What sort of lives do these “settlers” live? Do they have the resources to travel internationally? How many settlers are actually applying for visas?
This is a good policy. But how many people does it really affect? This isn’t going to stop people from causing violence in Palestinian areas, it’s just going to keep a handful of violent Israelis out of the USA. Keeping violent people out is great and all, but this has to be symbolic at best, right?
Edit: it sounds like from the article this will only affect about a hundred people involved in specific recent events, not set up some sort of system of banning settlers for their actions.
Only one side, Israel, has the ability and military firepower to carry that genocide to fruition. Hamas only has @ 20,000 members. It would need help from other Muslim militants to have a chance at genocide. The contrast in the power dynamic is what makes what Israel is doing especially egregious.
I agree that Israel needs to be held to a higher standard as a democracy(at least for now). However it’s a difficult question; when you have a neighbor that refuses to acknowledge your existence, that has walked away from the negotiation table numerous times, and that every few years attacks your country, and who used civilians as human shields; what is the solution? You can continue to the tit-for-tat in a never ending multi-generational affair or you can end things. It would be really nice if everyone could just get along. the majority of the Palestinians didn’t want this; and yet they are suffering for Hamas’ actions. The far right factions of the Israeli government are being opportunistic in the oppositions silence following the attack. I think the best we can hope for now is accountability, we need independent reporters there and some sort of UN intervention. It’s all so stupid I wish the world would come to its senses.
The solution: Change the conditions of the Palestinian people. Grant them the same rights as Israeli citizens. Allow freedom of movement in the country and abroad. Allow them employment and the ability to buy property. When they have the same rights as Israeli citizens, the impetus for Hamas will fall away. They will be vilified by Palestinians and Israelis.
How we get there is the conundrum. I agree that this needs UN intervention. But without United States support, intervention is moot. The first step is a ceasefire, which should be internationally supported immediately.
This shit bag is many shit bags who hold power in the Israeli government. I present you, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. Who wants to create their own militia:
In a further swipe against a previous attempt by Ben Gvir to form a national guard that would be independent from the police and answer directly to his ministry, Shabtai said: “I have fought and I will fight with all my strength to guarantee that any policing force will be subordinate to the Border Police and the Israel Police.”
The lawmaker, Itamar Ben Gvir, has long admired Meir Kahane, the late racist rabbi. Kahane’s violent anti-Arab ideology — which included calls to ban Jewish-Arab intermarriage and for the mass expulsion of Palestinians — was considered so repugnant that Israel banned him from parliament and the United States listed his party as a terrorist group. Kahane was assassinated by an Arab assailant in New York 32 years ago.
The Israeli govt is cutting off essential supplies to the entire Gaza strip, including food and drinking water, and is indiscriminately killing and bombing swathes of civilians if there is so much as a rumour of a single Hamas fighter in the area. They literally bombed a refugee camp for this reason.
Meanwhile, Hamas has less access to military gear but are no more discriminate in their targets. Israeli civilians, IDF soldiers, it's all the same to them. In a single day, they killed more than 1000 Israeli civilians, and that was just the incident that started this escalation.
Preface that I have no solutions to offer to the conflict.
But if a school bully takes your lunch one too many times, he’s eventually gonna get punched in the face. But in this case, Hamas is too underpowered to be the school bully.
It’s more like the mosquito that just won’t stop buzzing in your ear even though you are traipsing in his forest. Except this mosquito flies with 2m of his closest brothers and sisters and your response is to burn his forest down.
I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Hamas has annoyed Israel one too many times and now is getting an angry, irrational response with tons of collateral damage. Not a calculated response.
Perhaps the only thing I can offer is that the response from Israel isn’t all that irrational. Every person can be driven to the point of breaking and lashing out.
Israel has obviously completely had it with Hamas and would rather bear the international consequences of wiping Gaza off the map instead of facing one more rocket across that border. Honestly that is a pretty fucking huge miscalculation for Hamas. Because Israel is a much better international diplomat and the winner gets to write the history book.
When you have two kids on the school yard that are lashing out, the principal comes along and makes sure neither crosses the others path again. That may be how this ends, but I fear the world doesn’t care enough about either side to get involved that way.
I think that analogy is backwards here. Israel is the school bully. This has never not been the case, ever since the partition. In the past 75 years Israel has been displacing and killing Palestinian people, restricting freedom of movement, doing settler colonialism and genocide. Hamas’s horrific terror attacks are the result of the material conditions of Palestinian people deteriorating. The more Israel pushes them into a corner, the more extremism will look that a real choice to them.
Israel keeps taking Palestinian lunches, but much of the western world doesn’t care because they are Israel’s allies. Then the western world hears about hamas attacks and gives israel more money and weapons, continuing the cycle.
Yeah in 1948 when they started their genocide. Why do you think their neighbors started attacking them? Do you really think that it has nothing to do with the borders drawn up by the British, which forced an apartheid state onto the Palestinians?
Huh kinda weird how all of the people who would ultimately be affected by this new theocratic ethnostate voted against it huh? Did you ever stop to think that that is?
Western powers created a state that they had no business creating, against the wishes of the local population. When the locals fought back, a war broke out and Israel used the opportunity to take 60% of the land that was a part of the agreed Arab state as well as numerous zones that they were supposed to be sharing. That ended up displacing almost a million Palestinians.
A perfect analogy to this conflict is if someone ran into your home, said they owned 50% of your house, then when you fight back they throw you in the bathroom and keep even more of it. Ever since you get less and less. All the while the western imperial core supports them.
timesofisrael.com
Top