claiming they're entitled to all of the Palestinians' land because their sky daddy said so. The secular ones usually claim Zionism is needed because that ethnic Jews need a place to be safe from persecution.
Also, never, ever use a double equality sign to say things are not equal. It will only cause confusion.
Israel represents half of the global Jewish population. The US represents most of the remainder. In the US 8 in ten say caring about Israel is important or essential.
Israel and its actions like it or not represents Jewish people as a whole fairly well. Obviously not every single person but the majority thereof.
At least it's not Java with
All settlers are terrorists. There are over 750k people living in the occupied territories. They need to gtfo asap. Their claims hold no water and there is absolutely no legal foundation to creating little settler colonies on another people's land. I'm talking about the West Bank and the other occupied territories here, not Israel proper.
Just a friendly reminder, that Israel is an Apartheid state - according to the ICJ.
Can we stop calling them "settlers"?
Edit: "settlers" is an accurate term, but due to generations of teaching a white washed version of America's colonial history, the term doesn't hold the negative connotation that it should to average Americans. It just doesn't conjure the images it should, whether consciously or not.
They’re settlers. What they do is violently expel people from their homes in order to claim it for themselves.
Settlers are people who do that.
There’s no need to stop calling them the word that correctly describes what they do.
How about: invader, encroacher, intruder, illegal immigrant, trespasser, violator, infringer or conqueror?
You don’t need to say any of that because they’re already settlers. They’re already all those things because that’s what a settler is.
There is no need for another word.
I don’t think the term settler requires the land already be occupied, though it often is so there is that connotation. But there are better words to describe explicitly the invasion of land.
I know of one example of settlers moving into unoccupied land and that claim is disputed.
If in all but one (possibly) circumstance the situation is the same then is the meaning tainted? No. Of course not. Settlers and settlement violently disrupt and displace the occupants of land in order to claim it for their own.
In the context of Israel, settlers is the best word because Israel is a settler colonial state.
Why do you think a different word is needed?
I’m not saying another is needed necessarily, but that others may be more precise. Colonizers, for example, may be so. Settlers is a superset here, and the only reason it nearly always involves occupied land is because most habitable land is currently inhabited. Imagine that we begin to settle Mars, hypothetically. That would be settling without taking the land others are occupying. So the word is just imprecise.
Settlers is absolutely pinpoint precise. There isn’t a need for a different word to describe what’s going on.
Settlers is not a superset of colonizers.
Hypothetical situations don’t matter. There’s no grand council of English language administration that considers every bizarre possibility and issues proclamations regarding them.
The words settler and colonist in science fiction were chosen to invoke our history and imply the question of weather human expansion beyond earth was right at best and used to sell space trades to the same people buying cowboy trades at worst.
I get that you believe that the term "settle" implies expelling others from a land, and if that were the case, you'd have a point. But I wonder if you've considered consulting a dictionary and the possibility that you're mistaken.
What I'm saying is that "settlers" is a superset of what is happening here, since "settle" doesn't imply anything beyond:
I've no doubt that you'll push back on this and claim the definition in your head is better than those found in dictionaries, but the rest of us are just aware what it means.
I’m sorry, if you start with a dictionary definition you’re required to use the five paragraph format and start each one with a topic sentence.
Surely you aren’t seriously suggesting that because the dictionary doesn’t explain the etymology, nuance and history that you have yourself recognized, said nuance, etymology and history doesn’t exist?
That because the dictionary doesn’t say that settlers violently dispossess people of their homes it isn’t so?
May I see even one example of that from (let’s just keep it short, we don’t care about history here, right?) the last 124 years?
That ought to be easy. One example since 1900 of settlers just happening to come across a place to live without pushing some other population out or disrupting their lives or whatever.
Every place that is currently inhabited was settled at least one time when no others lived there. It really doesn’t matter that you want to set the goalposts somewhere that fits some niche definition you are cultivating. You simply don’t seem to know what the word means.
So no?
It ought to be easy! We’re talking about what words mean to people now, surely there’s an example of what you’re saying in the last 124 years that would reenforce the meaning you claim everyone understands!
Come on! Just one example of settlers bumbling their way into uninhabited land and living peacefully with the people around them in the last one and a quarter century!
In place of the dictionary, I recommend you read the book settlers instead.
Because the word has been largely washed of all negative connotations, at least across the minds of the majority of the populace in the U.S.
If you are trying to convey what the word settler means in a dictionary by using it in casual conversation, you are likely to find that it is not carrying the full weight of its intended meaning in the mind(s) of the listener(s).
This makes it a FUNCTIONALLY inadequate word despite being a technically correct one.
Why has the negative connotation of the word settlers been removed among people in the United States?
Why has the negative connotation been removed in the state whose subjugation of other nations literally inspired Hitler?
While you're correct, the word is misunderstood by the general public. So it doesn't properly convey its meaning
Words don’t properly convey their own meaning.
People do when they use them.
Rather than lament the way you perceive the present understanding in absolutes, why not start using the word settlers appropriately: preceded a cuss or followed by spitting.
If you think people don’t understand how the word settlers conveys historical meaning then do something about it instead of accepting your own transport to another grammatical space wherein you colonize the meaning and context of other words.
I understand. My point is that, for whatever reason (likely generations of white washed education regarding America's colonial history), people in the US don't view the word "settler" with the contempt it deserves.
Yeah. It’s darkly funny that right after the founding of Israel and the nakba the un went and changed the rules so displaced people have no right of return.
Big “”no one’s gonna know” “they’re gonna know!”” Energy.
I think perhaps the best thing to do to be understood is to continue to refer to them as settlers while people are seeing armed attacks and hate.
Then are the people illegally coming to the US "settlers" or are they still refugees ?
Because I'm confused on the difference with that definition.
No. People coming to the us and integrating into American culture (even if it’s not recognized by the law) aren’t settlers.
A person wrote a book about this called “settlers”. You can read it.
Invaders would be more accurate.
I don't see any daylight between these folks and the KKK this is basically the klan with different headgear
That's what they are, even according to themselves they're settlers. Perhaps a more accurate term might be settler-colonial but I think just settler works (when you stop glorifying America settlers it especially works.)
They have become what they swore to destroy
Nazis, more specifically.
I'm not surprised. That's what Israeli settlers are doing for decades, not just since October.
Tell me how people should not get radicalized, when your home and existence and that of your family is constantly threatened.
I'm not condoning the actions of Hamas, they are brutal and wrong. But Israel created that beast themselves and left Palestinians with no other options.
If you want a more human focused instead of politics I would recommend to read Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation
Jewish author Michael Chabon and Israeli born author Ayelet Waldman asked writers, journalists, authors of both sides and not involved at all, to visit the occupied territories and write an essay about their expierience. It shows a heartbreakingly personal point of view of the situation before the current war.
Thanks American imperialists for enabling these invaders
Yes we already finished first genocide (the Native Americans), but what about second genocide?
Wow Israel really thinks the world will go like "welp it is now a conflict between civilians so the Israeli government can't be blamed". I bet they are praying that locals organise a defense against these invader settlers so that they can pretend like they have a good excuse to send troops.
This already happens
Settlers like this have forfeited their status as innocent civilians. This makes them active aggressors in my eyes.
That is literally what they've done for many, many decades, let the settlers expand and antagonize, then send in the military to protect the innocent civilians living on Palestinian land.
The wild things is, their* religious leaders know they are worshipping a co-opted war god, that exists only in their shadows.
*Spelling
And that attitude right there is why there will most likely never be peace in the region.
There are hard-line factions on both sides of the conflict who are convinced that their religion grants them a god-given right to exclusive occupation of the same piece of dirt.
:-/
You're running into a degree of selection bias when you put "guy with gun seizing land" up against "group of residents who haven't fled yet".
What does a moderate faction look like in this set up? Either the IDF backed settler doesn't show up or the Palestinian leaves. These are your non-escalatory solutions.
Waving a gun in your face after I've kicked down your door, but you're no better than me because you're also religious.
Israeli fight because the Zionist brainwashed them in the name of god to fight. Palestinian fight to reclaim their land. Where exactly is "the hard-line factions on both sides of the conflict who are convinced thag their religion grants them a god-given right to exclusive occupation of the same piece of dirt."?
There was an article about her a few months ago, and I wanted to again point out how Hamas's terrorist mickey mouse actually had more sound logic than this insane woman.
Even Shin Bet calls these people terrorists.
No, no! Israelis are nice people. The BBC told me and also I read it in a newspaper!
Dude, settlers =/= all Israelis, they just have way too much political influence and are tolerated way too much. Think the proud boys/3%ers/border patrol vigilantes if Trump had won another term. Way too powerful, way too much influence, and way too encouraged, still not reflective of every American or even a majority.
When you are traveling on the common backpacker routes, you'll met a lot of young Israelis who recently finished their military service.
My expierience with them is, that those who are open minded and look at the world, are very much against what the narrow minded fundamentalists are doing at home and in Palestine.
We have to stop to condem big groups of people on the actions of a few. This just makes us xenophobic, racist and hostile to everything different.
Not all Israelis are violent fundamentalists. Judge the government and official forces, not the people.
Not all Palestinians are Hamas terrorists.
Not all Muslims are Islamists.
Not all Americans are white supremacists or suport immigrant children in cages.
Not all Germans are or were Nazis.
Not all mexicans are cartel gangsters.
If there's an overwhelming majority that supports it, there's nothing wrong with generalizing. Without support from most Russians Ukraine war wouldn't be possible. Without the support of most Israeli citizens there would be no genocide in Palestine. It's really not that complicated. The people are responsible for the government they voted for.
You underestimate the amount of brainwashing going on. When two people brought up in entirely different parts of the world, all other circumstances identical, are exposed to two completely different systems - they can often believe opposite things to be true, despite no person being intrinsically more or less good or bad than the other.
Also, generalization is a BIG problem the moment you use it as prejudice against individuals before knowing them. As a matter of fact, judging individuals based on generalizations is - the moment the generalization is applied to an ethnicity - equal to racism.
in a reasonable country this would trigger a red flag law.
Welcome to religion and war, boys and girls...
So many good things have started with the line "we are gods chosen people" /s
"No body follows the old testament." "Jesus died and filled the prophecy, so the old testament doesn't apply." "But Jesus taught love and forgiveness. That's what the old testament was for."
I have heard everything growing up when asked about old testament stories. The brutality, supported raping and murdering of those that don't agree.
Then you have Christians. For their teachings to be true, they HAVE to support Israel. If not, the their religion is false.
You see this vicious cycle. See why religion is dangerous and the bases for all wars. Someone change my mind? Maybe I'm the crazy one.
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MBFC
Wiki
News Corp being Rupert Murdoch's company, the same one that controls Fox News and the WSJ in the US, and The Sun in the UK. Any News Corp property should be rated very poorly.
These guys were behind most of the Brexit lies and supported the Brexiters themselves, which were a Far-Right movement by European standards (literally nobody other than a handful of Far-Right parties in the EU ever supported leaving the EU, and that's without going into the whole "rabbid racist" anti-immigrant speech from these guys which was very much the same kind of thing Trump spews about "Mexicans")
Calling them "Right-Center" is hilariously rightwards biased (the idea that these guys are "moderates" is physically a ROFL kind of idea), and saying they have "High Credibility" is Narnia-level fantasism.
And yet, we keep getting this bot trying to shove down our throats this ridiculous pro-far-right propagandistic take on reality as the "trust gatekeeper" guarding us against fake news: it really says all that needs being said about the ethics and honesty of the moderators that approved this crap.