It’s too on the nose when religions claim they are coming in the name of peace yet they continue to leave a bloody trail. Yes, I condemn Hamas just as much as I condemn the killing of innocent Palestinians in the name of religion.
Innocent Palestinians are being killed by an ethno state so let’s make sure we call it what it is. It’s colonial sentiments and Jewish supremacy that are behind this.
Hamas clearly and obviously committed crimes against humanity (intentionally murdering civilians, raping, torturing and kidnapping).
Israel, so far, is playing in the gray areas. It’s legal, according to international law, to lay siege on a population as long as it has a definitive and declared military purpose. It’s illegal to do it to intentionally harm civilians or to intentionally starve them.
The main problem is that Hamas is using the Palestinians and hides amongst them. That makes the legal discussion very difficult because Israel can always say that they target Hamas and everything else is just collateral damage.
Unfortunately the Palestinians are getting f’ed from both sides here.
so israel is obligated to keep providing vital supplies to the terrorists murdering them? Maybe instead of buying rockets they should have worked on their infrastructure.
If Israel wants to keep occupying an area, yes they do have the responsibility to keep supplying vital supplies to Gaza. Even if some of them would be terrorists. And while some of them could be called terrorists, you do not have permission to deliberately cause harm to everyone in largish area.
You being attacked does not allow you to commit war crimes, genocide or ethnic cleansing. This is not a grey area.
You being attacked does not allow you to commit war crimes, genocide or ethnic cleansing. This is not a grey area.
If someone was about to kill you, and they’re hiding behind another person, and the only way you could stop them from killing you would be putting the third person at risk of being killed as well, do you have the right to defend yourself?
That’s basically the point, on a macro level, that we are all arguing about.
There is another question on a micro level. How many people who are not about to kill you can you kill in self-defence to save how many people?
While in theory, every human life is as important and valued as another we do often in practice allow some movement morally.
The third question is immediacy. Are you allowed to kill someone in self-defence if you know they will kill you tomorrow? Is it just current action, and how far current stretches.
But while those are simplified questions on the philosophy of ethics in these situations they don’t entirely apply to Israel and Palestine. That is because they ignore the power imbalance.
Something already got wrong in your logic chain if you came up with something like “well maybe if I need to kill 1001 citizens the terrorist is hiding behind in order to save my 1000 citizens, maybe better not do anything and let him kill my citizens”.
Immediacy is simple in this case. We all know that if Palestinians do not attack Israel then Israel will not attack Palestinians. And we all know that no matter what, Palestinians are going to continue their unprovoked attacks. This means whoever comes up with “let’s attack first because otherwise we’ll get attacked” must be Palestinian, and a lying one.
Why are your citizens somehow more valuable than any other citizens? I am not even saying do nothing. I am saying killing people indiscriminately is not OK.
Second, if these are unprovoked attacks I have no idea what in your world constitutes provoked. I don’t think attacks being provoked makes them right but they didn’t come out of nothing. Israel is not an innocent party here. Neither is Palestine.
It’s not about being valuable ot not. It’s about accepting terrorism as weather and do nothing about providing an umbrella. While your stance suggests Israel to silently let Israeli die, hamas is actively using Palestinians in order to get away with their terrorism. This means hamas actively wants anyone interfering to kill Palestinians instead of hamas. They’re making it unavoidable.
Unprovoked attacks are unprovoked. When you want to say “Palestinians were forced to storm the Israel territory in an attempt to kill as many citizens as possible because something happened in the past”, you suggest a provoked attack. And if you say “but look, it didn’t come out of nothing, there is a reason that is righteous”, I’d ask you to consider how exactly it was even theoretically logical and effective. If you want to punish your attacker, you punish your attacker, not civilians. If you want to go war, you better have a plan on how to win from the very start. And if you know you can’t win, you don’t start because you value the lives of your people.
Are you seriously trying to argue that hamas is hiding behind 2 million civilians in Gaza, and that there were now thousands of valid military targets? Natalie Bennet couldn’t even answer a simple question a BBC interviewer posed to him about their consideration of the lives of innocent babies. Couldn’t even answer a simple question. This man is supposed to be one of the leaders of the nation.
Its been widly reported that the Palestinians are being used by Hamas as human shields.
Could you support that claim? Because it is Israel that actually has a track record of using human shields.
And no sorry, living in an area does not mean you are using people as human shields. Israel, for example, forces children to walk through a cross fire as a human shield or straps them on the front of an army truck.
Could you support that claim? Because it is Israel that actually has a track record of using human shields.
Well, I didn’t write down the dates and times down so I can prove them to you when you asked me, but I’ve been watching coverage every day all day on this and it was mentioned many times on multiple networks like CNN, BBC, NPR, Breaking Points (Intetnet), etc.
There are like a gazillion more reports like this so just say the words and I will personally DuckDuckGo them for you.
As with everything else about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it always comes down to both sides having ample evidence of how the other side is bad and they are good.
Having said that, if you just look at what’s going on in Gaza right now, you can see Hamas has bases/underground tunnels and the Palestinians are what are between Israel and Hamas.
I think almost all mentions of Hamas using human shields is a dumb technicality. Again, Israel staps Palestinian children on trucks and has been condemned by so many fucking human rights organizations that it made me lose hope in the world that they will ever be held accountable. Hamas on the other hand keeps its military bases where Israel can’t find them on an extremely densely populated open prison.
It’s entirely Israel’s fault for bombing hospitals (yes it’s done that in this operation too and in every single one before), whether Hamas (who are fucking picks too) puts bases underneath or not. You’d imagine if they were using human shields that Israel would kill less civilians. Instead Israel uses it as an excuse to kill Palestinians because they are less than human to the IDF.
What I mean to say is that when people say “human shields”, they mean when civilians are forced into crossfire to protect the enemy troops. However, there exists the notion of “proximity shielding”.
Authors Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, elaborating on their book, Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, discuss “proximate shields”, humans as shields merely due to proximity to belligerents and assert that this type has become “by far the most prominent type of shield in contemporary discourse”. They say that the proximate shielding accusation has been used by States to cover-up war crimes against civilian populations and that human rights organizations frequently fail to question this charge which they claim is being improperly used to justify civilian deaths.[7]
There are several pieces that discuss this idea, but here are some.
Our research suggests that human rights and humanitarian organizations have been complicit with this framing exercise and that it is urgent to have a frank conversation about human shields and the legal and political implications of the human shielding accusation. Both in our book and in several academic articles, we have shown that hi-tech States spend considerable resources on media campaigns and mobilize legal and military expertise to justify their use of lethal violence in cities where civilians are trapped.[ii] We describe how human shields, and particularly the charge of proximate shielding, are being widely used by States and their militaries to justify civilian deaths in asymmetric conflicts, and how it has become a major tool in what we have called the ‘erosion’ of the civilian.
Our research suggests that human rights and humanitarian organizations have been complicit with this framing exercise and that it is urgent to have a frank conversation about human shields and the legal and political implications of the human shielding accusation. Both in our book and in several academic articles, we have shown that hi-tech States spend considerable resources on media campaigns and mobilize legal and military expertise to justify their use of lethal violence in cities where civilians are trapped.[ii] We describe how human shields, and particularly the charge of proximate shielding, are being widely used by States and their militaries to justify civilian deaths in asymmetric conflicts, and how it has become a major tool in what we have called the ‘erosion’ of the civilian. **
If you turn your eyes back to the wiki page I first linked under the section on Israel and Palestine:
Israel has used the charge, in what has been termed its ‘infowar’ on social media,[56] to explain the high ratio of civilian vs military casualties in its conflict with Gaza. In Operation Cast Lead 100 Gazans died for every Israeli, and the civilian ratio was 400 Gazans to 1 Israeli. Israeli spokesmen explained the difference by alleging that Hamas used civilians as shields. It has been argued that no evidence has come to light proving these claims.[57][58][59][60] In September 2004, Justice Aharon Barak presiding over the Israeli Supreme Court, issued a demand that the IDF desist from the practice of using Palestinians as human shields, and in October outlawed the procedure.[61] The independent human rights NGOs B’tselem and Amnesty International have stated that ample evidence exists in conflicts after that date that Israel has employed Palestinians as human shields. According to B’tselem, the practice goes back to 1967.[55][61]
By these means, entire populations and vast cities are reduced to war space. Prevailing hierarchies of humanity ensure that some places and some people are far more likely to find themselves expendable through the twisted logics and framings of the human shield.
I hope this makes my point clear but basically: Israel is using proximity shielding (aka accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields) to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and has itself had to outlaw the use of Palestinians as human shields because it was a normal part of Israeli military operations and totally allowed until all the human rights groups finally succeeded in outlawing it, and yet Israel still sometimes uses it.
But this is that justification in that context. “Oh, they are using the civillian population as human shields. Looks like we are going to have to kill everyone.” Like 2 million stand between the IDF and the hostages. So silly. I would hope the IDF leadership is a little more disciplined than that logic.
I’m asking it as a moral dilemma, a thought experiment, generally speaking, and not to this current situation.
Fundamentally, is it ethically/morally right to risk/kill an innocent person who is being used as a shield, when trying to kill someone who is trying to kill you?
“Oh, they are using the civillian population as human shields. Looks like we are going to have to kill everyone.”
They’re not saying that, at least I haven’t heard them say that, and I’ve been watching the coverage daily.
They’re definately risking everyone in the area, but they’ve also warned everyone in the area to get out of the area, before they go in.
You have to be pretty naive about how Israeli govt. Leadership tables these kind of things, which you could be forgiven for if you don’t follow these things. But most American Jews, myself included, know how messed up Likud’s approach to this kind of stuff is.
People responding keep not answering the point I’m asking, instead of trying to turn it into me attacking Israel, for some reason.
Fundamentally, is it ethically/morally right to risk/kill an innocent person who is being used as a shield, when trying to kill someone who is trying to kill you?
Because it is extremely disingenuous to frame it like this. Even in this hypothetical scenario, you absolutely have the responsibility to try to save that innocent person’s life as well as your own.
While we could imagine hypothetical scenario where killing civilians is justified, it is pretty clear that is not the scenario Israel is facing right now.
Because it is extremely disingenuous to frame it like this.
The hell it is, that’s just an excuse for not wanting to answer the question.
My question gets down to the crux of the point, where the arguing from all of us comes from, and what should be done next comes from. And it needs answering.
Even in this hypothetical scenario
It’s not hypothetical, it’s happening right now, in real time, in front of us.
you absolutely have the responsibility to try to save that innocent person’s life as well as your own.
So does that mean you attack or not attack the person trying to kill you? Who’s life is more important, your own, or the person being used as a shield?
While we could imagine hypothetical scenario where killing civilians is justified, it is pretty clear that is not the scenario Israel is facing right now.
Well, Israel has to go into Gaza to destroy Hamas, and Hamas is using Palestinian citizens for shields, so that’s exactly the scenario Israel is facing right now.
You can’t hand-wave that away, because it’s uncomfortable to deal with.
Yes, the carpet bombing campaign has been Israeli troops going into Gaza. Oh wait, no it hasn’t they have been amassing reservists at the border.
This includes multiple of my relatives who are Israeli reservists. Obviously I do not want them to be put into harms way, but I fail to see how carpet bombing a place where 2 million people live does that. Perhaps you have some magical insight that my Jewish reservist relatives don’t.
Starving them out, cutting off water, power to hospitals… this isn’t pre-emptively attacking terrorists using human shields, its cruel and unusual collective punishment, and even the govt. leaders of Israel don’t bother to try to justify it when they are actually asked. Their response to these questions from journalists haven’t been “these are human shields.” The response has been “you didn’t talk about dresden in WWII.” Just disgusting.
Yes, the carpet bombing campaign has been Israeli troops going into Gaza. Oh wait, no it hasn’t they have been amassing reservists at the border.
You don’t see the carpet bombing as a step one and step two, which is coming very soon, is Israel actually going into Gaza with force, with all those reservists they called up?
Yes, but I don’t understand how carpet bombing protects them or helps them rescue hostages. They will still be in grave danger if they enter gaza, perhaps even more danger in this environment. It’s hard to pick out any military doctrine that suggests otherwise. This has been a repeated criticism of this type of military activity, across campaigns all over the world and recent history. I supposed you could compare it to allied bombing of axis forces, but I would argue that those campaigns were carried out as part of a much more stringently determined military strategy, rather than as a per reactionary action.
Perhaps you have some magical insight that my Jewish reservist relatives don’t.
All I was trying to do was get a conversation going on the ethics of attacking someone who’s using third-party innocence as shields, and not literally pass judgment on what’s going on on the ground today, just using it as an example for the overall ethical discussion.
There was a scifi book I read some decades ago they had the exact same scenario, and I was just trying to get input from today’s Humanity to see if it jives with the solution that the author of the novel had come up with.
People are being too emotional and defensive to have these kind of conversations though it seems.
If you want to talk about ethics on Lemmy, go create an ethics discussion community or host your own server. Discussing “ethics” in the context of Israel’s actions and policies is something that I have done over and over and over, unproductively. In less tense times, it is usually stuff like “should driving on highways be illegal on saturdays around the orthodox community?” and stuff like that.
If you come onto a thread that is specifically about what is going on Israel right now, and say “I’m just trying to have an ethical discussion,” it comes off as extremely disingenuous. I’m sorry.
If you come onto a thread that is specifically about what is going on Israel right now, and say “I’m just trying to have an ethical discussion,” it comes off as extremely disingenuous. I’m sorry.
You’re taking my words out of context of the whole conversation that’s happening, and being intellectually dishonest.
I was speaking about that question, as well as the larger discussion on what’s happening in Gaza right now.
Again, no it’s not disingenuous because it covers what’s being discussed in the very same topic. It’s real time and it’s happening.
You cannot hand wave that away as much as you want to. Both can be true, and allowed.
You’re just being emotional and defensive when you don’t need to be, to protect your team.
De-railing a conversation is a very well recognized form of logical fallacy. De-railing a thread is considered very poor etiquette on internet forums. I’m sorry for assuming we were having a conversation about the topic of the thread.
Also noteworthy: US law requires countries receiving US military aid to not have a consistent pattern of violating human rights, etc. And yet, the US doesn’t even follow US law on that
Its not a gray area. Killing civilians is wrong. It does nothing to counter hamas. It is not productive towards rescuing the hostages. Its not a well thought out or considered strategy that follow even the logic of war. It is just a cruel and broken reaction to terrorism. One atrocity in return the other. The point if government and leadership is to not behave like this. Jews whose famiues bear the the scars of the holocaust, myself included, know this better than anyone.
I just got done watching PBS News hour Brooks and Caprhart segment and, wow… Talk about completely one-sided. As though viewing this event in isolation without recognition to the broader historical context. Basically drooling over Netanyahu.
When will people learn that radicalization doesn’t just manifest out of thin air…?
Did either of them give historical context to why Palestinians are blaming Israel and not Hamas in this instance? Did either of them address the creeping territorial seizure of Arab land? Did they give any mourning to the many more Palestinian civilian deaths both in this acute conflict, or in the past decades? (reminder there has been roughly 10x the number of Palestinian civilian deaths from Israeli forces than there has Israelis by Palestinian groups).
The way they spoke made it seem like this attack just manifested out of thin-air and that Israel is innocent.
That neither the Capehart nor Brooks who raised their own race/ethnicity could relate to confining people into slums and ghettos, and imposing economic blockades as they victim-blame them for the number of civilian deaths is to me as shocking as it is ironic.
There’s so much emotion in your response that I’m lothe to reply, but at the very least, did you honestly expect them to have to hash out the whole history of the region every time they’re on air?
At some point I think it’s okay to assume that people know the basics of what happened before, and that they’re discussing the latest events that are going on.
to acknowledge the full picture would take five minutes. yes, it’s perfectly realistic. i’d say most of the viewers have only a hazy idea of the origins, if that.
exactly. israel has been killing palestinian as for decades. because they want their land. bibi is taking israeli citizens down a dark, dark road. if israel had treated the palestinians as full humans with the same rights as themselves, hamas wouldn’t even exist.
War crimes are war crimes even if you feel like you have a good reason (hint: there’s no good reason to cut off the watersupply to an entire population.)
Or maybe let the Palestinians take care of their own security because it seems the only palestinians with guns do so illegally and fall in with Hamas. How do we expect a peace treaty work otherwise? Do we expect to make sociopaths like Hamas docile with peace?
That’s just it. Hamas does not want peace with Israel. They want to see 100% total eradication of the Israeli state. There is no reasoning with extremists. I’m surprised so many people here are pro-Hamas.
In all seriousness, community is the biggest benefit of religion, and the reason I’m ok with it existing in modern society. The idealized church (and these do still exist in smaller churches) is a safe place for people to come, not be judged, and find acceptance and support.
A friend of mine goes to a church like this, and honestly sometimes I’m jealous. I’m as atheist as they come in my personal beliefs, but hearing all the actually cool stuff they do to support their members is really cool. I don’t agree with their religion, but they’re practicing it right as far as I’m concerned.
Religion should absolutely be either personal or small community, though. As soon as you have states using it as justification for violence, that religion has stopped being useful or acceptable.
Agreed, it’s mostly community as far as personal benefits. We had a friend group through it that fell apart recently and my wife wants to go back to church only for the community.
Outreach is mostly a guise in my opinion, a show that’s put on to make the congregation think their money is being used wisely. I have a lot of disdain for organized religion though, having grown up in it and painfully “deconstructing” a couple years ago. I can’t step foot in a church ever again (minus a wedding).
Yeah, for sure there’s some scummy stuff churches can do with money. Again, that’s not EVERY church, and the bigger it gets, the more likely the preacher has a supercar. Some have actual accountability, and actually spend the money helping congregation, but it can take some looking to find them, and unfortunately they’re overshadowed by the Joel Olstein style mega churches.
Traditionally, churches and other religious institutions, have been good at building community and programs that benefit the less fortunate among us. You know, the whole “love your neighbor as yourself” thing.
More and more, though, it has devolved into not much more than political extremism and often hateful rhetoric and even calls to physical violence.
I don’t think that is new. It’s true that it helps. But religions have always been involved in war. Up until 200 years ago the Pope was the most powerful person on the planet for at least 1000 years.
As a Brit I’m always shocked people focus on us so much. Like yeah we fucked up a lot of places and did awful things, but basically every country in Europe has committed atrocities that are as bad if not worse, like the French in Vietnam or Belgium in Africa, or mother fucking Spain basically wiping put the entire south American continent.
We aren’t giving the others a pass, but this shitshow has a certain Etonian stench. It’s like the British Empire looked at Zionist and saw a shared colonial heart…
Most of the current day border conflicts are related to the past century’s British policy, both due to the extent of the British Empire and its little interest in preventing trouble in their way out. You see similar issues with French ex-colonies, but since they weren’t as many they don’t appear as much in the news. Border conflicts in old Spanish colonies mostly took place during the 19th century, and they’ve been independent for long enough for their current issues not to have as much to do with Spain anymore. In contrast, there are British people alive today who were kicking around when the victors of WWII decided to split Palestine in half without asking Palestinians for their opinion, and afterwards chose to ignore the ethnic cleansings of Palestinians.
In any case, you shouldn’t take of this personally, unless you actually hold any position of relative power.
Palestinians were in fact asked for their opinion before the UN voted to split it in half…
Do you have a source for this?
There’s a shituation very comparable to Palestine happening today in Western Sahara. A former colony of Spain.
Fair enough. Spain had an UN mandate that ordered them to oversee the process of decolonization, and instead they just gave it up to Morocco against the wishes of the Saharawi people themselves. The contemporary attitude of both the US and Spain is disgusting in this issue.
I replied to a post that claimed they weren’t asked for their opinion. Instead of working with the UN to decide on how the territory should be split they just said “we don’t care”. It’s like refusing to go to your divorce or custody hearing because you think it’ll be unfair
Their plan was to get the neighbouring countries to invade and capture the entire territory
So the majority of Palestinians just flat out refused to discuss splitting their country apart, just like it would happen everywhere. The way in which you presented facts is disturbingly misleading.
You see similar issues with French ex-colonies, but since they weren’t as many they don’t appear as much in the news.
Or people aren’t as aware of them. E.g. notably their mandates in Syria and Lebanon after World War 1 where they intentionally stirred divisions on the basis of a theory of wanting to keep it so France as a mediator was needed in order to keep them stable. And then they fucked off and left chaos behind.
Fair enough. Also, English speaking people will be relatively less exposed to conversations in French, which should be more oriented towards French colonies than English colonies.
I think the general focus comes from the particular reach of the British empire controlling ~ a quarter of the world, but I agree every major power has done it
That said, in this particular conflict, it’s more about how right after WWII , around the time when the United nations was founded. The world powers knew they basically owned the world at this point with nuclear tech, but justified it by arguing they should use this power to preserve countries borders.
Around the same time when the world powers are saying this, land that Britain colonized in Palestine was given to create Israel. Which is hypocritical.
I can understand machiavellianism in the context of pre 1950 geopolitics, but there will never be peace because of the decision making of Western powers doing something they have acknowledged is unethical
1/4 yes, but also worth mentioning that today far more than 1/4 of the present-day population live in that quarter of the world that has a history of being under British rule in recent history.
Couple that with the UK population being far more likely to be proud of the empire, wish Britain still had an empire, and insist the colonies wee left better off for having been oppressed, the British Empire has a certain stench about it many of the others haven’t, or haven’t anymore because of either age, a greater willingness to admit it was a bad thing, or lack of scale.
I think Hong Kong is the rare exception that’s at least possible to reasonably argue, since the alternative was never independence but being ruled by someone granting even fewer freedoms.
Three things: Scale, recency and contrition or perceived lack thereof.
The British Empire is the largest empire there has ever been. At its greatest extent, in 1920, it covered about 1/4 of the entire world, long after having lost many holdings like the US. The second largest, the Mongol Empire, reached almost the same size, but hundreds of years earlier.
In the same time period as the British, the Russian empire covered <20% in 1895, but its proportion of colonial lands to their own was much smaller than for the British Empire and the proportion of the current world population living in those areas is also much smaller. The French colonial empire covered less than 1/10th of the world at its peak in 1920, and was by far the largest recent holding of colonies outside the holding country.
Spain is rarely brought up, I think, in large part because the Spanish empire reached its peak in the early 1800’s and so is “history”. Belgium doesn’t get discussed at much because 98% of their colonial holdings was Leopold II’s personal ownership of the Congo Free State. And then we get to the last bit: Contritition.
Nobody goes around saying the massive scale of gross abuse that happened under Leopold II’s rule of the Congo Free State was a good thing. Few people I’ve met ever defend France’s atrocities in Vietnam. Even the defence of their ownership of Algeria, which was special enough to trigger an attempted coup against Charles de Gaulle when he wanted to let it have independence because many saw it as part of France itself, is relatively muted.
But there’s still mainstream support for the British Empire in the UK. There are still people who insist the British Empire was awesome for the colonies that were exploited because they got English and rails and British legal systems and that somehow outweighs the mass murder and brutal exploitation and erasure of local cultures.
E.g. this survey from 2019, where 32% were proud of the British Empire, 37% were neutral, and only 19% considered it “more something to be ashamed of”. 32% were proud of their country’s history of colonialism and oppression. Critically this was significantly higher than for other colonial powers other than the Dutch. At the same time 33% thought it left the colonies better off vs. only 17% who thought they were worse off.
I’m not British, but I’ve lived in the UK for 23 years, and I’ve experienced this attitude firsthand from even relatively young British people (ok, so all of them have been Tories) - a refusal to accept that the fact that a substantial number of these former colonies had to take up arms to get rid of British rule might perhaps be a little bit of a hint that the colonial rule was resented and wrong.
No other modern empire has left behind such a substantial proportion of the world population living in countries that have either a historical identity tied up to rebelling against British rule, and/or have relatively recently rebelled against British rule, and/or still have substantial reminders, such as Commonwealth membership or the British monarch as their monarch. When a proportion of the British population then keeps insisting this was great, actually, there you have a big part of it.
Religion is a plague. It’s the reason we’re going to destroy ourselves. How many of the people who deny climate change (and every other batshit insane position taken by lunatics) are religious right-wingers? By far, most.
the communist elite in china don’t give AF about climate change and they’re nothing close to “right wing” or religious. you’re just cherry picking to make a (very weak) point.
Even when international powers would force the place into two countries the fighting will never stop. Because both don’t have a country and want one and both ground their claim on religion. The religions are incompatible. Hamas consider Jews as the enemy of Allah quite literally.
Jews were pushed out of countries and killed and therefore promised land. So land was simply taken from a torn place that couldn’t protect itself. Palestinians are also pushed out of countries and killed and want their land back. The Brits just left them with this conflict because they couldn’t handle it. And now probably no one will be able to stop Israel anymore because they were given the better hand in terms of weapons.
Asking either side to stop won’t work. Ban religion instead. They could both live there.
Oh yes of course banning religion is the obvious answer that will lead to harmony. Even in your magical world where religion doesn’t exist this conflict would then be on racial lines.
Exactly, people use religion to justify acts that would otherwise be seen as irrational and inhumane. But with religion out of the picture, people will still commit the same atrocities and just try to find other ideologies as justification, such as racism.
Before 1943, both Muslims and Jews lived in Palestine in peace, but as immigration increased, so did tension. It wasn’t about religion, it was about land.
Didn’t immigration to Israel increase due to persecution of Jewish people? So if there was no Christ / bible leading to Judaism separating from Christianity, we wouldn’t have the resulting anti-semitism that caused Jewish people to return to their biblical homeland and displace the indigenous Palestinians. Honest inquiry.
I think so, too. With no religion, anti-Semitism could probably not exist. Although, it isn’t purely a religious group but also an ethnicity.
Jewish people are native to the place Palestine/Israel as well, btw. Even when you leave out the religious claim going back to Abraham, there are multiple archeological and genetic findings that confirm Jewish people have lived there already thousands of years ago.
The only reason being jewish has an ethnic component is, of course, religious. Who else cares which parti-fucking-ticular tribe their ancestors belonged to 2.500 years ago
Not really. There has been conflict between the two groups since pretty much the day the first Jewish immigrants/settlers arrived in the 1800’s. The first recorded violent action was in 1882 when an Arab was shot at a wedding by a Jew so a bunch of Arabs started a small riot vandalising Jewish property. And since there has been so many riots and shooting and checks notes mule thefts, done as retaliation to retaliation to retaliations.
The Brits just left when they saw they couldn’t handle the conflict. I wonder why humans again and again try this concept of “let’s just devide the place and protect the borders!”. I don’t think it ever worked, instead we have multiple examples of how it makes people suffer and has long lasting negative consequences.
To be fair, most divisions took place around WW2, so perhaps it was just a beloved but dumb idea at that time…
That’s actually not true. There’s a book called Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe. Look it up, there’s a chapter precisely about that. He brought the receipts.
In peace part. There’s a lot of documents showing that the first wave of Jews coming to Palestine lived in peace with Palestinians, also a lot of them working together and forming trade unions together which was a problem for Jewish elite. It’s presented in the book.
One incident on a certain date doesn’t mean there’s conflict between groups. There were plenty of jewish and muslim neighbours helping/hiding eachother when extremists started trying to bully/kill the other group from villages. Living together in peace requires both groups to defeat their extremists
Jews lived in Arab and Muslim countries as second-class citizens at best. There are also many Palestines in Israel living there, doing sports, allowed to vote, etc. But somehow in that case it’s not okay.
Almost as if it’s okay to treat Jewish people as lesser, but not Muslims.
The whole fights and anger about the city Jerusalem is driven by religion, as well.
Even when Palestinians could live in Israel as first class citizens they reject it because they are anti-zionist. Which is a religious standpoint, even when Zionism itself is of course also a religious standpoint.
Please read this for example, which I think makes a very good point on how religion drives the conflicts:
So land was simply taken from a torn place that couldn’t protect itself.
I mostly agree, but ‘taken’ is somewhat reductive, it was more like a forced partition. Jews already lived there and were already emigrating there en masse long before the end of WWII, Zionism ramped up in the late 1800’s, 60 years before the Jewish state. There was already violence in that area through a lot of early Zionism and a civil war in the few years leading up to partition.
It would be like if the UK decided tomorrow to give 35% of the US to Hispanic Americans despite them only being ~20% of the population, it just a weird way to split up a country that is bound to cause conflict. (Jews were 30% of the population of Israel/Palestine when it was split in half) No one actually expected Israel to survive the wars at the start, as you said they just wanted to push the ‘problem’ onto someone else. If you’re a displaced population what do you do if no one wants to take you and your under threat of death most places you go?
I suspect however that if partition never happened, there would still be ethnic conflict in that area and it would have just shifted who was the oppressed group. Which really highlights the real problem as you implied, the inability for many religious communities to live side by side. Look at India, Nigeria, Ireland, etc. Whenever you have 2 prominent religions in large enough numbers living closely together their fanaticism never allows integration and a shared sense of national unity. Banning religion is a great way to make religion popular again though, not the best way to get rid of it. A secular education is the best way to get rid of religion.
Thank you, I looked into it and found a lot of interesting research about the people who lived in that area in the past. I agree that both groups of people are native to the place.
It’s interesting how the narrative of Jews being invaders or even colonizers of the place is prevalent in social media, on biased websites and sometimes even the news.
I guess people really like that idea because it makes the whole issue more easy black-and-white.
To be fair, extremism flourishes when conditions are bad. Hamas is potentially a product of these conditions, or at least partially. If both peoples would be afforded better conditions, they might seem less incompatible than the two groups seem at the moment.
About time the Palestian issue is put back on the agenda. Strangely enough, Israel is doing everything they can it seems to make that happen.
There’s a Chris Hedges - Sam Harris debate on YouTube you can watch in which Hedges brilliantly argues that desperate economic conditions actually lead people to turn to religious fanaticism as opposed to Sam Harris who argued that religion is fanaticism in itself.
Then people should extend the same excuse to the Jewish people as well, who ended up in and with Israel because they faced genocide and exile multiple times in their history around the globe. From Arabs and Muslims as well, btw.
Palestinians lived in Palestine before any Zionists came, and they lived with Palestinian Jews and Christians. They don’t demand the land because of “religion”… they demand their land, country, identity, and dignity back.
Big fucking difference. And honestly, it reflects poor knowledge about Palestinians and Palestinian history on your part.
The reason why Palestinian groups like Hamas want the land completely for themselves is religious. They claim that Palestine is only really theirs when it’s “pure Muslim”. You can read this in the charta of the Hamas and also in the quotes of their leaders.
How is that not based on religion? Jews were living there before as well and many Palestines want them completely gone because they are Jews.
Israel has killed full Palestinian families in Gaza. This isn’t people “caught in the crossfire”. This is Israel bringing the crossfire to their beds and homes. This is Israel’s continuing ethnic cleansing.
I am still waiting for the part where I equated Israelis with the Israeli govt and forces… How much longer do I need to wait until you read that paragraph again and realize you were wrong?
Almost like you got this out of Chris Hitchens mouth.
I don’t like religion either. But, I don’t agree with banning religion. Banning something only give reason for martyrdom. It is too naive, to say that the Israel-Palestina conflict would be gone if both of them turned atheists. Too much bad blood between them. Instead it would need a long process to fight for peace. Short term cease fire, making them to have a long one. Stop giving Israel too much privilege and upperhand by giving them more advanced weapons. Reeducate the people! Honest education is one of the best solution against religion. And we might have a chance to have a peace there in the long future. The conflict wouldn’t be resolved in the next couple of years, I believe it would take decades.
The western block has to stop giving weapons to Israel and stop supporting Israel blindly. What they did there, has to be condemned also.
When Israel wouldn’t have weapons, Hamas would kill them an probably other Palestine groups as well because they see Jewish people as the enemy of Allah and do not want to share the land with them, they want to kill or exile all Jews in the area.
I think if you were able to pull the religious component out the conflict would be solved very quickly. Control over religious hotspots? Gone. Scripture telling everyone they are god’s chosen and need to oppose the non-believers? Gone. Outside influence and money supporting ‘their’ extremists? Gone. Israeli settlers thinking it’s their religious job to retake their holy land? Gone.
Russia. It gives them breath and cover at a time where the US is stymied against supporting Ukraine. Creates another thing for the media to “do” that isn’t covering Ukraine.
It’s a very bad physical destruction when there’s now 5 times more than 60 years ago. When I destroy something whole or in part there’s usually less afterwards. See Jewish population in Europe before and after ww2.
So the medieval-style siege (only done 'in retaliation" ofc, as is tradition for Israel) does not intent to destroy the population in the Gaza Strip just because the bad sand people didn’t die yet? The definition clearly states that it’s about intent.
In any case, 45% of the population in Gaza is 14 years or younger, so the mental harm bit of the genocide definition also applies. What Israel is doing and did in the past centuries is horrific and that constant backup they get from the West has to stop.
By the way, I’m not arguing that Hamas are the good guys, everyone knows they are jihadists that like to pretend they fight for their people but in reality only use them as shields. I argue that Israel is a nationalist, ultra-right state led by an insane nutcase that openly admits to be a proponent of zionism and unironically thinks Hitler got the idea for the Holocaust from a Palestine Grand Mufti.
I’m not arguing for Israel being the good guy, just for genocide to be melodramatic. They treat them like enemies, which with a support of 60%+ for hamas which declared goal is to drive all Jews (not only the rightwing asshats) into the sea.
Hamas and many Palestinians celebrate the deaths of Jewish civilians. Since even before Israel existed there have been multiple attempts to bring all sides together. There were offers where Palestine would’ve been its own nation with the capital being in eastern Jerusalem. They refused every single time. You want intent? The clear intent of hamas is the extermination of every single Jew in the region without exception. Both sides are bad and the Israeli government is far from innocent. But I only see one group celebrating when civilians get killed. And I only see one group thinking the Holocaust didn’t go far enough.
I’m not arguing for Israel being the good guy, just for genocide to be melodramatic.
It’s not melodrama, it fits the UN definition of a genocide, but if you think “ethnic cleansing” is more appropriate, I’m willing to compromise.
They treat them like enemies, which with a support of 60%+ for hamas which declared goal is to drive all Jews (not only the rightwing asshats) into the sea.
Palestinians support Hamas not because of their ideals, but because they are the only one’s that pretend to fight for them. Israel’s kill count is orders of magnitude higher than Hamas’. How many Palestinian would vote for Hamas if there were fair, anonymous elections in Palestine is impossible to tell. You are extrapolating Hamas’ extremism to the general population.
Since even before Israel existed there have been multiple attempts to bring all sides together. There were offers where Palestine would’ve been its own nation with the capital being in eastern Jerusalem. They refused every single time.
True, because their Holy Scripture tells them it’s their land which is ironically the same reasoning Israel uses to stake a claim on the land.
The clear intent of hamas is the extermination of every single Jew in the region without exception.
Yes, and the clear intent of Israel is to exterminate every single Palestinian. That’s why they are huddled up in Gaza and the West Bank, guarded by the IDF. They are not allowed to enter Israel and Egypt refuses to let them enter their territory as well.
And I only see one group thinking the Holocaust didn’t go far enough.
The only group I see thinking the Holocaust didn’t go far enough is the West by continuing to give military support to Israel and fueling the madness.
The extermination of Palestinians clearly isn’t their goal. Allowing the population of Palestinians to grow from 1 million to 5 million would otherwise look pretty foolish.
But why is Egypt refusing to let them in? Maybe because they don’t want to deal with Hamas either?
A population growing to 5 times the size it was before clearly does not fit the definition of genocide. Am I agreeing with how Palestinians are treated? No. But calling it a genocide when the population has been growing and growing is ridiculous.
The comment about the west I’ll ignore because it makes you look like a tanky.
Then holocaust deniers can’t read stats. As it took the Jewish population in Germany until 2018 to grow back to 1/5 of what it was in 1933.
Is the Israeli government being dickheads about Gaza? Definitely. But calling it a genocide seems melodramatic seeing as there’s now 5 times the amount of people there was 60 years ago.
And honestly, if what being done in Gaza qualifies as genocide, where’s the hate for Egypt? They keep the border closed too. But for some reason only Israel gets blamed. Why isn’t Egypt stepping up supplying aid?
And honestly, if what being done in Gaza qualifies as genocide, where’s the hate for Egypt? They keep the border closed too. But for some reason only Israel gets blamed. Why isn’t Egypt stepping up supplying aid?
Because they seemed to care about that during any of the wars they fought against Israel.
The real reason (according to everything I found) Egypt keeps the border closed is because they don’t seem to want to deal with Hamas and not because Israel is telling them to.
President Bush’s embrace of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for unilateral Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip is going to turn out to be more than a mere gesture. Sharon’s radical initiative would evacuate all Israeli settlements and military positions, unilaterally, within the next 18 months…de facto responsibility for what happens in Gaza once Israel withdraws will fall to the United States. That’s the hidden meaning in the president’s letter of assurance to Sharon saying that the United States will lead an international effort to build the capacity and will of Palestinian institutions to fight terrorism and prevent the areas from which Israel withdraws from posing a threat.
One wonders whether Bush really appreciates what he is getting himself and the United States into. Having trumpeted his support for an independent Palestinian state, he is now taking on responsibility for ensuring that the Gaza mini-state created by Israel’s withdrawal does not turn into a failed terrorist state.
I don’t agree with this guy’s hot take on things. He’s arguing that because Bush supported the Israeli Prime Minister’s idea of pulling out of Gaza, Bush is somehow taking full responsibility for Palestine and has all the blame for Hamas winning the majority vote in Gaza in 2007.
Sharon was going to let the Palestinian Authority (who rules the west bank) run Gaza. Bush is the guy who pushed for democratic elections. That’s why he’s the one who is most responsible. Of course the Gaza residents over 40 who voted for Hamas (perhaps around 20% of the current population) also share the blame. This is also something the news media doesn’t talk about. The Gaza civilians voted Hamas into power.
Still civilians though. And, not all of them did. All in all it’s madness to equate the entire Gaza population with the perpetrators the way that Israel is currently doing.
What was the voting age at the time of that election in Gaza? I’ve heard that the average age of Palestinians is 18, although that might only be a recent statistic. If the voting age of that population is so young, you might imagine the ignorance that population would have towards issues, or the potential that population might have for manipulation.
Did that 2007 election take place like US ones, where only like 2/3rds of people even vote at all?
Questions like this really make you wonder if it was even possible for the election results that put Hamas into power to be representative of the general population.
I wrote this on Reddit to argue against someone who suggested that Israel’s response is justified, given that Hamas won an election. Here’s what I responded:
There are several significant issues with your reasoning:
Voting has never implied being responsible for the crimes of your government.
There have not been elections since 2006. The Gaza Strip does not have a democratic system. This further challenges the argument that the population should pay some kind of price.
Hamas won the elections by taking 74 of the 132 seats in parliament. This means that 60 seats were for non-hamas participants of these elections. Consequently, many people who are trapped in Gaza and want nothing to do with Hamas are being punished/killed.
About 50% of the Gaza population is under 15 years of age. Attacking Gaza in this way should never have been on the table given these demographics.
Sorryz maybe I sounded a bit harsh. I think we’re on line here, but to be sure. I mean that the average voting age in 2006 could be an interesting detail when doing an analysis of the origins the current situation. So would other themes that played a role in the campaign before the election. I remember reading about this that the corruption of the alternative parties was an issue for voters too.
But when it comes to justifying huge numbers of civilian casualties, it’s a pretty well established principle that civilians can never directly be held accountable with violence for the actions of their government. So that means that we don’t need to engage with arguments about whether voters knew what they were getting into or any specifics about the election. Because doing so would be giving in to your opponent (in a hypothetical debate) and you’d be undermining your own position.
Maybe my points have the same problem. But since people who support the bombings don’t seem to care about international law, I felt like these were a good second line of defence.
It’s not a stretch. It was Bush’s idea to hold democratic elections in Gaza, instead of turning Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. Yes it was a noble idea, but it showed how Bush was incompetent on foreign matters. Bush also let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora when he refused to order the thousands of nearby US soldiers to go get him.
This all goes to show how incredibly important it is to have a US president who is competent. Bush would probably argue that he was just trying to do the right thing in pushing for democracy. And I’m not saying Bush is the only person responsible. But every time another building in Gaza is destroyed by bombing, that happened because Bush made the wrong call while he was in charge.
Well, he already literally removed the ability for Israel’s Supreme Court to stop him from doing whatever the fuck he wants. Regardless of how anyone feels about Israel, their political system is in shambles.
that was my immediate first thought after hearing hamas attacked. and so lucky for him that israeli intelligence somehow missed everything, so there was no warning.
I’m glad to hear him break back away from the Dem establishment orthodoxy. He’s been mostly toeing the corporatist establishment line since Biden secured the nomination.
Though, maybe that means I need to get defederated now.
I (a non-US) watched Hillary in a documentary about her saying Bernie has never worked (in corporat/professional settings) all his life. If that’s true, I don’t think it matters to him.
It’s a joke. They are saying Bernie will never be a paid off tool of the corporations. Which he would never want to be anyway. And that’s why he lost the nomination.
By only condemning human rights violations by Hamas and tacitly approving bigger war crimes by Israel, our American and European leaders are choosing sides in a very obvious and hypocritical manner.
We are unnecessarily antagonizing a billion Muslims and making ourselves a target for terrorism by blindly supporting an unjust apartheid state.
I don’t want to on the side of Hamas, but I also don’t want to be on the side of Israel.
USA and rest of the Western world has enabled Israel for the last 70 years while the Palestinians have been systematically disenfranchised and radicalized. No one put in geniune effort to de-escalate this situation and now shit has hit the fan.
If you’re supporting Hamas you are evil. I don’t have any interest in any nuance in this situation. They are terrorists that use human shields. There’s nothing you can say that makes that ok, full stop. You are one of the evil people.
The IDF is dropping white phosphorus on children’s hospitals, a blatant display of cruelty that makes no pretense of being necessary to fight Hamas. As evil as Hamas is, and I’m not downplaying that at all, the Israeli government is worse.
Most western countries feel and are guilty because they repeatedly killed and exiled Jews and promised them land as retribution that didn’t belong to them in the first place.
About 1/3 of the people living in Palestine were jewish at the time of the partitition. Are you saying the entirety of land should have been given to the muslims?
No. I think there is no fair solution as long as both groups demand it all should belong to them. They will both feel wronged. I am also pretty sure that pressure on the Jewish population would have increased there when Israel would not have been formed.
Ok, but then where does this lead us? Are the jews more wrong than the muslims in trying to kill the other one? Is anyone supporting either side more wrong than the other? Us on the sidelines can condemn the cruelty but at the core there’s no clear cut right and wrong like when Native Americans were wiped out by colonists…
In a better world maybe the UN would have enforced the partitition and after several generations shit would have cooled down. But that’s something that was impossible in '48
I hope you aren’t really asking me that lol. I have no idea. Apart from suggesting they should all just love each other and shake hands I don’t know what else could work.
But historically I think there is no example where a division of a country has worked out. Korea, Vietnam, Germany,… It was always a disaster.
And how would you even fairly split Jerusalem, for example?
A refreshing take for sure, and even though Bernie is Jewish he sees this cruel regime for what it really is. There are no excuses for harming innocent civilians, ever!
A lot of jewish actually call this out as a genocide, its just the world leader playing their politics while the people are getting murdered on the ground.
Yes I’m aware. I also know many Israeli citizens condemn the actions of their government. I just think that as an American Jewish politician, Bernie has an incentive not to criticize the Israeli government but he still does, and that takes some courage.
There’s nuance required there… because there’s a wide gulf between fervently supporting the right of Israel to exist and supporting the actions of their government.